I Speak the Truth not Fiction

The Barnes' are coming, the Barnes' are coming

2008-03-04T18:36:00.010-06:00

This post is just to confirm the numerous media reports that the entire Barnes Family is coming to Louisville, KY the week from 6/13/08 through 6/16/08. If anyone would like to see us during that time, my only plans are to attend a North Bullit's High School graduation on Saturday 6/14/08 and attend church at Immanuel Baptist Church on Sunday, 6/15/08, and hopefully play a spirited game of Ultimate Frisbee afterwards. Other than that, our schedule is open, please book time in advance for you know that Young Briezy is a very popular gal as well as her Momma!

Other than this trip, there isn't much to speak of going on, just working and kickin' it with the love of my life and our offspring!

Since nothing much is going on, I am going to take the time to comment on the elections, Favre retiring, and how proud I am of four of my comrades!

Elections:
B.H. Obama is a joke! He has one message, and I could speak on that and so could McCain, "Change". Anything would be a "change" from Mrs. Bill Clinton! If that's all he's got, which it appears that it is, than he's very pathetic. I was listening to the radio today and one caller made a good point, "You wouldn't marry someone you just met, why would you vote for them to be your President than?" Until last year I never heard of Obama, so what makes him more qualified than my good friend Jed, whom I'm very proud of? He's had breakfast with the most powerful man in the world last month, he also visited with a powerful Senator last month, so what makes him any different than B.H. Obama? Personally, I'd like to see Jed in the White House, at least he wouldn't be for killing kids! In all honesty though, I am rooting for B.H. Obama to win tonight, just so I can rest assured that Mrs. Bill Clinton isn't in the White House, but B.H. Obama better lose to McCain for the sake of all the kids that B.H. Obama wants to murder! But enough on the elections.

Favre Retired: Finally! He was a great player, but the off-season can finally return to some sense of normalcy now that he's made his decision.

On to the friends that I'm proud of: Jed, for above mentioned feats in his career which is very promising (don't forget your roomie on your rise to the top!). Soon to be Dr. Rob-dogg for successfully completing another semester towards his doctorate! Lt. C.D. Carnes, MS for getting the gig and the job assignment that you wanted, what a good kid! Finally, Joey Cecil, I'm extremely proud of this fine gentleman! He graduated seminary and, Lord-willing, is heading over seas with his loving bride to serve the King! What great pals I have! If we can all take a moment and thank God for the accomplishments of these lads.

Finally, below I've linked to a few posts that intrigued me, the first two for one of my beloved pals that is an Obama supporter and a global warming believer (I would have linked to an article that had "experts" stating that global warming is a hoax because those same ice caps that were "thawing" have gained twelve feet of ice which over compensated for all the "thawing" that your SUV is causing, thus proving that IT'S A HOAX!!!).
The last post is for myself, I really enjoyed it especially being in what feels like the center of the Prosperity Gospel Universe in Tulsa, OK. It is idolatry! and praise to our God and King for opening my eyes to see Christ as my Lord and Savior, I pray that he would do the same for those around me and those in other nations.

I'll give you some pics of Young Briezy because I know that's what the majority of you folks want to see anyway!

Between Two Worlds: Patterson on the Jesus Storybook Bible

2008-03-04T18:36:00.000-06:00

Between Two Worlds: Patterson on the Jesus Storybook Bible

All of the fortunate friends of mine that received a birthday gift from your's truly can evaluate what a great friend I am and anticipate reading this to your little ones! It truly is a wonderful book!

Between Two Worlds: Evangelicals for Obama?

2008-03-04T18:34:00.000-06:00

Between Two Worlds: Evangelicals for Obama?

Here's another post for that certain friend of mine! Please, please, please reconsider!

Between Two Worlds: Infanticide? Yes We Can!

2008-03-04T18:32:00.000-06:00

Between Two Worlds: Infanticide? Yes We Can!

This article is for one of my friends in particular that, in my opinion, needs to evaluate what a vote for Obama would be saying. (Thanks for the call on my birthday pal!)

Piper on Prosperity Gospel

2008-03-04T18:27:00.001-06:00

My Journeys

2008-02-05T19:03:00.002-06:00

It's been awhile hasn't it! I am happy to learn that one of my good friends has just graduated seminary and is currently working on his application to the IMB. As I have come to know this is a huge undertaking that requires a lot of time and effort, but the reward is great and if I had a say in it he would have already been overseas, well, not really, if I had a say in it he would be in Tulsa, OK from now until I die. After I die he can move anywhere he choses!

Where to begin? I guess I'll start with my travels to Chicago to surprise Dominic for his Christmas gift from Amie. She gave him, Jed, and I tickets to the Bears game against the Saints. It was cold at Soldier Field but not near as cold as it was the previous week when the Bears played the Packers! It was a great time to be with friends! What was also great was seeing Owyn in person, what a cute kid! If you haven't seen pics of the little thug, check out Jed's blog and follow the links there, he's a cute gangster! Before I say much more, I have to thank the Carnes family for the tics to the game and the excuse to see everyone again, it was a fantastic weekend adventure!

One of the highlights of the trip was driving down Lakeshore Dr. going to the airport at 5:00am groovin' to some Ronni-Ron!I must say that Young Briezy enjoys waking up with poppa and jammin' to some "Snap" and "Derty"! I told Briezy that Ronni-Ron was working on another cd and she couldn't stop smilin'!

Now on to some politics. I just voted today and I cast my ballot for Mitt. I must say that I'm not pleased with Huckabee. He is withfully handing over the nomination to liberal McCain and hoping to get the VP from him which isn't cool! He's playing the role of the 2nd guy in the class elections that's great friends with the only girl running and is just trying to split the guy vote so that the girl can win.

On to sports, a lots went on in the past few months! We'll go with the most recent, how 'bout them Footbal Giants!!! I was rooting for them primarily because Osi Umenuora (however you spell his last name) played at Troy State with one of my friends that went there, some may remember him, Demetrius Summerville (the extremely cool and godly dairy stock dude at Wally World in PCB! Another reason I was for the Giants is because of Eli Manning, I video taped his first game as a starter at Ole Miss, he lit Murray State up for an SEC record 19 straight completions! Plus, the latest leak of Spygate really put a bad taste in my mouth about the Pats! If they really did tape the walk through of the Rams then they need the ring revoked and the victory nullified in the history books! Usually, during a typical walk through the team goes over the first ten plays of the opening drive and from this you can derive what weaknesses they are trying to exploit in the opposing teams defense. If the Pats knew this, they had a decisive and completely unfair advantage and their actions are deplorable!

As for my favorite sport of basketball, it looks like the Cats are improving. I am happy to see that they beat UT, which makes the season a little better! Another basketball note, Rajon Rondo is coming into his own which is good to see, but my favorite team to watch is the Warriors! They captivated me last season and never have disappointed me whenever they've been on the picture tube this season! It's just great unselfish, fast-pace basketball! I love the confidence that they have in each other and when someone takes a bad shot no one complains or pouts, they just hussle back on defense and Nelly lets them play!

Well, I guess I'll stop here and leave you with a few pics of the second best girl in my life.

Oh yeah, it took a trip to Chicago to get some pics from one friend to hang up in my house, am I going to have to travel the entire US to get some pictures from the rest of you folks???

Judgement Day Has Come

2008-01-22T21:03:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone, I just wanted to make a real quick post and tell you that E-Walk has made an exceptional list over at his blog, you can find his name in my links and go to it their. It took him an extraordinary amount of time to do this service for us so check out the post!!!

Trip

2007-11-17T07:59:00.001-06:00

Hello all, I just wanted to give you some updated trip info, just in case I'm in your area and you wanted to kick it with Megs, Brie, and me!

Wednesday---make the long trek back east to Evansville, we're leaving in the morning hours sometime and should be there by the evening hours sometime (I don't really know the definites because I've never travelled with a 3 month old before!)

Thursday---during the morning hours I don't really have any plans, during the evening hours we're probably kicking it with the family and trying to find out who has the NFL Network so that we can watch the game!

Friday---in the whee hours of the morning we're making the trip further east to Louisville. The only thing that's definite is that we are staying at one of Megs' friends house. The rest of the plans are up in the air?

Saturday---during the morning still kicking with whomeva in da Ville and then by mid afternoon making the trek back to Evansville to attend a 65th wedding anniversary party for my grandparents. (Basically when we get back to E-ville Saturday we are booked until we leave.)

Sunday---heading west to sleep in my own bed and think about the memories that were created throughout this trip!

On another note, as seen below are 10 empty picture frames awaiting some pictures so that they can adorn my walls. Unforturnately they've been just hanging out on the floor because no one wants their pics to be seen by me on a daily basis.

Well, I got plenty more to say but I know how you folks hate the long posts so I'll sign off.

If you want to get in touch with me to kick it on the trip just give me a ring, you should know the number, or drop me a line, once again, you should know the e-mail address!

Be safe!

Go Blue!

Pastor Ted

2007-10-30T16:21:00.000-05:00

When I first read this I immediately thought of this fellow singling out Pastor Ted!

I promise more posts to come but I thought this was too good to not share with all of you.

Congrats to Jed and Sunny, and E-Walk and Whitney (I haven't heard anything but I assume that the time has come?) Also, congrats to soon-to-be Dr. Robb-dogg and Brittany, I excited for you all!

Brit this one is for you!

Chi-Town

2007-10-06T08:43:00.001-05:00

What's up Folks! I'm back from Chicago and I am finally able to make a post! I know some of you have had this experience but going out of town and then returning home is not always the funnest thing to do. Getting back into a schedule is very very difficult, especially when you have an adorable kid that seems to have forgotten who you are!

Well, I guess I can give you a quick recap of the trip. I got into town at 8:00am on Friday. We attempted to check in at the 15 star hotel and the service was excellent! You can see the picture of it up top; it had something like 1200 or 1500 rooms. It's the hotel the Bears stay in the night before home games. I then walked around both Millenium and Grant Park and took a tour of the Art Institute to pass the time in the ac instead of baking out in the 90degree heat! Then we met up with Jed and Sunny for lunch (they're both in the big time with j.o.b.'s in downtown Chi-town!) Then we (my mother-in-law and I) went back to the hotel for a nap much needed nap! I then met up with Jed and Sunny and road the Metra back to their place and hung out with them and Cooper! We ate at an authentic Mexican restaurant near their abode; speaking of their abode, it's fabulous, it sparked a huge amount of coveting my neighbor's house!

We then woke up the next morning and kicked it for a few before we went to the Cubbies game and what a game it was! It was filled with all the drama that you would want from the final Saturday home game of the season and well worth the $180 tickets! Plus, I got to sit next to one of the most inciteful Cubs fan in the world. Everything that was going to happen he called it! He knew everyplayers numbers, their slumps, weaknesses, strengths, and what they were likely to do in the given situation and the always did it! I'm definitely taking Jed to every game that I go to in the future, his company alone made it worth the price of admission!

After the game we got some souveniers, I got the find of the year, a seat back from Wrigley on sale! We then took a pit stop back at Jed and Sunny's and took Cooper for a walk and I had to take a minute to show Cooper who was the boss and he learned! I would post a picture of

Cooper and I but I threw Jed's schedule off so much that he probably is still catching up on his studies, plus attending to his pregnant wife; thus, I am still waiting on him to send me that pic, but you all would be proud of me, I overcame (kinda) my fear of dogs and struck a pose with Cooper!

After all of that fun we went down to the 200star hotel and met Ron Turner (the Offensive Coordinator for the Bears) he's also my step-uncle-in-law. We got educated in the world of the NFL and ask him some inciteful questions. One of which involved Camera-gate/Spy-gate or whatever you want to call it. He stated that, "It's far worse than what the media is reporting." It turns out that for many years the Patriots have been sending people into the opposing teams locker rooms dressed in the opposing teams official clothes, as to blend in with the team, and stealing the script of the offensive teams, searching in trash cans for anything that they could find about the opposing teams game plans. For those of you that have been around college or pro football. The first ten plays by the offense are scripted and basically in those ten plays you can decipher the game plan of the offense i.e. if they are going to pick on a particular corner back, or run at a particular side of the defensive line. If you can recall, the first play by the Chargers the first game after Camera-gate broke, the pass was intercepted by the outside linebacker, Phillip Rivers took a three-step drop and threw an out pattern to the wide receiver and mysteriously within two seconds the linebacker was that far out their so as to intercept the pass! The Patriots had to know that play was coming because the odds of that happening without knowing what's coming is about 1,000,000:1. I couldn't ask Ronny about this because his brother is the Head Coach of the Chargers, Norv Turner, and I know if I was Ronny I would be a bit defensive of my brother and I didn't want to ignite some anger in him because you could tell the Patriots cheating was a touchy subject with him. But Ronny was very nice and pleasant allowing us to probe into his life and it was an overall delight to finally meet him and I'm glad that Jed was there with me to share in the experience! I also got to meet some other relatives that were so kind in bringing some clothes for Brie, it was an overall delightful experience and I must say I have some great in-laws!

The next day I got to attend church with Jed and Sunny by the way here's a pic of Sunny two weeks away from her due date! She is sooo tiny! Owyn is going to have some great parents though, Sunny was a fantastic host and very understanding of her husband being gone so long nearly all weekend. It was a great time at church them, it's a church plant and they meet in a theater downtown. The peeps were very kind to me and extremely welcoming, I'm happy that Jed and Sunny found such a good church!

After church we went back to their place and I was treated to some beef from a Peruvian restuarant, it was extremely good! We then rooted the Cubbies on to victory from the comforts of Jed's couch and then went down to the hotel and got ready for the Bears game. We had some great seats!

We were 17 rows deep and sitting at the goal line, not too shabby for $300, my ticket, mom-in-laws ticket, and Jed's ticket! I was expecting to pay like $700 for seats like those! To top it off, Ron's wife met us at the game and gathered us all up and took us to the Gift shop inside Soldier field for half off everything in the store! She was a very friendly woman, her an Jed got to talk about the city, it turns out she only lives a couple stops up from him on the Metra in Evanston well actually some suburb with Lake in the name but near Evanston. It was a great game for the first half, tied up at 3 to 3 or 10 to 10, I can't remember. But then it became the Tony Romo and T.O. show and Sexy Rexy just collapsed! This turned out to be Sexy's last game. As a side note, Jed pointed out to me that when T.O. was sitting on the bench on the opposite side of the field you could lose your sight from the bling in his ears! With the nake eye you could see when those big chunks glistened in the lights! As it turns out we could have went down to the locker room but since the Bears got their butts kicked again, we didn't want to have any chairs thrown at us or anything plus Jed had to get back to the house and it was already 11:00pm get up at 5:30am to go to work and that night write a paper he should have wrote over the weekend! Thus Jed walked me back to the hotel and we said our good-bye's! It was one of the best weekends one could ever ask for! Well worth all of the expenses and inconveniences of getting back into a routine. The only draw back is that Meg's didn't get to experience it with me, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of being married when you have one of the best weekends of your life and you wife can't be there to experience it with you! For those of you bachelors, you'll know what I'm talking about in a few years! Well, sorry to take up your whole morning, lunch, and afternoon with reading this post, but I just had to get all of this down so that I won't forget in twenty years what all I did that weekend! Talk to you kids later, stay out of trouble, and don't drive slowly in the left lane!

Here's some random pics from the Bears game for your viewing pleasure!

Despair

2007-09-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

I want to first share an article with you all that I read yesterday about Jalen Rose and his estranged father Jimmy Walker. It shows you a unique side of the main reason that I'm a Michigan fan. Seriously, without the Fab Five than I wouldn't be a UofM fan at all! If you have a spare moment, it's a well-written article.

Now to my dilemna and despair. Last week at about this time I was contemplating on composing a post about Michigan's cupcake schedule and how if they were in the SEC they probably wouldn't have a chance of becoming the National Champs but because they're in the Big 10 all they would have to do is beat Ohio State and they'd play for the title. Seriously, we played App. State and the following week the drums of the Pac 10 that being Oregon and both of them at The Big House. I was disappointed when I figured out that I wasn't going to be able to watch the first game out here and I was having the Big 12's pitiful teams shoved down my throat. Then when the sports ticker on ESPN came across showing App. State's name in Yellow I was in disbelief and thought that my eyes were decieving me so I intently watched the screen hoping that either my eyes were decieving me or that ESPN got the score wrong. I then saw that we lost and I was still in disbelief so I quickly scurried myself over to the computer to see if it was true and indeed it was. Unfortunately for me I was at Megan's uncle's house so I couldn't punch myself in the face and fall asleep, plus my sister and her husband were in town so I had some hosting responsibilities so my first option was out. Then I tried to divert peoples attention from the screen when the sports ticker came across, but this was to no avail! Everyone quickly took notice of the score and then the torture began!

Despair

I then realized that for the rest of my life I couldn't say anything about anyone else's football team because they now have the trump card in every situation! This quickly led me to think about whether I will ever be able to enjoy college football again. The majority of the fun with me is the banter, now I would officially have my mouth shut in every situation. Then the thoughts of jumping in front of a Mack truck or jumping off a building rushed through my head. I then dismissed those thoughts but thought of the thousands of other UofM fans that must be having those same thoughts! Then the father in me rushed to the front of my mind.

Dilemna

Could I be able to subject my daughter to this? Could I let her follow a team that you must shut your mouth when the topic switches to football? Would a loving father subject his precious daughter to this? If the answer is no, a loving father could not put his daughter through this misery, than what steps would I take to make sure she does not grow to love and cherish the Maize and Blue? Would I have to watch and encourage another team when she is in the room and deny myself the pleasures of rooting for Michigan?

Conclusion

This dilemna is similar to my dilemna with the Cubbies, or anyone rooting for Tennessee or Kansas and I've concluded that there are bad parents everywhere and they aren't excluded from the kingdom and this will add character to my loving daughter. It is good for her to love the Wolverines and hopefully in her day we will rid ourselves of the uninspiring coach and the new one will lead us on to the many National Championships that we have been eagerly anticipating (and highly capable of winning) this past 9 years!

Go Blue!

P.S. I wrote this yesterday before we lost to the abysmal Oregon Ducks.

P.P.S. The image of the dude about the jump from the roof is from www.rickyagostin.com, for all your photography needs contact Ricky!

Speaking Out

2007-08-30T23:27:00.000-05:00

There are some things in life that when you see them you just have to openly condemn it right away! Kids, especially skater kids in tight jeans is one of them. I saw this on a daily basis when living on Bardstown Road and I saw this again about a month ago and I must publicly condemn this. It is abhorrent and just not right! Boys/men are not meant to wear womens clothing! One of my wifes coworkers while we where living in Louisville wore womens jeans and when she was weirded out by this he asked her if I wore girls jeans, she appropriately responded by telling him that I would never have given it a thought to wear womens jeans, he responded by saying, "He's not a true Highlander then." How pitiful is our society when twenty-something year old men think that it's fashionable and cool to wear pants of the opposite sex! How silly would you feel walking in to a dressing room with a pair of womens pants and trying those suckers on, it's just all together sickening! I think I've painted too vivid of a picture for myself and I need to switch topics real quick!

On a better note, I recently got my Ronald Jenkees cd and boy was it a good day! The cash is worth it just for the signed copy of the classic picture of Ronald! If you haven't made the purchase you should because it will put a big smile all over your face!

On to the Senator Craig story, using my common sense gut feeling I'd have to say that he's guilty just because of this minor (but very important) detail. They said that he put his bag on the floor as to cover up any visibility from the outside of the stall. This means that the dude put his carry-on bag on its side in a public restroom! This is disgusting to say the least, and I don't even have to mention that it would have been easier for him to handle his business if he left the carry-on upright because it would give him more room to stretch out his feet. This makes me conclude that he did it, if they wouldn't have included this detail than I would be extremely likely to believe the dude but that bag on a pee-infested floor made his story almost unbelievable! This leads me to another thing I must speak out against...using public restrooms to do the #2, especially for men in particular. I can't tell you how disgusting this is, no matter how many rolls of toilet paper you put on the seat you know that someone has taken pleasure in peeing on the seat that they know you will be stupid enough to sit on! Not only will you sit on it but you'll hang out their, how sickening!

I guess I'll end on that note and get some sleep! Don't forget that there is a post below this so if you didn't know now you do.

Stay out of trouble and don't be a stranger!

Gabbrielle Ann Barnes

2007-08-30T06:29:00.000-05:00

Born 8/7/07 at 7:36am weighing in at 8lbs. 10oz. measuring 20 1/2 inches. She's a delight to care for despite my selfishness and laziness. For those who have not had this experience yet it will reveal who you really are and what your heart really looks like, thus kids are not recommended if you want to stay just the way you are! Also, it is recommended that if you haven't married yet that you find a spouse that is going to be extremely forgiving and understanding that is willing to make up for and forgive all the flaws that you have, if you don't find a spouse like this your life will be miserable!

You probably can't tell by the picture but her eyes are blue, her hair at first was jet black but now has changed to a lighter brown. Everyone who has seen her has remarked on how long her fingers are, hopefully she'll one day be able to palm a basketball, something her daddy could never do. That's about all the information I got on little Brie. Oh yeah, she was whispering in my ear the other day how happy she is that her daddy's sister was getting to come and finally meet her this weekend and her daddy's parents were going to see her the following weekend. But she was also telling me how excited she is for her daddy that he is going to get to go see one of his very bestest friends in Chicago and hopefully root her Cubbies on to victory and cheer his heart out for da Bears. She can't wait to hear the stories and the updates on how Jed and Sunny are doing as well as Pam and D and Little D and Chris. She's hoping to hear the good news that Cooper a few months ago took a trip down to Virginia to stay with Mr. Vick for a few days but was unable to make the trip back to Chicago. I'm hoping to not dissappoint my beautiful daughter with all of my stories that I get to bring back to her!

On another note, her first music that she has ever heard is a John Pettit Cd that I made, entitled "The Best of Pettit" it's wonderful and I'm super excited to let her hear Johnboy belt out the classics so that she can one day learn to sing praises to her King in the same way!

One may be wondering why this is the first real post in a couple months, this may be because I've been patiently awaiting a picture to be sent to 3bbarnes at gmail dot com so that I can hang it up in my house, but apparently no one cares enough about the person that speaks the truth not fiction to send one over, so I had to hold out, but after a few touching phone calls I decided not to punish you folks any longer. Soon to come are some posts that I just have to get off my chest, they may be about some outdated issues, this being due to my patiently waiting for some pictures. Oh yes, finally I have gotten an updated address for Jonathan Christman so those of you that were desparately searching in your crackberries and black books can stop!

Hopefully there's more to come and if you want some more pics of Brie than just drop me a line.

Note to Rick (formerly Lil' Brother Ricky) I say formerly because I don't want to be that jerk that constantly refers to a friend in a demeaning fashion so if Lil' Brother Ricky is still ok I'd like to use that because I like the ring to it. Anyways, I like the comment about the video tour of the crib, but I have to hold off on that until I get everything straightened out in here and until I get the security system installed, that way I don't get jacked after some creep takes a peek at the video, but hopefully it will be coming sooner rather than later!

Note to Dr. Rob-dogg: I tried to send you some picks put that mailerdaemon guy sent them straight back to me, go figure!

You all be safe and don't drive slowly in the left lane!

First Born

2007-08-06T16:56:00.000-05:00

I promise to post more later, but I just found out that Megs and I are supposed to come in to the hospital tonight so that Megs can be induced into labor. It isn't that big of deal I'm told, Megs' fluids were just a little low and the doc didn't want to chance it. If you get the opportunity please pray for our childs health and most importantly, her future hope in Christ!

Talk to you all later!

Random Thoughts

2007-06-12T20:37:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile folks! There is a great reason why it's been so long, that is because I've been waiting on some answers. I appreciate those who chose to help a brotha' out, thanks for taking the time for me. For the others...I hope you were spending your time reading some of E-Walks posts or some other productive thing instead of waisting your life on Youtube.

I do have an update for my techies, I have chosen a camcorder, it's a Sony Handycam DCR-SR82 . I think it was a good choice and I'm trusting that you'll let me know if it isn't!

Now on to some random thoughts. I was listening to John Gibson's radio show on the way home from dinner with my lovely bride and he was speaking of Bush going to Capitol Hill today to speak to some Senators about the amnesty bill and trying to muster up some votes. He played some clips from the media asking if Bush is officially a "lame-duck" President. My response to this stupid question is no, he is not a lame-duck President, he's just out of touch with reality. He doesn't get it that no American is going to support an amnesty bill without first getting the border secured. I'm impartial to the amnesty part of it, I just don't want to see history repeat itself like in '86 when they passed a bill on illegal immigration but didn't enforce the border back then, which gave us this problem now. If Bush would simply build us a fence or start enforcing the borders now than next year this time he probably would be able to pass this bill, but him being out of touch and thinking that some senator is going to get voted out of office the next time they have to run for re-election just because GW went down the street and talked to them is pure stupidity!!! I could say more but I think you get the jist of it.

Thoughts on the NBA... The playoffs were good up until the Suns got penalized for taking a few steps up the sidelines and Stern decided to hand the series to San Antonio. The best part of the playoffs were when Golden State was in the process of upsetting the Mavericks, it was probably the best TV that I watched this year other than the Michigan vs. Ohio State football game in which one bone-head play cost Michigan the National Championship!

One blurp about Lebron James, I can't stand watching him play! If you watch his off hand whenever he has the ball he basically assaults the person guarding him with that off-hand and then goes around them, it's an offensive foul just about everytime he drives, there's no way anyone can defend that. If I had to guard him, each time he hit me I'd hit him back and let the refs know what's going to happen if they keep on letting him take shots at me, at least that way I could create a little sense of uncertainty and possibly throw him off a little bit.

My bride has informed me that I haven't announced our pregnancy on here. We are due August 8th. We've pretty much decided on the name Gabbrielle and I'm going to call her Brei for short.

Also, other exciting news, not exciting for you but exciting for me and Megs, we are closing on a house this Friday!!! We are picking out floors, getting new furniture, and thinking about decorations so that can serve as another reason why I haven't blogged in awhile, but it's mainly the reason stated earlier!

Megs has agreed to let me ask all my friends for their favorite picture so that we can hang it up in our house and I can think of them each time I see it, just like right now hanging by my computer is a gift that Jed gave me for being in his wedding written in Chinese or Japenese or whatever foriegn language, but I look up and see it and think of Jed. If each one of you could just send me your favorite picture, it could be of you and you lucky lady or of Mt. Everest, it doesn't really matter, just any picture that you like, send it over to me at 3bbarnes at gmail dot com (so the spammers don't get me) and it'll be hanging up in the house. If you can't narrow it down just send them over and I'll chose.

I'll say that's it, but I got tons more to say, but don't want to bore you any longer. Don't forget, send me the pics and they'll be hung up or placed on the mantel in the house and I'll get to think of you all more often... it gets lonely out here!

Thanks for stoppin' by and have a good rest of the day!

P.S. Jed, if I don't call you in the next couple of days call me, I need to speak with you soon!

P.P.S. No one answered me about getting in touch with Christman to give him the graduation present.

P.P.P.S. Did anyone else graduate with him this year???

P.P.P.P.S. Watch this Algore video of him talking about George H. W. Bush back in '92. How can anyone take him seriously about anything?

Life

2007-05-23T20:00:00.000-05:00

Here's my promised post about life. My question to you all is as follows: What life/lives should we care about. How I came to this question is in the wake of finding out about the VTech slaughter I heard a clip of some Congressman saying (paraphrase) "We have a tragedy, a loss of life grave, and it's not somewhere over in Iraq but right in our backyard!" When I heard this dudes comment I was immediately offended because I felt as though he was somehow cheapening the lives of the troops that volunteered to die so that the Iraqi people could be freed from oppression. I then had to question myself and think, would it even matter if he was referring to a car bomb going off and it killed a bunch of Iraqis and Iraqi soldiers, would that make a difference in the offense that I should take to his comments. Is my Christian world-view supposed to differentiate between American lives and Iraqi, Somali, Chinese, German, or Ethiopian lives? (This isn't a rhetorical question! Neither are the questions to follow!) Where does the priorities lie? I know for instance that I naturally would care more about my wife, my unborn child, or my family or friends died than someone in Japan or any other part of the world, or even in the West end in Louisville, or North Tulsa. To what extent is a dead person a dead person and I should be affected by a sinner perishing without believing in their heart and confessing with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and trusting in Him for their salvation?

My second question I guess goes out to all the seminary folks. When Megs and I miscarried, did that child go to heaven or to hell? I know that this is an occasion to use Deuteronomy 29:29, but according to reformed theology and that life begins at conception, is the child that is breathing and living inside of Megs right now capable of sin. When she is squirming around inside of Megs' belly, is she being selfish in any way, is she giving praise to the King? Are all the millions and millions of kids that have been aborted worldwide going to heaven or because they have not breathed on their own and the umbilical chord been separated from their mother, are they not capable of sinning against the King of Kings?

I guess I could elaborate more on these questions but I think that you get my drift. If you take time to think about these things I'm sure you can come up with some more questions along these lines. If you have any insight into this, please help me out and try to answer these questions. Even if you don't know the answers feel free to think out loud here, no thoughts are considered stupid or inadequate to me, I just need some help with these questions and there isn't too many people out here that I know can contribute much in answering these questions so I'm leaning on you peeps for some help!

As always thanks for visiting and come back soon! (I'll hopefully have some more thoughts for you all).

Here are some more good blogs that I've found on the internets that I think may interest a few folks.

Blaquetulip

Reformingchurches (it's mostly black churches)

Dealnews

Slickdeals

Gottadeal

Jed, I've been meaning to call you recently, I'd love to hear your voice but I fear that you are either very busy or out of the country, hopefully we'll talk soon! Joey and Bruce-Bruce, I've seen you all signed in to Gmail here recently but have been too afraid to shoot you a line, hopefully someday I'll work up the courage for I'd love to hear from you all, I miss you both. Russell on the other hand, are you ever signed in to Gmail??? I'm curious about the first year and how it's went for you, I'm very happy for you!

Well, thanks for stopping by and hopefully I'll have some more posts when you stop by again the next time.

P.S. Does anyone know how I can get a gift to Jonathan Christman? I heard that he graduated seminary this semester and I got saw this figurine on-line and couldn't pass it up, but now it's at my house and it needs to be at his so that he can enjoy it but I don't know how to get it to him. If anyone knows how to get in touch with him that would be wonderful!

Please, please, please help with answering my questions! Talk to you later.

Covered by the blood,
Brian Barnes

P.P.S. Thanks for cooking again Megs, it was great!

Post for the Techies

2007-05-23T19:54:00.000-05:00

Here's a post I found while perusing through the world wide web. I immediately thought of the "big timers" Big Cheez and Lil' Brother Ricky. I would have just suggested that you click here to see the post but figured that the majority of readers don't click here, so I decided to copy and paste for you all so that it's right in front of your face and you can just scroll through it.

Here it is, enjoy!!!

It's a little messy because I started to clean it up and all that, but I figured that if you really wanted to read it you would just click here.

How To Crank Through Your Gmail

If you get a lot of email — and let’s face it, web workers live in their email — it’s likely that you already use Gmail to handle your communication needs. But are you doing it as quickly and efficiently as possible, so you can get back to your real work (read: Twitter)?

Master the tools of your trade and you will soon be churning through your email like it’s butter.

Crank quickly, and get out.

I get well over 100 emails a day, and I suspect I’m not alone in this department. But I respond quickly to each one (if necessary), and empty out my inbox each time. And with the help of some of the rules and tricks I share below, it doesn’t take me long.

Let’s get into it:

Empty your inbox. Keeping your email overflowing, and you’re soon lost in a sea of undone tasks and urgent requests and unhappy people. It’s a chaotic jumble of confusion, and enough to overwhelm the best of us. Instead, empty out your inbox and keep it that way. When you process your inbox, go through it quickly, dispose of everything, and be done with it. Read on to find out more.

Temporary zone. If you’ve got hundreds of emails in your inbox, the prospect of clearing that out is daunting. Rather than let this overwhelming task stop you, tag everything in the inbox “to clear” and archive it all (except perhaps the last few urgent emails if you’re ready to deal with those now). Then, from here on out, clear out all new, incoming emails. And schedule 30-60 minutes each day to clear out your “to clear” tag, disposing of each email in that tag as described below. Over the course of a few days (or a week), you should be able to get caught up.
Dispose of each email. OK, you’re ready to process your inbox (or your “to clear” tag). Open each email, one at a time, and make a decision on what to do with it. Here are your choices:
respond immediately
tag it “@reply” if you can’t respond now (and archive it)
delete it
delegate it (forward and delete or archive)
put it on your to-do list (and then archive), if it has an action in it that needs to be done later
archive it if you need to refer to it later.
Those are your choices. Do one of those, quickly, with each email, and move on to the next. When you’re done, you’ll have an empty inbox!
2-minute rule. If it takes 2 minutes or less to respond to an email, do it right away, as quickly as possible. Most emails, I’ve found, only require a couple of sentences to reply. Do those now. If it’ll take some thought or more time to write a response, tag it “@reply”, to be replied to later today if possible, and archive it.
Tag and archive. One of the beauties of Gmail is that there’s no need to file things in a complicated folder and subfolder hierarchy. The time spent filing is minimum. Tag an email (if necessary) and archive it. You can always use Gmail’s very fast search to find it later. Most of the time, I don’t even tag — just archive and search later.
No reply needed. Not every email requires a reply. Learn to spot those instantly. It might just be an FYI email, which you can note and then archive. Or it might be something forwarded to you — delete or archive those immediately. Try to avoid responding to emails in which you’re just in the “cc” field, not in the “to” field. Replying to fewer emails means less time spent cranking through your inbox.
Reduce your inflow. Do you get a lot of emails from mailing lists, or newsletters, or advertising, or regular things like that? Unsubscribe to as many as possible. You can drastically reduce the number of emails you receive, and thus reduce the amount of time needed to process your inbox, by stopping many of these automated emails. Also, if someone you know is sending you regular emails you don’t really need, politely ask them to stop.
AHK. OK, so how do you crank faster? AutoHotKey’s text replacement feature is a great tool for doing that — from automated replies to multiple signatures, you can save yourself tons of valuable time by setting up a few regular keyboard shortcuts for text replacement. I use a number of different signatures, depending on who I’m writing to, and after setting up AHK’s text replacement for each signature, I can just type a few keystrokes and the appropriate signature is generated. For example, I have “wsig” and “wsig2″ for my two different jobs, and “psig” and “psig2″ for different personal correspondence, and “bsig” for my blog signature. Another great way to use AHK is to generate a few common replies that you email just about every day. I haven’t actually begun using this yet, but I’m beginning to consider it with a lot more companies emailing me personally asking me to try out their products.
Keyboard shortcuts. Another invaluable tool for cranking. Using the mouse takes way too much motion (and thus time). Stay in the keyboard as much as possible, and your cranking skills increase dramatically. Gmail is great for this — it just takes a few minutes and a little practice to learn the shortcuts. There are a lot of great shortcuts (Go here for the complete list). Just a few I use a lot: “c” for compose, “r” for reply, “y+o” to archive and move to the next message, “tab+Enter” to send a message after composing it, “/” to search, “j” and “k” to move up and down the list of emails, “#+o” to delete and then open the next message.
Filters. I have a couple dozen filters set up — this is possibly Gmail’s killer feature. For example, all comments and pingbacks in my blog go to my “@reply” folder, so they don’t fill up my inbox. Same with Google Calendar notifications. I also have a Monthly Challenge mailing list that I do every day, and those get shunted into their own tag and archived. Others get forwarded to the appropriate address, or deleted immediately.
Killfile. I get a lot of email forwarded to me from people. I hate chain mails and joke emails. After getting a bunch of these from one person, I’ll killfile them. Just set up a filter with their address or name in the “from” field, and make “delete” the action.
@reply: Set up a time each day to go through your “@reply” folder (or tag). If you can’t get to it when you process your inbox, and you tag it “@reply”, you should try to get to it sometime that day, so your @reply folder doesn’t get to overflowing, and you don’t become one of those people to whom I send an email and it gets lost in a bottomless void. Respond within a day, and people will appreciate it. Of course, if you don’t want to respond, just delete.
Batch processing. It’s most efficient to do all your emails in groups, rather than processing them as they come in. For this reason, turn off your email notification. Set times during the day (2-3 times a day is sufficient for most) and give yourself 10-15 minutes to process your inbox. Do it quickly, all at one time, and get out. Of course, if one of those times is when you process your @reply folder, you might want to give yourself another 10-15 minutes on top of that.
Email diet. The above tip may be difficult if you’re addicted to email. Go on a diet, if that’s the case. Go one whole day without even checking your email. If you do this, you’ll realize that the world doesn’t collapse if you don’t check your email. From then on, only process email during those 2-3 set times, for 10-15 minutes each time.

Suns vs. Spurs

2007-05-16T17:00:00.001-05:00

The suspension of a First Team All NBA player and last years Most Improved Player because they went up the side line when the leagues 2 time MVP is laying on the ground after being way-layed into the boards is ridiculous.

The suspension is like saying look you took a few steps beyond the coaches box so we are going to suspend you, they might as well have went onto the court and knocked Big Shot Bob’s block off and got that same 1 game suspension.

What-is-more, when you see the tape of Tim Duncan walking out onto the court past the 3-point line when there is a high potential that there is a scuffle after Elson comes down on the head of Jones and ends up on the ground and was corralled back to the bench by Bruce Bowen who also was on the court. To say that just because Jones and Elson didn’t get into a scuffle and Horry decided to deliver an elbow into the face of Bell, Duncan and Bowen don’t deserve a suspension is preposterous. Let’s say that Jones doesn’t run down the court and just stands over Elson and stairs at him, would Timmy and Bruce have been suspended them? It just doesn’t make sense!

I actually would have been ok with both Staudemire and Diaw and Duncan and Bowen have been suspended for a game, but to suspend one set because Horry fired an elbow to Bell’s face and Elson and Jones had some sense doesn’t make any bit of sense! IF YOU LEAVE THE BENCH WHEN THERE IS POTENTIAL FOR A SCUFFLE THAN YOU SHOULD BE SUSPENDED! You shouldn’t be suspended only when some idiot loses his cool and not when cooler heads prevail.

This being said, I am even more upset with the officiating in the Warriors vs. Jazz series. They let the Jazz get away with way to much and had the tight knuse around the neck of the Warriors. The foul on Jackson last night when he went for the steal and Dee Brown went right into him and he gets a flagrant foul for it is just one evidence. I probably would have gotten kicked out of all those games if I was on the Warriors, those refs marred that entire series! There was a play in the first half of last nights game where the ball clearly went off of Barnes and then off of Boozer, the ref that couldn’t see a thing gave the ball to the Jazz and the ref that should have seen everything lets them get away with it, it was so upsetting! Well, I guess I’ll chat with you peeps later. I still haven’t forgot my promised post about life.

Thanks Joey for asking my thoughts on the suspensions, I have much more to say on this but I don’t have the time to write it all down.

Rob-dogg and Brittany, thanks for calling, and thanks for the gifts! It really made my week getting to hear from you all! You both are in our prayers.

Before I forget, how ‘bout Baron Davis’ dunk the other night! It was amazing! Reminiscent of Kevin Johnson (KJ) over Hakeem (The Dream) Olajuwon.

Abortion Article

2007-05-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

Reforming Churches blog

2007-05-02T16:09:00.000-05:00

For those of you that have never heard of this blog, it's great! If you never read my blog again and solely read this one I'd completely understand! Here's one of the posts, it's about the Stop Snitchin' campaign by rappers and other leaches that are going to suck the life out of the "hood".

After you read this one you should check out the most recent one as well, then peruse through the archives. It also has audio sermons by the members of the blog available here.

Enjoy!!!

Mavs vs. Warriors Series

2007-05-02T15:59:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you but the Mavs vs. Warriors series is a very compelling series for me to watch! Most of you in the Eastern time zone can't stay up to watch it so let me summarize the game last night for you. The Mavs built a 21 point lead to start the game, the Warriors fought hard all game and finally came back and took the lead in the fourth quarter. When they got a 9 point lead with 3 minutes left in the game, that's when the refs took over. They consistently called mysterious fouls, when the ball was obviously either out on Dirk or an over-the-back on Dirk, they gave the Mavs the ball. They called Baron Davis for his 6th foul when he was 6 inches away from touching a guy. They kicked Steven Jackson out of the game for clapping towards the fans!!! When the Warriors got fouled with 20-something seconds left in the game they weren't even in the bonus (the Mavs had been shooting free throws since at least theh 8 minute mark!) You tell me if it was rigged???

My prediction for the series, if the Warriors don't blow the Mavs out in game 6 then the Mavs are going to win the series. If the Mavs win this series, this may be the last you hear about the NBA from me for this season!

Persecution in Turkey

2007-05-02T15:51:00.000-05:00

Hello all, I stumbled across this post on Denny Burke's blog yesterday and meant to pass it along then, but unfortunately I did not. This is about a German missionary and two other Turkian males that came to faith and we evangelizing some people in the area. If you got 5 minutes you need to

Pure Church: Can You Imagine...

2007-04-18T12:46:00.000-05:00

Pure Church: Can You Imagine...

I stumbled across this through visiting Justin Taylor's website. I think this may interest a few of my readers.

Enjoy!

Accountability

2007-04-17T16:47:00.000-05:00

We all know that I've been ranting and raving for awhile about officials having too much control in a game. It's great to finally see some accountability! Though I rarely, if ever, would advocate for anyone to lose their job (I didn't even feel too strongly about Imus losing his job) but it's a positive sign for me that at least one league cares about the quality of the referees enough to discipline them. I would have been happy for a long suspension or something like that, but David Stern has spoken; he will not tolerate out of control refs in any way, shape, or form!

I got's to go but wanted to squeeze in this quick post. Thanks for visiting, and check out EWalk, Fern, Joey, and Steve-O's sights for some more insightful posts, oh, don't forget to visit Big Cheeze as well.

P.S. Congrats to Jed and Rob-dogg, as well as EWalk with the pregnancies, we are all happy for you!

P.P.S. Rob-dogg, I tried to leave feedback on your blog twice but it still hasn't showed up???

Annoying

2007-03-17T22:24:00.000-05:00

I still want to encourage my readers to chime in on the abortion issue, let's just say Brian loves dialogue!

Also, let me point you in the direction of a good ol' friend of mine many of you know, Stevo, he seems to post more frequently than some friends of mine not to name any names (Rob-dogg, Jed, and Brittany) oh did I say that, oops!

Another item, I still have yet to get a camcorder, can my techies help me out please? Jed, thanks for the picture of that camcorder but I need one that's a little more sophisticated than that.

On to the post.

Before you read this, please make the effort to visualize this happening to yourself on a consistent basis.

Since I was a youth I've been a creature of habit and I loved to form a routine. Structure in my day, especially my work day is always great! With this structure comes some pitfalls, for example: I don't take a lunch break because I have some goodies at my desk that I can munch on throughout the day to keep me going, but aroun one to two my eyes get a little heavy, so I'll meander over to the rest room to release some liquids from the bladder (I would never do the number two in a public toilet!). This is where the routine has some vital flaws. At least three times a week I'll enter the rest room and there will be some fat old man, rarely is it the same person, in the stall huffin' and puffin' making a big ole commotion trying to do number two. They are always stinking up the entire bathroom and breathing very heavily! What is more, they'll never give a courtesy flush, nor will they mind the manners of the bathroom. One of the bathroom etiquette's that they ignore is the main one, that if you are going to blow up the toilet, you don't show your face to those who are just tinkling, you wait for them to leave and then you leave never showing your face to anyone. I am so offended by this! On a couple of occasions the person that blew up the toilet just flushed and walked out of the stall and left the rest room, he missed the biggest step, he didn't wash his hands!!! On one occasion, this fellow didn't wash his hands and then I saw him get some stuff out of the microwave, how disgusting! I'm guessing that now that I'm out west the memo containing all the bathroom etiquette hasn't made it out here. Myself, I seemed to have deleted it so if anyone could forward it to me please help a brotha out.

This may be cause for a drastic change in the routine. I've tried to adjust it by going to the restroom at about four thinking that it may just be a lunch thing, but this has been to no avail. I'm open to suggestions.

Oh yeah, could anyone tell me if Duke made into the tourney this year?

Comment on Joey's Blog

2007-03-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to make a quick post and include my comments on Joey's blog so that we can discuss this furthermore. A special thanks for Joey for bringing this up for us! If you want to be able to understand my comments than visit Joey's blog first and then read the comments.

Oh yeah, a quick shot out to Big Cheez for having one of the most considerate blogs on the world wide web, he's a great kid!

Here's my comments.

A wise person once put on the top of Pogue Library, “The hope of democracy depends on the diffusion of knowledge.” I was contemplating Bruce-Bruce’s comments yesterday especially the latter part about so many being so stupid. In the defense of the dumb as a door knob if it weren’t for Piper’s sermon on this in January then I would have had no idea about the statistics of abortion. I think if this was given a public voice particularly in the black community than there would be outrage. But as it is now there is not a leader that is able to make their way on to BET or MTV that would make this message heard. In fact, I would be willing to bet that if someone did make it into the homes of the multitudes in the black community than the screen would go black or they would immediately cut to a commercial because liberal America wants to silence this message or in other words, make sure this knowledge is not diffused.

That’s about all I got. I’ll do some house cleaning now. The reason why I say BET or MTV is because the vast majority of blacks, including myself, don’t watch the news or surf the world wide web. Plus the sure-fire way to communicate this message to the majority is to get it on the television. The only person that I can see getting any play on BET and being able to speak the facts about abortion and be taken seriously is Denzel or somebody like Ludicrous or that pretty light-skinned fellow that got all the publicity about Bush doesn’t care about Black people during Katrina.

It’s kind of sad to think that a movie star or rapper that makes their money by degrading women or glorifying their “pimping” lifestyle is considered a person that the black population would listen to. What a dreadful state we’re in!!!

You Can't Be Serious Tubby!

2007-03-04T09:10:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday I read an article by the Herald Leader with Tubby's reaction to the AD issuing a statement of what Tubby said he viewed as a statement of support. You can find the article here. I strongly encourage you to read this article, I think it says a lot. When you do read it, pay close attention to the statement, “it always comes at this time of year” Geez Tubby, why would that be? Could it be that we’re always on the verge of ten losses? Could it be that we know that this year we aren't going to make the final four let alone win the title? Could it be that you have way too good of a team on your hands to get beaten 10 times this year and by the time the season is over with we'll have twelve losses? Sometimes I wonder what color the sky is in his world. Your coaching at the top basketball school in the nation and you don't know why "it always comes at this time of year". I was saying that you needed to be fired three years after the national championship because I could see everything that I love about college basketball going down the toilet with your style of play and choking the talent out of the players. That style may have been acceptable at Tulsa, maybe even at Georgia, but it's certainly not acceptable at UK. When you had three MickyD's All-Americans starting for you, you were still losing ten games, then you forced two of the three to go pro, one was forced back on to the team once he found out that he wasn't ready for the pros and that the mystery fax was found. Now we have three All-Americans on the team about to be seniors and one kid that hussles his butt off (Bobby Perry) and another kid that has the potential, under a new coach, to be the best point guard since Travis Ford at UK, I'm even going to venture to say that if our 6'5" point guard gets the right coach and some quality help around him, he could just be the best ever! Well, with that said, Tubby you gots to go!

On another note, I just learned that Joey Cecil has got himself a blog, I've taken the time to view all of the posts and Joey definitely doesn't dissappoint! So go check him out, the link is on the side with everyone else.

Now I got another rant. Last Saturday I went down to my brides hometown to see a high school game. I was informed that one of the players was being recruited by Lute Olson, Puke, the great school of UK, and some other among the elites. Well, what I was expecting to see was some super athlete take over the game and out shine everyone on the court. Instead what I saw was a kid make a view shots and then the refs put the kid on the foul line for no good reason, just to pad his stats. In the second half of the game I can only recall two three's that he hit, the rest were either unimpressive or all free throws. The way that he would get to the line so frequently is he would dribble on the perimeter, do a cross-over that involved the ball dangling in the air for a couple seconds (so everyone thought that he had to shoot because he picked up his dribble) but no, he would resurrect his dribble and get the corner so to speak and then the person guarding him would catch up to him and then he would just plow right into the defender, the ref would then blow the whistle and reward him with two free-throws. (If this had been a sub-par player the carry would have been called or if they didn't call that then they would call the charge.) This repeated itself numerous times throughout the course of the game and it got plenty old. At the end of the game his team was up by twenty and the other team obviously didn't want to foul, but the refs kept calling weak fouls to put this kid on the line. It was ridiculous! I got the Sunday paper the next day to check out the specials on Camcorders because no one seemed to want to help a brotha out with that purchase, and the love of my life asked me how many points I thought that kid ended up with and I replied with 30, I guessed again and said 25, guessed again with 35, finally she told me the kid had 49 points! That was the most unimpressive 49 points I had ever seen in my life. Joey aka Larry Legend could have had those 49 points, he only had one 3 that was highly contested that I thought that maybe Joey couldn't knock down, but other than that it was a complete joke! What is more, on Friday night this kid went for 57 points. This is officiating gone mad! They are making this kid a superstar without doing anything but shooting free throws and getting every call. He's not that good, he reminds me of a JJ Redick type player, can't do much for himself so he needs the refs to help him out to become a "superstar". This state should be ashamed of itself! For a fluff piece by the TulsaWorld about him read here.

Enough with that, I mention earlier in this post that I still don't have any suggestions from my techies, the only thing I got was from Joey saying that he likes his Sony. That's a great help, I'll take that into account, but I need some specifics, what pixel count, do I need a hard drive with the camera, what amount of zoom, blah, blah, blah, I just need some counsel with this big purchase, so can someone help me out!!!

Next we have old friend Algore, this rich dude and his global warming kick. The latest I've heard is that his justification for using so much energy is that he buys carbon offset credits. Well, this begs the question, from whom does he buy these carbon offsets? The answer is (drum-roll please) HIMSELF. The dude owns/is the chairman of a company in London with headquarters in D.C. that sells these carbon offset credits. So in essence the dudes message is, I can use as much energy as I want to because I am buying carbon offset credits, you should do your part too and buy these carbon offset credits as well because global warming is happening and we need to do our part so if you could just pay me that would be wonderful! What a joke/fraud! The national media isn't going to say too much about this because they are already campaining for him to get the Nobel Prize and his company to reach Bill Gates status. This is too comical! I guess you can always follow the money and it'll lead you to the proper rationale behind the words of actions of most people.

Thanks for stopping by, if anyone gets word from E-Walk as to his safety with all the tornadoes whirling around his way could you let me know, stop by and visit Joeys blog, you won't be disappointed. Finally, help a brotha pick out a camcorder!

2007-02-22T19:52:00.000-06:00

I'm Back!

After multiple delays due to computer malfunctions I'm back and am calling on all my beloved TECHIES for help!

I have two items that I need help with. The first is a camcorder. I am in serious need of a camcorder but I have no idea what type to buy, what features to look for, etc. So I'm going to give $25 to the first person that can find the best deal on a camcorder that will last me about 5-7 years that won't cost me a fortune, plus will be easy for this computer idiot to operate. Think about it, an hour of your time for $25, I think it's worth it!

My second issue is, I have no idea how to make this blog any more attractive without occuppying my entire night. I want to figure out how to title my posts, get some cool pics on here, and make it overall more appealing to my audience, if anyone has some helpful tips on that it would be lovely.

On to some thoughts, well, let's start with the affirmative action post that I left you with the last time. I was reading some articles/posts by Justin Taylor and Mr. Ayabiakjdlajkd (I forgot his name but he's a popular black preacher/scholar. Anyway, him and Taylor were having a dialogue on Affirmative Action and Taylor was arguing against it, but the last entry I found on this a few weeks ago Taylor made some pretty good points, but he seemed to leave out the fact that in order for justice to be done the wrong has to be made right, that's the essence of repentance. If a retailer let's say Best Buy, sells you a dvd and the dvd they sold you doesn't work and you take it back and they just give their apologies and state there's nothing they can do about it, their apology has no effect except to enrage the buyer to higher amounts of anger! If they don't rectify the situation and make the entire transaction "right" then there is no justice and we can't say that Best Buy is truly sorry/repentent of their wrong-doing. Similarly if "White America", of which I'm a card-carrying member of, merely states that it is sorry for the wrong that has been done to "Black America", of which I'm also a card-carrying member of, and does nothing to rectify the situation by making things right, than there can be no justice and the apology is perceived as being insincere.

I welcome any thoughts on this.

On to the NBA, I can't say enough of how much I love watching the Phoenix Suns play the game I love! The team work, unselfish play, constantly sacrificing their stats for the sake of the team, it's incredible. I wish there was some place that I could purchase every game of this season on DVD so that I could show it to my kids and grandkids someday. It truly is a work of art.

On the other hand, All-Star weekend was terrible to say the least! I thoroughly enjoyed the Chuckster racing Dick Bavetta and the smooch at the end. I was super-nervous for Charles though, at the beginning of the race I thought that he was going to try to get DQ'd for having too many false starts. I seriously thought that he would lose, but I was hoping for the best and somehow he pulled it off! Congrats CB! Here's the YouTube of the Race, it's worth the time!

The race was the only thing that I wanted to watch during the weekend, I just so happened to watch the skills competition and the players effort was ridiculous, talk about just trying to make an appearance to get some free money. The Dunk competition was a scam as well. Dwight Howard jumping up to a couple of inches below the top of the backboard was ridiculous! And then to see the judges not even advance him to the finals. I know we all wanted to see what he could do with a few more dunks! And for little Nate Robinson, please NBA ban him from all future Dunk Competitions!

Seriously speaking, throughout the week I DVR the Inside the NBA on TNT just so I can here what Charles and Kenny Smith have to say, it's great entertainment.

On UK, can we stinking hit a 3, they had me on the edge of my seat at the end of the Florida game, I really thought the Bradley three to tie it was going in. And how about the biased officiating in college basketball, once again the refs always have to keep teams in the game. On several occassions throughout the Duke losing streak one could clearly see Duke getting favorable calls at timely parts of the game just so it wouldn't get out of hand and Duke lose by 20. Then in the Duke at BC game, calls were still going Pukes way even when their playing an away game, the refs trying to keep McRoberts in the game and calling fouls on teammates that weren't even remotely close to being in the play just so McRoberts wouldn't foul out. Fouls being called on Dudley when they were clearly charges, it's just ridiculous folks, just ridiculous.

Back to All-Star weekend, the violence surrounding pro-sports is out-of-control! What business does any athlete have being at a strip club and with their girlfriend for that matter, how absurd is that? (This is referring to Pac-man Jones and the strip club killings) The thug-life shouldn't have any place in the life of million-dollar athletes. What fools!

Now back to Florida, how about the coach of Vandy slapping at Noah and not getting T'd up! In fact, Noah was pulled away and chastized by two chumps in zebra outfits while they said not a word to the coach! It all shows who wears the shoes in college sports.

What else, let's see, oh yeah, how about the people whom I'm going to be paying a boat-load of money April 17th spending countless hours discussing whether they should pass a bill saying they don't like something but aren't going to do anything about it. HELLO, I'm not paying you to waist time on something that is just an opinion, if you don't like the war do something about it, don't waist the tax-payers time by putting out some stupid bill that means nothing. When you're on the clock work, when you're off the clock you can find some stupid newspaper, tv station, or website that you can fuss about your disagreements with the war. If you aren't going to do anything about it than shut up and get to work. It's like calling Board Meetings to discuss the CEO but at every meeting we just sit around and talk about our disgust with what the CEO is doing and will never take a vote to get the CEO heading in the direction that we want the company to go in, it's a complete waist of the investors money!

I need to say, I fully, and I mean fully support the war, if there was ever a draft I would not hesitate to sign up and my thanks to all the soldiers that are presently serving.

Well, I think that I've rambled long enough for this one! Once again, $25 to anyone who aids in my successful purchase of a video camera. (I guess I should have a disclaimer, I'm only paying $25 to one person, not 20 people, just one, so the first person that can help gets it, the rest of ya's I appreciate the thought!)

Oh yes, I want to say a special thanks to those who have recently e-mailed me or given me a phone call, I really do appreciate it for it really gets lonely out in the Wild West!

Also, if you've taken the twenty minutes to read this entire post you need to head on over to E-Walks site and check his posts out, he's doing a terrific job over there! As well as Marky-Mark, when pressed for time, skip my blog and head on over to there's, you won't regret it like you are regretting reading this whole thing.

Until next time, stay out of trouble, thanks for visiting, and come back soon!

2007-02-07T19:19:00.000-06:00

Real quick post before the game.

First off, I recently learned that a lady that most of you don't know just became a widow very recently. I know that she'll never view this blog nor will anyone that knows her view this blog, but I wanted to send my condolences to her. Her maiden name was Amanda Brown. I knew her when I was a freshman and sophomore at Murray, she was a very godly woman and helped lay the foundation for the women's ministry on campus. I'm sad for her tragic loss, but rejoice with her that her husband is in glory right now. I can't imagine the pain and agony she must be feeling, but am confident that the Father will mold her into the image of His Son through this loss.

A life lesson that I always try to live by is when I say good bye to people I really want to be content that if it's my last breath than they'll know that I loved them and they meant a lot to me. Hopefully they'll feel the same.

I don't know how to transition from that to this so sorry for being very abrupt. I'm very happy about the way the Superbowl turned out. Hopefully Rex can use the off-season to improve and practice getting snaps undercenter whenever it's raining outside. About the interception he through way down the field. It was a great play call, the dude was wide open if he would have thrown it to the place it was intended for but right as it left his hands I was wondering what was going on, it just looked very odd.

Tony Dungy, Lovie Smith, what class acts, the Colts, the Bears, congratulations on the way they handled themselves throughout the two weeks, very impressive. Tank Johnson, on the other hand, I don't know what to say about that dude. The judges in Chicago that let that dude play, how ridiculous! Enought on that topic now.

The main point of my post is to say: I hope the refs don't influence the Duke vs. UNC game tonight! I may not even watch it because I know they will and I won't be to happy about the whole thing! Somehow those stinkin' refs are going to find a way to either make it a close game or even let those Devils win, even though the entire country knows that UNC should win by at least 20.

Consider this my plea to you all you refs that view this blog minutes before game time: Be fair, call the game justly, and let the kids decide the game!!!

One last item. If anyone caught the tale end of the Duke vs. FSU game, the refs on multiple occassions tried to give the game to Duke. The made such an aggregious call that forced them to call a technical foul on FSU's coach with 2:31 left in the game! It was a completely ridiculous call, obvious foul, but instead they give the ball to Duke! Then in the final 5 seconds the FSU player gets the rebound, is pulled down by the jersey by McRoberts, no foul called, he's lying on the floor, no travel called, but instead a jump ball is called when the FSU player has the ball wrapped up with both arms covering it, McRoberts just got through slamming the player to the floor and the refs call a stinkin' jump ball and give the ball to Duke with a chance to hit a shot and win the game, HOW RIDICULOUS!

Well, I got's to go. The answer to your question E-Walk is Tulsa, OK, Fayetteville is a two hour drive from here, but seeing the Cats play is worth a 50 hour drive if you ask me. Bradley came up wonderful, he hit a few shots that reminded me of myself, not saying that I was good, but saying that he shot some very ill-advised shots that if he would have missed he would have been sitting on the end of the bench for the rest of the game, but he risked it anyway! The girls game was worth it too, a double overtime thriller! Stay out of trouble. Love your neighbor. Remember that you aren't promised your next breath!

2007-02-02T10:21:00.000-06:00

First off I am sorry that it’s taken so long for a post, I know I probably have dwindled down from three readers to one reader (my wife), but I’ll post my thoughts anyway.

The only thing that I ask from the Superbowl is that it is called fairly! Recalling the memories of last years Superbowl I left extremely frustrated to see the refs hand the Steelers the game. Seattle was on the verge of blowing them out but time and time again the refs had to make it known to the world that the Bus is the one that is supposed to win the Superbowl this year. Please referees, call the game fairly and don’t exert your influence and your desires on the game, let the players decide its outcome and not you!

Being raised in Evansville, IN (five minutes away from Kentucky go UK!) my two favorite teams are Indianapolis and Chicago. I don’t feel the need to explain why I have two favorite teams, but I will for the clueless. One is in the AFC and one is in the NFC, just like I love the Cubs and the Red Sox, one is in the National League and one is in the American League. With colleges, I love UK and I love Michigan, one is a basketball school and one is a football school. Now I must admit that I’ve expanded my universities to include a women’s team, I am for UK and Michigan and now for Arkansas as well. If they all had to face each other I would root for them in this order, UK, Michigan, then Arkansas. Arkansas has been added due to the proximity (only a two hour drive) so I can get in a game without having to make a vacation out of it, and primarily because a good buddy of mine and a former teammate of my wife’s is an assistant coach or director of operations (whichever her title is, you can pick one) and my wife’s cousin is the masseuse of the swim team or gymnastics team or maybe both. Thus, I have some close ties to Arkansas, but I must emphasize that this is just for girls basketball. I don’t really care about their men’s b-ball team and I hope I get to see them get crushed by UK tomorrow, for I’ll be in the stands rooting the Cats on to victory!

I guess, I’ll let you all go, or should I say I’ll talk to you later tonight Megs and I’m excited about driving with you to Fayetteville tomorrow and enjoying the Cats whoop the pigs!

P.S. If you get a chance, take special note of the K-Fed/Nationwide Annuities commercial on Superbowl Sunday, it is hilarious!

Thanks for visiting, hopefully sometime soon I’m going to have some comments on the affirmative action debate going on over at this and at this original comments by Justin Taylor found here

Please everyone let me know your thoughts and then by that time I will have my thoughts together. This issue we really should give some attention to!

2007-01-04T21:44:00.000-06:00

The Life and Death of Saddam

First off, let me point something out to all my readers that don't take the opportunity to read the comments. I have recently been called a loyalty slut! I know, I know, try to hold back all the outrage and anger you have from reading those words in reference to yours truly!

I guess I'll conclude my remarks on my previous post about having a team, you can't hold it against a kid for falling in love with a particular type of play and then not being able to watch the type of play that his team resorted to and expect the know "grown up" to stay completely loyal to that team and that team alone. (This is all hypathetical mind you for I still bleed blue!) That's all I have to say on this topic for know.

Oh yeah, before I forget, I apologize for the length of time that it has taken me to create a new post, my internet has been acting very strange and each time that I would attempt to post it would get stuck and then it would tell me "cannot find server"! I wasn't too pleased with my internet provider at all and am still not entirely satisfied at this point in time.

Now to my post.

Upon receiving the news that the Iraqis decided to hang Saddam, I was bombarded with stories about his life. I was at work when I got the news, thus I got it over the radio. I heard that they were going to video tape so that we can be reassured that he really is dead. Thoughts of 2 Pac immediately popped into my head, by the way, how is he still making records 10 years after his death? If only we had some video that 2 Pac was really shot and died so that we could discount all the urban legends! On the next day I watched the History Channel and some other news documentaries about Saddams and his kids and the havoc they reaped on the Iraqis. My thoughts then went to my "while I was dead in sins" era and realized that Saddam lived the life that I wanted to live and just about everyone that has grown up in poverty wants to live. Fresh clothes, multiple mistress', all the power over an entire people group, no one telling you what to do, you answer to no one, it is the life that I coveted so much when I was a teenager! He literally "lived it up" as anyone should do if there was no punishment for sins. I then thought to myself about all the people that he senslessly killed and how much I wanted him to suffer for those people, but all he got was his life taken from him and how that seemed as such a little consequence for needlessly killing thousands of people. He was going to die anyways, he just died sooner than he would have and that's the only punishment that he received on earth. I then was so thankful that God is a just God and that He exercised justice on Saddam, but then thought to myself, what if Saddam would have submitted his life to Christ before he was put to death, meaning no eternal judgement for the numerous sins he committed. I was saddened by this thought, but then began to see more clearly that this is what I should desire for all people, that they fall in love with Him who knew no sin, but yet, while we were still the vilest of sinners, comparable to Saddam, God sent His only son to pay the price of my sin so that I can not fall madly in love with my former lusts, but become madly obsessed with knowing Him and making Him known. In realizing all of this, I began to analyze my life about how I am such a failure in marraige, in my walk with God, well in basically everything, but in all of my failure's His grace is sufficient, His mercy covers all of it. It's such an amazing thing, I almost called it a story, but it is not a story, it's reality, the truth, not fiction, and praise God for that!

I guess I'll conclude by saying, God is faithful to show us who He is even when we aren't pursuing Him whole heartedly; I'm very thankful that God is committed to me much more than I am committed to Him. Who would have thought that He would use the death of a dictator to teach me about myself, about my heavenly Father, and about the blood of Christ shed for me?

In the words of

Enter The Worship Circle: Third Circle

:

"You set the lowly, in families,
You set the prisoners, free to sing,
You are my bliss; you are my drug; you are my addiction.
It's my joy, it's my joy, to give You praise!

You reign abundance; you shower love,
Refresh the weary, more than enough.
You are my bliss; you are my drug; you are my addiction.
It's my joy, it's my joy, to give You praise!"

As always, thanks for visiting and come back soon. Oh yeah, feel free not to watch the video, I haven't.

Message to E-Walk, your girl JJ Heller's song prompted many of these thoughts, the last verse of "Love Me" triggered the thoughts of Saddam being that guy. Thanks for the recommendation of her cd.

Video of Saddam Hussein being executed

2007-01-04T21:35:00.000-06:00


Originally posted as a link on the Something Awful forums, I saved and uploaded it to google video before it died.

2006-12-19T19:23:00.000-06:00

Another question

I need to pose another question, this is for the sports nuts like myself. In skipping my company party this Saturday, I decided to attend a women's basketball game with the love of my life and her eigth grade b-ball team. TU (Tulsa University) was playing one of my former classmates and Megs' former teammates team Arkansas. It was one of the best games that I have ever attended (apart from the refs keeping TU in the game. At one point in the game with the aid of the stupid refs TU took the lead, a lady on Arkansas' team proceeded to take over the game, hitting multiple 3's and taking the ball to the rack on several occasions (you can read the story here). As an observer this took me by surprise for during the time when Arkansas took their eleven point lead she was very passive deferring to her teammates, but when TU got too close for comfort she took over. I had the opportunity to meet her after the game because of my connection with the assistant coach. While I was talking with the assistant coach I found out the lady is only a freshman!

Anyways, I say all that to say this. I'm facing a dilemna, as a Cats fan, I feel restrained from rooting for any other team besides the Cats and Michigan. I do admit to owning several other schools apparel, is this wrong as well?

I guess my main question is, when is it alright to stop rooting for one team and start rooting for a team? If you fell in love with one particular style of play and a team that you root for has stopped playing that way and they play a style that literally puts you to sleep, is it alright to discontinue rooting for them? I say this just as a question for I never intend to stop rooting for either Michigan or the Cats, but it brings about good conversation I'd say.

With the whole Arkansas thing, I think that it's alright for me to pull for the women's team and the football team, because they both have roots in my alma mater. If it wasn't for Murray State than they wouldn't be where they are today, so as a way of being loyal to Murray State, I root for the Arkansas Women's Basketball and Football teams as well as Alabama's Men's Basketball team for the same reason, is this wrong? Provided I only do this when they aren't playing UK or Michigan. But what about when the UK women's basketball team is playing Arkansas, I had classes with the assistant coach at Arkansas, she was one of my wife's favorite teammates, I love the way the freshman played, I don't even know anything about UK's team, so who should I pull for in that match up? Oh the dilemna's of being a fanatic!

As you can see, I need some counsel in sports etiquette, so please, even if you are a tekkie chime in. Your opinion matters here!

As always, thanks for visiting and come back soon.

P.S. Thanks for the help with the tekkie post Jed. B-Walk if you stop by congrats on beating OK State yesterday. This brings up another question too, Bruce Pearl was the coach of my childhood fantasy team, when I was a kid I rooted for UK, Michigan, USI, and anyone that played either Duke or IU. I loved the way USI played, fast paced, shooting three's on the break, pressing constantly, it was beautiful! Now Bruce Pearl, the coach I loved as a little rugrat is coaching at a despised enemy, of UK who doesn't play a style of play that I agree with, how should a man feel about this situation? Who should the loyalty be to? The team or the coach or the style of play?

Oh yeah, while I'm at it, check out the Lady Racer's tearing up opponents and with a winning record in the conference, I can't remember the last time that happened!

Stay out of trouble.

2006-12-18T06:17:00.000-06:00

A Question for all my Tekkies

I recently downloaded some music from Red Mountain Church's website and one problem that I faced is it will only let me download it in Windows Media Player. The other problem that I have had is that once I downloaded all of the songs I placed them in a playlist and attempted to burn them onto a cd. When I attempted to do that it gave an error saying "cannot synchronize" or "cannot convert" something basically telling me that I can't burn them on to a cd which makes them completely pointless because if I can't even get them either on a cd or into my iTunes than I will never listen to them for I can't carry around this big ol' computer everywhere I go just to listen to some songs! Thus, I need your help, how in the world do I get around this mess? This inquiring mind wants to know! Please help this brother out!

If you don't consider yourself to be a tekkie but know the answer to my dillemna please give me your advice for you are more than welcome here!

On a side note, there have been many questions that I've posed that have went unanswered, my Ted Haggard vs. Jimmy Swaggart question is one example, please don't let this be one be like that!

Addendum: For all of you that were whiggin' out like me worrying about Jed and Sunny's safety: as of today (12/18/06) Jed is at home in Chicago, his trip went well and he arrived home safely. I had the privelege of speaking with him yesterday. Besides getting to spend time with the love of my life, hearing that Jed is alright and speaking with him was the highlight of my day.

As always, thanks for stopping by and come back soon!

2006-12-13T22:47:00.000-06:00

Giving unto others

As I was listening to the Clark Howard radio program roughly two weeks ago, I was confronted with memories of my childhood. Clark, who is all about keeping us out of debt and avoiding being ripped off, was talking about the Salvation Army and how you could donate through his website and the money that you donate would stay in your community to help out hungry kids and buy Christmas gifts for many children in your area. This brought back the memories of one Christmas in particular where my parents definitely could not afford anything for me and my sister for Christmas but somehow at the last hour my dad came home with a 30 gallon bag full of toys for me and my sister. One toy in particular was the pogo-ball. The only reason why I remember this gift is because my sister brought it to my attention when I sought to verify this memory with her, truthfully until she brought up the pogo ball I couldn't remember a single toy that we got that Christmas, the only thing that I could remember is seeing that big ol' garbage bag being filled with toys for my sister and I and being overjoyed that instead of not getting even a stick of bubble gum for Christmas, we had the best Christmas that we ever had, probably even to this day! I say all of this not that you'll have pity on my childhood, I wouldn't trade it for anything, but that we can remember that we do not have anything that we haven't recieved, everything that I think I own is a gift from God, without His hand throughout our lives we would own nothing and would completely self-destruct. That Christmas when I was less than eight years old is what gives me a better perspective on how I can bring joy to others and possibly later on in life, whether the little rugrats like myself can look back and praise God for caring for them even when I never showed any inclination of caring about Him.

On another note, if anyone has heard from Jed about if he got to China alright please let me know, I'm a bit concerned about him traveling half-way around the world. If you don't receive a gift from me this Christmas it's only because my plans of taking over the world have been thwarted thus far, but when I do I'll send you a gift. Megs and I miss you all. Spread the joy and love of Christ this Christmas in any and every way. Thanks for stopping by and come back to visit soon! (I should be posting fairly regularly in the coming days for I got lots to say!)

2006-12-04T17:32:00.000-06:00

BCS Outrage Cont'd

How in the world can a team that loses decisively to two teams that were both unranked at the time and their last game of the year lose to one of those teams end up still finishing fifth in the BCS rankings? This is ridiculous! All of the two loss teams in the nation that are in any of the power conferences should be ranked above USC! This is absolute madness! Stop the press! Why is no one talking about this? True, it’s a big story that Florida moved ahead of Michigan in the rankings but the more absurd question is how is USC losing to two unranked teams ahead of any two loss teams let alone a one-loss team and an undefeated team. Needless to say, I AM OUTRAGED!

Thanks for visiting, stop back by here soon! Don't be a stranger!

Plus, as a reward to USC for losing to two unranked teams, they get to play in a BCS bowl game that is only about a 30 minute drive away from there campus, IT”S A HOME GAME! THEY GET A STINKIN’ HOME GAME FOR GETTING THERE BUTT”S BEAT BY TWO UN-RANKED TEAMS!!!!!!

2006-12-03T07:44:00.000-06:00

BCS Rants

I know I stated that I would post last night but I had to work an hour over (11 hours total) deal with people who attend a "Christian" school who stiffed me even though I had to drive on very very icy roads, plus I had a splitting headache all throughout the day which made me almost vomit twice, luckily for my vehicle's sake I didn't! I say all this not as an excuse because I have none, I said I would and I didn't it's that simple. Please accept my apology. Oh yeah, my motivation to post was also zapped by someone telling me that UCLA beat USC, I was planning on watching that sometime!

Anyways, why the BCS is bogus. When UofL got beat by Rutgers they immediately dropped to being behind both Rutgers and WVa in the BCS even though UofL already beat WVa pretty convincingly and WVa still had to play Rutgers a little bit down the road. According to sound logic, two teams both with one loss, if one team has beat the other than that team should be ahead of the other in the rankings. BCS even proved this logic when Arkansas (who was without a good starting quarterback) got it handed to them by USC (the first game of the year), when USC lost to a team that never even dreamed of dreaming of being ranked USC was still ahead of Arkansas in the rankings. Now common sense tells us all that there has to be something flawed in the system when UofL had beaten better teams than both WVa and Rutgers did and fell behind both of them when they lost one game, and USC gets beat by Springer's flag football team and they stay ranked higher than the majority of one loss teams, it's all ridiculous.

In my opinion, Notre Dame is highly over-rated, getting crushed by Michigan at home proves my point. Let alone getting drilled by a team that got beat by Springer's flag football team. USC is extremely over-rated and probably shouldn't even be in the playoffs if there were such a thing in college football. Florida or Michigan should be in the National Championship hunt, (remember I haven't seen the scores to know if they beat Arkansas in the SEC Championship). All the talk about USC this week is just propaganda to publicize the games on their family of networks. I gaurantee if UFl vs. UAk would have been on ESPN or ABC this week and not CBS than they would have been ranked #2, Michigan #3, and USC #4, this fact sickens me to no end.

This proves the point, when Florida lost to Auburn at Auburn they should have dropped in the rankings but not that much because Auburn was ranked higher than Florida and it was a road loss for Florida, but when USC got beat by Springer's Flag Football team Florida didn't move ahead of USC in the rankings, this is ridiculously absurd. Florida went with one loss throughout the entire SEC season (and possibly the Championship game). Keep this in mind too, the SEC is by far the toughest conference this year, proof, everyone is losing to everyone, even MSU is pulling out upsets, this year, plus, they have a Championship Game, something that the Big 10 and PAC 10 should be forced to have!

Concluding remarks, Florida or Michigan deserve to be in the National Title game (Michigan lost by 3 on the road off of a dumb penalty by the defense which led to 7 points, and a penalty not called by the refs when OSU's receiver clearly extends his hands and shoves/pics off the Michigan defender to free up the other OSU receiver to catch a pass in the endzone, in live action we couldn't even see if there was a defender remotely in the area, but on the replay via DVR we could clearly see that the Michigan defender was picked off which is illegal at any level of football, biddy leagues, flag football, high school, the pro's, and of course college football, but was it called then? NO! which gave OSU 7 more points, thus in two scenarios Michigan should have won the game! Thus deserving a rematch. Florida, they deserve it for only having one loss in the best conference in the nation. Also, we seriously need to do something about the referees, if the refs wouldn't have blown it in the Michigan vs. OSU game we would automatically be watching the Mighty Wolverines in the Championship game, and if, I hate to make this point, the refs would have got it right in the OU vs. Oregon game, the PAC 10 wouldn't have had such high conference ratings and we may be talking about Oklahoma in the National Title game, which makes me sick even thinking about it, fair is fair, right is right, and wrong is wrong, it's clear that their is something wrong with the BCS, too much propaganda by ESPN's family of networks that get teams that clearly have no case for the National Title into the hunt just so their ratings can go through the roof. Thus we should look to the pro level as Jed does and know that no matter what it is all settled on the field and leaves nothing to the commentators except to react to what is done on the field and let's everyone know that only the officials (as we saw in the Super Bowl with Seattle getting robbed on multiple occasions by the refs) and the players can determine who the Champion is!

Thanks for visiting, come back by soon, please accept my apologies, and please pass this article on Christians and tipping around to all your loved (and hated) ones!

Here's the article.

Have a good rest of the day!

2006-12-02T09:44:00.000-06:00

BCS post still to come

Although the games that matter will be played today, I am delivering pizzas in the snow and thus will be unable to watch the games. I do however plan on DVR'ing them, but I will not watch or knowingly find out the outcome of any of them until I post on this matter, hopefully tonight when I arrive home safely from work. Please bear with me for this post will come. Be safe and have a good rest of the day, thanks for visiting!

2006-11-28T17:53:00.000-06:00

Sorry

My deepest apologies to all of my seven readers! No excuses just reasons why it was a little more difficult to blog. First and only, my lovely bride, in attempts to keep us out of the poor house, turned on the internet filter, so I couldn't access all of my beloved sites such as ebay and finishline and most importantly, it blocked me from blogging! Now I'm back and ready to post!

Before I get to it I need to give a shout out to, almost Dr., Rob-dogg, good post my friend! E-Walk as usually giving us something to worship the Father with.

I was driving home from a long day at the office and heard on the Sean Hannity show about a police shooting in NYC with a groom on his wedding day, you can check out some of the logistics if you want here.

I have a few thoughts on the issue. First thought, why is it that whenever I think of police I think of the stereotypical white male wanting to use his authority to make me feel inferior? In this particular case it was mostly minorities, black and hispanic police officers working undercover. They were (according to what they wrote about the events) attempting to prevent a drive by from occuring. It all sounds noble, putting themselves in harms way to prevent others from dying. Well of course this is what they wrote about themselves so who really can you believe? I hope you can trust the officers in this case but when they are the ones that get to give their side of the story one never knows if they are attempting to cover up anything or not. It's a sad day when there are shootings, people die who didn't have to, and you don't know who to believe. One thing that is more certain, if you don't hit a police officer with your vehicle (as the report says) and don't make vague statements i.e. "get it out of the car and handle this" in order to intimidate others (as the report says), you highly increase your chances of survival!

Saying that I'll say this. I have personal knowledge of crooked cop experiences. I really distrust them, although I know one good cop, my uncle, so I guess there's one in the world that I can trust. Most importantly, I have personal experience with people who have to right reports on things and many times their report varied from my report. I hope that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can shut their mouths a little bit and see that if anything this was minority on minority crime and nothing else. This is not a race issue! The only thing that race has to do about it is that if it were a white male shot to death by some cops on the eve of his wedding in NYC, Brian in Oklahoma would not know about it and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would not show their faces on every TV channel.

Well, that's my rants for the day. Soon to come, more BCS rants. Thanks for visiting, please accept my apologies with the fourteen days without a post, I admit I dropped the ball and it's my fault and I am truly sorry. I'll try my best to not let it happen again. Come back soon!

2006-11-14T18:11:00.000-06:00

Considerate

Thanks to all who commented, please keep the suggestions coming. None of us have it all figured out but we all can help each other (mainly me) figure some things out. Also, thanks to E-Walk for stealing my thunder on this post, the Lord works in mysterious ways!

I am going to attempt to, off the cuff, compose some ways that you can be certain that you aren't being considerate.

You aren't being considerate when you pull out in front of someone only to go noticeably slower than them.

You aren't being considerate when you are stopped at a light, others take off going the speed limit but you are going so slow two other cars and turn onto the road in front of you!

Of course, you aren't being considerate if you drive slow in the left lane.
But, you aren't being considerate if you drive just as fast as the person in the left lane in the slow lane, then no one can get by either of you!

You aren't being considerate if you don't use your turn signal to notify the person that is trying to turn onto the road that you are on that you are turning.

You aren't being considerate (and highly increase your opportunity to total your car and someone elses car) if you leave your turn signal on while driving down a two lane road.

You aren't being considerate if you are talking on your cell phone while driving, especially if you are going slow!

You aren't being considerate if you are driving irratically.

You aren't being considerate if you (this is going to be hard to explain) are at a stop light and are in your lane, but the person behind you is wanting to turn either right or left and can't and will miss the light because you are either not scooted up far enough or are either too far to the right or left of you lane to where they can't get by.

You aren't being considerate if you pull out in front of someone and immediately make a turn thereby causing the person that you pulled out in front of to come to a complete stop, but if you would have waited another .67 seconds you wouldn't have caused anyone to slow down but simply let them pass by!

You aren't being considerate if you let someone into traffic causing everyone behind you to miss the light (because the light stays on according to the sensor and not enough people were going over it/there was a huge gap in time of people going over it, so only you and the person that you let in get to go through the light.

You aren't being considerate if you are the person wanting to be let into traffic but you are ten feet away from the road, thus causing everyone to wait on you to get on the road so that they can proceed only to get stopped by the light because of you.

You aren't being considerate if you are let into traffic and you continue to let everyone else in because "someone was nice to you so you have to return the favor ten-fold"! Think of the multiple people behind you that you are holding up just because you want to feel good about yourself!

You aren't being considerate if you are the person that is wanting to make a right or left turn and the person in front of you has left you plenty of room to get by but you won't go by them, causing those behind you to miss the light.

You aren't being considerate if you slow down excessively to make an easy turn either to the right or left, causing everyone behind you to slow down and lose their momentum and miss the light.

You aren't being considerate if you won't turn left unless EVERYTHING has cleared thereby taking absolutely no risk at all, even though everyone behind you knows that if you would have went the first time you would have been fine.

You aren't being considerate if you see a Pizza Delivery driver, or any other person whose entire job consists of getting somewhere fast and this determines if they can feed their family or not, and still go slow. Please make every attempt to get out of their way or speed up to at least the speed limit!

You are not being considerate if you don't tip you delivery driver well! (The $1.50 that is called a delivery charge doesn't not go to the driver but to the store, for what you ask, I don't know, I assume it's to pay for the person that answers the phone when you call, but they would do that anyway even if you wanted to pick it up so I guess it's just to make the rich get richer and frustrate all the delivery drivers in the world, for they don't get paid for their gas, oil changes, or anything, if you don't tip them well, they lost money delivering you the items you ordered, thus you aren't being considerate at all!

You doubly aren't being considerate if you claim to be Christ's ambassoder and don't tip well! (This goes for any tipping, including restuarants, the door man, the ice cream shop that you frequent even when they haven't done anything to deserve a tip!)

This list was an abridged version, I reserve the right to post more on this topic in the future. I hope that all of you help the world by being more considerate in your day to day lives. Have a good rest of the day and frequent the links on the right.

Of note, Jed had a good/true life post, E-Walk is always great, Consumed-fantastic as always, Rob-dogg-wonderful, Lil-Brother Ricky is good as well.

P.S. If anyone knows of Big Cheez's e-mail address let me know, I needs to get ahold of him for a great idea I had.

Feel free to link to this post, pass it on to every inconsiderate person you know, print it out and share it at the dinner table during Thanksgiving and Christmas, whip it out on the Fourth of July! Do your part by spreading the word so that we can have more considerate people on the road!

Stay out of trouble and thanks for visiting!

2006-11-08T22:20:00.000-06:00

Immigration Cont'd

As promised dear readers, though fighting my sleepy eyes, I am going to attempt to make some more comments and attempt to further the discussion on immigration and how I can better understand how this pitiful sinner can learn how to give honor and praise to my Savior in my views of immigration. But first, I got to draw some attention to Lil' Brother Ricky, this dear brother just gave me some undeserved props for which I am truly grateful. (Beware, selfish plea coming!) Please, Please, Please, someone, especially Lil' Brother Ricky, since none of my other readers have responded, help me learn how to put some pictures into my posts, I've tried and failed too many times and have waisted at least 2 hours of my life, please help!!! (You can probably tell that I'm tired.) Also, I've been meaning to do this for awhile, but if someone help me in showering E-Walk with some encouragement about his blog, it's wonderful. To have a peer devote so much time to make a great intellectual God-ward post day in and day out, it's marvelous, please, if you visited here, make sure you visit there too, and if you think about coming back here again, make sure you visit there first!

Now to immigration, first, I need to apologize to Where the Redfern Blogs for not reading the common-sensical article he suggested, I meant to before I blogged tonight but my eyes are about to shut, I promise I will though. I am basically going to be responding to Jed's comments, so if you haven't read them you might want to take this brief second and read them...

Okay, I too believe that the world, in our minds, shouldn't have borders, we are to love all men, this world-view is played out to me as when I see hurting Somalies and Iraqi's and Ethopians and Africans throughout the world my heart should ache, most of the time it does but sometimes I experience hardness and self-centeredness and then it doesn't of which I am ashamed. Though in my mind the world shouldn't have borders for a person is a person no matter where they were born (their life begins at conception too)and unredeemed peoples are going to spend eternity away from God. Saying this, the way the world is constructed and according to the infinite wisdom of God this world has borders, there are multiple countries in this world, some have more than others. I believe that this country should do everything in its power to help out the poor and needy, and fight for the defenseless as much as we can. I agree with Jed that this country as it is today is not doing a good job with any of this. I think we did the right thing with Iraq, people dying needlessly is never a good thing and something needed to be done about it and thankfully we stepped in.

We still don't have a good judicial system that appropriates justice, this is not to say that we shouldn't because we should, this is inexplicable to me. I hate the fact that we don't enforce our own laws, it's just so contradictory to me. I am for the illegal immigrants in the fact that I want them to have opportunity and not have to live in poverty for the rest of their lives, I don't have a problem with them working in the states and sending their income back to Mexico for their family either. The main problem that I do have is that they are here illegally! Let me break the law and not pay my taxes and see how fast I wind up behind bars, it's just not right! Besides them not paying taxes, I hate it that Cubans, North Koreans, Africans, Somoli's don't have the opportunity to walk across our borders and have freedom as well. It shouldn't be so easy for the Mexicans and not everyone else, it's just not right! Plus, the whole deal with Mexicans crossing the border to give birth so that their children are citizens isn't right either. I guess my chief complaint is that we should allow immigration the same to all and not make it so stinkin' easy for one people group while for the Iraqi's, Somoli's, and North Koreans it's so stinkin' difficult.

Taking this worldview a step further, I am desperate to know how I can care for the poor and needy in my area? If anyone in the greater Tulsa area can help me out with this I'm open to suggestions. I'm in the book, Brian Barnes.

Mainly I want to know how I can balance, two jobs, saving for a house, paying off all my debts and helping out those in my community that I lived just like a little less than 8 years ago. Also, how do all of these things balance out with having parents that are struggling to make ends meet as well? This inquiring mind wants to know! If you have any advice on how I should set my priorities and honor the King by doing these things please help a brother out. You can be any geek off the street, I don't care, as long as you have some helpful advice, it's more than welcome!

As always, thanks for visiting, check out Lil' Brother Ricky's site check out E-Walk's as well, give them both some encouragement, they deserve it. Post comments as many and as long as you'd like. Don't forget my other question that no one has commented on in my previous post, I think it's two posts before this one, I still need answers. Finally, if I wake up tomorrow and realize that I didn't make any sense than I'll revise this post and post again on this matter that I desperately need help in. Have a good rest of the day.

Soon to come... a post on being considerate (this won't be your normal post!) so come back soon.

Hiding in Him,
Brian Jason Barnes

2006-11-08T12:05:00.000-06:00

Disgusted

As much as it makes me sick to my stomach about losing the House and possibly the Senate to those who are in favor of killing kids, it makes me sick as well to see our President belittled to the point of being called Mr. Bush, at first I didn’t know who they were referring to, I thought to myself, President Bush has a brother besides Governor Jed Bush? I finally realized that the writer of the article was calling our President, Mister. How absurd, if you don’t respect the man you still respect the office. Needless to say, this was, in my recollection, the first time that I have read an article in the New York Times, and it might just be the last time.
Thanks for visiting and the immigration post shall come later in the evening hours so come back soon.

2006-11-07T22:56:00.000-06:00

Odds and Ends

One quick question for you readers out there. Is the Haggard scandal as big or bigger than the Jimmy Swaggert scandal. I am not old enough, or maybe I am but just didn't care at the time, to remember anything about the Jimmy Swaggert scandal. Truthfully, I still don't know anything about the Jimmy Swaggert scandal, I don't know what he did, who he was, or anything of the sort. Kind of like this Haggard deal, I have no clue who he is, still don't know what he did, is it just buying drugs, a gay affair, who knows? Truthfully this all brings me back to a conversation with Dominic one day last year when we found out that the job that he has now came open because the counselor was caught at a high school wrestling match peeping at the boys in the locker room. We both knew the guy and knew that he was gay but never would have thought he would commit such acts. We both came to the conclusion that he is no worse than either of us for without the grace of God sustaining us than we would be exposed doing far worse than he. The same goes for both Haggard and Swaggert, both are professing believers like me (to my knowledge, I can't say for certain that Swaggert is for I don't know anything about him except for his name and probably am mispelling that) both are as dependent upon the grace of God as much as I, it just so happens that for Haggert and Swaggert, the Lord chose to hand them over to their lusts in order to make them more like Jesus. It's kind of odd how when I heard of what Haggard was accused of doing it made me sick to my stomach just envisioning the man with man massage that he did confess to having made me a little queisy inside. But knowing that if Haggard really is putting all of his faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of God's Son, than this happened for his good, literally, God chose this to be the best thing for him. How many of us would really welcome the exposure of our lives to this degree, but if the Lord deems it best for us let us rejoice in Him being faithful to us and leading us to repentance.

I'll have a post about my immigration concerns tomorrow, or should I say Wednesday. Until then, pray that I abide in Him one more day and that He would grant both Haggard and Swaggert greater holiness and more intimacy with the King.

Don't forget my initial question, it wasn't a rhetorical one, I really want to be able to put this into historical perspective. Thanks for your help and visit again soon.

2006-11-02T17:28:00.000-06:00

U of L moving up in rankings

Eventual Dr. Rob-dogg recently posed a question to me and I think I should address it before the big game tonight that I won’t be able to watch due to being at work, yeah! The question was, what do you think about UofL’s recent jump in the poles. My response is, the BCS is one of the biggest jokes I’ve known, it rates up there with Santa Claus! It’s a sham, all they wanted to do is increase viewers of the game tonight by pitting 3 vs. 5, that’s it. This makes for better commentary on talk shows like Cold Pizza and ESPN and makes it easier to have a team from the Big East in the National Championship game and further it creates more controversy down the road, what happens if Florida wins out? Does UofL deserve a shot at the National Title more than a one loss Florida team, or any one loss SEC team? That’s going to be everyone’s cry towards the end of this, looking at WV schedule, they play no one except UofL, which is ridiculous, at least UofL tried to play a good team this year and stuck it to the U. Side note, Tom Jurich should take this occasion to challenge anyone in the nation to schedule a home and home with them, I’ve heard he’s done it in the past, but tonight he’ll have a national audience, he should do it WWE style and call every school out that has refused to do it with them and challenge everyone to take him up on the offer! This will increase recruiting and increase the likelihood the they never have to hear that they aren’t worthy of playing for the title because they didn’t play anyone, it will make it clear that he’s tried and UofL can’t help it if everyone is too scared to play them, end side note. Now we all know that neither Notre Dame nor USC deserve to be in the National Championship game for ND got it handed to them at home by the Mighty Wolverines, and USC got beat by a team that UofL blew out last year and most people never knew that they were even supposed to be kind of good this year. Texas doesn’t deserve a rematch with anyone for they struggled against Texas Tech last week and needed a bogus pass interference call to help them seal the victory. The loser of the UofM and OSU game doesn’t deserve a rematch either because if they wanted the Title then they should have won that game, enough said. The only teams that should have any hopes of the title is OSU, Michigan, the winner of UofL and WVU, and any SEC team with one loss, that’s it, not Rutgers because if they beat both UofL and WVU it just proves that the Big East was overhyped, that’s it. Well, that’s all I got for now, root UofL on to victory for me! Thanks for visiting and stay out of trouble!

2006-10-31T19:05:00.000-06:00

Immigration

I really am torn up about the illegal immigration issue. First off, the mere fact that we want to call them "undocumented workers" immediately sends up several red flags. Second, it seems like such a black and white issue, you have broken our laws and you didn't go through the process to become a citizen, you must go. It just seems like the right and just thing to do and keeps me feeling safe and secure knowing that my government is trying to screen who gets to set foot on our soil. On the radio today here in Tulsa I heard a news rift something about some government leaders asking contractors not to hire undocumented workers. What in the world is going on? My government is asking, I repeat, asking employers to not do something that is completely illegal. It's like asking a drug dealer to not prey on the poor and have little kids be lookouts for them, it just isn't right! I think there must be more to this issue but I am struggling to see it. It seems so black and white to me that I can't begin to even listen to anyone elses point of view because it's so obvious to me and this frightens me. I feel like throughout my life, because of the circumstances that I grew up in I am more slanted away from the poor and needy and compassion and thrive on justice. In saying this, I really like to know what point of view Christians should have that are called to be not only to love righteousness but to love mercy just as much. I want to know how I should react lovingly to my neighbor who is fighting to stay in the USA but is in clear violation of our laws. These are not rhetorical questions, I really want to know. If anyone can offer me a bit of advice I'm not hard to find, you probably got my number and if you don't just ask and I'll give it to you.

This is a wonderful song and a great way to end this post.

Now may the Lord reveal His face and teach our stammoring tongues to make His sovereign reigning grace the subject of our songs. No sweeter subject can invite a sinner's heart to sing, nor display the glorious right of our exalted King.
Grace reigns to pardon crimson sins to melt the hardest hearts and from the work it once begins it never once departs. No sweeter subject can invite a sinners heart to sing nor display the glorious right of our exalted King. The World and Satan strive in vain against the chosen few, secured by graces reign they all shall conquer too. Twas grace that called us home at first, by grace thus far we've come and grace will help us through the worst and lead us safely home.

(Some of the words may not be the original 'cause some of them I can't discern.)
Thanks for visiting and come back soon and help a brotha out, I need you peeps!

2006-10-25T17:49:00.000-05:00

BCS Outrage

First off, who cares if Notre Dame is whining about dropping in the poles, the bigger outrage should be that Tennessee is behind Cal in the BCS rankings! Before I say anything more, I HATE UT! (I was thinking about putting a link in for UT but then I realized I would have to visit their site and quickly changed my mind)For the integrity of the system and for anyone to take it seriously, how in the world can a team beat someone very very convincingly and lose to a team that is higher ranked than they were when they beat Cal, and they only lost by one point, and still be behind Cal in the rankings? This is an outrage! Why is this not being spoken of whatsoever? Yet still Notre Dame whines and they get television coverage, UT gets the shaft and not even a mention of it, ridiculous! I am not a Notre Dame hater, in some ways I normally lean toward Notre Dame, I like smardklalkjdlja however you spell his name! I even kind of like Weis but to have a network cover this as though it was a story and not cover the UT outrage is proposterious! I'm befuddled at it all, how does the best conference by far ALWAYS get shafted in the polls? This is very perplexing to me!

P.S. This post is for you B-Walk, as you can see I'm very impartial in my posts!

Oh yeah, did you see that "Consumed" left a comment on my blog, yup that's right folks, I'm blowin' up before your eyes. Just joking. Hope you all have a great rest of the day and thanks for checking out my rants! I promise to bring something of substance in my next post. And will someone please show me how to get the pictures to link from the internets, it's becoming fairly frustrating to me!

2006-10-22T21:57:00.000-05:00

I need some counsel

First, I need to address some questions. I would like for the zebras to have some sort of penalty system for themselves, like a bad call, be penalized with a loss of one paycheck, a bad call that costs the game loss of four paychecks. They should be held to some sort of accountability! Another gripe before I post about what I intended, there was a play in the first half of the Michigan vs. Iowa game this weekend where it looked as though our UofM player juggled the ball but gained control of the ball before falling out of bounds. ABC let us watch the play multiple times before Michigan hiked the ball again and it was apparent it should have been reviewed! What is more, the very next play we catch the ball for what could have been a touchdown but our players foot lands out of bounds, it wasn't even remotely close, and the crappy thing is, the stupid refs decide to review that play! If this would have cost us the game I would be a lot more heated about it but seriously, if the play is close, REVIEW IT! Earlier in the football season, I forget what game it was, there was a play where they didn't know if it was a fumble or not, one official said fumble, one said it wasn't, so the refs on the field did the right thing and huddled about it and made a call, it was the incorrect call, but at least they attempted to do the right thing and huddle up about it. Now I remember it was Maryland vs. West Virginia. The ref in the booth didn't review it!!! This is outrageous! If two refs on the field are in obvious disagreement about it you have to stinking review it upstairs, that should be automatic! Well, enough on that and back to my real blog.

As some of you got the e-mail, I recently got the free download of Derek Webb’s cd entitled, “Mockingbird”. I really don’t know how to react to it. I will tell you that it’s sound is so good I can’t get it out of my rotation. I bought two new cd’s but in the recent days the only cd’s that I really have a desire to listen to is “The Gadsby Project” and “Mockingbird”. I have no qualms with any songs on the former, it’s the latter that I am concerned with. Some of his lyrics just don’t sit well with me. At times he just seems to push passivism too much. One of the lyrics is, “I will protest the sword if it’s not wielded well, cause my enemies are men like me.” And, “Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication, it’s like telling someone murder is wrong and then showing them by way of execution.” It just seems so wrong to think that a nation should not wage war against peoples that are going to give their lives to hurt us. With these few lyrics he ruins the entire cd for me. There are multiple good songs on the cd but throughout the whole thing I can’t stop myself from thinking of what bent he is making with his lyrics. The cd as a whole sounds wonderful, even the song that I cited has a beautiful sound to it and is very appealing. In reading the http://consumedblog.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_consumedblog_archive.html
blog, which I highly recommend, I’ve never met the fella but in the three months that I’ve been reading his blogs he’s been very thought provoking, plus he’s a basketball fan, although if he’s a Dukie, IU, or UT fan than I remove my endorsement of him if he’s one of those he is evil and bad for society. But in one of his series of posts a few months ago he addressed Christians and the arts and stated that we should do them and do them very well, of which I agree, but I don’t have one artistic bone in my body except to know when I hear good music and “Mockingbird” contains some good music, every song is very good. Just like I immediately recognized when my father played Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and had me skating to LL Cool J’s “I’m Bad” that these are some good tunes and later I heard “Licensed to ill” and immediately recognized why they sold multiple millions of copies of that one cd, likewise, “Mockingbird” and “The Gadsby Project” should be selling millions of copies for they produce wonderful tunes. I wouldn’t recommend “Mockingbird” as a gift to someone who is easily swayed in their beliefs because the way he packages his music it’s very seductive and could easily mislead the young in the faith. I would highly recommend giving “The Gadsby Project” to any of your friends, it’s been my favorite, besides Stevie, ever since I owned it. Finally, I’ll refer you to another bloggers post way back when, he titled it, “Can I have my broadband width back” I don’t remember what he spoke of in that post but it had some interesting things to say about “Mockingbird”. If anyone can offer any counsel to me on how I should view this cd it is surely welcome! Thanks for visiting, come back soon, and don’t be a stranger!

2006-10-18T21:55:00.000-05:00

Whom I despise Part Uno

Hello all, I guess for my first post I need to state that I intensely despise referee's, umpires, line judges, zebras whatever you want to call them, I despise them all. For the sake of this post I'm going to refer to them as refs. Tonight while watching a brief, and I do mean brief stint of the NLCS I saw Albert Pujols strike out all because some stupid ref wanted to extend the strike zone to about the dirt. Words can't express to you how much I despise the Cardinals, but I also hate seeing the game not being called fairly. I'll date back to a play that we all can recall, at least all Michigan fans can recall. It's the National Championship game, in overtime, Ohio State needs a touchdown to win the game and it's fourth down. There is a mystery pass interference call and the stinking Buckeyes win the National Title having 7 opportunities to win the game, ridiculous!

I guess this most recent outrage of mine comes in seeing the second half of the Bears vs. Cardinals game Monday night. There was a punt in the second half that was kicked from the near hash mark (the left side of the field) where it lands at most one foot out of bounds at the far right sideline on the 4 and 1/2 yard line. This stupid ref marches his but up to about the 16 yard line! This is physically impossible! It didn't make any difference in the game but as you can see by my memory of it I can't stand refs and I hate it when they have to leave a mark on the game and try to influence the outcome.

Another brief example for you soccer fans. Theirry Henry scores a goal where the goalie and defender are within three feet of him, the referee is out of position and the line judge is about 30 yards away. The ball bounces up and hits him in his stomach and he puts it in the back of the neck. Neither the goalie nor the defender put up there hands as though there had been a violation as would any normal soccer player that just had witnessed a hand ball, but the stinking out of position referee calls him for a hand ball and nullifies the goal, Henry loses the match because of that ridiculous call! What an outrage! Directly after the call is made by the ref Henry asked the goalie if he saw him hand ball it and he chuckles as if to say you got hosed man, the injustices that these refs make are proposterious! They cost a team the game, I propose, they do something like that they should be fired! That's your only purpose out there is to get the call right, if you can't do it you shouldn't be out there!

I'm sure there are plenty more examples that I can think of but I don't want to waste any more of your time. Soon to come, which teams that I like and which teams I despise. Stay tuned folks and thanks for visiting, come back soon!

2006-10-17T20:01:00.000-05:00

2006-10-17T19:49:00.000-05:00

2006-10-17T18:39:00.000-05:00

It is a complete fallacy to think that I am going to be as faithful to this blog as Tim Challies is to his. It is also a fallacy to think that I am going to say anything that is going to damage my reputation of living in reality, as opposed to never-never-land. Let's see, what else is a fallacy? It's a fallacy to think that I believe I have life figured out, there are tons of things that I don't know, I'll try to stay away from speaking on those things and stick to what I do know. I do know the King. I do know how you can come to know Him as well. I am told that I do know how to be an offense to those around me, and for that I am truly sorry. I wish I was born a kind, gentle person, but for some reason the Lord had a perfect plan for me to be extremely rough around the edges and through that He is going to mold me into His image, what a glorious thought. Some that know me would say, yes, if God can change this brute into the image of His Son than He does reign on high. I feel the need to make a disclaimer before I begin with any real posts.

Disclaimer:
Though I may come off as being proud or cocky as often times I am accused of being, that in no way is my heart or desire. I desire to be humble and seek not my own glory or accolades but to bring glory to Jesus and His Father. End Disclaimer.

The stipulation of this blog is that I will blog as long as I receive comments. Refer to my very dear friend's blog at jeremyandsunny.blogspot.com, he wrote a good post on this topic. Thus if there are no comments, there will be no blog, remember this for days, months, and maybe years down the road. I do withhold the right to blog even when there aren't any comments though, if I feel I have some things I need to say about a particular topic I'll post about it.

I think that's all I want to say for now, I still need to finish up creating this whole blog.

Also, a quick shout out to my friends, Robin, Jed, Doug, Joey, and all the others that I have left out. And congratulations to Bethany Dowdy for snatching up Joey off the market, he's a keeper!

I'll give you all a real post later on after I set this thing up, I ask for patience, please bear with me!