The Journey Part IX

The Journey is chronicling my thoughts and feelings as I proceed down the path of spirituality. For a detailed explanation, see The Journey Part I

Now, I know what you are thinking. Two Journey posts on the same day? It will become clear enough soon, but let's just say that what I have to say in this one needs to be separated from the other post.

Lately I have been having some doubts about this whole journey. I really can't see myself becoming religious at all. I don't, among other things, seem to have the temperament for it. I tend to take things seriously that others seem to think I shouldn't and I laugh off things others seem to think are serious. Normally, that wouldn't bother me. In fact, most times I laugh off things others take way too seriously. But religion is different. You need to have convictions that, for the most part, are not easy for me to have. I have a quizzical mind. I often question things. It's because I need to know why a lot. Religion is one area where too many questions are sometimes frowned upon. I do want to thank Randy Skaja and Andy Brumm for taking the time to answer the rather goofy questions I have had so far.

I'm sure you will agree that some questions are healthy, but the problem I have is I want to ask the unhealthy ones. I will admit that occasionally I have an unhealthy need for knowledge. That's just who I am. That is why I can identify the flag for Burkina Faso in just a second or two and tell you where it is.

I have a lot of questions that I probably will never ask because I do not want to offend a group of people who have been very good to me and my family for a very long time. I will not ask questions that will cause more stress and anger in my family. I will not, in a quest for knowledge, ask questions that appear to be questioning someone's religion.

So, that leaves me at a crossroads. One that I have been standing at a long time. Two choices stand before me. One path leads down a road where some knowledge is sacrificed in the name of faith. The other is a life of knowledge without faith. I have seen the beginnings of both paths. They both appeal to me. I do not know which path I want to go down. What's worse is that I do not know which path is the right one. I guess I will stand at the crossroads (listening to some Clapton) for a little while longer.

The Journey Part VIII

The Journey is chronicling my thoughts and feelings as I proceed down the path of spirituality. For a detailed explanation, see The Journey Part I

As we go through the second most holy period of the Christian faith, I am forced to reassess myself. I have been trying to develop some semblance of religion and spirituality over the past several months. If you have read my blog for a while, you will have seen that in the other posts in this series. The Christmas season will probably be my sticking point for the foreseeable future. The reason for this is the fact that the season has very rarely been good to me. Stress, discord, and anger have all been present during most of the Christmases that I can remember. So, I rarely look forward to the season. This year will be just as bad. I'm uninviting myself (for now, that could change) from a Christmas Eve gathering due to stress that will be present. A stress I know very well, almost too well. Add that to the lovely Wisconsin weather we are expecting on Christmas Day which will make our 6+ hours of round trip driving that much more interesting, well, I'm not too excited about the next few days.

Add the fact that everyone seems to take the opportunity to spew hypocritical rants about what the season has become and there seems to be very little to like about this time of year anymore. Political correctness has crapped over everything to the point that you can't walk down the street and wish someone a merry Christmas without the other person taking offense. 31% of the world and 78.4% of the US identify themselves as Christians. What is so offensive about trying to be friendly and wishing someone a merry Christmas?

I guess it's the whole majority/minority dichotomy. No matter what those in the majority do, they will always be attacked by those in the minority. Of course, that is a one way street. The majority cannot complain about the minority. Still, why can't we put these feelings aside during a time that is universally recognized as a time of peace, joy, and forgiveness?

Yea, I know the season makes me more than a little cynical, and I am working on that. It's a slow process. I'm old and forgetful. If I do learn something, I forget it pretty quickly!

Pardon the epiphany here, but I think that the above might be at least part of the problem I am having with religion. I'm white, male, politically conservative, and 32. I am already part of a group that, in this society, has no right to complain about anything. Becoming Christian may just make me even more intolerant in the eyes of the more "progressive" folks out there. Now, I do know that is not a good reason to not become religious. It is, however, one of the mental blocks that is in my way. Not the biggest, but even the smallest of blocks can cause you to fall down. If that particular block causes me to fall down, I'm not sure how easy it will be to get back up.

There is no greater meaning to this post. The posts in this series rarely go beyond my feelings. However, all I ask is for people to try to drop their prejudices for at least a few days. If you want to encase yourself in your shell, please wait until Boxing Day!

Facebook responds to critics

Weird...Apparently Facebook actually decided to respond to the numerous complaint groups that have popped up recently. I received an e-mail recently that was supposedly leaked from the offices of Facebook. The text is below.

Dear Facebook user,

In an effort to make Facebook the #1 social media tool on the internet, we have made an effort to respond to all of the complaints that many of our users have been sending us over the past few weeks. While we have experienced unexpected growth over the past year, we have strived to bring you the best experience possible. However, despite our efforts, there has been a portion of our users who have been inconvenienced by our seemingly constant changes. To those who feel slighted by these changes, we say this:

Facebook development team.

Kinda sums it all up, huh?

Are we bringing about our own demise?

This is going to be a bit heavier than most of my other posts. If you enjoy the funny, smarmy posts I make, please know that I am completely serious here.

Technology is a wonderful thing. It has allowed us to do wonderful things. Nowhere is that seen more than in the areas of health and medical technology. We have cures for illnesses that weren't even discovered 60 years ago. Heart disease, diabetes, mental illnesses, even some cancers have treatments that can cure or delay the disease. We are living longer and having more productive lives. However, these same technological advances could easily lead to our demise.

I am not a fan of all the hand sanitizing products out there. I believe that the body's own immune system is a wonderfully effective illness killing machine. However, like a world class athlete, it needs a lot of practice. Besides, there have been numerous studies, some from as far back as 2000, that question the effectiveness of these products. People are given a false sense of security when they use these products. To make things worse, the germs that aren't killed by these products are getting stronger. If they can survive the alcohol, it will make it that much tougher for an out of condition immune system to combat, possibly leading to more severe illnesses.

Let's not forget every doctor's friend, antibiotics. True, it's not as bad as it used to be, but there are still many, many doctors who will prescribe antibiotics for everything. Even viruses which are rarely, if ever, affected by antibiotics. So where does that leave us? More superbugs that are getting tougher and tougher to kill. Malaria, Salmonella, Tuberculosis, even strep throat have all seen strains that have developed drug resistances.

What's worse, all these antibiotics are killing off the friendly bacteria. In case you don't remember your high school biology classes, we have many strains of bacteria in our intestines that help us in many ways. One of these bacteria helps protect us from a bug called Clostridium difficle. Symptoms of this little bugger are: severe diarrhea, ruptured colons, perforated bowels, kidney failure, blood poisoning, and even death. Large doses of antibiotics kill off the friendly bacteria that keeps this bug at bay. So now, because of heavy antibiotic treatments, 15,000 to 30,000 people a year die from this bug. In 2001, only 150,000 cases a year were reported. Now, it's up to 500,000.

We need to take a step back. How many needless deaths do we need to endure before we take a good, hard look at the treatments we are using? You hear a ton of stories on how we need to protect nature from the affects of human activity. From where I stand, it appears that nature is doing a good job taking care of itself.

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After thinking about it a little bit while waiting to get my son off the bus, I wonder how much this topic relates to the current health care reform? How much money is wasted by doctors prescribing unneeded antibiotics? Who knows what kind of reform we could get by just eliminating that!

Basking in the reflected glory

Let's face it, the closest any of us are going to get to fame is if we happen to be in the background of a famous person's photo or if we have a spectacularly dumb death. Up until very recently, my greatest brush with fame was a picture in the local paper when I was 8. I was attending the official opening of Houdini Plaza in Appleton in 1985 (God, has it been that long?) and the unveiling of possibly one of the goofiest tribute statues of all time. That is, until recently.

Now, I will be the first to admit that being linked to a small podcast which originates from a basement in Wauwatosa isn't on the path to great fortune and fame, but I have to take what I can get! Being mentioned in the same paragraph as the great Joseph Paul by the official PhilCast intern, Dan Baggott, well, that makes the weather geek in me squeal like a little girl. To think that I could attain the fame and notoriety of one of the giants of the industry, well, it's more than a little embarrassing. Add that to the mention that I received on the Thursday December 10th edition of the PhilCast and you have more reflected glory than one person should be allowed to have!

Keep up the great work Phil! I have been a fan of yours pretty much from the first day I was a listener of your former employer in the fall of 2000. I have listened to the PhilCast from the very first test Cast. I will do my part, pimping for the Cast for as long as you are on. I wish you luck in making the PhilCast a paying venture for you so you can pamper those gals of yours!

Snowmageddon 2009 and the ignorami who grind my gears

I have been kicking the idea for this post around for a day or two. What's been holding me back is my tendency to descend into technobabble when talking about the weather. However, now that the first major, complex winter storm is over and the sniping has begun, I feel I have to respond.

As you know, I am a weather geek. I do not attempt to hide that fact, nor do I apologize for it. I love the weather. I love the dynamics and the complexity. All of the models, graphs, data, and observations are fascinating. The amount of information used for even a 48 hour forecast would make your head spin. This complexity is a constant source of irritation for me when I watch TV news, or listen to radio reports. Ask any real meteorologist, and they will tell you that anything more than a three day forecast is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty. 7 day forecasts are a joke. There is no way you can know that far ahead what will happen.

With all that complexity, is it any wonder that often things don't go exactly as forecast? Sometimes it rains more than called for, sometimes less. Sometimes storms develop where they weren't expected, and sometimes all the ingredients are in perfect alignment but nothing pops. People who have little to no knowledge of the weather are often the first to complain. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in snowstorm forecasts.

Which brings me to the crux of this particular rant. Early season snowfalls are notoriously hard to forecast accurate snowfall totals. A warm Lake Michigan, a lack of previous snowcover, and varying ground temperatures all conspire to destroy even the best of snowfall forecasts. It never fails though, every single snowfall, there is a loud, vocal group of people who seem to take it as a personal attack if we get less snow than was predicted. This last storm, I actually saw someone calling for weathermen to be sued for a missed forecast. Really? Your life is so devoid of meaning and excitement that you would consider such an extreme measure over a snowstorm?

Granted, I have an issue with the sensationalized local weather myself most of the time. Most. The only exception is during tornado warnings. In Wisconsin, a tornado is one of the few, if only, meteorological events that is a serious, immediate threat to life. In those cases, I don't mind the wall-to-wall coverage. It serves a greater good. Hour upon hour of the same information every 10 minutes is asinine. I guess that's why, with the exception of one, I have little faith in TV weathermen. The guys at the NWS offices, on the other hand, have my total respect. The TV guys merely parrot the forecasts that the real meteorologists spend hours on every day.

Do I expect anything to really change with this? No. I know that there is a group of people out there who are not happy unless they are complaining about something. To those of you I say, take your complaints elsewhere. Your complaints are better served in areas where it may make a speck of difference.

HTML, oh how I loathe thee

As I sit here after a lovely, two hour session trying to help an online buddy get a blog set up, I have just one question. Does a website really need to be that difficult? Seriously, they couldn't have come up with an easier method by now? OK, that was two questions, but you get my point.

Now I know that someone who is certified in HTML will come along with some obligatory technobabble that would make Wesley Crusher look like Rain Man, but that will just prove my point. Why should it take so many codes to produce a single image? WHY?

I don't know...Maybe I'm just frustrated that it took so long to do so little. Maybe I had higher expectations than was warranted in regards to what we could get accomplished tonight. Maybe it's the fact that I'm old now and techie things are not supposed to make sense to me anymore. Who knows. Why should I care?

I guess I just don't want to admit that i'm behind the tech curve. Intellectually, I've known that for some time. To prove that point, all you need is me, my brother, and his Game Cube with Super Smash Brothers Melee in it. All the button mashing in the world isn't enough to save me from the butt-whooping that ensues. Hey, I grew up in an era where a D-pad and TWO buttons was advanced!

Oh, well. I guess when it comes to technology, 30 is the new 60. If you don't get it now, you may never get it!

Ho, Ho, Ho, and get me the hell out of here!

Well, it has started. The other half just adores Christmas and every year our apartment shows it. Not that it's entirely a bad thing. The problem is, she has so much stuff. Too much for the small apartment we have. So, in an effort to put everything up, the entire apartment EXPLODES every year. Call me a Scrooge if you want to, but I no longer see the reason Christmas decorations need to be up before December. Like I said in another post, I really could do without the season. Maybe she's the cosmic Yin to my Yang. I would be happy with no decorations and she does enough for 12 people! Oh well, at least we have an artificial tree. Picking needles out of my feet until June is not my idea of "festive". I'm sure if you dug a bit at my mom's house, you could find needles from 1987!

Ho, ho, ho, fa, la, la, la...'Tis the season I guess...

Things I am thankful for...

I've been noticing a lot of people on Facebook are really getting into the whole "Things I'm thankful for" updates lately, and I thought that I would get into it too. The problem is, I'm thankful for so many things, it would be impractical to use Facebook updates. Instead, I will give a handy, easy to manage, list right here!

The Things I am thankful for

• I am thankful that, as a general rule, the people that vote for American Idol are not the same folks that vote for president.
• I am thankful that we live in an age where those of us who can be classified as geeks can cherish it and live proudly in our geekness.
• I am GREATLY thankful for Facebook's 'hide' option. The number of posts I have to wade through thanks to that lovely button has decreased exponentially.
• I am thankful for Sid Meier's programming brilliance. If it wasn't for his amazing line of Civilization games, I would have had thousands of hours that I would have had to kill some other way.
• I am thankful for the Chicago Cubs and San Jose Sharks. I really do enjoy having my expectations, no matter how low, go unmet year after year after year after year.
• I am thankful for the NCAA and their Bowl Championship Series. Without it, there would be no chance to argue over the best college football team.
• I am thankful for the Wisconsin climate. Where else on the planet is it possible to experience 5 seasons in 4 days?
• I am thankful for our local media because, lets face it, we really need helicopter coverage following Brett Favre from the airport to his house.
• Lastly, I am thankful for Rich Rodriguez. Thanks to him, I have my Saturday afternoons in the fall free to do whatever I like.

OK, by now you know that all (most?) of the above is to be taken tongue in cheek. Still, this is the season of thanks however, and I would be remiss if I didn't hand out a few heartfelt thanks. First and foremost is a thanks to everyone involved with and who attend Crosswalk Church in Waukesha. They have gone over and above to help my family and I in many ways. Also, anyone who has helped us out at all during this trying time. I won't mention you individually without asking permission, but you know who you are. Lastly, while this will sound like it belongs above, I thank the inventor(s) of all the energy drinks. Without them, a vast amount of my writing would not have been done. Thank you all!

Kicking my own ass

OK, I guess that needs a bit of background....

As some of you may know, one of my hobbies is writing. Not just blogging, but writing poems and stories. I am currently working on a rough draft of a full length novel. Because I have a hard time writing when there is too much going on, my time to write is limited to the few hours Tuesday through Thursday when both kids are away at school or after everyone else goes to bed. The problem there is, the daytime hours are usually used for my job hunting and cleaning that can't be done when the kids are here. If you have a three year old, you know the frustration of trying to pick up when they are awake! So that leaves the late night as the best time. Unfortunately, I have to be up at 7 most mornings to get the kids organized. Pair that up with the fact that our three year old (who is still up as I write this!) rarely falls asleep before midnight, and that leaves almost no time.

So when situations like last night occur, I am thankful. My daughter was spending the night at one of the grandmother's house, neither kid had to be up at any particular time this morning, and my GF went to bed shortly after she got home from her bible study. When the tree year old fell asleep around midnight, I thought that I could get a solid 2-3 hours of productivity in.

That's where the title of this post comes in. My muse, never one to cooperate often, decided that it was time for his vacation. I sat there, writing totem and all, for two hours. What did I get out of those two hours? 116 words. 116 F'ing words. I have had nights where I was able to write 10 times that in half the time. Arrrgggghhhh...

I guess that's the nature of writing. I just wish it wasn't at such a bad time. Oh well, the Sharks game is over, it looks like the little guy is starting to wind down, so I guess I'm off to try it again. My coffee cup is near by (caffeine does wonders for my writing brain), my totem is close at hand, and I will be grabbing the MP3 player shortly. Wish me luck!

Bah humbug!

Well, here we are, 7 days from the semi-official start of the Christmas (all you "Happy Holiday people" can bite me!) Season, and I am feeling more humbuggy than normal. The Christmas season has always been a time I would rather not have on the calendar. I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that the season has screwed me one too many times. My happiest Christmas Eve was in 2001. My roommates were at their families homes and I had the place to myself with nowhere to I had to be. Heaven.

This year, however, is going to go down as one of the lower ones. Unless things change in a vast hurry (and with the economy the way it is, I don't see things changing), I will still be unemployed. That will cause stresses that we all could do without. Besides, I really have no desire to see anyone this year. I haven't talked to my mother in almost two years, and if I have anything to say about it, it will stay that way. I have never really felt welcome with my girlfriend's family and the travel time to see my dad is almost too much to be worth the effort.

I wonder why I even bother anymore. No matter what I do, things end up sucking, or worse. Maybe I'll just say the hell with it, let the GF take the kids to her family for Christmas Eve and I'll stay home and try to finish off my book I'm writing. I'm sure her family will think I'm an ass for not coming, but I honestly think they already think that anyway. Oh well, I will see I guess...

Why paper books are better than e-books

I stumbled across a discussion on a writing forum that I'm a part of that brought up the idea that printed books could be dead and gone within a few years. I have a problem with this, and I happened to compile a short list. These are just a few of the reasons I feel that paper books will be around much longer than anyone wants to believe.

• I will never need to replace my book's batteries.
• If I get my book wet, it will not ruin my other books.
• If I drop my book, I can pick it up and still read it.
• If my book breaks, I don't need a degree to fix my book, nor call an 800 number. A little tape/or glue will fix most damage to my book.
• I do not need a 100+ page manual to learn how to read my book.
• I can forget my book in my car in the summer and winter.
• I can hand my book down from generation to generation without having to worry about the new books being backward compatible.
• You can wrap/unwrap a book as a present.

Now I understand that there are many advantages when it comes to all of the new e-books. I'm considering a Kindle myself. While the e-books are a great piece of technology, I do not see them replacing normal, printed books anytime in the near future. Will the era of printed books end? Probably. I honestly can't say whether I will see that day in my lifetime.

Random thoughts

This is an idea I have been tossing around for a while and I would like to start it out. Hopefully it will develop into a series, but we'll see how it goes. Below are just a few, quick observations I have made. They can be taken however you feel fit. These are just my thoughts.

Something I've always wondered...Is having a peanut as a mascot for a nut company a little cannibalistic?

When did Facebook become evil? I have found that Facebook is now one of the biggest time suckers in my life right now.

While we are on Facebook, can I ask one favor? Can all of the stupid, vacuous, puerile, pointless, and just plain dumb cause requests go away PLEASE?! Seriously, if I get one more cause request that has no redeeming quality whatsoever, I am going to snap!

Maybe someone can answer this for me. I have been born and raised in Wisconsin. Can anyone tel me why I'm surprised by the weather anymore? As I write this, it's 69 degrees in Milwaukee. Tomorrow, we will be lucky to hit 50. Why does anyone live here anymore?

I'm going to try again, but I just can't seem to see the appeal of soccer. I tried getting into it during a past World Cup and I will try again next year, but I don't think that the result will be any different. I understand the rules, so that's not causing issues, I just don't see why the world thinks so highly of the game.

Is it wrong that I enjoy tweaking people? You know, doing and saying things that I know will set someone off? It's just too fun!

I know I'm fighting an uphill battle with this one, but I will continue to fight. Why, when character length is not an issue, do people insist on using textspeak? I understand the need for emoticons when it's hard to convey emotion, but how many LOL's, BRB's, ROFL's, and OMG's will I have to endure? In my opinion, it marks you as a bit lazy. I know it's the grammar Nazi in me, but horrible spelling should not be allowed. If people can't figure out what words you are using, how can you expect them to know what you are saying?

I swear, the next time I see someone properly merge onto a highway, navigate a roundabout, or use a 4 way stop properly, I may just die from the shock. Are they even teaching this stuff in driver's ed anymore?

That's it for now. Now, if you happen to fall in any of the above, this is not meant to be an insult. These are some of the things that I find odd, confusing, or frustrating. If you want to write about things I do that annoy you, feel free. I'll probably read it! If you enjoy this and wish to have one of yours included in the next installment, drop me a line in the comments. The e-mail address that is linked to this account has died, and I haven't replaced it yet.

No, I haven't abandoned this blog yet...

For the very small handful of my readers, no I haven't given up on this blog just yet. Things have changed a bit for me and one of the things that had to be put on the back burner was this writing. The fact that there hasn't been a whole lot of personal stuff to write about hasn't helped either.

There has been a bit of progression in my "Journey" series of posts, but not enough to devote an entire post to. I have also been busy with my recent novel project which has eaten into the free time I had.

Getting back to the writing motivation for a bit, I have found it increasingly difficult to care enough about stuff to write about it. The country is still on it's breakneck speed downward spiral, but it's hard for me to say anything that hasn't been said 40 times over. Personally, my stress level has been so high for so long, that I'm having trouble being motivated enough to write something other than my book. It's funny, the last time I started this, what killed it was it became more of a chore than something I enjoyed. While I haven't got to that point yet, I feel I'm quickly approaching it again. So, dear reader, I need a bit of help. What kinds of things would you like to see? I know my Cubs and Sharks rants have a very limited audience, and while I certainly fill this with Sharks rants of late, that's not the direction I want to go. If you have any ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments below. The only thing I don't want here are political posts. I have a separate area for that.