I'm part of a commitment of daily prayer for the upcoming November 5th election through the Presidential Prayer Team (PPT) website. Today's scripture note from them is Exodus 18:21.
Moses' father-in-law is giving him some guidance in how to govern his people. The many "small" questions and issues could not all be settled by Moses alone. He was to select Godly men (people) of character, that fear God, that hate covetousness and unrighteous gain. These people were selected to hold judgment over groups of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, of tens. Just like our court system is set up by our founding fathers - our CHRISTIAN founding fathers. As things get more and more complicated, they are to be sent up the food chain to the most righteous of judges.
That should indicate to you how important the choice of our supreme court judges is - and the President is responsible for choosing those seats. Keep this in mind in your prayers and who stands to rule as the "ultimate, righteous judge" over our country. This is the prayer I submit to you. May the Lord God convict your heart to see who He would choose to lead this nation's hierarchy of judgment.
Also, keep in mind, our great President Abraham Lincoln's quote: "The philosophy of the classroom of one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next." This was indeed prophetic wisdom... and something President Lincoln fought for - that our country's past unrighteous embrace of slavery and racism would be cast from the schoolroom. Our current battle has far greater consequence - God was removed from America's classroom in a New York Supreme Court decision on June 25th, 1962. Justice Hugo Black, from Alabama, was a staunch liberal, the justice that made the judgement in the Engel v. Vitale (1962) case. This "leader" judge was called out early on, in Newsweek magazine, on his membership to the KKK. (Reference) Not exactly a guy who had his head wrapped around God's righteousness. Lesson learned?
Here's the prayer from PPT for today...
Awesome, God: You are awesome and mighty, lifting up those who You desire to lift up and putting down those You desire to put down. You love it when Your people come to You with longing for righteousness and godliness.
As our nation looks to the elections this fall, I ask that You will move among the people of our country, causing us to desire righteous, godly leaders. May we yearn for godly leaders and, desiring that, may we vote in such a way that we elect at every level those who will honor and obey You in godliness and wisdom. I pray this, honoring the holy name of Jesus, amen.
Be blessed, be courageous, be filled with passion for righteousness. DON'T be lukewarm... (Rev 3:14-22)
For the record, I'm neither a Democrat or Republican. I beleive in choosing the best man for the job, not a party. My "party" is that of the righteous laws and views of my Lord and Savior. And unfortunately, I usually feel the pressure to choose the "lesser of two evils" rather than the most qualified and best man for the job. I still like Mike! Now, Huck and Palin (or Palin and Huck) - that's a team!
First off, there is no way that you and I should be paying for Fanny and Freddie screw ups while their crummy management make out like bandits, receiving "compensation" for a job-crappily-done. Of course, we're lead to believe by the Clinton News Network (CNN), ABC, NBC, etc. that this is all recent and a result of Bush's poor economics. Right. Here's a little history lesson for you...
And lets not forget to mention Senator Obama's compensation...
Fanny and Freddie put themselves into these situations. They went off buying tons and tons of high risk mortgages. High-risk. That's right. Identified back in 2001 by President Bush's informants, and pushed hard for regulation by Senator McCain. But, that's not covered on "network TV" - what's interesting is that people are obviously il-informed, based on the polls taken regarding this specific question (Reference): When asked... "Who do you think is most to blame for the current financial crisis? 1. Greedy corporate and Wall Street executives 2. Incompetent government regulators who let things get out of control 3. Congress not minding the store 4. The Bush administration not minding the store 5. All of above equally 6. Other 7. Don't know Democrats: Execs-15%, Regs-9%, Congress-6%, Bush admin-32%, All-33%, Other-2%, DK-3% Republicans: Execs-25%, Regs-14%, Congress-26%, Bush admin-2%, All-27%, Other-1%, DK-2% Independents: Execs-21%, Regs-9%, Congress-12%, Bush admin-12%, All-41%, Other-2%, DK-2%
Interesting how much liberal media has misconstrued things for us. Notice how the Dem's don't want to blame their Congress of the last 2 years... or the regulatotions that were violantly lacking - nope, to the Dem's, it's largely Bush's fault - despite his announced fears of Fanny and Freddie explicitly back in 2001! And of course, the Rep's want to put more blame toward the (now) Democratic Congress of the last 2 years... and have the tendency to blame the real people at fault - the executives. Interesting how things play out.
At least they were trying to prevent the problem, rather than lining their pockets with dirty money. I don't agree with the Government bail-outs at all. Let Fanny and Freddie go under. Hold their CEO's and upper management accountable!
Believe this: Dan Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, is getting $9.3 million of severance for running his company into the ground... and while doing it, he's received $12.4 million in pay and stock option GAINS since 2004 while the company's been on a steady decline assuming the risk that they were so eager to absorb. (Reference)
Believe this: Richard Syron, the CEO of Freddie Mac, is slated for $14.1 million in his severance package, largely in part because of a clause he added to his employment contract last November, when, ALREADY, it was clear Freddie was following the path of poopy in a toilet. He has already received $17.1 million in pay and stock option GAINS since 2003 when he took over as CEO. (Reference)
Here's the crux - YOU AND I are paying for their severance packages. How do you like them apples?
If the superintendant of your schools implemented changes and curriculum that reduced your districts test scores drastically to the point of dismal state funding, would you concede to offering them a HUGE dismissal severance package? Yeah, I kinda' doubt that'd make the next referrendum funding sheet. So why is government effectively buying out Fannie and Freddie losses to the point of paying these guys off for creating the problem in the first place?
If you and I make a gamble on an investment, does Uncle Sam come to our rescue? Do they pull us out of bankruptcy? What the heck are these guys in Washington doing???
Next topic: Obama's brother Denesh D'Souza reports the real story (Reference) Obama has a half brother (same father) living in Nairobi, making $1 per day, despite CNN's attempt at a cover up (Reference). They met in 2006, and while Obama exploits this as his "African-American" blood, he makes no attempt to help sustain or enable a self-starting, hard-working, driven individual who happens to be his brother.
In 2nd Thessalonians, Chapter 3, Paul tells us that a man that doesn't work, shouldn't eat. But this is not the case with Obama's brother. He's working as a mechanic, and helping leading youth groups in his home area. I know, I know - easy to point fingers. Here's my rub - Barack and Michelle raked in $4.2 million in 2007, $3.9 million of which was from the Senator's book... a lofty increase from their 2006 return filing of $996k. They dumped $50k into the United Negro College Fund, but not a penny to his own blood. (Reference)
I'm in no place to judge, but it seems a bit odd.
Next topic: Lies in Obama ads... WI Governor Doyle used the same woman, Jody Montgomery, in an ad in 2006 when competing against Mark Green for the seat. Jody's daughter, Maddy, was diagnosed with early onset diabetes and has to be tested 6 times a day. I offer compassion and prayer to the Montgomery's in dealing with such a terrible circumstance. (Reference) The problem is that the ad quoted Jody as stating that Mark Green was against stem cell research, repeatedly voting against it. This is largely false. There is a distinction - Green voted against EMBRYONIC stem cell research, not the common adult stem cell research that has been done for years and years. Here's the BOGUS ad...
And here we go again. Obama's campaign is up to the same dirty tricks. The SCRIPT for the new BOGUS "Obama Understands" ad broadcasting in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is below:
Jody Montgomery: My name is Jody Montgomery and my daughter Maddy was diagnosed with Type I Juvenile Diabetes at age 3. Six times a day, I take her blood. Six times a day, I pray for a cure. Researchers are working hard to do just that. Our best hope is stem cell research, and that's why we support Barack Obama.
Announcer: Stem cell research could unlock cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's too. But John McCain has stood in the way...he's opposed stem cell research. Picked a running mate who's against it...And he's running on a platform even more extreme than George Bush's on this vital research. John McCain doesn't understand that medical research benefiting millions shouldn't be held hostage by the political views of a few.
Jody Montgomery: For Maddy and millions of others, stem cell research can unlock cures. Barack Obama understands that. But John McCain just doesn't.
And what's even worse, is that McCain has proven track record for promoting and voting for embryonic stem cell research. I personally do not agree with this approach, but the Obama campaign ads stating blatant lies really get my goat. (Reference) The utter nerve of these guys...
Next topic: Even Clinton isn't interested in supporting Obama? OK, maybe I'm reading into this... here's an interview on The View with former President Bill Clinton, commenting on Senator Hilary Clinton's potential request to serve as the Dem's VP on the ticket this November. Here's a condensed version. The full length can be found in Part 1 and Part 2.
So, she'd do it out of "duty" for her country, or perhaps her party... but she's not interested in going as VP under his wing... interesting.
I lured Christina to the Oconomowoc Lake Club for a "meeting" with the event coordinator for our upcoming reception there on February 14, 2009. Thanks to Sue, Angela, Rick and the rest of the gang that helped set everything up for us at the Club!!
After presenting her with the evening's program, I played a few pieces on the piano for her, and then asked her to sing her favorite Sara Groves song, Awakening, while I accompanied her. I finished the program with my 3 favorite Yanni tunes. Turns out, much to her dismay, Christina DOES like Yanni. LOL.
Here's the program... (FYI, "Yiannis Hrysomallis" is Yanni's birthname)
Following the recital, there were some "closing remarks." Christina and I talked about some things that we want for our lives down the road. After telling her a few things I wanted to do to manage proper health of our relationship, I got down on one knee... and, well... turns out she's in. Her face says it all...
Below are a couple shots of the ring. Its a loaner from Barnes Jewelers. They're custom designing a ring for me (OK, for her). But, this is, in some generic ways, similar. For those good coworker friends... "It's exactly the same as, EXCEPT..." mine's so cool they wanna' add it to they're permanent portfolio :-) This one is beautiful in it's own right, so we felt it worthy of a few pictures.
Here's a couple pics of the setup of the beautiful piano and ballroom at the Lake Club. Christina sat in the chair next to the fireplace as I played...
"The Beast" has risen. It may be considered a geriatric recovery by most computer nerds, but I am ecstatic. This was quite the feat!
Monday night, I got a call from cousin Chad: "Wanna' LAN it up?" How do you turn down an offer like that? My first instinct was "Let me see if I can revive 'the beast.'" As you may recall, my RAID array went haywire a few months ago. Over the passing time, I've slowly been trying to monkey with the box, here and there. I figured out my BIOS processor problem - BIOS thought it was an Athlon XP 1500... but the chip is an XP 1900. Change a few settings, and back in business. No more CPU check errors. And it seems as though the memory testing I've done indicates that the 3 1GB Crucial modules I have are all good. There were some indications to the contrary earlier on.
In addition, it seems as though only one of the 2 drives in the RAID array went south. I actually almost recovered it, but just has too many bad sectors... and is now making that fabulous seeking clunking sound.
I'm hoping that with the old installation of Windows on there it just had too many unorganized corruptions to keep track of, and eventually just went south. So far, I've had no blue screens in the setup tonight after getting home from date night with Christina in Kenosha.
So, anyway, last night was a long story. I can't express the frustration I was running into with my Windows installation. In a nutshell, the disk was corrupted. Chad was nice enough to hang a new disk on my door knob tonight for me. So, tonight, I went to town right away when I got in the door.
I pulled all the drives out and did some diagnostic scans. I pulled out my old 60GB Seagate Barracudas that used to be my RAID array in this machine when I first built it in summer of '02. 6 years is a pretty good run for a gaming rig. And, it seems as though it has some more life left in it.
So, I've finally learned my lesson. I setup a RAID 1 array, "mirrored," with the two Seagates. That's going to be my important files backup. I'll sync up my laptop to backup here on my network as well seeing as the Western Digital 250GB "my book" I bought for this purpose decided not to even power up on it's 3rd use in May. If you could have seen the steam pour out my ears as DJ S2H was preparing for a show. It's very difficult to pull songs from your library of 150GB of MP3s when the drive won't even turn on. Turns out, the early generation was rifled with crappy power supplies. With a little creative debugging with the help of Nate during my DJ gig, we were able to narrow down that the power supply was the problem, not the drive. So, I picked up a replacement supply on eBay for a bargain $6.99. Gotta love those mass qty Chinese suppliers. Upon inspection when it arrived, it seems like a pretty decent unit...for consumer grade stuff. I look forward to getting the drive going again...
Anyway, yeah, so the Seagates are going to be my "important" data for backup. It will actually be duplicate backup because of the RAID Mirrored array.
So, I also did some reorganizing. Moved some cards around (to redistribute PCI bus loading), pulled out the dead drive, added Seagates, removed an old CD-ROM, put a new TV tuner card in (from another computer), and cleaned out the dust bunnies - doesn't look like I cleaned from the pictures, but there was a 1/4 of dust layered throughout the case. I also rerouted some cables to help improve airflow. There are 4 case fans for this beast to help keep the drives cool... and the proc and video card, course.
So, why try so hard to resurrect this beast? Well, for one thing, I'm cheap. Hoping I don't have to invest in a new desktop for a while now. It seems there's another major financial obligation I'm saving for (hmmmmmm). That, and my laptop (while a thunderous gaming laptop in it's day of 2004), is horrifically slow. Laptops are all about comprimise. Here is a beautiful example... I started a fresh install of Battlefield 2 on my emachines M6802 laptop last night at Chad's. It took 1hr 20 minutes to install the game off of 3 CDs. Following that, there is a major patch update over 500MB in size. The patch took an additional 2 1/2 hours. 3hrs 50mins total. Tonight, I installed all 3 discs on "The Beast" in about 23 minutes while I've been typing up this post. The patch update is 50% complete or so, with a grand total of 13 minutes on the clock. Now, I'm sure a new gaming rig would smoke past these times, but you can see that this is a major improvement. Imagine the improvement in game play! We're looking at about 45 mins total for the Beast.
Well that said, here are a few pictures of it while I was screaming in the background... "It's.... aaa aaa -aaallliiiiiiiiiiivvvvvveee!!!! IT'S ALIIIVE!!! [Muuuuuuuwwwwwaaaaahahahahahaaaa]"
"Don't take it to those fly by night shops. They use crappy oil, crappy filters, and who knows what they'll forget."
You'll notice a few things in this one. Yes, this is Christina's car, Foxy Vanilla. Yes, that's my my Venture in the background. Yes, this is in a parking garage downtown Milwaukee. Yes, it's on the 10th floor on the parking garage. Yes, that is oil on the ground in front of Foxy Vanilla. Yes, that is oil from Foxy Vanilla's engine.
Closer inspection...
What you can't see is that the hood liner is SOAKED with oil... some spray is evident in other areas.
And the problem... anybody notice the cap missing? I peeked in the hole, and there's a rocker arm almost directly underneath the hole... perfect for spraying oil out the top and into the engine compartment.
Apparently, the car was running fine until just before Milwaukee. The oil light would come on here and there, car still running fine. Pulling into the garage (about 20 degree incline), the car reportedly started shaking pretty bad.
Intuition tells us that eventually the oil got so low in level that the oil pump started not being able to pull it out of the reservoir, thus the oil pressure would occasionally drop down in curves as the oil would slosh to one side of the pan, and thus turning on the oil pressure light occasionally. As she started heading up hill in the garage, there was no hope of the pump getting any oil from the pan... and by some miracle had enough lube in the engine to run it all the way up 10 floors in the parking garage. The oil you see on the ground in the first picture is what eventually dripped out of the hood liner, onto the engine fan, and eventually the ground.
So, knight in shining armor arrives (that's me). On the way to meet her, I picked up a 5 quart bottle of oil, oil filter, adjustable wrench, filter wrench, and bag of shop rags from Wal-mart. As I was crawling under the car, I actually had to lift the car up with my hands for me to fit my head between the ground and the frame. I was inspecting to make sure they managed to get the pan plug and filter on properly and tight enough.
All of a sudden, the car drops and smashes my head. Yup, I pooped my pants. I scream, kicking my legs and trying to get my oily, slippery hands back under the frame to lift it up again. My head happened to be looking out the drivers side. I was screaming for Christina, but she was apparently on the phone... IN THE CAR. I peered out with now blurred vision from smashed temples, and see some vaguely adorable feet dangling out of the side of the car. (Picture a little kid with his legs hanging over the edge of a pier/warf on a lake... real cute, right?) It took about 3 microseconds to figure out what happened. Christina had plopped down into the driver's seat while talking on the phone. As kindly as I could, "GET UP GET UP GET UP GET UP GET UP!" I don't know if you can picture what it was like for me under the car to see those legs dangling out the side... if you do it right, you'll be laughing a lot.
Lesson: use jack stands.
Anyway, as I was fumbling around underneath the car, following the near-death experience above, I was feeling around for the oil filter. All of a sudden the cap for the valve cover plops to the ground. Somehow, it managed to fall onto a frame member and wedged next to a plastic panel for about 70 miles. Thank God He worked that into our favor - good luck finding an auto parts store for a replacement in downtown Milwaukee.
While pouring the new oil into the engine, I kindly said something like this to Christina, "You realize that you're NEVER going to one of these Jiffy-lube type places again, right?" "Yeeeeesss, I know."
