Dave's Grab Bag

Trach & Black

2007-04-10T08:28:00.000-04:00

Trachodon & Blackstarr yukking it up

Ghost Story

2005-07-30T14:33:00.000-04:00

Okay I apologize for my last post, but I really do think all the scripts people are using in their blogs are getting out of hand. On with the next post:

As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man that wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
~Unknown

A couple months back I woke up and was somewhat surprised to see that my dresser had been pulled almost two feet from the wall. Bleary-eyed and not yet caffienated, I decided the best thing to do was to just put it back and forget about it. No problem.

The next morning I awoke to the same thing. Again I just put it back.

And the morning following that - same thing. Now I'm growing rather alarmed and curious as well. I ask other members of the house if they had heard any furniture moving around in the night. No, they had heard nothing.

This continued for almost two weeks. Every night, without fail, my dresser would be pulled from the wall. I am strongly considering calling a priest to have the house blessed, as I seem to clearly have a prankster poltergeist messing with me. I am starting to become afraid to sleep in my room.

Finally, I wake up in the middle of the night, and catch my ghost in the act. It is nowhere near as frightening as my recent dreams and imagination have made it out to be. It was in fact... my arm. In my sleep I have been sticking my arm behind the dresser and pushing it forward. So half-asleep I get out of bed and move the dresser and nightstand away from my bed where I cannot reach them. The ghost was never heard from again.

The End.

Make poverty history

2005-07-30T00:05:00.000-04:00

Okay it sounds good, but in my opinion its a pipe dream. As long as someone out there is willing to make a buck at the expense of others, poverty will always exist. It's nice to know that all you people with your white banners care so much. But please remove them from the right hand corner of your blogs. Kudos to you who have thought to put them on the left-hand side.

But the banners on the right side make it impossible to click the next blog button (that is if you haven't been so completely insensitive as to remove that button altogether).

and while I'm at it I would like to ask that anyone who is using clever javascripts to make messages appear in the status bar, or to have little popup alert messages that just have cutesy sayings (that I have to click 'OK' to get rid of), or soundfiles that play automatically upon visiting, or mouse pointers that have interesting effects... GET RID OF IT! it's not cute. it's not cool. all it does is aggravate me while I wait an extra 30 seconds to get the hell away from your blog while pages load.

Dan

2005-07-29T04:17:00.000-04:00

Was thinking about my brother a bit today, I miss him a lot. I can't help but wonder about what happens once we are gone? In life Dan was plagued by such a large conglomeration of mental illnesses, that the so called psychiatrists that he had seen all his life could never quite put a finger neatly onto one of them. If I were to attempt to guess at what might have been his trouble, I'd say manic depressive schizophrenia with autistic tendencies. But thats just a lable. Sure he had his bad days, but he had lots of good ones too. When he was in school, they kept putting him in the special ed classes even though he was probably just as smart as any of the normal kids, if not smarter. The problem was he just didn't know how to interact with people on a social level. Especially when it came to females. But he was very clever, witty, humble... lots of good qualites.

It would take a person a good while sometimes for Dan to warm up to them enough where he would feel comfortable talking to them, and often never, as too often people would speak condescendingly to him as if he were a simpleton which he was not by any means.

Anyway, what I mean by 'what happens when we are gone' is more in reference to the psyche. I don't care to get into a big theological debate about it, I consider myself a Christian in the broadest of terms, have read the bible a few times, but I also believe in karma & reincarnation, which are apparently beliefs that are disdained by the majority of the Christian population.

In life, Dan's mind was plagued by a multitude of problems, and I wonder - did he shed them along with his body when he passed on to the next world? Does he now finally have clarity and understanding of this world such as he was unable to fully grasp in life? I really hope so.

It's still kind of hard for me to talk about him even though I think of him almost everyday. He died of brain cancer Feb 2001 at the age of 29. Don't you all start getting depressed over this post, as in a way, his passing I assume was a sort of mixed blessing for him. But I still miss him and hope he is doing well.

okay, the flood :)

2005-07-28T04:49:00.000-04:00

I know I should have said more about it when I first mentioned it a while back, but at the time, it was all that was talked about on the news and in the paper. It has been a few months now, so my somewhat diminished short-term memory can for the most part recall only that I was very busy for a few months (thank you mother nature :D )

I can't say now when exactly it all happened, funky weather between January & March... first we got some bad ice storms that pulled down power lines and trees across half the state of Ohio (some counties even had to declare national disaster). But then it all thawed fairly quickly, and we got hit with the most rain we have had since 1927 (I'm quite sure I'm wrong on the year there, but it's pretty close - give or take 20 years)

Dayton and other surrounding communities in southwestern Ohio are fairly hilly, and where there are hills, there are valleys. And just about everyone living in the valleys ended up with around 2 feet of standing water in their homes. It was a mess. So I was doing a lot of tearing up carpet (and flooring in some cases to exposed joists), and stripping the bottom 2-4 feet of walls, and pulling out all the soggy insulation and setting up fans all over to help dry out the wall studs. Then put it all back together after it had a couple days to dry out. I think all that carpet was the worst, as 180 sq. feet or more of soggy carpet is very very heavy. The first house the home owners helped me get it out, but after that I just got it to the door, and drug it out to the curb with a chain attached to the truck.

I would really rather there wasn't a flood causing that much widespread damage, because most people simply don't have the kind of money to pay for such extensive repairs. Many people were insured of course, but a lot of them weren't. So for most of these people I barely charged them more than just the cost of materials (around 15-20% extra, give or take). was still able to make a good amount cutting prices because of the sheer volume of work that was needed. There are still a lot of them that haven't paid me in full yet, but I don't think I'll press them for it really. Just keep sending them monthly statements that they might or might not pay lol.

I have to admit I do tend to change my prices rather frequently - I have my standard prices that are about the same as any other contractor, but I tend to cut them depending on what I think the home can afford. I mean really, a single parent with 3 kids and a $500 car with 30-day tags simply isn't going to afford to pay what a couple living in a $250k custom home with a new BMW in the garage can pay. Maybe I'm too nice, but I don't really care as long as I can keep paying my bills & extra laborers when I need them.

heh

2005-07-25T05:46:00.000-04:00

Ah yes, the blog! I haven't forgotten about it, but as uninteresting as my life seems at times, I can hardly justify boring you all with it. :)

If I could think of a topic that would be great. I would then write paragraph upon paragraph of meaningful and insightful drivel that may or may not be read by anyone.

I dont care, its fun anyway lol

Thanks everyone for stopping by though, its just I have more fun reading your blogs than taking the time to write in my own hehe

Oh! I am now a great uncle! My eldest niece just had her first baby. Wasn't she just born 5 years ago herself? Oh wait she's 19 now... how do these things happen? Anyway, My niece gave birth to a beautiful (if a bit pink and wrinkly) baby girl - Adriana Nicole. I went to visit her last weekend, and I'm quite sure I have never seen a more wriggly 4 week old baby. I held her for a little bit, but was afraid I was going to drop her, as she was squirming around quite a bit, making it rather hard to keep hold of her while still properly supporting her head. But she didn't throw up on me, so thats good :)

I cant imagine what I would call her for short though, as Adriana doesn't seem to lend itself to an abbreviated version. Dri? Didi? Not sure.

Going over there again tomorrow though to rip all the panelling out of her house (at least he ground floor). Looks like a big dark cave right now. I'm afraid to see what's behind it all. maybe I'll be lucky and it wont have been glued at all, and the walls will mostly be intact underneath (dream on). More likely the panelling will be hiding numerous cracks and holes, and will be not only glued on (and the glue will rip more plaster from the lath when I take it out), but it will be nailed on as well with possibly the wrong kinds of nails, and I'll have to go through and try and pull out a bunch of 3 inch spikes that are normally used for framing :P ah well I'll find out soon enough.

well, I'm gonna surf for a little bit, then get a few hours sleep as its a 2 1/2 hour drive to her house. She should just move here, thats too far lol.

Ciao

Sorry folks!

2005-02-05T07:27:00.000-05:00

I been kinda busy lately doing a lot of flood damage stuff, plus been playing around a bit (or should i say studying?) this geek stuff is quite fun lol (web design junk)

Happy New years! I hope everyone had a safe holiday season!!

I really cant think of a single thing to write about at the moment, perhaps something remarkably clever will come to me soon?

Sorry if I made any of you worry, God Bless, and I'll try to stop back sooner =)

Messin around

2004-09-27T13:47:00.000-04:00

Here I am at about 18 months... I just found this pic and have never seen it before, but couldn't resist sharing it.

I was getting a bit frustrated with the old background failing to load from its previous location, so I thought to attempt using the accursed Hello uploader to use this one here. Another thing I hate about hello- it uploads JPEGs only, and the old BG was a .gif, so I couldn't upload it here.

So I made this one to upload here, and maybe the URL will work better.

Banner ad for Runescape to replace the one I am currently hot-linking in hopes that it will load faster.
This image is owned and copyrighted by Jagex.com.

'I'm part Cherokee'

2004-09-24T22:48:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'm really not. At least not to my knowledge. But I heard this phrase once again today, and for some reason felt rather p.o'd. I'm sure true Cherokee are tired of hearing this as well. And why is it always Cherokee these people lay claim to? Someone suggested it was Cher's song that made people want to identify with them. But to my knowledge, the Cherokee were never really in Ohio where I am from. Here in Dayton and the surrounding area is primarily Shawnee country. And in the northern regions of Ohio were the Iroquois. Other tribes that lived in and around the Ohio Valley included the Delaware, Wyandot, Miami & Ottowa. There may have been some smaller lesser known tribes that I left out, and my apologies to them.

So if you fellow Ohioans insist on lying about your heritage, please choose from one of the afore-mentioned Ohio tribes. I would be more likely to believe you, although I still wouldn't care.

"Dear Dave"

2004-09-23T18:58:00.000-04:00

Recently I have invited readers to ask me questions concerning the male species, and was rather surprised when I found more than 1 question upon my return to the keyboard. Here are some of the letters that I have recieved so far:

Dear Dave,
Why are the nice guys too shy to ask a girl out, and the not so nice guys only talk to our boobs? Not that I always mind having my boobs talked to - but by a nice guy would be well...nice.

Signed,Lookin for a nice one.

Dear lookin for a nice one,
The so-called 'shy' or 'nice' guys for the most part are merely guys who are more fascinated with a well-formed derriere than a pair of mammaries. The reason they appear to be timid around women is because they have yet to figure out a way to hold a face to face conversation with you while still maintaining a clear view of your bottom. In this light, if it is a 'nice' guy you want to meet, here is my recommendation: Put on some high heels, and lean over a table or a counter facing away from him while pretending to read the morning news, and strike up a conversation with him over your shoulder about the daily box scores. I think you will find that he will be much more talkative than he may have been in the past.

Dear Dave,
Question for you. It's a curiosity thing. Right ok, so break out the dictionary, and brace yourself.
Situation: Something's wrong. It is because of something the guy has done.He doesn't quite realize *what* he has done yet, but he does realize that something's wrong and it is because of something he has done. So he asks the girl "what's wrong?" She replies "nothing" in a tone that suggests that there is very much something wrong and she can't believe he's asking when he should instinctively know what horrible thing he has done. They both know it isn't nothing.
Question:What is the guy thinking?
Another question, while I have your attention:Why is there no female equivalent to the word "guy"?

-Patiently waiting with slight female annoyance at having to be kept waiting for any length of time (aka Thérèse)

-Dear Patiently waiting,
Unfortunately this is one of the most often misunderstood parts of a man's thought processes. If a man were to ask another man what is wrong, and the reply is 'nothing', it can only mean one of two things:
a. The mood was misinterpreted, and there really is nothing wrong, or
b. There is something wrong, but we do not want to talk about it until we have had sufficent time to brood over it, and perhaps come up with a solution for what might be troubling us.
The man who asked whether there was a problem would then know to drop the subject and either move to another topic, or to another room, depending on which way he percieves the answer of 'nothing'.

She replies "nothing" in a tone that suggests that there is very much something wrong

To him this only suggests that you wish to be left alone to think, And the only reason he is still standing there is because he is hungry and is wondering how best to let you know that he would like you to take a moment from your mood and cook his dinner, and by the way the babies' diaper needs changing. The idea that you are expecting an explaination or apology for a recent grievance may never come to him, since your reply was 'nothing'. There simply is no other translation for 'nothing' in the male dictionary when used in that context. If you would like an apology, you really should tell him what is wrong, even though he may already know. His asking what is wrong when he already knows is merely a gauge to see if you are ready to talk about it.

And about your 2nd question

Why is there no female equivalent to the word "guy"?

Actually there is. There are several actually. Gal, chick & broad just to name a few. However, for some reason females do not wish to be called to be called by any of these general terms, preferring instead to be referred to by a word more descriptive of their own particular personality. Unfortunately, this is usually a word that is not to be found in the male dictionary.

There is a third letter as well from hemustbecrazy, but as I am gender-limited, it is taking me some time to figure out the nature of the problem put forth. However I hope to have an answer post-haste.

Something New (or at least rehashed)

2004-09-23T09:04:00.000-04:00

Reading Sven's blog (particularly his "Dear Pat" series), I decided it would be fun to do something along a similar line. However, instead of answering questions concerning faith, I think I would like to answer all questions that you might have concerning men. Why this topic? Well first of all, it is because I am one, so that gives me a pretty good insight into the thought processes of how a man thinks. Secondly, it has occured to me that a majority of the people who stop by happen to be members of the fairer sex . And lastly, because just about every blog (but not every) I have come across that is written by a woman has some complaint about a man, or some question along the lines of "Just what the heck was he thinking" when he said or did something that you found offensive or just plain stupid.

So, without further (ado? adieu?) I offer you "Dear Dave".

I hope you have fun with this, as I am sure I will. How do I know I will? I am a male, which makes me easily amused. So ask away, and I will try my best to give you the answers you have been looking for.

P.S., I have recently purchased a pocket "Male-Female translation dictionary" to aid me in giving you the answers in a language I hope you understand. ( had originally accidentally purchased the female to male translation, but it wasn't really much help as everything seemed to translate into "blah blah blah". Its a miracle you can even get us to mow the lawn with a translation like that.)

Next Blog

2004-09-22T04:32:00.000-04:00

I would really like to update this more often, and delight everyone with colorful tales of my life, or offer opinions and advice on a number of heady topics, perhaps even throw in a few short stories. I may still do these things from time to time, but that 'Next Blog' button... I dont know why, but I love to click it. It's a potluck into the minds and realities of the unknown individual masses. Sometimes I come across some funny ones, some are thought provoking, and some are... well, there's no telling. But when I come across one that I like for whatever reason, I like to leave a comment when I can. Often these comments are a paragraph or two containing my opinion on the subject the anonymous blogger has put forth, or I will relate a similar life experience that their post reminds me of. Or it might just be a short note to let them know that someone has stopped by, and heard what they had to say.

As a result, while I may write several paragraphs a day, on a number of topics that may or may not interest other readers, that stuff never seems to find its way here. My own blog seems pretty sparse. To make things worse, I can never remember exactly where I was where I left a comment! Perhaps I should start keeping note of them, and then everyday just post a list of where I've been commenting =P

Or not. But I know that in the short time I've been here, I've come to appreciate everyone who stops by, as well as those whom I visit. There is a community here that a few short weeks ago I never knew existed. But hopefully I will start having more to say. I actually have a lot to say, but a lot of that is likely to turn into ignorant ranting if I don't stop myself.

Hm. I just realised my error in that last sentence... How can my rantings be ignorant, when I know everything? lol

E-mail testing

2004-09-21T07:32:00.000-04:00

As I hate that 'hello' photo uploader, I thought I'd test to see whether I
could use E-mail to add pictures to my blog. I certainly hope so, as that
uploading tool is waaaay too complicated for my simple mind =P

nope, didn't work. Dang.

...Added titles

2004-09-21T04:48:00.000-04:00

I've added titles to the blogs that I've linked in my sidebar (you can see them when you hover your mouse over the links) as I thought a little extra info on them would be good, rather than just an anonymous list. However I had a bit of trouble in coming up with good descriptions for some of them. So If you see your blog listed, but would rather it had a different title, please tell me, and I will change it. It would also be helpful if you told me what you would like it to say if you require a change.

Ick.

2004-09-20T01:19:00.000-04:00

Hm, seems I should post something but I certainly cannot think of a single thing to write about. That is, of course, you care to hear about the slug I stepped on a few hours ago. What? You want to hear that? Strange. Very well then, I shall regale you with a delightful tale about stepping on a slug.

I don't smoke in my house, but rather go outside to my front porch whenever I need a cigarette. This is good, because my house doesn't smell like stale tobacco, and if the weather is poor, I am less likely to smoke more than half a pack a day. (I usually smoke about a pack a day). Sometimes I remember to put my slippers on first, but usually my smoke breaks are conducted whilst barefoot.

Every night, a number of large slugs make a pilgrimage across my front porch. I say large, as they are roughly 4-5 inches (10-12 cm) long. They are attracted by whatever cat food may be left that the cats did not eat. That's right, these are large slugs that eat cat food. And not that small pellet cat food such as you would get from Iams, or the soft canned cat food which you would expect to be more palatable to a creature that presumably has no teeth or bones, but the cheap catfood shaped like fish and X's that one might buy for stray cats.

Today, while smoking barefoot, I forgot to watch where I was walking and stepped directly and fully on one of these big cat food-eating leopard slugs. It was very wet, slimy, sticky and altogether disgusting. I am sure to remember to wear my slippers outside for at least another few weeks.

Um... The End.

Close enough

2004-09-19T01:29:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of it =P Hope you like it! I may do some more tweaking over the next few days, and would love to hear any feedback on the new look.

... Defeat

2004-09-18T21:43:00.000-04:00

It's simply not working. Try as I might I cannot get the elements of the page to behave properly. I have decided that my only recourse is to create a new blog, and edit the heck out of the existing stylesheet there. Once it looks the way I want I will bring that style over here, and delete the other blog. Or I might just keep it to test future looks.

I have the other one looking pretty close to what I had before I got tired of banging my head against it, so if you want to check on its progress you can do so by clicking here.

hooray!

2004-09-18T13:42:00.000-04:00

I would like to thank the good people at Webmasterworld for their help in solving my most annoying problem with my stylesheet. I was getting very frustrated with it.

Basically the problem was this: my left sidebar refused to go left, preferring to stay at the bottom of the page, despite my using 'float: left' and 'float: right'. So I forced the sidebar to go left using absolute positioning. It seemed to look ok for the most part, with a few flaws: the right content would get jammed under the sidebar when resizing the window, and different browsers seemed to have different ideas as to where exactly { top: 210px; } should start.

Solution: When floating elements, add a left margin to the right content equal to the width of the left content.
Example:
#sidebar {
float: left;
width: 33%;
}
#content {
margin-left: 33%;
}

This was driving me nutty, and I hope it might be useful info to anyone else out there.

Ah yes, one more thing. I found a very useful 216 websafe color pallet the other day that that shows the value for the color you want. Just mouse over the colors til you see one you want, and click it to get the value. Keep in mind that these values can be abbreviated. If the value is #3399FF;, you can just write #39F; with the same result (this only applies to instances of double letters/numbers).

On Pondersome Distractions

2004-09-17T19:08:00.000-04:00

Ok, I really cant think of a title for this particular blog. I am just sitting here thinking of how easily distracted I am. Just thinking about it is yet another distraction. Sharing my thoughts on that matter is still yet another distraction. What I'd really like to do is finish my stupid stylesheet so I can get it uploaded and done with. I come across a bug in it and start browsing the W3 for a possible solution. While I'm there, I notice something about javascript that catches my attention. So I start looking at that for a while, despite the fact it has nothing to do with what I originally went there for. Distraction! Dangit, what was I there for anyway? There's a half hour wasted. I go back to my work. I look at it. I look at it some more. I admire the color scheme for a while. I blankly stare at the coding I have written on my notepad. My brain locks up. I go outside, smoke a cigarette, and give whichever cat happens to be near a scratch. I come back inside and look at my PC from across the room. I go make coffee. I think I am ready now to continue. I sit down at my desk. I have to pee. So I go take care of business. On leaving the bathroom I hear some loud noise outside. I go and see what it is. It is a kid about 12 on his bicycle dragging what appears to be a dormatory style refridgerator down the street by its cord. I wonder for a moment just what the heck he plans on doing with it. I come back to my desk. I sit down and prepare to get back to my stylesheet. From the kitchen I hear the coffeepot make its dying gurgle noise which alerts me to the fact that coffee is now ready. I get up again. I go pour myself some joe. I come back and sit down. I look at the screen. I wonder if anyone else has commented on my blogs? I come here and read them. I read them again. I read all the comments I have recieved on them. I think everyone who has posted so far seem like a pretty decent bunch of people. It's nice to see comments from nice peple. Mean people suck. Where did I put my coffee? Oh, here it is behind me. I start surfing blogs. Spanish blog. Spanish blog. Puertogese blog. Ohh pictures! This person seems to be a pretty good photogapher. Too bad the whole page is written in Hebrew. Next blog. Oh great another person who need to get rid of their music. Why don't they notice that when they add that their page becomes infested with those stupid popup download prompts? Next blog. Next blog. Lot of Spanish blogs today. What am I doing? I'm supposed to be working on my stylesheet. Grr. I think I'll stop back here one last time in the off-chance that somone has commented something in the last 10 minutes. Nope, they haven't. Arrggh! I keep getting distracted! Hmm, I think I shall write a blog about distractions...

getting closer...

2004-09-17T05:36:00.000-04:00

Layout is starting to look quite nice! (for a rookie job) I am half tempted to just upload what I have now, but I think I need to work on it a bit more first. With the exception of my profile container (which I stuffed into the header) things are more or less cooperating, and I am happy with most of the colors. The only problem now is that when I squish the page (minimize it and move the sizing manually) the content gets tucked underneath the sidebar. not a problem for me since I always view pages in their maximized form, but for you multi-taskers who like to tile windows, it wont look very nice. Another day or two and I'll upload it regardless of whatever bugs it may still have, as the anticipation is killing me.

Layout Continued

2004-09-16T18:56:00.000-04:00

It kills me to know that there are 13 year old web designers that can knock out a presentable W3-compliant stylesheet in less than 2 hours. Especially when my own particular creation is taking several hours (days even!) to produce. I realize that this is mostly due to my being new at it, and I am continually having to look up various attribute definitions and uses (sometimes more than once, as some of it simply isn't sinking in). But it is still slowly coming along. Dont expect any flashy backgrounds or cool javascript coding, as that may never happen here. I wish these blogs came with a hidden image folder where we could store things like background images, buttons, and the like that we could use. ( img src="#.blogspot.com/images/coolpic.jpg" ) That would really be great.

Anyway, I am writing (a.k.a. hardcoding - creating from scratch, not using a WYSIWYG editor) my stylesheet with Notepad, and testing primarily with IE6 since that is probably my least CSS compliant browser. I am using Windows ME operating system with 600x800 (or is it 800x600? you get the idea) resolution. Once the layout appears to perform correctly in IE6, I will check it with SBC Yahoo! browser 1.0, Netscape Navigator 7, and Mozilla's Firefox browsers, as those are the only other 3 that I have (Firefox being my favourite). When it looks good on all 4 of those browsers, I'll upload it here. It will be open source, meaning if you want to steal the layout for your own page using the 'view source' option, feel free to do so. I only ask that you consider linking this page if you do. Or at least mentioning me =)

If nothing else this is providing me with hours of fun learning something new =)

Abortion

2004-09-15T21:57:00.000-04:00

This is a rather somber sort of post, so if you want a little happier theme, scroll down and read "Bird feet".

I know a woman who is close to me, who is a single mother of 3 beautiful children.
However several years ago she was attacked, and became pregnant by the encounter. Not wanting to raise a child whom she could only view with the memory of indignation, humiliation and pain, she had an abortion. Ever since then, she has been living with the crushing guilt of that. I can't imagine that burden. Sometimes she cries with self-contempt, believing that what she did was unforgiveable, and that despite any attempts to get back in the good grace of God, He will shut her out. This weight has been on her for nearly twenty years now, and her spirit is all but crushed. I can't tell you how much it hurts me even to see this. It is too delicate an issue to discuss with her, but she really needs to have some of that weight lifted.

I am not an overly religious person, but I was raised in the knowledge that Christ came for a purpose, and that God is real. So to her, or anyone else in a similar situation, I should like you all to know, that no matter how far you think you may have fallen, It is never too late as long as you draw breath to come back to Him. He will accept you. As Jesus told the sinners: "Now go, and sin no more." Even a criminal who was dying on the cross alongside Jesus after living a life of sin, confessed his faith in Christ, who then told him that he would be going to heaven that very day. (Luke 23:39-43)

Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall recieve, knock and the way will be made open to you. All you need to do is ask God to forgive you, and he will. Satan loves to poison us with doubt, and he is very good at it. But if you only remember the word of the Lord, and keep His promise in your heart, you need not be afraid, for God loves you unconditionally. For me, it helps when I am in low spirits to say an "Our Father."

I guess I'll close here. I cannot specifically say whether I am pro-life or pro-choice. Thankfully I will never have to make that choice. If I did have to choose, I would say pro-Jesus, and trust in Him to make the right decision. As for everyone else, it is not for me to judge their actions. I can only give them the respect they are due as a fellow human being.

Bird Feet

2004-09-15T14:33:00.000-04:00

My front porch is a haven of sorts for all manner of stray cats. I wish they would find someplace else to hang out, but here they are. As a result I am frequently having to dispose of various small animal carcasses (birds, mice, snakes etc.,) that they bring here. Today, for example, I had to get rid of a very flat and very dead bird that I presume to be a bit of road kill that the cats presented me with in their own loving fashion.

This brought to mind a time fairly recently when I went out to my front porch to find a pair of bird feet. This was a bit of a puzzler, as I searched the rest of the porch and the surrounding property, and could not find any trace of the owner of said feet. No body, no head, no beak, no feathers, just... feet. I can't imagine the cats eating the entire bird, beak and all, and leaving just the feet. But the evidence (little as there was) could only point me to that conclusion.

layout can be a pain

2004-09-14T18:47:00.000-04:00

I've got a new look for this page that I'm working on, but for some reason things refuse to go as planned. It's not like what I'm going for is overly difficult, just a slightly different look.

Blog Navbar still on top
Header with title and description still on top, with different look
floating the sidebar to the left with my profile on top
all the links below that get a nice new look:

links to blogs get a picture of that blog's author, or a related image that appears when you hover over their link
all span images and/or text appear between blog list and links
when hovering over a link to another website, a short description appears in the same spot the pictures did
When hovering over recent posts of mine from this side bar, a sampling of text from that post will appear
Nothing fancy when hovering Archives

The trick is in defining the spacing between all the items so the flow smoothly (ie, setting margins and padding properly so the navbar doesn't hop around when you hover items).
Then, once I get all that squared away properly, I have to make sure it integrates nicely with all the blogspot coding (recent posts go into the block I assigned for them to go into without my having to tamper with it with every new post).
But hopefully I'll get it all going smoothly soon, and you can see the end result in a week or so.

Favourite Dessert Recipe

2004-09-13T08:53:00.000-04:00

Yeah that's right, I cook =)

This recipe is very easy, and if you like pumkin pie, you'll love this

Pumpkin Cobbler

makes 8 to 10 servings

1 stick (½ cup) butter

1 cup self-rising flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs, beaten

1 small (5 oz.) can evaporated milk

1 can (30 oz.) pumpkin pie filling (the kind that says you need to add eggs)

Vanilla ice cream for serving, if desired

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Cut the butter into 4 pieces and place the pieces in a 9"x11" glass baking dish. Place the dish in the pre-heating oven to melt the butter. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, milk and vanilla. Remove the melted butter from the ovenand pour the flour mixture into the dish. Do not stir. Set the mixture aside.
Break the eggs into a 2-quart measure or mixing bowl, and whisk them. Add the evaporated milk and the pumpkin pie filling. Stir to mix well. Slowly pour or spoon the filling mixture on top of the reserved crust batter in the pan. Do not stir (the crust batter will rise to cover the pumpkin as it bakes).

Bake until the crust is dark, golden brown on top about 50 minutes to 1 hour. Let the cobbler rest 20 minutes or as long as 1 hour before serving. Serve topped ith vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Local UFO Story

2004-09-12T03:33:00.000-04:00

This one is quite old, and the actual newspaper clipping is unfortunately badly decayed. However, since I am originally from Toledo, I found it interesting, and thought I'd share it since I know there to be a lot of UFO fans out there. You might be able to find the original story on microfish at the Toledo Public Library. As far as the newspaper itself, The Toledo Record, I have never actually seen a copy in print as it was not in circulation as far as I can remember, But it could be The Toledo Blade with a previous name. Anyway, on with the story:

The Toledo Record

Front page; Sunday, March 5, 1967

Mystery Over Toledo

By Jupiter, Note This Shot, A Blinkin' UFO

Object 'Terrifying,' Two Youths Report

   TWO NORTH TOLEDO youths reported sighting an unidentified flying object near their homes Friday evening.
   Joseph Szczur, 16, of 228 Windemere Blvd., and his companion Gary Jankowski, 16, of 222 Windemere Blvd., (note they give full name and address of minors... times have certainly changed) told The Record that they observed the UFO between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
   The youths described the object as "a weird thing which came out of nowhere." It was circular and 75 to 100 feet in diameter. The body appeared silvery, with several blue blinking lights on the bottom half. It had a huge red blinking dome, and made a high-pitched monotonous droning sound, the Jankowski and Szczur youths recalled.
   The boys said they were standing in front of the Szczur home chatting, when the object suddenly descended at "a terrific speed." It appeared to be shifting from side to side, they explained, and then hovered steadily about 300 feet above the construction site of the Lagrange-Manhattan segment of the Toledo expressway system, just east of Lagrange Street and south of Ottowa River. They said they were about 500 feet from the object.
   A camera enthusiast, the Szczur youth dashed into his home to get his camera. He took several shots, but only one reproduced, he said.
   After hovering over the expressway for a brief period, "the thing took off straight into the sky like a streak of lightning," Jankowski and Szczur youths recalled.
   "It was a terrifying experience," the boys said. "For a moment we thought the thing might zoom toward us when it was shifting from side to side."
   The Jankowski youth is a sophomore at St. Francis de Sales High School, and the Szczur youth is a sophomore at Woodward High School.

UFO Spotted By Pair Over North Toledo

The Record recieved reports of similar sightings between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Wednesday and Friday evenings from residents in the Dorr Street-Secor Road area, and from other sections of West Toledo.

Saucer-Shaped Object

Mr. and Mrs. Ray Keitl of 5901 Rambo Lane said they spotted a UFO with flashing red and green lights on Alexis Road just west of Lewis Avenue Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. It was several hundred feet high, hovering for brief periods and then suddenly zooming out of sight. They said it appeared saucer-shaped.
Friday at 7 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Keitl said they sighted it (or another one) again in the area of Secor and Alexis Roads. They could still observe it from their back yard on Rambo Lane.

Six Similar Sightings

   "The thing looked so weird and mysterious that I called my neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Dale Hiner, 5906 Rambo Lane. We watched it maneuver in various directions and at varying levels for 20 minutes before it sailed out of sight," Mr. Keitl reported.
   The police dispatchers office said at least six similar sightings were reported Wednesday through Friday in various sections of North and West Toledo. Callers are being referred to Maj. H. Quintanilla, Project Blue Book, at Wright Patterson Air Base, Dayton, the police dispatcher said.
   Authorities in Ypsilanti, Cadillac, and Ottowa Lake Mich., also reported having recieved numerous sighting reports during the past several days.

Thanks Amanda!

2004-09-11T15:37:00.000-04:00

Thanks Amanda for commenting in my blog, and this below I found at your blog... pretty cool =)

My japanese name is Kawazoe (riverside) Masato (sacred person).
Holy man who reeks of fish... lmao! =)
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Also I found this at the Name Generator Generator:
My White Rapper Who Thinks He Is Black is Kool-Aid Gangsta' Dog.
Take The Silly White Guy Who Thinks He Is Actually A Black Gangsta' Rapper But Is Actually Trippin' Since He Is A White Fo'. today!

Music on the page

2004-09-11T03:51:00.000-04:00

well for a short time I had that music here (Unforgiven by Metallica) hosted by iwebmusic.com, but got rid of it. What a shame... I liked the music, but their stupid offsite scripting kept causing those stupid download prompts to show up, then followed those up with a 'you must click yes to continue' alert, followed by yet another download prompt. And one of the downloads- gain publishing, I know to be a data miner, that sends information from your computer to other sites without your knowledge or consent. I believe it is also adware that causes popups as well, but don't quote me on that one.
So anyone else that happens by here, if you want music on your page, dont get it from iwebmusic. your page may sound nice, but it will become too much of a hassle to view.

Template Editing: What's this?

2004-09-10T13:06:00.000-04:00

If you are new to using stylesheets, or are unfamiliar with layout in general, You should copy your entire template onto a text editor such as Notepad or Microsoft Word, and save it in your documents as "blogger_template.txt" before you begin making any changes. This way, if you mess it up, you can easily go back to your original look by pasting it back into your template here.

Your template is basically made up of 2 parts:
The STYLESHEET (the stuff between the style type="text/css" tag and the /style tag), and the BODY (the stuff between the body and the /body tags).

The body is basically all the content on your page that is viewed by you and anyone else that visits, and the stylesheet is a set of instructions that tells your browser how the page should be viewed. (There's a little more to it than that, but I dont want to confuse too many people.)

Ok, moving right along.
Editing your stylesheet: You may have already noticed on your template that the good people at stopdesign.com put lots of stuff on your stylesheet in between /* and */. These symbol groupings are a type of parenthesis in the stylesheet that tells your browser to completely ignore whatever is placed in-between them. On this note, you should try to use them as well when making changes.

Example: Say you want to change the font color in your page description. So in the "Header" section (since this is where your description is located on your page) you should find a spot that looks like this:


#description {

  margin: blahblah;

  padding: blahblah;

  border: blahblah;

  font: blahblah;

  color: #777;

}

Now say you want the font color to be a nice shade of blue.
Write it in like this:


#description {

  margin: blahblah;

  padding: blahblah;

  border: blahblah;

  font: blahblah;

  color: /*--edit--*/#3ff;/*#777;*/

}

This way, the /*--edit--*/ lets you see easily exactly where you've made a change, and the old information /*#777;*/ is still there in case you need to undo your change. Still following this? Cool beans =)

One more thing...

Editing the body: you should be cautious about editing anything that falls in-between the div id="content" tag and its closing /div tag, as this is the area that displays all your posts, and comments to your posts. The whole point of blogging is so that others can read what you write, and maybe share their thoughts. And if the posts you create suddenly vanish or turn into a big string of gobbledygook, it would most likely not be of much interest to anyone. Most of the editing you do to the body should either go in the footer (stays locked on the bottom of your page), or more commonly in the sidebar.

When adding to the sidebar, you should either put your item in-between the 'End of profile' and the h2 header for the 'previous posts' section, or closer to the bottom where it says:

This is a paragraph of text 

that could go in the sidebar.

Botched Blogs

2004-09-10T08:24:00.000-04:00

While surfing through a lot of other blogs, I couldn't help but notice that some people had some really nice ones that they re-did the layout themselves, while others had horribly botched their blogs. So I think I will try to frequently add some things here that will hopefully help some people who want to change the look of their blog without destroying it. So check back once in a while, or if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask, and I will do my best to come up with an answer for you.

Ron The Handyman

2004-09-09T20:58:00.000-04:00

Ron The Handyman
Whilst surfing through the blogs clicking the 'view next Blog' button, I came across Ron's blog. I thought it looked like a good one so I went ahead and clicked the 'blog this' button. Wasn't sure exactly what it would do, but now I know =) I've got to write me a link bar on the side to add these to, as it would be a shame to have them travel into the obscurity of the archives.

Compu Crap

2004-09-08T16:36:00.000-04:00

Thought I'd share here a couple or more of my favourite computer related sites:

W3Schools
A collection of free HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, XML, XHTML, WAP, ASP, SQL tutorials with lots of working examples and source code.

css/edge
Created by Eric A. Meyer whom I believe to be a minor demigod when it comes to formatting web pages using CSS (Cascading style sheets). Unfortunately, many browsers (IE6 for one) don't fully support style sheets, despite their claims to the contrary. But his site can be viewed normally with Netscape Navigator 7.0 and the new browser from Firefox among others. Hopefully with the release of Internet Explorer 7.0, they will have addressed some of these non-compatibility issues, rather than killing all the browser hacks that web developers have worked so hard on to ensure their pages are viewed the way they are meant to be.

Cyberwalker
All sorts of useful information here ranging from Upgrading your memory to reformatting your hard drive, plus many other troubleshoooting tips.

PC Hell
Has the devil taken control of your computer? Pop up windows mocking you despite which blocker you have downloaded? Are you having to reboot every 5 minutes due to a mysterious lack of resources? Crashing often? Got a virus? They have fixes to tons of these problems and more.

Ad-Aware SE Personal
This free for personal use adware/ malware/ spyware removal tool is good enough to make you cry. Well, almost. I've downloaded it myself, and strongly recommend it to everyone. It is a small download and very easy to use.

I hope anyone interested finds these links helpful, and I encourage you to post a comment with links to sites that you have found useful as well. Cheers!

frumpleschitzengoofrapoo

2004-09-08T15:42:00.000-04:00

No it's not a real word, just a made up thing to express general confusion and frustration. The photo below I wanted to post as my profile picture, but that 'Hello' thing sent it there instead. I hate technology sometimes. So I guess the photo will just stay there, as I went ahead and linked it into my profile, and I dont feel like messing with it further.
And concerning the goofy upload process for posts such as this, it appears they are aware of the problem. In the meantime it seems I can still post by going to 'settings' while its in its publish loop, going to the bottom and clicking the 'save settings' button, then republishing from there. I don't pretend to understand it, I just know it works.

2004-09-08T15:38:00.000-04:00

Me @ Kings Island 2002

Okay it's working now

2004-09-08T15:03:00.000-04:00

Apparently I wasn't waiting long enough for the settings to be published, was getting frustrated when I could see what I thought was my blog in the preview mode, but when I tried to go to my blog via the protocol I had specified, I just got some stock display site that had nothing to do with this one with some posts that were 2 years old. Glad I got that figured out =)
It seemed that the publishing page was stuck in a loop at 0% complete, where it would seem to refresh itself after every 4 seconds or so. I hope the Blogspot administrators get that cleared up. But its not terribly important.

my first blog... I think

2004-09-08T00:25:00.000-04:00

After 4 hours of bleary eyed surfing, I found myself creating a blog. I'm still not fully sure what a blog is, only that it's short for 'weblog'. Prior to my coming to this knowledge, I believed that blog was a European expletive. Blog this, blog that, blog off, blog you... Glad to see I was wrong there :P

Well i'm off to play with this some more, will be back later with something a bit more relative to... something.