A Heartbeat Away

So ever since John McCain announced Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate for the Presidency, there has been a lot of criticism of her lack of experience (which I'm not going to comment about...today anyway). The Obama campaign, just a few minutes after her announcement, released this statement:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

I suppose that the point of this was to scare us all into thinking how terrible it would be to have an inexperienced Palin as President.

But as I was mowing the lawn yesterday a thought occurred to me: Between now and January, Dick Cheney is a heartbeat away from the Presidency!

Holy Cow! That's a hundred times scarier than the thought of Palin being President!

And that was where I intended to end this post, but I wanted to add this little addendum: I just went out on the Net searching for the photo above of Palin. As I searched, I was amazed at how many people have already taken a headshot of Palin and placed it atop the body of some suggestive, nude, or even pornographic image.

I guess Hillary was right: Sexim IS alive and well in 2008.

I'm Almost Loathe to do this...

...but I've been getting pestered for two days now to create a link to this blog, and I'm going to do it just so that I'll be left alone!

And besides, this guy HAS been basically part of the family for about five years, so I guess it couldn't hurt to put this link on here.

But I want to say for everyone to hear, this is the ONLY time I'm going to link to this. Okay, okay, I'll add it to sidebar running down the right side of this blog, but I'm not going to promote it! This is the ONLY time.

The ONLY time! Do you hear.

Click here for the blog, which is "da large explosive device!" (He insisted I write that).

Sweasy for President!

Apparently my blog has been getting more hits than I realized:

BARACK OBAMA (doesn't) HATES CHRISTIANS!

Okay, 2 out of the last 3 blog posts have been about the Democratic Presidential ticket. And this now makes the 3rd out of 4. I promise not to make this a regular occurrence, but I can't just let this one go...

...Yesterday I received an email with a link to this video which--according to the email--shows Barack Obama mocking Christianity. It's an email I'd received before, but it came this time from someone I consider very intelligent, so that's why it ticked me off.

The problem is that the video is taken WAY out of context. It is an excerpt from a speech that Obama gave in 2006 at the "Call to Renewal" conference. Obama was the keynote speaker, and his speech is quite long. It is not, however, mocking of Christianity. Obama mentions several times throughout the speech that he is a Christian himself, and that he has deep and abiding respect for Christianity.

You can read the text of the entire speech by clicking on this link (Be warned, though. It's long).

If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, let me just provide my own block quote from the speech, one that will give the reader a completely DIFFERENT view of the speech. In the same speech above where Obama supposedly "mocked" Christianity, he also said this:

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Doesn't sound like someone mocking Christianity, does it?

So here's why I'm so mad. As I mentioned above, I've received information about this email many times before, but I've never gotten upset. I've always just dismissed the sender as "foolish" or "stupid" or "uninformed." This time, though, again as I said above, I have a lot of respect for the sender. He's not stupid, but to send this load of hogwash out he must have been one of two things: 1) Either he was lazy, too lazy to look into the context of these lines himself, or 2) He KNEW the lines were taken out of context and was TRYING to mislead me about Obama. Neither possibility is good.

I want an intelligent, honest, frank discussion about politics, not a lot of taking stuff out of context and trying to score political points. Maybe it's too much to ask. There's plenty of stupidity going back and forth in the Presidential campaign so far. For instance, here's what I would like to say to the people who create the 30 second b.s. ads on TV:

To Barack Obama's people: So John McCain doesn't know exactly how many homes he has. That doesn't make him any less a common man than Barack Obama. Obama is loaded, too.

To John McCain's people: So Joe Biden said Barack Obama wasn't ready to lead back in the Democratic debates? So what? He was trying to win the nomination himself, and he was contrasting himself against Obama. What did you expect him to say?

Okay, this is quickly turning into a rant here, so I'm going to stop (I'll save my venom for crafts stores and the Olympics). I'll just finish by saying this: I don't care whether you agree with me politically or not--I just want an honest debate. And lately I haven't been getting it.

I'm Important

Back when Obama and Clinton were in a two way race for the Presidential nomination, I gave the Obama campaign a few dollars. I did this because I believe in Obama and think he can make a good President. More than that, though, I can't stand the Clintons, and I was a tad dismayed that I couldn't vote against Hillary as I'm not a registered Democrat. So I voted with my wallet. I figured I'd help Obama buy a campaign ad that would convince some registered Democrat to vote for Obama in my place (Apparently it didn't help, as Clinton won Kentucky handily).

Anyway, ever since that time, I've been getting personal emails from Barack Obama on a weekly basis. Heck, I sometimes hear from him twice a week. Last night I got an email from Michelle Obama. She REALLY wanted me to watch her speech last night. Not sure why. My guess is she's heard that I taught speech and drama for a couple of years in the mid '90's, and she values my input.

And all of these emails, by the way, are personalized. They have MY name on them. So I know they're meant for just me.

Two days ago I got an email (again with MY name on it) from Joe Biden. Here's what it said:

Bryan --I'd like to thank you for the warm welcome I've received as the
newest member of this campaign.What you and Barack have accomplished over the
past 19 months is incredible, and it's an honor to be part of it. I'm looking
forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting involved.I recorded a short video
message about how I hope to help in the weeks ahead.

Please watch this video and pass it on:
http://my.barackobama.com/bidenvideo

Thank you,

Joe

My favorite part of the email is Joe (He and I are on a first name basis now) acknowledged what both Obama AND I have accomplished over the last 19 months. He even called it "incredible." Apparently he's heard about the upgrade to our school district's network, our rollout of wireless Wi-Fi all over the district, and our replacement of hundreds of student workstations. I knew I was working hard, but "incredible"? Well, Senator Jospeh Biden says so!

Here's my point in all of this:

I'm important.

I have big friends in big places. In fact, if the Democrats win in the fall I'll have big friends in the biggest place of all.

Keep that in mind next time you talk to me.

It's over

You may (or may not) have noticed that over the last two weeks I have not made a single post about the Olympics. Which might seem strange when you consider that it's all anyone seems to have talked about. But now that the closing ceremonies are over let me say this for everyone to hear:

1. I don't care about the Redeem Team.


2. I don't care if the Chinese gymnasts were underage.


3. No, I didn't watch the women's beach volleyball finals. I've never watched beach volleyball in my life.


4. I don't care about Insane Bolt or whatever his name is (He sounds like a super villain, maybe the Flash's arch enemy).


5. No, I didn't watch Michael Phelps win his 8th gold medal. Or this 7th. Or his 6th. Or his...


6. No, I didn't watch the triathalon. Or the team handball. Or the dart finals. Or the shoe polishing finals. Or whatever.

I resent the Olympics. I resent that every four years the Olympics come on and try to get me to care about sports that I didn't care about for the other three years. Guess what, Olympics? There's a reason why I don't care for these sports. They're boring!

I resent NBC Nightly News. For the last two weeks it's been a commercial for the Olympics, which are coming up later that evening but covering events that happened 8 hours ago.

So I'm glad it's over. The Closing Ceremonies (which NO! I didn't watch) happened yesterday morning at 8 AM Eastern time and were broadcast sometime last night. Now we can pack away synchronized swimming and diving and archery for another four years, and get back to reasonable activities.

Like NFL football.

And the Presidential Election.

Thank God for autumn!

Joe Biden and Other Stuff

I have a lot of respect for Joe Biden, and I am very enthused by the idea of him being Barack Obama's running mate. Joe Biden has always struck me as a reasonable, thoughtful individual, and I think his experience will assist Obama in his campaign, despite the negative comments made by Biden about Obama back in the debates.

More than that, though, I am enthused by the entire Presidential race this year. If only John McCain would choose Mike Huckabee as his running mate, I'd have all four of the candidates I was most interested in running on the two tickets.

1988 was the first year that I could vote for the President of the United States. I was 20 years old at the time. To be honest, I didn't really know enough to vote back then. I voted for Bush because I had grown up with Reagan as President and thought he'd done a really good job, and I saw Bush as a continuation of Reagan. That was about the whole thought process at the time (I also voted for the Kentucky lottery that year, a vote I would very much like to take back now.).

So I don't really count myself as having seriously voted for President until 1992, when Bush and Clinton opposed one another. And for every election from 1992 on, I have never really been excited about any of the candidates. And truth be told, I only once voted for the winner in all that time (and you could put an asterisk on that win anyway, as I'm talking about Bush's first victory over Gore, which he may not have won without the Supreme Court's intervention).

Uh, I guess, without meaning to, I just gave away what all of my votes for President have been for my entire life. Oh well.

Anyway, to get back to my point, I never really cared for anyone on any of those tickets. I always felt like I was voting for the lesser of two evils.

I don't feel that way this year. I'm leaning pretty heavily toward Obama/Biden right now, but I like John McCain as well. In fact, after learning about him during his run for the Republican nomination in 2000, I really came to respect the man for his courage and his ability to do what he felt was right party be damend, and I decided then and there that if he ever ran for election again I'd go so far as to campaign for him. And I probably would have, too, but his campaign initially sounded very much like a reiteration of everything George Bush had done for the previous 7 years, and I didn't want another 4 years of Bush, so I soured on him a little. Lately, though, he has moderated his position somewhat.

The point is I think I'll be happy with either candidate. I just hope that in the process of competing for President these two men--whom I respect and admire very much--don't stoop to hammer each other until there's nothing left in the end but a couple of ordinary politicians.

Cool New Photo Tool

Hi! Today I wanted to promote a cool new photo tool that was just released last week by Microsoft. The product is called PhotoSynth, and it allows a user to create a sort of virtual experience using a series of photos.

The ability to create a virtual experience is nothing new. Quicktime has had the ability to create pans for years (In fact, there are three of these on the Vent Haven Museum site). However, the software to create these pans a) costs money and b) is hard to use.

PhotoSnyth is free and couldn't be easier. You just download the software, stick into the software the photos you want to use to create your virtual experience, and then click a button. The program does everything else.

I created a PhotoSynth last night of the girls in their playroom just to see if I could do it. It turned out okay. After I did it I watched a video that showed me how to create one, and I understood what I did wrong.

Still, even without having done it right what I did came out pretty cool. You can check it out by clicking this link.

Note: You'll have to download a Photosynth plug-in in order to view the link.

Quote of the Day

Never doubt my loyalty and committment. I am right behind you...win or tie!"

--Mike Ford
Director of Pupil Personnel
Boone County Schools

ALMOST Me

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd been keeping an eye on the sweasy.com and sweasy.org domains to see if they ever became available. It occured to me today that if I ever am on the verge of becoming famous ("And when am I not?" is perhaps a better question!) that I should perhaps see if bryansweasy.com is still available. Luckily for me it is. In the process of checking this out, though, I discovered the following websites that are ALMOST about me:


Almost Me #1: Tell me I'm not as gay looking at this guy.


Almost Me #2: Holy crud! Tell me I'm not as gay looking at this guy, either!

How Stupid ARE People?

According to Google News, there are 682 different news stories today concerning the fact that the recent discovery of a Bigfoot carcass in the backwoods of Georgia has turned out to be a hoax.

Here's my question: Who DIDN'T think this was a hoax in the first place? I mean, come on! When I read the news articles a week ago about how this had been found and would be unveiled last Friday, I thought, "That's ridiculous. This HAS to be a hoax!"

Here's why I thought that: You can't hide something that big in an area as un-remote as the backwoods of Georgia. This isn't some remote area of Congo, where thousands of lowland gorillas--previously unknown to have been there--were recently discovered. We're talking the woods of Georgia here, where families go camping and fishing. Where did people think a supposedly seven foot seven inch, 500 pound creature would be hiding?

I MIGHT (emphasis on "might") have believed the claim if the people who "discovered" the Bigfoot had found only the single dead Big Foot (after all, there was a wild bear running loose in Northern Kentucky a few years ago and it managed to elude authorities), but their claim that they saw three more walking around was just silly. People have been looking for Big Foot for decades with no success, and these people discover four of them in one day...in Georgia!

They would have been more believable if they'd claimed they'd found a dinosaur the size of a chicken or something like that. But Big Foot? In an age where I can use Google Earth to zoom down on my address and see my minivan in the driveway, Big Foot is just too big to go undetected. Give it up, people. There's no such thing.

At least not in Georgia.

Emergency Room

We spent Saturday night in the Emergency Room...

Before I give you the details on that one, let me give you a little background that might explain our decision to GO to the emergency room. In the spring of 2007 Natalie learned to ride a bike, and shortly thereafter she and Meredith got new bikes. A couple of weeks later I was taking the girls on a bike ride through a nearby cemetery (No, it's not creepy at all, and there's very little traffic to worry about). We came upon a fairly steep hill, and I decided that I wanted to zoom down it for the excitement. I knew the girls couldn't handle the hill, though, so I told them to wait for me and I'd be right back. Meredith, though, became afraid when I took off and tried to follow me down the hill, and Natalie tried to do the same.

By that time I'd foolishly raced down the hill and turned around to come back up. I got turned around just in time to see Meredith go racing by me with a look of terror on her face. Natalie was even worse. She made it about halfway down the hill before driving her bike off the pavement into the grass. She tried to ditch her bike, but the wheel hit something and the bike came to an immediate stop. Of course, her body did not stop so suddenly, and she rammed her left side into one of her handlebars. She then tumbled over the handlebars and rolled head over heels through the grass. I ran up and checked on her (after shouting at Meredith that this was HER fault--Nice, huh?), afraid she might be really hurt. When I got up there, though, she complained about the pain in her side and nothing else. I felt around her side. Everything seemed okay, though she said it was a little sore, so we rode slowly home.

The site of the impact on her side did swell up a little, but it just looked like a bruise. So despite her complaints of pain (In our defense, Natalie treats a scratch from fingernails and a burst eardrum with pretty much the same drama), we told her to shake it off--that everyone gets bruised sometimes.

Finally, after two months of complaining (Yes, months, not weeks, not days), we took her to the doctor, who ordered x-rays. The results: three cracked ribs. Lisa and I both felt awful (I felt a little more awful than Lisa, I think), and we resolved not to make that mistake again.

So that gets us back to Saturday. We were on a family bike ride all around Fort Mitchell. We'd probably ridden about 3 miles when we went around a sharp corner. Natalie lost her balance and fell on her bike. Meredith and I were right behind her, and we watched her arm hit the concrete curb with a whack! Instantly she grabbed her arm--in the same way that I had grabbed mine when I broke it at age 6--and began wailing that her arm hurt "like fireworks going off!" I quickly rode my bike back to our house, jumped in the van, and raced back to where we were. We all came home, and after a half hour or so of trying to figure out what to do, Lisa and I decided that we'd rather err on the side of caution and we took Natalie to the emergency room.

We thought we'd be there for hours, but it wasn't really that bad. We were there for about an hour and a half. Natalie first said that on a scale of 1 to 10 that her arm hurt "like an eleven," but every fifteen minutes or so after that she dropped that number by 1, so that when the emergency room doctor came to see us and asked her where it hurt, she said, "Well, it used to hurt HERE, but it doesn't hurt anymore."

He grabbed her arm roughly, shook it, jerked it around, and asked her if it hurt. When she said no he looked at Lisa and me like we might be crazy and then said, "I'm not going to radiate this child. Let me fill out your paperwork so that you can go home."

It was an embarrassing ending to the night, but I have to keep reminding myself that it was the ending that I wanted! I didn't WANT Natalie to have a stress fracture in three places. Did I? Of course I didn't. Still, it would have been nice if she'd had SOMETHING wrong or at least had been in a LITTLE pain. Instead, the doctor's official prognosis was "Deep contusion," which is medicalese, but I think it means "Nothing wrong with her. Parents overreacted."

Ann Curry

I'm not a fan of the network morning talk shows. I don't like that in 60 minutes you get 21 minutes of commercials, 14 minutes of fitness tips, 9 minutes of diet advice, 6 minutes of an interview with an egotistical celebrity, 6 minutes of playful banter, 2 minutes of weather and 2 minutes of news. So as I say, I'm not a fan to start with.

However, of all of the people on the morning talking shows, the one who bugs me the most is Ann Curry. I don't know what it is about her--maybe the hyper-emotional tone in her voice, like she's trying to make you cry constantly--but something about her gives me the heebie jeebies.

So, since I have nothing productive to write about today, here are some links to some Youtube videos that make fun of Ann Curry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2FQ1W4vo8k&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89aQ_F64NPs&feature=related

I Will Survive

The day isn't over yet, but I believe that I will survive the first week of teachers and students returning to school!

And this year, to be honest, hasn't been that bad. My staff has been cut from 5 people working the equivalent of 4 full time employees to 2 people working the equivalent of 2 full time employees, and I was really worried that cutting the staff in half would make this first week impossible. But it really hasn't been too terrible. It's kept us hopping, but we're doing okay.

Not okay, enough, though, that I'm going to be able to write very much right now. We still have more than a dozen work orders open that need to be addressed. Just wanted to put my head above water for a moment and say that I am here, and I will survive!

Of course, as soon as I get confident about that...

People Can Be Retarded Sometimes

I'm really annoyed by the uproar that is happening over the new movie Tropic Thunder. If you haven't heard about the uproar and you're too lazy to read the link above, let me sum it up for you: Many groups are up in arms that the movie uses the word "retarded" over and over again in a disparaging way. Yes, the use of the word is shocking. Yes, it's meant to be shocking, and these groups want it cut from the film. From a linguist's point of view what they want is a mistake. Here's why.

For all time, people have made fun of people with mental disabilities. It's not right, but it's always happened. Sad but true. And one of the effects of people making fun of this group is the co-opting of psychological terms for the disabled and the use of those terms in a derogatory manner.

The first IQ tests were made around the turn of the 20th century, and they defined people with mental disabilities as those having an IQ less than 70. Psychologists further divided that group into three sub-groups: Those with an IQ of less than 26, those with an IQ of 26-50, and those with an IQ of 51-70. Each of those groups was given a name. Any guesses what those names were?

Through guessing already? Okay. I'll tell you: Those with an IQ of less than 26 were called "idiots." Those with an IQ of 26-50 were "imbeciles," and those with an IQ of 51-70 were called "morons." It's hard to believe that these were actual psychological terms in the early 20th century, but they were, and they did not have any of the negative connotations associated with them now. However, eventually people who were NOT mentally disabled starting using these terms on each other, and the three words went from having a neutral meaning to having a definitely negative meaning.

To combat this change of meaning of the three words, the psychology community adopted new terms: The former idiots were labeled "profoundly retarded," the imbeciles were "severely retarded" or "moderately retarded" depending on their IQ score, and the morons became "mildly retarded." The word "retarded" was used to suggest that these people were not idiots, at least not idiots in the sense that the word means now. They were simply a little slower to learn than the average person, a little retarded in their learning.

Of course, eventually "retarded" became a word with a negative connotation as well. Blame it on me and my friends. We pretty much called everything "retarded" as kids: school, people in authority, each other. So "retarded" fell out of favor and has been replaced by more specific words. Mentally disabled. Learning Disabled. Autistic. Dyslexic. And "retarded" is now so out of vogue that many publications reporting on this film are referring to it as the "r" word.

Getting back to Tropic Thunder, though, the problem is this: If the film's creators did what everyone is crying for them to do (edit the film to remove the use of "retarded") they would most likely replace "retarded" with a word like "mentally disabled" or "learning disabled." But if a politically correct term like "mentally disabled" was used in a comedy over and over again, the very real possibility might occur that whatever term they use could also fall into the public vernacular as a negative phrase and then the psychology and special education community would have to find new words to describe the disability. Again.

So I say let Ben Stiller use "retarded" if he wants. The word is already damaged by poor use. Why subject another, perfectly good phrase to possible damage as well?

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for students in my school district. It is--and has been every year since I've taken this job--an INSANE day! People wait until the start of school to try to use their technology and then contact me this morning and want me to fix their problem FIRST! I spend a lot of time explaining to people why they're not FIRST on my list.

I'm on lunch now, and a little frazzled. Since the start of school I've taken care of a broken security system at the high school, networking new construction at one of the elementary schools, setup five teacher workstations, fixed a principal's computer, created a major query linking 4 separate databases, and taken 39 calls on my cell phone and work phone. And to think I'm only halfway through the day!

So what am I doing writing this instead of getting out there and getting the job done? I don't know. Just needed a small 5 minute break so that I don't go crazy. My phone is ringing, though, so I gotta go...

...Truth be told, I live for this kind of day! :)

Article about I'M NO DUMMY

As I mentioned many posts ago, if you search for Lisa's name via Google you will discover that she has an entry in the Internet Movie Database. That's because she will be playing herself in an upcoming documentary about ventriloquism. The film, I'm No Dummy, was recently featured in an article in a small online newspaper (I'd be more specific, but I'm not sure where Faribault County is). You can read more by visiting this link:

http://www.faribaultcountyregister.com/page/content.detail/id/500334.html?nav=5002

You can also read the IMDB entry about the movie by visiting THIS link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0926091/

If the Salt Has Lost Its Savor

I've been watching The Food Network on cable TV for years now, and there's something I've noticed that disturbs me: No one on that channel uses salt and pepper shakers.

I want to know if The Food Network has something against salt and pepper shakers. Almost everyone I know has them and uses them, and yet no one on the Food Network does. Instead, the chefs on TFN tend to use a pepper grinder to dispense their pepper and they place their salt in a bowl and then grab it with their forefinger and thumb and sprinkle it over their food.

The pepper grinder I can SORT OF understand. After all, many regular, non-chef people use a pepper grinder in their homes, the idea being, I suppose, that pepper grinders deliver fresher pepper than the ground pepper that you can get out of a can and put into a pepper shaker. And it may be true that pepper from a pepper grinder is fresher, but it's also true that I've NEVER heard anyone finish a meal and say, "Wow! That meal was exquisite! The first course was delightful. The second course had just the right Caribbean flair. The chocolate dessert was scrumptious. But do you know what REALLY made the meal? That freshly ground pepper!" I think, in reality, the REAL function of pepper grinders is to be haughty and elitist, not to improve the taste of the food in any way. Which is why at a restaurant when the waiter comes around with the pepper grinder and asks if I'd like some on my meal, I wink at him and say, "I think I can handle my own pepper dispensing, thank you," and reach for the pepper shaker.

And if a pepper grinder is just a tool to seem fancy, a bowl of salt is even worse! After all, if a pepper grinder is basically useless, at least it isn't a detriment to the meal, but I see a bowl of salt compared to a salt shaker as a WORSE option for three reasons: 1) It seems to me it would be much more difficult to correctly measure salt when you're grabbing it with your hands. 2) Speaking of grabbing it with your hands, the bowl option requires a cook to actually TOUCH the salt with his/her hands, which could introduce impurities. And finally, 3) a bowl of salt just sitting out would tend to get dirty just from things settling down on it, or it could get contaminated when the chef dropped some of that extra virgin olive oil or that special white wine into it.

I know what some of you may be thinking--of course no one REALLY uses bowls of salt. In the end, the Food Network is about entertainment and presentation more than it is really about food (which is why most of the chefs are women wearing low cut blouses). The salt bowl and pepper grinder are just there to make the chef's preparation seem fancier. But come on, Food Network chefs--you already have a kitchen larger and better equipped than anything we could ever have. You already have ingredients that I've never even heard of before, and you have a staff of dozens of people helping you prepare your meals! Who are you trying to impress? Just use a salt and pepper shaker, for goodness sake!

An Erlanger Vacation

Thank goodness the world didn't end yesterday, as I feared. The clothes came out fine, the dishes were clean (except for one that had peanut butter on it before being washed, but that's an ongoing problem), and life was good.

A couple of years ago Lisa was out of town for the weekend and I took the girls on what I called at the time Vacation in Cincinnati. We went to Coney Island, the Cincinnati Zoo, the Beach Waterpark, and to Eden Park in Cincinnati.

We just got back from a big vacation a couple of weeks ago, though, so I decided to be decidely less extravagant this weekend. I dubbed yesterday "A Vacation in Erlanger." If you're from this area you're probably thinking, "What can you possibly do in Erlanger?" I know; it's a challenge. Don't get me wrong. I lived in Erlanger for years and have worked there for almost two decades, so I love the place, but entertainment capital of the world it is not. Still, at the end of the day I realized we had spent most of our time there.

We started at a yard sale. U.S. 127 runs right through Erlanger, and apparently this was the weekend of the big 127 Corridor yard sale as we passed several yard sales before finally stopping at one. It had been probably 10 years since I'd been to a yard sale, and I need to go to one every 10 years or so to remind me of why I don't go the other nine. After looking at various pieces of junk all labeled between 25 cents and 5 dollars, I realized that a low price does not in any way mean that you're not still getting ripped off. We were at the yard sale, which was really about 10 different families in this one location, for all of about six minutes.

After that we went to the Erlanger Putt Putt, where we played a mean course of 18 carpeted holes. Everyone got at least one hole in one, which was nice. Meredith's was a complete freak shot. Frustrated that she had not gotten a hole in one yet and was way behind everyone else, she smacked her ball hard. It ricocheted around and went right into the hole. Very cool!

We had lunch at the Colonial Cottage Inn, an Erlanger tradition for nigh on 450 years or more (I'm actually not exactly sure when it opened). In 18 years of living in Northern Kentucky I've only eaten there a handful of times, as I've always thought of it as not much more than a lower grade Frisch's, but I have to say I was impressed yesterday. The restaurant went completely non-smoking a few months ago, and that has really changed the atmosphere. The restaurant used to seem dingy and heavy with the smell of cigarettes, but yesterday it was light and pleasant. Sadly, however, it was also almost empty.

After lunch we ran by the Erlanger branch of the Kenton County library, where the girls returned some books and checked out some new ones. And that pretty much exhausted all of the entertainment options in Erlanger, so we went home. Last night we went up to the neighborhood pool to swim, but we didn't stay long as the water was pretty cold. When kids are shouting that the water is too cold, you know it really is.

And that concluded our exciting day of Vacation in Erlanger. Not a bad day, and maybe we'll do it again in a couple of years.

But not the yard sale part.

Message to Be Left in Event of Apocalypse

Today is Saturday, August 9, 2008. If you find that hard to comprehend, please believe that I am telling the truth...

...Lisa is out of the house for the weekend. She made a last minute decision to accompany a friend to Indianapolis for the weekend in order to help the friend with whatever it is she is doing. I'm alone with the girls.

And that's okay. Last night we went to the Golden Corral for dinner (Lisa can't stand that place! It's not my favorite, either, but the girls love the freedom of choice.) and the girls spent some of the money they'd earned doing yard work on toys. Today we're going to do something outside this morning (not sure what yet, but it's too beautiful to be inside on a morning like this) and then we're going to lunch and the library. We'll cap it off with a trip to the pool late this afternoon when it's warmed up enough outside.

That's all great, but here's the problem: I don't have any clean socks. Well, that's not true, I had plenty of dress socks that are clean, but they would look silly with my Nike running shoes. I don't have any clean WHITE socks. Since Lisa took off suddenly, she didn't have time to do the laundry before she left. So now I'm going to wash a load of whites. I'm also running the automatic dishwasher upstairs.

And that's where my anxiety begins. I've been warned many times before not to run the dishwasher and the clothes washer at the same time, and I'm not sure why. My first thought is that running them both at the same time would drain the hot water heater and would limit the effectiveness of both devices. That would make sense, but that doesn't explain the severity of the warnings that I've gotten about not running them together. If a few half-cleaned clothes were the only problem, I'd get a "Hey, you probably shouldn't run the clothes washer and the dish washer at the same time." I wouldn't get, "No matter what you do, never, never NEVER use the clothes washer and the dish washer at the same time!"

I've racked my brain trying to figure out the cause for the severity of the warning, and this is what I've come up with: Running them both at the same time causes a chain reaction in the washer/anti-washer particle stream, which affects the space/time continuum and can send the entire universe either backward or forward in time--no one knows which will happen!

Of course, I could be overreacting. Maybe the warning is just about the hot water heater getting drained. And besides, I really need some white socks! So I'm going to take a chance. But I've created this message in the event that my hunch is correct and we ARE sent backward or forward in time. As you read this it may be the year 2365, or it may be 1610. In any event, please believe me when I tell you that I wrote this in the year 2008.

And for those of you living in 2008 who may cease to exist when I hit the "Start" button on the clothes washer, I have this to say:

Please forgive me for what I am about to do.

A Preview of Hell

I'm a religious person, but I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on the afterlife. That's because I've thought about it before, and I've never been able to grasp the concept of heaven or hell. Preachers describe heaven as a place of absolute joy where there are no problems and we just worship in the presence of God. Sounds boring to me. Without problems to take care of, what will we do with our time? Heck, I was really starting to get bored after six days of "relaxing" in Cancun. I can't imagine an eternity like that. And I have the same problem with hell, too. No matter how hard I tried, I've never been able to picture what hell would be like. After all, if it really were just a pool of fire where you were burned alive, after a few seconds your nerves would be burned off and you'd cease to feel the pain anyway, right? So hell is something I've never been able to envision, either.

Until last night.

Last night Meredith spent the night at a friend's house, and so Lisa and I had the night with just Natalie. On nights like that, when one of the kids is out, we usually try to do something special with the child who's left, maybe something that the other child wouldn't be interested in. Natalie loves crafts, so we took her to Michael's, which is a crafts superstore the size of a small Wal-Mart.

I think I had been to Michael's before once or twice, but I'd only run in to get something specific, and I'd always just asked at the front for what I'd wanted and someone had gone and gotten it for me. I'd never actually browsed the store before, like we did last night for about an hour and a half. And I have to tell you, I was blown away! I never knew such a place existed! Imagine browsing aisle after aisle of items and having no interest in any of them WHATSOEVER! I had no idea there was so much stuff in the world that I DIDN'T care about! I have never seen so much soft foam, balsa wood, fake flowers, and acrylic pens in my life!

It's sad that the most exciting aisle in the store for me was the candle aisle. While Lisa and Natalie continued browsing through the store, I pretty much stayed there and picked up a candle, read what was printed on it, smelled it and then thought, "Yep, that smells like linen all right!" Put that candle back; picked up another one. "Yup, oatmeal cookies!"

I also spent a bunch of time in the Halloween display aisle. In any other store I want nothing to do with the Halloween display aisle, as I find Halloween to be kind of stupid. In fact, at Wal-Mart or Bigg's or someplace like that I walk by the Halloween aisle and hope that none of the little automatically animated devices are motion sensitive because I don't need to hear a talking decapitated head ask me if I know why it has a headache. But there I was at Michael's, going through the aisle and pushing the button on every animated figure.

I was bored out of my mind. And the sad thing was that there was a Guitar World superstore right beside Michael's, but I'd promised before we left to stay in the crafts store and not wander off down the strip mall. After all, this was family time. So there I was, trapped in the store.

Trapped in my own personal hell.

Rain, Rain Go Away

For most of my life, I've enjoyed changes in the weather. My wife might argue that I've loved weather too much! After all, I used to check the forecast religiously a couple of times a day, and I was in Nirvana when we got cable and I found that there was a 24 hour national news channel (The Weather Channel) plus--more importantly for me--a LOCAL 24 hour weather channel that broadcast a local radar ALL DAY LONG! (Don't get me started about how excited I was when I found out that I could get on the Internet and see all kinds of radars!)

As a young, young child I remember being thrilled by electrical storms, excited and frightened by the deafening thunder and the bright flashes of lightning. As a school child I awoke on January and February mornings and ran to the window to see if the inches of snow forecast the night before had silently fallen during the night. If it had, I'd climb into my bed and turn on the transistor radio and listen to Russ Hatter on 1490 WFKY in Frankfort to see if, yes, Virginia, there WAS school today (There's a reference that no one outside of zip code 40601 is going to get) or if--maybe, just maybe--we had one of those most magical of days: a snow day.

Even as an adult I loved the weather. A steady rain in the spring relaxed me in a way I can't really describe. I distinctly remember one day in 1995 when I lived in Covington. Our house there backed up to a wooded area maybe 1/2 mile deep. One afternoon it rained a steady, strong rain. I opened one of the bedroom windows that faced the back yard and the woods. A cool breeze instantly blew into the room, and that combined with the steady, even sound of the falling rain hitting the ground and the leaves put me in an almost comatose state. I really couldn't tell you how long I sat there just enjoying the rain. Could have been hours. Most likely was several minutes. I'm not sure. My point is I used to love the weather.

Not anymore. As I alluded to a few posts ago, electrical storms still frighten me, but in a completely different way. Now whenever I hear thunder or see lightning, I think, "Great! What electronic system at work is going to get screwed up by this?" We have precautions in place--commercial class surge protectors, battery backups, generators--but no system is perfect, and there are many times when I have to come and fix a problem. So as I sit in my house with the kids and my wife and talk about how exciting thunderstorms are, I think, "Come on, Erlanger. Don't lose power!"

In the hot summer I worry about computers or servers overheating if the air conditioning goes out in a building. When it rains a BUNCH I worry about the server rooms that are at ground level flooding. Two days ago during a strong rain the roof of one of the schools in the district started mysteriously leaking. And I don't mean leaking a little--I mean leaking like a water faucet was turned on. We couldn't figure out in the driving rain where the leak was coming from, but the leak was following a line in the roof of the building. As I followed that line I saw where it was headed: right towards the main server closet of the building! It was still several rooms away, but if the rain kept up I'd be in trouble. I had the building custodian check every 20 minutes to make sure the leak hadn't moved closer to the server room (In the end it didn't make it there).

Even snow days aren't as exciting for me. Sure, it's nice to have a surprise day off with the kids, but the snow day generates two hours of work for me as the unexpected off day causes us to alter our yearly school calendar, which creates a mountain of paperwork that has to be generated, approved by the Board of Education, and then sent to the state Department of Education.

So my love for weather is a casualty of my job.

On the other hand, my wife might say that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Where Was I When This Fool was Standing in My Street?

I was actually writing another post just now, which I will finish on another day, when I discovered that Google Map's "Street View" feature has found its way to Northern Kentucky!

I heard about Street View several months ago. Street View allows you to type in an address in Google Maps, and then click the "Street View" button to see a three dimensional representation of the address. It sounded exciting, but when I heard about it Street View was limited pretty much to major cities like San Francisco (which, I think, is the city that I played around with when I first heard about it). Pretty cool, I told myself at the time, but it'll be forever before Google gets to my street.

Not so. You can see my house by clicking this link.

Pretty cool, huh? I have no idea where we were that day that our cars aren't there. I'm assuming, based on the landscaping, that this was taken sometime between mid-July and November of last year. Maybe Lisa and I were both at work. The pathetic truth, though, is that if we HAD been home and I'd seen this guy standing on the back of a truck (I'm guessing based on the height of the camera that is how it's done) and taking a bunch of pictures, I wouldn't have been surprised or alarmed. I would have assumed it was some ventriloquial kook interested in the museum. That's probably what the neighbors thought, too.

Anyway, Google HASN'T gotten to Frankfort yet, so the Frankfort Sweasys won't be able to play with this toy at their house. But don't worry; they'll get to you eventually...and sooner than you think!

An Open Letter to Sally Field

Dear Ms. Field:

First, I want to begin by saying that I am very much a fan of yours. Though I am too young to remember The Flying Nun or Gidget, I have seen much of your work. I first fell in love with you and your infectious smile watching Smokey and the Bandit. You were awesome in Norma Rae. Your scene in the cemetery in Steel Magnolias was brilliant, bringing me to tears the first time I saw it (and threatening to do the same the many times I've seen it since). And of course, who could forget your Oscar acceptance speech! Like many of your fans, I DO really like you.



However, I have been very concerned about you lately, and that is the purpose of this letter: to ask you to get some help now...before it is too late.

What specifically has been bothering me is the new Boniva commercial that I've been seeing on TV. You know the one I'm talking about: The one that begins with you looking earnestly into the camera and saying, "Well, I just did it! I took my once a month Boniva pill for osteoporosis!" There are two specific reasons why I think this advertisement shows that you need help:

1) You need to set larger goals for yourself!
Whenever I see this commercial I'm always concerned by the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in your voice as you proudly proclaim that you just swallowed a pill! I mean, come on! What are you doing with the rest of your day that THIS is the thing you've done today that you're proudest of, that you feel a need to announce to millions of people via television? What are your plans for tomorrow? Are you going to get the newspaper off the lawn? Take a shower? Maybe log on and check your email?

You know, Ms. Field, the inability to function at a high level, the feeling that you can't even accomplish the smallest things in life--these are clear signs of clinical depression. I'm not sure osteoporosis is your biggest problem right now. You need to be concerned about possible suicidal tendencies.

2) You're only supposed to take the pill once a month!
You say so yourself, and yet I keep seeing this ad every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Overdosing on prescription medication is dangerous. Your own ad states that Boniva's side effects include diarrhea, ulcers, and pain in your extremities. I imagine that exceeding the recommended dosage by 30 times or more would only increase these side effects. I would guess that the severe diarrhea alone would be one of the reasons you find yourself unable to accomplish much more than swallowing a pill.

I understand that your self-esteem is low right now, and that taking your Boniva--for whatever reason--makes you feel so good. But you simply MUST stop taking it every day.

Oh, and keep in mind that overdosing on prescription pills is ANOTHER sign of clinical depression.

You really need help, Ms. Field. Please, I implore you, get it before it's too late.

Sincerely,
The Sweasy.Net editorial staff

The Web's Fickle Nature

My last post, which you can read below, was about how my name appeared on a porn website. Today I'd like to come clean with you about the truth behind that story.

I wrote yesterday that I was Googling my name out of vanity. That wasn't entirely true. And by "not entirely true" I mean "not true at all." I first Googled Lisa's name because I was looking for an NPR story she had done a couple of years ago (and which I will make the subject of a future post on a day when I don't have anything else to write about) and I was going through her Google results when I found something that startled me (I'd rather not elaborate on what I found). I decided to check to see if the same link appeared in my results, and that's why I was Googling my name late on a Friday night and that's how I found my name on a porn site.

However, this afternoon I wanted to show Lisa both of the Google results I mention above (the porn site and the other site that bothered me) only to find that BOTH of the links have disappeared. I used my web browser's History tab to navigate back to the pages only to find that both pages are completely gone! Without any proof that either was real I felt like a liar, like someone who'd made the whole thing up. To Lisa's credit, she believed me and just asked what I thought had happened to the two pages. I would have teased her endlessly for a couple of days, saying she was making stuff up just to get attention.

So the World Wide Web is ever changing. Something everyone knew already, I guess. I'm just shocked at how quickly Google indexes changes.

Anyway, you can now Google my name to your heart's content (not that I imagine anyone to actually be doing that) without worry about porn.

I've Been Porned!

My name has been out on the Internet since 1996, when I--as a first time user of the Internet--made the mistake of signing my name to a public "Visitor's List" to a library somewhere in New York state. I can't find that web page anymore, but I know it was still out there a few months ago. In fact, the whole library's website seems to be gone now. But that's not important. My point is, my name has been floating around on the Internet for one reason or another for more than a decade now, and search results on my name have always returned perfectly appropriate links.

Until now.

I googled myself just a few minutes ago to see what appeared (Yes, it's vain, but come on--you've done it before, too!). I was fine for several pages, but then a few pages into the links I found one called "high school girls room" that appeared--based on the text on google--to link to a virtual tour of our high school that students in my Web Design class completed back in 2001. Two questions popped into my mind when I saw this link: 1) Why was this virtual tour still online? and 2) Why was this "high school girls room" page linking to our virtual tour? I clicked the link, and lo and behold, I got a screen full of nudity. The page had a number of scantily clad (or unclad) teens. To drive traffic to the page and get the page to appear in search results like the one I had run, the bottom of the page was filled with text that had been pulled from various sites, all text having the words "high school girls room" in them somewhere. Our virtual tour of the high school included the "Girls Locker Room" and the web page said "Copyright 2000-2001" and then had my name and the name of the school where I worked at the bottom of the page, so all four of the necessary words appeared and a link to our page was added to this porn site. Since my name was also in there, the offending page showed up in Google when I searched my name.

So now I'm associated with porn. And I have two reactions: 1) I'm disgusted and a little shocked. I also feel a little naked and exposed. It's sort of like getting mugged, or maybe being scammed out of a gallon of gasoline. 2) On the other hand, it's about time, porn people! What have you been waiting for? It's been 12 years!

When I get a chance I'll go to the district website and delete that virtual tour--It shouldn't be online anymore anyway as it's inaccurate. Hopefully that will in time remove me from the porn page. If not, I don't guess there's a lot I can do about it.

And no, I'm not going to make a link to the offending page on here! If it's really that important for you to see, google my name in quotes and you'll eventually find it yourself. But be warned: If you do go there, I didn't proceed any further, so I have no idea if the site is safe or if it's going to try to install a virus or spyware on your computer. I'd hate to see anyone's computer crash because this post made them curious.

On the other hand, it serves you right, pervert.

Hope

I know a couple of posts ago that I said that I wasn't going to talk anymore about our vacation to Cancun, but I wanted to lead off with this little tidbit (I promise that the whole entry isn't going to be about our vacation)...

...Someone asked me the other day what was my favorite day of this vacation. I answered that it was the same as every other vacation I'd ever been on: My favorite day of vacation is always the day BEFORE vacation starts. That's because the excitement about vacation is at its highest then, and because maybe--just maybe--THIS vacation might be the best vacation ever! Now I know that's not going to happen. Things are going to go wrong on vacation. There is going to be disappointment. But for just a moment on that day before vacation, there's a blank slate, and everything is perfect!

I feel that way today, too. It's August 1. Now I know most people think of summer vacation as being June, July, and August, but schools start so much earlier today than in decades past that--for me, as an educator--I really think of the beginning of the school year as August 1. And today has that same feeling as the day before vacation. Ten months of limitless possibility lay in front of me. Oh, what could happen! What things might we accomplish this year!

And I'm not alone in my feelings of anticipation and excitement. I'm sure you've seen the TV ad for Back to School sales at Staples, the one that shows the dejected kids staring at the ground while their father dances around them to the tune of the Christmas standard "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." The truth is, though, I was always excited to go back to school. And my kids are, too. They don't want summer to end, but that limitless possibility that lies before them is so very enticing. Two days ago we went to a Staples store to get--yup, you guessed it--school supplies, and I noticed as we shopped that there were a number of other parents in the store with their kids picking up supplies. And no one looked dejected. Everyone was excited to get their multicolored notebooks and their packs of pens and that book cover with just the right piece of pop culture on it. My girls have already packed all of their school supplies into their backpacks, and I've caught them a couple of times getting back into the backpack and checking ("just one more time!") their items against the school-supplied list.

It's not that any of us have any bitter feelings about this past summer. It's been great for us, but it did inevitably fall short of how wonderful we perceived it might be on June 1. But here we are again on August 1 with that feeling. It's a feeling of hope, I guess. Look what lies ahead of us.

This could be the most amazing year ever!