Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

I have been impressed with Lisa Whelchel and her post-Facts-of-Life life, but I am even more impressed with her now that I have run across the fact that she collaborated with Steve Taylor on a project: Lyrics of a song Steve Taylor wrote for her called Good Girl. mp3 of her belting it out Not only did she have the good sense of getting Steve Taylor to write her a song, but she even gave a go at singing it. She is smarter and braver than I could be all at the same time. Rock on Blair! Powered by ScribeFire .

It is not impossible to floss your teeth while driving a car with a manual transmission. Don't ask me how I know this. Powered by ScribeFire .

We had a food collection in the Champions club that wrapped up on November 14th. I  now have a bunch of food down in my basement ready to go somewhere. While buying batteries last night for my sons' new Buzz Lightyear race track I noticed that there was a collection barrel for food at the local grocery store sponsored by Foodlink which is the food bank here in Western New York. Having interned at the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York I was well aware of food bank operations and thought contributing to this drive would be a good thing. This morning I mentioned to my wife that I found a place for the food and she mentioned that she had spoken with a friend of ours who knew of a family that needed food and clothing. She told us about the need that this family had in an email on November 19th. I am tempted to chalk this up to a happy circumstance, but it seems to be much more than that. Through this I am reminded that I am to be obedient and faithfully apply the revealed wil...

You gotta look sharp You gotta look sharp And you gotta have no illusions Just keep going your way looking over your shoulder - Look Sharp, Joe Jackson In at least one previous post I have talked about my teenage and off and on continuing affinity for all things Joe Jackson. Well, I was getting the youngest dressed for his annual Christmas picture with his brother and I said that he looked sharp. He asked what it meant to look sharp and I told him it meant handsome and then I started to sing the refrain to the song Look Sharp by Joe Jackson. After I was done with that he had a quizzical expression on his face and, in response to the song, asked "Why, Daddy?" Why indeed. I remember watching a special on the Moody Blues on PBS a while ago where they lamented that people looked to them for answers because they were asking questions. Questions that were profound, relevant, and that struck a chord with the people that listened to their music. Such was their lament that they actu...

I really can't stand standing still. I have a lot of nervous energy and it shows quite a bit as I fidget when I talk to people or when my computer monitor looks like a fireworks show as I zip back and forth between different applications. I don't need coffee, but I do like it. I think that the main way this lack of attention benefits me is that I get bored easily. I need to constantly tweak things so that my attention is held which leads to (I hope) some innovations that make a real difference in various places. I have had some blunders and near disasters, but those are rare in comparison to the "micro-improvements" I think I have been able to make. (You see my temperament bleeding through here. No self-respecting sanguine would ever admit defeat.) I teach a wide range of kids on a weekly basis as a member of my church. There are a lot of innovative things going on and there have been more than micro-improvements that have been made in both the curriculum that is bein...

Well, it has been a long time in coming, but I have successfully configured and used my modem under Ubuntu 7.10. Here is what I did: The Linmodems support page was very helpful in providing a utility called scanModem to scan my system to help me determine what modem I had installed in my Dell Latitude D610. I ran the scanModem utility and opened the ModemData.txt file where, on line 106, I found that there was an install package for the modem that corresponded to the kernel version I am running (2.6.22). I then followed the directions to extract the contents of the file and install the .deb package. The trick for me was to run the 'sudo wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf' command as this command scanned all of the ports to find which one my modem was installed on. It found that it was installed on /dev/ttySHSF0 and wrote the configuration to the wvdial.conf file. I then used the 'sudo wvdial' command to dial out and connect to my ISP ( Bluefrog ) using configuration informat...

There's hungering and despair There's hungering it's unfair There's hungering everywhere There's hungering in solitaire There's hungering in pairs There's hungering everywhere But it's not here - Lost Dogs, The New Physics It takes a lot of energy for me to focus on me. Not that I need help indulging my pride or selfishness - I have got that down. What I need is to stay focused on the evil that is inside of me rather than the evil that is out there. Taking it one step out it is easy for me to get caught up in the dysfunction in other families and ignore the dysfunction in my own. It is hard for me to hear criticism but I cannot even begin to explain what a gift that is to me. It allows me the ability to look at me through someone else's eyes, which independent of the criticism is an impossible feat. It is almost like I have been handed an opportunity to confront the dross that is in my life and deal with it. Burn it in the fire of holiness and eradic...