Right here is what I'm talking about: http://www.lnt.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2615193

A grill that you can hook your iPod or Mp3 player into.

Can someone please give me a reason why this is needed?

I'll admit to loving my position as a consumer of the many material goods available today. I like buying my books, video games, board games, role playing games, miniatures for wargames, DVDs and several other things that I really don't need but like pissing away my money on.




On a different topic, I ran across this article the other day at Tangency. Needless to say I am pissed off and stunned at how low the President is willing to whore himself for positive feedback from US citizens.

Original article here: http://www.kdhnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=15367


[i]Originally Posted by Killeen Daily Herald
COPPERAS COVE – History will be made today when Copperas Cove resident Bill Thomas and his wife, Georgia, present President George W. Bush with a Purple Heart at the Oval Office.

Thomas said he and his wife came up with the unprecedented idea to present the president with the Purple Heart over breakfast one morning a few months ago as they discussed the verbal attacks, both foreign and domestic, the commander in chief has withstood during his time in office.

"We feel like emotional wounds and scars are as hard to carry as physical wounds," Thomas said.

The medal was awarded to Thomas on Dec. 18, 1965, following injuries he sustained while serving in heavy combat with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam.

It is one of three he was awarded during his service.

Thomas said the Purple Heart he is presenting the president has special meaning to him because the injury he suffered to earn it occurred just after a friend, Richard Peterson, lost his life attempting to save him.

"The hand grenade came in, and I didn't see it. Before diving, which he should have ... he pushed me down and the delay cost him his life," Thomas recalled. "Shortly after that, I was laying in position ... and took a .50-caliber round that shattered my shoulder blade and virtually took out my right lung."

Thomas said he drew up a citation and he and his wife signed it before dropping it and the medal off with Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, to forward to President Bush.

"Congressman Carter called me last week and said the President was very moved by it, and would like us to present it in person," Thomas said.

Thomas is taking a copy of the original citation showing the origin of the actual medal to present as a companion piece with the citation he drew up for the President.

He has drawn criticism from some locals who have learned of his actions, Thomas said. Nevertheless, he said he earned the Purple Heart and it is his to do with it as he sees fit.

"I feel the President deserved one," he said. "The bottom line is, I paid for these Purple Hearts with my blood."

The Thomas' are scheduled to be at the White House at 12:30 p.m. Monday.

"As John Carter said, this is a piece of American history," Thomas said.[/i]

I know one of my grandfathers had a purple heart. I just found out my other grandfather had several medals from his service, but never spoke of them. There's a decent chance he was awarded one as well.

Hello all.

It's been quite a while since I bothered to write anything so I decided I'd go ahead and babble at you for a few minutes.

I'm taking classes two nights a week right now and trying to fit in 50 hours of classroom observation around work and homework. Most of you probably know, but my paternal grandfather passed away at the beginning of this month. I went down for the funeral. It was actually the first funeral I've ever attended. My father had always managed to keep my brother and I from any family funerals while we were growing up. I missed my the funeral for my other grandfather because of work or something like that. My grandfather was a Freemason and so am I, so I was able to participate in that part of the funeral service. I was also the person who pinned his 50 year pin from the Freemasons to his lapel. I know he would have liked me to be there if he had been well enough to go to a lodge meeting to be presented the pin by the Master.

My dad has taken early retirement from the Post Office and he and my mom have moved down to Missouri to live with my grandmother and help her out. That means I get the house in Kenosha to myself until I finish grad school.

Work is going ok. The county is changing from the Community Integration Program to a new program called Family Care. Unless you have a family member who is county case managed, none of that probably means a damn thing to you. For me it means getting all of my people to enroll in the new program so they can continue to get all of the services they need. Little things like a roof over their heads and their medical bills paid for. The enrollment process itself isn't too hard at all, but the state requires that I do certain things within certain time limits every month. I'm just lucky I only have a few people enrolling each month.

What little free time I've had lately I've been spending working on miniatures for Warhammer. I'm working on putting together between 1,500 and 2,000 points for a Dwarf army for the summer campaign. I have no idea if I'm actually going to have the time to play in the campaign, but I want to have the army ready in case I do.

Hopefully I'll update things here a bit more often than I have been. I can't promise anything, but I'll try.

Talk to people later.

Tagged by artemispri:

The first player of this game starts with the "10 weird things/habits about yourself". People who get tagged need to write a blog of their 10 weird habits/things, as well as state these rules clearly. At the end you need to choose the 6 people to be tagged and list their names.

My ten:

1) I am secretly a neat freak when alone.

2) I habitually alphabetize things.

3) I would be ultra-happy if I could spend almost all of my time sitting in a coffee shop reading.

4) I still like the taste of Zwieback toast.

5) I regularly check immigration laws for friendly nations.

6) I don't lose my keys, wallet or glasses. They are always kept in the same place and are not moved.

7) I have a number of routines and can get very grumpy when they are upset. Especially routines at bedtime.

8) I like having a clean table to eat at.

9) I depend on reading people's lips a lot more than you might think at times.

10) I purchase lottery tickets on a semi-regular basis.



TAG:
dlly
duncanid
hazardman
heronymus_waat
stacy288
thecoddess

Memeory Alpha: Stolen from heronymus_waat

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.
Because of my lack of LJ-fu while at work I shall do this: Bold the ones I've read, [] the ones I hated, italicize the ones I started but didn't finish and * by the ones I've loved.

1. [b]The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien [/b]*
2. [b]The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov[/b] *
3. [b]Dune, Frank Herbert[/b]*
4. [b]Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein[/b]
5. [b]A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin[/b] *
6. [b]Neuromancer, William Gibson[/b]
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. [b]Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick [/b]
9. [i]The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley [/i]
10. [b]Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury [/b] *
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. [b]A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.[/b]
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. [b]The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett [/b]*
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. [i]Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey [/i] Can we say "Chick novel"? I knew we could.
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card Yeah, yeah duncanid is probably going to beat me with her copies the next time I'm over to visit since I still have read this series.
23. [b][The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever], Stephen R. Donaldson [/b]Donaldson is just painful. I'm surprised I forced myself through it.
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. [b]Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling [/b]*
27. [b]The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams [/b]*
28. [b]I Am Legend, Richard Matheson [/b] I'm bolding this because I think I did read after checking it out at Amazon, but I won't swear to it.
29. [b]Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice[/b]
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. [b]More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon[/b]
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. [b]Ringworld, Larry Niven [/b]*
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. [i]The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien[/i] Who the hell HAS bothered to finish this one? Corvar, you may be exempted from this question. :)
42. [b]Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut [/b]*
43. [b]Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson [/b]** Cyberpunk all the way! Hiro Protagonist is a hero! :)
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein I seem to have read almost all of his other books, but I haven't read this one yet.
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. [b]The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks[/b]*
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford - Looks familiar, but I don't think I've read it.
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I'm sorry everyone. The state of Wisconsin seems to prefer bigotry and hatred of homosexuals to the principles of, "All men are created equal..."

I didn't support it.

I'm so ashamed of this state right now.

Today is Election Day for the United States. Please get out and vote.

I'll be happy if you vote.

I'll be even happier if your vote does something to hurt the GOP and, by extension, Bush.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
Wooz71 goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Jeff, and The Roman Crap-God of Biscuits.
artemispri gives you 4 brown orange-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
corvar gives you 18 red apple-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
dlly gives you 12 blue apple-flavoured gummy bats.
duncanid gives you 16 teal passionfruit-flavoured nuggets.
ethel_aldehyde gives you 19 dark blue vanilla-flavoured gummy bats.
hazardman tricks you! You lose 45 pieces of candy!
jubi331 gives you 6 dark blue lime-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
lady_curmudgeon gives you 5 green peach-flavoured wafers.
thecoddess gives you 6 dark green peach-flavoured wafers.
zman923 tricks you! You lose 13 pieces of candy!
Wooz71 ends up with 28 pieces of candy.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

hazardman swipes 45 pieces of my candy. Why does that seem so right? :)

Just found out that I may have let a cat out of a bag that wasn't supposed to be. Sorry. I didn't realize the cats were to be kept in the bag. I was asked questions by friends and didn't want to lie to them. When I get back you can villify and hurt me. Sorry again.

The weekend:

Friday night:

Got together with some friends to game. We were planning on playing the latest installment of a D&D campaign. We did play D&D, but it ended up being a pickup game that had nothing to do with our regular campaign. It was a lot of fun though. We managed to break an adventure that was being created off-the-cuff. Our characters started a riot over a chicken place. You can ask if you want, but I wouldn't expect to really understand after asking.

Saturday:

Got together with some other friends and played Descent. zman923 was there. It was the first time I had played the game. It was fun. Drooled over Radman's copy of Twilight Imperium as well. We all agreed that a time needed to be found to sit down and play that game as well.

Sunday:

Slacker day. Cut the back yard for my dad and then spent some time down at CG. I read a book I ordered recently and played a little bit of a Pokemon game on my DS.




I'm taking the NaNoWriMo thing as well as my writing in general a lot more seriously this year. I ordered a book about plotting and also got the No Plot? No Problem! Kit for NaNoWriMo.

In case anyone is interested, these are the books I bought:

Plot and Structure

No Plot? No Problem!

The Plot & Structure book seems to have been a good purchase. It's not an overly dense read and it makes a lot of sense. I really want to make the 50,000 word goal for NaNoWriMo goal this time around.

Well, I decided that I would give NaNoWriMo a try again this year. I didn't try at all last year, but I'm feeling a little better about this year. The idea came to me while I was at a restraint training for work. I have lots of stories about my profession that could be translated into something fun to read. I don't really have a plot for the 'book' as a whole, but that's not what is most important about NaNoWriMo. What's more important is getting at least fifty thousands words on paper in the course of a month. If I can meet that goal just writing observations and remembrances, then I don't think fitting them around a plot of some kind won't be too hard. I figure in the end it will probably end up reading a bit like a Coupland book, but without the gratuitous tech references.

The Subject of this post is also going to be the working title. For those who know me, you'll probably recognize what the title refers to, others of you, may not. If you ask nicely I might explain, but then again, I might not.

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?"
-- Ernest Gaines


We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on LiveJournal. There is no bribe of a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this. Thanks.

Fill this out if you're on my Friends list. It's some sort of meme that I've stolen from Nez.



1.Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song:
6. Favorite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:

HERE COMES THE FUN ... ... ...
1. Do we know each other outside of Live Journal?
2. Whats your philosophy on life?
3. Would you have my back in a fight?
4. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
5. What is your favorite memory of us?
6. Would you give me a kidney?
7. Tell me one odd/intresting fact about you:
8. Would you take care of me when I'm sick?
9. Can we get together and make a cake?
10. Have you heard any rumors of me lately?
11. Do you/have you talk(ed) crap about me?
12. Do you think I'm a good person?
13. Would you drive across country with me?
14. Do you think I'm attractive?
15. If you could change anything about me, would you?
16. What do you wear to sleep?
17. Would you come over for no reason just to hang out?
18. Would you go on a date with me if i asked you?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

...since I actually took the time to do a proper entry here.


I want to say that a whole lot of shit has gone on, that I've solved the ills of the world, found a cure for the common cold and managed to engineer a way to not only get Bush Jr. out of the White House, but put him and all of his cronies in a "Federal Pound in You in the Ass Prison."

Nope.

I have spent a bunch of time at Common Grounds over the last while. I also have a better job than the one I was working back in May. I was accepted back at UW-Parkside to take a class this semester. I'm signed up for Econ 101: The American Economy for this semester.

Work is nice, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm getting there.

Well, I don't know what else to write here, but I've at least added to this now again.

I went to some site and refreshed until I got five quotes that describe me. Something like that at least. The website is: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3


PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)


Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)


Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis Mumford (1895 - 1990)


A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
James Feibleman


The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry Kissinger (1923 - ), New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973





And a bonus:

PHILANTHROPIST, n. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Seriously. I just read an article in which he states he wants to see a return of nifty costumes and a departure from the t-shirts and piercings of late.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060802/ap_en_mu/people_elton_john;_ylt=AmRyyg.nCq_x4VEFNseeqZZxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-


I'm going to try to start updating this thing a bit more often than I have been. Unfortunately I don't have any nifty software which will let me do the cuts and things, so you'll just have to bear with me.

I have had a lot of hobbies over the years. Some that might even surprise those that know me well.

One I've thought about recently was stamp collecting. I liked. It was fun and I actually learned a lot about history and world cultures from it. I've considered getting back into it every once in a while, but felt that if I were to go back to it I would need a focus. I needed to chose an area of specialty for my collection. I couldn't come up with one.

Then I saw this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060719/ap_en_ot/super_stamps;_ylt=AjrPg3kPojoLEwut.KcgMuDAG78C;_ylu=X3oDMTA3YXYwNDRrBHNlYwM3NjI-


I think I may have found a focus. Literary characters on stamps. I think it could work. Also, it gives me an excuse to go buy those stamps. :)

I saw this story in the news this morning and liked it. It really shows how messed up we all are and just how cool science can be in the right hands.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060705/od_nm/germany_pitch_dc;_ylt=Ag4Ji4jgyPIN0w7y2nIQEU_tiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

Check out the artists renderings of the proposed theme park to be built in Amsterdam. Very cool. In two or three years the reasons for visiting Amsterdam will be increased from pot and sex shops to pot, sex shops and chocolate. That's a winning combination! :)


http://www.dechocoladefabriek.nl/