So, there's a wedding happening today, which just happens to be the feast day of St. Michael. And, better yet, it's happening at St. Michael's Cathedral Church in San Clemente. So - Naomi & Jess - I ask you, "Was I such a complete nerd?" Somebody else is doing it, and if his name is Michael too, then we've got a real winner, because dang if that isn't a great idea: Michael gets married on the Feast of St. Michael and all Angels in St. Michael's Cathedral. I suppose if they made their own wedding invitations and other things with supplies from Michael's, they'd be doing even better. And finally, they could hire the Michaels Wedding Group to do the photography and videography. Seriously, where's the nerdiness in that, I ask you? ;o)

Posted by Michael at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, today at work, I got a new computer.

Not just any computer, but a really, really fast one. In Geek speak:
A dual-core Pentium D, running at 3.4GHz.
1GB of RAM
Two 19" flat screen displays, running digital cable.

I feel good today.

Posted by Michael at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The trip to my sister's house in Tucson was a success. We got a lot accomplished, with the help of a lot of friendly people. I drove out Thursday afternoon around 3pm, and got to Tucson around midnight. Then on Friday, after my sister got off of work, we went to Loew's and Home Depot to find all the things the volunteers would need in the morning.

Saturday morning, we started on the tasks at 8am, and as people came over, we put them to work. Slowly but surely - and I mean slowly because we didn't stop working until 10:30pm - we got things accomplished, and it was good to have so many people there to help.

Here's a list of the things these volunteers accomplished:

• Pulled down and painted 8 doors


• Replaced doorknobs on 7 doors, after re-hanging them


• Replaced 3 interior light fixtures in the bathrooms


• Replaced 3 sinks and fixtures


• Replaced 1 exterior light fixture.


• Installed 3 horizontal window blinds in 3 different rooms


• Replaced 4 towel hangers and 2 toilet paper holders


• Put up a hanging light in one bedroom.


• Put a valence over one of the windows


• Painted kitchen cabinets with two coats of white primer, and one coat of Terra Cotta paint


• Pulled weeds in the front yard, and began pulling weeds in the back yard.

I'd say it was a rather productive day. And then I slept.

Sunday morning, I drove back home, listening to my books on tape all the while.

Posted by Michael at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, after some work, I've got two more sites to display.

The first is one for my friend Zachary, who builds custom laptops and desktops through his company MyPCBiz.

The second is for myself, as I go into the business of selling online wares and other goodies. You can find it at binary-monk.com.

Posted by Michael at 6:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My blog software allows me to set up a "scheduled" entry, so that it publishes when I tell set the time for it to go live. Apparently, though, I forgot to make some adjustments on my server, so those scheduled entries failed to show up. So, take a look at the previous days to see the entries listed there.

And as for "paying for it later," you might say I'm living on credit today.

Posted by Michael at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday. I speak with the padre, and he tells me I sound like I'm getting sick.

I say, "Yes, I feel not entirely up to Snuffy, and I think my big-time cold might be making a comeback."

He says, "You should stay home tomorrow and heal up. You don't want to be sick when you go to help your sister this weekend."

I say, "That's probably a good idea." And I knew it was.

So what did I do? I stayed in the office until 9:30pm, then came in today around 9:30am.

I'm sure I'll pay for it later. How's that saying go? Father knows best.

Posted by Michael at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yes, my little red Honda Civic DX (1990). My "new" old car. I owned it several years ago, before I owned the silver Hyundai. At the time I bought the Hyundai, I sold my parents the little red Honda for a buck. Now they've returned the favor, and I'm driving it once again.

Why do I love it so?

Miles in the trip meter: 405
Gallons filled up at the station: 10.6
Miles per gallon: 38

And that's with mixed city/highway driving. I remember once getting 450 miles on one tank on purely highway driving. Yeah. I love the little red honda.

Posted by Michael at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yesterday I ran across an interesting article about Pope Benedict's visit to the Fatherland - Germany. It seems that his message was a simple one: that people should "pray together, go to church and 'walk with Jesus.'" At one point, he even compared "the sour notes of rundown organs to the dissonance that can arise inside the church when too many members are out of harmony." (1) Now that's good stuff. Straight, simple, and to the point.

Faith and Reason Must Be Reunited
In his message, which he extrapolated on for the academicians at Regensburg, the Pope had hoped to make clear that the church's agenda is not the same as the dominant Western Culture's agenda, and that people should recognize this. The main thrust of the argument is that "Other religions...do not see a threat to their identity in the Christian faith but in the 'contempt for God' and the 'mockery of the sacred' in the West." (1) In fact, this concept of the "mockery of the sacred" is seen as "an exercise in freedom" (2), which, in his view, is primarily the concern those of the East have with the Western culture:

"People in Asia and Africa admire our scientific and technical progress, but at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally excludes God from man's vision, as if this were the highest form of reason." (2)

And the Western Church, says the Pope, is no stranger to this tendency to exclude God from our own vision; hence the lack of harmony, and the dissonance inside the Church.

So what's the Pope trying to say? Basically that the Church needs to reintegrate faith and reason, to engage the heart again, and to stop with the faithless logic, or faithless reasoning behind the social projects. Focusing on the social issues, and social projects is good, but will never hit the mark without the application of the simple truth of Christ's redeeming work on the Cross. You want to help with the AIDS epidemic in Africa? Preach the Word, and don't just create social agendas which fail to drive at the heart issues involved in perpetuating this disease. If the Church's Agenda - God's Agenda for the human heart - is left out of the equation in any social poject, then the encroaching Christianity is merely an encroaching Political Agenda, and the world becomes a battle of culture, rather than a message of hope, salvation - and ultimately, of change.

Hearing Harmony
Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty darn good to me. Focus on God's agenda first and foremost, and you won't be tempted to promote any other agenda. And, get this, if we all promote the same agenda, there will most likely be harmony, and not dissonance in the Church.

"Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God -- there are too many different frequencies filling our ears." (3).

1) http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=2125
2) http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4176049.html
3) http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/world/story.html?id=703cbbc5-7f54-4452-91c5-c1dcf0022ab0
4) http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6072944,00.html
5) http://www.myfoxal.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=885265&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.4.1

Posted by Michael at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yes, these women had a challenge, and they didn't take it sitting down.

Posted by Michael at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

5. When entering your house, you're greeted with the pleasant odor of unusual flora and fauna.
4. Both sinks are full of dishes, and filling up a cup with drinking water requires stacking dishes in one sink in the most precarious of fashions.
3. Piling all the dishes into one sink lets you discover a new form of lubricant gracing the enamel.
2. You notice a level of heat rising from the dish pile - possibly life signs.
1. You find a form of fungus unlike anything you've ever seen before growing on the inside of one of your plastic containers. A quick lab test reveals you've discovered a new form of life.
0. You're sweating like you just ran a 5K after decontaminating your dishes.

Posted by Michael at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So, the latest tally on the telemarketing thing is 22 pages, 18 of which need to interact with the database. Two more pages to go, though I'm told that these two can wait until Monday. After the last entry, several more pages were added. Several as in 10. Thankfully, four pages were taken out of the requirements list, so that left just a nice round 6 pages to build. The beautiful thing about it was that the pages the boss wanted removed were going to be the most difficult to do, and the extra ones added on, though more in number, were much simpler to do.

So where's that leave me?

Add in the User Manual I just completed, and I'm done for the weekend.

Posted by Michael at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ok. Here's a blog entry, but not on butt dust (that's still forthcoming). It's just a quick update on life in general:

The crazy telemarketing bruhaha continues. I've got several pages to build before the weekend, so that our esteemed volunteers can go and try and break the system to tiny little pieces over the weekend, and then tell me what needs to change when I come back from Labor Day. Unfortunately, as is normally the case, the project is blossoming - and not in a good way. It's called feature creep, and it happens quite consistently.

On this project, it means that suddenly we've got several new pages to code, and different ways of displaying data too. It wasn't good enough that the page displayed the prospect's data on the screen, and allowed the callers to enter in the responses from the prospect; no, we needed to also provide them with a PDF version of all the details, as some of our volunteers don't like to sit in front of a computer (my question is: If that's the case, why build a web-based program for them? If computer based won't work for them, why not stick with the old school paper way?). So, tack on an extra day figuring out taking database information, and turning it into a nicely formatted, printable PDF. All that without allowing just anyone to access the PDF page and get sensitive data on individuals across the US of A.

And, in the middle of it all, I'm told to quickly develop a way of allowing people to purchase Rose Parade tickets online. Tack on an extra day out of telemarketing land, which now has 6 hours to get as complete as possible, so that it can proudly bear the name "Alumni Phonathon 0.7beta." Woo and a hoo.

All that to say the following: Butt Dust will not be written about anytime soon, although I think I'm creating quite a bit of that aforementioned Dust while trying to get this quite-possibly-unnecessary-program out to the volunteers for testing purposes. And, sadly, it most likely will mean no other real blog entries until after the big Alumni Conference on Sept. 7-9.

I know, I know. Let me go wipe the snot from my nose and clean up.

Posted by Michael at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)