Short and sweet...

Christmas was great. I got 7 games; Wild ARMs 3, 4, and Alter Code:F, Star Wars Podracer Revenge, Star Wars: Episode 3 and Lego Star Wars, all for the PS2. I also got SimCity 4 for the PC. And best of all, Val, her mom, her mom's friend and her Aunt Sandy banded together and refurbished my Cabbage Patch Kid. Sandy resewed all the stitching that had gone out over the years, Rosallyn got lots of cute clothes for him, and Val's mom brought it all together. But it was all Val's idea. And she was the mover and shaker of it.

I'm working nights, so I'm gonna stop, but I hope all of you enjoyed your Christmas.

I'm goin' away for Christmas...

I have the rest of the week off, starting tomorrow. We're gonna work on Christmas cards, anticipate presents, and take time to play games.

Merry Christmas to all of you.

Again, I can hear the masses saying..."duh".

Your link for the day.

A study says that 95% of Americans have had sex before they were married. And people think that it's normal.

I'm not even gonna get into a discussion or a diatribe about this study. The only comment I will make is that this shows why Western civilization is going down the toilet, and why the 2nd Coming is right around the corner. If the most sacred thing a person can share with someone else is cheapened to the point of normalcy by its casual flaunting and misuse, we are doomed.

Repeat after me..."moral degredation".

Just hold on to the stupid thing...!

Your gratuitous game link for the day...

You'd think that people wouldn't let go of their game controllers, even in the heat of the moment...

Then again, perhaps I'm not as excitable as other people.

I have made a decision about games and game consoles. From now on I'm not gonna buy a *new* console until the end of its generational cycle. I'll just save up money, and then when the new consoles come out, I'll pick up the old ones along with all the cool games that are out for them. This way I save money, avoid hardware recalls and destoyed HDTV's from flung Wiimotes.

So, with the Wii, 360 and the PS3 coming out last month, I would have bought a PS2/Xbox/GameCube, along with the games I wanted. But, I have a PS2 and 'Cube already, along with games. So my plan will be put into effect as of this moment.

Post #2

Mom just sent me this...

I wonder what Ben's take is...

on this.

A Ford Mustang Wagon?


The world is doomed...

Cone nebula

Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this monstrous object is actually a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula because of its conical shape in ground-based images, this giant pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in April 2002, this image shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the nebula, a height that equals 23 million round trips to the moon. The entire nebula is 7 light years in length. The Cone Nebula resides 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. Radiation from hot, young stars has slowly eroded the nebula over millions of years. Ultraviolet light heats the edges of the dark cloud, releasing gas into the relatively empty region of surrounding space. There, additional ultraviolet radiation causes the hydrogen gas to glow, which produces the red halo of light seen around the pillar. A similar process occurs on a much smaller scale to gas surrounding a single star, forming the bow-shaped arc seen near the upper left side of the Cone. This arc is 65 times larger than the diameter of our solar system. The blue-white light from surrounding stars is reflected by dust. Background stars can be seen peeking through the evaporating tendrils of gas, while the turbulent base is pockmarked with stars reddened by dust. Over time, only the densest regions of the Cone will be left. Inside these regions, stars and planets may form. The Cone Nebula is a cousin of the M16 pillars, which the Hubble imaged in 1995. Monstrous pillars of cold gas like the Cone and M16 are common in large regions of star birth. Astronomers believe the pillars are incubators for developing stars.

Image credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team and ESA

Here is the link for the text and image.

The king has died. Long live the king...

Ben's site is now gone.

*sigh*

I'm taking it off the side of the blog right now...

How big is the second Death Star really...?

I didn't post yesterday, and I apologize.

Here is your Star Trek/Star Wars/sci-fi link for the day.

WARNING: If you do not have a cable/DSL/T-1 or faster connection to the 'Net, I wouldn't even bother clicking the link. Lots of .gif images that are quite hi-resolution. So, if you are dial-up, don't even worry about it.

I'm not sure how coherent this will be...

...but it saddens me just how much intolerance and/or hate and /or indifference is in the world. It almost seems as though peaceful coexistence is an empty platitude mouthed for the benefit of the poor sheeple who are expected to remain pliant.

Angnostics and atheists decry the supposed fallacies of organized religions and question the believers' sanity in believing in things so obviously false and unproveable, organized religions preach intolerance and bigotry towards their fellowmen, road-rage is rampant, and indifference towards others is rife.

And the indifference isn't only towards other people, but also towards the things we belive. I wonder what the percentage of church members is, in any religion, that have testimonies of their faith. Strong, Mother Teresa/Pres. Hinckley types of testimonies. Religion seems to be a thing practiced on Sunday, and rarely if ever implemented in a person's life. I suppose it has always been that way, but I can only wonder at how much better would the world be if everyone loved everyone else and helped them, according to their religion's dictates.

Why can someone believe in no Higher Authority, but if I do belive in God and Jesus, why do they attack me for my belief? Am I the only one who sees a double standard here and a inherent weakness in the believers' position? I'm not saying that the position is weak, only that by proclaiming a belief in something, say Christianity, it limits the kind of responses to the attacker.
Because the attacker will invariably deny the reality of a person's feelings, and thus their testimony, and the beliver is limited by his Christian beliefs towards patience, tolerance and love. NOT that these beliefs make the person weak. But if you are taught not to attack a person's beliefs and to be tolerant, you will feel sadness and sorrow for the other's intractability. Hopefully you will also share your testimony, even though it might ultimately be a futile endeavor. But that will be the extent of your involvement.

I suppose that contention/attacks on others will never be a viable method of conversion. Helping others to feel the Spirit through truth is the most effective method. It just seems that there is so little opportunity to share the Spirit through the Internet.

My disclaimer is that I still have a testimony of the restored Gospel, and that it is true. Prophets lead us through current revelation.

I think I have a problem with the "meekness is not weakness" thing.

I know. It's been a while...

"This 1991 image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a small section of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. The Cygnus Loop marks the edge of a bubble-like, expanding blast wave from a colossal stellar explosion which occurred about 15,000 years ago. Supernova remnants play an important role in stellar evolution by enriching space with heavy elements, and triggering new star formation by compressing interstellar gas.The image shows the structure behind the shock waves in the Cygnus Loop with unprecedented clarity, allowing astronomers to compare directly the actual structure of the shock with theoretical model calculations for the first time. Besides supernova remnants, these shock models are important in understanding a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, ranging from winds in newly-formed stars to cataclysmic stellar outbursts.As the supernova blast wave slams into tenuous clouds of interstellar gas, the resulting collision heats and compresses the gas, causing it to glow. The shock acts as a searchlight by revealing the structure of the interstellar medium.A bluish ribbon of light stretching left to right across the picture might be a knot of gas ejected by the supernova. This interstellar "bullet," traveling over three million miles per hour (5 million km), is just catching up with the shock front, which has been slowed by plowing into interstellar material.The Cygnus Loop appears as a faint ring of glowing gases about three degrees across (six times the diameter of the full moon), located in the northern constellation Cygnus the Swan. The supernova remnant is within the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy and is 2,600 light-years away."

Text and image taken from here.

My bad...

I didn't post yesterday, and I hope all of you were OK with that. I'm really bsy today, and I don't have anything else to say today.

So, until tomorrow...

Hardware upgrade...

So, I traded in my old PS2, which I got about 6 months after the launch in either 2000 or 2001. I got $15 for it, which I used to buy a new PS2. I'm pleased with the new one. It's about 1/3 the size of the old one, makes lots less noise, has an integrated IR remote reciever, and is lots faster than the old one. The only drawback is that it is a top-loader, instead of a front-, like the old one. And the reason I only got $15 for it is because it was an old model that didn't play blue PS2 discs, so it needed to be sent back to be refurbished. I wasn't too happy to lose the $45 that I had hoped would go towards my re-upping, but I'll live through it.

So, that burns through the rest of my Christmas money for this year. And I'm OK with that. I picked up the stuff that I wanted, and Val has the things she wants. So, we should be good to go.

A better day, I hope...

...than yesterday. I think my problem is that I put too much stock in my personal relationships, and am too sensitive.

I worry what others think of me, if they are upset with me or not, whether what I do or don't pleases them, etc. This is with ALL of my relationships. And when someone doesn't respond to me as quickly as I would like, I assume (bad, Jordan, bad!) that they ARE mad at me, and the whole thing goes down the toilet from there. But, the key to all of this is that I still choose how I feel, and can therefore choose my way out of my funk. It's really difficult, though.

I just need to not worry so much, and trust that those who care about me will tell me if I have done something stupid, or have hurt them in some way.