Today I received a new twist on the Nigerian 'please help me get lots of money out of my country' scam email. Only this one is 'I am a lawyer who greedily stole the estate of this devout Christian couple, only now I have been saved by Christ and want to give the estate to you because I know you will use it "honestly and wisely for things that will glorify God's name."' But, perhaps in homage to the roots of this scam, the devout couple who left so much money to God lived in -- you guessed it -- Nigeria.
I don't often laugh at loud at spam...
But I'm still quite sure I'm not sending this guy my account number ;)
I visited the dentist today to finish getting my crown put in.
In the future, I will try to remember that having a lot of coffee before needing anesthesia isn't really the best idea for me. The overall effect was that it took much, much longer for the drugs to kick in. Consequently, the dentist, trying hard to actually get me numb for the procedure, had to give me three separate shots. That worked -- and then, thirty minutes later, when they finally kicked in for real, half of the left side of my face was numb. My left nostril was numb. Even my left eye was tingling a bit. Yecch...
This, I believe, may be one of the most retarded "sports" I've ever heard of.
"So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." -- Pat Robertson, defending indicted war criminal Charles Taylor of Liberia -- while forgetting to mention his $8 million investment in a gold mining venture with Taylor's government.
"You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." -- Exodus 20:7
Pat Robertson is a walking violation of this commandment.
Since the Staff-Parish meeting last night was our first with our new senior pastor, I wanted to buy some nametags for people to wear. So I stopped at Target on my way home. I looked all over the stationery and office supplies section. Nothing. In doing so, though, I did learn that if I ever want to buy paper, don't go to Target. They had computer paper, but all of their other paper looked like something that would just thrill me to pieces if I were a 12-year-old girl. Or maybe 11.
I finally found an employee that I could ask about nametags -- half-way across the store. "You want what? Oh ... we wouldn't carry anything like that."
Fine.
Wal-Mart (across the street) did.
I understand that Target wants to differentiate themselves from Wal-Mart. But I don't yet get what the positive difference is.
I haven't written in here in forever. I've been really busy with work trying to get caught up on things. This week I spent some time learning the Direct3D (now known as DirectX Graphics) APIs. Pixel Shaders are amazing things. Ever since I came over to this group four months ago, I've been jumping around learning one new thing then another. I'm hard pressed to remember another four month period in my career where I've been trying to learn so many new things at once. It's really good, but sometimes a little overwhelming.
Of course, I've been adding to my computer workload myself by working on some software in my free time. I'm trying to write a program to take email messages with Word documents attached and convert them into PDF for posting to a mailing list and/or convert to HTML and automatically post on a blog. The idea is to make it a lot easier for people in our church to update the church web site. It's getting there...
Meredith started her new job two weeks ago, as the new Director of Youth Ministries at Community United Methodist Church in Half Moon Bay. She loves it, except when there's a really slow-moving truck trying to go over Highway 92 into Half Moon Bay.
Yesterday we went to the Microsoft company picnic, held at the San Francisco Zoo. Meredith enjoyed it much more than the company picnic last year at Great America.
We went to see Tomb Raider 2 last night. It was definitely an entertaining couple of hours. A high concept motion picture it wasn't, but it was good fun. Also, the movie theater is air conditioned. Although getting out of the movie theater at the same time a concert was letting out of Shoreline Ampitheatre was fun, especially when we discovered that MVPD had blocked off Shoreline, forcing us to go home via 101. Ah well.
I found blogshares.com in my referrer logs. I don't quite get the site -- it's like a fantasy stock market, only instead of trading shares of companies, you trade shares of ... blogs. It seems that my blog is not worth very much -- small surprise there. But, curiously enough (to me), there are people who have traded shares of 'Some Boring Words'. I'm sure there's something to this that I'm just not getting right now.
I awoke today to find lots of news reports on the latest developments in the legal fallout from the Columbine school killings of four years ago: now the parents of the two murderous teens are to be deposed as part of a civil suit alleging that the parents knew or should have known what their boys were planning.
Does no one remember being a teenager? My parents believed me when I would show up a few minutes after curfew, explaining that I would have been on time except that, because of all the rain outside, I had driven really slowly home from Knoxville because I wanted to get home safely. Beaming with pride at my safe, responsibile attitude, they'd let the lateness go without another mention. Of course, the reality was that the reason I was only a few minutes late is because the friction between the tires and the roads is so much less when you're hydroplaning straight down the Interstate at full throttle. I could have been plotting to blow up the Sunsphere; Mom and Dad would never have known.
Over a year ago, I wondered how long the lawsuits over Columbine would drag on. I'm still wondering.
I think I should run for governor.
As has been pointed out numerous times (e.g., here), all it takes to run for governor in the current recall election is $3500 and 65 signatures of registered voters. That's it.
That's EASY!
When else would I have the chance to get my name on a state-wide ballot? All I need to do now is come up with some campaign promises.
The only problem: Meredith is quite sure that she can think of better things to do with $3500. And she said she wouldn't vote for me. Alas...