Archive → December, 2007
Update December 30th, 2007
Hello everyone,
It has been an amazing year that is likely to get better next year. Yesterday we went to Checotah, Oklahoma near Lake Eufaula to visit with my father in-law and do our Christmas thing. We always do it the Saturday after Christmas so everyone can be there. We had a good time and got to see many people that I had not seen in a while. I spent a good portion of the day putting up a new television antenna on the house. I enjoy that sort of thing so it was fun. I took more that 100 pictures while I was there as well. Tomorrow is New Year’s eve and I have to go to work for one day before New Years Day off. I really do not want to take off anymore because I have really used a lot of vacation days this year with sicknesses and problems with kids and schools.
I looked at my pay statement this weekend and saw that I had taken off work for 42 days this year. Man, that is unbelievable. Next year must be better than that. This morning I went out to find some new shoes and could not find any that were comfortable. I have painful feet because I stand so much at work.
After that I went to a couple of places to find some anchors for my tower guy wires. As shown in the above picture, there is a very large tree branch that landed on my tower support wires. Those wires seen are 1/4″ thick and rated at 7,000 pounds. This pulled up one of the anchors on the opposite side about 10″ out of the ground. Right now the tower has no support and needs new anchors before our thunderstorm season arrives. The tower is 70 feet tall and if it falls in any direction, it will cause damage. I was not able to find any anchors so far. I am hopeful that I will have better luck later. I guess that is about it for now. I will post more as things happen.
Paul
Technorati Tags: New Years Day,Checotah,Oklahoma,tower
Christmas
It has finally arrived and I am glad. We have had a nice day so far but it has a little bit of dread since tomorrow we have to go back to work. We could not ask for better weather as it is 60 degrees out there and clear. It looks like a cold front is heading this way and we have a chance of snow tomorrow. I am really greatful for my wonderful family and friends that have made this such a good Christmas. I hope all of you have as nice day as we are having. Only one week until 2008 and I can hardly believe that. What an eventful year with school, pneumonia, gall bladder surgery, and the worst ice storm in Oklahoma history. I think it will end on a positive note giving God the credit for all the blessing we have had.
Thank you all for your support and prayers through this year.
Paul
CHRISTmas, Are You Ashamed?
I know I have posted in the past about this sad topic before but I thought being Christmas eve, it is relevant to mention again. In that previous post, I was angry and was speaking out of emotion. First the picture above is an example of what has always made me proud to live in Oklahoma City. This is one of the few places that still acknowledges Jesus in the Christmas celebration. I took this photo on the top of the parking garage at St. Anthony hospital in Northwest Oklahoma City. It was taken on Christmas eve in 2006. I just love that our downtown buildings still display the cross of Jesus on their buildings as a badge of honor and I think this is very important.
Discaimer: I use Godaddy.com as the domain registrar and hosting for this site and I love them. I really am pleased with their service and would recommend them to others.
In this photo, I took a screen shot of an email that I received via email yesterday. It was very nicely put together and wished myself and my family “…a Happy Holiday and a fantastic New Year.” I think it is unfortunate that Godaddy has chosen to follow the trend of other companies around Christmas that refer to Christmas as “HOLIDAY” instead of Christmas. This advertisement is so blatant because they single out Christmas as Holiday, and then go on to mention New Year by name. I think this is a conscious decision that companies are making to omit Jesus CHRIST from Christmas. Their motives are never announced so it leaves us to speculate. I would guess they would probably say they do not want to offend those of other religions by mentioning a Christian holiday by name. This is unfortunate because Christmas is a Christian holiday specifically to celebrate the birth of Jesus. This is the only holiday among all the other holidays this time of year that plays Christmas music, and giving gifts.
I would venture to say that the real issue that would never be admitted to is being ashamed of Jesus. There are millions of people in the United States that celebrate Christmas that do not even believe in Jesus. They want to play the game without any commitments. Companies want to sell their goods and take advantage of Christmas without acknowledging Jesus, the very reason for the holiday. You cannot have it both ways. Since they do not believe in Jesus, they will likely not listen to this argument either but I think it is relevant and important to know.
The Bible says in Luke 16:13…
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Also Jesus says in Mark 8:38…
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
This is so important because Christmas celebrates Jesus and these words are His own words. His words are more relevant than anything else. The way Christmas has been been displayed in recent years on television with advertising has been a complete turn off for me. It makes it not even feel like Christmas and I find myself muting every Christmas commercial on television. In their attempts to not offend other religions, they have successfully offended the very people that celebrate Jesus’s birth. I am not advocating boycotting businesses or anything but rather be a light. If you believe in Jesus, then do not be afraid to admit it and tell people about Him. Do not be ashamed of Jesus by taking the easy way out and saying “HOLIDAY”.
Winter Arrives
Winter arrived today with a roar. When I woke up this morning it was 39 degrees and was drizzling. Later today, it started getting colder, and a strong North wind. Around 12:30 am it started snowing very hard today. I was amazed at how hard the snow was coming down and how hard the wind was blowing. Around 6:00 pm the clouds cleared away and the temperature continued to get colder. As of now, it is 22 degrees and the roads are very slick. You would hardly know that just yesterday it was in the upper 60’s and sunny. Our weather changes very suddenly. We received around one inch of snow today and I am glad it is gone now. This has already been a cold and snowy and icy this month. Lets hope that tomorrow is a little better and stays warmer.
Evil Eye
This is one of the funniest and cutest videos that I have seen in a long time.
Update 21 December 2007
This is a momentous occasion in that I have completed a whole week of work without taking off. Is that sad or what? With sickness, and ice storms ruling the day, I have really burned some vacation days. Today was the last day of work before Christmas. It is after 11:00 pm and my wife, son, and girlfriend, and her friend are putting up the Christmas tree. It is only four days from Christmas and it does not even feel like Christmas at all. It is not that I did not want to put the tree up, but I have not really been in the mood.
While they are putting up the tree, I am watching the Dallas Mavericks beating the Los Angeles Clippers on ESPN and barely able to stay awake. Whether I go to bed at 8:00 pm, or midnight, I always wake up before the alarm and have not had much sleep this week. We cut many tree limbs this week and put them in the front yard since the city is going to come around and pick up the ice damaged tree limbs. In January, I am going to do the impossible deed of paying someone to cut the next door neighbor’s tree down to the ground. That tree has damaged our home many times and has been a constant trouble.
Today at work I watched a display that really bothered me. Maybe I am overreacting but I will let you be the judge. There are three women at my work that have done some research to find a family that has endured hardship on Tinker AFB. While I was off for surgery, they collected money at work and then spent two weeks wrapping Christmas presents on the clock. They bought more than 50 presents and put them on banquet tables at work and called the family to come to work to receive them. They made them open the presents while more than 100 workers stood by and watched. I made a point to leave the area against my supervisor’s wishes because I thought this was shameful. I thought making a sideshow of this family was humiliating for them and I did not want to be associated with it. I think a more appropriate approach would have been to anonymously deliver these gifts and not subject them to the humiliation of opening these gifts in front of everyone with the cameras flashing. I may be wrong but in my opinion, this whole display was more for the benefit of those three women getting a pat on the back than it was a gesture of compassion. If I am wrong, let me know because I do not wish to be judgmental in this but I just did not get a good feeling about this.
Again, I have not really been in the Christmas mood this year. I am hopeful that I am wrong in my opinion of the above story because I really would hate to embarrass a family like that. Well guys… I see this blog post really going in the wrong direction reflecting my fatigue. I better get off here and get some sleep.
The Media is So Biased About Global Warming
In the story below taken from Yahoo News, you can read the anger in the writer’s tone when reporting this story. The part in bold italicised print shows the bias. They just cannot stand it when someone points out that global warming is not man made because it goes against the left wing liberal template.
Small group of US experts insist global warming not man-made
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A small group of US experts stubbornly insist that, contrary to what the vast majority of their colleagues believe, humans may not be responsible for the warming of the planet Earth.
These experts believe that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and they point to reams of data they say supports their assertions.
These conclusions are in sharp contradiction to those of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reached its conclusions using largely similar data.
The UN body of about 3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming.
In mid-November the IPCC adopted a landmark report stating that the evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet was now “unequivocal.”
Retreating glaciers and loss of snow in Alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost shows that climate change is already on the march, the report said.
Carbon pollution, emitted especially by the burning of oil, gas and coal, traps heat from the Sun, thus warming the Earth’s surface and inflicting changes to weather systems.
A group of US scientists however disagree, and have written an article on their views that is published in The International Journal of Climatology, a publication of Britain’s Royal Meteorological Society.
“The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, doesn’t show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming,” wrote lead author David Douglas, a climate expert from the University of Rochester, in New York state.
“The inescapable conclusion is that human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming,” Douglas wrote.
According to co-author John Christi from the University of Alabama, satellite data “and independent balloon data agree that the atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface,” while greenhouse models “demand that atmospheric trend values be two to three times greater.”
Data from satellite observations “suggest that greenhouse models ignore negative feedback produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects” of human carbon dioxide emissions.
The journal authors “have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases.”
For Fred Singer, a climatologist at the University of Virginia and another co-author, the current warming “trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep sea sediments and stalagmites . . . and published in hundreds of papers in peer reviewed journals.”
How these cyclical climate take place is still unknown, but they “are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on cloudiness, and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface and thus the climate.”
Singer said at a recent National Press Club meeting in Washington that there is still no definite proof that humans can produce climate change.
The available data is ambiguous, Singer said: global temperatures, for example, rose between 1900 and 1940, well before humans began to burn the enormous quantities of hydrocarbons they do today. Then they dropped between 1940 and 1975, when the use of oil and coal increased, he said.
Singer believes that other factors — like variations of solar winds and terrestrial magnetic field that impact cloud formations and the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, and thus determining the temperature — are much more influential than human-generated greenhouse gas emissions.
Technorati Tags: Global Warming,Media Bias,Liberal