Middle America's Worldview

I had heard a special fox report regarding "honor killing in America". I have it recorded, but haven't watched it yet.

Stop the ACLU has the special on their website. You can see it here.

Of course we are speaking of the Muslim faith, regarding Honor Killings. I noticed the commercial I seen for it, didn't mention the religion, rather the killings.


Of course, this is nothing new in other countries. Yet, we are shocked in America. Why? Because some muslims are willing to be acclimated in our country, others are not.

Since the family is away, I been getting some things done around the house.
I've already managed to get half of my honey-do list done, and a couple of extra things I wanted to do.

I finished off the remaining 5 lb hotwings tonight. My dad has invited me to dinner tomorrow night. I plan to go over there. It will be a nice change. I think he was really surprised I said yes.

I've been watching the first season of Lost. I never seen it, and now see why the show was such a hit.

I miss my kids and wife, but glad to get some things done here.

This evening, my evening runs became this.

1) Return weather strips to a store
2) Grabbed some duct tape, reusable unit filter for the house
3) Ran to the alarm systems to pick up a new battery (from our 2 a.m call)
4) Ran to mother-in-laws work to pick up item
5) Run to bank to cash a check from the weekend
6) Run back home to finish my hot wings

I was able to put in the new filter and replace that battery tonight.

This is pretty staggering, or is it? It is estimated 8.5-9 billion web pages on the Internet now, indexed only. Index means what Yahoo and Google has in their database to search, not necessarily the number that exist. There is probably never going to be a true idea of existing sites as it changes per minutes.

Taking that in perspective, does this news seem so staggering?

"EVERY five seconds, a website falls prey to hackers and gets infected with malicious software. This puts visiting
surfers at risk of having their computer systems infected.

That startling figure is from a recently published report by IT security and control firm Sophos.

The half-yearly report, which was released last Thursday, documents the latest trends and figures on Internet security and cyber-crime within the first six months of this year.

According to Sophos, an average of 16,173 malicious webpages are discovered each day, and a whopping "90 per cent of these webpages are legitimate sites which have been hacked".

Surprisingly, these sites are prominent and esteemed ones.

The website of Cambridge University Press was hacked in April, and the website belonging to the Association of Tennis Professionals a month later. According to the report, even government agencies are not spared."

Full article here

Another awesome movie, called "The Kingdom".



I was able to watch this yesterdsy, simply awesome. The last 30 minutes was simply full of action and awesome! From start to finish action and drama.

Synopsis:
"When a deadly bombing attack targets Americans in the Middle East, a counterterrorism squad is dispatched to find the culprits. Once they arrive in the desert, the U.S. agents (an ensemble that includes Jamie Foxx as the group's leader) learn that in these parts, they are the true enemy. With their investigation hampered by local bureaucracy, the team realizes they may be the terrorists' next target. Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman also star."

Talk about a cool movie! I watched it last night, while alone and it was a great guy flick.



Premis:
"Based on a true 1971 event, this thriller tells the story of Terry (Jason Statham), a car dealer who becomes involved in a London bank heist only to find that the contents of the bank vault will draw him deeply and irrevocably into the city's criminal underbelly. Murder and scandal abound in this tale of corruption populated with a surprising mix of offenders, from low-level thugs to government officials and all the way up to the royal family."

It has MI5,some nudity, drama, intrique and just all around great movie.

I realize Miley C. is on a bad train leading to the pits with her actions. However, I am more interested in the hack of her Gmail.

After getting to bed nearly 11 p.m., I was awaken by a siren going off in the house.
Man, was it loud. I jumped out of bed and did a dash like I was 18 again to the alarm system. I am not sure I even opened my eyes. If there was a robber, I would had sacked him like a freight train trying to get to that system.
After about 5 tries, I finally shut it off. The wife was asking "what the h###". I checked the doors, ect. and all were still locked up tight. Better call the alarm people to ensure I don't need the cops. Although, that would had made for some interesting conversation for the neighborhood.
So I called them and they asked what does the screen on the system show. The lady on the phone didn't realize it took me 4 minutes to find the right keys on the phone through my blurry eyes.

I checked the screen and it mentioned "low battery". This thing has a battery?
Evidently it does. It must use the battery, when the electric is out. Obviously, that's not the case. I wonder if those Cable guys screwed something up the other day?
So when there is light outside and I have more than 3 hours sleep, I will be crawling in the attic to check/replace the battery. Then do an alarm test. (at this point I am suspecting she didn't even know our alarm went off)

During all this drama, the kids remained asleep or non-moving. How they can manage, I have no idea. Even the dog was spinning like a top during that world war 2 siren.

I just read a very interesting article regarding the new step for internet users.
full article here.

It uses GovTrack.us as the example.

A full implemented website that harnesses all the current tech on the net.

Think of the site Tauberer has created as a virtual news fetcher, bringing all the relevant info right to your PC. No more need to surf around the Internet or plow through wordy government sites. It all comes to one spot, his Web site.

Such Web-service sites are just starting to catch on, thanks to technologies such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is sort of a lingua franca for Net programmers, and Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, which make it possible for sites to easily share data. It's not a stretch to say they could revolutionize the way content is delivered.

This is what I been waiting for. It will remove the need for searching, to a great extent. Rather going out there looking all the time, you can bring the subject to you.

Other sites hope to use Web services to grab a chunk of the classifieds market. In March, LinkedIn.com, a social-networking site for 1.8 million professionals, will begin using a Web service to collect job ads from all over the Internet on its site.

Through the site's social network, a LinkedIn.com customer interested in a listing will be able to find out if the recruiter is a friend of a friend, and if so, get a referral, says Konstantin Guericke, LinkedIn.com's vice-president for marketing. LinkedIn.com is working out an agreement with sites like Feedster.com to post their jobs data.

It's only the early days of information Web services, of course. But the potential is huge. Consider this: Just 10 years ago, businesses were tiptoeing to the Web, trying to figure out if they could make money on it.

Today, the question isn't "if?" It's "how much?" Ten years from now, savvy business folks will be asking the same of informational Web services.

Awesome. Now we need the information to create our own personal "All in one' sites to really get going.

I am on the edge of like/dislike. The acting, action is great. The special effects were phenomenal. However, the message of the movie was bleak.




I understand they wanted to convey the horrible tragedy going on in Burma. This is akin to Darfur. Freaking Genocide. Yet, it would had been nice to see one lost soul saved by the christian group.

Over the past week (more like 2), I been delving into the online tutorials, book on PHP/MYSQL.

Ideally, I want to be able to pull the information from a database, and have it viewed on a configured, concise layout, via the web. This would allow me to simply update the database, and not to have to re-configure the webpage so much.

The hardest thing is getting the construction down. I am getting close in the understanding, but man it's time consuming.

The way I normally work, is take a existing working project. Unravel it to see how it works, then try to apply those same means in my own desired format.

I already pulled some scripts down from the net and going through them. I already have a PHP/MYSQL book I bought for reference. Yet, there is nothing the same as writing and testing your own code.

Currently Resource for the Christian is using an existing script/sql I had found. Yet, I want to do more with it, rather than being a hack.

I have another free site I am using to simply test out on.

I keep saying the mantra in my head, "Once you get the basics down, you can do anything with it". I truly believe this. I am just working on getting that initial "aha" to come through.

I have to give a shout-out and say, I am really proud of my wife. She has continued to run after her first 5K. She really seems be loving this.

This morning she did 5 miles. I find that to be estoric. So a shout-out to my wife to say way to go!

Yesterday marked my 13 years of marriage. Looking back at the old pictures, we were just kids. The best gift I received? A wonderful full year with my wife of course.


Yesterday, during a work break, I figured I would walk with the kids. Our area is made out, where if you walked from end to end 3.5 times, it equals out to a mile. My kids been doing this with my wife for some time now, but me, not so much. My daughter said, "lets run to the end". Sure, why not. By the time I was at the stop sign (1/2 way), my heart was screaming 'what the hell'.

I kidded with my daughter (after I regained my breathe and composure), my heart was asking me 'why are we running, is there a twinkie down there?' She thought it was hillarous. But in the end, I managed to walk the remaining mile.


Last night, the homeschool group had the water park to themselves. Needless to say, I played like a kid. Rather, I tried to keep up with mine. They had some neat slides we had to go down way more than once. However, you had to walk up bloody four stories to the top. The first 2-3 times were not bad, after the eight time up, I was not only feeling it, I was getting slower. My son the ever energizer bunny kept baiting me "Comeon slowpoke, old man". Sigh, I was feeling it. I am feeling it more this morning.

Irregardless, I think we all had fun.

So, with all the physical exertion I am not used to, I am feeling it this morning.

Not as young as I use to be

We had a relaxing weekend. Too bad, these times are the ones that seem to run faster. But these days, everyone seems to be running out of time.

From relaxing weekend to yet another busy week. All remote employees from my company should had received a call by end day last Friday. I know of 2 groups that are indeed effected. One a really good friend. The burden of choice is not so much as, where does my friend go from here. I hope the company realizes many families simply cannot leave their current locations. Perhaps they do realize it, or perhaps they simply don't care.


For this week I have a board meeting Monday night and 13 year anniversary on top of my regular schedule of events.

My wife and I finally watched "Defnitely, Maybe" last night. It was a cute movie. Worth renting.

I came across this interesting video where the news reports T-Rex soft tissue was found.



You can see additional videos at Resource for the Christian

T-Rex soft tissue found

More good news came my way yesterday. My dad's doctor appt. came in saying everything was good. He was obviously happy last night informing me. Yesterday, my wife's doctor appt. also came in good.

After being on stress alert, with all this good news coming in, I can't help being excited yet speculative. Isn't that like humans, always pessimist.


On another note, my 13 year anniversary is next week. I can't believe it's been 13 years already. Then I look at my kids and realize how far we have really gone. During our 7th year anniversay we joked about the "itch". Supposedly around 7 years, couples tend to get the itch to split. Obvioiusly, this had not occured for us.

I was told this morning, most men break the union around year 15 or 17. Guess, mid-life hits and they need that young blood to make them feel younger. Irregardless, we were mentioning the excrutiating things that would happen to me, if that had ever occured. Jokingly of course, ahem.

Although, unless I had the money by then, I am not sure what the young blood would want. Surely I will be fatter and with less hair by then, given my dilemma at this point.

Never fear though, if a dull knife doesn't scare a guy, this will. My wife works for two lawyers. Think a one room apartment with no weekend money sounds like a drag, think of a cardboard box instead. But I digress.

Fortunately for us, I really don't think any of that will happen. Personally, I have no desire to ruin such a good relationship. Everyone (including ours) has it's ups and downs. However, when I see the alternatives, there's no challenge there.

I had posted a bit of stress in the past. Part of the burden has been lifted. As my fellow 4-5 readers know, radical changes have been occuring in our company. We has an updated meeting early this week, indicating 25% of the IS Dept was remote and 25% were working one or two days at home. They felt this was unacceptable having 50% (at times) of the work force not working within the corporate building. So, the first phase was requiring all local employees to drive to work, removing the ability to work at home. Yes, that sucked for most, considering 4 bucks a gallon and traffic in PA pretty much bites. If hit wrong, 35 miles can take 1 to 1.5 hours to get to work.

The second phase was to pull in 1/2 of the remotes back to corporate. We were informed 16-18 remotes will be effected. All remotes will be given "the call" to inform them if they are indeed affected by this. If so, your two options were some assistance to move in, or some assistance to move on. Most thought the our team would be ok, but as I said before and still believe, you only know what is told to you.

Irregardless, I received the call yesterday informing me my position and team was not effected. I had to ask if the company plans to re-evaluate the remotes a year from now, as they are currently. I was told no. So at this point buisiness as usual. I am scheduled to go up to PA in August for a week.

It was a huge stress relief, to say the least. Everyone at work kept asking if I will have to go, will I go, ect. I couldn't answer. I really didn't know.

Now I am thankful that part is over with. I still feel sick for those who are effected. It sucks. They were hired as remotes, but now that's being changed.

Yesterday I had to go to the doc. I had another bad headache. So, if I acquire another one, my job was to call the doc. Note: I never use to get headaches. In fact, I rarely get sick, knock on wood.

So, I called them to inform them as I was chewing down 3 tylenols. They called back and said they happen to have a cancel, 'why don't you come on in'. Sure. Why not, what else do I have to do but work.

The doc suspects it's migraines. The uni-lateral (one sided) pain, more than one day, yada yada. Take this freebie drug and see if that helps. So I took it then and there, sense I was still having tension.

This morning it's better. At first, I didn't think it was going to help out yesterday, but the pain later subsided. However, having 85 mg/500mg running through me, I felt like a deadpan. So I wasn't much into conversation.

I kept conveying to the doc, I never use to get headaches, but no answer was found. Simply, let's try this.

Hmm, why might I be getting them now? I know my eyes are OK, I had them checked. I suspect stress.

My wife and kids are leaving for out of town in less than two weeks.
My son is having a procedure on the brain.
I am fighting with the insurance to cover what shouldn't be questioned.
My company is radically changing with little communication.

Hmm, yeah, some things going on.

Below is a full article regarding a UK school forcing the students to practice religion during class.
Although, this is the main part of the story, notice the last two paragraphs. It indicates Britain will soon see Sharia Law being put in place. To me, this is the more pronounced story.

---------
'If Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion there would be war'
Posted: July 04, 2008
6:15 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Two seventh-grade boys were given detention and their classmates forced to miss their scheduled refreshment break when the pair refused to kneel and pray to Allah during a religious studies class.
Outraged parents called the punishment of the boys for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration at Alsager High School near Stoke-on-Trent, UK, of how Muslims' worship Allah a breach of their human rights.
"This isn't right, it's taking things too far," parent Sharon Luinen told the London Daily Mail.
"I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that, but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer. Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful.
"I don't want this to look as if I have a problem with the school because I am generally very happy with it."

Last month, WND reported Principal Robin Lowe was reassigned after staging a mandatory lesson in Islamic religious beliefs for nearly 900 students at her Houston-area school.
The controversy erupted at Friendswood Junior High when students were diverted from a scheduled physical education class and taken to a special assembly.
In the 40-minute session, representatives of the Houston office of the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization critics link to terrorist groups, presented a lesson in the religious beliefs and requirements of Islam.
The CAIR representatives instructed students that Adam, Noah and Jesus are prophets; announced "there is one god, his name is Allah"; taught the five pillars of Islam; told students how to pray five times a day; and gave instruction on Islamic religious requirements for dress.
The assembly had not been authorized by the district, officials confirmed.
In May, officials at a Minnesota charter school, housed in the same building as a mosque, attacked a television news crew investigating whether the publicly funded institution had complied with a state order to stop accommodating Islamic prayers and religious programs.
The investigation followed revelations by a substitute teacher who observed children being forced to participate in Islamic prayers.
In the Alsager School incident, the religion teacher, who was not named, made the class wear Muslim headgear and watch a short film. Afterward, she took prayer mats from her cupboard and said, "we are now going out to pray to Allah," parents claimed.
"I am absolutely furious my daughter was made to take part in it and I don't find it acceptable," said parent Karen Williams.
"Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right. They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."
"My child has been forced to pray to Allah in a school lesson," the grandfather of one of the students said. "It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it. My daughter and a lot of other mothers are furious about their children being made to kneel on the floor and pray to Islam. If they didn't do it they were given detention.
"I am not racist, I've been friendly with an Indian for 30 years. I've also been to a Muslim wedding where it was explained to me that alcohol would not be served and I respected that. But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion there would be war."
Keith Plant, Alsager's deputy headmaster, said with summer break, many of the staff was unavailable and he could not comment fully.
"I think that it is a shame that so many parents have got in touch with the press before coming to me. I have spoken to the teacher and she has articulately given me her version of events, but that is all I can give you at the moment."
Cheshire County Council issued a statement telling parents "inquiries are being made into the circumstances as a matter of urgency.
"Educating children in the beliefs of different faith is part of the diversity curriculum on the basis that knowledge is essential to understanding. We accept that such teaching is to be conducted with some sense of sensitivity."
Revelation of the incident follows this week's pronouncement by the UK's top judge, Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips, that Islamic sharia law should be used in the UK.
In a speech to an East London mosque, Phillips said, "Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'
"Those who are in dispute are free to subject it to mediation or to agree that it shall be resolved by a chosen arbitrator. There is no reason why principles of sharia law or any other religious code should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of dispute resolution."
Phillips signaled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments – and divorce rulings – complied with the law of the land.
In February, WND reported Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, chief of the 70-million-strong worldwide Anglican Communion, advocated the establishment of Islamic law in Britain.

The weekend was an enjoyable 3 day weekend. We had some friends and family over for the fourth. All very comfortable and peaceful.

Now the architect part of my new site, Resource for the Christian is put in place, I am simply adding more and more vids to it. Hopefully, it will become a pretty good resource, as intended.

I watched a very good dvd entitled 'Exodus Decoded' last night. I would highly recommend it. The preview is on my Resource site, under Biblical Archeology.

This coming Tuesday, we should hear the interpretation of working remotes and their future for our company. All remotes I know are basically waiting for this ball to drop. This has become such a topic, the son's owner is coming down to discuss it with the IS department, along with HR to help him. Our new CIO is holding this one close to his vest. I guess we will see tomorrow.

Other than that, another 5 day week, a tremendous headache and 2 weeks before my family goes to Texas. Sigh.

Standardization is hard for most. Your use to doing something in a particular way, then along comes someone to force you to do the same outcome, differently.

We are having this pain in the company I work for. So the stress is high. We just moved over to our new ticketing system, and believe me, I fumbled through my first one.

They have it setup for you to "acknowledge" it. This sounds simple enough. Yet, simply adding comments or putting your actions in the ticket does not "acknowledge" it. You have to go through a certain pathway to change the status to "acknowledge" it. Grr. To compound things, a text page is sent to you initially, then another one in 5 minutes, if you dont "acknowledge" it. after 10 minutes, the page goes to the whole group informing the others this ticket has not been "acknowledged". Within 15 minutes, it hits the team and the supervisor. Yeah, no stress. Just go in there and "acknowledge" the da*n thing. What's absurbing is you cannot text an "acknowldegment". Ahh progress.


Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept. You have everyone doing the same thing, thereby everyone understanding the process, yada yada. This is pretty much where the company is heading. The writing is on the wall, so to speak. Bringing everything in house, rather than outsourcing contracts. The technology is there, so why not utilize it to it's fullest potential?

Same thing for websites. First HTML was pretty much the standard. Then scripting came in to jazz it up. Now PHP/MySQL is reigning. The technology is there for everyone, you just have to go with the flow. Note, you can't keep up with the demand, so you just try to keep up with the requirements.

This is where the other part of the stress at work is having on the employees. No-one knows what the next ball will be. Everything is changing. For some, way too fast for their comfort zone.

Personally, I don't care how you want me to do it. The outcome is the same, the means is whats difference. Just train me to do my job. I don't even care to read those 50 dollar books on my own time.

Another thing which would be a no-brainer, but fails in most levels is communication. People perceive things differently. So, when the gaps are not filled with direct communication, everyone fills them in with their own insecurities. Yeah, you can see what that causes, more stress.

Well, this post turned from a meaningful thought to a rant, unintentially.