Monthly Archives: April 2008

Animals, Eric, Monica, Music, Suzie

T Night

I went over to Suzie and Eric’s for T Night. I was pretty sure that the night would conclude with Suzie conceding that she was too far behind in the race for Monica’s Friend of the Year 2008 that she should just do the gracious thing and bow out of the race.

Instead the night concluded with a rousing round of video games. I have not played a video game in multiple years, but if you look at the pictures below, you might find some photographic evidence of an event that might not repeat its self for several years. I believe the game in which we were engaged is called Rock Band.


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Monica

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The Band

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Rock Band Cat

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The Band

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Jeff

We ripped up some Nirvana, Oasis and Radiohead.

Baier

CASA Fundraiser

My good friends the Baiers are active with a group known as CASA. They are having a fundraiser this week. Take a look at their poster.

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What is CASA?

The shorthand version is that they help children with crappy parents.

The long version goes something like this:

In 1977, a Seattle judge conceived the idea of using trained community volunteers to speak for the best interests of abused and neglected children in court. So successful was this program that soon judges across the country began utilizing citizen advocates. In 1990, the US Congress encouraged the expansion of CASA programs with passage of the Victims of Child Abuse Act.

Today, we have grown to a network of more than 50,000 volunteers that serve 225,000 abused and neglected children through 900+ local program offices nationwide. Our advocates, also known as volunteer guardians ad litem in some jurisdictions, are appointed members of the court. Judges rely on the information these trusted advocates present.

They rely on the CASA’s to do home visits with families and then report to the judge, and decisions are usually made whether or not the parent can keep guardianship. Most mother’s do want to keep their kids, so they will try harder; but every year they do take the kids from the parent.

http://www.nationalcasa.org/

It sounds like a pretty good group to me. Looks like a pretty sweet playhouse as well. So if you have a daughter or even a son that is a little fruity, seems like you could do worse with 5 or 10 bucks.

Baier, Basketball, Bill, Faust, Frank, Jesse, Lowell, Mark, Robert, Russell, Tim, Toby, Willy

The Roundball Oracles: Year 4

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2005-William McAlpine
2006-William McAlpine
2007-Tim Peterson

Now the name Mark Wolfram will sit proudly next to theirs. The miracle comeback of Kansas made them champions. It also made Mark the third champion of The Roundball Oracles (An NCAA tournament pool).

The Final Standings:

  1. Mark Wolfram (Taiwan Hoops) 136 points
  2. Lowell Davis (Davis) 114 points
  3. Jesse Howard (Goldie’s Bracket Brilliance) 108 points
  4. Dan Dill (dandydan) 92 points
  5. Corey Faust (UCLA Love) 90 points
  6. Jason Baier (Baier’s Winning Bracket) 90 points
  7. Tim Peterson (Dominate Monkey) 87 points
  8. Toby Sebring (esgefhg) 85 points
  9. Me (The Zechariah of the Hardwood) 85 points
  10. Willy McAlpine (william) 84 points
  11. Bill Wentworth (Bill’s) 84 points
  12. Frank Meiners (FHM) 75 points
  13. Nate Buckingham (Wade Lookingbill allstars) 73 points
  14. Robert Henning (Drake Bandwagon) 64 points
  15. Russell Kennerly (Fighting Grossmans) 61 points

A trophy has been ordered and will be given to Mark when he returns from Taiwan. I miss college basketball already.

Boone FUMC

Class of 1993

I’ve had some strange encounters with members of the Class of 1993.

My home loan officer is from that legendary class.

I ran into a member from the class at a nursing home.

Then I met a member of the class during Fellowship at church.

Interesting.

Black & White, Nature

Foggy

It was a bit foggy on the way to work. Here are some pictures from my commute.


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Looking down South Benton

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The alley across the street

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Leaving town on Mamie

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This semi was so slow

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Dickcissel Park

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Road next to Dickcissel Park

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Entrance ramp

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US 30

It is probably rather evident that I was driving while taking some of these pictures. Some people might think that is rather dangerous and a stupid thing to do. I would agree that it would be dangerous and stupid if you were doing it, but if I’m doing it, then it must not be stupid. I’ll concede your point on dangerous.

House, Jaycees, Music

Acceptance

I got home from a Jaycees meeting tonight. We were able to hammer out the details of the band contract. This was actually way more difficult than I figured it would be. It included some quite lively debate about whether or not we should follow the law or not.

I got home and saw an envelope from my bank (Bank of the Bear). I was expecting this letter but was not expecting what was inside. Apparently my bank, that hasn’t been all that good to me in the past, is actually willing to throw me a ton of cash to buy a house.

This was pleasant, but now I have to start actually doing some research and start saving up some funds for the expenses. At least I have the money and I know who my realtor is going to be. That much of the process is done.

History, Movies

Chicago 10

Last night I went to the Varsity with Nader to see Chicago 10. This is a fascinating documentary about the trial of the Chicago 7, 8 or 10 depending on what name you want to use. The film mixes animation with archival footage. I’m not fan of hippies, yippies, Democrats, police, Chicago, numbers, or 1968, but this film is fascinating.

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If you are wondering why there the movie is called Chicago 10 when the group was originally known as the Chicago 8 and then the Chicago 7, well there is an interesting story.

When the trial began there were 8 defendants. Bobby Seale (the leader of the Black Panthers that was only in Chicago for a couple hours during the Democratic National Convention) was denied his right of defending himself. Actually he was originally denied his right of having his own attorney. He wanted his trial delayed while his attorney recovered from surgery. When this was denied he requested to defend himself and that request was denied.

In the end, Bobby Seale was severed from the trial and sentenced to 4 years in jail for Contempt. Thus the Chicago 8 became the Chicago 7. However, Jerry Rubin insists that they should be referred to as the Chicago 10 because the two lawyers that defended them also spent time in prison as a result of the trial.

That is the hardest part to soak in for me. How often do lawyers end up in jail because of the people that they are defending? Or because of how crooked the judicial system was at that time?

Jerry Rubin is quoted as saying:

“Anyone who calls us the Chicago Seven is a racist. Because you’re discrediting Bobby Seale. You can call us the Chicago Eight, but really we’re the Chicago Ten, because our two lawyers went down with us.”

The film is definitely heavily slanted towards the side of the protesters, but I don’t really know how it couldn’t be.

Blogging

Coppermine

I’ve started the process of creating new photo galleries. I’ve decided to finally update my photo galleries and have stumbled across a new way of doing the galleries. I just need to get Frank to install MySQL and PHP on his server. He doesn’t like installing new things, so between that and tinkering and get it working, it might be a few weeks.

When it gets installed and is rolling, it will be a million times easier to update my galleries, plus people will be able to leave comments. So keep tuned for developments and perhaps an invitation in your inbox to be a beta tester for the new galleries.