The Life and Times of The Partially-genius...

If I had any doubt that I can’t have dairy products anymore, I have my answer today.  I stopped at Taco Bell last night and got some tacos to bring over to Becca’s work and have dinner with her.  I remember thinking that the cheese on the tacos probably won’t be a big dea.  Boy was I wrong!  Within an hour from leaving for home, I started getting a dull headache. Now this morning, it is like when I have had what I thought were migraines in the past.  I am going to stay in bed today…

Okay, so many of you know already, but I got a Zune. I used to have an old Creative Labs Nomad Zen that did just fine, except for one complaint. When I would use it in the car, it was very difficult to control. If I didn’t setup a playlist in advance, it was next to impossible to use. The two biggest issues were the fact that none of the controls were on the face of the Zen. They are all located on both sides. The other issue is that the screen is way too small to be able to see what is playing without taking it off of the dash and moving it close to my eyes. Trying to do this while driving is not a good idea, so needless to say, I didn’t do it too often.

Normally, the controls on the side is not a bad thing. The problem while driving is that I had to do it all by touch and they aren’t built for that. There is no way to determine what button does what.

I was very happy with the Zen except for those issues. It was 20GB, which was a little small, but usable. The battery lasted for upwards of 10 hours.

Well, since I have been going on more and more drives and every month it seems my drive-time to work is getting longer, I decided that I needed something a bit more user friendly. After researching the various DAPs (Digital Audio Players), I selected the Zune.

I sold my Zen to a co-worker and went off to Walmart (where it was $25 cheaper than anywhere else) and picked on up after work a couple of weeks ago.

Now, even though it is a Microsoft product, it does the job very well. The screen is huge! When a song is playing, it lists both the time counting up and counting down. The album art (if you have it) is displayed on the top 2/3rds of the screen. It is a beauty to behold.

I can now glance over towards my radio and see the Zune screen with the song playing as if I was glancing at the speedometer. It is that big! All of the controls are on the front so they are easily accessible.

The Zune team gets my congratulations on an almost perfect machine. I have only a couple complaints:

Firstly, there is no easy way to listen to audio books or podcasts. You can sync the mp3 file, but when you do a “shuffle all music” option, it will throw those files in along with the music. That is something that the iPod doesn’t do. It is smart enough to know that you don’t want to listen to chapter 3 of War and Peace in the middle of listening to Tobymac.

Secondly, there is no way to easily listen to “ranked” songs. The Zune Marketplace media player and the Zune itself have the ability to rank a song from 0 stars to 5 stars. It would be nice to be able to select music and like selecting “album”, “artist”, “genre”, or “playlist”, there should also be “rating”.

I got an email sent to me that has a huge dog in the image with a man and a woman and a horse.  At first it looked to be amazing, but then I started to look closer.  I thought perhaps that the image looked fake, but I couldn’t quite tell for sure.  After a few minutes of research though, the prevailing thought is that the text is incorrect, I don’t know about the image.  The message follows:

Hercules: The World’s Biggest Dog Ever According to Guinness World Records

Hercules was recently awarded the honorable distinction of World’s Biggest Dog by Guinness World Records. Hercules is an English Mastiff who has a 38 inch neck and weighs 282 pounds (128 kgms).   With “paws the size of softballs” (reports the Boston Herald), the three-year-old monster is far larger and heavier than his breed’s standard  200lb. (91 kgms) limit.

Hercules’ owner Mr. Flynn says that Hercules  weight is natural and not induced by a bizarre diet: “I fed him  normal food and he just grew”….
And grew. And grew.
And grew.

Hm. “Ismail Ax” was evidently scrawled on the VT gunman’s arm. I heard a suggestion in reference to the Bible, where Ismail (Ishmael) is the eldest son of Abraham (or Ibrahim in Arabic) via Sarah’s servant Hagar.

As Christians, we know that demons are still at work in the world today. What if Ismail Ax is a demon’s name? There are few demon names mentioned in the Bible, perhaps the most well known being Legion.

Demons definately know Jesus Christ.  They also are in the habit of sowing deceit and uncertainty.  It would certainly explain a lot if Ismail Ax is a demon.  One of Cho’s lines in something sent to CNN was “You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience, you thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.”

I am by no means trying to trivialize this tragedy, nor am I pointing blame to something that many people in the world don’t believe in.  Even in saying this, I expect to get some flame mail…

To anyone willing and able;

Becca’s mom and dad are going to be collecting, cutting, and stacking wood this coming Sunday starting at noon.  We will be receiving a genuine home cooked Italian meal as payment and some good old muscle and perhaps even fat burning!

If anyone plans to help, let me know.