A Cup of Joe

My marriage must be good

2008-06-08T15:15:40Z

I've been married to my wife now for 11.5 years. I've known her for almost 21 years total. While I love her a lot, it's always nice when someone else seems to notice that. A couple of weeks ago, we received a card in the mail at home. Here's the text contained in the card:

Even though I am finding such pleasure in my singless, I am aware of the beauty that the Lord had in His Heart when He created marriage.

I can see the love many husbands and wives have for one another, but there are some that stand out in such living color that they are simple a delight to the heart to observe. They are standing as a testimony to God, where ttue love, tenderness, fun, and oneness can be seen glowing around them as a couple, and you can almost feel the pleasure in the Lord's heart!

Thank you for being a couple that adds so much blessing in the house of the Lord by simply wearing your love for one another in living color!

We received this from a single woman in our congregation at church. It was quite the pleasure to receive this card, which is an apparent validation of sorts of the fact that others can see the rather happy marriage Lynn and I have. The best part about this was not so much the note in the card itself, was the fact it was sent by someone we barely know. The woman who sent this was someone I don't believe we've ever actually talked to. When we first received it, I actually thought she was someone else! We have a blind woman in our congregation, I thought the note came from the blind woman, which would have made it extremely impressive! It wasn't her, but the fact that we received this note was a blessing from God. When I finally figured out who it was, I thanked the woman in person, and told her how surprised we were, especially coming from someone we don't speak with very often (hardly at all, actually). Her response was "I meant what I said in there - and you never know who is watching".

Quite the message from the Lord - "Your marriage is good in my eyes", and "Be careful what you do, as you never know who might see you." That's what I took out of this.

Yeah, church is good for me

2008-06-04T03:50:51Z

Here's a story I sent via email to several of my church members on Monday. I had quite a span of three days thinking about Jesus, God, & the Holy Spirit in my life. Check it out:

I wanted to write some of my friends from church and let them know of a powerful thing that happened to me at Church yesterday. I wanted to write several of the people I know from Christ the Redeemer, and several that have left too, as I think the message here transcends any earthly barriers. This is one of those "Filled with Joy" moments that I just wanted to share with everyone.

I've been thinking of late about some of the overall larger issues our church has, and I was focusing on some of the negative aspects of all of this. Due to this, I was feeling rather "blah" about going to church this past Sunday (Jun 1). So I had internally decided on Saturday that I was not going to go to church. No particular reason, other than "I didn't want to". I've skipped a few times in the last few years, but there's usually a reason (airport trip, or needing a family day or something tangible like being sick). This one was nothing other than my own "funk", and my desire to be by myself and "do my own thing", I suppose. Lynn was at work at the time I had decided this, so I didn't tell her about this decision yet. As Lynn was at work, it was "Daddy & Samantha day!". We were driving around and Samantha remembered we went to Sam's Club about a month ago, and she played on the demo version of a video game called "Rock Band". She wanted to do so again, as she liked the drums. For those that don't know, "Rock Band" is a game where you have a microphone, a drum kit, and a guitar, and you play along with pre-recorded songs. So we went to Sam's Club to let her bang on the drums for a few minutes, but the demo kit had been removed, and she was bummed out about it. This is important again later.

When Samantha and I got back home from the trip, I had gotten an email from Spencer Williams. Spencer had asked me to bring my camera with me on Sunday, as it was Commencement Sunday for the discipleship class. He asked if I'd get a picture of the group. So I thought "OK, I'll go - I seem to be Mr. Camera guy anyway". I was just going to go for that, because I do enjoy taking pictures, plus there's been several events captured which if I didn't, there'd be no visual record of. So yeah, I was going just to take pictures, I still kind of didn't want to be there, really.

Well, let me tell you, this is a prime example of "Obedience Brings Blessing". I came, and I felt like it was going to be a day you get once in awhile, where you're just there to "go through the motions". As most of you know, I've had a few injuries in my knee since last August. I fell and really banged up my knee last August originally, and it hurt a lot for quite awhile. It was getting better, and then I twisted my ankle playing in the back yard with Samantha, and most receently I fell on some water on our hardwood floor in the kitchen I did not properly clean up. So I've had some sort of pain in my left knee since last August. When we got to the part in the sevice where we kneel for confession, I was thinking "What do I confess now? - So I told the Lord, "Look, you know me, you know all the stuff I've done, and right now, as I kneel here - I can't think of a single thing to confess, and I know I've done a ton that needs to be confessed, so Lord, I'm sorry that I cannot remember what I've done wrong for you". I was feeling pretty down about not being able to remember my own sins. There's enough of them, I should be able to remember, but I really felt different about this confession, normally I can pass it off to something or another, but this one felt different. Then we got into the community confession part. At the end of it, when Fr L delivers the blessing, I had a rather huge smile, and an overwhelming feeling of happiness. Normally, I feel good about confession, but this was something different. It felt way stronger than usual, and then I realized I was kneeling down on the kneeler, without any pain. That was something I had not done since, well, since we first got them. So I was rather filled with joy about receiving God's blessing, and being pain free at the same time. So I had to offer up thanks for it during prayers from the people (which you may have heard me say during the service). But it didn't stop there.

During Father Lawrence's children's sermon, I took a bunch of pictures. As I try and take pictures with the flash off as to not disturb the service, I tend to take a lot of them because 90% of them are unusable and blurry due to no flash. Well, one of them worked out, and had quite a meaning for me. It was from the second attempt to get the Jesus paper to rise with the balloon. Right before the balloon got to the ceiling, the picture I took had a completely UNMISTAKABLE cross on it. Now the light behind the balloon was not shaped like that, and we don't have any cross shaped lights that I know of in the church. The closest would be the big wooden cross behind the altar, but there's no way I can think of that this cross would reflect on the balloon like this. I can only conclude that this was a message from God that I was supposed to be there today. Both to receive the absolution from sin, to feel pain free - this cross on the balloon was a message for me, I think. I did not see this cross until later in the afternoon on Sunday when I had dumped the pictures from my camera to my computer. It was quite powerful - I just stared at it for awhile. I'm not the kind of person who sees these things - I don't see "Jesus in a pancake", or "The Virgin Mary in tree bark". So for me to see a cross in an object like that was quite powerful to me. Since God knows I'm a computer person, and someone who takes a lot of pictures, it felt like he was using this technology to reach out to me, and deliver me a message that he was glad I was there when I didn't want to be.

So I get to work today, trying to figure out how to tell people about all this, and in my company's interoffice email was a guy here who was selling his copy of the aforementioned "Rock Band" game from earlier in my story. He was selling it for about 33% off, and I wrote him back saying "It's tempting man, as my little girl wanted to go bang on the demo unit at Sam's Club Saturday, but it wasn't there - I almost bought one on the spot - but I really don't have the free cash to buy a $150 game, even discounted to $100, but thanks for the offer". About ten minutes later, the guy shows up in my office, carrying the Rock Band game stuff. I said "Dude, my email was to say I was tempted, I really can't afford to buy this, as much as I'd like to". He responded with "I know. The joy of your little girl is a better thing to receive than the money I'd get." I protested again with something like "That's nice dude, but you could get some money for this". He told me "Shut up, and take it home would ya?" So I backed off and accepted it. It was a very kind gift, and right after it happened, I could only thank the Lord for being in this man's heart. When I replied to him about Samantha, I honestly was not intending to seek out a gift like that. The Lord must have been working in his heart. I feel it's a nice bookend to the last 36 hours or so with me. I was obedient to God's call to come to him and come to his house, so I was blessed both spiritually, and with an Earthly blessing, too.

I have to admit to still being a bit surprised by all this. Spencer, thanks for the email, my friend - or I would have likely missed all of this.

Guitar Hero III Now Online

2008-05-01T20:46:39Z

God Bless Samantha

2008-04-29T06:25:51Z

In the last couple of months, we've found that Samantha's emotions aren't that of a really young kid. Oh, she just passed her third birthday, so we do get "three year old"-itis, but in general, she seems much more mature than her age is.

She certainly doesn't like it when Mommy or Daddy have any sort of raised voice. If that happens, or one of us sounds sad for any reason, she'll usually go "What's wrong, Mommy?" or "Are you OK, Daddy?" One of her other favorites is to say "Can you make a happy face?" When you're not in a good mood, that one is hard to deal with, because you want to make her happy, and you know that she realizes you're not happy. She's quite observant of our feelings and moods.

One thing she has done since she was rather young was that whenever she heard some sort of siren, or saw emergency vehicle flashing lights when in the truck, she'd say "God Bless Them". She's grown a lot in her usage of religious things, and it's quite glorious to me as her father. For ages, we've been saying the Lord's Prayer when she goes to bed. Well, in Church after she comes in for a blessing during communion she stays afterwards. When Communion is done, everyone says the Lord's Prayer, and the light bulb went on for her, and she has started saying it with everyone else. Being three, she says it in that loud monotone kid voice, but darnit, it's cute! What else is cute about that is she's started blessing herself at the end of it. We've noticed that she has started closing her eyes when we say prayers for her (or our clergy at church doing it for her during blessings). All this has come from her. She also chastised me a week or so ago at dinnertime.. "Daddy, you didn't bless the food!", so we had to go back and say Grace.

The best thing for me that I observed recently was this past Saturday. There's a playground about two miles from our house - it's quite nice, actually, very new and clean. Anyway, Samantha and I went there while Mommy was at work, and at one point we had both climbed up one of the playground things (I can't think of a good word for them) and were sitting there playing a new game we had invented. We had been there for awhile, and I was so overwhelmed with joy that I just burst into praising God for the blessing of the day, my daughter, the love in our life, etc... Anyway, when I was done, Samantha followed me in praising by saying "Thank you God for all of my gifts". It almost made me cry.

Speaking of crying, Lynn told me a doozie when she and Samantha came home from church Sunday (I did not attend, as I was lying on my back in a lot of pain from having fallen in the house earlier this week). Lynn told me that Samantha got upset because she "couldn't hug God". Lynn got around that by saying that by hugging other people, you show God's love, and are therefore hugging God (or something like that, I'm unclear on her exact words). Samantha then said "God is in my heart", and I did cry. Maybe not bawling tears down the face crying, but wow - I was bowled over by that.

You know when we were pregnant, Samantha got us to go back to church - neither Lynn nor I were attending at that point. We hooked up with a church family that has meant so much to us, I can't even begin to describe it. The entire church has been seriously supportive to us, and that's important, what with all our "real family" back home in Pennsylvania. God led us to this church family, and has richly blessed us with the people in it. It's for that reason that something one of the clergy said to me recently has touched my heart. I was told "God is raising a strong Christian household in your house". To hear that from people whose opinions and thoughts mean a lot to me in my spiritual walk was quite humbling - Praise be to God for all those at our church in whatever capacity they are there.

Anyway, I never stop being amazed at the spiritual growth in all three of us. But this article is about Samantha, so I'll close up by saying that seeing Samantha do all these things at Church fills me with a deeper love for her than I had merely as her Earthly father.

God Bless Samantha!

Mommy is the one with the better memory, so I'm hoping to get a blog entry from her regarding other things I can't recall. :)

MSNBC Knows their Star Trek

2008-03-28T16:50:25Z

A friend of mine (Eh, eh, eh...) tipped me off to this link today. It's a story that doesn't seem to want to go away. The Tom Cruise in Star Trek rumor that has been flying since the first moment JJ Abrams took over control of Star Trek. That issue aside, you have to love this screen grab I just took. Look at the caption.

I'm sure they'll fix it when someone points it out to them, but I felt like marking the occasion. :)

The Following Preview has been approved...

2008-03-28T14:44:32Z

If you spend any time watching movies, then you've seen the graphic above. It's the Film Ratings Board's image that shows up in front of all trailers. That's why I'm writing. See the text there? "The following preview has been approved for all audiences by the Motion Pictures Association of America". I have a few points to raise about that.

1) The implication of this rating is that there are trailers they would NOT approve for all audiences. When was the last time you saw one of those? Do they have a "red" screen they put up there for those? Is there an actual ratings system for movie trailers on their own? And if you did get a trailer that was not approved for audiences, would we ever actually see one in the theaters? Oh no, Little Jimmy can't see this, let's run out of the theatre in 3 seconds so he won't see anything. I'm sure my "Little Jimmy" remark is why we don't see anything else in theatres, but are there really trailers that are not approved for everyone?

2) I submit that a lot of the stuff in trailers is NOT valid material for "all audiences". Now granted, I know trailers tend to be skewed towards the movie they're in front of. You're not about to see a Blue's Clues movie trailer in front of say "American Zombie". Likewise you won't see a trailer for Rambo in front of "Horton Hears a Who". Still, there are a lot of things in these trailers that are not valid material for all ages, thank you very much. There's a current trailer for a movie called "Boarding Gate" that oepned last week. The trailer is marked with the "approved for everyone" green thing. It does say the movie is "R", but the TRAILER itself is approved for "all audiences". Now it's fairly tame as these things go, but there is still a decent amount of things in there I don't want my kid seeing. Something that really bugs me are trailers like "Diary of the Dead", whose trailers are marked for "all audiences", but are totally NOT for "all audiences". I'm not against the movie itself, just the marking of the trailers.

I wonder which Soccer Mom will eventually raise a stink about "Little Johnny" seeing a trailer for Diary of Dead and making a big enough stink to get the concept of "for all audiences" addressed on trailers. It bugs me, but I'm not the crusader. I just like to complain about things sometimes. :)

It does seem odd/wrong/whatever though. Anyone ever seen a trailer without that "for all audiences", or some other wording saying the trailer IS NOT for all?

Doctor Who Ages

2008-03-27T02:24:02Z

With the new series of Doctor Who starting in less than two weeks now, I thought I'd revive a post I made on another forum about ages of the actors. Was talking to a friend of mine who asked me how old David Tennant was (he'll be 37 on April 18th), and it reminded me of this. I did some research as to how old all the lead actors were when they started in their role on the show, and did some comparisons.

Mostly useless information, I admit, but I tend to do things like this. Especially about Doctor Who. This post only for the hardcore nutters. :)

Here's the ages they were when their respective times in the show started. I am not breaking it down to days. That's just too stupid. I'm also not counting Colin Baker's appearance as Cmdr Maxil or Lalla Ward as Princess Astra, those are different characters. The companions are listed by which Doctor they started with, not ended with.

Doctors:
William Hartnell: 55 years, 10 months
Patrick Troughton: 46 years, 7 months
Jon Pertwee: 50 years, 5 months
Tom Baker: 40 years, 5 months
Peter Davison: 29 years, 11 months
Colin Baker: 40 years, 10 months
Sylvester McCoy: 44 years, 1 month
Paul McGann: 36 years, 7 months
Christopher Eccelston: 41 years, 1 month
David Tennant: 34 years, 2 months

Companions:

Doctor #1:
Carole Anne Ford (Susan): 23 years, 5 months
William Russell (Ian): 39 years, 1 month
Jacqueline Hill (Barbara): 33 years, 11 months, died Feb 18, 1993
Maureen O'Brien (Vicki): 22 years, 5 months
Peter Purves (Steven): 26 years, 4 months
Adrienne Hill (Katarina): Unknown birthdate, died Oct 6, 1997
Jean Marsh (Sara): 31 years, 1 month
Jackie Lane (Dodo): 18 years, 8 months
Michael Craze (Ben): 23 years, 5 months, died Dec 8, 1998
Anneke Wills (Polly): 24 years, 4 months

Doctor #2:
Frazier Hines (Jamey): 23 years, 3 months
Deborah Watling (Victoria): 19 years, 5 months
Wendy Padbury (Zoe): 20 years, 4 months

Doctor #3:
Caroline John (Liz): Unknown birthdate
Katy Manning (Jo): 21 years, 3 months
Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah): 24 years, 10 months

Doctor #4:
Ian Marter (Harry): 30 years, 2 months, died Oct 28, 1986
Louise Jameson (Leela): 25 years, 9 months
Mary Tamm (Romana I): 28 years, 5 months
Lalla Ward (Romana II): 28 years, 3 months
Matthew Waterhouse (Adric): 18 years, 11 months
Sarah Sutton (Nyssa): 19 years, 11 months
Janet Fielding (Teegan): 24 years, ?? months

Doctor #5:
Mark Strickson (Turlough): 22 years, ?? months
Nicola Bryant (Peri): 21 years, 4 months

Doctor #6:
Bonnie Langford (Mel): 22 years, 4 months

Doctor #7:
Sophie Aldred (Ace): 25 years, 3 months

Doctor #8:
Daphne Ashbrook (Grace): 33 years, 4 months
Yee Jee Tso (Chang Lee): 21 years, 2 months

Doctor #9:
Billie Piper (Rose): 22 years, 6 months
Bruno Langley (Adam): 22 years, 1 month
John Barrowman (Jack): 38 years, 2 months

Doctor #10:
Noel Clark (Mickey): 30 years, 5 months
Freema Agyeman (Martha): 28 years, ?? months
Catherine Tate (Donna): 38 years, 2 months

Others:

John Leeson (K9): 34 years, 7 months
David Brierly (K9): 43 years, ? months
Gerald Flood (Kamelion): 55 years, 11 months

Notes:

1) I counted Mickey with Doctor #10, as he wasn't a "traveling companion" until that point. It's the same reason I haven't counted characters like Jackie Tyler, or the Brigadier, as they weren't traveling companions, just support characters. It's a fine line I know. I also realize I condtradict that by the use of Grace & Change Lee from the 1996 movie, but if you didn't count them, Doc 8 would have NO companions, and that's not right, either.

2) Some of the companions have ?? as months, as their birth month was not given, just a year, and a couple have totally unknown birthdates. I listed 'em anyway, but with as much info as I could get.

3) I debated what to do about using "Others" are they were merely voiceovers, and weren't on screen. But I put the info in there for the heck of it. The actor who voiced Kamelion would be the oldest "companion", but since these characters were robots, I'm not sure if that should count.

Oldest/Youngest:

The youngest overall companion was Jackie Lane, Doctor #1's Dodo Chaplet at 18 years 8 months. The second youngest, and youngest male companion was Matthew Waterhouse; Adric. He was 18 years, 11 months. The oldest was William Russell, one of the original companions (Ian) at 39 years 1 month.

Older than the Doctor:

1) There's only one companion (discounting Kamelion) who was older than their Doctor at the time of their taking the role. That was Catherine Tate. She was 38 years 2 months old when she appeared in "Doomsday", and David Tennant was 35 years, 3 months at the time of "Doomsday"'s airing.

2) John Barrowman was 38 years 2 months when he first appeared in the Doctor 9 story "The Empty Child". At that point he was younger than Christopher Eccelston. However, when he reappeared in Utopia with David Tennant's Doctor, that changed. At the time of the airing of Utopia, Barrowman was 40 years, 3 months. Tennant was at that time 36 years, 2 months.

I'm such a dork.

XM Radio & MLB Home Plate

2008-03-26T19:36:52Z

I signed up for XM Radio back in the Spring of 2005. The reason I did it was because of their 24 hour baseball talk channel, dubbed "MLB Home Plate". They run several things on that channel. Primarily it's various talk shows. But the biggest bugger has been that it's not on the XM Radio online service. If you're an XM subscriber, you can login with your account, and listen online anywhere. This is particularly helpful to me, as my office is a cave. It's in the middle of the building, I work in, and while it's a small one story building, it's still got no windows, and I cannot get reception for my XM Radio. I've tried with signal repeaters at various windows in the building - no go. This is an issue for me, because the online version of XM has to date not included the MLB Home Plate channel.

I've written to several producers and folks at XM, and they have told me the reason they have not been allowed to put it online is MLBAM themselves. You see, one of the things they do on MLB Home Plate is include "live lookins" when something cool happens in a game. I don't particularly use that feature on the shows they have, but I could understand (if not agree with) why MLB didn't want a competing product available online like that. So I've missed a lot of programming I've wanted to hear because I couldn't listen online.

Well, that's finally changed. I saw a story today on Orbitcast (Satellite news) saying that as of Saturday the 29th, XM will FINALLY MAKE HOME PLATE AVAILABLE ON THEIR STREAMING ONLINE SERVICE. This is such good news, I think it warrants an appearance from "w00t guy!" :)

Seriously, this is extremely good news. I've wanted this channel online for ages, so I can listen during the day. I love the talk shows here, but I haven't been able to listen because I've been unable to get a signal in my office during the day, and they haven't had it. w00t indeed! Anyway, here's some of the shows on the channel (all times below are Central):

Baseball This Morning: This show's hosts are Mark Patrick & Buck Martinez. Mark Patrick knows baseball, but seems to be less "serious" than some of the other show hosts. One of their producers goes by the nickname of "The Godfather", and Patrick himself goes by the nickname of "The Big Chair". While their baseball talk is fine, they seem to be more into the "show" and "character" aspect of being on radio. When it originally launched, there was a third host, that being Larry Bowa. Bowa stayed there until he got a job with the Yankees as a coach, and was replaced by Orestes ("The Latin O") Destrada, who stayed for awhile until he left last year. They did not replace O, and I think they gave up on the idea of three hosts, which I liked, since it tended to keep the focus more towards baseball with three on this show. Anyway, this show runs from 5AM to 8AM, and then immediately repeats from 8AM to 11AM.

Fantasy Focus: Hosted by Jeff Erickson of rotowire.com, this show runs one hour (from 11AM to noon), and focuses (as you'd guess by the name) on fantasy baseball. There's less talk about baseball news on this show, and a stricter reliance on discussions specifically relating to fantasy baseball. This is my least favorite show of the lineup. Not that it's bad, but the fantasy aspects of baseball discussion are of less interest to me.

Baseball Beat: To me, by far the best show on the channel. This is hosted by Dodgers broadcasters Charley Steiner. What I like most about this show over all the other show - and this is a big one for me - NO CALL INS! At least not from the general public. He does take calls, but that's the beauty of it. It's from beat writers for specific teams, hence the name of the show. They've had Evan Grant on several times, and they talk to other local writers for teams. I absolutely love that, you get to hear from people who actually cover teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Kansas City Royals. I mean, will ESPN do big deals on those? Hell no, they want to suck on the gob of the Yankees and Red Sox. So I love the fact they talk about other teams, and with people who know what they're talking about. Unlike the usual callers who call in to these shows and ask a litany of stupid questions, which make me want to scream and turn off the radio. I love this show - no public call ins! YAY!

The Show: Hosted by former Ranger manager Kevin Kennedy and Reds pitcher Rob Dibble. This one I get to listen to the least, as it runs from 2PM to 5PM, and I'm usually at work then. From what I heard, this is the more opinionated show on the slate, and that's likely due to the personality of the hosts. Or at least Rob Dibble. That's the reason I garner he disappeared from ESPN's Baseball Tonight - strong opinions. Which is fine. When I listen, I like the show, but I hear this the least based on timing.

XM on Deck: This show runs for an hour between 5 and 6, and will preview the games coming up that evening. During the offseason, it's just a general talk show.

MLB Live & MLB Live Late Edition: These shows combine to run from 6PM to midnight. They consist mostly of live look ins to games in progress. There's also a healthy dose of talk too when nothing is going on in terms of things to "look in" on.

Other things that run on the channel are classic games on the offhours, and there's some other shows that don't run as regularly. Like Baseball Confidential where they talk to an individual for an hour. There's also some weekend only shows, like "Minors & Majors" with Grant Paulsen and "Ripken Baseball" with the Ripken brothers. If you like talking baseball, this is the channel for you. Yeah, I realized I turned this post into essentially an ad for XM Radio, but the fact that I will be able to FINALLY listen to Home Plate online while I'm at work is a MAJOR huge deal for me.

And on top of that, they have all the games broadcast during the season too. If you're a hockey fan, that's a bonus, as they have a 24/7 NHL channel, too (as well as the NHL games in a similar fashion).

If you don't have XM, you should consider getting it. They have a trial signup you can get for two weeks via the website to listen to the streaming version - which after Saturday will include Home Plate, the entire reason I bought XM in the first place.

It's about time, guys.

Doctor Who!

2008-03-22T23:30:06Z

The official launch of the new season of Doctor Who in the UK has been formally announced as April 5th. I've known about that for a couple of weeks now due to a source I'd rather not name, but it's nice to see it pubicly out there now.

UPDATE: The official Series 4 trailer has been released in high quality by the BBC, on their official Youtube Channel.

The BBC are calling this "Series 4", but that's the fourth series of the revived Doctor Who. Since the history of the modern show includes the old show, I believe it shouldn't be "Series 4", but "Series 30".

You have now concluded reading this blog entry by Mr. Pedantic.

Battlestar Galactica

2008-03-21T15:19:21Z

The new season of Battlestar Galactica starts on April 4th. The entire cast showed up on the David Letterman show last night and delivered the Top 10 list. Was quite funny.

My Xbox 360 Died Part II

2008-03-15T21:04:16Z

As the two or three of you who regularly read this blog might remember, back in February of 2007, I had a problem where my original Xbox 360 died. My original Xbox 360 was bought on January 1, 2006, and lasted until February 3, 2007. At that time, I had been just out of warranty, so when it died, I was going to have to pay $129 (plus tax and shipping) to repair the thing. I've been through this story already, if you read the link above, you can check out my original nightmare.

So, OK - fast forward to today. It's March 8, 2008. My second Xbox 360 has been going fine, although I've noticed as of the last week or so that when I turn it off, it was making an odd grinding sound. Nothing that really caused panic, but it was a sound that wasn't there before. So today I'm playing some MLB 2k8. Having fun, and then the wife and daughter went out for awhile. I got on the net for a bit, and came back to play some more. And guess what I saw? Well, given the blog entry's title, it can't be too hard to guess. In fact, I took a picture of it. It's shown to the right. This isn't a red ring picture glommed off the net, I just took this myself.

I have all the major consoles from "this generation". I have an Xbox 360, a Nintendo Wii, and a Sony Playstation 3. Of the three, I've had the 360 the longest (although not obviously the same actual unit). It's got the most polished interface, the biggest library, and a host of other things Microsoft will tell you about their console. It also has a horrendously godawful hardware failure rate due to what a lot of folks are suspecting is an overall design failure. For the longest time we didn't hear much about it, but not too long ago, there was a story saying that the overall failure rate for the console is 16.5%! Good Lord, that's insane. Most hardware failure rates are a couple of percent. You kind of expect that. It's inevitable. Things break. I get it. But 16/17 percent of all units? No wonder Microsoft had to extend the warranty.

That's the rub with me and my original Xbox 360 unit. That one was manufactured at some point pre-launch of the console in the fall of 2005. I forget the manufacture date of my original unit. This second unit was manufactured in August of 2006. That was right around the time that Microsoft started coming up with some ways to properly combat the problems the units were having, but I didn't get an upgraded unit for the second one. It was one from the original hardware design, before they started upgrading things to deal with the original design problems. In July of 2007, they extended the warranty for all units to three years with the red rings problem, and refunded repair money to those who had paid it. My first one died in the window between the original one year warranty, and when they extended it to three years. So I could have gotten away with it, but I was so mad at the time.. oh well.

Anyway, this new unit has died now too. At first I tried all the junk they have you try when they die (which I've read about enough, and went through once before with my first unit). Unplug the box AND the power supply from the wall. Let them power cycle (the light on the power brick goes out). Plug back in. It actually worked again. However, I knew it was likely temporary, so I turned off the box, and tried again. Three red rings. It's a gonner.

So I first tried the repair stuff on xbox.com - and got an error about my box being not registered, and then when I tried, I got another error on their website. Great. I was really hoping to avoid talking to someone on the line again, as it's generally guys who sound like English is their third language. So it was with some trepidation that I called 1-800-MYXBOX. I got another guy who sounded like I was talking with someone in India again. But this guy wasn't uber hyper, and was talking in a register I could understand. Without going through all of our phone call, I got a repair order put in.

Technically my box is out of warranty, but the three year repair thing covers this, so I don't have to pay anything. As has been documented elsewhere what happens now is that you get an empty box from Microsoft with UPS postage paid on it. You put your 360 console in there, and ship it off. A few weeks after that, you get it back repaired. I've read online that in a lot of cases it's not the same unit. I am hoping that due to the manufacture age of this unit, they don't just repair it, they replace it with one of the newer ones. The newer ones have quieter DVD drives, additional heat sinks, chips that use less power, and generate less heat. That kind of stuff. Hopefully that's what I get.

So now I wait - the empty box should arrive around Wed or Thursday this week or so they said. I now have to wait about three weeks or so to get an Xbox 360 back. I guess this means more time with my Nintendo Wii and my Playstation 3. Despite all the tech problems the 360 has (one of which is the extremely LOUD DVD drive the thing has - the Wii & PS3 are whisper quiet), I enjoy it more than the Wii & the PS3. That's not to say I don't enjoy games on the others - or I wouldn't have them. But the overall experience I think is the best on the 360. When it works.

When my wife suggested that I just buy a new one after my first failure, she did say that if the second one died, that she'd probably put her foot down and say I wasn't going to buy another one. This all has happened while she's out of the house with our daughter at one of my daughter's friends' birthday parties. I can't wait to see the rolling of the eyes (rightfully so) when she returns. :) At least this repair is free. What they tell you is that the repair work is not covered by the rest of the three year warranty, although if this happens a third time, I might be too mad to want another one.

The real tease of all this is that I have a development kit Xbox 360 on my desk at work. Those are nice, but the development kit boxes don't play retail games. Only development stuff. Darnit, otherwise I'd use that to play my games on. Sigh.

So in closing, I have this to say about my second Red ring of Death Xbox 360...

A Daddy's Story

2008-03-07T06:31:20Z

As some of you know who are reading this, Lynn and I found out on February 4th that we were pregnant (well, I found out anyway). We unfortunately ceased being pregnant on March 5th. This story is about our lost pregnancy, and how God was faithful to us, even during this time. I decided to put down some thoughts as to what's happened regarding our experience in losing our baby. I explain some thoughts leading up to our decision to get pregnant, and then several thoughts from Feb 28 (when we first found out we probably weren't pregnant) until Mar 5 when we had a surgical procedure after finding out for sure there wasn't a baby - as well as describing some of our experiences in the hospital (don't worry, no yucky details). This was originally intended to be a short email/blog post, but it turned out quite long, as I really wanted to get it all out.

We've wrestled with the decision as to whether or not to be pregnant again for some time now. To be honest, I've been pretty scared of having a second child. You see we have autism in the family, and while I know I'm capable of loving an autistic child, I was having major issues in rolling the dice. Before Samantha, we said that if we got through it and there were no health problems, that we'd stop.

Then when Samantha was two years old (her birthday I was reminded of), during a bathroom break at the mall, Samantha got all gushy about a baby they saw, and from what Lynn told me at the time; I knew we would be revisiting the "stop after one" decision.

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We wrestled with it for some time. I went back and forth between wanting to have one, and not wanting to have one. My thoughts were very much buffeted by the exact day it was, and what my mood was like at the time. We also had decided that we wanted to have a second before Lynn turned 40, which would have meant we would have had to have gotten pregnant by about March 25th (this month) to fit that in. Time passed, and Lynn had to come off birth control due to an interaction with another drug she had to take. After a time, I had decided to trust the entire thing to God, and then Lynn got pregnant.

After the initial surprise at being pregnant I was quite into all of this. I was really looking forward to being a father again. Samantha also seemed to be into it, she knew what "big sister" meant, and she kept going to mommy's tummy saying "Hi!" to the baby, and tickling it. It was really quite adorable. Samantha would ask things like "Is that my baby sister in there?" Samantha was quite convinced it was a girl. That was something that both Lynn and I wanted - we wanted another girl. Samantha was even calling it "Baby X" (I'll get to the name stuff in a bit)

So this past Thursday (Feb 28), we went into the Doctor's office for a sonogram. It was going to be the first time we saw the baby. So we were prepped, and had Samantha in the room with us. She was going to see "pictures of the baby!" We got started, and the technician doing the sonogram couldn't find anything. They looked around a lot, and it turned out there was no baby in there. It was quite a bad moment. Lynn and I both knew immediately what it meant, and I was listening quite closely to latch onto something that was said that would be GOOD news. We were told that it could be a few things - we could have gotten our dates wrong and it was simply too early to see anything, or she simply wasn't pregnant. We discounted the dates thing, because Lynn is too good with dates to mess up that badly. That left "not pregnant", which neither of us was happy about. QUITE sad, actually. The hardest part about being in the sonogram room like that is Samantha was looking at the screen with me, and she asked several times "Where's the baby? I don't see it?" It hurt a lot when she said it. I don't blame her, she's just a two year old, she doesn't know. We eventually got her to stop that by telling her "The baby is hiding." But we knew better than that, unfortunately. It wasn't just "hiding".

They took a blood test before we left the office - there are some levels of "something" that is counted in a woman's body when she's pregnant. As you become more pregnant, they're supposed to up and up. Now I don't know exactly what they're counting as such, but if Lynn really was pregnant, they should be (I'm making up numbers here) at say level 75. Her levels were about 20. The Doctor told us that she likely was not pregnant, but was at some point. All the stuff inside Lynn got started because there was a conception. For whatever reason (only God knows that) the embryo did not take, or just stopped developing. When we left the office, Lynn had another appt on Monday morning for a blood test to compare vs. the one taken on Thursday. She also had an appt on Tue to discuss the results with the Doctor, and a scheduled sonogram today (the 6th).

We spent the weekend in agony over this. I can't speak for Lynn's feelings on this particular matter, but I was pretty much in a state of shock and grief over the weekend. The sonogram room was devastating, but after spending time with my thoughts, I came to the conclusion that the baby was lost. My brain said there were tests to check, but in my heart, I felt led that there was a problem, and the baby was gone. We told a select few people at church (outside of the clergy), and spent the weekend basically grieving.

So Monday morning Lynn went in for the second blood test, and on Tue morning we got the results of that. Her levels were down even further; if she was pregnant, they should have essentially doubled (or more) from what they were just four days ago. That was it. There was no reason to hope there might be a miracle anymore. This baby was not to be. So a D&C was scheduled for Wed the 5th, and we set up a babysitter for Samantha, and waited.

The folks we told in Church were ones we know were well steeped in prayer. I have no doubt that the prayers of the church for us were extremely helpful. While I was very sad over all these things, I felt a peace about the whole thing. It was no fun, I was not happy, but I wasn't a "blubbering idiot" about the entire sequence of events. We were thankful for the prayers we had received, but were NOT expecting how they'd manifest themselves on Wednesday.

Wednesday morning came, and our babysitter showed up about an hour earlier than we needed to leave. This was the first of the blessings, as Lynn got a little bit of "girl talk" in before heading to the hospital. The next of our blessings was what Brandy (the babysitter) told us. She did not want to take any money for babysitting. That was quite a surprise; and I had already decided to pay her extra anyway because this would be a longer than usual babysitting job - that's what you do. Pay the babysitter. But she was quite insistent that we not give her any money for this one. That was most kind. Turns out her employer was also in on this. She works for a bakery (the same one that supplies cakes and donuts for our church), and she was scheduled to work. Her employer let her have the time off at quite the last minute to help out with this - so we're grateful to Brandy and them; as Samantha loves Brandy, so that all went well.

So we drive to the hospital, and were waiting in the admit area for awhile. After dealing with the usual hospital paperwork, we sat in the waiting room. And thanks be to God we didn't have much waiting to do. At just about every step of the way, we didn't wait for more than 5-10 minutes. It was quite the surprise. This was beneficial because we didn't have too long to sit with our thoughts, which can play games with you at times like this.

Lynn was taken in for prep, and they came and got me. Now once Lynn was taken in, I expected to be waiting for awhile, that was expected. She was prepped to go upstairs, and then they brought me in to be with her for a few minutes. We cried, and just spent most of the time being quiet. The nurses came in for Lynn, and it was all quite rushed. Not that they were obnoxious about it at all, but it was obvious the Lord cleared the way for all this to be done quickly. We asked for a few minutes of prayer, and were given it, so I said a prayer over Lynn, and then it was time for her to be taken upstairs for surgery. I retreated to the waiting room where I had a book and a lot of coffee. I decided to call the parents, as well as our contact at church (Fr Jeff).

Now I was originally going to attend a conference being held at our church from Mar 4-8th (The Anglican School of Healing Ministries) - I had taken off the entire week of work for that. When I spoke with Father Jeff, I was told "we're all praying for you here", which was the entire conference of some 50 or 60 people. I'm quite grateful for that, because it was seriously felt at the hospital. So I waited after talking with Fr Jeff. Between coffee, reading, and CNN blabbing about the election results, I finally was called to speak with the Doctor. I found it hard to pray much when I was by myself. Was easy with Lynn, but on my own, I found it hard to do it, so I was thankful to have the prayer coverage I did.

The Doctor and I only spoke for a few minutes, but in that time, I was told that Lynn came through it fine, the procedure went well, and she was coming out of it (she was put under for this). She had the same reaction I did about 7 years ago when I had an endoscopy done - I was a bit loopy and asked the same questions over and over again. Although the first thing Lynn asked after regaining consciousness was apparently "Did you see the baby?" Very nice mothering touch there, but I knew that about my wife anyway. After one shorter wait, I was taken to where Lynn was in recovery. She looked like what you would expect from someone who just came out of surgery. But she really wasn't that bad, just really tired looking. She drifted in and out of sleep several times while I was there.

Lynn would know more about the other parts than I, since I wasn't everywhere she was, but from what I saw, the nurse she had in recovery was VERY kind. Her name was Kathy, and apparently she wasn't even supposed to be there, or in that department. The hospital was short staffed that day, and Kathy came in on her day off. This too was a blessing from God, as this woman was extremely helpful to Lynn, especially with some private issues which aren't appropriate for here. So God bless this woman for being there when Lynn needed her. Whether or not she was a Christian woman, we never found out - but it felt like God sent her.

In fact, the whole hospital visit went extremely well. Obviously this was not the reason we wanted to be in a hospital, and that subject was mentioned several times while we were there. Lynn got taken up for the procedure about half an hour before her scheduled time, things were going SO smoothly - so thanks be to God for that, too!

Another blessing is how well the surgery went. I don't know what you about a D&C, but it's a fairly invasive surgery. There were no complications, and the pain medicine prescription given to her has not been filled; it simply has not been needed. Praise be to God for the lack of pain!

On the way back home, I made sure Lynn got something to eat, as she hadn't eaten anything at that point in about 16 hours. Stopped at Chick-Fil-A (one of her favorites). We got back home, and after a brief conversation with the babysitter, we were back "home". I did the Daddy thing, as Lynn was very weak on Wednesday for obvious reasons. Another blessing was that Samantha seemed to grasp that Mommy really needed to be by herself and rest/sleep. Normally after not seeing Mommy for awhile, Samantha will jump all over mommy, cry to be picked up, etc, etc, etc. There wasn't very much of that. Mommy even got to lie down on the bed for a couple of hours by herself with no felines or no two year old clamoring for attention. Small blessing indeed (although probably a bigger one for Lynn, I'd imagine). The day was full of these kinds of blessings. One of the biggest ones was that Samantha slept through the night with no crying out. Samantha sometimes cries out during dreaming which wakes up Mommy (but not Daddy generally), so that was seriously helpful for Mommy's rest.

When we got up on Thursday, Mommy felt much better, and we were able to function better as our usual family unit. Mommy still couldn't pick up Samantha, but praise be to God she was still pain free, although still more tired than usual.

Thursday morning did have one really nice thing happen, and it was with Samantha and Lynn's pregnancy. Samantha had gone to Lynn and said "There's a baby in your tummy", like she has been during the pregnancy. Lynn's reaction to this was spectacular. This next bit is Lynn's words (from one of her emails):

"An opportunity arose this morning with Samantha, and I was able to explain to her that the baby was sick, and that the baby went back to God to be well. She said to me, "He put his hands down to get the baby." (meaning God's hands) and then asked where heaven is. I was able to get through this talk without crying, praise God."

While neither of us cried after all this, it was something that moved us, that our almost three year old would grasp that God needed to take the baby because it was sick. Was very VERY moving.

In emails we received from several folks at our church (especially those who have gone through this too), a suggestion was given to us which we will do. We were told that if we had not done it already to pick a name and turn the child over to the Lord. We had already chosen a name (both male and female) about two days after finding out we were pregnant originally. Given how strongly both of us thought it was a girl (aside from us just wanting it), we were also reinforced by Samantha insisting it was a girl. We told her when we were pregnant that "No, it could be a boy, too." "No Mommy - it's a girl!" Maybe she knew, but either way, since there's no medical way to know, we're going to trust the Lord that this is the right decision. At the moment of conception, there was a soul created then and we needed to give this soul back to the Lord.

Our child's name is Vanessa Grace Siegler.

We will have a memorial service for Vanessa on Sunday after Daddy & Samantha return from church, I'd imagine. Mommy will be staying home, as she needs more time before dealing with a crush of people, and besides, the few hours will give Mommy a break at home. The service will be small, and just for the three of us in the back yard (weather permitting). The plan at the moment is for all three of us to hold a small white balloon, and release them into the sky at some point. My plan now is to tell Samantha at the time that we're sending the balloons to Vanessa in heaven, so make sure to blow her a kiss when you send her this. I'm actually tearing up a bit writing this (corny I know, but hey), as the service has not happened as I write this.

This past week has probably been the single worst time in our married lives, and we are so thankful for all the prayers we have received (and boy have we noticed them being received), a mere email/blog post (long though this is), can't do them all justice. I'm reminded at this time of part of the Bible passage James 5:16:

"The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effect."

At the darkest moments we had this past week, the Lord was there with us, helping us through the pain and the suffering. I doubt we could have gotten through it as gracefully as we have without the Lord being with us, and most certainly not without y'alls prayers.

Thank you and God Bless,

Jay Leno's Hair

2008-03-03T08:31:48Z

Alice Cooper?

2008-02-29T18:00:28Z

Personally, I would have run over Richard Simmons.

Indiana Jones is Back!

2008-02-14T18:24:02Z

I knew it was coming, but the trailer turned up today!