Ben & Shae Cecka's family in Gilbert, AZ

Olive Fingers
Baby Hop Dance

On a lighter note (for me), I’m using VirtualDub now to recompress and clip the videos. It’s about a 6/1 compression ratio using the Windows Media Player 9 codec.

What does this mean for you? Longer files with a fraction of the download time. What does this mean for me? Longer files with a fraction of the bandwidth. Not that I care about bandwidth having a server in my office, but I stream talk radio all day long and I feel bad sometimes when I see someone trying to download a 30-second clip that’s 4MB during the day.

I was looking forward to this history class for some time now; above and beyond just looking forward to learning about cultural origins in general. I had no idea what to prepare for. So far we’re taking a general “survey” approach to 17^th century through early 20^th civilizations around the world. Specifically, European industrialization and expansions throughout America and Africa. For the time being anyway. This class is moving well outside the realms of Europe and into various tribes and factions in Africa itself, the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, and who knows what else (well the syllabus I suppose). At any rate, this evening in class I was moved to near tears… but not over anything in particular. Just the fact that I felt so enormously privileged to sit amongst my friends and discuss (the style of our professor is to teach through pure discussion) events that shape our lives today. It awes me to have the ability to talk about events and lives that took place centuries ago, and to find true parallels that exist in the way we conduct ourselves today. Learning is the greatest gift that we can receive and give in return.

In light of Johnathan’s new fascination with flicking the light switch on and off, here is some scientific/mathematic proof that every time you switch on the light, you don’t “burn up enough power to run the light bulb for 30 minutes.” (Contrary to our parent’s attempt to rationalize the ban of this activity.)

I caught this on a message board this week and it struck me as a fine piece of wisdom.

The university professor challenged his students with this question:

“Did God create everything that exists? ”

A student bravely replied “Yes, he did!”

“God created everything?” the professor asked.

“Yes sir,” the student replied.

The professor answered, “If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then God is evil.”

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.
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