There are more calories in 2 Samoas Girl Scout cookies than in a 12 oz can of Coke Classic.

1. Little 15 (Depeche Mode)
2. Tough Love (Squeeze)
3. Down In It (Nine Inch Nails)
4. Fight (The Cure)
5. Trust Me To Open My Mouth (Squeeze)
6. New World (Soul Asylum)
7. Suck My Kiss (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
8. 99% (Soul Asylum)
9. Somebody Told Me (The Killers)
10. Turn Your Lights Down Low (Bob Marley)
11. Creep (Radio Head)

• After a three month hiatus, we are finally having another D&D night.  We are starting a new adventure with new characters and a new person running the game.  You can’t imagine how geeked out I am about playing.
• Justin got a first place ribbon for his science fair project - “Great Scotts, It’s a Miracle (grow)”.  He compared the growth rates of Lima beans in Scott’s Garden soil and Miracle Grow garden soil.  Scott’s won, but we felt he didn’t have enough data to be certain that Scott’s would always do better — he had a very low rate of Lima beans sprouting.
• In theory, the product I’ve  been working on for the last 6 months should go RTM (release to manufacturing) in one week and GA before the end of March so they can get some Q1 sales for it.  I suspect it will sell enough in the first couple weeks to pay my salary for the year (and then some).  Once it goes GA, I’ll see if I can post some screen shots (it’s really that cool).

I haven’t commented on Cynthia Davis’ weekly emails lately, not because I agree with what she’s been emailing me, but because I’ve been so busy. Today was a bit too much to ignore. Although I considered writing a screed about the whole email, I decided to focus on this part:

Here is the text of the proposed legislation. The bold text is the new language. The normal text is already in our state constitution.

Bill of Rights

Article I, Section 5,Constitution of Missouri

That all men and women have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; that no human authority can control or interfere with the rights of conscience; that no person shall, on account of his or her religious persuasion or belief, be rendered ineligible to any public office or trust or profit in this state, be disqualified from testifying or serving as a juror, or be molested in his or her person or estate; that to secure a citizen’s right to acknowledge Almighty God according to the dictates of personal convictions, neither the state nor any of its political subdivisions shall establish any official religion, but a citizen’s right to pray or to express his or her religious beliefs shall not be infringed; that the state shall not compose prayers nor coerce any person to participate in any prayer or other religious activity, but shall ensure public school students their right to free exercise of religious expression without interference, as long as such prayer or other expression is private and voluntary, whether individually or corporately, and in a manner that is not disruptive nor in violation of other policies, rules, or standards, and as long as such prayers or expressions abide within the same parameters placed upon any other free speech under similar circumstances; and, to emphasize the right to free exercise of religious expression, that all free public schools receiving state appropriations shall display, in a conspicuous and legible manner, the text of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States; but this section shall not be construed to excuse acts of licentiousness, nor to justify practices inconsistent with the good order, peace or safety of the state, or with the rights of others.

With the many challenges facing our nation, we need the power of prayer more than ever. I for one want to make sure Missouri’s citizens have a clearly stated right to pray in public if they choose to do so.

If you need a copy of the constitution, please contact me. I will be happy to have one ready for you to pick up at my O’Fallon office.

Rather than railing on her email outright, I decided to pull her chain with a very concise email:

 There seems to be a bit of an oversight in the proposed language changes.  It currently states “worship Almighty God”, instead of “worship the God or Gods”?  Likewise it states “right to acknowledge Almighty God” instead of the “right to acknowledge the God or Gods of their choosing”. 

I would hope that you will address these changes for your Hindu and other polytheistic constituents.

She is so far on the fundie-right, she probably doesn’t even realize that their are modern polytheistic religions.  I can’t wait to see if I get a response.

I’ve been swamped at work, so I didn’t notice that I had been tagged for a book meme from Yet Another Web Site

The Rules:

1. You have to look up page 123 in the nearest book around you.
2. Look for the fifth sentence.
3. Then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.
4. And then tag five people, just like you were tagged!

Let see, the closest books to me have to be the ones on my laptop.

From: Deities and Demigods by Rich Redman, Skip Williams, and James Wyatt

They also organize athletic events and other physical contests. They often try to outdo each other by undergoing long and demanding quests.

Temples to Hercules tend to be spacious and airy.

From: Duck Blood Soup (unpublished) by James and Frank Hofer

She stuffed the second paper wad into the musket barrel and began packing it with the steel ramrod. She sensed danger a second before Jaklfor screamed, “LOOK OUT!”

Greta looked up in time to see a giant’s club rushing toward her.

Or, if it is supposed to be a physical book:

From: Active Server Pages 2.0 by Francis, et. al. (I use it as a javascript reference)

<body>

This page will display the image New Moon Books from a SQL Server 6.5 image field. <br>

<img src=”SHOWIMG.ASP”>

Now, who to tag…

I tag the first five people that read this.  Leave a note in the comments saying that you’ve been tagged.

• I’m not sure if I should feel old because Prince needs hip replacement, or feel young because I don’t.
• I didn’t know Australian snakes like Mexican food. Apparently this one was willing to wait days for his terrier-Chihuahua crossbreed platter.

Allison caught her first pokemon today - a charmander.

1. One That Got Away (The Rainmakers)
2. Listen Like Thieves (INXS)
3. The Magic Flute Aria (No. 14); “Queen of the Night” (Der Holle Rache …) (Mozart)
4. Anyone Can Play Guitar (Radiohead)
5. Liar (New Order)
6. Shake The Disease (Depeche Mode)
7. The Sun Song (They Might Be Giants)
8. Pipeline (Depeche Mode)
9. Legoland (Ned’s Atomic Dustbin)
10. Orange Crush (REM)
11. Bigmouth Strikes Again (The Smiths)

HIGH GEEKDOM:

• Assuming the weather doesn’t suck too bad, I get to have a guys night tonight.  It is Bollini’s birthday, so he is having people over to play cards.  No, not poker; Magic the Gathering.  It is one of those mathematical  games of death that I enjoy so much.
• Next weekend is also a guys night - D&D.  We are starting a new adventure with low level characters.  It’s always fun to start with a new campaign, but I was having so much fun in the last one, I almost accidentally used the exact same kind of character this time around (a sneaky little halfling that is a little bit of everything).  Instead I rolled up a big half orc ninja/cleric.  It should be interesting
• During the lunar eclipse, I got out the new telescope.  It was really cold, but the kids enjoyed it.  Someone, I think Brenda, suggested that we look at Saturn once the moon was fully eclipsed.  This was a very good idea - we managed to see Saturn’s rings.  It was very tiny (I’m not very good at positioning and focusing using the higher magnification), but you could definitely see the rings.  Very cool.  Oh yeah, the moon looked cool through the scope too.

FAMILY

• Justin has a basketball game tomorrow followed by the blue and gold banquet.  He will be crossing over from cub scouts to boy scouts, so it is kind of a big deal.
• Justin and Allison were playing with a digital camera and photoshop last night.  I will probably post their creation a little later (when I get home from work).