Types of spam

I have some pretty good spam filters on all my e-mail but every once in a while I like going and looking to see what they are trying to sell me. Here are some of the more common types of spam I receive:

1. Viagra/Cialis... Gee thanks
2. Nigerian 419 Scam wanting to give me millions of dollars for using my bank account
3. Refinance my house, which I don't have
4. Viruses
5. Phishers trying to trick me into giving away a username and password
6. Pirated software
7. Help to improve my website

My favorite type of Spam is a Hawaiian specialty called Spam Musubi but it comes in a can, not e-mail

Finding A Good Movie

I watched Finding Neverland last night. What an awesome movie. Johnnie Depp knows how to pick really good movies. It seems like I have really like every movie he has ever been in but they all haven't been huge hits. He is probably the most underrated actor in Hollywood. Finding Neverland was probably his best film yet. It is about James Barries and writing Peter Pan. If you haven't done so already, do so as soon as possible.

20 Questions

For those who love playing 20 Questions, you can now play it on the internet. So far it has correctly guessed CD, sticky note and Allegator in less than 20 questions. Strangely addictive...

The Beach

We had a lot of fun at the beach this weekend. One of the highlights for me was at night. I wasn't getting much sleep in my room. All I was getting was eaten by mosquitos and hot. I decided to try and sleep out on the beach. I took my towel and slept right near the high tide line. It was an amazing night of sleep since the water crashes tremendously there. When I say tremendously I mean tremendously. Every twenty seconds or so there is a boom that shakes the ground. This is because of the high slope of the beach and the size of the waves. I dreampt of earthquakes all night because the sand was shaking under the force of the waves. It was cool.

I also really enjoyed riding my bike all the way there and back.

Half way home

I got two wisdom teeth removed yesterday. I had only local anesthetics so I got to feel the hour and half surgery. My jaw was pretty sore by the end. The dentist started with the one that was the hardest and it took him forever to get it out. It was impacted and one of the roots had a hook at the end. I'm not kidding. It wraps around 180 degrees. He had to drill out part of my jaw to get it out. I'm a little sore today because of that but not too bad. I'm taking Ibuprofen to help keep the swelling down. I'll go back in a couple weeks to get the other two out. Looking forward to it.

Finger pain

I cut my finger on a piece of glass while working on building the set for the upcoming drama today. I've got the bleading stopped now and it is all bandaged up. It was my ring finger on my left hand. It's amazing how hard typing is without it. To many s's in words. Hopefully it will be better before I jump into the salty ocean water this weekend.

Beach trip this weekend

This weekend 8 of the single teachers are going to the beach. We have friday off for a Muslim holiday. Five of us will be riding our motorcycles down and the other three will be riding in a car. We will be leaving at 4am. This will probably be the last trip while I am at the school. Can't wait. Should be lots of fun.

Wisdom, we hardly knew you

Its official. I'm having my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday. Not a moment too soon either. They are really starting to hurt today and my fourth one is starting to come in.

Firefox 1.0.3 Released

For all of you using Firefox 1.0.2 or before, Mozilla has just released a new version. This fixes several security problems so it is important to upgrade. Click Here to download the latest version.

For those of you using Internet Explorer, click there also. It is very dangerous to browse the internet with the big blue e.

For those of you using Opera or Safari, nothing to see here. Move along. Enjoy your blissful but somewhat perplexed existance. I may be joining you soon.

Earthquakes aplenty

Since Tangkuban Perahu has started acting up we've been having lots of earthquakes. We had a bit larger one today that shook the school enough to see the walls moving. We also had a fire drill and talked about what to do in the event of a major earthquake.

Tangkuban Perahu active

Things are really exciting for geologists in Indonesia right now. Not only have there been 9.1 and a 8.7 earthquakes and many 6.X earthquakes but volcanoes are going nuts as well. In West Sumatra where the big earthquakes were, the Talang Volcano has started erupting and 26,000 people were evacuated. Even more fun, Anak Krakatau and Tangkuban Perahu are both acting up. Why is this fun? Tangkuban Perahu is the volcano 30 minutes from my house that we always visit. I might have to go check it out this weekend. I'm sure I can bribe my way to the top.

Mom and Dad, that's the one you visited while you were here.

Update: Fox News has another good story on it.

Get Perpendicular

Talk about cool education! Check this out. My class will definitely be watching this.

Disease Scares

It seems like the media is intent on getting us worked up about certain diseases. A good example is the SARS bug that was terrorizing Asia in 2003. In total, 8436 cases were reported and 812 people died giving us a mortality rate of just under 10%. Most of those who died were elderly or children. Again with Avian Flu, which has killed about 51 people, we are told it is a serious health threat. According to Fox News up to 70% of the birds in Vietnam are infected, meaning that we can't contain it even if we wanted to.

Why is this not a big deal? If you read all about SARS and the Avian flu, at the end of every story the reason they give for it being so dangerous is that it could mutate into something more deadly. What they don't tell you is that the common influenza virus could do the same. In fact, in 2001 753 people died of influenza in the US alone. This probably goes into the tens of thousands globally. We should be more focused on the Marburg virus that is ravaging (not terrorizing which includes a lot more hype and less deaths) Angola with a 85-90% mortality rate and has already killed almost 250 people. This disease is not pretty. Think of the movie Outbreak. Yet, I didn't even hear about this disease until I stumbled upon a story when reading lots of news. If you didn't hear about SARS though, you must have been in an isolation chamber.

SARS, Avian Flu and Influenza I'm not worried about. Marburg scares me to death if it comes anywhere close to me. How about we try not to hype up these illnesses when they don't deserve it.

The Pope

I realized that in my last post the only time I mentioned the Pope was in a slightly negative context. I'd like to spell out a little better on how I feel about Pope John Paul II.

I really admire Pope John Paul II. He was the best Pope this century if not since the early times of the Catholic church. I admire that he was an incredibly smart man who was also intensely spiritual. I don't mean this in the pseudo spiritual way made popular by the modern culture but I mean it in the way that he was close to God. He knew how to win people over but didn't do so by telling them what they wanted to hear. He told them what they needed to hear. He wasn't afraid of confronting people and telling them they are wrong. At the same time he was a very understanding and accepting person. One of the things I most admire about him is that he reached out to so many people, especially people of other beliefs. To see leaders of so many religions at his funeral was a testament to how great a man he was. The best thing about Pope John Paul II was his unwavering support for the value of life and conservative values, even in the face of strong dissent from within the church.

Pope John Paul II brought so much back the the Catholic church that it was losing. He has left shoes that will be hard to fill.

Musing on Glorified Figures

With the recent death of the Pope, I've been thinking again on how the different religions glorify a certain figure. Now, I'm not talking about people glorifying the Pope. The Pope instead, glorified Mary. This is because when the Pope was shot in 1981, he appealed to Mary to save him and he said that she did. After that, she was a very important figure to him. On his (very beautiful I might add) coffin, there was a cross with an M underneath it which stood for Mary. While I admire Mary as a person and do not wish to enrage Catholics, I think it is important to have a healthy view of Mary. I would also like to say that not all Catholics believe this way about Mary.

Why is it that Catholics esteem Mary so much? In the Bible, she is mentioned in several different places in the New Testament. I'll deal with them here.

The first was the birth and early life of Jesus found in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. The most interesting part of this is Luke 1:28-30.

The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.

It is noteworthy that the angel tells her that she is "highly favored" and has "found favor with God." This appears pretty common throughout the scripture that when God bestows a special blessing or an important instruction on them, he blesses them.

Luke 1:42-44

In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!”

Here again she is blessed much like many of the people in the old testament were. An example is Abram in Genesis 12 where God calls him to leave and then blesses him.

She is also mentioned in Mark 3:31 and Luke 8:19 but this is not a very good one for people who think Mary is overly special. She and Jesus's brothers are trying to talk to him but can't get through the crowd. Someone recognizes him and tells them they are there. His reply is that those who hear God's word and practice it are his mother and brothers. Think about this one for a minute. My mom would be pretty angry if I said something like this with people around. Basically what he is saying is that those who follow God's word are more important than his mother and brothers.

She is also mentioned as watching the crucifiction of Jesus in all four gospels (Matthew 27:56-61, Mark 15:40-47, Luke 24:10, John 19:25). She is also mentioned taking part in the discovery of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1). It is interesting to note though, that in both places she is described as an observer and did not take place in anything important besides being there.

Finally, the most striking place she is mentioned is in Luke 11:27-28.

As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”

He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

This clearly says to me that Jesus was saying, don't obsess about my mother. She isn't what is truly important. The word of God and obeying it is what is important.

Nowhere in the bible does it say anything about immaculate conception. I don't see why God would even need to do this. If he can have Mary born without sin from two human parents, can't he do it even more for his own son? Again, there is no evidence in the bible for it and there is no need for it.

Also, there is nothing in the bible that says Mary can intercede for us or has special powers in heaven. In fact, she is only blessed as many others before her were blessed.

Again let me say, I don't think badly of Mary but I don't think she was the immaculately conceived, interceding in heaven, on the level with Jesus person many think she is.

If you think I am wrong about something here, please write a comment about it. I am not set in stone about this but I am more likely to be swayed by scripture than doctrine.

New internet coming

For the last four years our school has been using a wireless link (802.11b) to connect downtown to our internet provider. It is a dedicated 128kbps line but costs an outragious amount of money for that connection. Also, with 150+ computers connected to it, it can get pretty slow. I've decided the time is right to invest in satellite internet. While the price for all the equipment is pretty expensive, the monthly cost is less than half what we are currently paying for 256-1024kbps. We should break even in 2 years and then be saving money, all for up to 8x the speed we are getting now. The only question is, how fast can I get it? All of you with a very cheap, very fast connection, be thankful.

Science Fair Today

Today is the biannual science fair at BAIS. I've been judging 3-5th grade projects for the last three days after school. Some were pretty good and some were pretty funny. Today we are having presentations, science scavenger hunts and awards all day so no classes!

BTW

I don't have a beard anymore.

Google Satellite Maps

Okay, this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. On Google Maps you can now switch to satellite view! Just click the Satellite link in the upper right hand corner of the page. I searched for my parents house and then zoomed in. I can see the tree out front, the pool and the roof. I can almost make out the van parked in the driveway. I can't see my sailboat though. Must be obscured by the neighbors tree.

Hair hair, everywhere

I've grown a beard after a year or so without. I don't know if I've ever really had a full one (usually a goatee) before for very long. Not to worry. It is starting to get itchy which means I will shave it off soon.

Lamb Burger

I went out to eat last night and had a Lamb Burger. I've had lots of different meat on a bun (mostly beef) but lamb was a first. It was interesting but I still prefer beef.