Do or say something interesting. Please!

And no, I’m not talking about the riotously funny Stargate SG-1 episode this past Friday. (Side note: one of the marks of good writing is the ability to make fun of oneself. Say what you will about that episode - but they made fun of themselves and their parent genre in general while still staying true to form. Nothing was sacred; everything was fair game. A steady diet of that is no good, but it’s definitely fun once in a while.) 200 is the next milestone to be reached on the list. And today we inch two bloggers closer, bringing the total to 196. First off, Barbara Harper, with familial connections of some sort to Jeremy Harper, I think, commented and left info about Stray Thoughts. A little closer to home, for me, was the inclusion of John MacInnis, fellow survivor of American Hymnody and…bah. What am I talking about? Everyone survives an Uncle Fred course, even if it looks like they’re gonna die when they get the final exam. Anyway, John and I spent many hours (minutes?) thinking deep thoughts in the best tradition of seminarians. We even had productive deep thoughts, on occasion. But I digress. Perfect Diapason is up and running now, and you’d do well to go read. And check out the design - he’s got a nice clean layout which should be noted by web developers.

All I need is four more bloggers, and we’ll hit 200. Which reminds me…I need to outfit Groovin’ Guy for a party…

This evening, Brade and Sig invited me to partake in All-You-Can-Eat Fish & Chips at the English Country Tea Rooms in Taylors. I will say that I enjoy international food as much as the next guy, but I’ve never really had English food, per se. So tonight I joined the guys and went out.

The waiter was Alex Short, according to the website. He’s a thoroughly likeable English chap, one of those people you immediately trust to order for you when you see him. After two plates of wonderful fried cod and chips (which most Americans know as French Fries), he asked if I wanted to “top off,” which I assumed meant a small slice of cod and a handful of fries. Actually it was another complete plate. Not to fear, though - the fish was sitting pretty light and the chips weren’t heavy, either.

As I’m starting into the “topoff” plate, Alex informs me that, for as long as that restaurant has been in Greenville, no one has polished off four plates of fish & chips. I was on my third plate and going strong, and he opined that I stood a good chance of setting a new record. With my friends egging me on, I told him to come back when I finished plate #3, and I’d see if I felt like taking a shot at history. With plate #3 out of the way, I gave it a minute or two to settle, then opted for the record fourth plate.

And finished it. Barely.

As a reward for the new record, desert was free. Not only was it free, but it was more than advertised. Not only was there more to it, but there were four candles in the “pie.” I highly recommend the Banoffee - graham cracker crumb crust, toffee filling, bananas, and a whipped cream topping dusted with brown sugar. Mine came with a side of ice cream to wash it down. Oy.

So you may now call me “champ.” At the moment I’m calling myself “full,” but we’ll see how long that lasts.

I give you this, the longest sentence (?) in the history of the universe, found this morning while reviewing procedures to slipstream a Windows XP SP2 CD:

Well I can tell you that you can edit the OEM drivers in the untouched OS to use the latest drivers, you can also add multi drivers that will come into play if your installing on multiple systems so you should also have the drivers for anything you need if you get it right, including raid drivers without using a floppy, currently looking at that one myself, the thing to remember is you have to extract the driver packages from their .exe files into their own folders, but I know that adding drivers has changed a bit, the latest build v1.01 can add multiple folders, but I failed dramatically trying that, the secret seems to be editing the OEM files to add the drivers, it means creating folders for each in turn then adding commands to tell the installation process where to look for them, but thats as far as I have got so far, I know of it, but am yet to get it to work for me, but you can find more info >>>Here<<< which is where I have found the info I have so far, hope it helps.

I got out of breath reading it. See why you should use proper grammar??

Welcome to this, another post in the “strange yet somehow vaguely enigmatically-named posts” series. First, a BJ update. You know how we shake our heads at all those new-evangelical churches that have live video of the pastor displayed on the side screens in the auditorium? Well, BJ is officially new-evangelical, if that be the only criteria. Dr. Stephen Jones finally decided that, after many faculty, staff, students, and student leaders all asked for enlarged video of the chapel platform (especially us faculty/staff/GAs up in the balcony - impossible to see from up there!), he would finally approve a video screen of the speaker. Now if they could just get rid of those mic cables dangling in front of the screens…

This “Oof” post contains a whopping number of updates to the list that have been accumulating. Since the server change, I was unable to log in and make changes to the queue of new bloggers. Now I can, so I did. And wow, the changes. Many thanks to Caroline Lee, whose site is listed below, for the excellent work she did scaring up these sites. Props, Miss Lee. Now, here are the billion or so updates:

1. Title: Fundamentalist Resource Centre
   • URL: http://www.givemetruth.net/articles
   • Author: Jason Harris
2. Title: JDHarper.com
   • URL: http://www.jdharper.com/wordpress/
   • Author: Jeremy Harper
3. Title: Juniata
   • URL: http://www.bensfriends.com/juniata/
   • Author: Michael Gembola
4. Title: by caldron pool
   • URL: http://caldronpool.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Justin Rettger
5. Title: music in the mountains
   • URL: http://musicinthemountains.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Scott Moore
6. Title: sweet nothings of shortcake
   • URL: http://www.thesweetnessofnothings.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Jessica Velez
7. Title: The Life of a Violinist
   • URL: http://violinguy.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Jacob Frank
8. Title: MissLine86
   • URL: http://www.xanga.com/missline86
   • Author: Caroline Lee
9. Title: The Abbott Builder Family
   • URL: http://www.theabbottbuilderfamily.blogspot.com
   • Author: Ashley Abbott
10. Title: To the Praise of His Glory
    • URL: http://www.xanga.com/sdubois305
    • Author: Sherry DuBois
11. Title: Mark’s Blog
    • URL: http://mark.wmdboom.com
    • Author: Mark Johnson
12. Title: In Whatever State I Am
    • URL: http://www.xanga.com/ebabe860
    • Author: Lea Ann Garfias
13. Title: Stephens Family
    • URL: http://www.musicmom100.blogspot.com/
    • Author: Andrea Stephens

The overwhelming majority are present students or very recent graduates, but there are a few “sages” thrown in there for good measure.

Finally, a warm word of welcome to all the students returning for the fall semester: GET OFF MY HALL! GET OUT OF MY PARKING SPACE! GET OUT OF THE DINING COMMON LINE! IN FACT, GET OFF MY CAMPUS!!!

Sorry…it’s just that this place becomes tolerable, population-wise, during the summer and Christmas breaks. Though, fear not, because I’m really not all that ticked off. Truth be told, it gets a little lonely without everyone around. That’s fine - I’m sure you don’t want to be here, either. But you are, so hey. And now, since I have absolutely no idea where this train of thought is even still on the tracks, I’m going to end right now.

NASA can’t find original tape of moon landing

I’d say that’s a fairly big oops. I mean, you think the world is coming to an end when you can’t find your glasses. Now how can we prove that Armstrong said, “One small step blah blah blah”? Conspiracy theorists take note - all you have to do is shift the burden of proof. Let the spooky music and talk of black helicopters begin!

For the next few days, as my webhost switches over to a new server and restores everything, you may experience some functionality loss, particularly on the list. Fear not - I’ve got a few backup measures in place to make sure I don’t miss entries…like the 50-odd (okay…actually it was only 7) entries by one Caroline Lee this morning. Thanks, Caroline, for getting me in touch with at least one friend I’d lost contact with. See? Isn’t the list great?

Some people take a week off of work for vacation. Me? I take a week off for two vacations. Heh…I am doing the jobs of two people, so I guess it makes sense that, when I take a week off for vacation, I go on two vacations. Anyway, vacation numero uno was a long Quartet trip up to Lancaster, PA (that’s LANG”-cə’-ter, not LANG’-cahst’-er; don’t feel bad - even the pastor at Calvary Independent Baptist Church still gets it wrong every now and then…but he’s from Michigan, so we expect that ). We got back around 3:30 this afternoon. Good trip - lots of good, sound, practical preaching, good food, and a good time of fellowship with the others in the group and the church members. This weekend saw three fill-ins: Jeff Larson at bass, Steve Hall at baritone, and Steve’s wife Jennifer at piano. On the bus trip back, those of us on the bus all agreed that, despite over half the group being replacements, we sounded just as good and were just as effective in our ministry at the church.
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Some folks have remarked that a majority of my posts deal with food and something else; this is probably because, when confronted with Dining Common[s] food, one can either complain, laugh, or go to Subway. Much as I enjoy option #3 (foot long turkey on wheat, with provolone cheese, toasted, add lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and black olives, add oil & vinegar, and top it off with salt, pepper, and oregano), I can’t get off spending $6 a night, every night. Option #1 gets me nowhere. So it’s option #2, and when I laugh, I like to share the wealth.

In that spirit, Wednesday evening I found a remarkable similarity between my Spicy Baked Chicken (©) and a sub-continent. The whole meal has forever been recorded for posterity and includes the following:

1. One small serving of mashed potatoes with beef gravy: A-
2. Two rolls to mop up the remaining molecules of number 1: A
3. One moderately large piece of Spicy Baked Chicken shaped like India: B+
4. One piece of Orange Kuchen Cake: A++
5. Two glasses of low fat milk: A+

Not seen is the refill on the milk (A+) and the actual orange (A). And if anyone’s interested (and I know you’re not), lunch was two small egg salad sanwiches and a regular old salad with lettuce, egg, bacon bits, carrot shreds, and parmesan peppercorn dressing. And another two glasses of milk, bringing the day’s total to five glasses of milk, one Mountain Dew, and three bottles of water. Breakfast was non-existant.

So…this is what happens when I blog about food. Happy?

Out of the barren wasteland of not-funniness, I come riding to your rescue. Yes, faithful few, stats are back after a several-month hiatus. I could claim that the reporting means for all my raw logs were scrambled for the past three months…or I could just admit that I was too lazy to compile these. Take your pick.

First, a school update. GA’s now pay for only the meals they attend, but the price of laundry went up $0.25 a load. Supposedly it’s an even trade, but I’d prefer getting charged for not eating Swedish Meatballs (blech) than having to pay an extra quarter for every load of laundry.

And now, the stats for July:

Most viewed: More from Good News Publishers with 27 views. Pitiful, I know. I think something’s wrong with my stats tracker.

Browser stats:

BTW, did you hear about Firefox Day? Supposedly it was July 15, but I didn’t hear anything about it until today.

Top Referrer: As usual, I weed out the SI blogroll and any referrals from my own site. That done, Katie Jaspers is July’s top referrer, probably over a span of less than a week, too. It’s funny in a way - usually my top referrer comes from someone I’ve actually met at one point or another. Oh well. Congrats, Katie…I wish it didn’t have to come like it did.

Searches:

12 out of the top 50 searches were about the whole Maranatha thing. Combine that and the 30 comments on that thread before I closed commenting, and I’d say that issue pretty well dominated this site last month. On the lighter side:

• DORGH - I know. Sometimes I feel like shouting that, too. SOMETIMES I EVEN DO SHOUT.
• wallpapers of honesty is the best policy - Try under http://www.parent-isms.com
• may the good lord bless you and keep you John Rutter - John Rutter has done a number of spirituals, and if you pronounce this right (”Lawd” instead of “Lord”), you’ve got another one that he may have written.
• meter for hymn I could not do without Thee O Savior of the lost, - It’s funny - if you know the words, and you know how to count, you can probably find the meter…though it’s pretty tough.
• twisted mounty - Only when I’m in a disagreeable mood…or when I’m doing these stats.
• threat in opening a coffee corner - Too much caffeine? Is that a threat?
• 4 corner napkin quarter scam - This, as opposed to a 2 corner napkin. Or maybe a two-thirds scam.
• dangers of toilet paper - “But next, we’ll discuss the hidden dangers of a very common thing. It’s probably in your house, and you probably never even thought about it. Why you should lock up your TP and run screaming for the hills…next, on Channel 13 News.”
• Controversy-Pensacola Christian College - Did they change their name? I’m not sure many people in “our orbit” actually picked up on that.
• how to brade parts of our hair - When multiple personality disorder meets mistaken identity. Don’t worry if you don’t get it - very few people will.
• count of mounty crystal - When French Lit meets homophones.
• pic celebrate halloween in a godly way - I can hear it now: “Look, everyone! I’m St. Sebastian, and these are real arrows!”
• pictures of chronic bronchitis - Ewwwwww.
• most romantic restaurant in greenville, SC - Still trying to figure out how this led to my site.
• missed one - No, I didn’t.

Until September 1, adieu.

The heat is such today that they actually issued a severe weather alert for “excessive heat and humidity.” Ick. Heat index should be up around 115 or so, with humidity to match.

In that spirit, I offer this Foxtrot comic: