First things first, we’re proud to announce the entry of Pillsbury History Guy, otherwise known as David McGuire, ‘71 grad. David submitted his own site, and now that I’m off at a friend’s house getting (got, at this point) his new router running, I figured I’d pop on and confirm everything.
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I must follow the cliche of all bloggers and bore you with the details of my journey home. To start, the trip is usually 10.5 hours - I-85 N to I-77 N to I-81 N to I-78 E to US-22 E to local roads to doorstep. This time, though, given all the rain and colder conditions in the mountains, I opted for a slightly more complicated route that was about as direct and avoided the mountains entirely: I-85 N to I-95 N to I-695 N (Baltimore) to I-83 N to I-81 N to I-78 E, etc. About twenty miles extra and no mountains. But there was rain. Boy, there was rain. I was starting to feel like Rob McKenna from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The road conditions got as favorable as “horrible” only once, usually living closer to “abysmal” and occasionally “blech.” I counted 17 separate accidents, five of which combined to add another two hours to my travel time. Think about it - that’s one accident every 40 miles, give or take. Thankfully I was not a participant in any of those, though I nearly felt what it would be like to have another car merge with mine. It’s all Fulton/Gwinnett county drivers - apologies to folks from the Greater Atlanta area, but - not making this up - every close call on the roads last night was with drivers from those two counties, including the clueless moron, bless his heart, that didn’t bother checking his mirrors or even looking out his window before leaving his lane and entering mine. But, accidents aside, I made it up in thirteen hours. And I get to do it all over again Tuesday. But it’s worth it - home always is.

I’ve just been informed that two more locations tried and failed to break the world record for Christmas carolers in one spot: an Alabama attempt fell short, as did an Irish attempt, though the latter did succeed in setting a European record. Still falls short of the world record, though.

As far as online news sources go, I haven’t been able to find any additional record attempts that have been publicized. Now, if I remember correctly, we didn’t do a lot of publicizing and figure-guessing before we made our attempt, just because even then there was competition that year. So it’s possible (though, this late in the game, not very likely) that someone out there is still planning something and hasn’t let any information go about it yet. Time will tell, but for now it appears BJU will continue to own a spot in the history books.

A few years ago I came across a columnist in the Philly Inquirer - John Grogan. At the time he was more of a humor columnist, not on the level of Dave Barry, but funny all the same. I still read his column every week, because he does have an engaging writing style. Recently, though, I’ve noticed that he’s been politicizing just about every gun-related story and pushing the “let’s all get rid of our guns” agenda. His latest work is just one example. He’s writing about the shooting in Montco last week where a 16-year-old boy killed himself with an assault rifle after shooting up his school’s ceiling. Tragic? Yes. But the fault of the parents for keeping the AR locked up with all the possible safeguards available and running their kid through a gun safety course? Hardly. There are two things that most anti-gun people tend to forget: 1.) if a person wants to commit a violent crime using a gun, he will find one somewhere, somehow; and 2.) if someone wants to kill himself, he will find a way.
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My last official act this semester was to give a presentation for one of my classes - Research & Writing in Music - where I argued that symphonic film scores are the rightful heir to the throne of “classical music” in the twenty-first century. I hope it went over well, but my final grade will be the judge of that. After work today, I went up to The Beacon, a place that you may only go to once a year. I say that because if you go more often than that, you risk a coronary (caused by your heart acting in self-defense) before ever walking through the door. In attendance were The Group, consisting of the usual suspects (Zach, Nate, Sigs, Brade, Jordan, and your’s truly) and whichever other friends happened to be free - in this case, Aaron, Jennaca, Sarah, and Rachel. A fun time was had by all.
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(HT: Sigs)

Citizens of America, I give you the next Intelligence Chief…who is apparently none too intelligent.

If he flunked the quiz, can we fail him from his post? If only politics worked like school.

:UPDATE: He says “I’m acutely aware of al Qaeda’s desire to harm Americans. The Intelligence Committee will keep its eye on the ball, and focus on the pressing security and intelligence issues facing us.” This is a nifty combination of buzzwords (”eye on the ball”? C’mon, Mr. Congressman - surely you can do better than that?) and common knowledge that anyone who’s ever picked up a newspaper could attest to. al Queda wants to harm Americans? That’s news to me! I’m grateful that we have such smart people in the government to tell us these things. I would never have known otherwise!

I was getting dinner on my way back from church tonight when I read this article in the Greenville News. Hey, Greenvillians - your city ain’t ready for another ice storm! Isn’t that a shocker!
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I’ve got five new ones to report at the list:

1. Title: Scotter Finazzio’s Adventures
   • URL: http://www.scootersadventures.blogspot.com
   • Author: Carol Selstad
2. Title: ryan’s ramble
   • URL: http://blog.broylesonline.com/
   • Author: Thomas Ryan Broyles
3. Title: The Chronicles of Blake
   • URL: http://www.bjunewsletter.com
   • Author: Blake Meyer
4. Title: The Jackson’s Journey
   • URL: http://jacksonsjourney.blogspot.com
   • Author: Leah Williams Jackson
5. Title: Hammond Family
   • URL: http://jandkhammond.blogspot.com
   • Author: Kelly Hammond

Stop by and enjoy.

Microsoft Word 2007 is the worst Microsoft product to come down the pike since Microsoft Bob. Remember Bob? No? Bob lives in the same house that Clippit goes home to when you break your mouse trying to get rid of him on new Office installs. It was all Bob’s world, and it was hideous. It was Windows 3.1 and the PowerPuff Girls all wrapped into one. But I digress - the topic is Office 2k7. So why am I not writing my 10-page paper right now? Why am I instead wasting my time blogging? Because while I waste my time blogging, my CPU and hard drive waste read/write cycles uninstalling Office 2k7. Shady security on Vista, horrible user experience in Office, IE (any version)…if anything should convince you to either stay with XP and Office XP/2003 (or XP and OpenOffice, or Linux) that combo is it. It’s the ne plus ultra of arguments against Microsoft.

At least Halo is still cool.

Typically one’s heart skips a beat when he gets an email from his academic Dean. It’s usually not a case of a guilty conscience, either - it’s just unexpected to receive an email from the guy who is ultimately in charge of your education. But this email from my dean was nothing to worry about, from an academic point of view. From a world record point of view, though, it’s very scary:

Alabama Carol Sing Attempt

Dr. Lawson did say that kind of attempt is more difficult than they may think, and he’s right - he tapped me and Rob Ranney to coordinate our successful attempt in 2004, and it was crazy. All the organization, forms, paperwork…and I wasn’t even the one really doing most of it. Rob volunteered the idea and got saddled with the bulk of the work. Suffice to say plans for a 10,000-person carol sing are on hold until we see if our Alabaman friends can pull off 8,000 people. Either way it won’t be my problem, since I won’t be a student anymore. Still, it’s a point of pride to point to a world record book and say “I organized that.” We’ll see.

:UPDATE:

Another town - Wausau, Wisconsin - is shooting for the record, too. The plot thickens…

This is me, come December 1 through whenever exams start. Click for the full thing.

On another note, happy December 1. It’s currently 70 degrees outside. O_o