Category: Uncategorized

Too fat? Too skinny? Too obsessed with my weight?

In 1999, I was in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and was given a smaller part in the show because they were looking for “Someone Slimmer” – and they chose a guy I thought was kinda chunky.

So I dieted for 6 months and went from 220 to 180. Dieted another 6 months and went from 180 to 165.. and have hovered for the last three years at 163… until now.

Within about two weeks, I had my wife, my mother, my stepmother and someone at work tell me I looked skinnier and that they thought maybe I was getting too thin. I was used to this.. but when my mother said, “Its starting to look unhealthy”, I decided I would go back to around 175, where I looked the best in photos.

And its been great. Mint Mochas, candy, pizza, pastries.. anything I chose.. just yum yum yum..

Until today, when I hit the scale and it said 172. I had wanted to go gradually through the holidays, get to like 177 and then lose the two pounds after the first. Instead, before even Thanksgiving, I have put on 9 pounds, and only have 3 to go.. and I wanted to be able to just eat whatever over the holidays.

So now, in order to be able to keep gaining weight in the coming months, I am back to dieting in order to lose weight in order to be able to keep gaining weight until january.

Its very confusing. .. and it may turn out that I am indeed insane.

Today I simply wanted to send out a “thank you” to some of the vets I know. Today is Veterans Day, which, unlike Memorial Day, honors the living rather than the dead.

• William Gallagher Barnson, retired Air Force Colonel. My adopted father served honorably in the active duty and reserve stateside throughout the Cold War, and had served in the navy during the Korean War.
• Jeffrey Kevin Barnson, my adopted brother, veteran of the First Gulf War flying a C-130 Hercules for the Air Force.
• Brian Michael Barnson, my older brother who honorably served in the U.S. navy.
• Ryan Rawlins, good friend and former Utah National Guardsman. Called him this morning to thank him.
• Richard Wendell Ellis, my father-in-law, who served in the U.S. army stateside and in Germany, retiring a few years ago to Idaho.
• Our very own Jon Brusco, friend for the last nineteen years, who served us in the U.S. army stateside and Panama, acquiring wounds that will never fully heal. Kind of like Frodo, if Frodo had a bum knee.
• Kevin Graham, currently serving in parts unknown. I haven’t seen him for thirteen years, but I’ve heard about him here and there, one day serving here, and another day serving there.

According to Woodrow Wilson’s Armistice Day proclamation, “the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nation.”

Who would you like to give props to this Veteran’s Day? Now’s the time, because tomorrow it won’t be Veteran’s Day anymore 🙂

Robert Anson Heinlein, deceased science fiction author, popularized an acronym: TANSTAAFL. This means “There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.

I’ve watched with interest as various environmental activists over the years have opposed coal, oil, and nuclear power plants. Some advocate hydroelectric power, but we’ve discovered to our chagrin that damming rivers leads to dramatic downstream ecosystem declines. Wind power, on the other hand, has been proposed by many as a viable alternative.

Well, it turns out that Wind Power Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be. WPAAICUTB… nah, it doesn’t quite cut it. Anyway, wind power actually raises local temperatures significantly, and if used in sufficient numbers, could cause global climatologic variances, too. While the impact of wind towers on the environment are roughly 1/5th the equivalent, per megawatt, of coal power, it just goes to show TANSTAAFL.

I dunno, I still think that nuclear power is the solution. We can dump all the waste in a very confined geographic area (like the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Tribe proposes we use some of their mostly-wasteland reservation for), and the global climate cost is negligible. But the old “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) contingent opposes storing waste near them.

Me, I live in Tooele. I’d live literally just a handful of miles from what the Goshutes propose should be the world’s largest radioactive waste dump. Store the dang stuff; it’s better to store it near my family than raising the world’s temperatures and sea levels.

Okay folks, I throw this blog out there so that we can compare notes on the best software available for consumer computing use.

Over the last six months, we’ve all been reading about Microsoft’s settlement payments to Novell, Netscape, the EU, and others as a result of unfair competition practices. Basically, MS wants to own the operating system and all the software used on it. So they bundled and bought off competitors to shut down choice.

During this time, I’ve tried to capitalize on a primary benefit of having a PC: I’m not locked in to an integrated hardware and software system, like Macs. Here’s my list of the Microsoft software that I’ve abandoned for more powerful, secure apps. Let us know what you guys are using!

**XP Home/v2002/service pack 2**

Windows Media Player — Winamp, Nero 6 Internet Explorer — Mozilla Firefox MS Word — Notepad MS Publisher — Adobe InDesign MS Access — Filemaker Pro MS Money — Quickbooks Pro MS Draw — Photoshop, Illustrator MS Frontpage — Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

I’m wondering if there’s anything else out there for Word Processing, Spreadsheet, or E-mail?

About one year ago, I started sending all my working files to people in .pdfs. This means I now avoid sending native working files to recipients. It circumvents font and file corruption, as well as cross-platform issues. So, I’m not opposed to using powerful software that nobody else has, because everything is sent in a standard format (.pdf, HTML, etc.)

Thanks!

OK, I’m flipping out. We put in an offer on a house and it was accepted!

We’ll be living in, believe it or not, Eldersburg Maryland. We had been looking into Howard County or Baltimore County, but they were simply out of our price range. So we’re buying a cute little 3-bedroom split-level right down the road from my mother’s house (free babysitting!), and we’ll be poor for the next few years as every ounce of money we make will be channelled into the house. *whew*

We close December 8th – think happy thoughts for us!

We are not couch potatoes at our house. We have no reception to speak of and getting dish network or something of that nature would surely turn us into couch potatoes.

However, I do allow my toddlers/preschoolers to watch as much TV in the form of movies as they would like. I have a couple reasons for this: first of all, I get absolutely nothing done around the house otherwise; secondly, repetition and music is good for vocabulary development for little children.

My two year old proved this theory correct this morning. He is two and a half and loves his movies. His usual favorites are Muppet Treasure Island and George of the Jungle. But recently we bought the new release of Mulon on DVD so we’ve been watching that constantly.

This morning as I was trying to get my big kids ready for school, Elijah was playing with a toy drum, using a “magic wand.” He proceeded to the kitchen and beat on the floor, then suddenly turned to Zach and said, “Bow to me!” He normally doesn’t speak very clearly so I was surprised to hear him say it so clearly and asked my big kids, “What did he say?” He seemed to sense our need for a repeat and did, “Bow to me!” with his magic wand in place of a sword as seen in Mulon, pointed directly at Zach’s face. I had to ask the kids what it was from. Of course it all made sense once they told me, Mulon.

So our little Eli is growing up, speaking more clearly and using a magic wand as a sword! As tedious as housework is for four children, these are the moments that make parenting worth while! They sure can be fun.

I ran across a study today on people’s answers to the basic question, “What is your religion, if any?”.

Key findings:

• the proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from eighty-six in 1990 to seventy-seven percent in 2001;
• although the number of adults who classify themselves in non-Christian religious groups has increased from about 5.8 million to about 7.7 million, the proportion of non-Christians has increased only by a very small amount – from 3.3 % to about 3.7 %;
• the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001
• there has also been a substantial increase in the number of adults who refused to reply to the question about their religious preference, from about four million or two percent in 1990 to more than eleven million or over five percent in 2001;
• Women are more likely than men to describe their outlook as “religious”;
• Older Americans are more likely than younger to describe their outlook as “religious”;
• Black Americans are least likely to describe themselves as secular, Asian Americans are most likely to do so;
• those who identify with one or another of the main religious groups are considerably more likely to be married than those who have no religion;
• Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and those with no religion continue to have a greater preference for the Democratic party over the Republican – much as they did in 1990. Evangelical or Born Again Christians and Mormons are the most apt to identify as Republicans. Buddhists and those with no religion are most likely to be political independents. In keeping with their theology, Jehovah’s Witnesses disavow political involvement.

What do you think this means, if anything, for America? What do you think are the causes? The effects?