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Showing posts with label Back Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Back Story. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Why I Believe In Some Form of ESP

Here's some more "back story".

But, before we begin today's lesson in what makes me tick, let me say that anyone who really knows me would say that I am a very pragmatic fellow. Which is to say that I don't take a lot on faith, and that I need to see some real convincing proof before I can say "This is what I think about that!" in regards to many things.

Slow and steady wins the race.

That sort of thing, if you get my drift.

But this ESP thing; even though there has been very little scientific proof to date that it isn't all a bunch of hooey, I still have strong reasons for telling you that it is real.

I can even sum up why it is possible that ESP can be real:

The universe is far stranger than we can ever know, so we cannot really rule out anything as being impossible, now can we?

But I don't expect such generalities—no matter how lucidly they might be expressed—to carry my argument. But no matter.

I can do better than that!

Now I swear to you on my parent's graves (or I would if they hadn't both chosen cremation)—and I swear to you on whatever both you and I hold most holy—that what follows is the honest truth.

When Julie and I lived back east we often visited a couple we were friends with, a couple whose last name is Jester.

On the day of this story we were leaving our place to go see them, as we'd done any number of times before, and I had this great thought which I passed along to Julie: "Hey," I said, "wouldn't it be great if they someday had a baby girl and named her Courtney? Then she could be known as Court Jester!"

As usual, I got "the dirty look for trying to be funny" (a look I got often, even though I never saw the problem being at the transmission site, but rather on the receiveing end, if you know what I'm talking about.)

Well we head over to the Jester residence, and what is the first thing they show us when we get there?

Their new border collie, that's what.

"We named her Courtney," they said. "We call her Court Jester for short!"

Now, mind you, we'd been to this couple's house many times before.

Why, then, did I suddenly, that day, decide to make that wonderful joke?

It's because there is more going on in the universe than we're aware of.


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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Back Story (M): Summer Came To Visit

M is for Miscellanea, remember?

It reached the eighties here in the Twin Cities yesterday. That was—though deeply unusual (a phrase which here means "record breaking")—quite enjoyable, early in the day at any rate (more on that later).

I stunned my son Riley when he got off the bus from kindergarten when I said "I have to go back to the house for a few minutes, then how about we go to the park?"

First off, I don't think the thought had crossed his mind yet this early in the spring—and trust me, this is a kid that does think of the park very early in the spring—and secondly, even though I can usually enjoy taking him there, I never am the one to suggest it.

So off we went to the park for a while, and he was mighty miffed when I told him it was time to go so I could get dinner on the table before I had to leave for my class. (I'm taking Internet Programming - Client Side at Saint Paul College, as I work toward a Web Developer Certificate.) I finally got him to head for the car, but not without hearing about how we're coming back to the park again tomorrow (which would be today, now) and every day next week (during his spring break).

The bad part about summer showing up for a day is that folks at Saint Paul College had no idea how to switch on the A/C I guess. It was sweltering in our classroom, a condition made worse by all the computers turned on in the room!

Our first order of business at class? A quiz! I started off real good—I really know this stuff rather well—but then the heat started to get to me and I found myself struggling over stuff I knew that I knew. What an annoyance!

The rest of the class went well though; we're really getting into some cool JavaScript stuff now, which I cannot wait to apply to my Web Developer Quest site, not to mention what I might be able to do for this blog!

And being that this is primarily a "book talk" blog, I guess I could mention that the textbook we're using (New Perspectives on JavaScript by Patrick Carey and Frank Canovatchel) is really excellent for learning JavaScript from. And it is even better for learning JavaScript with a teacher, but I think most educated individuals could do quite well with only this book.

So—back to my story—summer visited, as I was saying.

For one day.

Today it is back to being what I—with my seriously thin blood—would have to call "mighty cool".

So guess where Riley and I wound up after he got off the bus today?

Right!

The park.


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Thursday, December 14, 2006

(R)ecreation [From my "Back Story" blog]

What do I do to kill time? Well, I:


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Saturday, December 2, 2006

Or perhaps M is for . . . [From my "Back Story" blog]

Miscellanea.

In the immortal words of the not-so-immortal Stan Lee: 'nuff said!


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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Story of O (iteration 1) [From my "Back Story" blog]

As I said, using FORM, the O stands for Occupation.

Occupations I've had:


  1. Shoe factory worker

  2. Telecommunications specialist (USAF/Post-USAF)

  3. IT professional

  4. Stay-at-home dad


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Saturday, November 25, 2006

Let's try this again [From my "Back Story" blog]

I thought I'd learned from my mistakes, but I guess not. At least this time the problem was an offline error. I had a really nice entry being edited yesterday for this blog, and got my machine hung before I saved a copy (I just saved what I've written in this post so far!)

So, now I'll try to re-invent what I wrote once already, and you can bet I'll be saving this puppy often as I do.

Before we get started with the back story that is the raison d'etre for this blog, I'm going to explain how I'm going to proceed with giving you some idea "what I'm about" in the most useful fashion.

I tend to be someone who likes my route well thought out before beginning a trip, and a plan of action before beginning any venture. As such, I'm going to lay out my plan so that you know what to expect.

My intent is to concurrently implement two techniques that I've been familiar with for many years:


  1. The first technique (I was taught this a number of years ago by a salesman) gives you the ability to converse with anyone you'd like to get to know better (and, in the salesman's case, anyone you'd like to sell something to).

    This first technique is called FORM.

    FORM stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Money (or Message). If you introduce yourself to someone and start a discussion about your families, jobs, recreational interests, and then talk about whatever your message is (or what you're selling) you stand a better chance of investing that person in what you're saying.

    And since this blog will be (as I hope all my blogs are) a conversation between myself and my readers, I'm going to be using the FORM method to structure the information you learn about me.

  2. But wait, there's MORE!!!

    The second technique I'm going to employ is something from my former life in the world of IT (information technology): spiral development. Yes, I'm going to iterate over the FORM areas of my life (mayhap not so much over the M), providing a high-level view of my life at present and how I got here, and then on successive iterations going into more and more detail (but not so much you get sick of me, I hope!)



So, beginning with Family, (iteration 1), I am:

  • 50 years old

  • a husband (to wife Julie)

  • a father (to son Riley)

  • a stay-at-home dad (for six years, come January)

  • an orphan

  • the fourth of my mother's six kids (I have an two older "half sisters" and a "half brother")

  • the first of my father's three children (I have a younger sister and a younger brother)



That's enough of the first iteration on family. Next time I'll talk about my occupation (such as it is).


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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

One of my favorite quotes [From my "Back Story" blog]

This has to be one of my favorite quotes ever: Follow your bliss (Joseph Campbell). The fact that it has been run up as the rallying cry for more than one generation by now (not to mention "t-shirtized" out the wazoo!) does nothing to diminish what it stands for.

But, like most of us, I suck at figuring out what my bliss is. I thought I wanted to be a published writer when I grew up, and now, thanks to blogger, I am. This does feel blissful to me, so I'll continue with it for a bit (like for the rest of my life, if I have anything to say about it, which I think I do!)


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The Fifth Element [From my "Back Story" blog]

The fifth element in my journey to blog overload was launched on Monday, November 13th. It's a little thing called Love All Books (and I do love all books, for the most part, though I'll admit that I find some books by certain parties of political extremism do induce strong feelings of anxiety!)

If I'm going to provide "back story" on my life, I guess I need to post soon about just what my life is like at the moment. That is my plan for the next post (or the post after, no later than that!)


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Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Great Advice For Project Completion [From my "Back Story" blog]

This may be the best advice I've ever been given:

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

I have this graphic set up as my wallpaper on my Dell laptop, but I let ImageShack resize it when it was uploaded.


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Monday, October 30, 2006

A To Do list (from/to "yours truly") [From my "Back Story" blog]

Here are some "blog-related" things to do soon:


  • Clean up all my sidebars of "Edit Me" kinda crap

  • Make sure I optimize my income opportunities (since I'm donating all the revenue from now until Dec 31 to charity.)

  • Make sure all blogs have the following links (right now some do, some don't):

    • My del.icio.us

    • Blog Explosion

    • Links to my other blogs


  • Make sure I put a link to WWdN on the Links section of the Famous Blogs blog (and in the future, put up links to any new blogs I focus on)

  • Syndicate all blogs





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Saturday, October 28, 2006

Why do I need another blog? [From my "Back Story" blog]

Yes. Why indeed?

Well, the short answer (Yeah, right! If you know me you know there really isn't such a thing where I'm concerned; if you don't know me, you're about to find out that I'm anything but brief) is that I like for my blogs to have a particular focus, and I thought I might need a place for more unfocussed blather, and perhaps to just tell you a bit about my history.

For right now I'll say that I'm sort of ticked at the person with the blog at backstory.blogspot.com, but only a little bit: so instead of this blog being at that address, I had to use my little grey cells and get creative with the address I wanted, which is how I wound up with baxtory.blogspot.com (say it out loud if you don't get it). What I'm most annoyed about is she's got the address I wanted and isn't doing anything with it (at least not since Guy Fawkes Day 2001).

So now I'm up to, what, four blogs? Bet you don't read'em all. (Kinda reminds me of the bunch of "personalized" pencils my friend Dave ordered many years ago: "Save the whales! Collect the whole set") Hell, I'd be happy if anyone was reading any of them.

My first, Techsploration (techsploration.blogspot.com) deals with my delvings into things techie.

My second, Famous Blogs (famousblogs.blogspot.com) intends to pick apart (and not always in a negative way) what works and what doesn't with some blogs by some famous folks.

The third, Web MaJoR (webmajor.blogspot.com), I wanted as a place to focus on my web programming activities/studies.

And now this one. We'll have to see where it leads.

Perhaps it will fall flat on its face.

Or maybe it will actually get linked to, and perhaps I'll get comments (I'm very open to comments; I'd like my blogs to be a dialog).

So, let me know what you think!

Please.



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