Now that some of the controversy has died down, I have a question out there for practicing Catholics. I've noticed that a few of you had negative reactions to the election of Pope Benedict the XVI. This honestly confuses me, so I'm wondering which of my assumptions is incorrect:

1. You believe in the Catholic Church and it's teachings.
2. The Pope is chosen by God through the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those voting.

This is honestly not meant to be aimed at anyone in particular, nor is it meant to be a flame. I'm honestly curious as to how correct my understanding of Catholic theology is.

It just didn't make sense to me to see so much complaining from Catholics on the choice of a new Pope, from what I understand to be of the church's teachings. Honestly, I'm curious as to where my logic is wrong. Also, I'm not all that interested in responses from non-Catholics :-)

I am, in fact, too sexy for my shirt.

Need a lawyer? Are your constitutional rights being violated by rogue government agents? If you have information that may lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions, and you're being threatened with torture, call Amnesty Global! Our team of liberal lawyers and U.S. marshals are standing by 24 hours a day, armed and in suit and tie, ready to assist you with with all your legal problems, even at 12:36 in the morning! Need a court order in the middle of the night to stop pesky spies from injecting with you truth serum? We're here to help! Even wavering, cowardly presidents are no match for our crack legal team. We'll be at your side representing you with a court order in hand within 20 minutes or your first billable hour is free! Don't forget our name: Amnesty Global!

Note: I can't take credit for this. My friend emailed it to me. We're having more fun making fun of 24 this season than watching it.

If you were paying attention, you might remember my bleg for help on how to spend bonus money. Well, I took everyone's advice and put it towards paying off the small CC debt.

I don't know if it was a reward from God, but I just received another award at work. This is quite a surprise, as I've been with my employer for 5 years now, and this is only my third award. I must be doing something right.

So this time, I got myself an XBox, with some XBox Live on the side. My gamer tag is "MC Hampster". If you're on Live, drop your tag here, so I can add you to my friends list. I only have Halo 2 right now (and Crimson Skies, since it came with Live). What are the best Live Enabled games out there?

I was #29.

Super obscure hints:

1. My kids face is blocked out. I am purposely vague about my kids age, and I don't give their names. I've said before I like to keep my kids off the internet, for privacy reasons.
2. Zoom out a bit on either picture, and you'd see we were at Disneyland (a vacation I recently mentioned). In the first pic, panning to the right would reveal Mrs. Incredible (Or Elastigirl if you prefer). The second pic was getting out of It's a Small World. Only DL die-hards would have picked up on that.
3. My glass eye. Apparently, no one remembered or knew that I had a glass eye. I thought I had mentioned it somewhere. It was the reason I made sure to post pictures of me wearing sunglasses, so it would be more difficult to pick out. Normally, it is more difficult to pick out glass eyes, but because I was born without sight in my right eye, the muscles in that eye never developed, so it closes a little. Once Ethelred had that hint, he went all crazy on me.

So my hints were really obscure, and sucked, but it did eventually reveal my identity.

Some of the bigger surprises for me:

• siewolf as #43 - Not at all what I expected :-) What's really strange, is that before I lost a few pounds, we could have been twins (except for the iPod).
• SamTheButcher as #44 - I don't know what I was thinking, but I had this image from a previous photo competition that was totally different. I mean, way different. And it's what I've been imagining for a while now. Have you lost weight or something recently?
• RailGunner as #59 - You don't look like a right-winger to me.
• dexterpexter as #104 - Ack, he's a chick! :-)

I'll have to go back to figure out how many I got right, but it's not many.

Edit: Fixed StB's picture link. Thanks john!

I hate pigeons.

I mean, I hate these birds with a righteous fury I don't think I've ever felt.

I spent most Sunday afternoon dealing with these "rats with wings". We have a two story house that has morphed over the last few months into an open-air aviary for pigeons. They have built nests, crapped all over my roof, driveway and vehicles. They've woken my children up early with their cooing in the early morning hours (which in Phoenix now starts at 5:30). Yes, this is partially my fault for letting the problem get this bad. I should have dealt with them months ago. But as usual, I've procrastinated on my housework, mostly because I spent my weekends playing with the kids and finishing schoolwork.

However, I felt inspired after church to deal with the issue. On the way home, I stopped by Lowe's to pick up my arsenal:

1. Wire snips
2. Gray spray paint
3. Stapler gun (I've wanted one of these for a long time)
4. What can only be described as the wire fencing they used to make rabbit cages.

The plan of action was to get up on the roof and sweep off as much pigeon crap as I could. Then clear out the nests and spray off the roof to clean up the rest. I don't think I've experienced that much crap since I watched a night of the DNC convention last year. It was everywhere. After getting it off the roof, I swept it up off the driveway. I honestly had to shovel it into the garbage can. After getting that cleaned up, I went back on the roof and tried to clear out the nests. There were two of them. One recently had a mother with babies, but they had moved out. That nest wasn't a problem. There was another nest in an eave on the 2nd level roof that still had a mother pigeon there. I ended up spraying all the other pigeons to get them to leave, and I THOUGHT that the one in the nest had left, but when I ended up shooting the water in the eave to clear out the nest, I realized it wasn't going to work. So I went to try to reach something in there to pry out the nest and clean it up that way. It was then I realized the bird was still there.

Now, I had sprayed a high pressure stream of water in this thing for at least 3 minutes. And this bird still refuses to leave. I kind of felt bad for a second or two, thinking that this was one dedicated mommy bird. But then I realized that things was simply creating more rats with wings. I decided to give up on clearing out this nest until next weekend, when hopefully the babies have left the nest and I don't have to battle with the bird.

I closed up the two other eaves that had previously had nests with the wire. I spray painted the wire with the gray spray paint so it wouldn't be so noticeable. It closely matched some of the highlights in the external paint and ended up looking much better than expected.

So at this point, the house is pretty nicely cleaned up. I still need to clean out that last nest and close up the eave so they won't be back. On Monday morning, I noticed there were a bunch of pigeons back, sleeping on the roof and perching areas. I've done some research on ways to more permanently get rid of them. On one Usenet posting I found, someone said that spraying them with a hose in the early evening as they are settling in will usually get rid of them after a few nights. So last night, right as the sun was going down, I sprayed them all enough to get them to leave. I saw no birds this morning on the roof except for the one in that last nest.

Anyone else have any suggestions on dealing with pigeons? It's illegal for me to kill them, so I'd prefer not to resort to that action. (I'm looking at you Bungi.)

It's way to good to pass up:

"Special" donut for sale at EBay

Note that this item is in the "mature" section of eBay, so you have to sign in. If you have problems getting the link to work, do a search for the item #5572838087

You know, there's no better feeling in the world than writing up a two page mathematical proof.

Oh wait, there is: every other feeling that exists

Yeah, I'm doing homework and I'm bitter.

So what is the worst homework assignment you ever received?

Doesn't "pumping lemma" sound dirty?

This is a total inside joke. But I have to post this somewhere to release the hours of frustration I've been experiencing today.

InstallShield = teh sux.
ServerBuilder = teh bomb.

That is all.

I was busy yesterday posting on the front page. I actually had a total of 26 moderations of my comments yesterday, mostly good. I'm especially proud of my Troll moderation.

Insightful, yeah... , posted to Microsoft Lifts Curtain on Indigo Software , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Normal (0).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Offtopic (-1).

It is currently scored Offtopic (0).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (1).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (2).

Oh really? , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Informative (+1).

It is currently scored Informative (2).

May I be the first to say... , posted to Lab-Made Fireball May Be a Black Hole , has been moderated Funny (+1).

It is currently scored Funny (2).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

May I be the first to say... , posted to Lab-Made Fireball May Be a Black Hole , has been moderated Funny (+1).

It is currently scored Funny (3).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Funny (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Nice , posted to Google Launches Google Code , has been moderated Informative (+1).

It is currently scored Informative (2).

Nice , posted to Google Launches Google Code , has been moderated Informative (+1).

It is currently scored Informative (3).

Nice , posted to Google Launches Google Code , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Informative (4).

Nice , posted to Google Launches Google Code , has been moderated Interesting (+1).

It is currently scored Informative (5).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

May I be the first to say... , posted to Lab-Made Fireball May Be a Black Hole , has been moderated Funny (+1).

It is currently scored Funny (4).

PS3 , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (2).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (5).

PS3 , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

time to spend some karma , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Troll (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Oh really? , posted to CSS Support Could Be IE7's Weakest Link , has been moderated Flamebait (-1).

It is currently scored Flamebait (1).

PS3 , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

PS3 , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (5).

Try to keep up , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (2).

Try to keep up , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Try to keep up , posted to Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD , has been moderated Underrated (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

As a reminder to those who watch Survivor: the show airs tonight on CBS, rather than tomomrrow due to college basketball.

To those who don't care about Survivor: what are you doing here anyway? :-)

w00t, two journals in one day.

For those looking for the new trailer, you can right-click here and do a Save As. It's in Quicktime.

The trailer gave me goosebumps. Yes, I am a geek.

I recently switched between departments at my place of work. I used to be in a department where I would be writing reusable components that other developers would use in our distributed environment. Stuff like logging, data access, security, etc. I also was responsible for mentoring and helping other developers. Eventually, I grew tired of only working on architecture. I wanted to get back into application development. I applied with a manager that I used to work for and he was happy to pick me back up.

The only problem is, there is no one left to do this job, specifically help other developers in our distributed environment. So, a couple weeks ago, my old manager called up and asked if I could help this one developer who needs help often. I didn't used to get along with this developer, but over time I've come to see he's actually a pretty good guy who is doing the job the best to his ability. After a couple days of troubleshooting, we figured out his problem. I was invited to a meeting that took place yesterday that was titled "[Application Name] Follow-up" that included the developer I helped plus my old manager. I had never been called into that sort of meeting, so I had no idea what to expect.

Well, turns out this developer pushed for me to get a Special Recognition Award for $400. I was completely surprised by this development. I've bee with the company for almost 5 years and this is only the second time I've gotten one of these. It's not that I haven't done anything worth rewarding, it just seems like no one notices. But enough with the "woe is me" attitude.

So now the real question is, what to spend it on? Should I be responsible with it and maybe pay off some of our final credit card debt? Should I just save it? What? I've been wanting to get an XBox for the last few months, but I always feel so irresponsible since I already have a Nintendo GameCube that I really enjoy. I mean, I'm almost 30 years old now with a family and the thought of buying a second console seems... .geeky? What really interests me in the XBox is XBox Live, since I have a few friends that are already on it.

Anyway, I'm also thinking a Tivo would be pretty cool, although I don't watch a whole lot of TV. And prepare yourselves, because we don't even have cable *gasp!*.

So what do you think? Who out there has XBox Live? Is it cool? What about Tivo's? Is it worth it without cable?

Via The Corner:

Optimus-Prime Dies of Prostate Cancer

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Pop culture fans are mourning the death of Optimus Prime today as the famous Transformer passed away last night from prostate cancer on the new Cartoon Network Show, "Robot Chicken."

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