Fishing Derby this weekend

Ruth and I are staying home to watch the racing homers come in from a 165 mile race. Ruth enjoys sitting out in the yard waiting for them to pop over the horizen too. We work together training the birds. She always calls me when they come in from a training drop - or don't come in on time.

I hate to miss this with Kyle but I think it will be nice for him and his grandfather to have some time together. Besides, I'll be there later. The birds should be back by noon ( just in time for the fishing derby to be over). In the meantime, this will be a neat memory for Kyle and his grandfather.

Great Lecture by Dr. Kenneth Miller

I attended his lecture, entitled “Darwin, God, and Design: America’s Continuing Problem with Evolution". His basic premise was that science and religion need not be at odds - a feeling I share. He expressed himself very well and was entertaining to boot! He has even been on the Colbert Report - twice! I had ordered two of his books and had hoped to have him sign them but they didn't come in. His books sound as if they are nearly identical to my masters thesis idea which I thought was pretty unique up until recently. Of course, I'm sure he's covered the ground much better than I ever will but my thesis is not just focused on cosmology and religion and really has more to do with my personal spiritual journey.

I was impressed with his gracious handling of a presumed fundamentalist who asked basically [paraphrased] "who he thought he was trying to use his finite mind to understand the infinite." He answered he was just a fallible human being trying to answer the same questions everyone was trying to answer while being well aware of his limitations.

I couldn't possibly do his lecture justice in a blog entry so please click the links.

I came across this Google ad in my mail: http://www.byki.com/

So, I gave them my junk mail email address and they started sending me lessons.  I started with the flash cards - easy!  "I know these!"  Then they started presenting them backwards, giving me English and asking for  Russian in multiple choice (I think).  Neat.  "I can do this."  Then
came the hard part: Type your answer in Russian.  I thought I had it right but left off the soft sign - WRONG!  Man!  Some of these Russian words are hard to spell!  (They give you a little Russian keyboard on the screen).  By the time you learn to spell these - you ought to have them down cold!

So I bought it.  I haven't used Rosetta Stone but this was a fraction of the cost so I'm going to say it's a pretty good value.  You can really manipulate the lessons and they way they are presented.  Incidentally, I also recently purchased Berlitz Ear Worms (I know - ewww!) and moved to my MP3 player.  Byki had podcasts too.  Tons of them!  I was shocked at how many podcasts there were!!  They already had a lot more content than most beginner language series.  It's an amazing value - and very portable.  I wish this was one of those sites I could profit off of sharing ideas like that!  :-)

Current Reading List

• Finding Your Religion (for Masters Thesis)
• Seven Daughters of Eve (also for Thesis)
• Saxons, Vikings and Celts (for genealogy, sort of)
• Thomas Jefferson: Writings (for fun - my favorite president)
• The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008

Yes, even though I'm taking a break on the classes - I am still working on the thesis for my Master of Arts in Liberal Studies. Actually, I was already working on it before I started taking classes.

I got many of my friends and family a copy of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 for Christmas. I thought it would be neat to have something interesting to discuss and share via email. It went over like a lead balloon. :-)

See, that's what I'm talking about

Translating Airat's blog today, I picked up a very useful term (for a computer guy): столы. From his post "Качественные рабочие столы на interfacelift.com". I get "Quality working [table?] on interfacelift.com". Table? I've known стол as table for more than 20 years. I look it up anyway. Yeah - table. So I decide to put it in Google Translate and it translates it as "desktop". Ah! Makes sense! So I guess this is something like "Good stuff for your desktop at interfacelift.com"? Anyway, knowing the word for the computer desktop is useful.

Hazzards of foreign language study

I was searching for the program schedule for Dish networks new (cheapest) Russian ala cart programming: ТВ-1000 Русское кино (TV1000 RUSSIAN KINO). Searching in English did not bear fruit so I switched my keyboard layout to Russian and searched. I found what I was looking for! A nice program schedule which also had movie descriptions (in Russian). I then got busy with other things and forgot about my PC.

When I came back to my desk, I was unable to unlock my keyboard. Again and again I tried, carefully typing my password and making note of the caps lock key indicator. Caps lock is off and I am typing it correctly: "I've been hacked!!" That always pops into my mind when this sort of thing happens. "No, no." I tell myself. "Don't jump to conclusions. That has never turned out to be the case in any of these situations." Then I notice: the keyboard layout is set to Russian! I'll NEVER be able to enter my password with a Russian keyboard layout. Что делать?!

I Googled for a possible hot key to toggle the keyboard layout (you can do this at the desktop - but in the screen lock position?) No luck. Then it occurred to be to use on of the pseudo tty terminals (I use Ubuntu Linux). Yup! Got in and killed off the screen saver and then toggled off the Russian keyboard layout. Whew!

xtranormal beta = free movie maker

This is pretty neat! An animated movie maker. It's free (for now) while it is in beta.