More Fun With the Bible

Ecclesiastes 9:5

For the living know that they are to die, but the dead no longer know anything. There is no further recompense for them, because all memory of them is lost.

Translation, when you die you loose consciousness. The spirit in man has no consciousness apart from the physical human brain. Man doesn't have an immortal soul according to the bible. He has a spirit in him that Jesus can resurrect, but not an immortal soul that contains all his thoughts and hopes and dreams.

Psalm 146:4

His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

The bible is showing that death is like sleep.

Daniel 12:2

Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.

The resurrection wakes you up, and you get to have cookies and cake with Jesus.

No Immortal Soul, like the Egyptians thought existed, like the Greek philosophized, and like so many sermons and lessons have been fabricated about in bible school and in churches around the world.

There is a distinct difference between a spirit and an immortal soul.

I forgot how funny this was

Birthday's was the worst days, but now we drink champagne when we thirs-ta

Attending performance reviews always puts me in a rotten fucking mood. It’s a shame this one had to be on my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

I sat down with my interim boss and my new boss and went over my goals and results for the year. It was all smiles and fun and love. All the measurable goals I have I’m far exceeding, reports completed on time, customers fully satisfied based on survey results, training classes completed in a timely way, volunteer to lead training requirements for my group, reviews normally done by managers completed…

YET when I say I was told I was at a 3b after my last review. My goal is a 3a, where do I need to improve to get to that rating.

Well, we need to get you more up to your capacity.

Translation: You aren’t working enough unpaid overtime. I put in at least 45 hours a week and that’s about my fucking limit.

Cause I don’t get paid for it and

I only get to see my son, if I work my current schedule, for 4 hours a day, of which two of that is hurried dinner sort of things that aren’t actually quality time. So they would want me to work another hour or more a day so I would see him less.

I think that verges on discrimination of some sort.

Find some other chump to work your 60-hour workweek who doesn’t have kids and a pregnant wife.

They apparently don’t want you to achieve the measurable goals they’ve set, they really want you to take on more work than you can do in a 45 hour week, be late with your reports, have unsatisfied customers, unfinished safety training, etc, etc.

Happy Birthday,

Dear

Law

ryde

Happy Birthday to you.

I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda

So I learned that I was decieved by Christianity while I was growing up. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

I was lead to believe that I had a soul that would, upon my death, either rise up to heaven because I was good, go down to hell if I was bad, or go to pergatory if I was OK (I was always aiming for purgatory, and yes, I was raised Catholic.)

Anyway, turns out that the bible NEVER says ANYWHERE in it that man has an immortal soul inside of him. If he did, he’d be on the same frequency as God, and you couldn’t have that. Christianity expounds that man if flesh, and when he dies, he dies, until Jesus Christ comes back and resurects everyone who was good, and casts the wicked down into the lake of fire. So, when you die, you lay in your box, unconcious, until Jesus comes back. Christians don’t have souls, not in the immortal soul sense that I think most every Christians in America thinks, and that Plato came up with back in the day. Everyone dug the immortal soul idea that Plato had so it has survived, but it isn’t true Christian doctorine.

Check your bibles if you like, ask your priest or pastor or whoever if he can give you a line in the bible that talks about your immortal soul and how it will some day float up to heaven.

It's Time for a Test

Here is question that should be on any medical, law, or other institute of higher learning’s entrance exam:


You have a fence that you share with a neighbor. One of the boards happens to fall off due to the age of the fence. The other boards have swelled and warped so that you can’t just put the board back in its original place. Both you and your neighbor have a dog and kids. Please select one of the following options to rectify the situation:

A: Hire a professional fence contractor to come to your house and assess the situation. Pay handsomely for a section of fence to replace the old section.

B: Ask your neighbor for a pipe wrench. That’s the right tool to fix a fence, right?

C: Lay the board in about the position it was in, and hope that the wind or an animal doesn’t knock it over.

D: Exam the boards and see that there are gaps in-between the neighboring boards that could be consolidated into enough space to place the old board back in it’s original position. Take a cordless drill and move the neighboring boards, and then replace the fallen board in its original position with screws.

For those of you scratching your heads, D is the correct answer.

A, B, and C may seem correct to the common sense challenged, but D is in fact the correct answer.

My doctor neighbor (soon to be done with his residency and will be a real doctor), the same one who asked me for an axe to take apart an old desk he had (I suggested a saw), picked C.

The board fell, my little dog escaped, but we got him back.

Still, come on. I’ve never considered myself a beacon of common sense, but I guess engineering in the real world has helped me move past those who’ve been buried in academia.

Kick-Off to Kitchen ‘08

As I said before, our kitchen sucks balls, deep full mouth sucking.

We’ve gone through several design sit-downs with Lowes. Today I laid down some cash and got the cabinets and countertops ordered.

They’ll be delivered on the first of March.

Our build date is March 15. My dad and I will be doing 100% of the labor. The wealthy don’t understand the satisfaction you can get from putting something together with your own sweat and blood.

I’m looking forward to the new kitchen.

There will be pictures of the process, as with all of my remodel projects.

I shaved my beard last night. Just had one of those feelings it needed to be gone and grown again. My face was cold this morning in the –20°C wind chill.

It’ll grow back in like a week.

Until then I look like my naïve high school self, with the wonder and horror of 10 years since then only evident in my eyes.

It’s a Good Time to be Paying Off Debt

Our economy is in a recession, or at least we’ll know we were in a recession in a few years. Stupid economics.

My company is actually growing, hiring, and making record profits. Why? We export 50% of our machines and engines to other places in the world. Unlike American cars, which no one but Americans want, we aren’t only affected by the US economy.

So I’ve got this good paying job, and banks are giving out great deals on credit since they’ve got people not paying and going into foreclosure and bankruptcy.

All of my unsubstantiated debt is riding on one of those zero percent for 12 months credit card deals. When that deal is over, it will all be paid off.

I also want to talk to all my Republican friends? out there who haven’t had their primary yet. Your man is already a mathematic certainty. If your primary is open, i.e. anyone can vote in it, I think you should go and vote for Obama. My reason is this: Do you really want to take the chance that Hillary will become president? You probably hate her more than I do. Go do it. You’ll feel better about your God fearing, gun loving, upper class tax breaking self.

I Love This Man

Watch and listen to this whole thing.



If you notice, he doesn't say that he is going to do all these things; he's saying WE are going to do these things. Without the support of the American people, a president can't do anything. How can you not be inspired or given a sense that things can change for the better after listening to him?


OR we could just let Jesus take care of everything like Huckabee thinks

OR we could just stay in Iraq for 100 years like McCain suggests

OR we could just bend to the ambition of Hillary and have a polarizing divider, an equivalent to a Democratic George W Bush.

Slice

Played hockey this evening. It was an embarrassing loss. Plus I got cut by a skate. More like nicked. I didn't realize it until the end of the game. Not quite as bad as the dude in the NHL, but I can understand how it happens a bit easier now.

I Felt the Cold Rain of the Coming Storm

I found out today what I’ll be working on for the next year (literally a full years worth of work).

I’m weighing the pluses and minuses of this rotten assignment.

I get to work with the machine engineer I worked on pipelayers with. He’s good people.

I have to do the work for a dude who I don’t play hockey with, and whom I don’t think has a similar style or personality as myself. Not Gonzo Engineering.

The machine will be mine and mine alone to test for the year. It’s a dedicated hydraulic test-bed.

It’s the highest volume bulldozer we sell, best I don’t fuck something up or miss something.

I’ll be pushed to work more overtime than I would ever consider.

I won’t work said overtime.

I’ll receive flak for not working that overtime.

I’ll be forced to tell them to find some other stooge who doesn’t have a kid and a pregnant wife, or two kids and a wife at home or be happy with my 40-45 hours a week.

Or fucking pay me overtime and I’ll consider putting in more time.

I’m planning on becoming a 179 millionaire tonight playing Mega Millions so maybe this editorial is just masturbation.

I mean how unlikely is it that I won’t have had the machine randomly predict a series of numbers picked in the future?

I was fantasizing about winning that big wad of cash today, and I thought my wife and I would each just take 1 million dollars and spend it immediately on whatever. Get that spending spree out of the way.

I was having a hard time thinking of shit to spending it on.

Unless you buy crazy big-ticket items it’s kind of hard. I’d buy a fast expensive car that would be like $100,000. I’d pay everything off I owe which is only like $175,000. I’d pay my tattoo artist a lump sum of money so that I could call at any time and get an appointment to get whatever I wanted done on my torso. I figure that would be like $20,000. I’d buy a shit load of hockey gear that maybe would reach like $20,000 if I got goalie stuff as well. I guess I’d get a bunch of electronic toys. I still only be getting close to half a million.

Now that was an exercise in masturbation.

Doctor Lawryde PhD

Higher degrees are a waste of money. I've learned more working in industry (about 7 years now including internships) than I would have getting my Masters or Doctorate.

Today I found out I found out I'm almost a hydraulics engineer knowing my shit for the second time. We had a 583T that wouldn’t raise its boom. Everything else worked, including lowering the boom. So what the fuck was wrong? I went out with mechanic Dave to try and figure it out. It was low on hydraulic oil so we filled the tank, hoping that was the problem. Unfortunately it wasn’t so I went and got my coveralls on since it was like –8°C out and gently snowing. I started taking some pressure measurements at various places to try and figure out what was going on. Turns out the pump wasn’t stroking up when a boom raise command was given.

It’s never a good thing when your pump doesn’t get full stroke.

I studied the schematic sitting on top of the hydraulic tank as my gloves froze to the steel of the machine. It had been much colder so the machine was even colder than the air. My gloves were wet and wherever I touched the machine they would stick.

I thought it might have been the boom kick-out switch. The kick-out switch makes it so you don’t bend the boom when you have it all the way up. If you didn’t have it, you’d be able to keep running the winch as the boom bent backwards. We took off the guard and the switch was stuck closed.

Problem solved.

Patient will have a full recovery.

The Building Momentum

“Sometimes the train is going 100 miles an hour and you’re better off getting out of the way rather than trying to stop it.” – some asshole at work talking about a bullshit process I no longer have to deal with.

Anyway, in that case momentum is a bad thing, but when it comes to Obama’s momentum it’s a good think. I’m stoked he’s pulled within like 20 delegates of Clinton including Sűper Delegates.

My wife put it best regarding how we don’t really like Clinton. She said that Clinton seems like “Mom” from Futurama. When she’s speaking publicly she’s all nice and happy looking, and then as soon as she gets behind closed doors she’s an űber bitch.

Last Friday we went to Lowes and Home Depot and started planning our kitchen remodel. Our kitchen sucks balls. We’re going to gut it and redo everything. My dad is coming down Good Friday week and we’re going to have at it. It should be a good time. It will be like old times when we redid our kitchen at home like 10 or 12 years ago. I’m going to make sure I wear steel toes for this remodel. Last time I accidentally kicked a drill that was laying on the floor and it went right through my shoe and stuck underneath my little toe. It only went in about a half inch, but it didn’t feel good. I’m working all the numbers and layouts and material stuff right now. We need to get the cabinets and counters ordered in about two weeks.

Got my taxes filed this weekend, the economic stimulus thing is going to get through, my bonus is on the way, a class action lawsuit against Belkin that I qualify for is going to payout about $130, I’m just waiting for the cash to roll in so I can let it roll out for kitchen and baby stuff.

Lawryde should be CEO

Diversity Of Thought Will Take
Opposite of Dog From Good To Great

...Sometimes, in the United States in
particular, we hear the word “diversity”
and immediately think of race or gender.
Certainly it’s important that we’re diverse
in how we look as a company, especially
as we work to attract the best talent
around the world to serve our customers.
But it’s even more important that we’re
diverse in how we think...- JO CEO Opposite of Dog 02/2008

Friday, October 06, 2006

I am Jack's acceptance of Diversity

Opposite of Dog has a large diversity initiative in place. I’m all for diversity in the workplace, especially at Opposite of Dog where the culture is so grossly atavistic it’s oppressive.When most people think of diversity, they think of different races and cultures interacting as if there is no difference between them. This is definitely part of diversity, but I think that’s pretty easy to achieve. By easy, I mean that it’s easy to accept someone when they are supposed to be different than you are. Someone from India is from the other side of the world, so most people can handle the fact that they have different customs and ways of seeing the world.Where Opposite of Dog is failing, and will continue to fail is diversity of thought. I can’t be who I actually am at work; because of the inability of old white men to accept the fact that all young white engineers aren’t conservative, Republican, God fearing, risk intolerant, local sports team loving, willing components of the larger machine.The day I could come to work in a short sleeve shirt, sit down and eat sushi at lunch, and have a discussion about how universal healthcare would solve the rising cost of healthcare (it’s all the lawyers faults according to 99% of the people who work here), would be the day that Opposite of Dog has truly embraced diversity.At which point hell would freeze over.

-Lawryde Engineer Opposite of Dog

I'm so fucking progressive.

It’s Super-Duper Fucking Tuesday!!

Got up early this morning and voted. I’m not the most patriotic individual in the country, but I do hold voting as a priority.

I voted for Barack Hussein Obama. I think he has the right ideas to move our country in a positive direction. He also has one of my key qualifications for President. He’s a skilled orator. If you have big ideas, you need to be able to move people through your words.

I’m not voting for him because it would be historic. I’m not trying to have an Anchorman moment (It is anchorMAN, not anchorLADY! And that is a scientific fact!), like so many women in this country are. I’m voting for who is going to be a good leader, someone who isn’t already bought and paid for by big companies.

Go vote if it’s Super-Duper Fucking Tuesday for you today. Polls close in 11 hours and 48 minutes, and your employer has to let you go.

Thundersnow

We had this rare weather phenomenon yesterday. It was strange as hell. All of a sudden I see this flash through the curtains and then there is a loud boom. I look outside and it’s snowing like crazy. It continued on for a while. The whole thing just offends your senses. Snow and thunder and lightning just don’t mix. It might as well have been raining frogs. That’s kind of what it felt like.

I’m on the verge of all this big cash coming my way. I’ve got a $6400 bonus (after tax), a $2500 tax refund, and maybe a $1300 stimulus check that should all be coming in the next several months. That’s over 10 G’s. What will get done with all this extra cash? I’ll be paying off a substantial amount of unsubstantiated debt, buying all the shit for a full kitchen remodel planned for March, buying a new digital camera, paying for doula services, prepaying for our midwife (should get all that back from flex spending and insurance), paying to get the rest of my sleeve done, and the rest… I guess I’ll save? Yes, save the rest for the time period when the baby is born, my wife isn’t working, and I get my next raise in August.