Passing on an Angel

This is a little item I received via e-mail. I'm not typically fond ofthis sort of chain letter, however, the digital art was quite good. Rather than clutter up the e-mail boxes of several friends and colleagues I will post it here for all and sundry to see if they want.

Click to enlarge

For ALL of the Angels that I know...

I'm sending you an Angel.

Most people just don't believe in stuff unless they can see it. Well here it is. I drew one for you and your friends, and their friends, and their friends. It's my wish to have this drawing travel around the world 100 times over to make people feel good and to show that someone is thinking about you.

-J.C. Paquet

What's in a Name?

It's the birthday of the man who gave us the system of classifying and naming all the living things on the planet, Carolus Linnaeus, born in Råshult, Sweden (1707).

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He was a botanist. He taught at universities. At a time when Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe, Linnaeus set out to import exotic plants and animals, hoping they could be raised for profit in Sweden. He hoped to raise tea and coffee, ginger, coconuts, silkworms. He experimented in clams.

It was at a time when people named plants and animals in many different ways, usually based on what they looked like: Queen Anne's lace, ghost orchid, and swordfish. But even within a single country, a plant could be called by half a dozen different names by different people, so Linnaeus decided to develop a naming system based in Latin. He put each specimen into a large group called a genus and a smaller subgroup called a species, and that became the binomial naming system, which he published in 1758.

His botanical experiments failed. The tea plants died. The coffee didn't make it in Sweden, and neither did ginger or coconuts or cotton. Rhubarb did though, and Linnaeus, late in his life, said the introduction of rhubarb to Sweden was his proudest achievement. But today we remember him for his contribution to taxonomy.

When he published his taxonomy in 1758 he listed 4,400 species known to science at the time. Today there are more than one and a half million.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

20 Ways to Maintain your Insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on arid point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down?
   
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.
   
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.
   
4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In."
   
5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone Has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch To Espresso.
   
6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Sexual Favors"
   
7. Finish All Your Sentences With "In Accordance With The Prophecy."
   
8. Don't Use Any Punctuation
   
9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.
   
10. Ask People What Sex They Are. Laugh Hysterically After They Answer.
    
11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go."
    
12. Sing Along At The Opera.
    
13. Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme
    
14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play Tropical Sounds All Day.
    
15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party because You're Not In The Mood.
    
16. Ask your co-workers to address You By Your Wrestling Name, RockHard.
    
17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won! I Won!"
    
18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking Lot,Yelling "Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!"
    
19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner. "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To have To Let One Of You Go."
    
20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity
    Send This E-mail To Someone To Make Them Smile.- It's Called Therapy...
    

Received by E-Mail

Rise Lord Vader!

Star Wars Horoscope for Aquarius

You can be cruel and torment people who disagree with you. Deep down, there is a peace-loving, friendly side to you. You have a knack for inflicting pain on people and use your intellect during battle. Star wars character you are most like: Darth Vader

What is Your Star Wars Horoscope?

Interesting and disturbing at the same time.... I haven't seen the new movie yet but maybe it will be a new job reward to myself this week.

Elementary My Dear Watson

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It's the birthday of novelist and short story writer Arthur Conan Doyle, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1859). Conan Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where he met Doctor Joseph Bell, whose amazing deductions about the history of his patients fascinated the young student. After completing his studies, Conan Doyle served as a ship's doctor on voyages to Greenland and West Africa, and eventually opened his own practice. In his spare moments, he began writing. Calling on his memories of Doctor Bell, Conan Doyle created a detective who used his great powers of deduction to solve crimes. The first such story, A Study in Scarlet, introduced the detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Doctor Watson, in 1887. All told, Conan Doyle wrote 56 Sherlock Holmes stories and four Holmes novels.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Reversal of Fortune

It is amazing what can change in a short 4 days. Back then I was fortune's fool, now I am the recipient of fortune's goodwill. Yesterday I was called into the office of the boss of my boss. He had recently accepted a different post a Gigantic Concrete and was one of my chief supporters here. With his departure I had little hope of things working out for me; little hope of securing my position; little hope of salary improvement.

I thought this meeting was just going to be a standard Project update,but it wasn't. This meeting was a short affair, I was handed an offer letter guaranteeing everything I had been promised when I originally accepted the job here. My own boss had been in Toronto all week and never mentioned it. He left for Detroit early and never called to indicate anything was going to happen. Perhaps the boss of my boss is just setting things right before he goes. In any event fortune has seemingly turned my way. Let's see how long it continues to give me its favour.

Off half a pint of shanty was particularly ill....

“One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests”

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

It's the birthday of political economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill, born in London, England (1806). He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a strict disciplinarian, and who, at the age of eight, was reading Aesop's Fables in the original Greek. He is best known for his defense of empiricism in his 1843 book, System of Logic, which espoused that all knowledge is based on information received through the senses and experience of the world, rather than on rational thinking. His two other famous books are On Liberty (1859), which argued for the importance of the individual, and Utilitarianism (1861). He said: “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Continuing in the tradition of the Monty Phython Philosopher's Song

X Marks the Spot

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It's the birthday of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, in Omaha, Nebraska (1925). When he was five, his home was firebombed, and a year later his father was kidnapped, beaten, and left on a trolley track to be run over and killed. His mother was later committed to a state mental asylum, and young Malcolm ended up being sent to a juvenile detention home for delinquency. After he got out, he made his way to Boston, where he got mixed up with a burglary ring, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. While he was in prison, he became a follower of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. His Autobiography, as told to Alex Haley, was published in 1964. Shortly before his assassination, he said: “I am a Muslim, and my religion makes me be against all forms of racism. It keeps me from judging any man by the color of his skin. It teaches me to judge him by his deeds and his conscious behavior. And it teaches me to be for the rights of all human beings.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Things That Go Boom

(Further reading list available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

On this day in 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. First, an earthquake triggered the largest landslide in history down the north slope of the mountain. Then, five hundred and forty million tons of ash were spewed into the sky. Rivers of lava as hot as fourteen hundred degrees poured down the slopes at over a hundred miles an hour, along with twenty billion gallons of floodwater from melted snow on the mountain. In the end, ninety-six thousand acres of forest burned up and fifty-seven people died.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Fortune's Fool

Sometimes fortune smiles on us, sometimes we are fortune's bitch. If I had to sum up my professional career in a single line, I think this would be it. The bloom is now well off the rose at Gigantic Concrete. I have been here a little under three months. I'm not in the position I actually interviewed for. I'm not in the salary range that we actually discussed for the job. I suppose desparately wanting to leave the previous toxic environment did blind me to the short comings of this place and the blame for putting up with it - mine alone.

So now what do I do about it?

No Small Thing

It was on this day in 1796, that Edward Jenner, a doctor, inoculated an eight-year-old boy with a vaccine for smallpox. It was the first safe vaccine ever developed, and it was the first time anyone had successfully prevented the infection of any contagious disease. What made it so remarkable was that it was accomplished before the causes of disease were even understood, decades before anyone even knew about the existence of germs.

“Smallpox at the time was the most devastating disease in the world”

(Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK)

Jenner was a country doctor. He studied for a few years in a hospital in London, and learned something about the scientific method. Smallpox at the time was the most devastating disease in the world. It caused boils to break out all over the body, and killed about one in four adults who caught it, and one in every three children. It was so contagious, most people who lived in populous areas caught it at some point in their lives.

There were inoculations for smallpox, but they didn't work very well. People who were inoculated could still pass the disease onto others. Some people who were inoculated developed the disease and died from it.

Jenner knew that milkmaids who worked in his area almost never caught smallpox, and he figured that they had caught cowpox from the udders of cows and that this infection somehow helped them develop an immunity to smallpox.

He took some of the fluid from a cowpox sore and injected it into the arm of an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps who developed a slight headache and lost his appetite but that was all. And six weeks later Jenner inoculated the boy with smallpox, and the boy showed no symptoms. He had developed immunity.

At first, the Royal Society of London did not believe Edward Jenner, so he published his ideas about inoculation at his own expense in a book which came out in 1798, and was a huge success. The novelist Jane Austen said in one of her letters that she had been at a dinner party and everyone was talking about the “Jenner pamphlet.”

By 1840, the British government passed a law providing all infants with free smallpox vaccinations. It was the first free medical service in the history of the country. And today, so far as we know, smallpox only exists in the freezers of laboratories. The last known natural case occurred in 1977 in Somalia.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Not One to Cry Wolf

Further reading list available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of Farley Mowat, born in Belleville, Ontario (1921). He is best known for his books about the Canadian arctic, including Never Cry Wolf, (1963) a best-seller, and The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, in which he wrote, “I suspect that at some early moment of his existence he concluded there was no future in being a dog. And so, with the tenacity that marked his every act, he set himself to become something else.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Moss on this Rolling Stone

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in Canada (100%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (50%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (43%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the United Kingdom (38%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Western Europe (36%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the Western United States (21%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in the Southern United States (15%)

You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Eastern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%)

You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Southern Europe (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

When Puns Go Bad

Once upon a time there were 3 kingdoms. one year they decided to hold a tournement to see which kingdom's knight's were the best. the first kingdom sent 200 knights & squires. the second kingdom sent 300 knights & squires. the third was a small & poor kingdom and only sent 1 knight & 1 squire.

The day before the tourney was to begin all the knights from the three kingdoms gathered together & decided that this tournement was beneath their skill & dignity. they opted to have their squires battle instead.

The day of the tournement came and the squires of all three kingdoms assembled. standing bravely & defiantly by himself was the squire of the third kingdom. he held his banner high as he waited. on the banner was a tree to represent the longenvity of his kingdom. hanging from a branch of the tree was a noose to show the justice of the kingdom. from the noose hung a cauldron representing the bounty & abundance of the kingdom. when the squires of the other two kingdoms saw him, they surrendered immediately.

This really shouldn't be too surprising since everyone knows that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the other two sides.

Received by e-mail today.

A Great Day - Somewhere Else

What a wonderful day. The sun is shining brightly and warm through a puffy Simpson's sky. There is a light breeze from the south, and birds sing sweetly in the trees. I can see all this from my office window. But that is on the good side of the glass. On my side of the glass there are deadlines, politics, and disappointed expectations. Projects are impossible and fit nicely into the Dilbert profile of “growing or doomed”.

I think my project is definitely doomed. This isn't so much pessimism, but an educated guess based on years of working on similarly doomed projects. We scramble to meet arbitrary delivery dates, with little support or guidance. Guess what happens when they get missed; does anyone stand up and say “Your right, should have helped you there - sorry” ? No they don't.

So inside it's dark and gloomy. Outside it's bright and cheery. Here I am looking for a door.

Leaving Normal

You Are 35% Normal (Occasionally Normal)

You sure do march to your own beat... But you're so weird, people wonder if it's a beat at all You think on a totally different wavelength And it's often a chore to get people to understand you

How Normal Are You?

Found on Tim's and Rufus' blogs

The Last Lion

It was on this day in 1940 that Winston Churchill took power as the prime minister of Great Britain. He was an English politician who had had a bumpy career. He had switched parties not once but twice. He started out conservative, became liberal, and then went conservative again.

"All I have to offer is blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

At the start of World War I, he was one of the few to predict how enormous that war would be. He advocated an invasion of Turkey and the result was a disaster. There were hundreds of thousands of British casualties and nothing to show for it, and he had to resign his office in disgrace; whereupon, he joined the Army, went into battle, commanding a battalion in the trenches. He was the only politician of his stature to serve in the trenches in World War I.

Between the wars, he was alienated from politicians in both parties who felt that he was an extremist, a reactionary. In 1932, he made a speech about the growing danger of a second world war with Germany. Nobody took him seriously. He was considered paranoid and a warmonger.

But things changed when Hitler took over Czechoslovakia and Austria and then invaded Poland, Belgium, and France. In less than two years, almost all of Western Europe was either controlled by or allied with Nazi Germany. And then on May 10, 1940, Churchill became the prime minister. He gave his acceptance speech in which he said, "All I have to offer is blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

The situation for Great Britain was dire. The British Army was decimated in a retreat from Dunkirk. Hitler was so confident that he delayed invasion. He thought it would be a waste of resources. He expected British surrender, but Churchill set out to rally the British people by sheer force of will and his personality and his command of English.

Today he's perhaps more idolized in America than in Great Britainwhere he's seen as an important statesman but not perfecta man who did not support independence for India and who, in the 1930s, thought that Communism was more dangerous than Fascism. And many British felt that he turned Great Britain into a junior partner of the United States.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor.
Available by e-mail daily.

Disaster and Recovery

All IT professionals know the horrors os disaster recovery testing. You have production servers, routers and data. You have backup systems in place should anything bad happen. You dilligently plan and document procedures and eventually you say let's test it.

at least this time the disaster is in my favour

It's this testing phase when everything goes to the dogs and your world turns to sh*te. Case in point I am at the fine offices of Gigantic Concrete and all is not well. I've been here since 3:00 AM this morning. Other poor sould have been here since 4:00 PM yesterday. We are deep in the muck of it, it's not going as planned. No one is happy. No one except me that is...

You see my part of this little operation has been cancelled. We are just not going to get to that part of the plan. We are going to try to clean up the mess and complete the user testing but the network stuff? Hands off. This means, that although I've wasted a good 4 hours in the wee hours of the morning, I can go home. I can call my Mom on Mother's Day; I can spend my son's birthday being a visible, rather than invisible, dad.

Oh sure we are going to have to do this disaster recovery thing again, but at least this time the disaster is in my favour

Bars, Singing and Blogging

Technology is sometimes a wonderful invention. I'm sitting in a bar, music pounding in my ears, the hour getting late, the beer flowing freely, and still I am able to harness the technology and post friom the raised bar stool. Always online. Always connected. It's a scary thing indeed.

I promise to use the power only for good.

I'm a sterotype!

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Today is Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican holiday marking the defeat of the French invaders at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Cinco de Mayo is an even bigger holiday in this country than in Mexico. It's estimated Americans will eat 54 million avocados today, most of them in the form of guacamole.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor.
Available by e-mail daily.

I'm Apparently Rougish

Not that I wanted to be a Han Solo type. I always thought of myself as more of a contemplative Yoda type. As we know however, these quiz things don't lie, so I am Rouge here me... (whatever Rogues do).

My Inner Hero - Rogue!

It's a good thing I use my powers for good and not evil, because quite frankly, I could get away with murder. I'm clever, tricky, and charming. I know how to make you laugh with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. Not that I'd ever DO that, of course...

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

I Think My Party Membership Has Lapsed

I am: -7% Republican.

"You're a damn Commie! Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?"

Are You A Republican?

Found on Falling Upwards.

Good Book Birthday

It was on this day in 1611 that the first edition of the King James Bible was published in England. It was one of the greatest works ever written by a committee, and it was produced during a chaotic time in England. There was an epidemic of the black plague the year before. 30,000 Londoners had died. Puritans in the country were agitating against the monarchy, and a group of underground Catholics were plotting to assassinate the king.

they saw the King James Bible as an artifact of a simpler time

King James I, had thought that a new translation of the Bible might help bind the country together. There had been other English translations, but he wanted a Bible that would be the definitive version.

Previous versions had been translated from Latin. This one would be translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. Other translations had had scholarly translators' notes in the margins. This one would have as few explanatory notes as possible and appeal to the widest audience, and he wanted it to sound right since it would be read aloud in churches. So when the committee of translators gathered, each man read his verses aloud, to be judged and revised by the others.

It was a committee of 54 of the best linguists in the country: Lancelot Andrewes, George Abbot, and John Layfield. At the time, words like "thee" and "thou" and "sayeth" had already gone out of fashion in England, but the translators wanted the language of the Bible to sound old, to sound like long ago and far away. Some of the phrases in the King James have become enduring expressions: "the land of the living," "sour grapes," like a lamb to slaughter," "salt of the earth," "the apple of his eye," "to give up the ghost."

For decades most people preferred the Puritan Geneva Bible because it was plainer. It was only after the civil war in England that the King James version came into fashion. People were nostalgic for the period before the war, and they saw the King James Bible as an artifact of a simpler time.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily

Death and Taxes

“rendering unto Caesar”

You can run, but you can't hide. Through a fluke in the space time continuum April 30^th falls on a weekend. This means that I have until midnight tomorrow to file my taxes. Like other pecuniarily challenged fiscal lemmings, I am leaving the “rendering unto Caesar” as late as I possibly can. I mean it's not like Caesar is going to miss my small allotment, and you know he's only going to waste it on something like a salary increase for the MPs or another goodwill trip for the Governor General. Worse yet, it will probably be spent on federal advertising to let people like me know that it's tax time and we should pay on time. Better in my pocket I think. The illusion of paltry wealth, for at least the next twenty-four hours or so, is something I need.

Post Moving Day Post

Morning broke cool and sunny with the glaring realization that I'm neither young nor immortal. I am in a fair amount of pain from areas of my body that I scant realized I had. Tim is moved. Boxes are piled neatly in the rooms they were ordained to be in. Furniture, formerly in trucks, now gracing the various rooms it was constructed for. Furniture; massive furniture; heavy German inspired furniture, bearing all the weight of the Black Forest, now ensconced in place, carried on the backs of the now broken movers. Why can't my friends decorate in light weight; in rattan, wicker or bamboo? These are thoughts I ponder as I lather up on the A535 rub and plan a long hot bath.

A Catch-22 Day

Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK

It's the birthday of Joseph Heller, born in Brooklyn (1923), best known for his novel Catch-22, (1961) about a World War II bomber pilot, Yossarian, who spends his time trying to get himself declared insane so he can stop flying bombing missions. There's a regulation called Catch-22 which says that if you want out of combat duty you are, therefore, sane and you will have to fly them. If you wanted to fly them, then you would be crazy and you wouldn't have to.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.