Dear Readers,

I apologize for the problems with the availability of mejudice and meditatio mea. I don’t know if you’ve also had trouble, but I have not been able to get to the site for good portions of the day for the last week or so. Sometimes attempting to go to the site gives the message that the site isn’t found. Sometimes requests time out. As I write this, I know I won’t be able to post it until the site stabilizes again (who knows when). And if things continue as they have been, in a few hours after the site is back, it will go down again.

I’ve been trying to work with the web host, (VizaWeb, but unfortunately, they have been totally unresponsive. Within the next few days, this will be resolved, either by VizaWeb addressing the problem, or (what looks more likely every day the instability continues and VizaWeb does not respond) I will reluctantly move to a new web host. I plan to keep the same domain name, so there should be no interruption of service (beyond the instability of the current host).

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to write and post things as the site becomes available. I hope you are able to still visit the site some times.

Best regards,
Knilram

There are some people who doubt President Bush’s intelligence and perception. I think that these critics must realize that no one could get to the position of President of the United States unless they had highly developed political skills, and that requires at least some intelligence and perception. And so their claims that the President is stupid are simply ad hominem attacks.

But this newspaper report of President Bush going on a bicycle ride with Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong last Saturday should prove once and for all that President Bush is intelligent and perceptive.

Headline Washington Times: Bush, champ go biking

Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Armstrong spoke to reporters, although White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was impressed by the seven-time champion’s skills.

“Recognizing what the world has known for years, the president said, ‘He’s a good rider,’?” Mr. Duffy said.

It also proves that his spokesman has a sense of humor.

Headline Interactive Home: Robot attacks Japanese Prime Minister

Via Digg

Headline Tribune-Review: Bond forged at Iwo Jima reaffirmed

Snidely Whiplash is back, and this time he’s on a bicycle.

AFP Photo:

Caption: “Racing against the clock : German cyclist Joerg Jaksche races against the clock in the eighth stage of the Tour of Germany cycling race from Ludwigshafen to Weinheim. (AFP/DDP/Robert Michael)”

Several years ago, I noticed that I was putting on a lot of weight. I realized that if I didn’t do something about it, I would soon have a major weight problem on my hands (well, actually on my whole body, not just my hands). I had to do something. But what to do?

I read about it and I came to the conclusion that most reputable experts agreed that weight loss has something to do with decreasing your food intake and/or increasing your physical activity. So I started exercising regularly, and I now try to watch what I eat (I rarely eat with my eyes closed these days).

After three years, it has been somewhat successful. I feel much better. I feel like being more active. But, maybe I’m just kidding myself about being lighter. The other day, waiting in line to get on a water slide, one of my children told me I shouldn’t go on the ride. “The sign says the weight limit is 350 lbs, Dad.” I ignored her comment and went on the ride anyway. The slide didn’t collapse under me, so I guess either there is a little slack in their weight limit, or perhaps, contrary to what my daughter thinks, I am actually under 350 lbs.

Meanwhile, I’ve recently noticed that there are a couple places in the house where the kids wrote on the walls when they were much younger. (Stick with me here. There this will all come together soon.) We haven’t painted over them yet, even though they have been there for years. I’ve just thought of them as a fond reminder of years gone by, and someday I know we’ll paint them over. For now they are out of the way, and most of the time, out of mind.

Another minor problem with our property is the front lawn. We have a sharp dropoff down to a major road with a a fence at the top of the dropoff. I don’t go down to the bottom of the hill by the road very often. But when I do, there usually is garbage laying on the side of the hill from people who throw it out of their car windows when driving by. Fast food bags, empty pop cans and sometimes beer cans, that sort of thing. But again, since this is out of sight from our house, it is out of mind, and I don’t clean it up often.

Now it turns out that for the last few years according to an English study, I’ve been focusing on the wrong things in my attempts to keep from being overweight.

Headline Cincinnati.com: Graffiti, litter may help spur obesity

Instead of eating less and exercising more, I should have painted my walls and picked up the garbage on the front hill.

Q.46. What does the first commandment require?

A. The first commandment requires us to know and recognize God as the only true God and our God, and to worship and glorify Him accordingly.

It is possible to acknowledge God as God but not to claim Him as your own God. The demons, for example, know who God is. They acknowledge Him. But they refuse to submit to Him and continue in their rebellion, knowing full well who He is.

Our duty is to recognize and acknowledge God, to submit to Him as God, and to worship Him as is His due.

James 2:19

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!

The last couple days, I’ve been playing around with Flickr, and might in the near future link mj to a Flickr account.

One thing I found interesting in Flickr is the photo groups that exist around a theme. Or example, as of this time, a community of 2,915 photographers have posted 19,139 square pictures of a circle in the squared circle pool of photos. Check it out. Is that bizarre or is it cool? You make the call.

I overheard a mother say this to her daughter today:

Keep your lollypop in your mouth, dear. That’s what the bees are going after.

Sometimes you just have to wonder about people’s sense of right and wrong. As a computer programmer, I can understand the satisfaction of writing a well structured, efficient program that does what it is designed to do and does it well. And there is a lot of satisfaction in knowing your program is being used on an ever growing user base.

But its just wrong to program your software to remove competing programs just because they are from your rival.

Headline Computerworld: Computer virus writers at war, security firm says

AUGUST 17, 2005 (REUTERS) - HELSINKI, Finland — Computer worms that have brought down systems around the world in recent days are starting to attack each other, Finnish software security firm F-Secure Corp. said today.

“We seem to have a botwar on our hands,” said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. “There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines.”

Hypponen said in a statement that varieties of three worms — Zotob, Bozori and IRCbot — were still exploiting a gap in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 2000 operating system on computers that had not had the flaw repaired and were not shielded by firewalls.

“The latest variants of Bozori even remove competing viruses like Zotob from the infected machines,” Hypponen said.

Is there no honor left among programmers?