Here's a little Monday morning nerdery for you

In the King James Version of the Bible, the verse with the highest frequency of the word "the" is Ezekiel 48:21:

And the residue shall be for the prince, on the one side and on the other of the holy oblation, and of the possession of the city, over against the five and twenty thousand of the oblation toward the east border, and westward over against the five and twenty thousand toward the west border, over against the portions for the prince: and it shall be the holy oblation; and the sanctuary of the house shall be in the midst thereof.

Total: 18 instances of "the"

(I'm sure that everyone already knew that, as it's probably the first thing they teach you in Bible school, but it's a fun fact nevertheless.)

Incidentally, when Nicole and I are in Portland next week, we plan on stopping by Oblation in the Pearl. Although I don't think we'll need to bring any residue for the prince. Just cash or plastic.

Just a quick note to all of the wackos who wear aluminum foil over their heads to protect themselves from government mind-control rays

You know, maybe if you wore a baseball cap over the top of your foil helmet, you wouldn't look so much like a wacko.

I'm just saying.

Here's a TERRIFIC link to an INDESCRIBABLE page for you to PERUSE

These are fun!

List of self-contradicting words in English

Unintentional promotion for the local competition

On the Dilbert blog this morning, Scott Adams linked to a news story about a 12-year-old boy who has invented a really powerful solar cell. The link goes to KATU.com, which I, of course, thought was awesome because it's hometown news. Represent!

So I clicked on the link and began to read the story, when something unusual caught my eye:

(Click to see a less-cropped screenshot)

This is interesting because anyone from Portland can tell you that KATU is the ABC affiliate for that city. And the randomly generated banner ad is for the new incarnation of Knight Rider, which is an NBC show. It even has the NBC peacock.

I wonder if KATU would even notice this and try to have the ad excluded from its site.

Just a reminder to everyone who has been selling Halloween candy and paraphernalia since Sept. 1

IT'S STILL SUMMER

Thank you. I will probably send you a similar message when you start selling all of your Christmas crap in the middle of next month.

Timothy James Fadel, 1977-2008

I just found out today that the brother of one of my old friends died last Saturday.

When I was in high school, I started going to a youth group at Lynch Baptist Church in southeast Portland. One of my friends from that group was Todd Fadel; he had a younger brother named Tim. I didn’t know Tim as well as Todd, just because of the fact that most of the time I was at Lynch, I only attended the high school group, and Tim was never actually in the group while I was there. Nevertheless, I saw him around church, and he was kind of a friend by proxy.

Over the past year or so, since joining MySpace and Facebook, I have had the chance to see Tim’s name pop up here and there. Todd's page has had some videos of Tim doing silly things. Now, I doubt that all these years later, he would even remember who I was – after all, I was a friend of his older brother’s in high school, and not even like a best friend or anything. Just another dude in the youth group. Nevertheless, I'm still sad to hear of his passing after a long battle with cancer, and at such a young age of 31.

I did a quick Google search of Tim’s name, and found a blog post by one of his former high school friends. In the post she talks about how good natured and friendly Tim was, and she also quoted a poem he wrote in his journal (perhaps a blog; I haven’t determined the original source) right before he died. It’s such a wonderful look at the heart of a man who’s just gone to Heaven, written by one who was on its threshold:

I am here now.
I am finally home.
I can breathe. I can run. I can see color.
I am certain of love.
I have complete joy and complete peace.
I am exploring every corner of my imagination.
I am laughing with my family.
(Job says "hi" and not to stress about the little things)
I am singing and playing instruments.
I am playing ping pong and basketball.
I am resting.
I am free.
I am here with you.
I am here with God.

...Oh and I may have an overdue library book too, if someone could check on that for me, thanks.

According to his obituary on OregonLive, there's a memorial service/celebration of his life tomorrow at 2 p.m. at New Hope Community Church. I think it'd be worth your time to go, if you were ever a friend of Tim Fadel...even by proxy.

This 9/11 anniversary post has nothing to do with 9/11

At this exact time two years ago, I was on a plane, taking a one-way flight to my new life here in Missouri. Can you believe it's been two years???

I've enjoyed every day here, and even though I miss my dear hometown of Portland, I know I am at home here because I am with my beloved Nicole.

Haven't done this in a while...

Random monkey picture!

Announcement

Nicole and I have booked our flights, and we'll be back in Portland (and Salem) from October 4-11. This is the longest I have ever been away from my Oregon, and I am looking forward to returning!

Nearly one year to the day after being a groomsman in my friend John's wedding, I will be the best man in my friend Dave's wedding. I'm still available for October 2009 if you want to pencil something in.

Enough already

Am I the only one who's starting to get tired of the trend of showing vines, roots, bird wings, dirt, etc. growing out of the corners of a design piece? I mean, it was cool for about 20 minutes in 2006, but come on, people, it's out of control.

What I did on my summer vacation

As you may have noticed, I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks. Ironically, I just had eleven days off from work with mostly nothing to do, and I could have blogged a lot. However, I just filled all that free time with other things - well, mainly one other thing (hanging out on Facebook), though I did manage to squeeze some schoolwork in there too.

Wait a minute, what? Schoolwork? As in, Stan's in school again? Actually, yes. I am taking six hours at Missouri Southern, as the beginning part of an effort to finally earn a degree. After enjoying my 17th year of my year off, I decided that it was time I tried to finish my education.

When I started college in the fall of 1990, I didn't really have any direction. I planned on just taking core classes toward an Associates degree until I figured it out. Problem was, I never figured it out, and so I really didn't put an effort into doing well. So that lasted one semester. I tried it again a year later, and I even tried taking art classes, but even still, I wasn't sure that was the career I wanted to pursue. Plus, I was starting to work more, and my crazy late hours weren't helping me find any time to study. So I flopped again, and have been in the working world ever since.

Then this year something happened. I tried this little experiment called 366 Days of Creativity, which got me thinking about that art career again. And with the encouragement of my beautiful wife Nicole, I got off my butt and applied to MSSU. Because of my absence from academia, my strategy is a little different than a normal returning student's would be. I need to start out a little slower. And I am working full time, during the day, so my options are 1) take time off from work to attend classes, 2) take night or distance-learning classes. Nicole is already using option #1 for her school, and her degree is of higher priority (she's much closer to finishing), so I am taking Internet-based classes for now. And that means it's back to the core classes, even though I am planning to declare a major in Graphic Design.