Streams of Consciousness

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, To hold Infinity in the palm of my hand And Eternity in an hour. --William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

I really am blessed to work for a company that provides me with nice hardware to do my job. This past weekend, I was able to obtain a new notebook computer, the Toshiba Tecra M7. It has been somewhat of a pain to re-install the many programs that I had on my old device, but I was able to migrate data files with ease. Re-customizing my settings is also a pain in the neck, but it is a small price to pay for the benefit of a new computer. It is a tablet PC, which I think will be interesting to learn more about. The specifics: Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2 Intel CPU; T2400 @ 1.83 GHz 2 GB RAM 75 GB Hard Drive IEEE 1394 Port 6 USB 2.0 Ports SD Card Reader DVD+Rewriteable Many other nice and interesting features The screen is 14.1 inches, which is smaller than our 17-inch screet at home, but larger than the screen I used to have at work. The battery-life seems decent, and, perhaps most importantly, I now have a 1 and F1 key. These keys had been broken off of my old laptop, so I ha...

I can't remember a time when the Super Bowl was not a pseudo-National Holiday. For the NFL's status as the premiere sports league in the country, we can thank Lamar Hunt . Mr. Hunt, the driving force behind the AFL, owner of the KC Chiefs and general sports promoter, died earlier this week. He is an icon in Kansas City, and most respected around the world of sports. For a guy that was born the son of an oil tycoon, he could have lived the life of a playboy. However, he put his energy into sports entertainment, and because of his efforts, I believe the world is a better place.

Dominic has been in a magic "groove" the past couple of nights, expressing a keen interest in how each illusion unfolds to foil his unsuspecting audience. He's even got the black hat, black cape and wand to go with the whole she-bang. I thought it would be nice to see if I could find a magic show somewhere around town between now and Christmas. My thought was, this is a relatively big city, surely there is somebody that is doing a magic show somewhere relatively close to where we live. Sadly, after a half hour of searching google and several of its suggested sites, I found no shows actually scheduled in our area. Most of my search returns were magicians looking for work, wanted me to book them for a party. Which, I may do when February 17 rolls around. But right now, all I wanted were some good old fashioned cheap seats to an old theater where we could watch a magician wow us with his or her illusions, and then wonder about them the entire way back home. A sense of...

As I ate my turkey on Thanksgiving Day at Sharon's parents house in Kearney, MO, I looked forward to travelling to Iowa the following day to visit both my immediate family, and my aunt Kak who was visiting from Cleveland. Little did I know as I scooped mounds of mashed potatoes onto my plate that before my Iowa trip would end I would be in store for one of the grandest paradigm shifts nature or God could possibly throw at a person. Indeed, I see the world in a new way after watching my 16-month-old son Benjamin being wheeled into an ambulance with his tearful mother at his side. This is one of those images that will be burned into my cortex for the rest of my natural life, and maybe beyond. Kawasaki Disease . After three days of a horrible rash, Sharon and I took Benny to the Fort Madison, IA emergency room on Sunday afternoon. The pediatrician on call, Dr. McClellan, thought it would be a good idea for Benny to be evaluated by the University of Iowa pediatrics department. The U...