Religious fanaticism.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Every day I hear of someone saying how they need to wipe out so-and-so, and kill the heathen infidels, all of this in the name of some or other religion. What for? Over a tiny little chunk of old musty ground that has nothing other than a bunch of crusty old relics?

It seems like a few have the ear of many and are leveraging the hell out of it.

Religion is about a way of life with guidelines and rules that help keep people focus on doing the right thing. These rules have been twisted and used by men to achieve their own subverted goals.

Religion isn't about a dusty old wall or a beautiful old church. It's about the spirit and energy that helped build them.

Religion is not about feeling superior over others. It's the feeling of good will and peace that you have when you feel whole.

Religion is not about who's right and who's wrong. It's about patience and understanding.

Religion is not an excuse to fight. It's a excuse not to.

If someone doesn't believe what you believe, then tough, deal with it. People have the right to choose. Let's all try to be a little more tolerant and little less judgmental and we'll all get along just fine.

Geek Squad Agents, the new Postmen?

Whenever there is a kid in the family that doesn't look like either of the parents, or any of their siblings, we refer to that child as the Postmans child.

Do you think one day they may be refered to as a Geek Squad child?

Well at least they'll be bright

Ghost stories

Now that Halloween is here TV has nothing but ghost stories. Some of these stories are pretty hectic with people going insane, selling their homes etc. So in the spirit of things I wanted to share a story of something I experienced in our previous home.

My wife, new son and I moved into a house in Port Chester, NY. It was a beautiful home of fairly new construction so you wouldn't expect it to house any spirits of any kind but hey, you live and learn.

So before I continue let me just tell you that I like to think of myself as a fairly rational person with some minor eccentricities. Before we moved into the Port Chester home I didn't really believe in ghosts and would have considered myself a skeptic.

And so we continue...

Within a couple of months of my sons birth I started feeling like I was being watched every time I walked up from the basement or the middle floor. At first I thought this was just a case of the heebie jeebies but it happened night after night as I turned off the lights and headed to bed. As this continued I became more and more convinced that there was someone there, even when I looked and there was no one. I was convinced it was a little girl.

One night while getting Chris dressed after his bath he fixated on a spot over my shoulder and smiled. I looked at the spot he was fixating on and saw nothing, but he was definitely staring at something.

Chris would go to sleep around 7pm and would fall asleep almost immediately. This would leave Kim and I a blissful few hours of piece and quiet before we too would turn in. One evening while we sat there enjoying a TV show, I heard Chris running around upstairs (he was about 2 and a half years old at this stage). I was delegated the responsibility to go and put him back into his bed. When I arrived upstairs I found it quiet and upon entering Chris's room found him sound asleep. This was something new! Every so often over the next year this would happen every now and then.

The final proof for me that there was something haunting the house was probably one of the scariest experiences I have ever had. One night after Kim and I had gone to sleep, I woke up bolt upright in bed in a cold sweat. I had no idea what had woken me up until I looked at the closet. I turned just in time to see a figure walk into the closet. At this point I thought we were falling victim to a robbery. I grabbed the Mag-Lite torch from next to bed determined to ponce on thewouldl be robber when he exited the closet. After waiting for some time and hearing nothing, I climbed out of bed to investigate closer. On inspecting the closet I found no one.

This freaked me out.

There was no way for someone to leave the closet without me seeing them and no other exits. It took me hours to fall asleep after this experience.

Looking back on these experiences I am still convinced that there was a ghost in that house and I think I believe in them now. There ends my ghost story.

The Art of Clearing Leaves

After standing the yard with a leaf blower strapped to my back, ear plugs in ears and a cool breeze blowing in from the lake, I realized that there is an art to getting the job done painlessly.

It involves 2 rakes, a split pole fence and great neighbor's.

My boys are 5 and 2 years old and love being outside when I am working the garden. Whilst I was blowing the leaves into a pile they helped by standing in front of the blower until I pointed it at their faces and they'd run away screaming. Once I had the leaves in a pile they proceeded to jump into and role around in said pile. This is where the split pole fence and great neighbor's comes in to play.

Our neighbor's have 2 awesome little girls who have become good friends to my 2 boys. They were watching the fun through the fence with a look of envy on their faces. Of course they were welcome to join my two and promptly came over with a rake of their own and proceeded to rake up every leaf they could find. All in the cause of creating a HUGE pile of leaves.

SO now I can sit back as the garden gets cleaned up. The beauty of this whole situation is that, what was a chore for me and something that I am sure I would grow to loath, was a major entertainment event for the kids. They found the fun in an otherwise mundane task. Therein lies the art that is clearing leaves.

Browsers ... the spawn of Satan?

Sometimes I really am at a loss for words when I run into an unfathomable browser bug!

Going back in the day there is the old add a carriage return to the last form element submitted in IE, or the can't populate tables using innerHTML (IE again) or Mozilla double posting form submits if an image is not there.

These bugs, or what I like to call opportunities*, have caused me much grief and numerous sleepless nights because some developer decided to cut a corner or couldn't be bothered to hunt the bug down. I'd like to thank those developers for giving me an example to shy away from. A shining dark at the end of the light tunnel.

* Opportunities to become a better developer by debugging weird browser inconsistencies.

The vicious planet

I have been reading the news and following the tragedy that has unfolded in Pakistan. Those poor folks. Not only have they been decimated by an unwanted and highly unnecessary civil war but now this!

The earthquake was so powerful it completely removed whole villages from the face of the earth. There were people that the earth just plain swallowed up, removing them from existence. It doesn't seem like that should be even possible.

I pray for all those families ripped apart by this disaster.

It's raining morons

The best thing about the rain is it makes things grow. The worst thing about the rain is it brings out the moron drivers.

I was on my home from work on Friday night after being stuck in the most horrendous traffic I have seen in a while. I was in the fast lane, doing a considerable clip considering the torrential downpour (65mph). As I am passing a guy (Mr DrivingRespectably) in the middle lane this complete idiot comes screaming up his backside and narrowly missing crashing into him. He starts honking his horn and flashing his lights, as if to say "Hey, get off my road!". Let's call this idiot, Mr InconsiderateMoron.

Mr InconsiderateMoron promptly swings into the fast lane behind me and proceeds to drive as close to my rear bumper as he can get, flashing his lights at me all the while. Being the kind guy that I am, I decide that he wants me to slow down so I rein in my speed to 50mph. Mr. DrivingRespectably sees what I am doing and slows down accordingly, effectively boxing in Mr InconsiderateMoron. This makes Mr InconsiderateMoron a little upset and he uses every trick he can muster to get past us.

Eventually, he makes his way past us and decides to wind down his window and yell obscenities at me, saying things like "Hey, you wanna pull over and fight?!!". So I oblige him by pulling into the lane behind him. Of course I have no intention of getting out of the car to fight this guy but as luck would have it, he chooses my exit for the prospective show down. Turns out it is his exit as well.

He pulls over onto the exit and realizes I am still following him. Suddenly he takes off at a rapid rate trying to get away from me. The beauty of this situation is that he is driving this beat up old Honda with biscuit wheels vs my nice wide, low profile wheeled, sports car. This basically means that any corner he can take, I can take better.

He proceeds to try and out run me, and turn after turn chooses the exact route I take to head home, so I continue to follow him. At one point he almost loses it on a bend in his frantic effort to out run me. What an idiot.

I eventually gave up chase and let him know by flashing by brights good bye as he careered off ahead of me. I hope that he realizes that this could all have been avoided if he had just been a little more considerate.

We all share the roads and we are all responsible for all the other drivers on the road. Mr InconsiderateMoron, I'll thank you for not driving like an idiot in future.

Sleepless and the Lost City

I had my first trip to the Lost City this week, Atlantis, Georgia. Ok, so it's Atlanta but I really enjoy the groan of disgust from Atlantians when I refer to their beloved city as Atlantis. Great folks all round, believe me. I never met so many polite and courteous people. Even a 300 pound, 6ft 7 guy said excuse me before slipping past me at a restaurant.

The flight back was fairly uneventful but was delayed as all American airlines are. I finally arrived home around midnight to find my bed occupied by my beautiful, 5ft 6½" wife (occupying 4.37% of the bed) and my youngest 3ft 2" son (occupying the other 95.63%). My wife relinquished her 4.37% to me so that I could look after E. At 5am this morning he decides to wake coughing and spluttering. I gave him a glass of water which he promptly spilt all over the bed. So I went to Plan B, Cough Medicine. At the instant of contact with his lips, he threw up. Lovely!

So we moved E back to his bed. Which meant that K and I ended up sleeping on the couch in the lunge. Really comfy!!!

Don't under estimate the power of small children to completely take over your evening and ruin your sleep! They have this immense power that slowly deminishes as they get taller.

Inconveniently Dead

In this busy, busy world we live in it seems that inconvenience and celebrity rank a lot higher than human life in the news.

Last night as I sat and watch the news I was amazed at how callous and superficial the breaking news was. This was the local news so it pertained to the NY area but still, come on!

The first story was that Lindsey Lohan had another car accident. Really, was anyone hurt. No? Oh so it was like the thousands of other car accidents exactly like it that occur across the nation every week. I can understand why the fate of an actress's car (the only casualty) in Los Angeles (2805.7 miles away from NYC) makes headline news!

The second story that followed directly after this was that of a fuel tanker that had exploded in the Bronx. Now this is fairly sensational so I could see this as being the headliner, but NOOO, Lindseys bruised knee is of much more interest. What really got me about this news story was that it wasn't about the poor soul that was burnt alive in the fireball, it was about how inconvenient it was going to be for all the commuters this morning!

Heaven forbid the searing death of a human being should inconvenience the folks driving to work! How heartless can a news channel be? The story rambled on about broken concrete and how much damage the fire caused, and right at the end, almost aside, a mention of the mans name and age.

My condolences go out to the drivers family and my disgust goes out to the news dictators of America.

Kim's site is alive and kicking!

I finally got around to sorting out Kimmy's site and blog. You can check out her site at www.kimcharalambides.com and her blog here.

Waking to dead comics ... cheers Ronnie

Been working flat out for about a month now, pulling some serious G's coming round the turn of the night, only to be greeted with another one. Today is no different. When to bed at noon today and slept till 5. The good news is that I am paying more on my car insurance after changing to Geico ... and getting 2 speeding tickets and a licence suspension!

People think I am pretty f**cked working like this but it's not worth doing, if you don't go all the way. Life is short so push it while you can! Drive fast, work hard, drink plenty and be merry!

Ronnie Barker died today. He was one of my favorite comics, growing up in the 80's. South Africa always seemed to have a influx of British humor and him and Ronnie Corbett were among the best in the business. I was lucky enough to meet Ronnie Corbett. Probably one of the shortest guys I have ever met but with an immense personality on stage!

A 'Two Ronnies' piece that has stuck with me over the years is the Mispropunciation of Worms. This is the affliation that strokes money a poor passion. I dope to be elbow to tell you more won day.

Once more I blog!

So this is the second blog I have created today. It has been riveting stuff and really makes life a lot better... YEAH RIGHT!

I am tired and cranky, give me a break.

I am hoping to relate stories of madness and mayhem as this blog evolves.

CYA soon