Schwarzenegger, 40 DoP and Limbaugh Updates

Ah-nold isn't Right: The rest of this post is about Mr. Limbaugh, but I first wanted to mention that Mysterium Tremendum has an excellent post that mostly says what I've been saying and thinking about Schwarzenegger. He might not turn out to be a bad governor, but I'm not sure conservatives should be celebrating. It's hypocritical, folks, there's no way around it.

Follow-up: Also, I finally responded to all of the great comments on my 40 Days of Purpose post. Thanks everyone.

Rush Limbaugh and Addiction: If you didn't already hear, Rush Limbaugh acknowledged the truth in the reports of addiction today. Shortly before signing off for the weekend, Rush started the undoubtedly difficult statement:

You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life. So I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication. I first started taking prescription painkillers some years ago when my doctor prescribed them to treat post surgical pain following spinal surgery.

Apparently, the surgery didn't stop the pain and Rush eventually got addicted to the pain pills. He will be in rehab for the next 30 days while others host the “EIB Network.” Rush went into more detail, which you may want to read, but I really liked one statement that I thought I'd quote here:

You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes.
They are the role models. I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem.

That's unusual for someone of his position. While I could be cynical about the statement, I found listening to it that he seemed sincere (a video of the statement broadcast from the “Dittocam” is available for free here, but only in Windows Media Player format). I wish more people would take complete responsibility for their actions. Rush has, at least to some extent, done what he has said people should do, and for that, I respect him.

He closed by saying, “I deeply appreciate all of your support over this last tumultuous week. It has sustained me. I ask now for your prayers. I look forward to resuming our excursion into broadcast excellence together.” I do too, Rush.

The Main Question: Are They Quartz Movement?

A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were.

The blonde responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex.

Her friend said, “Whoever heard of someone giving dogs such stupid names?”

“Hellooooo,” answered the blonde, “they're watch dogs!”

Depressed

Of those things, I was most excited about the brochures. During my first year as publicity taskforce coach, I've been focusing a lot on the creation of the Uniform Brochure Design (UBD). The plan behind this is to create a unified array of brochures on whatever topic one might want to find out about our church, our beliefs, etc. I've been working on the UDB even before the publicity taskforce was formed and I was very excited that it would come to fruition during the ministry and missions fair (part of the 40 Days of Purpose).

Unfortunately, things have not been going smoothly at all. First, the powers that be ripped apart the press release I crafted and gave me a different one to send out. Then, after doing some requested modifications to the pre-built site, I was told to reverse all of them plus redo the pre-built site into a site with a number of extra pages. The site stuff was alright, although I wish if they wanted to do a bigger site that we weren't trying to do it with the pre-built template (which uses very messy HTML), but that was fine. The death of my PR piece was a bit disheartening, but I got over it.

Obviously, I still had one piece of work that hadn't been rejected: the UBD-based brochures for the ministry and missions fair. Early on the head of the ministry fair taskforce approved the use of the UBD for the brochures and a matching UBD-esque cover for the accompanying ministry directory booklet. Finally today, after work on those brochures was already well under way, I found out that the main DoP team reject the design. Completely. I've been told to redo the brochures with a new design that consists of black bold Times New Roman text on white paper and no graphics. Every dot and iota of the UBD was removed from the rough draft I received to work on.

In the big scheme of things, none of this is that big of deal, but with time constraints (see last post) and the shooting down of all three projects, I'm a bit weary at the moment. Considering everything has either been replaced or is waiting to, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if I'd spent my time working on the next generation church web site or some other project instead.

I think I need a vacation.

Tired

This week has been very hectic… nothing is going according to plan. sigh Maybe I'll just go back to bed until next Monday.

Oh well… tomorrow I setup our church secretary's new computer during the afternoon. That could be fun — there's nothing like seeing the delight in someone's eyes when they realize they can actually get their work done rather than fighting with a slow, old computer. Now if it just works out OK…

Another New Site, Meetings

Kevin Hartwig, the founder of the Sakamuyo Network, which was his personal blog for a long time (now it is a group blog), has launched a new personal blog — Birkenpreacher. Take a look, it has lots of good stuff already, and knowing Kevin, it will keep getting better!

The site has been up for a few weeks, but Kevin was doing a sort of “soft opening” (as a retailer might put it). Now it seems he's ready for the world to know about it — so at least asisaid.com readers should know about it!

In other news… tonight was Administrative Night at church. A worker at some printing shop, that was closing, stopped by and gave us a bunch of reams of high quality paper that will be really useful. I was there tonight for the Evangelism Committee (I'm the “coach” of the Publicity Taskforce subdivision of that committee), but I'm also the chair of a small committee that oversees our volunteer librarian staff. Somehow it got on the calendar that this other committee was meeting tonight and I had people wondering where the ERC committee was. Oops!

Ah, exciting night…

What Technology Do You Really Want?

I'm just curious, dear readers, what piece of technology would you get right now if you had, say, $4,000, and could spend it on just one item? That's a tough question, isn't it?

Well, I think I know what I'd go for. It'd run this and this very nicely. It'd also complement my Dell Dimension 4550 running Mandrake Linux quite nicely (silver and black always look nice together — as the Logitech MX700 mouse demonstrates).

So, how 'bout you?

Get yer asisaid shares!

Well, I haven't been messing with BlogShares much lately, but I decided to today. I accidentally pushed this blog way over the edge and crashed it to 1/4 its old BlogShares value. It has almost regained all of its value however from me buying a large number of newly issued shares (and through some other buying I've almost gotten back to my old $4.3 million in BlogShares worth).

At any rate, there are presently 700 newly issued shares available at $23.38 a piece. If you'd like a few shares, why not jump over here right now? This is an ideal time to pick up new asisaid.com shares if you lost yours when Just James Productions quite maliciously did a hostile takeover last month.

Disclaimer: For anyone who isn't familiar with BlogShares, this is a fantasy stockmarket. I'm not really worth 4.3 mil., and the money you use to by asisaid.com shares is fictional money. Just thought I'd mention that in case you'd never heard of BlogShares before.

New Day, New Blogs

Well, I seem to be on a blog adding mode at the moment. I've added two new blogs that I think should make nice additions to the blogroll.

• David's Journal - David McGlone is a friend of mine I met, hmm, I can't remember any more! Anyway, I met him a long time ago on the SuSE-Linux-E mailing list, and he has since been on other mailing lists I'm on, most notably FaithTree.com/OfB.biz's own ChristianSource and OfB-Talk mailing lists. He's new to the blogosphere, so give him a hearty welcome!
• DogfightAtBankstown - This looks like an interesting blog from down under with a wide array of stuff. “Saint in a Straitjacket,” the writer, stopped by and commented here a week or two ago and I've been reading the blog since then. I like it!

Have a nice Saturday afternoon!

The Rush of News

Unless you've managed to avoid the media today, you've surely heard the big news: Rush Limbaugh, the country's most listened to talkshow host and conservative commentator, appears to be tangled in a illegal pharmaceuticals scandal. Rush hasn't confirmed either way yet (of course) if he is guilty or not, but the fact that he doesn't deny the allegations and his tone of voice today makes me wonder.

There's also another interesting (in a horrible way) detail. According to that Fox News report, two of the alleged drugs associated with the accusations can damage hearing. If you recall, Rush lost his hearing very rapidly almost two years ago and received an implant to restore his hearing. I'm not sure, but that sounds like a rather large coincidence to me.

At any rate, I'm not saying all this to kick Rush while he's down. To the contrary — I feel sorry for Rush. Behind the bold statements of the man who “keeps half his brains tied behind his back just to make it fair” is a real human being that no doubt has some real problems staring at him at the moment.

Perhaps in the most bitter of ironies, Rush's attacks on President Clinton for, among other things, drug use, has come back to haunt him. There is nothing quite as horrible as getting accused of doing something you yourself have accused others of, although that is part of the experience of being human I suppose.

I hope the situation turns out to be less than it would appear. Rush, in my estimation, is one of the few conservative political pundits that doesn't have major issues — previously, that is. Unlike characters such as Bill O'Reilly, Rush has been on friendly terms with conservative Christians. I have also admired his willingness to stick out against the flow, even complaining about Republicans when they fail to follow conservative principles.

Yet, here we are. Assuming the situation is as it appears, I just hope Rush handles it well and can get his problems straightened out. If he handles these issues well, I, for one, will have no issues with continuing to be a “Dittohead” in the future.

Mysterium Tremendum

Well, I ran into a new blog tonight called Mysterium Tremendum. It looks pretty interesting, so you'll now find it on my blog roll.

What really caught my attention was the title. It is derived from Rudolf Otto's statement “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” (which roughly means trembling and fascinating mystery), a description Otto used to describe Holy or numinous experience. It's a good statement, I think, for describing the experience of the Holy and if the name of a site can be any kind of indication, it ought to signify a good new blog starting up.

Anyway, uiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur. (Ten points to the first commenter who knows what that means).