Phew... what a day.

Well, you may be wondering were I've been. Yesterday I spent the day in a hospital waiting room. Dad went in for a angiogram and possibly an angioplasty (after the doctors noticed a small anomaly during a stress test) and instead ended up getting a quadruple bypass surgery. It was, needless to say, very worrisome — he had several passages with 90% blockage and a few with 70 or 80%.

Going in yesterday he really didn't expect more than possibly an angioplasty (where they use a balloon to clear blockages), since it didn't even look like he had more than a blockage-in-formation. We are just thankful it was caught when it was — leaving it alone for longer possibly would have caused a massive heart attack.

At any rate, he's doing fairly well today. The hospital moved him out of ICU ahead of schedule, and he might be released by Monday, which is amazing, to say the least. While the toughest part is (hopefully) over, prayers would still be appreciated.

Mr. Former President: Thanks.

In part, Clinton stated, “I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying 'we probably shouldn't have said that.'” He continued, “You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in a while. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That's what I think.”

Unlike other democrats that have seen this as an ideal way to hurt the Bush Administration's chances for reelection, most notably Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.), Clinton urged that it was time to move on. He urged that “People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.”

Of course, not everyone of the former President's staff agreed. You can read the full report here.

In all, I'm left a bit speechless by this. Everyone knows Clinton was critical of the administration's moves toward Iraq earlier this year. Yet has shown a very commendable view at a time when he could have easily been a strong voice for the Dem's best hope at hurting the administration thus far. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I'm impressed with former President Clinton's forward focus on the issue.

For that, I thank you Mr. Clinton. Let's hope that this is the action people try to copy from you.

New Graphic.

First graphical logo for the site (circa Summer 2001):

Pre-asisaid.com logo (circa April 2002):

Old logo (circa March 2003):

New logo (circa right now!):

So, which one's best? Yeah, I know, don't quit my day job.

Need a Bible geek button?

I was just thinking, what better way to acknowledge that you consider yourself a Bible geek (small “g”), and thus believe it is a generic term, than to put a button on your blog/site somewhere?

Feel free to include a link to your own Bible geek graphics in the comments section!

I'm a Bible geek.

I can't believe it. As I just found out on Sakamuyo, some guy that goes by the name Bible Geek has trademarked the name and has threatened to sue a Christian blogger that used the same name (see the original post on Cruciform Chronicle). This isn't Christian, and I would suggest it is even dubious trademark — after all, Bible geek is a descriptive term that is quite generic and used by more than just this one fellow.

Imagine if I trademarked the name Linux Geek or Computer Geek? It's really not that different in this case, except that someone claiming to desire seeing the spread of the Gospel has gone against Christian principles and threatened to sue another Christian for claiming to be a Bible geek.

While I won't claim that lawsuits are never acceptable, consider Jesus' words:

“Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right? As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” — Luke 12:57-59 (NIV)

And can you guess Paul's stance on the issue?

If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another—and this in front of unbelievers! The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.
— 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 (NIV)

And yet, it would seem the Bible Geek® guy, who seems to fancy himself a Bible Answer Man, oh, oops, Hank probably owns that trademark, is busy threatening a brother in Christ and blogger who has the nickname Bible Geek.

This is a sad day for Christianity.

Sola Gracia All The Way!

Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Pretty good quiz, I've always found that I relate strongly to the Apostle Paul (Almost any posts, articles or papers I've written on the Bible and theology come out with strong Pauline influence, no matter the topic). It seems short of Ephesians, I have the most in common with the book of Revelation, which also should make sense to anyone who knows me.

Hmm...

I can't say I've completely gotten my mind to grasp what this is suppose to do, but here's something intriguing at any rate. It's called a Blog Coop (Web Log Cooperative):

Blog Cooperatives are businesses jointly owned and operated by their members. BlogCoops are for-profit ventures that embrace emergent democracy as a means for governance and decision-making.

Here is the site if you want to read more about it. Thoughts?

And They Still Charge THAT For Popcorn?

So, I give the theatre advertising company a call thinking maybe we could buy some time on a few nice “G” or “PG” rated films and spend, oh, maybe $500-$1,000. Yeah right.

Turns out that the company charges the better part of $13 dollars per CPM (that's advertising lingo for thousand ad impressions or showings), you can't pick what movies your ads show on — they must appear on all the movies — and you must show for at least seven weeks. Needless to say, even with an non-profit discount that comes out to the better part of $3,000. This amazes me, because these are highly untargeted slide adverts.

Anyway, I bring this up because it occurs to me just how much theatres make that you don't even think about. Not only do they get the better part of fifteen or twenty bucks per person on refreshments and tickets, then you watch numerous slideshow ads before… you see the really cool big screen motion ads. Then you finally get to the movie, but before you leave you see all kinds of ads plastered on the wall advertising various services as well.

With that much revenue, you'd think they could at least keep the floors from being sticky.

Linux Showdown: Take Two

Well, it's been four months since I wrapped up the 2002 comparison series in which I talked about the good and bad features of all the major GNU/Linux distributions. Today, I've started it back up as we hurdle to the end of July and the Open Choice 2003 awards. In the next week and a few days change, I'll be considering a lot of distros, starting with SuSE 8.2 today.

If you use GNU/Linux or want to know how you can try it, read along and learn which distribution is right for you.

Now You Can Get Twice the Tim!

Kevin, perhaps in a lapse of judgment, has invited me to write for The Sakamuyo Network. TSN has been Kevin's blog for over a year now, and more recently he has added two other authors. Now with me, there are a total of four bloggers writing on Sakamuyo providing all kinds of bloggy goodness.

So if Asisaid.com hasn't succeeded in driving you crazy already, now you can get more of the Asisaid guy himself at Sakamuyo (Kevin's always insightful posts will continue to be there as well).