Last night was my last night at the Courier-Journal. I turned in my two weeks notice last week after a great deal of thought, prayer, and discussion with mainly Sarah. The 3rd shift hours are what really did it in for the job. I've worked graveyard shift before on an occasional basis, but I never realized how much it would mess with my life overall. So, hopefully within the next week or so I'll be back on a normal schedule and much more productive because of it.

I will say my last night there was a pleasent one overall. Nothing too complicated as far as the coverage was concerned. When I left for the night, Lauren, the one person that's almost always there in my department during the hours I work gave me a book. We'd spent a lot of time talking about books while working on the sites at night and after finding out that I've never read anything by Orson Scott Card, and knowing some of my taste in the genre, she gave me a copy of Ender's Game. I think I'm going to enjoy the book based on Lauren's comments. I'll miss some of the chats Lauren and I had, but I'm glad I'll be sleeping at normal hours again.

World66 is a site that you can keep track of places that you've been in the United States or which countries you've visited around the world. In my family we use to have coloring book type maps of the US that we kept track of this type of thing, but this makes it a lot easier.

World

Yeah, just three other countries at this point (Canada, France, Mexico). I plan on increasing this number in the not so distant future.

United States

I've spent the night in all but 5 (MS, MO, NJ, OK, and TX). I'll probably be changing that about two (MO and TX), as I have friends that live in both places and hope to get a chance to visit them in the near future.

(via Ipse Dixit)

Former Governor Louie Nunn died Thursday night after suffering a heart attack. As he was Gov. before I was born, I really don't have much to say about him concerning him as a politician in specific. I do have several memories of him from my days in College Republicans. My most distinct memory was him calling the state CR chair when the state convention was at UofL and he was lost on UofL's campus. I don't think he ever made it to his speaking engagement that day. Everyone I knew that knew him generally considered him a funny and very likeable guy.

Well, while people complain about toy guns in the US and Europe, they have a different opinion of it in Southeast Asia.

Yeah, I'd like to see them try to sell this here. It'd be worth it just to watch the gun-control supporters to go nuts.

(via WizBang)

Bush has finally taken advantage of recess appointments by appointing Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pickering, one of the judges that's been filibustered in the Senate, has been waiting confirmation for nearly two years.

Hopefully Bush will take actions like this with other judges being held up by the Senate Democrats unprecedented filibuster of appealate nominees. Maybe follow what some of suggested and put Bork on the DC Court of Appeals.

Since I seem to take so many quizes and post the results to this site I'm going to go with a trend of several other bloggers and designate Wednesday as my quiz day.

First up, what type of hipster am I?

You are the Low-Fidelity All-Star. You were born with your cool, and it's totally natural. You run the gamut from Hipster Supreme (only they can ingest as much coffee as you) to the geeky hipster (Mario Kart, anyone?).

What Kind of Hipster Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(via Classical Values)

Which Family Guy Character are you? Take the Quiz!

(via A Small Victory)

Over at Salon Joe Conason seems to think that Bush's announcement concerning sending people is all about oil.

When President Bush inspires us onward and upward to Mars this week, his political calculations may be more earthly. Expanding space exploration is a wonderful aspiration for America and humanity -- and also quite promising for the Houston economy, the national aerospace industry, and one company in particular that has long pondered exploration of the red planet: Halliburton.

Ok, as no one knows if life ever even existed on Mars, it's kind of interesting that anyone would even contemplate drilling for oil there in the first place. For those of you that don't know, oil is created by the decay of dead plants and animals. It's organic. If life doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.

His two sources discuss drilling in space. One mentions oil, but concerning use of the technology being developed for terrestrial uses as well as their use off the planet. The other one mentions Halliburton, but it was discussing how NASA wants to use technology to drill for water and look for the possiblity of microscopic life. Doesn't look like any discussion of how the company could get rich off of drilling. Nor does any of his sources suggest a determination of the company to drill on the moon. To some people everything is a conspiracy.

UPDATE: Instapundit has a lot more on this.

Nick Anderson has a reasonably good approximation of how the Democrats in the Louisville Metro Council have been behaving.

Personally, I think we should give them the ammo.

The snow has started falling in Louisville once again. It's almost hard to believe it considering the temperatures we were having here recently. I will say that the snow is preferable to freezing rain.

As per norm, our city services have been slow to get anything done. When I got into work about an hour ago only west bound Broadway was salted. It didn't look like the interstates had even been touched. And the majority of Louisville drivers were demonstrating their complete ineptitude when it comes to handling anything but driving in fair weather.

Moxie has an interesting post quoting Howard Dean making another monumentally stupid comment related to religion:

On Wednesday Dean said in an interview, "from a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people." ...

By that same theory,

“If God didn’t want to steal from the rich to give to the poor he wouldn’t have created Democrats.”

I'll agree with her that the one thought can lead to the next one she lists or several other equally stupid thoughts. However, there is a logical reason why, from a religious viewpoint, that God can view homosexuality as a sin (which it is, 1 Corinthians 6:8-10 ) and still have homosexuals exist. It's this basic concept known as "free will." Just because we can do a thing doesn't make it right. Besides, Dean's grasp of religion is questionable anyway as has been discussed here at least once before.

Meanwhile, over at The American Mind, Sean Hackbarth, who calls him Howard the Duck, has started The Duck Hunt. I'm hoping to have a few entries to contribute to this Hunt over the next few months.

On a side note on Moxie's post, using music by a man that became a devout christian as "typing inspiration" for a post in which she makes a statement that she's an atheist. Ironic.

Came across this quiz tonight. Yeah, I know I do a lot of quizes, but this site is my diversion.

Spent time with Sarah this afternoon and evening. We had agreed to wait to see ROTK together and tonight was the first night since it opened that we were able to go and not to tired to sit through a 3.5 hour movie. I'll make comments on ROTK in a second, but first I have to say I don't think I've ever come so close to freezing to death inside a movie theatre before. By time I left the place it seemed warmer outside and Sarah tells me my finger tips were blue.

As far as ROTK itself, I was definately happy with the movie overall. But I do have some thoughts on it. ( WARNING: Possible spoilers for those that still haven't seen the movie. I'm sure I'm pretty close to the last one though.)

When I watched the last two movies it had been awhile since I had read the LOTR book. However, I did notice differences between the books and the movies. Afterall, some where pretty prominent. However, I definately wasn't upset, like many people I know, about the treatment of Faramir and other more minor issues.

However, I had a chance to read LOTR again before ROTK came out, so I went in with things much fresher in my memory. So, while I'm happy with the movie overall, I'm much more inclined to side with the nit-pickers this time. (No offense guys). I know there's no way to keep everything in the movie that was in the book, but there's some key points I felt that were left out and some things that were changed that I think has an effect on the story overall.

First, after Ewoyn kills the Nazgul captian, didn't she almost die. How about the hobbit, didn't it hurt him too? I think their near death and recovery, along with her falling for Faramir merited inclusion. Faramir continued to be mistreated in this movie, and Denethor just appears to be a madman with no reason given as to why. Would it have hurt to take the extra minute to explain why he'd lost it? It really wouldn't have taken much longer than that.

I am pleased that they kept with the book in that Frodo didn't destroy the ring of his own free will. I'm not happy about how they handled the scenes at Mt. Doom though. Frodo, to my recolection, wasn't fighting for the ring after Gollum bit his finger off. Gollum just did a happy dance off the edge.

Also, while I understand the depressing nature of the end of the book, I felt it was an important way to end it. The destruction of the Shire and the reactions associated with it where important to the final meaning of the book. However, the movie overall ends on a much better note.

I have more that I could nit-pick this time (the crowning of Aragorn, leaving out a few key "speeches," the battles, etc...), but I should end on a better note.

Unlike some, while the special effects weren't the best I've ever scene when it comes to CG film, I felt it was far better than most. Legolas taking down the Oliphant was done 10 times better then his mounting of a horse in Two Towers. The movie overall was superb, and while the ending did effect the meaning to some degree, it was overall very true to the original work. I eagerly await the extended release of ROTK to see how the added scenes flush out some of the issues I had with the movie.

Matt Hoy has managed to capture rather accurately the problems with Dean's plans to discuss his faith more.

As I've said before, I'm always hesitant to question the genuineness of another person's faith, but the more Dean talks about his, the more questions it raises. Dean's "Southern strategy" to talk about God appears to be disgustingly fake. Dean appears to be what I call a "cultural christian." Someone who checks the "Christian" box on surveys because their parents took them to church on Christmas and Easter, but have little contact with the church or Christians otherwise.

Dean starts out his story with: "If you know much about the Bible — which I do..." and then talk about Job being one of the books of the New Testament?

I'm sorry, but you're a poseur.

I know this performance isn't going to fly in Kentucky, and I'm sure in the South in general, with the people that actually take their faith seriously. First he talks about winning the vote of Southerners who drive pickups with Confederate Flag stickers and then he does this. If he keeps this up and still manages to get the nomination, Bush will win the South in a walk, along with most of the rest of the country.

As this is the first post of 2004, let me wish you all a Happy New Year. Hopefully this year will treat all of us well.

As I'm waiting for things to process I thought I'd go see what quizes are posted over at Classical Values this Friday and came across these two.

First, going in theme with the new year, was a quiz that suggested what my new year's resolution should be.

Take the What Should Your New Year's Resolution Be? Quiz

Now, I don't think this is something I'm going to be doing anytime soon. At least I don't have to deal with the "logical conundrum" that Eric has to deal with in his results.

The second test is asks "Are you a blogaholic?"

44 points is in the 21 through 50 precent

You are a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you'd post a little more often, you'd make your readers very happy.

Well, glad to know I'm not addicted to this thing, though I do feel like if I posted a bit more I might get a bit more traffic to the site. I'm still a bit disturbed by what seems to be driving traffic (Robert Palmer and MBE scores).

Well, back to work.

(via Classical Values)