The Funeral was Today

Today was Nicole Elizabeth Sodemann's funeral. Here is the obituary, if anyone is interested. She was due to be born this week, but instead we have a funeral. She is now resting with her tiny casket on top of that of my grandmother's. If you knew my grandmother, you would know how amazingly appropriate this is.

This was very hard on everyone, but especially hard on my brother and his wife. Now the healing can begin. I thank all of you who responded to my prayer request.

Temperment Test

This one describes me pretty well, I think, though the graphic is just a tad off...

You Have a Melancholic Temperment

Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything. You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life. You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you. Given enough time alone, it's easy for you to find inner peace. You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life. Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times. At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you. You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others. You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult.

What Temperment Are You?

Prayer Request

My brother Jon and his wife Karen were due to have their second child any time now. Today, Karen went to the doctor, and found out the child has died. She should be in surgery now as I write this. Please pray for them.

Useful Tools

Firefox - I have been using this browser almost exclusively lately (at least at home). I used to use Safari. While Safari is fast and clean and has some nice features, there are just certain things that don't work very well. Firefox has most of the same features, works better with certain web sites, and has cool extensions.

GMail - I love this e-mail system. Despite the paranoid concerns of some people, this is truly the way an e-mail system should work. Their system makes it trivial for me to keep all of my mail without clutter, organize that mail into important groupings, and search that mail. Moreover, the work flow that they have built in to their system is more natural than more traditional e-mail systems. This is really the right way to go.

Wizz RSS - This is one of these nice Firefox extensions I was talking about. It is an RSS reader, and it works very well with Firefox. Wizz RSS makes it very easy for me to keep up to date with the blogs and news sources that I like to read. The current version has a minor bug saving feeds to the server, but I have reported that and heard back from the developer. My guess would be that this will be fixed in the next release.

Performancing - This is another one of those nice Firefox extensions. I have to give thanks to richmanwisco for pointing out this tool on his site. I have found that this extension has a couple of quirks to it, and is missing some key features (like a spell checker, for instance). It is still pretty handy, though.

Pretty Peach

Pretty Peach
Originally uploaded by stuffle.

The best thing about having a dog is if they think that a treat is involved, they will let you dress them up in pretty much any stupid thing you can think of...

Killing for Convenience

This article does a good job pointing out one of the many problems we have in our society, where abortion on demand is not only the law of the land, but is also socially acceptable, and becoming more so every day. The fact of the matter is that abortion is an absolutely despicable practice in all cases. However, this practice becomes even more detestable when it is done merely for convenience.

An especially tragic group of these victims are children who have been diagnosed in utero as having Down syndrome. Compared to our slaughter of these innocents, Herods efforts to kill the infant Jesus were amateurish: Expectant women are now pressured into prenatal testing, including amniocentesis; then, if Down syndrome is detected, they are expected to get an abortion, which 90 percent of them do.

This is just sad and wrong. I know families who have children with Down syndrome, and not one of them would go back and choose the evil path of abortion. Last night, at the Christmas party at Roy's group home, I also met some parents and friends of people with various mental and physical disabilities. The fact of the matter is that all of these people have presented special challenges to others over the years, but they have also provided special blessings.

All of God's children are precious, and none deserve to be aborted just because they may be an inconvenience to us.

For me, it is the ticket prices...

It seems that the size of the movie theater audience has been shrinking the last few years. Several reasons are given for this:

• High ticket costs
• High concessions costs
• More on screen ads
• Poor audience behavior
• Lower quality movies

For me, the problem is simple. It just plain costs too much for what you get. Tickets in this area are something like $8, so that is $16 for my wife and I to get in, plus $10 for the sodas and popcorn. So, $26 to see a movie that may or may not suck (and more likely than not, it will suck).

I would far rather add another $20 or so and go see a Milwaukee Wave game or a Brewers game. At least then I know the money will be well spent and I will actually enjoy myself. I can wait for the DVD release of the movie and watch it at home, when I want to, without some stupid punk-ass kids talking through the whole thing...

Merry Christmas, Roy!

Christmas Roy #1
Originally uploaded by stuffle.

This is Roy. Roy has lived in group homes for most of his life.

About 4 years ago, our pastor asked for volunteers to bring people to church who could not get there on their own. We volunteered. Roy has been going to church with us almost every Sunday since then.

Tonight, there was a Christmas party at Roy's group home for the residents and the people who help take care of them. We had a nice time talking with Roy, the other residents, and the other people who were there.

Merry Chirstmas, Roy!

Ben Stein is Dead On

Thanks to Little Miss Chatterbox for posting a link to this article by Ben Stein. Ben Stein has always impressed me as being one of the few celebrities who does not have his head up his butt. This article shows why. Let's look at some of it.

Is there any evidence at all of Americans' rights being trampled upon by the application of the Patriot Act? Are we any less free? Are there detention camps anywhere? Are opponents of Bush afraid to express themselves?


The answers are, of course (in order): No, no, no, and yes. All claims that I have seen to the contrary have turned out to just be political posturing by Bush's opponents. While it is important to keep reasonable checks and balances in place to ensure that any administration is not corrupted by its power, that corruption has not occurred with this administration.

Where are all of the wild hurrahs that should have greeted the recent election in Iraq? It went off incredibly well, with all major groups participating, with a much smaller amount of violence than was expected. Iraq has gone from being the most unfree Arab country to the most free in a matter of months, thanks to the vision of George Bush and the heroism of America's fighting men and women. What has happened is beyond the hopes of even the greatest optimists. But where are the cheers? Why are Bush's opponents still bashing him over what is a clear success?

The answer to the last question is simple. They are doing it for political gain. They see how weak of a stomach we now have as a nation, and will take advantage of that for political gain. They will take what has been an outstanding success (as wars go, ugly and horrible as they are), and try their best to make it look like a failure, all for political gain. Highlighting any of the successes, especially one so obvious as this, just makes their job harder.

In any event, Bush's main goal has been to save the nation. He doesn't care about an imperium. He's a quiet, self-effacing guy. He wanted to save us from more 9/11's. Why doesn't he get some credit for that?

Amen to that, Mr. Stein. Good article...

Milwaukee Wave vs. PASL All Stars

Today, Lisa and I went to see the Milwaukee Wave take on the PASL All Star team. The game was a special "school day" game, so there were a lot of schools there on field trips, and not a lot of us "regular" fans. The wave won 9-2.

Since this was not a league game, the Wave rested a fair number of their top players, but it was still fun to watch. It is too bad that Soccer in general, and indoor soccer in particular, does not have any traction in this country. While regular soccer is a tad dull, the indoor variety is quite fast paced and fun to watch.

Anyhow, after the game, we went to Turner Hall for lunch. As we were finishing up, the Wave players where starting to show up for their after game festivities. It was pretty cool to go to a game, and then see the players out in the same establishment basically right afterwards, just being "regular Joe's".