The Syndicate

Golden wrote:A boy arrived for us on the 7th, not long before midnight. His name is hamish. He was big but not quite as big as they expected. No sleep for me.

For those who know Sophie, she was due the same time as us but hers came earlier, a couple of weeks ago. She had a boy called Julian.

Golden the Father! Welcome to the club, sir. Fatherhood is a lot of work but it is awesome.

I did better than last year but that's not saying much. I got maybe half of the answers right. I'm a nerd but it seems I need to broaden the scope of useless information I retain in my head. Maybe next year.

T minus 30 minutes until I am intellectually humbled for the second year in a row. Here goes nothing...

Just call me...

My youngest daughter turned six months old today!

Here's a pic of my crispy burnt balls if anyone's interested.

Yup. We need to buy a new griddle. Looks like we may add slow-cooker to that list.

Epignosis wrote:Maybe Albert Pujols doesn't mind hot balls.

Well, he could certainly hit these over the fence.

Ricochet wrote:mmm datsome burny meat-uh-balls

Just got home. Indeed the are.

That feeling when you realize that you most likely set the slow-cooker full of meatballs and spaghetti sauce to HIGH this morning instead of LOW.

This is my 2,000th post!

Metalmarsh89 wrote:I was rooting for the Cardinals tbh, but the Panthers are obviously the team to beat.

If anyone can do it, it's a healthy Broncos team.

I have nothing against the Cardinals but I find Phoenix/Arizona to be one of those regions that it's hard to care about in terms of sports teams. Seattle used to be in this same category for me but now they're lumped into my "root against them because of obnoxious bandwagon fans" category. It's funny how you expect some teams/regions to have inferior sports teams simply because you grew up knowing those teams to be mediocre.

That being said, I lukewarmly support the Diamondbacks and Coyotes from time to time because their logos/team names/color schemes are/were cool and for the underdog factor.

Epignosis wrote:PANTHERS

Broncos

This will be the best kind of Super Bowl for me- one where I'm okay with either team winning. The last time that happened was in 2011 with the Packers and the Steelers.

While it would be nice for Manning to go out on top with a Super Bowl victory (still hard to believe his brother has more rings than he does), I think I'm leaning toward the Panthers. They were such a dominant team this year and Cam Newton really seems to have transformed both his play and his attitude since his car accident. Plus, I thought their logo and colors were cool back when the team was founded back when I was a kid. I've always had a soft spot for them because of that.

Cold day at work. Nobody noticed that the furnace was low on oil. It must have run out sometime overnight. It's 63 in the office now that our bodies and the lights have warmed it up from the 59 degree temperature we discovered upon opening for the day. Hot chocolate has been clutch today but I don't think I'm going to want to drink any again for a long while. Working on my fourth cup as I type this.

Nothing says Merry Christmas Happy Boxing Day quite like cleaning vomit out of your child's bed sheets at 12:45 a.m.

We have wifi at the hospital but still no baby. The doctors are saying she ought to be born today (Friday) yet. We'll see.

Today is the day! Heading to the hospital in half an hour to induce labor. Friend me on Facebook if you want to see pics. Just make sure you tell me who you are when you friend me. I haven't seen pictures of all of you.

Worker's comp audits make me do this:

Turnip Head wrote:I stayed home sick that day. My mom was at work and called to tell me what happened. I don't think I'll ever forget that phone call. We didn't have TV at the time so I followed along on the radio. I remember feeling scared, confused and alone.

I remember being very confused too. It was a total shock and I didn't know how to process it all in real time. Seeing the jumpers is probably what made it sink in. The footage of people fleeing buildings covered in dust and running from the debris clouds is one thing but I think the jumpers gave me a much deeper understanding of the severity of it all. A building is an inanimate thing but seeing real people jump to their death on TV gave it that personal punch that pretty much wrecked me inside for the rest of the day. It was a similar (but probably heavier) feeling to when my sister and I watched footage of the evacuation of Columbine back in 1999. We tuned in not long after getting home from school on the east coast, right as one boy was rescued out of the library window.

If you take the time zone differences into account, most of Europe was in the early to mid-afternoon hours when it started hitting the fan here. By the time most of the day-shift folk got home from work, there was already plenty of footage compiled for evening broadcasts. I hadn't really thought of that before. Then again, I was "lucky" in that I had access to a TV at school. I know my parents wouldn't have had access to a TV at work. Maybe in the break room but neither of my folks worked jobs where they could huddle around a TV or radio for a few hours as it all played out.

How many of you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001? Obviously those of your from outside of the USA may not have the details cemented in your brain like we Americans do but I'm curious to hear from everyone.

I was in 2nd period study hall of my senior year of high school. By the time they announced it on the PA system, both planes had hit, so all we saw were the countless replays of the two strikes. At close to the end of study hall, the Pentagon was hit. My 3rd period class was biology. We were supposed to be working in our lab groups on prepping to dissect pigs but our focus was split between that and the TV. We saw both towers fall and then school administrators told all teachers to turn off the classroom TV sets. The next day they had turned off the cable so no one could watch anything- not even the morning Channel 1 broadcast during homeroom.

I think the plane that hit in Somerset County happened between periods. The news focused so much on the other three planes though that it's easy to lose track of that part of the timeline.

I'm not sure at what age to tell my kids about that day. At 17, I was old enough to understand everything despite how crazy it all looked and seemed at the time. One image I'll never be able to let go of is the jumpers. It sent chills up my spine then and it still does.

The standoff ended long ago. The guy who barricaded himself in his home was a cop who had been sniffed out for stealing jewels and planting them elsewhere to frame a fall guy. He killed himself around 12:45 p.m. but we weren't allowed back into the development until 5-ish. The family and I went out for dinner and skipped all the news people hustling for interviews. He lived around the bend from us, five or six houses away.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index. ... cart_river

So a couple of weeks ago there was a heroin bust a mile from my house. Today there is a police standoff just a few houses down from mine.

I'll be refreshing the local news sites on a regular basis this afternoon.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:

G-Man wrote:Anybody watching the Little League World Series? The Mid-Atlantic team (Red Land) is from my neck of the woods! In past years, it's been fun cheering on teams from PA that made the LLWS but to have a team from 20 minutes away in the mix is pretty cool.

I've never watched the LLWS, but that's awesome. Oregon would never have a team in such a position.

Actually, there was a team from Oregon in the tourney but they lost their first two games.

Red Land won again tonight, putting them in the US Championship game! Seriously, this is the only time I think I've ever been this excited about baseball.

Anybody watching the Little League World Series? The Mid-Atlantic team (Red Land) is from my neck of the woods! In past years, it's been fun cheering on teams from PA that made the LLWS but to have a team from 20 minutes away in the mix is pretty cool.

My daughter is awesome. Earlier in the week I was listening to a Ben Folds & Ben Fold Five playlist on YouTube (the CD player on my office computer crapped out and Pandora bores me with its uninspired selection and repetitiveness) and saw the video for "Do It Anyway," which features the Fraggles. Last night at dinner I was whistling the Fraggle Rock theme and my daughter wanted to know what song it was. I played it for her a few times and now she has about half of the theme memorized and wants to watch Fraggle Rock.
We had a mini dance party last night before bed to the Fraggle Rock theme.

Any other tinnitus sufferers out there? I normally have a high-pitched electronic frequency-esque noise in my left ear but today my right ear decided to go all haywire on me. Curious if anyone else struggles with it.

http://fox43.com/2015/06/29/police-drug ... -epidemic/

Our local police force busted a sizable heroin ring operating out of a home half a mile from my house.

Stories like these make me worry about the world my daughters are going to grow up in.

Ricochet wrote:I have a date on Thursday. Or, coffee or something.

Does asking and going to coffee with a girl count as a date?

Only if you pay for her coffee and ask to do it again sometime.

S~V~S wrote:

Epignosis wrote:Frankly, I'm pissed off about how little this ruling affects me.

I had an argument with my Great Uncle (who is a VERY OLD MAN) a while back about this. He got all in my face about it, how pastors & priests would be forced to perform weddings for people against their conscience.

Um, Uncle, I said. Catholic priests have been not marrying people for YEARS because it went against their beliefs. Can't get a Catholic wedding if divorced, can't get a Catholic wedding if marrying a non-Catholic. And iirc, it is the same for Orthodox. No one tried to FORCE Father Whazzizname to do the wedding for my husband and I (he was my husbands priest) when he refused becasue I was not a Catholic. Why do people think it will be otherwise now?

So I am not getting the "it is an attack on my beliefs" argument, if religious officiants have always dictated who they would and would not marry for religious reasons. So, a gay person could not sue the Westboro Baptists for refusing to perform a Gay Wedding, because it clearly violates their doctrine. So I am not sure what Huckabee and his ilk are screaming about, acting as if Gay Marriage is a second spear stuck in Jesus' side.

I have yet to read the SCOTUS opinions and dissents on the issue but I will in due time (yeah, I'm that big of a nerd). As a social quasi-libertarian, I see nothing wrong with the way the court ruled through the lens of the 14th Amendment. What I am curious to learn is how the majority spoke to religious freedom in their decision. Pundits were pondering whether a court ruling in favor of putting same-sex marriage validity under the umbrella of the 14h Amendment would also speak to protecting the freedom of denominations to excise their religious beliefs and decline to perform same-sex marriages on religious grounds. If they don't extend the same level of protections as many state courts did, I can imagine a scenario where the tax-exempt statuses of religious institutions (not just Christian churches mind you) are threatened over discrimination.

The crux of the argument is similar to what the Boy Scouts of America faced years ago over openly gay Scout Masters- religious institutions retain their right to preach what they want regarding homosexuality but their stance on the issue may disqualify them from tax-exempt status. As someone who belongs to a denomination that is still torn over this issue, I'd hate to see my church lose tax exempt status and likely have to shut its doors because of an issue that isn't even preached on from the pulpit. Converting a church to a taxable entity is an expensive nightmare and involves a lot of red tape, new regulations, and all sorts of headaches and pitfalls that will probably bury most small to mid-sized churches.

Golden wrote:It's hard for me to post on this subject without a giant diatribe about how ill Christianity is (certainly the part of Christianity which makes all the noise and gets all the press), so I will leave it at this...

Congratulations USA, glad you caught up.

I'm sorry you have such negative views about a faith that I myself follow. I can agree that there are plenty of people professing a faith that looks and sounds almost nothing like what I believe in. I'd love to talk to you via PM about it if you like.

rabbit8 wrote:I went looking through the sites I used to frequent and found most of them dead and ended up finding everyone here. Yay for internets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The same general thing brought me here too. Maybe this site is some kind of temporal vortex upon which hinges all of existence like The Dark Tower.

Or it could be one hell of a coincidence.

Either way, howdy.