I read the following on a message board I frequent. There is and always has been a very anti-Christian bias on the forum in question and this pretty much more of the same. It’s amazing how many people actually fall for this and get roped into a “debate” they cannot win. I find that it’s best to just ignore these trolls. This one was particularly crass so I thought I’d share.

“God is supposed to be a compassionate entity. But only if you do things his away by admitting fault and repentant. Otherwise, you risk being damned to hell. Satan takes all comers. One seems more compassionate than the other.”

See if you can count the misconceptions, fallacies, and faulty assumptions. Personally, I didn’t even try.

I saw this on this site but thought I’d post it here as well.

An engineer dies and reports to the Pearly Gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says:

“Ah, you’re an engineer, but you worked for a high-tech startup company and got rich. You’ve had too good of a life, so now you can’t come in here.”

So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators. The computers are all upgraded and there are speaker wires running to every room. Even the clocks on the VCRs are set. The engineer becomes a pretty popular guy. One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says,

“So, how’s it going down there in hell?”

Satan replies, “Hey, things are going great. We’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators. The computers are faster than ever and we’ve got music in every room.There’s no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next.”

God replies, “What??? You’ve got an engineer? That’s a mistake, he should never have gotten down there! Send him up here-NOW.”

Satan shouts back, “No way! I like having an engineer on the staff, and I’m keeping him.”

God says, “Send him back up here or I’ll sue.”

Satan laughs uproariously and answers, “Yeah, right….and just where are YOU going to find a lawyer?”

Yeah, that’s likely a very big oxymoron but it adequately portrays my opinion of nearly every work meeting I’ve ever had the misfortune of attending. This image is also a pretty good representation of how I feel about most meetings:

On Wednesday, my co-workers and I were subjected to a pointless meeting of massive proportion. Not only did it drag on for an absurd two hours, but those two hours happened to coincide perfectly with the time of day when most of us eat lunch. Pretty much the two-headed monster of meetings, if you will.

Needless to say, if one were on the same career level as myself and most of my co-workers (read: non-management types), one would find oneself bored to tears with the content of the meeting in question. In order to keep myself entertained, I decided to make note of all the clichés used and memorable quotes made by the presenters of the meeting. If you’ve read this far, you’re likely finding yourself as disinterested in my diatribe as I was in the meeting I’ve been discussing. So let me just stop rambling and present you with my list of clichés and memorable quotes from my two hours of suffering.

Clichés
===

• “It’s time to hunker down.”
• “We’re going to invest in our future.”
• “This is game changing.”
• “We need to break that down and simplify it.”
• “We have to do our job and do it well.”
• “J.D. is a move and a shaker.”
• “We’re not going to just rest on our laurels.”
• “We’re going to challenge everything.”

Memorable Quotes
===

• “How did they get into our back-end systems?”
• “This next slide shows Greg and I holding hands… or shaking hands… however you want to look at it.”
• “… it keeps you from getting skill… er… stale, that is.”

You gotta love the corporate lifestyle.

Vanesa and I are leaving for Devil’s Tower in a couple of hours. She’s never been there and the only time I went, I wasn’t really old enough to remember. So it should be fun. It’ll also be great to take a day off from the misery that is my job.

After that, it’s off to Sheridan to see my cousin from Florida who will be visiting her parents. I haven’t seen her for a couple of years and she wanted to meet Vanesa. It should be a fun weekend. I’ll probably post pictures here and Facebook upon my gallant return.

Since January 1st, Vanesa and I have been reading from the One Year Bible every morning after we wake up. For the last couple of days, we have been reading from the Book of Esther. In particular, we read the story of Mordecai, Haman, and King Ahasuerus, which is detailed in Esther 3:1-7:10.

If you haven’t read it, here’s a brief synopsis: Mordecai (a Jew) had previously informed Esther (his cousin and the current queen) of a plot to assassinate King Ahasuerus. Esther relayed the information on to the king and a crisis was averted, though the king was never made aware of the source of the information. Later, Ahasuerus appointed a man named Haman as his prime minister. Haman did not care much for Mordecai. As a result, he convinced the king to sign a decree to have all the Jews in the kingdom killed, with Mordecai being a prime target. Hamas was so confident that Mordecai would be killed that he built a gallows in his court in anticipation of having Mordecai hanged. In the course of events, the king discovered that it was Mordecai who had warned Esther of the earlier attempt on his life. Esther also revealed that she was in fact a Jew and that Haman was trying to kill her and her people. Not surprisingly, Ahasuerus sided with his wife and ordered that Haman be hanged. So in the end, Haman was strung up on the same gallows he intended to hang Mordecai on.

It’s a very ironic story and at it’s conclusion Vanesa said to me, “That was a good story. It would make for a great movie!” I agreed and replied, “I have the perfect name for that story. I think it should be called ‘Oh… Snap!’”. However, I was the only one in the room that seemed to fully appreciated the wit of my proposed title.

Wow, it’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year and a half since I’ve written anything here. I’d like to change that but I don’t seem to have many interesting things to write about now that I don’t live in a foreign country anymore. Still, stuff comes to me every now and then so I’m going to try to write more often. So we’ll see how this goes. As a matter of fact, I’ve been struck with an idea for a blog post that I think I will start writing right tonight. Stay tuned!

Also, if anyone can point me to a decent WordPress theme or could design a cool banner for me, drop me an email.

So Vanesa and I ate at a restaurant called Modern Toilet today. Yes, that’s the actual name. And no, it’s not some horrendous English translation of the Chinese name. Here’s the link to their website.

I had the Pork Chops Cordon Bleu and Vanesa had the Smokin’ Chicken. The meals came served on a plate that was resting in the bowl of a little plastic commode. It was served with rice, soup, iced tea, and dessert. The dessert was chocolate/vanilla swirl soft-serve ice cream served in a little plastic replica of the “squatter” type toilets that are so common here in Taiwan.

The seats you sit on are all real porcelain toilets minus the tank. The bigger tables were full-sized bathtubs sitting under a glass table. Our small table was a basin under glass.

The food wasn’t at all shitty (zing!) and was actually very good. Portions were very good sized and we were both full after the meal. It was also pretty reasonably priced. The total meal ran NT$380, which is about US$13.

The most ironic thing in the restaurant was the bathroom. It was boring and understated and get this, it only had a squatter style toilet. What’s up with that?

At any rate, I think we’ll probably end up eating there a couple of more times before we leave at the end of next month. We didn’t have a camera but here’s a weblog that has some photos of one of the locations in Taipei.

This post was stupid and mostly pointless. It was a rotten weekend and I’d just as soon forget it. Sorry for wasting your time.

Rockies are NL Champs after defeating the punchless Diamondbacks by a count of 6-4 in Game 4 of the NLCS. And for those of you who don’t know, that’s Eric Byrnes lying flat on his face behind Todd Helton after making the final out of the series. Karma is a bitch, ain’t it Eric?

The Rockies have taken a huge 3-0 lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series. And if that wasn’t good enough, all four runs the Rockies scored came via homeruns that sailed directly over the head of leftfielder Eric Byrnes, who a day earlier, just couldn’t keep his big mouth shut.

Here’s a fact: In MLB history, 29 teams have lost the first three games of a seven-game series. 23 of those teams went on to get swept by losing Game 4 and just one of those teams has come back to take the series by winning the following four games.

So yeah, this series isn’t over yet. But the 2007 Diamondbacks are certainly not the 2004 Red Sox.

Oh, and for the record, Byrnes turned in a spectacular 0-4 performance in Game 3, grounding into a double-play and weakly popping out two times. Yeah, you sure showed ‘em, Eric.