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Would you guys please remember my Mom in prayer tomorrow? She’ll be having surgery at UAB around 10am to have a tumor (benign, thankfully) removed from her abdomen. It’s attached to her kidney, and we’re hoping that they will not have to remove the entire kidney as a part of the procedure.

Thanks!

Where, oh where, has the month of June gone?

I hope you’ll forgive the lack of blog activity, and allow me to interrupt the silence with a gratuitous Dad brag.

Yesterday, we got a phone call from the Grammar school principal at Evangel. It turns out that Brandon’s scores on the SAT test have made him eligible for Duke University’s Talent Identification Program. We’re just learning about the program, so I don’t know a whole lot. But I thought it was definitely cool enough to brag about.

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

Actually, I think it’s spot-on, especially this part about Perl:

1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall’s forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall’s monitor isn’t random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born.

(HT: Oracle_Ace, via Twitter).

From the Fish with Trish blog, where Trish writes:

Someone messaged me hours ago on facebook and urged and me to watch a video entitled, “Death is Not Dying: A Faith that Saves”. So I did. And just 10 minutes into it, I pressed pause and went into my husband’s office and said, “Do you have a little bit of time to watch something with me?” “Sure.” He answered.

I pulled up my chair next to his and he and I watched “Death is Not Dying: A Faith that Saves” which is a talk from Rachel Barkey a 37 year old wife and mother of two was diagnosed with terminal cancer. If a miracle doesn’t occur, Rachel only has weeks to live and will leave this earth and all the things precious to her…but she’s is convinced that death is not dying.

“Cancer does not define me,” she says. “Neither does being a wife or a mother. All these things are part of who I am but they do not define me.” Watch as she shares what defines her.

I listened to the talk today. It is absolutely amazing, to listen to a woman whose days are few share her thoughts on dying. It reminded me of Randy Pausch’s ‘Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’ lecture, which he gave approximately 9 months before passing away. However, Rachel’s talk is centered on how her Christian faith impacts the way that she deals with her cancer.

If you have the time, watch her online: Death Is Not Dying. If you don’t have the time, make the time.

Topping the news today…

Obsession with Naked Women Dates Back 35,000 Years

The only thing that I would quibble with is the 35,000 years. Depending on where you fall in the young earth / old earth debate, that number’s going to change.

Where would we be without Science?

I present my all-time favorite SNL opening skit:

I have had the toughest time finding this skit. I’ve looked for it for many years, but could only find the first portion of it, up until Phil Hartman sings. But thanks to a link I followed from my friend Ashley, I found that NBC has finally published the entire skit.

It’s been a while. Why not?

1. What’s your favorite card game? Rook. Too bad I can’t find anyone to play it with.

2. What’s your favorite roll-the-dice-and-move game? I like Monopoly, but it just takes too stinking long to play. I also love Risk, but I’m not sure that it counts as a roll-the-dice-and-move-game. So with those notes, I’ll give the nod to Sorry, because the boys like to play it so much.

3. What’s your favorite playground game? Hmm. Kickball?

4. What’s your favorite party game? Power Uno. This was a game invented by several college friends one night, back in the early 90s. Best when played with multiple decks. I believe that I wound up drawing 24 cards in a single turn.

5. What’s your favorite computer game? I’m not much of a PC gamer, but I’m currently having a blast playing Left For Dead. It’s the first PC game I installed since… Tie Fighter, maybe?

Engadget summarizes it perfectly:

Advertisers have finally picked up on what we’ve known all along: nerds are the modern day rock stars.

Hi. I’m Brian, and I’m a Twitter addict.

(HT: Neal Boortz - or @Talkmaster for you fellow Tweeters)

Now this is funny:

Since the Obama administration’s talk of banning so-called ‘assault weapons’ has resulted in a huge spike in semi-automatic weapon sales nationwide, the White House has recently begun a covert ‘whisper campaign’ suggesting the president might also ban U.S.-manufactured cars and trucks with fully-automatic transmissions, now dubbed ‘assault vehicles’.

(HT: ScrappleFace)