Jerry Orbach of NBC’s Law & Order passed away yesterday of prostate cancer. I found him to be one of the funniest characters on the show with his Bronx attitude and non-politically correct comments. From what I have read about him he was a very accomplished Broadway star with a great voice.

He will be missed.

I have dived into reading General Tommy Franks’ biography/memoir titled American Soldier and I have been thoroughly captivated to the point where I almost cannot put the book down.

Gen. Franks has an amazing story that begins with his upbringing in Midland, TX and moves through his time in the Army to his thoughts on present day events such as the war on terror and WMD.

The book explains a lot about how the first Gulf War was fought and how the implementation of techniques that Gen. Franks had devised helped win the war.

I am finding that a lot of the book has key points on leadership that apply not just to military personnel but to managers and bosses. Gen. Franks goes into great detail about how his decisions on and off the battlefield shaped his men and his family and how responsibility for ones actions means a lot to the people below you.

So far it is a great book and will probably get even better as I get deeper into it. Definitely pick it up as it is worth being read.

To be honest I have been contemplating whether or not to write about this for a while now and tonight after reading some things on a website that I frequent I decided I should.

I, as a Christian, feel that mocking the Christian faith is wrong. Now, I know that it is going to happen from time to time and for the most part I keep my mouth shut or make a comment like ‘Hey, that isn’t necessary’ but I have come to realize that it is becoming more and more o.k. and almost encouraged to make fun of religion and in particular Christians.

There is no real reason that I can think of for the mockery except that some people actually believe that some of the extreme Christian Right sabotaged this year’s election or something idiotic like that.

I have seen comments making fun of the 700 Club, and granted, I do not really like the show but if you are non-Christian and you watch it, then it is your own fault. You have a remote, use it. Why complain about something that you have complete and utter control over? The Christians are not taking over television, you have nothing to fear. You can still see Janet Jackson’s breasts and Michael Jackson interviews on NBC, ABC, and CBS all you want. We are not invading your everyday life, in fact, if you have not noticed most of the things that were supposedly invading your everyday life are being removed (10 Commandments, Manger scene’s, etc.). My point is that the political correctness has finally reached a head in my mind and I am worn out by all of it.

I have to stop telling people ‘Merry Christmas’ because they may not celebrate it? Since when? If someone said ‘Happy Kwanzaa’ to me I would nod and smile and maybe respond with a ‘you too’ just out of sheer kindness. I would not take them to court over it let alone get bent out of shape.

What I find disheartening is the fact that a lot of this negativity is aimed directly at Christians. If any of the things that were being said/done to Christians were done to people of another faith those people would be up in arms about it. If a group of Muslims were told they could not have their prayer mats at a public park they would sue the city faster than you can imagine. I am tired of this “If you are going to have one faith you have to have them all” mentality, people need to get over themselves and realize that not everything is going to suit them all of the time and that people around them are not obligated to change everything to make them happy.

Sometimes people need to realize when to keep their mouths shut and their eyes open and understand that the only way to enjoy each other is to tolerate each other and that goes both ways.

I am kind of new to the whole fantasy sports thing and I made a huge mistake in the dropping and adding of players on my basketball team. I had Jermaine O’Neal, one of the players involved in the Pistons vs. Pacers brawl and he had been on the unavailable list for a while (due to his suspension), so I, not thinking, dropped him from my roster. For some reason it did not register in my head that O’Neal would not be out for the entire season. But before I could put him back on my roster someone else picked him up.

So now I am watching as my season may or may not go down the tubes since O’Neal was ranked 7th in the fantasy league’s rankings.

I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Houston received some snow, which I did not see since I was in Tyler enjoying Christmas with family. Not seeing snow does not really bother me, I see enough in Lubbock to hold me over. Christmas was great though, seeing family that I have not seen in a while and probably will not see again for some time. All in all it was a good time.

I will be in Houston until the 2nd of January when I head back to Lubbock. If you are in town and want to meet up, e-mail me at s [at] badice dot com.

I will probably be a little short on updates until the holidays are over for a few reasons.

1. I hate this keyboard. Typing on it is like pulling teeth.
2. I have a lot plans/prior engagements that I have to make sure I meet.

After the new year though I should be back to writing a lot.

I have been looking into how to deal with timezones in PHP and daylight savings. From what I have been able to find, daylight savings in the U.S. takes place from April through October. The only states that do not observe daylight savings are Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, and Indiana.

To write internationally compliant code I have decided to just include a checkbox that says “Does your local area observe daylight savings?” and if it does have the code during the daylight savings months subtract another hour from the time. This allows the code to be used pretty much anywhere in the world. The only thing I need to look into more is if there is anywhere in the world that falls back two hours. I do not think there is anywhere like that but I need to double check.

I have received a few e-mails from people wanting me to post a Christmas list. I do not really know why they want a list and I do not really feel like listing everything that I’ve been wanting for a while. So, check out my Amazon.com wishlist.

I don’t really need anything for Christmas. My main “wish” is to get my health back to where it was 7 months ago. Anything above that would just be icing on the cake.

I have been mentioning a site redesign for a while now and I just have not had time to follow through with it.

Well, over the past few days, myself and a couple of friends have come up with some ideas and it looks like they may be implemented in the near future. The first issue that we came up with was focusing the content of this site so that I can better define the audience. I am still going to keep the topics broad but at the same time I am going to focus on specific issues (that I will define later).

The site will get a complete overhaul. The backend code is almost done and the visual design is being thought out. I plan to roll out more changes over the next few days, the biggest of which is the implementation of an archiving system. I have received a lot of traffic related to the Pistons/Pacers brawl and other older posts. People still come to the site looking for those things and I think my return rate would go up with the archives.

So be looking for some changes over the next few days/weeks/months.

I have made a decent amount of purchases from the iTunes store (57 songs to be exact). I was recently prompted by iTunes to make sure that I backed up my music as it would be unrecovarble if my harddrive failed. Well, that is a refreshing thought, I pay that money to have them say “Well, you can’t download it again”…

That leaves me one option, go out and buy another, bigger harddrive. At first I thought I wanted an external drive by one of the big boy harddrive makers but after talking to Brandon I have decided that I will buy a regular harddrive (probably 80GB or 120GB) and an external enclosure for it. That way if the drive ever goes out I can just take it out of the enclosure and buy another one.

I guess that data loss is one of my biggest fears. I have a ton of music (I need to post my library up some time) and I think I might actually have a heart attack if I lost it all.