Ministry at work

 Society  No Responses »
May 312007
 

John Lister and the group from Faith Family Baptist and N.E. Houston Baptist went to New Orleans to help reconstruct homes that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. This one belongs to Doris Cousins. On the N. side of the house you can see the FEMA trailer she is living in for the time being.

Doris Cousins' House in New Orleans

A long soggy weekend

 cycling  No Responses »
May 292007
 

We were blessed with lots of rain over the long weekend. This cut into my outdoor activities quite a bit. I did manage to get in a decent ride on Sunday. And the best part of it was that I made it back to the house about 10 minutes before the storms cut loose again. Sheer dumb luck!

Ride to Performance Bike

beIRONfit

 Health  No Responses »
May 222007
 

Picked up a neat book at lunchtime today. The title is biIRONfit: Time-Efficient Training Secrets for Ultimate Fitness. The author is Don Fink.

If you click the image, you will be taken to the Amazon.com page for the book.

In addition to lots of great general information and tips, the book presents three specific 30-week programs. You pick the one that is best suited to your lifestyle.

I’m in the process of fine-tuning my running, swimming, cycling, and strength-training schedules right now so I thought this would be a good book to read to help in designing the most time-efficient schedule possible.

I’ll let you know how it works out.

Python: convert a positive decimal integer to a binary string

 Computers  No Responses »
May 212007
 

Saw this interesting one-liner for converting a positive decimal integer to a binary string representation:

dec2bin = lambda x: (dec2bin(x/2) + str(x%2)) if x else ''

You can read the whole thread here.

Interestingly, you can easily generalize the one-liner to handle any small (< 10) base. For example:

dec2base = lambda x,b: (dec2base(x/b,b) + str(x%b)) if x else ""

Example output:

>>> for b in range(2,11):
...  print "10 in base %d is %s" % (b,dec2base(10,b))
... 
10 in base 2 is 1010
10 in base 3 is 101
10 in base 4 is 22
10 in base 5 is 20
10 in base 6 is 14
10 in base 7 is 13
10 in base 8 is 12
10 in base 9 is 11
10 in base 10 is 10

Wonderful Service From Humble Hyundai

 Life  No Responses »
May 152007
 

I’m always very pleased to be able to write good things about local businesses, so let me get started.

Gordy Jr. has a 2003 Hyundai Accent. It has been a great little car. About two weeks before he deployed to Iraq, he had a minor fender-bender in Columbus, GA. He took it to a local body shop in Columbus. It’s a place called Dimensions Fender and Body. They are located at 5110 Suite B, Hamilton Road, Columbus, GA 31904. This company is owned by a scoundrel named Todd Rise. I’m not completely sure about the spelling of his last name.

I mention them just as a public service announcement for folks living in the Columbus, GA area. This company proved to be completely unreliable as well as incompetent. Todd lied to me several times during our various conversations. Folks, STAY AWAY FROM DIMENSIONS!!!

OK, back on track…

Once Gordy’s car was repaired he wanted me to bring it back to TX to keep and care for while he is in Iraq. So i flew to Columbus and drove the car back. About an hour outside of Columbus I heard a noise and pulled over to the side of the road. I discovered that Dimensions failed to fasten the plastic fender well liner to the body on the left-front side.

I had no tools except for a pocket knife that I had purchased in Columbus while waiting for Dimensions to complete the repairs that were supposed to have already been done.

Thank goodness!

I was able to use the serrated portion of the blade to quickly and efficiently trim away all of the loose and damaged parts of the plastic fender well. I completed the trip without further incident.

When I got back to Humble I took Gordy’s car to Humble Hyundai. They special-ordered the part that I needed and I paid for it in advance. The cost was very reasonable…$40+ dollars (I don’t remember the exact amount). They said they would call me when the part comes in.

So last week they called and said they had the part in and that I could drop by any time and pick it up or have them install it. This morning I drove over there expecting to have to leave the car with them. But they took it back to the shop immediately and I waited only a short time while they installed the new part.

When they called me back to the service area to pay for the installation and pick up the car they handed me the keys and told me there was no charge. I thanked them and left.

Needless to say, I’m very impressed with Humble Hyundai. Their service was fast and efficient and they treated me very well.

I think the fellow that helped me was named Ellery Davis.

Pathetic pool of potential jurors…

 Society  No Responses »
May 142007
 

I was summoned for jury duty today down at the main courthouse in Houston, TX. Took the Metro bus into Houston and that was really great.

I was part of a pool of 64 people. We were brought to the 185′th Criminal Court of Judge Susan Brown. The trial was the State of Texas versus Cornelius Johnson. He was accused of criminal possession with intent to distribute of greater than 400 gm of a controlled substance (cocaine).

As part of the Voir dire we were asked if we were capable of obeying the following legal obligations of a juror:

  • If the defendant does not testify, you cannot use that failure to be questioned in the consideration of his guilt or innocence.
  • If you find out that the defendant has a criminal history, you cannot use that knowledge as part of your determination of his guilt or innocence for this trial. You can only use that knowledge in determination of how believable he is during any questioning.

So many of the pool of 64 potential jurors said they were unable to follow those laws that the judge ended up having to dismiss the entire pool and they had to start over with a new group of potential jurors.

I was very completely dismayed by the crappy performance of my fellow potential jurors. They should be ashamed of themselves!

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