If so, consider this an update.  A few months ago I found out about a talented Japanese boy named Yuto Miyazawa on the Ellen show (found out via the ‘net of course- I don’t watch shows like Ellen).  This boy at just nine years of age plays a mean guitar.  Here is the clip of him on the aforementioned show:

Too unfortunate he chooses someone like Ozzy Osbourne to imitate, but I suppose they can’t all choose more godly heavy metal like Disciple, Kutless, or Red. 😉 ) The update, if this is one, is that Ozzy just had Yuto as a guest at a concert the other night he did for Blizzcon 2009.  Here’s a clip:

Put me on the crazy train, but I think Yuto did a better job singing the song on the Ellen show than Ozzy did at Blizzcon!  Okay, to be fair Ozzy had just finished a set, and to put this politely he ain’t getting any younger.  I did have to cringe though when he dropped the f-bomb right in front of Yuto, twice.  So what do you all think?

Just haven’t felt much like posting, though I did make an attempt to do a post yesterday, like fellow blogger JustJ did the other day, after playing around with Vista’s voice recognition software.  Incredible in comparison to Dragon Dictate from several years ago, though I suppose if that software is still around it is at least as good as Vista’s.  Of course, knowing Microsoft their software may very well *be* Dragon Dictate, or some other commercial package bought by them.  They started off that way back when when they bought a DOS from someone, relabeled it MSDOS, and licensed it to IBM way back when, so why not these days with voice recognition?

Anyway, I still don’t have much to say, so I leave you with this hilarious video mentioned on Majorgeeks in today’s news:

Well, school is almost upon us once again.  Depending on where you live, it can be a week or three, or maybe your kids attend an all-year school that started up again in July after a much shorter break.  In the two districts I’m signed up with, it starts in 1½ and 2½ weeks.  What’s that you say?  Two districts?  That’s right.  I am only in hometown and supersized districts this year due to my continued job of shooting pictures of cars.  I have chosen to work three days a week on the cars for now leaving two days to teach.  Of course it will likely be another month before I am needed as a sub, but that’s the plan.  As you probably figured out already, these two districts are where I have gotten most of my work in the past and so I stuck with them, losing the less productive ones, even though near-urban paid me the most.

So how is the new job going?  Well, I got my first store finally- unfortunately it’s 45-minutes away!  The one who had this store didn’t do a very good job so he was replaced.  Not the best way to start, but I’ll take whatever I can get.  Today, in fact, Kim (one of the owners of the company I work for) and I spent much time fixing the stickers on the cars that were tilted, stuck over unremoved adhesive from previous buyer’s guide (warranty info which by law has to be in the window even if just handwritten) or otherwise placed with a lack of care.  I think we did no less than two dozen.  The rest of my time was spent in doing four cars that were ready for me.  Not a lot, but the idea is to have three dealers (four if they are small like this one) in one day to shoot a reasonable amount.  The most I had in one day training with Rene was 42.  At $7 a car that was nearly $300 for the day for her.  Of course that was three large dealers, and even then that number is rare.  My goal is eventually 20-30 cars per day.  Another trainee may be leaving as his school just gave him a reality check- no, it is not possible to graduate in a reasonable time if you only have classes two days a week.  If he leaves then I am hoping to get one of the stores promised to him, but not the other one.  There is a dealer that is way over toward Chicago (strike one for the bad traffic).  They require the cars to be shot in their warehouse a mile away, meaning the cars have to be driven from their lot to there, adding a tremendous amount of time (strike two).  Also, the warehouse has bad lighting with three of the five lights burnt out the last two times I was there making it difficult to take pictures inside the cars (strike three).  I am scheduled to do new cars every other week, but the one who has been doing the used cars while Pat was training to take it over can keep that part as a punishment for his bad performance at the dealer he lost (yes, same guy)!

In the meantime, all this work has meant that I haven’t gotten the DVD done yet for my kids from camp- I’d better start on it soon, or just do what I did the first year- give them a CD with all the pictures, but that’s no fun and can’t be viewed without a computer.

It has been a while since the last camp post, so why don’t I just wrap it up in one post?  Since we’re talking two days, I have a lot of photos this time.   The highlights of course were the games and instructionals.  But before we get to those, the themes for the last two days were the tongue and the hands/feet.  The tongue refers to what we say and the hands and feet refer to our actions.  If you’re keeping up with the key verses, here they are (can you match up the theme with the verse?):

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. (Ephesians 4:29)

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm. (Proverbs 13:20)

The one heart lesson on Thursday night was the good news- the faithful heart.  After three nights of learning about the bad hearts it was refreshing to finally get to the one that hears the Word and takes action, letting it take root strongly in one’s heart.

The first game was Man Overboard against the Blue Shields.  Man Overboard is a running game where the kids have to follow the directions of where to go and what to do.  There are four sides to a ship, but for this large of a group we only used two- bow and stern.  Besides the two places to go, the one in charge can call things like octopus!, shark!, hit the deck!, and of course the title, man overboard!  There are more too.  When the kids hear this they have to do an action associated with the command.  See the photo section for two such actions.  Since this is a relatively short game for the allotted time, they played a couple of games and followed with a couple rounds of Simon Says.  The boys actually played this the night before before going on a hay ride at the end of the day, but not for a good reason- it was because several boys didn’t listen to directions.  It was a fun sort of reminder for them I think.  Our team rocked on these games.  The next morning the game was Bedlam against the Red Cross.  This was a more subjective game where the teams were given an action to do, like act like a particular animal or object (i.e., ice-cream truck), and whichever team did it best overall according to the leaders judging would win the points.  I have no idea who actually won this one.

Hey, did I skip a game?  Well, that’s because I saved the best for last.  Last time I mentioned Counselor Hunt was switched to Thursday.  This is quite a different game from the rest.  This annual game is where the counselors all hide somewhere in the camp and the kids, working in groups, have to find them.  Over the last four years, I have tamed a bit on this one.  The first couple times I played it I hid so well that almost no one found me.  Last year (or was it the year before?) I switched tactics to make it easier for the kids- I placed myself so that I was hidden from most directions, but visible if they looked from a certain angle.  Several found me of course, but that was the idea.  Another strategy some take with this game is to hide in plain sight.  That is, they will place themselves in a spot they can’t be missed like the middle of the road or reading a newspaper in front of a cabin.  They are so obvious that they must not be playing, or so most of the kids think.  This year I didn’t hide at all.  I was one of the runners, called viruses in this medical theme.  You can tell by the name that this is bad news for the kids.  Instead of hiding, I was one of about four who would chase the kids.  If caught, they would be marked and would have to have the virus “cured” before they could continue the game.  This was a very tiring job- no wonder the high school kids were usually the ones to do it!  I think I marked about five or six kids throughout the game, regrettably one of my own (hey, we had to play fair!).  I ran up to three from my cabin, and instead of running away like they all should have, one of them ran toward me, an excited look on his face that he “found” me. Doh! (visualize hand slapping face here).

There were of course four instructionals throughout the two days.  I won’t talk too much about most of them though for brevity sake.  On Thursday we had fishing and archery.  Yes, there were actual fish in the lake but they didn’t get to cook up what they caught- just catch and release.  I’m sure the kids weren’t too disappointed they didn’t get to clean, gut, and cook the fish…  Not much to say on archery- most kids were, let’s just say not quite Robin Hoods, so I will move on to riflery on Friday.   The kids from Iowa put us to shame here.  They were so practiced at shooting that when they ran out of targets to hit they shot ours!  These were actually pellet guns powered by air- no real bullets for this camp.  This was a new event this year and I was looking forward to it as I remembered my times at Boy Scout camp, though there we had to pay for each round we shot.  You can see what the rifles looked like below.  Rock climbing was the final event of the week for us.  All but one of the boys in my cabin gave it a try.  Again, a couple of pictures below.

The only things left to write about (I’ll probably come up with more once I post this!) are the campfire and going home.  Wednesday night the girls had a campfire while the boys went on a hayride, which, by the way, had no hay- just the cart.  Thursday reversed these roles.  The campfire was to serve a couple of purposes.  The obvious one was marshmallows for s’mores.  The other was to burn a list of fears we wrote up the night before as part of the lesson, signifying that we release these fears to God’s control.  Since we had to wait a day on this for our turn at the campfire, you can guess what happened.  Myself included.  I’ll just say that I found my list once I got home and unpacked.  Speaking of going home, that’s what we did Friday night.  Cleaned up the cabins, packed, and headed to the bus bus.  Once again I was grateful for the buses coming down Dorothy’s Hill so we didn’t have to climb it with our luggage.  All but one of my boys boarded the bus- we left one behind.  On purpose.  Are you curious?  Okay, he was staying for family camp.  His parents wouldn’t arrive until the next day, but he stayed with another dad who stayed behind with his own son.

In the end, our team was not victorious.  We came in a close second, still far ahead of third place.  There’s always next year. 🙂

Oh, one more thing- winning the cleanest boys’ cabin twice really messed me up for one of the things I wanted to do one of the days.  Lots of balloons was the key here, but I guess I will be saving them for next year now.  On Thursday we decided that since we would probably not be allowed to win two days in a row, we saved them for Friday.  On Friday, we were busy cleaning and packing.  Oh, well.  Enjoy the pics, and be sure to click on whatever catches your eye for larger versions.

Oh, no contact lenses were really lost as far as I know.  What?  You don’t read the pop-up tooltips when you hover over the pictures?  For shame! 😛

While reading my daily geek.com, I came across this article they blogged about.  For those of us in our middle years it is really quite interesting.  To get you started, I have reprinted two or three from each section, but to read them all you will have to click the title or end of the article to go to the source.  What really makes me feel old is the inclusion of 90s things like the Playstation… 😮

Oh, be sure to click the link at the source about the young teen trying out a Walkman for a week, the MP3 player of the 80s.

UPDATE: I just visited Worthy Christian Forums, and apparently someone posted this same article, but with 37 more things (plus more in the replies)!  At a glance, I could see they weren’t just tacked on to the end and I’m too lazy to figure out which are new, so CLICK HERE TO GO TO READ ALL 137 THINGS

Audio-Visual Entertainment:

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.

8. 8-track cartridges.

Computers and Videogaming:

19. The scream of a modem connecting.

22. Using jumpers to set IRQs.

33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.

The Internet:

38. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.

44. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.

56. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.

Gadgets:

58. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?

69. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.

Everything Else:

70. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.

81. Han shoots first.

86. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.

(beginning of actual article follows below)

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

By Nathan Barry
July 22, 2009
8:00 am

There are some things in this world that will never be forgotten, this week’s 40th anniversary of the moon landing for one. But Moore’s Law and our ever-increasing quest for simpler, smaller, faster and better widgets and thingamabobs will always ensure that some of the technology we grew up with will not be passed down the line to the next generation of geeks.

That is, of course, unless we tell them all about the good old days of modems and typewriters, slide rules and encyclopedias …

[CLICK TO READ FULL ARTICLE ON WIRED.COM]

I found this little brief to funny not to share.  Click the title to see the picture:

THE COOLEST MUTT IN THE EAST

COOL canine Fei Fei left other dogs in the shade after his owner bought him a pair of sunglasses as a joke.

But now the fashion mad mutt refuses to leave owner Bo Lee’s home in Chongqing, central China, without being given his wraparound shades!

“I think he likes all the attention he gets on the street,” said Lee.

“I bought them to protect his eyes but now if I try to leave the apartment without them he howls the place down,” he told the Austrian Times.

It seems as if the camp series was mostly a failure so I guess I will move on to other things rather than wrap it up.  I just have to think about something to write about.  Work maybe?  From what Rene was telling me, I might be coming out of training and getting the first of my own stores starting this Friday.  All I know right now is that Kim (one of the owners) wants me and another trainee from Elmhurst to do a store every Friday starting this week.  Since there are two of us doing it I didn’t make a connection to having my own store, but Rene seems to think this is it.  Hmm.  Well, a less exciting post than camp, at least to me, but who knows?

UPDATE: Well, the dealership I will be at Friday is not to be a store for me.  It will be another store for the trainee who started after me.  I guess it just works out like that because of the one who quit recently who lived in the same area.  These dealers were already being served.  I’m sure they will start picking up new stores for me soon, in my own area.

Whew- what a scorcher this day was!  I am certain temperatures were in the 90s…  The kids certainly got no breaks at meals with drinks other than plain water.  Normally, they have to drink a glass or two of water at lunch or dinner, and then they can have punch or lemonade but for most of this week it was just water.  Of course they could get pop or Gatorade during canteen time, but for meals it was all water because it was so hot for most of the week.  It was so hot, they moved the normal Wednesday evening game to Thursday!

So today, the teaching was on the ears in the morning.  As for the ears, it is what we choose to hear: (1) What do we listen to, (2) Who do we listen to, and (3) How do we listen.  For (1) a big thing is music.  At their age it hasn’t become such a big deal yet, but we talked a little about it anyway. (2) involves what people they choose to listen to- besides their parents.  We will blissfully assume that they do listen to their parents. 😉 )Mostly this is about other kids or so-called role models who model inappropriate behavior- will they listen to such people or remember what the Bible says instead?  For (3), even if we listen to the right things, what do we do about it?  As the Bible teaches, we must be doers of the Word and not hearers only.  The evening message was about a crowded heart, one where Christ’s teachings are there, but crowded out by other things in our lives like TV, sports, internet (er- including this blog 😮 ), hanging out with friends, etc.  These things aren’t necessarily bad, but if there isn’t room for God then something has to go.  The memory verse was Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,  but a wise man listens to advice.” Speaking of verses, today we added all the key verses around the room- the five memory verses and Psalm 51:10, an all-encompassing verse for the week (I’ll let you look that one up- you don’t expect me to do all the work for you, do you? 😀 )Incidentally, we won cleanest (boys) cabin for the second time this week!

Of the two game times, I unfortunately have no pictures for you.  In the morning, we played our nemesis team, the Biohazards- nemesis because we were the top two teams all week, dukin’ it out for first place.  The game was the obstacle course.  I really didn’t get any pictures here because I was helping out our team at one of the stations.  The stations included going through a tire, swinging across a hole with water (and a “6-foot leech”), navigating balance beams (logs) and stumps, going across tall monkeybars, a “meat grinder” (old wire/cable reel), going over a couple of walls, and going across steel cables (my station).  The kids had to help one another, and many came back when they were finished to help Diego out.

The evening game was against the same team.  It was another course to navigate, this time in the game field.  I have a video of just the course- I suppose I could upload it to Youtube or something later but it’s really not as exciting as I had hoped.  This time I didn’t help out at a station, but I only took videos with my camera this time around- no pictures.  We won this game, but mostly because we had less people on our team.  I have no idea who won the obstacle course but I suspect the other team got the nod making the two games a wash.

Today the kids got to do the all-time favorite instructional- the zipline.  Now, you may be thinking, “what kind of crazy camp allows children to use a zipline?”  Well, aside from the obvious answer that our camp does, let me explain that this zipline is not the sort where you hold on to some sort of handles while sliding down the cable, letting go when near the bottom onto a net or something soft.  No, these kids are strapped in and attached to the cable- there is no way they can fall, short of the cable breaking, and I am sure by law the camp has to make regular checks of the zipline to prevent that from happening.  At the bottom they are stopped by two burly staff members- one slows them down, the other stops them entirely and unclips them from the cable.  There are two lines, so two kids can go at once.  They had time to go down about a dozen times each even though three cabins were there (normally there are only two cabins at an instructional- I’m not sure why they did it this way).  The other instructional was biking, though this year I think they got less instruction than previous years.  The biking, by the way, was at the top of that hill I talked about in a previous post.  I think it is only 40-45°, but it feels more like 60-70° when climbing it!  By the way, it’s named after a student who went down this hill on a bike when she was in junior high.  She got to the bottom, flipped, and broke multiple bones.  Needless to say, bicycling down the hill is no longer allowed…

Well, I think that covers all the main stuff.  The afternoon canteen was at the swim front as it was every day, but hot as the day was, would you believe that only one of my kids hit the water?  Unbelievable.  I even joined him for a short time- the first time in all my years I have gone in the water- I have always been paranoid about wearing contacts in the lake.  Even this year when I did go in I made sure to wear goggles to protect my eyes, which worked for the most part.  I’m thinking of combining the last two days into one post to get it over with- what do you think?

Either my last post was uninteresting, or I hit another busy spot in all of your lives. Most likely the second, but just in case of the first, here’s a little break from camp for a little humor involving kids. Note: none of it was written by me, it was all shamelessly copied from Worthy Christian Forums, though the ones who posted these are probably not the authors either. 😛

Murphy’s Law of Children (there is no actual law it’s a joke)

1. The later you stay up, the earlier your child will wake up the next morning.
2. For a child to become clean, something else must become dirty.
3. Toys multiply to fill any space available.
4. The longer it takes you to make a meal, the less your child will like it.
5. Yours is always the only child who doesn’t behave.
6. If the shoe fits..it’s expensive.
7. The surest way to get something done is to tell a child not to do it.
8. The gooier the food, the more likely it is to end up on the carpet.
9. Backing the car out of the driveway causes your child to have to go to the bathroom.
10. The more challenging the child, the more rewarding it is to be a parent..sometimes.

—————————————————————-

I was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital after my wife had gone into labor and the nurse walked out and said to the man sitting next to me, “Congratulations sir, you’re the new father of twins!”

The man replied, “How about that, I work for the Doublemint Chewing Gum Company.” The man then followed the woman to his wife’s room.

About an hour later, the same nurse entered the waiting room and announced that Mr. Smith’s wife has just had triplets. Mr. Smith stood up and said, “Well, how do ya like that, I work for the 3M Company.”

The gentleman that was sitting next to me then got up and started to leave. When I asked him why he was leaving, he remarked, “I think I need a breath of fresh air.”  The man continued, “I work for 7-UP.”

—————————————————————-

Great Truths That Little Children Have Learned:

1. No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.
2. When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.
3. If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4. Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5. You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.
6. Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7. Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8. You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9. Don’t wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10. The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandpa’s lap.

Work was a bit long this week, then add in the travel times since all but one of the jobs I have been doing has been at least a half-hour away.  Today, in fact, coming home took over an hour for what should have been a half hour before traffic.  Sigh.  So without further interruption, here is installment number three of camp 2009.

Some of you may recall that the week I was away was the first week of summer, in more than one way.  That is, starting Tuesday it was h-o-t.  This would have been a far better day for us to have all the water games!  The start of the day went pretty much like Monday, so I won’t bore you with that.  The first highlight was the up-front game before the morning teaching session.  The lesson was going to be on the eyes (see the picture below of Pastor John and his special glasses… 😀 )The “game” therefore involved an eye chart which the kids read as if they were in an optometrist’s room.  Did you notice I put the word game in quotes?  That’s because there was no winner.  As soon as one of the four read the lower lines, “if you can read this you are about to be pied,”  WHAP!  All four of them.  But don’t take my word for it- look below for the picture of one of my guys.

So lesson, then small group- the memory verse for this day was from the book of Psalms: Ps 119:37 “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.” See?  Eyes.  Pun intended.  Okay then.  This time, after the session for the big game, we had the same two games as yesterday but switched.  While the other two teams played the wipe-out wiffleball game, we played the same team as yesterday morning in human foosball.  I am sure to have mentioned this game before as it is a standard for camp and winter retreat.  It is a life-size foosball game where each team is divided into lines, holding hands, like on a foosball table.  Multiple giant balls are thrown in (more added throughout the game) and the kids have to kick them over the other team’s heads into the goal.  The lines can bend, but not break.  This game was so close in the end 70-something to eighty-something.  Sweating from the direct beating of the sun, we had a break from action with crafts.  The kids worked on pouches the first had to stamp with leather tools before tying two pieces together with a needle and plastic thread.  Among the different bevel, letter, and picture stamps were a couple of crosses- you can see one below.

We continued to maintain a fairly clean cabin and added open bibles on pillows, key verse highlighted to the mix.  Unfortunately another cabin thought of this too (or was a spy listening in at the right time (!) ) so they won the award.  Cabin S, the dirtiest cabin of yesterday with proof on video was much improved, but they still weren’t the winner- that went to the team that would be our nemesis all week- the Biohazards.  Well, tomorrow we would add something new.  While they were inspecting our cabins, we were at our afternoon instructional- tennis.  To get there we would have to travel over a huge mountain in the woods (well, it was a hill with a stairway, but it seemed like a huge mountain at the time!).   The weather continued to be brutal with a hot, sunny sky so I spent much time in the few shaded areas while the kids went through their instructional.  When it was done, we hiked back over the mountain hill  and went right to the swimming front for afternoon canteen time.  I had given kids the option of getting in swim gear before we headed to tennis to save time since tennis was almost on the way to swimming, but only one heeded the advice so most would not be going in the water.  None in fact, as the only one who prepared still didn’t go in.  One who didn’t prepare ended up looking longingly at the water as the heat continued.  He was sure to get his trunks on next time.

Well, there really isn’t much more to add.  The rest of the day was pretty much like yesterday.  I don’t think I mentioned that the evening session started with some youtube-esqe video with a puppet voiced by a falsetto voice talked about movies.  I could only understand maybe half of what was being said and don’t know the name of the video, but it ended up Friday with revealing the number one hit movie of all time.  If someone could help here I am curious.  Anyway, these shorts “introduced” our video of the day- a five-minute-or-so video of all of us throughout the day.  The next heart talked about in the lesson was the shallow heart, the heart that receives the Word of God, but not deeply so that when things go sour one turns from, instead of to, God.  Now that really is it- tune in next time.  All pictures in this thread by the way have once again been selected, or in some cases edited, to help keep from revealing identifiable faces.  I shouldn’t have to say it again, but click for larger pictures. 😉

EDIT:  I skipped over the evening game!  Of course, after most of the hot day was over, only then did we get a game involving swimming trunks and getting wet.  So the kids changed into their trunks once again and headed to the game field after dinner.  Smack in the middle was a large inflatable pool filled with objects in water that the kids had to find.  This was a summer-ized version of the classic “steal the bacon,” the version where the kids are told what to find and bring back.  They were told such things as, “three chickens, two pics, and one noodle,” which of course they had to bring back one at a time.  Several kids were called at any one time so that made it less work, but more chaotic.  The boys and girls each had their own game going- gee, I wonder why? 😀 )We won this game despite the odds-evening attempt against us (we were doing too well by this time) by giving us less numbers so when #10 or 11 were called we couldn’t go.  Well, at first we did pick someone to go for those numbers as normal for when one team has more than another, but were “corrected” when caught and accused of cheating.  Well, we really did what was normal so we weren’t cheating, but in the director’s mind the number we had was it, no extras to be given.  I think he should have explained this better.  Well, it was still all good fun and the kids enjoyed it.