Welcome to TL's

How well does your name Google? Who are you up against? (Celebrities, etc.)
Submitted by Matt Blank.

I have a fairly unique name so i Google pretty well.  If you put my name in, 4 of the top 10 results are me.  If you put my name in with quotes around it, 9 of the top 10 are me.  Of course this could be bad since it wouldn't be hard for someone to find out where I live just from a few simple Google searches.

How do you pass the time during a flight?  What do you bring in your carry-on?

White earphones

i haven't been on very many flights lately but i normally just load up my ipod with podnetcasts and sit back and relax.  if i get bored with that i usually have a book or two in reserve that i can turn to.

How many bones have you broken? Yours or someone else's?

To my knowledge, just 1.  The last section of my middle finger on my right hand.  Don't play flag football against someone wearing shorts with pockets.  Its dangerous.

Okay, we hate to ask, but... over the roll or under the roll?  

  DefinitelyOver.  I really am not particular about much when it comes to household items but I am about this one.  There is no room for Under in my house.

Toby was a sick puppy yesterday.  A week ago, he got out of the fence and was there to meet my truck when I drove up.  I put him back in the fence and later found an empty box of rat poison in the yard.  I suspected that he had eaten at least some of it but I wasn't sure.  I watched him for a few days and he showed no ill effects.  I figured that everything was OK.  Yesterday when I got home from work, he was obviously sick and couldn't get up.  I carried him to the vet and he got a half liter of blood and some vitamin K.  His body temperature was very low (it seems that 101-102 is normal for a dog, his was 97) and he was struggling to breathe.  After the blood transfusion I took him over to the E-vet for him to spend the night.  They were giving him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.  I didn't get any calls during the night and when I picked him up this morning he was standing up but moving very slowly.  I took him back to the regular vet where is has stayed today getting more vitamin K treatments to counter the poison that is in his blood.  Apparently it isn't uncommon for rat poison to take up to a week to work.  I didn't know it before but it works by inhibiting the vitamin K in the blood and keeping it from clotting.  He was bleeding internally and it was in his lungs and intestines.  If he wasn't so big (~90 lbs) and strong he wouldn't have made it.  Hopefully he will be able to get well and be back to normal in a few weeks.

The moral of the story is don't let a dog eat rat poison.  If you suspect that they have eaten it you can get them to throw it up by giving them a little hydrogen-peroxide but call the vet.  I think that if it has had time to absorb into the blood they can give them vitamin K to counteract its effects.

My dad tells me that this is not unlike a human's reaction to overdosing on coumadin or warfarin.

What's on your "do before I die" list?
Submitted by Caroline.

i don't know of anything right now that i feel that i MUST do before i die.  however, here are a few things i'd like to do one day.   Trek around Europe, visit Australia, visit all 50 states, learn to weld, rebuild an engine, see a shuttle launch.

ok.  i had forgotten about this blog until tonight.  i haven't posted because i haven't thought about it and i (evidently) haven't had much to say.

life is pretty good.  work is very busy.  the whole "rapid transformation" process has been fairly stressful but not too much so.  our group  has gone from 8 to 6, then to 5 and hopefully back to 6 very soon.  we've got at least 2 big projects coming up in the next month and lots of work to do.  i think we'll get it all done.  i just hope we're all in good spirits while doing it.

other than work, things are good.  SS and i are still dating and having fun.  i've been lazy around the house so no big project have begun lately.  i did buy a new (to me) truck, though.  its been good so far.  i'm going to find out this weekend or next how hard it is to change the oil.

we went to the movies twice this past weekend.  on friday night we saw The Prestige.  i highly recommend it.  i like movies that you have to think about and this one definetly fit the bill.  it is a little hard to follow at first, but once you get into it, it gets really good.  don't worry, though, they explain everything at the end.

on saturday afternoon we went to see Facing the Giants.  it is quite obviously an independent film with an overtly Christian message.  it was a cute little movie that left you feeling good.  i think the main actor did a good job but the script was very weak and many of the supporting characters were not very good.  it lacked a little polish but overall wasn't bad.  i kind of disagree with the message it gave, however.  basically it said that if you trust/praise God in everything, it all will turn out like you want it to.  i'd have actually liked the movie a lot better if they didn't win the state championship and the coach and his wife weren't able to have children.  at least then it would have been a little more realistic in that what we want isn't always what God has planned and what ultimately ends up happening.  overall, i'd give the movie 2.5 out of 5 stars.

i also saw a preview for Jesus Camp.  that movie looks scary on several levels.  i'll have to see it.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your music player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)  Inspired by Stephanie.

1. I Love You, Porgy - Miles Davis
2. I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow - Soggy Bottom Boys
3. Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
4. The Best Day - George Strait
5. Fields of Gold - Sting
6. Don Quixote - Cherry Poppin' Daddies
7. These Thousand Hills - Third Day
8. What Have We Become - dc Talk
9. Heartland - George Strait
10. I Need Words, God of Wrath - David Crowder Band

i'm not exactly sure how this is a horoscope, but its kind of interesting.  of course i don't recognize 5 of these and--according to itunes--have listened to 6 of them twice or less.  is it possible to have too many mp3's?

i wouldn't have even answered this one but for SS.

What are your personal memories of September 11th?

september, 2001 was the fall of my last senior year in college.  i had a VLSI class at 8am but i arrived only to find that it was cancelled for the day.  when i got back in my car to head home for a nap, i heard on the radio that a plane had flown into the world trade center.  this would have been right at 8am CST so it was actually in between the 2 planes hitting the towers.  i drove home and turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit live.  at that point, no one knew exactly what was going on other than this was a plane hijacking and that both WTC towers had been hit.  i remember my friend lorrie calling and asking me what i thought was going on.  i think i told her that i didn't know but that i thought we would be safe in starkville, ms. 

about an hour later the towers collapsed.  the only video there was at that point was the long shot from far away so all you could really see was the tower going down and a huge cloud of smoke coming over the whole site.  by then i didn't know what to do and the news didn't have any new info, so i went to my 11:00 class.  i remember sitting there listening to the professor's lecture thinking that neither she nor anyone else there knew what had happened.  it was a pretty empty class that day and i presume that anyone who had seen or heard the news reports had just skipped the class.  it was a strange feeling sitting in a class like i had done hundreds of times but knowing that it didn't matter and that probably no one else there knew what was going on in NYC.

that afternoon, i had to do some work in a computer lab on campus but was trying to stay up-to-date with the latest.  the campus internet connection--which is usually very fast because they have a FAT pipe--was completely bogged down.  i don't know if it was from on-campus usage or the slowness of the internet at large that day because of everyone in the US checking CNN.com every 5 seconds.  this, of course, led to speculation that the terrorist attack was also targeted at communications networks and that they were bringing down the internet.  this was ultimately proven false, but it seemed plausible at the time.

i really only have specific memories of the hour or so when i found out about the attacks and watching the towers collapse.  the rest of that day doesn't really stand out much.  i think i was in shock like everyone else and just went through the motions of the day.

World map

How many places have you lived in your life?

well, i can't say that i've really lived very many places in my life.  pensacola, starkville, brookhaven, hattiesburg.  that's about it.  4 cities, 2 states.