NYC

Last weekend Liz and I hopped up to New York for 2 days to spend some time with friends and get out of town for a little while. It was also a birthday trip for Liz which I think she really enjoyed. Ate some great food, saw some sites, took in Mama Mia! and The Color Purple and walked around tourist packed streets in the rain. And where else in the world could you find someone who would actually put "rich" on their license plate?

Video Backlog

Now that I have the video thing working I went back and found all those tapes that I made while over in Rwanda. First off, here's some footage of my visit to the gorilla park. Towards the end you can see where the silver back actually grabs our guide and tosses him to the ground.

It's not exactly hot off the press since I shot this stuff back in April. More like cold off the dusty shelf?

Saving Money

The Cy (Video) Blog

I finally went and got the firewire cable I needed in order to capture video on my old computer. Then I went to the rummage sale across the street and picked up an old dell monitor for 5 bucks. I'm now in the video business and by the looks of this first installment there's no where to go but up!

A Hero For President

I admit that my loyalty for the next President has been a little wishy washy over the last couple months. First I was thinking about Bloomberg because he's sort of a democrat and sort of a republican and he has billions of dollars already so he wouldn't be so suceptible to greed. (See Scott Adams' reasons here. I tend to agree with him.) Then I was thinking about a mysterious Congressman who seemed to have that flashing and stylish bravery that America so sorely needs. But now, my friends, a new contender has entered the spot light. Conservative...but he's got connections with the liberals. Inexperienced...but incredibly funny.

Post Card Stories and Hangovers

Wow, it has been a long time since I blogged regularly. I just got on to the blogger site this morning and actually read the updates and news section of what's going on with the site. Looks like there's some new stuff to mess around with in the coming weeks.

Here's a neat blog. It's short personal stories told on postcards that have been sent in to this guy Frank who does the blog. It's brilliant. People do all the content for him. He packages it together in a well visited blog and also books which are selling like crazy on Amazon. What a great way to be lazy and still make people happy and get paid accordingly.

Also, my Irish friend Pierce (one of my old friends from the 33rd St. Mafia days which is a whole other post/story) sent me this yesterday. His entire email was:

Subject: Hangover

Ha ha! Go Ireland!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071017/wr_nm/internet_life_dc_1
-Pierce

Now where were we?

Hey everyone. Sorry about the "no posts" thing for last 12 days. You'd think that I forgot how to to type or lost my laptop or something. Well, the truth is a sun flare bathed my house in unusually high amounts of inter-stellar radioactive gamma rays and all of my electronics were were acting funny. Every time I turned on my laptop there would only be a message saying "The invasion is inevitable." and a countdown that was headed toward 00:00:00.

Well, the countdown has ended and everything now appears to be returning back to normal. I guess the aliens got word of the sub-prime meltdown and decided that a hostile takeover would present too many risks given the uncertain nature of the world economy. I don't blame them. I would be very hesitant to be responsible right now for world domination. Middle east crises, civil wars....OJ Simpson....I mean serious, who would have the time to deal with all this stuff anyway.

So here's a question to think about. If you were an alien about to take over a less advanced civilization what would be some of your primary objectives and how would you deal with things like sectarian strife and washed up celebrities? It's important to think about these things because they just might happen to you some day.

Friday Updates

Not a whole lot to report today. Cell phone still not working. The fridge thing didn't seem to work and I'm not sure how many more tricks I want to try. I'm now thinking about just going ahead and upgrading to a blackberry or something like it.

Here's a rundown of the last few days.

Monday: watched the Bengals play on my friend Mike's new lcd hd television. The picture looked much better than the score.

Tuesday: first meeting our new men's group. It went really well and we look forward to even better meetings in the future. It's something like a junto group that we're starting in the neighborhood. Two requirements to be part of it: 1. You must be interested in bettering yourself. 2. You must be interested in bettering the world around you.

Wednesday: Church choir practice. I've had better ones since I was the only guy there. However, it was more than offset by a great business meeting I had earlier that morning, the details of which cannot be revealed now, but perhaps in the future.

Thursday: Barbershop choir practice. Fun, just like last week. I even received a round of applause. You have to picture that it's mostly older gentlemen, many of which are retired. One guy showed up last night and I guess it was his first Thursday at practice in a long time because of some kind of illness. During the announcement the president of the chapter says "let's give some applause to welcome back George!" Then he says "and let's give Cyrus a round for coming back." Wow, one guys gets applause for surviving chemo and I get it for walking across the street. I think George should have gotten my applause as well, but I'll take it none the less.

Friday: Heading out to the farm for the weekend to work on planting trees with a bunch of my in-laws.

Redneck Church

Got this in my email today. Enjoy it's words of wisdom...

1. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... the finance committee refuses to provide funds for the purchase of a chandelier because none of the members knows how to play one.

2. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... people ask, when they learn that Jesus fed the 5000, whether the two fish were bass or catfish, and what bait was used to catch 'em.

3. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... when the pastor says, "I'd like to ask Bubba to help take up the offering," five guys and two women stand up.

4. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... opening day of deer season is recognized as an official church holiday.

5. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if... a member of
the church requests to be buried in his 4-wheel-drive truck because "It ain't never been in a hole it couldn't get out of"

6. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... the choir is known as the "OK Chorale".

7. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... in a congregation of 500 members, there are only seven last names in the church directory.

8. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... people think "rapture" is what you get when you lift something too heavy.

9. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... the baptismal pool is a #2 galvanized " Wheeling " washtub.

10. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... robes were donated by (and embroidered with the logo from) Billy Bob's Barbecue.

11. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... the collection plates are really hubcaps from a'56 Chevy

12. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... instead of a bell you are called to service by a duck call.

13. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if .. the minister and his wife drive matching pickup trucks

14. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if ... the communion wine is Boone's Farm "Tickled Pink".

15. You Know You're in a Redneck Church if... "Thou shall not covet" applies to huntin' dogs, too.

16. You know You're in a Redneck Church if ... the final words of the benediction are, "Y'all come back now, Ya hear".

Please Help Fix My Washed Cell Phone

This post is reaching out to anyone who may be able to help me with a little challenge I had this weekend with my cell phone. It accidentally took a little bath and by "little bath" I mean tossed and turned repeatedly in soapy water for over 15 minutes....yup....washing machine.

If anyone has any ideas about how I could possibly bring it back to life I'd be interested. My first instinct was to just leave it out in the sun for a couple hours, but after 36 hours I can still see lots of moisture in there. I was talking about it with my father this morning and he claims to have dried his cell phone out in the past by placing it in the refrigerator.

"You know how vegetables will dry out if you leave them in there too long?" he asks me. I'm thinking I know how just about anything looks once you leave it in the fridge for a couple months. I've seen some scary stuff in there. But I decide to try. I put it there today and will leave it be for a couple days to see if it works.

Does anyone else have an idea of how to save a cell phone that's been through the ringer?

Barbershop

For those of you who don't already know one of the ways I participate at my church is through the choir. I'm a bass. My favorite songs are any where I get to actually sing a bass part to harmonize with the melody. This usually means only 2 songs/hymns per Sunday. I'm not very experienced with singing off a sheet of music, but luckily I usually sit next to my friend Ken, who is a great baritone, but sings bass with the choir. So really, all I have to do is copy what he's singing and it works out great.

Ken also sings in a barbershop quartet. He invited me recently to come sing with the local chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (or SPEBSQSA for short, but I think they recently changed their name to the Harmony Foundation.) I decided to go last Thursday night and my first impression is that I had mistakenly gone to a local AARP meeting. But everyone was very nice and welcoming. The director is great and has a real passion for barbershop. I picked it up a little and ended up having a fantastic time. I got to bring my music home with me and now I'm looking forward to next week. I feel like a big geek, but this weekend I did some internet searches on barbershop music. I had no idea that so many guys were into it and also, that there actually are a lot of younger guys out there who compete in the national competitions. So I'm going to keep going to practice and who knows, maybe someday you'll see me in concert.