Sugar Cookies

The Hamilton's have an annual tradition of making sugar cookies for Santa. Here are the photos of this years sugar cookie making party.

Current Website Work

I have been working a lot recently on a new website for the Rolla Royals. They are the Rolla Homeschool Athletics Association teams. We have Junior High and High School teams for boy and girls in Volleyball, Basketball and Track. We are planning on forming a soccer team in the spring.

The website has a lot of information already there, and a lot more to be added.

I have really enjoyed working on this project check it out at http://www.rollaroyals.org

A Not Quite New Car

On Friday Night I purchased a replacement for my totaled Ford Escort. I miss that car, but I think I will enjoy the "new" one even more. The accident gave me the opportunity to purchase a "classic" car to restore. I was surprised to find a very well cared for 1984 Ford Crown Victoria with some minor body damage that fit my budget perfectly. I am getting a new windshield put in it on Wednesday and need to do a little body work to the driver's side doors to make it street legal again, but I should have it fully on the road by the weekend.

I have driven it far enough to know that it will be a very enjoyable car to drive. It probably won't get very good gas mileage with a 302 small block V-8, but at least I'll have plenty of power. It has been said about these cars that they can pass anything but a gas station. I'll letyou know if that is true in a week or two. I'll probably be blogging about the car quite a bit over the next few weeks just because it is something new in my life. I hope to have some picture to put on here soon.

Billy Graham's Prayer For Our Nation

THIS MAN SURE HAS A GOOD VIEW OF WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY! I Whole-heartedly agree with Bill Graham on this one.


'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice.. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!'


Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, 'The Rest of the Story,' and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called 'One nation under God.'

Obama Pro Life?

A friend of mine sent me to the following site where supposedly Obama is taking a Pro-Life stance, but from my reading of the site I was unable to determine his stand on much of anything other than protecting the life of the mother.

Obama's supporters seem to believe that through the process of legalizing abortions through the "Freedom of Choice Act", and then providing better health care so that women will be able to care babies to term easier. I don't really think it is a Pro-Life choice to pass the "Freedom of Choice Act".

There is not much else to say in response to Obama's stand on abortion, he has no moral issues with abortion at any stage in a pregnancy, this just does not come across as a Christian stance on the issue.

Obama, Where are your Christian Morals?

http://www.prolifeproobama.com/plpo_willdo.htm

Thanks for reading,
Scott

Choose Obama Choose Death

From viewing this video on "Americas Choice Now" it has become clear that a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of our culture as we know it now. It will give any woman, or any age girl the right to an abortion at any stage in the pregnancy. This gives a woman the right to murder as unborn child even up to the point of full term delivery. Please help me in getting the word out about Obama's Pro-Choice stand.

Thanks for your time.

The Messiah?

I came across a very interesting web site this morning making claims that Barack Obama is the messiah. He has not said it in his own words, but several people including Fararrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam in the United States, have called him the messiah.

I found the articles on this blog to be very informative and thorough in giving their sources. Obviously they are making an impact as many of the links mysteriously vanished after being covered in this blog. I realize I should cover both sides of this story, but have not found a site excepts snopes.com that will deny Obama as messiah. If anyone reading this post knows of one I'll be happy to add it as a full blog entry.

This was one of the most interesting entries on the site: http://barackobamaantichrist.blogspot.com/2008/10/full-story_09.html

Not that the rest of it wasn't worth reading.

I don't really care who you vote for, but I hope this will persuade you that voting for Obama is a bad idea.

Fun with search engines.

Did you know that you can use a search engine to take a rough poll of peoples opinions? It's quite fun to do, except when the general opinion is against yours. Then it kind of sucks.

Below you will find a graph generated by me to guess the election results. It looks like if Sarah Palin were to run for President she would win by a land-slide. But McCain is holding her back.
This poll is done by counting the number of web pages that contain the candidates name followed by sucks, rules, or rocks. These numbers are then totaled and graphed below. It seems that people equally hate and love Obama, everybody likes elections and Jesus, more people hate McCain than like him, but a majority of people love Sarah Palin.

Kind of fun to look at.

Exciting Week

This has been a very eventful week in my life. I am speaking with a Pastor about taking on a youth pastor position at his church. I am excited about the possibility, but not going to be disappointed if he choses a different person for the position. I have given it over to God and his timing. It has been a dream of mine to be a youth pastor since leading campfire services at a youth camp when I was thirteen. I am also trying to start a U13 girls soccer team for the Rolla Area Home School Athletics Association (RHAA) with a first tournament coming up the end of November.

I know it sounds like a lot to put on my plate, but I love staying busy. Be praying for my and my family as we are trying to do what we feel God is calling us too. We will be meeting the pastor of the church this Sunday and having lunch with his family. I am very excited about the opportunity.

Another Second Place Trophy

I don't have a team picture to place here yet, but Allysa's U11 Soccer team placed second in the Thompson's Fall Classic It was another dis-appointing game. They lost 1-0 because of a quick score by the opposing team about midway through the second half. The fought their little hearts out trying to score and kept shooting either just outside the goal, or ringing the goal posts. It was another one of those games where the team appeared to dominate the game, but still lost.

The tournament was based on a point system and they took second being down by only 2 tournament point so they shouldn't be too upset. The went into their last game 6 points ahead of the competition. The Nixa Raptors received 8 tournament points for shutting us out. If we had scored a goal we would have won the tournament by 6 points. They played excellent soccer. Allysa assisted on one goal and missed the shot on three others. She played on the best soccer games I have seen her play on Saturday and Sunday.

I am one proud dad.

Finally A Gold Medal

Erin's U13 Recreational Soccer team took the season undefeated. They received trophy's and gold medals for their accomplishments. Erin played several positions for the team including goal and striker. She scored some goals this season, and blocked some goals as goalie. I feel bad that I only got to watch two of her games because of scheduling conflicts with Elijah and Allysa playing competitive soccer. It's just one of the bad parts about being the oldest. If everyone else has something going on you get dropped of for your games and left to enjoy time with your friends, but nobody gets to see you play.

I wish I could clone myself and not have to miss important events in my children's lives, but at least I get to celebrate their victories with them.

Signed,

One proud Dad.

I get it "Air Ride" --Allysa

Check out the holes in the back of this truck. If you look real close you will see that the truck says "Air Ride" on it. Allysa saw the truck and said, "I get it 'Air Ride'" It was just one of those things that had to be shared.

Taking the Silver

Above is a picture of a bunch of boys who are happy to have won the silver, but very disappointed that they lost the final game to the same team that beat them in the Show Me games earlier this year. Both times the boys way outplayed the Jefferson City Lightning, but came up short on goals. This group of boys didn't allow a single shot on goal the entire second half of the game, and shot nearly twenty times but still lost the game 2-0 because of a couple of lucky shots early in the first half.

The boy with his head in his hands, Cole, is our goalie. He let the goals get past and felt like he lost the game for us. He was just too short to stop the second goal which managed to slip in just about an inch above his hands as he jumped to stop the goal. The first goal slipped past two defenders and came in on the ground just past him.
The biggest disappointment for the team was that they have only lost two games since they started playing as a team and both of them were to the Jefferson City Lightning. I guess that will have to our teams rival now. We won't be happy until we beat them.

A Beautiful Day at Lion's Club Park

It was a beautiful day to spend at the park with the kids. I am very glad for the swing about 20 feet from the parking lot that allowed me to enjoy the park with the kids. Fall is so near we probably won't have many more days like this.

Guard Rail Damage.

I finally got around to posting the pictures of the guardrail that destroyed my car.

This part was in the car. That is the glass from my door scattered on it.

This part was broken off of the guardrail prior to it entering the car.

See that sticker on the guardrail, that was the label from the fuse panel under the dash about 10 inches from my leg. This is the part of the guardrail that was over my lap.

See the broken end. This is where the bumper that is supposed to curl the guardrail hit the end of the next section of guardrail and stopped moving. The guardrail should have been overlapped in the opposite direction allowing the bumper to continue to slide and curl the guardrail.

This is the overall scene after the accident.

See the hunk of my car, I believe that is the padding from the back of Ange's seat still stuck on the guardrail.

The Accident

Here is what a Ford Escort Wagon looks like after it hits a guard rail at 55 mph. If you think it looks bad from this angle just wait better pictures are coming. After looking at them you will understand why I am not at work this week.

This is where the guardrail entered the car just behind the left front tire. We tried to take a picture that showed the path it took through the car.

This shows the damage to the inside of the car. That's the left fender laying across the front seat. Let's move it out of the way.

Gee look at the hole in the passenger seat. That's where Ange would have been had she been properly buckled in the vehicle. We are very glad she was not buckled. Even though she got bruise up pretty bad.

This is just another picture of the outside of the car.

This is a picture from where Allysa was setting. Its not a very good one, but maybe we will get a better one later.

This is another picture from the passenger side of the car looking to driver side, notice the missing steering wheel. It fell off when they tried to secure the wheels for towing.

This is the view straight out the hole from the rear passenger door where Allysa was setting. The guardrail destroyed her door. She got a scratch on her finger.

This is just one final shot of the outside of the car. We are very thankful that the car took more damage than anyone in the family did. A paramedic with the Fire Department saw the accident happen and immediately called 911. He was sure someone was dead on the scene. We all walked away from it, or at least crawled away from it in my case.

Don't try this at home.

My Take on Barack Obama

I just read an excerpt for Obama's newest book and found it to be a very interesting read. The excerpt can be found at Time Magazine.

First he admits that we are a religious people, note he does not say a Christian Nation. Our founding fathers were Christian and formed the nation in a way to protect our freedom to worship the one true God in our own way. You'll see his definition of religious in a little bit.

"It is a truism that we Americans are a religious people. According to the most recent surveys, 95% of Americans believe in God, more than two-thirds belong to a church, 37% call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people believe in angels than believe in evolution. Nor is religion confined to places of worship. Books proclaiming the end of days sell millions of copies, Christian music fills the Billboard charts, and new megachurches seem to spring up daily, providing everything from day care to singles mixers to yoga and Pilates classes. Our President routinely remarks on how Christ changed his heart, and football players point to the heavens after every touchdown, as if God were calling plays from the celestial sidelines."

Next he says that the biggest gap in the election between the parties is faith. He admits that the Democratic party is playing this card hard in the election process.

"The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is not between men and women, or between those who reside in so-called red states and those who reside in blue states, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to "get religion," even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular in orientation, and fears rightly, no doubt that the agenda of an assertively Christian nation may not make room for them or their life choices."

This is the one that gets me fired up. In his campaign ads he claims to have grown up being taught Christian Values. Yet, in his book be makes the following claims.

"I was not raised in a religious household. My maternal grandparents, who hailed from Kansas, had been steeped in Baptist and Methodist teachings as children, but religious faith never really took root in their hearts. My mother's own experiences as a bookish, sensitive child growing up in small towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones. Occasionally, for my benefit, she would recall the sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world's people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation and who in the same breath would insist that the earth and the heavens had been created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary."

"This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my partno introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many waysand not necessarily the best waythat man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives. In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well. Moreover, as a child I rarely came in contact with those who might offer a substantially different view of faith. My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition."

Then he commits his life to Christ at small community church because he feels the need to connect with others you share his values. He doesn't say he truly believes everything they believe, just that he wants to be a part of the group.

"It was because of these newfound understandings that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth."

Yet he refuses to speak of his faith as part of his political standings, even though his campaign ads do exactly the opposite.

"To begin with, it's bad politics. There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends."

This is the one that makes me doubt Obama's commitment to running the Nation as the Christian Nation that it is.

"Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."

The following excerpt shows that Obama has not truly understood the very basics of the Christian faith and yet claims to be a Christian man. He may express a "Christian" value system, but is the furthest thing from a true Christian.

"This is not to say that I'm unanchored in my faith. There are some things that I'm absolutely sure about the Golden Rule, the need to battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity, humility and grace.

Those beliefs were driven home two years ago when I flew down to Birmingham, Alabama, to deliver a speech at the city's Civil Rights Institute. The institute is right across the street from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site where, in 1963, four young children Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair lost their lives when a bomb planted by white supremacists exploded during Sunday school, and before my talk I took the opportunity to visit the church."

"I thought of Sasha asking me once what happened when we die"I don't want to die, Daddy," she had added matter-of-factly and I had hugged her and said, "You've got a long, long way before you have to worry about that," which had seemed to satisfy her. I wondered whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn't sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang. Walking up the stairs, though, I knew what I hoped for that my mother was together in some way with those four little girls, capable in some fashion of embracing them, of finding joy in their spirits."

It just really gets me fired up when political ads say one thing and the politician himself says something entirely different. It just shows that we as a people need to do our leg work before committing our vote to anyone. It is a known fact that all politicians lie to get in office, but to lie about the core of your being, which in my opinion a persons religious beliefs is the core, doesn't make you a lying politician, it makes you a liar.

You might wonder what makes the difference, but too me telling a few falsehoods to make people feel good about your stand on non moral issues such as taxes and the economy is entirely different and a normal, expected political stance. However, to lie about ones beliefs is lying about who you are. It takes a very "special" person to openly lie about your religious background and beliefs. Obama is a person I would have a very hard time trusting to run the country.

So in summary, I say a vote for Obama is a vote against America remaining a Christian Nation. Any Christian thinking about voting for Obama should really begin to look at his religious heritage and his faith to make sure they match the stories he is telling the public during his campaign. He is both "Christian" and "Muslim", "Religious" and "Secular", ""God-fearing" and "Atheist". He is a double-minded man, which is the last thing we need to run this country.

A Hurricane in Missouri???

What remained of Hurricane Ike blasted its way through Missouri Saturday Night leaving things a mess. We had ball fields under water, roadways under water, ponds overflowing their banks, flying trampolines, and trees crashing through houses.

We were the lucky ones. The only thing that happened to us was the loss of a trampoline. It flew about 100 yards into the middle of the hay field where it laid as a crumpled mass of metals bars and springs wrapped inside a trampoline mat. It looks like even though trampolines where made for bouncing, they do not know how to bounce.

A co-worker of mine sent these pictures of his house after the storm. He is off work the next couple of days dealing with insurance claims. It makes me feel lucky that all we lost was the trampoline. Had the wind been blowing out of the north, which it usually is, the trampoline would have trampled our cars, as it was it blew the other way.

Giant Rat Sighting

It is just plain crazy the kinds of things you notice when you decide to blog about strange sightings caught on a cell phone camera.  How about a giant rat?  I spotted this giant rat on my way into work this morning setting in downtown Rolla at the site of our "Opening Soon" Walgreen's.  Enjoy!!

Earthquake!!!! Magnitude 4.6 :: 27 miles SE of Calexico, CA :: Fri Sep 5 21:54:34 2008 UTC

I am a member of a really neat list that monitors seismic events in Southern California. It is one of the many uses of the computational clusters that I have been supporting. Cal-tech uses their computational cluster to generate what they call shakemaps within minutes of an earthquake in Southern California they release a movie to geologists studying the basin that gives immediate feedback of the seismic activity. I just think weather and earthquake data is very exciting so I thought I would share it here. I am going to try and attach the movies to this post as well just for the fun of doing it.

These are movies of a 4.6 quake that occurred late on Friday.

There is new media now available for download on the recent seismic event:

ML: 4.6
27 miles SE of Calexico, CA
UTC: Fri Sep 5 21:54:34 2008
Latitude: 32.38
Longitude: -115.24

All movies for this event are available from:
http://shakemovie.caltech.edu/event?evid=10347253

The movies available include:

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
http://shakemovie.caltech.edu/dl?evid=10347253&product=socal&style=orange&size=small

LOS ANGELES BASIN
http://shakemovie.caltech.edu/dl?evid=10347253&product=la&style=orange&size=small


To unsubscribe, visit http://shakemovie.caltech.edu/signup.
You will see an Email Password and Unsubscribe buttons at the bottom left.

This email was automatically generated by Caltech's Southern California
Seismic Event Simulation Portal Notification System.


[shakemovie.caltech.edu]


((( shakemovie.caltech.edu )))

Funny Sighting from the Past

If you look really close at this picture you will see a Tonka dump truck strapped to the truck bed just behind the end loader. We thought this was so funny it had to be shared. I only wish our cell phone would have had a better camera.

Elijah's First Soccer Games

I have just finished watching Elijah's first to games of the season. His team was great. The one the first game by a narrow margin of 2-1 against "Galaxy" The only goal scored was while Elijah was goalie, it bounced off of our defender, Nick, and went sailing past Elijah on the far end of the net.

The second game was even better that had a 7-0 shut-out victory over Mac United II. My favorite part of this game was when there was a hand-ball in the box and the other team got to take a Penalty Kick right at Elijah. He blocked it with a beautiful dive to his left sending the ball just past the right post and out of the end zone resulting in a corner kick. This kept the game at a shutout victory.

This was an awesome Sunday afternoon, watching the Rolla Knights win there first two games.

Mantis Sightinging

I am really enjoying trying to catch strange things on my camera phone. This one is really not all that strange, but still worth blogging about. Check out the Preying Mantis that was setting on our satellite dish. It's not often that you see them and even less often that they pose for a picture.

A Sighting by Ange

Ange and Erin spotted this gasoline powered hang glider flying over Edgar Springs, MO. I had never seen one before. Earlier that morning I saw one fly over our house, but didn't get a good picture of it. It's funny how many unique sights you see when you start blogging. Check back often for more strange sightings.

Linked my blog to Facebook

I just figured out how to link my blog to my Facebook account. This is nice. Now I'll only have to log in one place to update things going on in my life. I hope everyone will enjoy following my blog, either here or on Facebook.

Repairing A Ford Escort Wagon

If you are the owner of Ford Escort do not trust the repair manuals, or information from the dealerships. I learned my lesson the hard way when the fuel pump went out in my 1998 Ford Escort station wagon. Everything on the internet and information from the dealership suggested that replacing the fuel pump required dropping the fuel tank from the car.

I proceeded to follow the directions and dropped the fuel tank only to find that it was attached to the wiring harness under the rear seat at an access panel. I could have simply removed the rear seat, removed the access panel, and replaced the fuel pump. The job should have taken a couple of hours tops, instead I spent my entire weekend under the Ford Escort removing the fuel tank.

The good news, my car is running great again.

Well that's it for now. Hope you are all having a good day.

Wienermobile Sighting

We spotted the Wienermobile on Highway 63 just at the end of our road toady. This was very exciting.

I was on my way to get the fuel pump for my car when the Wienermobile passed us on the highway. I got a really lucky shot at it with my MotoQ.

Open Source Project Idea

I have an idea for a new open source project that I may start soon. I have found a real need in my work for a solid scheduler for Linux clusters. I have found Moab to be very buggy, slurm, maui, and torque lacking features that I need. Our cluster has been unstable for the last three days due to issues with Moab that tech support has not been able to solve.

Research Ideas

Today I came across some good ideas for future research. They came from the wonderful people on the NPACI Rocks Discussion list.

• Creating an NVIDIA Cuda Library Roll for NPACI ROCKS 5.0 (I have been beat to the punch http://insidehpc.com/2007/10/26/nvidia-releases-cuda-rocks-roll/ but it is only available for ROCKS 4.3 and the x86_64 architecture.)
  
• Converting Caltech shakemovie generator to utilize CUDA based GPUs for improved computation speed. See
  http://www.shakemovie.caltech.edu/ for more information.