A really good breakdown on the <TEXTAREA></TEXTAREA> tag.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet! This is funny.

Interesting blurb on the cabana today: Resentment is like taking poison and hoping it hurts someone else.

Recently read this in Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them, by John Ortberg.

...Adam hides. And God says, "Adam, where are you?"

This is one of the most astounding questions in Scripture. Why does God ask it? The psalmist wrote that no matter where he went, he could never travel beyond the range of God's knowledge: "If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there." The thought of Adam trying to hide from God would be funny if it weren't so sad.... Why doesn't God just use his X-ray vision to locate Adam?

The reason is that, of course, this question is not really about Adam's geographical location. It is not really a request for information at all, as if God needed a global tracking system for his creatures. It is an invitation.

God allows Adam to hide.

God offers him the opportunity to reveal himself.

God has the audacious grace to treat Adam as a person, even when Adam has defied him. God does this because no one - not even he himself - can get another person to be in a relationship by brute force.

...Dallas Willard writes, "God has placed the only key to the innermost parts of the human soul in its own hands and will never take it back himself or give it to another. You may even be able to destroy the soul of another, but you will never unlock it against his or her will."

Heheh...googlebot is my most frequent visitor. I'm glad he enjoys my page so much!

I spruced up my page a bit with help from these fine resources:

http://www.dithered.com
http://devedge.netscape.com/toolbox/examples/2002/xb/ua/#Source
http://gimp-savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/UFWS/page1.html

If you have Internet Explorer and you click on the sunflower picture, it should fade to the foreground. Click it again and it should fade back. I guess that's a little geek'ed out. Originally, I was using family pictures on my background -- so I figured visitors (especially family) would like to see the background pics with more clarity. Hence all the effects. But I ended up using the sunflower cuz...well...it's more aesthetically pleasing (I like the yellow).

Anyway, I use Netscape's ua.js sniffer script to detect the client browser. And I use the dithered API to turn off the effects in any browser other than IE. And the sunflower picture is GHS public domain. All the rest is mine.

All of the tricks were done using JavaScript and IE's visual filters. I use the alpha filter with a rectangular opacity gradient. I was using the gray filter to remove the colors in the image, but I liked the yellow on the sunflower. I use a plain alpha filter to lower the opacity on the blog content. And I use JavaScript to make the sunflower keep you company as you scroll. I had to play with it a bit to get the scrolling right. Ultimately, I just used timeouts to delay the scroll a bit. And it seemed to help on the refresh during scroll -- it's been awhile, but I think the timeouts end up getting executed on a different thread, so I'm not delaying the scroll or screen refreshes to move the image. In any case, the background painted better once I started doing that.

Here's a great resource on the visual filters:
http://www.ssi-developer.net/css/visual-filters.shtml

You are here. This is a view of the Earth from Mars. Makes you feel pretty small, eh? I've been pretty fascinated by the Mars rovers. It blows me away to think there's some contraption on Mars roving around snapping color pictures.

I'm totally bummed. For like the 6th year in a row, we didn't win the HGTV dream home. Sheesh. I was totally counting on that, too. I mean, with odds of 1:36,000,000 it's almost like I'm guaranteed to win, right? Oh well. Guess I'll stick to our savings plan.

It's nice to read about a successful business figure who seems to have a few morals about him. Warren Buffett (and here) simply demands respect. Can you believe his comments on taxes? We hope our taxes continue to rise in the future -- it will mean we are prospering -- but we also hope that the rest of corporate America antes up along with us.

He's also critical of the recent tax cuts. I have to agree with him on that. I'm a big Bush supporter, but it just doesn't seem like the best time to be cutting taxes. But what do I know, right?

And check out his web site. You can tell he's not out to impress anyone with flash -- the man is all about results. I just want to own 50 shares of his stock before I'm 40. :-)

Well, I just resurrected my blog. I actually need a blog site to play with some new tools I'm working on, so I had to dig into the archives to find my blogger password again :-).

Anyway, I noticed my last post was over two years ago! Wow! Time sure does fly by. A lot has happened since then. Certainly more than I care to type right now, but suffice it to say that we've moved, I've changed jobs about a gazillion times (it sure does feel like that) and most signifcantly, we have a new addition to our family...Aiden.