stranger things may have happened*

[*the following has been sanitized to protect the guilty]

but not to me
well at least not
in this particular area of my life

what am I talking about
well someone forwarded me
a sermon given by a Christian Pastor
in which a portion of my life
was used as an anecdote
to illustrate a point
[I was aware in advance that it was being used]

now sermons are on many things
and anecdotes can be used either to
positively or negatively reinforce a point

an example of positive reinforcement would be
Jack did X which is a good thing, so you should do X

an example of negative reinforcement would be
Jack did X which is a bad thing and so you shouldn't do X
[negative reinforcement generally also carries with it]
[some mention of consequence]
[i.e. Jack did X, and that cause Y, you don't want Y do you?]

so I am going to ask you two questions
the first is to choose which of the following
was most likely [to you] the subject of the sermon
and
secondly was the anecdote used as an example of
positive or negative behavior
i.e. this is a good thing, or this is not a good thing

[Poll #67179]

*wicked grin*

[oh and sanitized means I took out identifiable details]

(no subject)

random question
for my fellow technogeeks

I have been thinking about
buying a DVD burner

primarily to create legal backups
of my DVDs

at the moment
I rip all my music cds
then store the originals away
where they wont get scratch
and
burn mixes of whatever I want to listen to
onto CDR

I was hoping to do the same with my DVDs
but I am getting mixed information on the possibility of this

I understand most burners cant write to the section
of the disk which contains the CES code
that allows the DVD player to decode the movie

one suggestion which was offered
was to use a program to copy and decode the data
then burn it onto a VCD in uncoded form

this is a pain in the ass
because for most movies it requires you to
use two discs
and I dont much like swapping discs in the middle of the movie

now I am thinking
you could decode the data to your harddrive
then import it into an application like Premiere
and write it as new data to a DVD

can anyone think of why this wouldnt work
and/or
suggest another solution to the question

In four minutes I have people arriving at my house, and I am not wearing any clothes

I had the most intense and
fucked up dream last night
its been tripping me out all
morning initially it all seemed
normal, boring, a review of
history, but then it took a
weird change of direction
featuring prominently an ex
girlfriend of mine who I have
not thought of in some time

how bizarre

(no subject)

I despise realplayer
or any real network product
but I am installing it anyway

real networks is the slime
of the internet, even worse than MSFT
and no I am not biased
regardless of where paychecks used to come from

not only have they been caught repeatedly
gathering customer information without consent
but they do not even have the decency
to act bashful about it

their code is sloppy crap
and their player reports back to them
what you listen to
as well as a few other tidbits of info
which it collects

fuck em

but
dammit
I want to hear something
that is only in realmedia format

install/uninstall baby
that god for the system restore feature
so
I can get rid of the little easter eggs
their fucking spyware leaves behind
after the uninstall

(no subject)

umm

I think my computer just farted

that was weird

Tonight's bedtime reading