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Our Daily Thread 7-10-13

Good Morning!

On this day in 1778 Louis XVI declared war on England in support of the American Revolution.

In 1821 U.S. troops took possession of Florida. The territory was sold by Spain.

In 1890 Wyoming became the 44th state to join the United States.

In 1900 ‘His Master’s Voice’, the logo of the Victor Recording Company, and later, RCA Victor, was patented. It shows the dog Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.

In 1913 the highest temperature ever recorded in the U.S. was 134 degrees in Death Valley, CA. 😯

In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was hand delivered to the U.S. Senate by President Wilson.

In 1928 George Eastman first demonstrated color motion pictures.

In 1962 the Telstar Communications satellite was launched.  The satellite relayed TV and telephone signals between Europe and the U.S.

And in 1984 Dwight ‘Doc’ Gooden, of the New York Mets, became the youngest player to appear in an All-Star Game as a pitcher. He was 19 years, 7 months, and 24 days old.

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Quote of the Day

“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”

John Calvin

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This song was released today in 1965. This should help wake you up. 🙂

Hey, it was either that or Dio. You’re welcome.

And then in 1968 Eric Clapton announced on this day that Cream was breaking up following a farewell tour.

Next up, the 80’s for the Pet Shop Boys, since it’s Neil Tennant’s birthday.

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Anyone have a QoD?

46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-10-13”

  2. Good morning all. I have now added a third path to my options. I am off to get dressed and head to Women’s Council of Realtors and see what else there might be.

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  3. Where is everyone? Chas, this photo of a bee flying is of you. It’s a closeup of a photo I got of flowers two days ago. It had two bees in it, including this one, flying with full pollen bags.

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  5. Good morning all.

    Orange County, CA has essentially outlawed bees. It’s a real problem. Here in SD County we have allowed a swarm to hive in our yard. That would be illegal up in the OC. The result is ours and all our neighbors gardens are producing bumper crops. There are pesticide problems with bees too here in the Central Valley. Farmers want the bees, but not the bugs, but like all things in life, the solution for one can cause a problem for the other.

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  6. 😦 Cheryl thinks I look like a bee.

    I don’t know any of the groups AJ is talking about.
    😦 I got another 0.8” of unneeded rain last night.
    🙂 Good night Jo. Everyone else, get with it.
    And good luck Kim.

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  7. Good morning all. I guess since the subject seems to be bees, the greeting question should be “What’s the buzz?”

    Funny that Orange County would outlaw bees, when the orange trees depend on bees for pollination. But are there any more orange producers in Orange County? I suppose they only outlaw people having man-made beehives on their properties? They couldn’t expect bees to know the laws of man, could they? But, we are talking about California.

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  8. PeterL, yes in the Great State of CA the city of La Jolla tried to outlaw seals on the beach. Seals not SEALS. The SEALS while noisy and persistent are grandfathered in and they are in Coronado anyway. The other seals like to sun themselves in Children’s Cove and thus the poor children of the well-heeled can’t play in the sand without some pesky seal sidling up to them. At the city council meeting the Chief of Police asked if the council wanted his guys to bring the seals in or just cite them 😉

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  9. In Huntington Beach the lifeguards are constantly blaring from their loudspeakers, “Attention on the beach, no dogs allowed on the beach.” And yet the dogs continue to romp as if they didn’t speak English.

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  11. Good morning, everyone! Like Cheryl, I, too, have been battling insomnia for about a week now. I fall asleep easily enough, but then awaken around midnight and can’t get back to sleep until around 3 or 4. It’s extremely frustrating. Oddly enough, I don’t feel that tired today (of course, I’ve had three cups of coffee, so….).

    Both my girls are away at camp, so I’ve got the entire day all to myself. I plan on taking care of a lot of errands, since I prefer to do them alone. Tomorrow, I have plans to hang out with my best friend for the day while her daughter is at volleyball camp. Scott and I went out for dinner last night and had a lovely evening conversing (sans interruptions) in our quiet living room afterwards.

    My sister and her family will be home in one week! I’m so excited! Sister and I have plans to spend a couple of nights at a hotel in San Antonio for some much needed sister-time in late July. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve missed her a lot!

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  12. With Chas, maybe it’s like in that movie The Fly where the guy starts slowly transforming into one. First it’s the innocent yellow and black shirt. But then he’ll start trying to hide the little antennas bud, the wings that make the back of his jacket twitch, the insatiable craving for honey which he’ll eat with a spoon from the jar.

    I slept through the night but thought I heard rain this morning when I was only half awake. I don’t think it was rain. I think it was the neighbors’ sprinklers. We don’t get summer rain out here.

    Adios, banning seals and dogs from the beach is nuts. But then again, up here we put up “bird wires” on one of our popular family beaches to discourage the seagulls from landing on a certain stretch that was getting polluted. They blamed the birds, but turns out it wasn’t them. Sigh. Now we have a clothes line on the beach.

    They’ll someday just find a way to enclose our beaches in domes and charge us admission. There will be NO animal life to mess it all up. 🙄

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  13. I’m going to comment about Nipper, the RCA dog–was that his name? I wasn’t allowed to have a dog growing up, but my grandparents sold RCA TVs in their store and had two life-sized RCA dogs, surely one had it’s ear up for “the master’s voice.”

    I use to sit on the floor beside that plaster of paris dog in the store and pretend it was mine.:-)

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  20. You’ll be ship shape in no time, Joe!

    Interesting article about the young man whose legs were blown off at the Boston Marathon. I hope the young man who did this to him reads the article. 😦

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  21. Good piece about how Christians’ perceptions of sin can become trivial in a social media-online age:

    http://theaquilareport.com/the-very-worst-trend-ever/

    michelle, I’ll have to read that link when I have more time today, we’ve been following a local man’s progress after also being seriously injured in the Boston incident (he’s still back east, but now finally is in outpatient rehab, expected *maybe* to get home toward the end of summer at long last).

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  22. We use to have one of those RCA dogs at the cable network where I worked. It became the responsibility of the traffic department to look after Nipper. Please don’t ask what the traffic department does in a TV station. It is boring and complicated and has nothing to do with cars.

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  23. I would imagine that a traffic department is necessary to be sure that the right people and things get there on time.
    On the local radio station, we often hear the Limbaugh commercials for time fillers because the local ads don’t get on. I’m sure this costs the station money.
    Everything from noon till three on Wlocal is a recording. If I managed the station, I would have a professional there always.

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  24. So, guess what the presentation was at WCR today? Who Moved My Cheese? The facilitator gave me a free copy of the book when I told her I had lost my “cheese” last week and this was a great jump start to looking for more cheese. She also would like to talk to me about opportunities with her real estate company. She used to be a corporate trainer who presented Who Moved My Cheese. An agent I used to work with at ReMax wants me to come talk to her. We are both now at the same company. Guy has also set me up with an appointment to talk to the company he is merging with.
    I am doing a lot of soul searching and trying to figure out my strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and what I really want to do.
    I am continueing to take the high road with my former boss and do what is right. It still smarts that my honesty was questioned so I want everything I do where they are concerned to be in black and white with NO shades of grey.

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  25. The RCA dog was a Rat Terrier. I realy like those dogs and have a book about them so that is where I found out about that particular dog. Some of them are more pleasing in appearance than others, and “Nipper” was a very good choice for RCA. He served his master well.

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  27. Kim, on honesty being questioned, yesterday I had a rather ironic happening at the hardware store. I had purchased some magnets to attach to the back of Bible verse plaques made by children in Sunday School. When I got home I noticed I was not charged for one small pack because it had stuck to another small pack and looked like only one pack. Trying to do the right thing I went to the store to pay for the extra pack they had failed to charge me for. I had also purchased a roll of magnets that was more expensive. When I pointed to the problem on the receipt I had brought with me, I pointed to the wrong line somehow and the clerk thought I was trying to get out of paying the $3.00+ amount instead of the $1.29 that needed to be paid for. So I basically was in a sense being called dishonest as a reward for the extra effort I made to come in and pay the bill for the mistake they made. Life does get complicated! I think no one believes in honesty anymore so that is why it was questioned that I would do such an out of the ordinary thing. At the end of the transaction the clerk and the other guy who had to go back and check prices thanked me for my honesty. I told them the credit goes to Jesus. That made the whole thing worth it.

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  28. Janice,

    My oldest brother has an odd story along that line. He was once in a store buying two tools that needed to fit together (a wrench and socket or something, I’m not a handyman). He had connected them to make sure he had matching sizes, and after he got home he realized they had only charged him for one part. He needed to use the tools, so he went ahead and did so, and a couple of days later he went back with the receipt to pay for the second tool. They praised his honesty. He went to write a check; they demanded identification. He told them he forgot, and didn’t have identification with him. They insisted they needed ID to cash a check, and he told them basically would I really bring this receipt in and insist on paying for an item if I was going to pay for it with a bad check? They accepted his check at that point.

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  29. I’m still trying to deal with this package that got mis-delivered Monday. Basically everyone (the company I ordered from, paypal, and UPS) all say, “It’s not our problem.” As I see it, it was really a paypal glitch–it makes no sense at all that all the other orders I’ve ever placed with paypal, even an order I placed after this one, came to the correct address without me making any changes on the system, but one random order went to an an old address. Since that is NOT my correct billing address, Visa shouldn’t have let it go through. (Yes, they did list it as billing address too.) I didn’t even know paypal had that address. They don’t now; I went into the system and deleted it.

    Anyway, I am now trying to see if I can somehow get the phone number of the person who bought my old house, to see if I can get hold of her and ask her to ship it here, if she hasn’t done so already. But it really seems to me that in an ideal world, paypal would say, “Yep, it looks like our system messed up. We’re sorry, and we’ll get it reshipped.” But I guess in the world we actually live in, it’s always someone else’s fault. (And yes, I too should have caught the error . . . but just as I don’t double-check my address when I order through amazon, because it’s in their system and it’s correct, I didn’t double-check this one, because for a year and a half I have been getting packages ordered from paypal and sent to this address, and I didn’t even know my previous address was in their system.)

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  30. Cheryl, life just should not be so complicated! So often it seems what should be an easy transaction gets turned into a multitude of transactions. Things like this make the system seem broken. And this is private industry. It is only compounded by layers government in that arena.

    Yesterday I went to Kroger to return a cup of yogurt I bought that was out of date when I bought it (I could not read the fine print to see that while at the store and only caught it after I read it with a magnifying glass on the cup I had eaten). I told the clerk I had bought two that were out of date thinking I might be refunded for both, but no, she had to have the second cup which I did not bring in. I got to thinking how I could have gotten sick and had a doctor’s bill for eating that first out of date cup of yogurt and all of that would have been my exprense for their mistake. Things like this happen way too often. They never seem to give a refund for the gas money it takes to get something back to the store.

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  33. Oh, yes, the traffic department at a TV station. I wonder if it is the same as at a radio station. That person made sure we had a daily log and made sure all the ads were aired when the customers wanted them. She also had to make sure we had enough news and public service announcement minutes every week. Tough job, for sure.

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  34. Great article on Christianity being the only viable worldview that is historically defensible.

    “This is why you don’t have religions based on historic events. They are all, with the exception of Christianity, based on private encounters which cannot be falsified or subjective ideas which are beyond inquiry. The amazing thing about Christianity is that there is so much historic data to be tested. Christianity is, by far, the most falsifiable worldview there is. Yet, despite this, Christianity flourished in the first century among the very people who could test its claims. And even today, it calls on us to “come and see” if the claims are true.
    The only reason why I can say Christianity survived in the midst of such historic volatility is because it is true. And this is exactly what I would expect if there were an all-powerful God who created and loves this world. When he intervenes, he makes a significant enough footprint that historic inquiry is demanded. Think about that next time you are critiquing the Christian faith. The only reason you can is because it is the only religion that has opened itself up to such critique. Simply put, Christianity is the most falsifiable religion there is and yet it has survived. Why?”

    http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/07/christianity-the-worlds-most-falsifiable-religion/

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  35. Janice, not only do they not refund gas money it takes to return an item, but more and more they’ll tell you, “The manager isn’t here right now, so if you come back another time . . .” My husband had someone tell him something like that the other day after she’d already torn the receipt into two pieces (making it worthless), and he told her, “No, we live in the country, and I don’t want to come back another day.” She decided to go ahead and give the refund and then put it into her system when the system came back up.

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  36. For quite a while now, I have been volunteering for our local Lutheran church, with prides itself on its liberalism and ecumenalism. They allow Muslims and Jews in their congregation. However, my atheism proved too much for them to bear. As I was about to got out for my volunteer work, my neighbor informed me that I had “offended” a number of people at a recent party where I introduced myself as an atheist. This struck me as similar to the Muslims who go bananas when their holy book is burned. If their is a God, he can send me to Hell or extinghish my soul. I think being offended by meeting an atheist indicates one’s faith is not that strong.

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  39. Random – You know you can be quite caustic at times, don’t you? Could it be not merely the fact that you said you’re an atheist, but the way you may have said it that offended? Was it in an “in your face” kind of way, or just an off-hand comment kind of way?

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  42. Cheryl, that sounds like a nightmare with the package. Does the person who lives there now have your forwarding address? Hope it gets straightened out, but it’s so frustrating to go through all that red tape trying to fix these things.

    I’m fighting with AT&T lately — I dumped the cable company to go with them because they were so much cheaper. One of the perks they offered new customers who signed up were “reward” cards — preloaded Visas. The salesman who signed me up at the AT&T store wrote me up to receive two $150 cards (total $300) — the first $150 is standard just for signing up, but the second one was added because my cell phone is on AT&T. And the ads all pushed the $300 amount, though I’m sure in small print somewhere it was qualified.

    So now the AT&T folks who handle the rewards cards are telling me, no, you only get one $150 card — the cell wouldn’t count, they said, unless it was a new account, not a pre-existing account.

    But in my mind, the $300 in rewards is part of the package I signed up for & I have the original paperwork explicitly saying that. I think they should honor it. If the salesman was mistaken in giving me the second $150 reward, that’s really kind of their problem, not mine.

    Anyway, I’ve gone ’round and ’round with them on the phone, transferred back and forth to several departments, gone back into the store (they promised the salesman would call me by the end of last week but he didn’t), sent an email & left a personal voicemail for the sales guy.

    Zero response.

    I’ll go back to the store tomorrow to ask to speak to the supervisor. Really pretty annoying, not to mention tiring. And why would they want to irritate a new customer like this for a measly (to them) $150 (which I was, after all, told I qualified for & was promised upon signing up??).

    Arrg.

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  45. Thank you to everyone who replied to my comment. In the past, I (and my wife) were plaintiffs in a large trial, one almost as big as the Zimmerman trial, but not involving murder. I was sure that my wife and I were “in the right,”; our opponents were equally sure (as far as I can tell) that they were in the right. The decision was not left up to either party. It was handled by a judge and jury of supposedly disinterested and impartial people. (My wife and I won.)

    My point is that is that I can’t objectively answer your questions about whether I was offensive or caustic or whatever. I guess you will have to not think about it, or make up your mind however you please. I suppose I could give you my neighbors’ phone number and you could call them and say, “Hi. We are social network acquaintances of Stephen Kahn. He says he was not offensive to you as an atheist communicating with Christians. Is there any reason we should believe him.”

    However, I respect their privacy. So I will let your imagination fill in the blank spaces.

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  46. Random, when more than one person is offended, I think it’s fair for us to examine ourselves and our own actions in the situation.

    We may have thought nothing of what was said or how it was said. Sometimes people are thin-skinned and get offended easily and through no fault of our own. But if more than one make the same complaint, there could be something for us to take a closer look at and perhaps to offer apologies to clear up the matter.

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