Yesterday, I made a post about riding my bike for the first time in 2005. Here are the stats from that ride:
Distance: 22 mi
Time: 1 hr 40 min
Avg. Speed: 12 mph
Cal. Expended: 1513 (apx)
IMB Job
Well, I'll say everything is official now. I have accepted the Programmer/Analyst 2 job with the IMB. My last day with NiSource will be (oficially) June 6th. That means I'll get my five years in so I will be vested in the pension plan. Both Randy (NiSource) and Amy (IMB) were helpful in making that happen. Cyndi will be going to Richmond here in a few weeks to look at places to live. I should be able to talk to the movers tomorrow so we can get that all set up.
First Ride of 2005
Well, today was my first bike ride of the year. Cyndi and I recently moved, and I had to figure out how to get to work from our new place while avoiding 33/Dublin Rd./Riverside Dr./Whatever else that road is called :^0
So, I have the route figured out, but my ride was 22 miles. It took me 1hr 15 min to get there (I had to stop and look at the map often) but it took me 45 minutes to come home. I don't think that is too bad of a ride.
IMB Job
Well, the opportunity has finally arrived. Friday afternoon, Amy called me from the IMB extending a formal job offer. Cyndi and I have thought through this previously, and had already decided that unless the offer were extremely unreasonable, we would accept. Well, it turns out that the offer was good and so we have decided to accept. We don't know when we will be moving, exactly, but are expecing that to happen mid-May.
Thanks for all the prayers!
Mae Magouirk
Well, WorldNetDaily.com is reporting in this article that Mrs. Magouirk has been transferred to a hospital and is now receiving proper medical attention.
Schiavo Fallout?
WorldNetDaily.com is reporting in this article that a granddaughter is, essentially, murdering her grandma.
In a situation recalling the recent death of Terri Schiavo in Florida, an 81-year-old widow, denied nourishment and fluids for nearly two weeks, is clinging to life in a hospice in LaGrange, Ga., while her immediate family fights desperately to save her life before she dies of starvation and dehydration….
That paragraph could have been written about the recent Terri Schiavo case. If you read the rest of the article, you find out that this lady–Mae Magouirk–is being murdered. She was healthy, but had to be admitted to the hospital with a heart condition. Shortly after that, her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, had her transferred to a hospice and ordered that food and water be withheld. It turns out that Beth didn't have the authority to order that, but her decision is being upheld by the courts. Mae even had a living will–remember those?
The big call after the Terri Schiavo case was "get a living will," "specify what you want," etc…. Well, Mae had one that spelled out what she wanted to have happen:
…In her living will, Magouirk stated that fluids and nourishment were to be withheld only if she were either comatose or "vegetative."…
It looks like the courts and everyone else is simply ignoring what is going on here. Folks, read the entire article! We MUST stand up and fight for those who cannot do so for themselves! To this end, I have sent an e-mail to the only e-mail address I could find for the hospice: info@wghs.org. I urge you to send them an e-mail and urge them to not allow this murder to continue.
For those of you who want to read what I sent, here is the e-mail:
Chief Physician:
WorldNetDaily is reporting that you have a patient in your care by the name of Mae Magouirk. The URL for the news story is http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43688. The article states that "… since March 28 Hospice-LaGrange has denied Magouirk normal nourishment or fluids via a feeding tube through her nose or fluids via an IV. She has been kept sedated with morphine and ativan, a powerful tranquillizer…." The article also states that this "…is being done in defiance of Magouirk's specific wishes, which she set down in a "living will," and without agreement of her closest living next-of-kin, two siblings and a nephew…." The person responsible for this is Mrs. Magouirk's granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, because "…[g]randmama is old and I think it is time she went home to Jesus."…"…[s]he has glaucoma and now this heart problem, and who would want to live with disabilities like these?""
Is this correct? Is your facility allowing Ms. Gaddy to murder Mrs. Magouirk? With the Terri Schiavo case ending, much has been said about living wills and how they allow an individual to specify what they want to have happen to them in certain circumstances. What good is a living will if the instructions are not followed? I urge you to follow the instructions contained in Mrs. Magouirk's living will. I urge you to keep Mrs. Magouirk from harm and injustice, as is outlined in the Hippocratic Oath (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_classical.html).
Sincerely,
Matthew Maxson
Computer Security
Ever wish you knew if there were any security issues with any of the applications you use? Well, CERT can help. They have e-mail alerts, etc… For more information, visit their website here.
Established in September 2003, US-CERT is a public-private partnership charged with improving computer security preparedness and response to cyber attacks in the United States. US-CERT is responsible for
- analyzing and reducing cyber threats and vulnerabilities
- disseminating cyber threat warning information
- coordinating incident response activities
RIchmond Pictures
I just Finished…
…the book I was reading (Christian Jihad) by the brothers Caner. It was an interesting read. It was, basically, a short history of Christendom focused around the development of a "Church Army" commanded by the pope that went on Crusades. Additionally, it talked about other "crusades" this army went on that focused on the extermination of heritics (heritics were anyone who did not agree whole-heartedly with the Catholic church). For some more information on this, see this post.
When I was done with that book, I read The Lie: Evolution by Ken Ham. This book was very interesting, and if you are a christian, you need to read it. You especially need to read it if you believe that God used evolution to "create" things. Folks, this is a lie straight out of the pit of Hell. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are true, and need to be taken literally. When the Bible says that God created everything in six days, he did it in sis 24 hour periods. He spoke everything into existance.
Reading The Lie has made me take a step back and think about some things. I think what I am going to do is write some short essays outlining what I believe and why (back that up with scripture) and put them on the web. I think this will do two things: first, it will make me evaluate what I believe and why so I can support it and, secondly, it will give others a resource they can go to while researching things. This may take me several months and years to accomplish, but as I get things done, I will keep the website up to date.
In the meantime, I'm looking for something else to read. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Tour of Richmond
On Sunday after church, I decided to go for a drive around Richmond and see what I could see. I spent about 4 hours driving around different areas of the city. My goal was to try and get a general feel for different parts of the city, neighborhood conditions, etc…. I tried to focus on areas of the city that Larry didn't take us to on Saturday. If you want to see where I went, click the map below:
I started near the upper right-hand corner of the map at the H (that is where my hotel was…in the Insbrook Corporate Center). The route I took is marked by arrows indicating the direction of travel. the two spots marked with a 1 and 2 indicate two rental properties I saw that looked interesting. The Cs indicate churches that Cyndi and I may be interested in. I tried to put all this stuff together into one place so we could look and think about everything in perspective. I wish I had taken the map with us on Saturday to mark that route as well. If I had to do it over again, I would take my GPS unit to track where we were, and mark waypoints at the interesting spots. Oh well, hopefully someone else can learn from my experience.