Pete DuPont offers a well-reasoned defense of the Electoral College today at OpinionJournal.

There is no question in my mind that we should maintain this system for electing presidents.

This coming Sunday night my brothers Aaron and Andrew and I will be doing a concert for my church. Noelridge has annually had a church potluck in the park on Labor Day Sunday; for the past several years we’ve had the Faris family (talented bluegrass types from Kansas), but now they’ve moved up in the world and we can’t afford them any more. (Good for them!) So as their amateur replacements, the Hubbs brothers will be providing the musical entertainment this year.

I’m looking forward to this immensely. I have blogged before about the fun of playing music with my family, and this is no different. The music will be stuff that we’ve goofed around with before but never really performed; stuff by Caedmon’s Call, Derek Webb, Andrew Peterson, Andy Osenga, and others.

I only have a couple of more tasks in preparation: I need to try to drum up an electric piano we can use for the night (I know who to call, I just have to make the call) and I need to practice. I need to practice a lot.

What: Noelridge Park Church potluck and concert in the park
Where: Noelridge Park Pavilion
When: Sunday, September 3rd, 5:30 PM
Bring: a dish to share and a lawnchair.

There’s a fascinating article today on NRO written by a former Soviet general from the Intelligence branch on the history of Soviet support for terrorism. Some excerpts:

Between 1968 and 1978, when I broke with Communism, the security forces of Romania alone sent two cargo planes full of military goodies every week to Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. Since the fall of Communism the East German Stasi archives have revealed that, in 1983 alone, its foreign intelligence service sent $1,877,600 worth of AK-47 ammunition to Lebanon. According to Vaclav Havel, Communist Czechoslovakia shipped 1,000 tons of the odorless explosive Semtex-H (which can’t be detected by sniffer dogs) to Islamic terrorists — enough for 150 years.

In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.

According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch.

Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized. We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were “fascist, imperial-Zionist countries” bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom.

Go read the whole thing.

There’s a fascinating article today on NRO written by a former Soviet general from the Intelligence branch on the history of Soviet support for terrorism. Some excerpts:

Between 1968 and 1978, when I broke with Communism, the security forces of Romania alone sent two cargo planes full of military goodies every week to Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. Since the fall of Communism the East German Stasi archives have revealed that, in 1983 alone, its foreign intelligence service sent $1,877,600 worth of AK-47 ammunition to Lebanon. According to Vaclav Havel, Communist Czechoslovakia shipped 1,000 tons of the odorless explosive Semtex-H (which can’t be detected by sniffer dogs) to Islamic terrorists — enough for 150 years.

In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.

According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch.

Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized. We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were “fascist, imperial-Zionist countries” bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom.

Go read the whole thing.

There’s a fascinating article today on NRO written by a former Soviet general from the Intelligence branch on the history of Soviet support for terrorism. Some excerpts:

Between 1968 and 1978, when I broke with Communism, the security forces of Romania alone sent two cargo planes full of military goodies every week to Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. Since the fall of Communism the East German Stasi archives have revealed that, in 1983 alone, its foreign intelligence service sent $1,877,600 worth of AK-47 ammunition to Lebanon. According to Vaclav Havel, Communist Czechoslovakia shipped 1,000 tons of the odorless explosive Semtex-H (which can’t be detected by sniffer dogs) to Islamic terrorists — enough for 150 years.

In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.

According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch.

Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized. We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were “fascist, imperial-Zionist countries” bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom.

Go read the whole thing.

I may be reasonably intelligent, but sometimes I miss the obvious. I have known since we bought our house that there is tubing running from the furnace across the floor and under a wall into a drain below the bathroom sink, but it never dawned on me why it was there.

Yesterday morning it became clear. I went downstairs for a shower and found the bath mat sopping wet. And more water standing on the floor. My initial reaction was to think that the sewer pipe had gotten clogged again; I’ve had to snake it out twice in the last 3 years. But no, my mother-in-law wasn’t here, so that couldn’t be it. ^[1] I cleaned up the water as best I could and then headed to work, but not before mentioning it to Becky who was up early with Addison.

Becky investigated further and found that the water was coming from that drain line. And that drain line carries the condensation that builds up on the air conditioner coils which are inside the blower there in the furnace. It ended up that the drain line had gotten totally clogged up, and finally the water had started leaking. So she turned off the air conditioner, cleaned up the rest of the mess, read up on the topic on the internet, and then called me to discuss the issue.

My initial reaction was to say “hey, let’s just stick a bucket under it and empty the bucket occasionally.” Then she told me that according to the internet the a/c can produce 5 - 9 gallons of water a day. I wasn’t expecting that. So the bucket idea was out. We ended up hitting Lowe’s (so nice to have a Lowe’s only 3 blocks from our house!) on the way to WT practice last night and picking up some new tubing and a few screw-on connectors so I can have a way, outside of cutting the tubing, to clean it out again if the need arises.

The other complication was that the previous owner of the house built a nice little wall around 2 sides of the furnace to hide it from sight and make a nice little hallway. Unfortunately, the drain pipe was on the back side of the furnace, towards the wall. So I spent a bunch of my repair time last night with my upper body shoved through a 15″ x 18″ hole I cut in the drywall. It probably would’ve made a funny picture, but thankfully Becky left the camera upstairs. I’ll put up a cabinet door or something over the hole so I can get to it next time if I need to.

By 9:30 last night I had it all fixed and the mess mostly cleaned up. I checked it this morning and the line was still draining nicely. All in all it only required a few hours of sweat and about ten bucks worth of parts. Not too awful, as home repairs go.

Oh, and I watched the water drain after I turned the a/c on last night. Five gallons per day is an understatement.

[1] The two times we’ve had serious water in the basement my mother-in-law has been here visiting. Both times.

I may be reasonably intelligent, but sometimes I miss the obvious. I have known since we bought our house that there is tubing running from the furnace across the floor and under a wall into a drain below the bathroom sink, but it never dawned on me why it was there.

Yesterday morning it became clear. I went downstairs for a shower and found the bath mat sopping wet. And more water standing on the floor. My initial reaction was to think that the sewer pipe had gotten clogged again; I’ve had to snake it out twice in the last 3 years. But no, my mother-in-law wasn’t here, so that couldn’t be it. ^[1] I cleaned up the water as best I could and then headed to work, but not before mentioning it to Becky who was up early with Addison.

Becky investigated further and found that the water was coming from that drain line. And that drain line carries the condensation that builds up on the air conditioner coils which are inside the blower there in the furnace. It ended up that the drain line had gotten totally clogged up, and finally the water had started leaking. So she turned off the air conditioner, cleaned up the rest of the mess, read up on the topic on the internet, and then called me to discuss the issue.

My initial reaction was to say “hey, let’s just stick a bucket under it and empty the bucket occasionally.” Then she told me that according to the internet the a/c can produce 5 - 9 gallons of water a day. I wasn’t expecting that. So the bucket idea was out. We ended up hitting Lowe’s (so nice to have a Lowe’s only 3 blocks from our house!) on the way to WT practice last night and picking up some new tubing and a few screw-on connectors so I can have a way, outside of cutting the tubing, to clean it out again if the need arises.

The other complication was that the previous owner of the house built a nice little wall around 2 sides of the furnace to hide it from sight and make a nice little hallway. Unfortunately, the drain pipe was on the back side of the furnace, towards the wall. So I spent a bunch of my repair time last night with my upper body shoved through a 15″ x 18″ hole I cut in the drywall. It probably would’ve made a funny picture, but thankfully Becky left the camera upstairs. I’ll put up a cabinet door or something over the hole so I can get to it next time if I need to.

By 9:30 last night I had it all fixed and the mess mostly cleaned up. I checked it this morning and the line was still draining nicely. All in all it only required a few hours of sweat and about ten bucks worth of parts. Not too awful, as home repairs go.

Oh, and I watched the water drain after I turned the a/c on last night. Five gallons per day is an understatement.

[1] The two times we’ve had serious water in the basement my mother-in-law has been here visiting. Both times.

I may be reasonably intelligent, but sometimes I miss the obvious. I have known since we bought our house that there is tubing running from the furnace across the floor and under a wall into a drain below the bathroom sink, but it never dawned on me why it was there.

Yesterday morning it became clear. I went downstairs for a shower and found the bath mat sopping wet. And more water standing on the floor. My initial reaction was to think that the sewer pipe had gotten clogged again; I’ve had to snake it out twice in the last 3 years. But no, my mother-in-law wasn’t here, so that couldn’t be it. ^[1] I cleaned up the water as best I could and then headed to work, but not before mentioning it to Becky who was up early with Addison.

Becky investigated further and found that the water was coming from that drain line. And that drain line carries the condensation that builds up on the air conditioner coils which are inside the blower there in the furnace. It ended up that the drain line had gotten totally clogged up, and finally the water had started leaking. So she turned off the air conditioner, cleaned up the rest of the mess, read up on the topic on the internet, and then called me to discuss the issue.

My initial reaction was to say “hey, let’s just stick a bucket under it and empty the bucket occasionally.” Then she told me that according to the internet the a/c can produce 5 - 9 gallons of water a day. I wasn’t expecting that. So the bucket idea was out. We ended up hitting Lowe’s (so nice to have a Lowe’s only 3 blocks from our house!) on the way to WT practice last night and picking up some new tubing and a few screw-on connectors so I can have a way, outside of cutting the tubing, to clean it out again if the need arises.

The other complication was that the previous owner of the house built a nice little wall around 2 sides of the furnace to hide it from sight and make a nice little hallway. Unfortunately, the drain pipe was on the back side of the furnace, towards the wall. So I spent a bunch of my repair time last night with my upper body shoved through a 15″ x 18″ hole I cut in the drywall. It probably would’ve made a funny picture, but thankfully Becky left the camera upstairs. I’ll put up a cabinet door or something over the hole so I can get to it next time if I need to.

By 9:30 last night I had it all fixed and the mess mostly cleaned up. I checked it this morning and the line was still draining nicely. All in all it only required a few hours of sweat and about ten bucks worth of parts. Not too awful, as home repairs go.

Oh, and I watched the water drain after I turned the a/c on last night. Five gallons per day is an understatement.

[1] The two times we’ve had serious water in the basement my mother-in-law has been here visiting. Both times.

After being a slacker yesterday morning, I got up and did my 5k distance again this morning.

Times:

Mile 1: 8:18
Mile 2: 9:55 (total 18:14)
Mile 3: 10:46 (total: 29:00)
End: 31:29

This was about 20 seconds slower than my Monday run. In fact, that’s the exact same time for my first mile, and only 8 seconds slower for my second mile. I guess I’m at least consistent. Now one of these days I can focus on kicking up the pace a little.

The Solon 5K is only 24 days away…

A good ramble with thoughts from Barney and The Incredibles over on the Colossians 3:16 blog.

http://www.colossiansthreesixteen.com/archives/725