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Don’t get a pet that you can’t take out by yourself. “Take out” does not mean a nice evening on the town…

Pets, deep down, are wild animals. They may behave nicely most of the time if they are domesticated, but they are still animals. They may decide to do something uncivilized and start harming people. Animals just do that from time to time. The bigger animal you have, the bigger gamble you are taking with your life or someone else’s life.

Growing up on a farm-like setting, I was able to see various animals and pets in all stages of life. I got to see day-old kittens – very precious. And I saw kitten parts scattered over the lawn after some predator (maybe a hawk, maybe a grouchy tomcat) found the kittens too. All that was good, because it made me realize what exactly animals are and what they do.

If you don’t have a well-rounded view of animals, then you run the risk of ignoring the problems. If all you’ve ever had are cute housecats, you might not realize that it is not a good idea to take a cute baby raccoon into your house.

If you do want an animal as a pet, consider what would happen if the animal decides to be undomesticated one day. Would you be able to control it? Would you be able to win if you had to fight for your life (or a friend’s life, as the lady with the chimp had to do)? That’s why cats and parakeets make good pets. And fish and turtles too. But not chimps or lions or panthers or elephants.

“But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,”
– 2 Peter 2:12

Our church had a work day on Saturday, February 14th. It was just in the morning, and it was for people to help maintain/improve the church – painting, sawing, etc.

One thing I noticed was that just about everyone drove separately. I’m not talking about different families car-pooling – most of the spouses drove separately.

For the work day, most of the wives were in one area and most of the husbands were in another area. Not that our church requires men and women to work separately, but people generally just do that. At the end of the work day, which was lunch time, I noticed that there were a few wives who came to the husband’s area and said something like “Okay, I’m going home now.” To which the husband replied something like “Okay, I’ll see you there.”

I guess I expected more togetherness on Valentine’s Day. And these weren’t young couples either – most of them had grandchildren.

Yes, my wife and I also drove separately to the church. Since our anniversary is in February, we celebrate that and ignore Valentine’s Day. Plus I had to go into my day job for a couple hours before heading over to the church. So we had good reason to drive separately. I’m sure everyone else did too, but I didn’t question them. I just thought it was an interesting observation. At what point do couples trade the joy of togetherness for the practicality of logistics? Probably somewhere around the second child.

“Then Esau said, ‘Let us take our journey and go, and I will go before you.'”
– Genesis 33:12

I got to drive a Mercedes S-Class last weekend.  One of the features is a nice screen in the middle of the dashboard. It is the multi-function display: it shows the radio, navigation system, rear-view backup camera, DVDs, and live TV. The live TV comes from the over-the-air broadcasts, like any normal TV.

While that is a fun feature, I wonder how many vehicles have been sold with televisions in them.  Because some of those are going to be obsolete in June, when the analog broadcasts are disabled and only digital remains.  The converter boxes won’t work very well in the cars either.  The Mercedes TV tuner is supposed to handle both analog and digital, so it shouldn’t be affected by the transition.

The analog tuners would have been obsolete this month (February 2009), but the digital deadline got moved back, yet again.  Now it is in June, although stations can start dropping analog broadcasts now. But I wonder how many cars or aftermarket TV tuners will be affected. That would not be fun for someone who spent a boatload (or carload perhaps) of money to add TV reception to his car a couple of years ago, only to discover that he’ll have to upgrade it.

One other thing I noted from my afternoon in the car was the radio controls. The radio (and climate control and TV and nav system) is controlled by a single dial thingy. On my drive home, I usually switch between one AM station and one or two FM stations. To change from AM to FM took 3 presses (back, down, down) and to change from FM to AM took 4 presses (back, down, back, down).

I enjoy reading whatever’s on the cereal box during breakfast.  One side panel, on a chocolatey crispy rice cereal, was encouraging children to be active – probably because it is a sugary cereal and they need this public service announcement to make up for the unhealthiness of the cereal.

Part of the panel showed various sports and how many calories the average child would burn during 30 minutes of each sport.  It listed

• baseball: 60 calories
• soccer: 90 calories
• basketball: 90 calories
• football: 120 calories

So not only is baseball the most boring sport to watch, it is the most boring to play – it burns the fewest calories.

But don’t take the word a a cereal box for it – go look up calorie burn rates by sport. Beware though – baseball isn’t even on that list. It must not have qualified. Here are some excerpts, using the general non-game category for 130-lb person:

• basketball: 354 calories per hour
• soccer: 413
• football: 472
• swimming laps: also 472

And soccer? Don’t let your kids play soccer. Not only is it average at best for exercise, it is dangerous for high school kids to play (especially for girls) (and more dangerous than football). The combination of moderate exercise and high risk means that soccer should not be an option.

But football? The combination of good exercise and average risk factor means that football is a good option for your child. I suppose swimming might be even better, with the combination of good exercise and low risk factor.

Football players are more likely to be injured, but fractures and sprains usually heal with no lasting problems. Concussions are where you want to be concerned about your child. Football helmets are being improved to reduce concussions. What is being done in soccer to reduce concussions? And yes, even though soccer is supposed to be non-contact, soccer players are more prone to concussions than are football players.

Football is a contact sport, but the uniform and gear are setup to protect the players from damage. In soccer, only your shins are safe (even though shins heal fairly easily compared to concussions or ACL tears). You could try this article, which states “The injury rates, calculated per 100 athlete exposures during total events (games plus practices), were: baseball, 1.7; softball, 1.0; soccer, 2.1; and football, 1.5.”

“Those who seek my life lay snares {for me;} And those who seek to injure me have threatened destruction, And they devise treachery all day long.”
– Psalm 38:12

Since we own a couple of vehicles, we occasionally get mail about those vehicles.  Usually the mail has to do with vehicle maintenance or warranties.  Today I am sharing one of the warranty notifications with you.

The reason for sharing this letter is to show how to tell it’s not a good program. Take a look at the whole letter, above, and then look at this particular excerpt, below.

For those who can’t see the image: it says “Due to the nature of this program, we can only authorize your vehicle for 72 hours from the receipt of this notice.”

One of the reasons to distrust it is that it pretends to be related to a dealership by using the words “Dealer Warranty” prominently.  But it’s not from a dealership at all.  It’s similar to those coin companies that have the words “US” or “Federal” or “Mint” but are not related to the actual US Mint at all.

Anyway, these guys are offering to extend my factory warranty (with their own warranty).  But our vehicle has been out of warranty for about 30,000 miles and 2 years.  Oh, and only my vehicle qualifies, so it must be an exclusive program that I should feel privileged to join.

If you look at the whole letter, you will not find a date anywhere. How do I know when the 72 hours expires? What I forgot exactly which day I received it? How do they know what time my mail arrives?

It’s not 3 days – it’s 72 hours … from when I receive the notice. They can’t know when the offer expires, but I need to “call immediately”. That’s one of the ways to tell a scam – being told that urgent action is required and being pressured for a decision. That’s especially true when the person applying the pressure is the one who will be taking money from you (or getting you to give them your money).

Hey! Isn’t that what’s being done with the president and congress right now? “We need a stimulus package, and we need it right now. We need to take 800 or 900 billion dollars from the taxpayers, but we don’t want to think about it too long. Don’t delay, vote now! Urgent action is required.”

Unfortunately, I can’t just toss the government’s requests in the trash like I do other junk mail.

“For wisdom is protection {just as} money is protection, But the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the lives of its possessors.”
– Ecclesiastes 7:12

Here are some updates on recent conversations with the children.  They are more into weapons.  We don’t really have many weapons in the house, but they have good imaginations.

Cup-Bearer

One day I came home from work and the kids were glad to greet me.  The 5-year-old brought me one of his plastic play cups from a food/kitchen set and told me I should drink it.  So I pretended to drink from the empty cup, and then we had the following conversation:

“I just gave you medicine with diabetes in it!” (and he was laughing that I fell for his trick)
“Diabetes?”
“Yeah, what possums have.”
“I think you mean rabies.”

They are trying to poison me.  Once they’re old enough to cook, I’ll have to be careful.

Proofs

Driving home from church one recent Sunday, I heard the following coming from one of the car seats behind me: “Our van is shooting spears and bullets and everything that hurts.”

When it not that, it’s the quicksand and hot lava (not just lava – hot lava) and lasers and electric (not electricity – electric).  Anything that they can wave their hands and pretend is shooting out of them, they will do that.  I think it started with Spiderman’s web-shooting abilities and then progressed from there.  They’ll shoot ice at you to freeze you and then squirt hot lava at you to unfreeze you.  Or tell you that the floor on which you are standing is really quicksand.

But don’t worry, our kids are quicksand proof.  And hot lava proof.  And “everything proof”.  So if you ever try to pretend-squirt them back, it won’t work.  And it also won’t work if they try to shoot/squirt each other, because whatever one says to the other, the other quickly claims that he is that-proof.

Always Winning

Then there was the Super Bowl.  The kids usually like to watch football with me, and they usually want to know whom I want to win.  So they asked me who I wanted to win, and I replied “The Cardinals.”  And then they asked who was winning, and I replied “The Steelers.”  Then my 5-year-old shared his philosophy: “Whatever team is winning is the team I want to win.”  I suppose he will always be happy with whatever game he watches.

Like many other people I know, I was hoping that the Cardinals would win but expecting that the Steelers would win. I was not cheering against Pittsburgh, as I have nothing against them. But I did want Kurt Warner to win. So I cheered for Arizona but was not depressed when they didn’t win. Disappointed, yes, but not so much that I had trouble sleeping.

I find that with college football, I cheer for (or against) teams because they are those teams. For the NFL, I cheer for or against teams based on certain players. If Kurt Warner were not with Arizona, I don’t know that I would have been cheering for them.

My take on the game, not that my take matters much (and why is it called a take when really I am giving my opinion? I am not taking anything…) is that the Steelers didn’t win the game as much as the Cardinals lost it.

Certainly, the Steelers played well enough to win, and win they did. The Cardinals also played well enough to win, but they helped the Steelers a lot whereas the Steelers didn’t help the Cardinals much. The Cardinals made so many mistakes that’s it is easy to think that they should have won. The infamous “They were the better team.” They were the better team, but they didn’t play as well. It all matter how you play during that one game. Of course, after a game is over you can always say “If this had gone differently” or “If this hadn’t happened” and anyone can concoct a scenario where the loser would have won.

How many yards did the Steelers get as a result of Cardinal personal fouls? Is it legal for an offensive lineman to pull his own quarterback into the end zone? Did they really let a linebacker run 100 yards? Could nobody catch him before the 2-yard line? Is it possible for Clark to use his limbs to tackle someone instead of using only his helmet?

I was just glad that the Cardinals played well enough to almost win. It wasn’t looking too good at the half, and I was worried that Arizona would be lumped into the same category as Oklahoma and Ohio State – the team that gets put through to the championship game and then gets blown out by a real team.

“{A man of} great anger will bear the penalty, For if you rescue {him,} you will only have to do it again.”
– Proverbs 19:19