Yes, I am alive! True, I haven't posted a new update here since June 30, but I am in fact still among the living.
So, what have I been doing since June 30? Well, let's see. In early July, I went home for the Independence Day weekend, visiting my parents, my brother, and various friends. We had the traditional bonfire (although markedly smaller and less alarming than in previous years, due to wet wood), as well as the traditional live band, games of Magic, fireworks, and alcohol. (As per tradition, I abstained from the latter two, so that I could be available to drive the wounded to the hospital.) I videotaped the band, Diggles Dozen, which turned out reasonably well. They sounded pretty good, actually, if you ignored the fact that the sound system was intentionally set to distort everything and sound like crap. I'm not entirely sure what the attraction is in making things sound like crap, but at least they succeeded. It must be like modern art or something.
Anyway, while I was out of town for that, I obviously couldn't update this journal. When I got back, I found that I had dropped out of the habit. And the longer I didn't update it, the more stuff I would need to write once I finally began again -- which caused me to put it off even further. In the meantime, I began to have an idea, which eventually lead to something which further delayed getting this updated.
One of my interests is organized skepticism. For those of you thinking, "What the heck is that?", here's a quick explanation. Some people believe in paranormal and pseudo-scientific subjects, such as UFOs, psychic powers, ESP, astrology, fortune telling, and so forth. Most of the people who don't believe in such things are content to laugh and go on with their lives. A few people, however, are sufficiently annoyed by such claims as to actually obsess about them, write articles complaining about them, and create entire web sites to complain about them some more. I'm one of those people.
I'm a member of (take a big breath) the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL, for short). We're a group of skeptics located here in central Illinois that get together monthly to complain to one another about the latest annoyingly weird claims being made. One of the things that I do is operate an unofficial web site for REALL. (For those of you who are interested, the site is located at "http://www.reall.org/".)
Well, back in early July I began to think about creating a new web site that would act as a "what's new page" for skeptic web sites. Whenever I located some recent update on a skeptic web site, I would create a link to it with a brief description. This would allow skeptics to come to one place to easily locate news. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. So, on July 26, the Skeptic News went online at "http://www.skepticnews.com/".
I post an update to the Skeptic News every morning. Since it went online two months ago, I've missed only two days, and that was simply because I was out of town. In short, I've been spending every morning posting updates to the Skeptic News instead of posting updates to this journal!
Of course, that's an over-simplification, but it's the only excuse I've got, so I'm sticking with it.
My Life by the Numbers
Yesterday: 237 pounds. I haven't walked since June 30. See what happens when I don't update my journal? I gain weight and stop exercising!
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