I just went through my friends list and removed a bunch of people that hadn't been active on LJ in over a year.. That took my list of friends on here from 130 down to 65..

If you got an email from lj saying I removed you, or you stumbled back here and want to be added back, please drop me a note here.

School called me about my son coughing and now I'm at the doctors office waiting for the doctor.

Oh the joys of being a dad.

Posted via LiveJournal App for Blackberry

White Christmas, I think I can watch that movie every year.. without getting tired of it.

My friend uawildcatgrl is having a friending Frenzy here! You should all go and introduce yourself and make new friends!

I just had to share.

Yes. You. I love you.


( LyricsCollapse )

In 2004, one of my good friends, musesinspire lost a daughter to SIDS. I cannot tell you how emotionally devastating that was for her and her family. Every year, she celebrates the short life of her daughter Lexy (Alexis) by remembering her on her birthday (March 26) and her angel day (May 24) .

musesinspire has made it her mission to raise awareness, and to educate others about this terrible syndrome. This year, she created a community stop_sids and they are hosting a month long charity auction for raising money to fund research. The charity auction is auctioning off fan/fic stories, graphics, audio, video, cookies. You can find links to items people are auctioning here

I think this is an awesome and I plan on bidding on a few items. I hope you find the time to go over to the community and donating some money to help these these organizations prevent other parents from suffering the same loss that my friend musesinspire suffered through.

This year I didn't do the wishroll valintinr. (http://wishroll.com/valentinr/sircaliban) I have in the past, but this year I thought I'd do something different.

My soul does need love, as does everyone. And I realize that there are people that need a kind word, a word of encouragement, a little bit of love. And I know that you have to give a little love to get some.

So, leave me a comment on this entry, which will be screened by me. The only person that can see the message will be me. In your comment subject, put Give Love, if you want to leave me a message telling me how much you love me. If you put Get Love in the subject, and let me know if you want an email or a post, and I'll give you a message back letting you know how much I love you.

Christine was a girl I worked with at Burger King while I was in high school. She was blonde, beautiful and had a sharp wit. Working with her was fun and I enjoyed her company.

During one of our breaks, I'd walk up to her and jokingly ask her " Hey, when are we going out on that hot date?" And about every time I did, I'd get a smile and a laugh. She'd always respond with, "Never in a million years."

Then one day, I walked in and asked my famous question.. "When are we going out on that date we are supposed to have?"

And she surprised me with, "How about this Friday?"

Needless to say I was stunned by her response. I mean, I never expected her to say yes.

After some discussion, we decided to go to see the Cleveland Crunch play at the old Richfield Coliseum. They were a professional soccer team in the MISL at the time and I enjoyed watching and playing soccer. And it gave us the opportunity to talk and get to know each other better.

I picked her up at 7pm and we headed to the game. I'll never forget that night because while I had been to the Coliseum before, I had never driven there on my own and at one point, I made a wrong turn. Christine recognized my mistake almost immediately.

"Where are you going?"

"We are headed to the Coliseum."

"Yeah, but your headed the wrong way! you should have made a left back there onto 271 South instead of getting onto 480 East!"

It took me about 5 miles before I recognized that we were definately on the wrong road and I turned around. I apologized for my mistake.

"It's ok. Let's just get there. " she replied.

After we got there, we sat down in our seats and we had a pleasant time talking and watching the game. She didn't know much about soccer so I spent most of my time explaining the rules of the game and the difference between the penalties.

"The blue card is a 2 minute penalty, they yellow card is a 5 minute penalty and a red card is a ejection from the game. " I explained. "See, he just got 2 minutes in the box for tripping the other player. So our team gets the advantage of having an extra player. "

"You mean it's like hockey?"

"Yes. It's like hockey in that regard."

"Are their fights?"

"Not usually, if there are, then the players get suspended and they are given a red card."

The Cleveland Crunch won the game against the Balitmare Blast 3-2 and it was a pleasant evening, despite me getting lost on my way to the venue. It certainly was a memorable evening.

The Cleveland Crunch has always been my favorite indoor soccer game and I was so excited when they finally won a championship for the City of Cleveland.

The last thing I remember was being in the local Barnes and Noble searching for a book on hiking. I was in the middle of enjoying my Starbuck's coffee as I thumbed my way through a stack of potential books that I might want to purchase. Then it happened.

I can't exactly tell you what 'it' was, but I knew instantly that I was someplace else, even though I wasn't. I looked around trying to ascertain what was going on.

Looking around the room did not give me any clues as to what had changed, the place was just as crowded as normal and no one else seemed to have experienced the same thing as I had. When I looked back down at the pile of books, I discovered a new book in front of me.

The book was leather bound and had a post-it note on it that read, "read me."

"Where did this come from?" I wondered outloud.

I picked it up and examined the black leather bound book. I removed the post-it note and examined the gold engraved title.

"These trails I've walked." I read the title to myself.

I flipped it over and discovered nothing special on the back. No picture of the author. No summary or indication of what the book was about. There was nothing special about this book at all.

"Don't judge a book by it's cover.", I said as I opened up the book and started to thumb through it half expecting the book to be about hiking.. or about a courageous story about overcoming challenges.

My eyes widened as the realization of what I held in my hands settled into my brain. This wasn't just any random story. It was THE story of my life. It contained every little thing you would ever want to know about me. Every decision I made, every risk I took, every success and every failure was documented in great detail.

I flipped ahead searching for something more current and found the section talking about my recent job change, my family life and recent trip to Florida.

"If this thing documents my past and my present.. " I mused.

I paused and thought about this for a moment.

Did I really want to know the future? Would the pages be blank, unwritten or full of actions and consequences of potential decisions that could be made.

After thinking about this for a moment, I calmly shut the book and set it down on the table. I picked up the books I decided to buy and headed to the cashier who was happy to help me check out.

The cashier took my books and started to ring them up and then paused as he scanned the last book and looked puzzled.

"Sir, your missing a book." he said to me.

"No, I don't think so.", I shook my head.

"Yes, I think you are. ", he said motioning to the black book still sitting on the table.

"Oh, that? That's for someone else to read. I've been there, done that." I replied.

"But, you haven't finished it yet. Don't you want to know the ending?" he asked.

"Part of me does.. " I paused. "But I think I'll pass."

The cashier just nodded. "Well then, have a nice day sir."

On my drive home I wondered if I hadn't made a mistake. I couldn't help but to wonder if the answers for what I was searching for was buried somewhere in that book. I wondered if I could figure out how to make my life better by rehashing the past and prevent myself from making those mistakes in the future. I wondered if I could make my life better by reading a bit further ahead in that book.

I almost turned around several times that night.. but I kept coming back to the same thought. "Live today well, and tomorrow will take care of itself. "

When I got home, I found that book in my bag. I carry it with me wherever I go.

I walked into the press conference room half expecting the room to be empty, but as soon as I entered the room, I realized that this was no ordinary press conference. The room was packed full and the reporters were all whispering amongst themselves quite excitedly.

I slipped in and quietly looked for a good spot to sit. A quick glance and I gave up hope on finding a nice comfy chair and decided to make my way to the back part of the room where I could stand and listen to the conference and jot my notes down on my IPad.

Once I found a spot along the back wall where I could both see the podium and the projection screen on the opposite wall, I leaned over to the guy standing right next to me and nudged him to get his attention. "What gives?" I asked.

The guy shrugged, and dryly responded, "Hell if I know, all I know is my boss told me to be here, so here I am."

I looked over to the guy on my other side and nodded at him to ask the same question. He just shook his head to indicate that he didn't know either.

I took a moment to observe the packed room. I started picking out the 'usual suspects' who I would often see at NASA's press conferences, Sam Franklin , the reporter from Popular Science, Frank Thomas from Astrobiology magazine and even a couple of guys from the SETI institute.

"Man, whatever is going on, this is big.. either something really epic was about to be announced, or something went wrong." I thought to myself. I glanced around at some more of the press badges around me taking note of them as I read them off to myself mentally.

"Life Magazine, New York Times, The Tribune.. even some guy from Horse and Hound, what's that guy doing here?" I only had a moment to ponder because the doors on the far wall flew open and the room went suddenly quiet.

A short bald headed man walked into the room. He was followed closely by 3 other men and 2 women. He walked accross the stage with purpose and straight over to the podium.

"First off, I'd.. " the man spoke too closely to the microphone and had to pause as feedback brought any remaining conversations in the room to a halt.

A few seconds later, after adjusting the microphone again, he continued.
"First, I'd like to thank you all for coming today on such short notice.", I know we all have a very busy schedule today so we'll try and keep this short. After Dr. Crieghton has made his statement, there will be about 5-10 minutes for any questions."

He paused , looking around the room as if to see if anyone have any questions. Apparently there were none, "Alright, lets get this started. Here is Dr. John Crieghton."

The man looked around the room and stepped aside to allow a taller gray haired gentleman to come to the podium.

"Thank you, Ben. As most of you know, for the last ten years we've been tasked with finding alternative energy sources in order to find a solution to the energy crisis. Since the demise of the Shuttle program in the early part of this century, we've been able to re-task teams of scientists and give them all of the tools and resources they need in order to address our the biggest problem in our world, our dependence on the diminishing resource, OIL. "

There was a quiet murmur that cascaded through the room as the reporters started taking notes on their tablets. Some of the reporters looked excitedly at each other.. others looked down at their tablets typing away.

John looked over the room and continued. " We've made tremendous strides in this area over the last decade. We've figured out how to triple the efficiency of the internal combustion engine. And we've had minor success with splicing water molecules and generating a low grade electrical power plant, enough to provide basic power for 65% of the home owners in America. But, here at NASA, we think we can do better. Under my supervision, we've had a team of scientists examining and experimenting with the concept of black fusion to solve our energy needs. Over the last couple of days, we've had some exciting developments that I'd like to announce."

With that, the screen behind him threw up a graph showing a Time Line of events. Arrows and lines highlighted key points in time giving the reports a visual indication of timing of events.

"This graph documents the power output of our BH1 device and as you can see at precisely 6:00 am this morning, we were able to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity fairly consistently from the BH1 fusion reactor for about 69 seconds and then the power doubled after we introduced a second compound called unobtanium, as indicated by this point in the graph. We predicted, would quadruple the output, and were pleasantly surprised when we exceeded that expectation by a factor of 10. " John pulled out a green laser pointer and pointed it at the second spike. " And about 2 minutes later, we saw the resulting burst of energy that we expected. "

John turned back to the press and then concluded with " I am very excited about these results and I believe that I can say conclusively that our days of driving hybrids are over. ".

The room suddenly exploded with.. gasps and a few "frell me's" . All the reporters shot their hands up as if they all wanted to be the first question.


The guy next to me, commented out loud.. "My god.. have they really solved the problem?"

The guy next to him clambered to get on his cell phone.. "I think so Joe. "

Ben stepped back up to the podium, and said "We have time for questions now.."

Ben scanned the room and randomly choose the reporter from the New York Times. " Ted.. your question please."

" Thank you, John, my question is "can you explain in layman's terms what this black fusion is? And to followup on that question, what kind of mechanism does this type of fusion use? "

John looked overly pleased as he started to rattle off the answer to this question. " It's the process under which we compress and excite an atom to a state of matter that it is in motion, but not moving. We discovered it quite by accident while doing some experiments on some ordinary iron molecules. Basically, when the atom enters this state, it excites the particles next to it to be in a similar state. Kind of like making a solid into a liquid. This generates a new kind of matter which throws off radiation which we can use to generate electrical current. "

Ted wrote down.. "thank you, and the second part?"

John nodded. "And the second part of your question was... oh right.. what kind of mechanism, it's kind of a hybrid of chemical and biological reaction. Some matter needs to fuse with the material temporarily in order for the radiation burst to be generated."

Ted sat down and continued to write on his tablet. "Thank you John."

Ben looked around the room.. "Shirley.."

Shirley jumped to her feed and spoke like an excited school girl at a rock concert.." Shirley Withers, from the Oracle Chronicle, my question is "are there any side effects. to this chemical reaction?"

John nodded. "There is a small residual compound that is a result of the reaction, we are in the process of studying it now. "

Shirley giggled.. " What kind of compound?"

John replied. " We aren't sure, we know that it has strong attractive magnetic properties to just about anything that gets near it. We believe we can use this compound to provide artificial gravity in space. We have to study it and determine what the properties of this new compound are."

As Ben started looking around the room for the next question, A man in a white lab coat burst in the room and ran up to the podium and whispered into John's ear. John looked startled.."I'm a bit busy.. " John said, not realizing the microphone was on..

The man in the lab coat shook his head. and whispered something else in John's ear.

"What?! " John exclaimed still speaking loud enough for the microphone to pick up. "what do you mean irreversible?"

The room suddenly shook as if an earthquake was happening.

The man in the lab coat turned and ran out of the room.. John looked worriedly at the crowd of reporters and suddenly realized he needed to be somewhere else. "I'm sorry.. " John said turning a pale shade of white. "I've got a matter I must attend to."

With that, John turned and walked briskly out the door after the man with the lab coat.

Ben looking startled.. turned to the crowd and said, "I think our press conference is over." and turned to try and get out of the room.

Reporters rushed up to him and started asking him questions.. "what did he mean irreversible? ", "Does this mean something went wrong with the experiment?"

All Ben could answer was.. "No comment.." as he pushed his way towards the back door. "I'm sorry.. I cannot comment at this time.."

I'm away from my computer at the moment. So I can't post the poll in an entry now.. I'll do it when I get home later.

But. At the moment I'm near the bottom. So, if you can vote for me.. I'd appreciate it. 

Thanks.

Posted via LJ for WebOS.

Jen stared at me in disbelief.

"Take Heart? Take HEART? That's your advice to me?", she screamed.

She was angry with me and I couldn't say I blamed her. After all, she just spent the last half hour pouring out her heart to me and crying on my shoulder. And when she finally asked the inevitable question, my reply was "Take Heart".

My instincts told me that if I said anything at this moment that my picture would be on the next milk carton, so I just silently looked down and let her sift through her thoughts.

"How can I 'take heart' in any of this.. this mess?" she looked directly at me. "I just lost everything. My job... my boyfriend... my home..."

Her voice faded and hesitated as she fought back tears. Hearing her own voice confess the reality of the situation, only made the experience more real and more painful.

I slowly reached over and took her hand and then I looked into her eyes hoping to find something other than the pain that existed in her heart. I wanted to take that pain and find that sparkle in her eye that I knew was buried deep down in her soul.

"I think.. that he's a fool for not knowing how much you love him. " I said softly. I knew that wasn't enough to make her feel better, but it was a good starting point. " And honestly.. you deserve much better. "

I wasn't sure how much of that she would believe, but I figured that I should start with the truth of how I viewed the situation. When someone is at this point in their lives, lying to them, no matter how well intentioned, always does more harm than good.

She looked at me, searching for some underlying message behind what I just said. "Really?"

"Yes."

"But John.. "

"John wouldn't know what's good for him, even if it walked up and slapped him in the face. He's an idiot."

She chuckled at this, pausing for a moment and allowing herself to collect her thoughts.

"Careful now.. " I said to interrupt her thoughts.

"I was just thinking.."

"I know.. I'm just cautioning you to be careful of what you think. After all, 'What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.' "

She just raised her eyebrow at me and let me continue.

"Look, I know you feel like you failed. Like you did something wrong. That you feel like you have to figure out what went wrong. And I completely understand. I've failed too. Whenever something bad happens to me, I analyze it.. i break down the situations and try and figure out what went wrong..but what I'm learning about life is that the best thing to do is to 'Take heart'. "

"And why is 'Taking heart' so important?" she said skeptically.

"Because.. well, I'm still working that out myself, but I think it's like that saying, 'when God shuts a door, he opens a window.' It's the process of evaluating the place where you are at in life, learning as much as you can about the situation, but looking out for that one bright spot in the whole situation. Sometimes it's very hard to find a positive.. "

"No kidding.. " she said while giving me hard punch on the shoulder.

"Ouch! what was that for?"

"That's for the crummy advice.. 'Take heart.' What in the world were you thinking?"

"I guess I wasn't." I laughed.

As i rubbed my arm, I knew that things were going to work out for her.

My name is sircaliban. I participated in LJ idols a few seasons ago, as some of you might remember. And here I am, in 2011, throwing my hat back into the ring.

I'm a 40 year old married man with 2 kids who find ways to keep me busy in my 'spare' time. I'm a computer geek and my job keeps me in front of the computer for at least 40 hours a week. I try and balance my life by being active and having fun when I'm not at work.


I look forward to the challenge of writing in this competition and hope that you enjoy what I write.

Cal

Star Wars comes to mind, but only because it introduced so many people into science fiction. However, I don't think it's the 'best' anymore.

The second movie that came to my mind was 'The Matrix'. I find some of the scenes in that movie amazing. But to me, I don't think that it's the best.. cause I feel I would get bored with it after a while.. and I don't think it really can pass 'the test of time'.

I think for me, I'll have to say the best science fiction movie is "The Fifth Element".

I feel I have to mention at least the Star Trek movies, which always challenge us to be better.. and Back to the Future.. my favorite time traveling trilogy.

I've now got the new LiveJournal Messenger. My Windows Live ID is sircaliban@livejournal.com. Sign up now and we can chat!

This is hilarious...

I have to thank ladyozma  for this!

This is how I do the monthly comment stats. I hope you find this useful. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

( How to do monthly comment stats behind the cut.Collapse )

I think it's pretty cool. :)

http://zoomquilt2.madmindworx.com/zoomquilt2.swf

I cut some friends off of here today.

Mostly, the friends were people who haven't posted in a while.. or journals that appear to not being used anymore.

If I cut you.. and you still want to read my journal.. comment here and let me know that you want to stay. Stop by and say hi.. and let me know what's up.

what is everyone doing this weekend?

I have known lbkwee1 since High School. She by far has known me the longest. We recently reconnected and I personally think my friendship with her is stronger now then it was then.

adamdray has known me since we went to Kent State together. I also met the talented rvpkim as well. Both of them have been very good friends.

wildermis and a2l have been friends on my lj the longest. they've been with me since I started my journey here on lj. I knew them from the advice group on yahoo that I have run for the last 10 years and they've been with me here on lj since I started this journal.

I look back at my first entries here and realize I have changed so much since I've arrived here. There are friends that have come and gone during this journey. At this point, given what I know now.. I look forward to the challenges and triumphs of what lies in the future. Not just mine... but my friends as well.