I'm a PC

I installed Windows 7 over the weekend. I just did an in-place upgrade. I went from Vista Home Premium (32bit) to Windows 7 Home Premium (32bit). I know it’s always better to do a clean install of a new operating system but I really didn’t want to go through the iTunes mess I went through a year ago.

A clean install would have formatted my drive and I would have had to recover my extensive 324 gigabyte iTunes library from my backup drive (aka The Tank). For some reason only known to Steve Jobs iTunes makes the process of moving an iTunes library an inconsistent pain in the ___. I hate iTunes but I sold my soul... I’m an idiot and I could design a better interface than iTunes.

So, the in-place upgrade was my work-around.

The upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 worked great. No significant problems.

I really like the new taskbar. I really like the customizable libraries. All the Aero stuff looks great.



Microsoft, you done good.

My Family

Kill the little #$%@!!!

So, I’m putting on my pants this morning and I feel something fall down my leg. I thought it was a penny or something. Then it started moving on its own. I patted down my leg and then it stung me. I took off my pants and found a scorpion in my pants. Don’t worry I killed the little bastard (sorry to my sensitive readers).

One of my close friends had a scorpion in her house (Erin) and she sprayed it with bug spray. According to Google scorpions are immune to most bug sprays. In fact, they actually enjoy the stuff homeowners typically spray on them.

Scorpions, like roaches, get high off household bug sprays and they often will try to get sprayed. This is a common practice with teenage scorpions. They show themselves to a homeowner where the homeowner freaks out and gives them strong dose of bug spray. The scorpion will run around in a strange euphoria. The intoxicated scorpion's high is often quickly brought to an end by the heel of a Timberland boot. Unfortunately, for the hapless scorpion teenager they are not immune to the repeated pounding inflicted from a size 11 shoe.

Tagged: One Word Answers

USING ONLY ONE WORD

Not as easy as you might think! Now forward, change the answers to suit you and pass it on. It's really hard to only use one word answers and do not reuse the same word. Be sure to send back to the person you received it from!

Where is your cell phone? office
Your significant other? Mela
Your hair? combed
Your pet peeve? slowness
Your favorite team? Diamondback
Your favorite thing? family
Your dream last night? house
Your favorite drink? Diet-coke
Your dream/goal? fulfillment
What room are you in? office
Your hobby? photography
Your fear? cancer
Where do you want to be in 6 years? Pima
Where were you last night? home
Something that you aren't? patient
Muffins? Blueberry
Wish list item? AR-15
Last thing you did? farted
What are you wearing? clothes
TV? no
Your pets? children
Friends? wife
YOUR LIFE? Great!
Your mood? anxious
Missing someone? no
Your Car? Truck
Something hard about your work? clients
Kids? 2.5
Worst job you ever had? Stock-boy
Your favorite store? Cabela’s
Your favorite color? blue
When is the last time you cried? 2002
Who will resend this? nope
Where do you go to over and over? QT
Five people who email me regularly? Mela
My favorite place to eat? Rubio’s
Favorite place I'd like to be at right now? Beach

It's a BOY!

I can’t remember if I posted this on my blog or not. I know I put this on my facebook page... Mela is prego with #3.

Yesterday we found out we're having a boy!

Andrew is excited to have a younger brother. He wants to name him Lightening McQueen Mario after the movie and the game Mario Cart on the Wii. I think we may choose a different name...

Anyway, I am very excited to have another boy to be my buddy and to maintain the male majority in the Christiansen family.

Socialism

My wife’s sister’s husband forwarded this in an e-mail to me. I thought the story made a great point about where our country is headed.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Couldn't be any simpler than that.

Emperor Kyle

I need to be Emperor. Foolish people have often said I should run for some political office. I wouldn’t be happy having limited power. Unlimited power would be the only power I would be satisfied with. If I can’t be Emperor I will just have to settle with my average life.

If you think I would be a nice Emperor you would be wrong. I would be cruel and mean...

Things I would do as Emperor:

Christmas decorations or music may not be displayed or heard until after Thanksgiving. I was in a Hobby Lobby in July and they had 4 isles of Christmas crap! I went to the clerk and told them the following: “Listen, I’m going to go to Wal-Mart, buy a 5 gallon gas can. Then I’m going to the QT on Dysart and fill it up. Then I'm going to get a match from my 72 hour kit under the back seat in my truck. Then I’m going to come back and burn this whole store down if they still have the Christmas sh_t is still out.” They were not amused.

Oh, by the way, I’m just kidding... I may have thought about burning Hobby Lobby down but I didn’t really say I was going to do it or actually do it. Unfortunately, the isles of Christmas stuff remain.

Males may not wear pink shirts or ties. Here in the Land of Schwab we have TVs all over the place playing CNBS. I have a TV right above my desk so I’m stuck watching CNBS all day long. First of all, I want to humbly state that all the talking heads on CNBS are babbling idiots. I would rather watch Jerry Springer than anything on CNBS. This has nothing to do with my opinion about pink shirts and ties. However, when I see a babbling idiot on CNBS wearing a pink shirt or tie I want to pull the TV down on my head. It just pushes me over the edge.

Again... to my liberal friends who will use this blog as evidence against me, I’m just kidding! The nice people on CNBS, sorry CNBC, are idiots but I don’t plan on actually going over the edge when I see a pink tie.

Outlaw Pepsi. Pepsi just sucks. Nobody likes Pepsi. Like I’ve said in past blogs, Pepsi tastes like rust and Diet Pepsi tastes like used bath water.

I have several other things I’d like to do but my time is short. I will have to write about them at another time.

I'm a conservative

Everyone assumes I’m a Republican. I’m not. I consider myself a conservative. I don’t know if I would call myself a libertarian. When it comes to the political spectrum I find myself leaning more towards our libertarian friends than I do to the republican wimps in congress.

I honestly feel like the republicans sold out their conservative base. They have spent too much money, not secured our borders and have not fought for our rights. Government just keeps getting bigger and more corrupt. It doesn’t matter what party is in charge. The only difference is the speed in which they drive our country to socialism.

Below is a quote from Anthony G. Martin from the examiner.com site. These principles generally sum up my thoughts on government and what I mean when I say I’m a conservative.

10 basic conservative principles:

1. 'Government money' does not belong to government. It belongs to the taxpayers who worked hard for it, and who had funds deleted from their paychecks even before they got to see them.
2. The government that governs best governs LEAST.
3. Government normally does not solve problems. People do. Big government usually IS the problem.
4. Oppressive large governments are responsible for more murders of citizens than all of the wars in history.
5. The private sector is where the juice of society lies. There you will find ingenuity, creativity, and the creation of wealth--provided government gets out of the way.
6. Government social programs reward pathological dependency. True adults, unless hindered by debilitating physical impairment, seek independent living as free persons who are not stuck in an infantile dependency on the government nanny.
7. The one role of government mandated by the U.S. Constitution is to provide for the national defense.
8. Human rights are not granted by government. They are inherent and automatic. We are 'endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.' Government can only choose to recognize and protect those inherent rights.
9. The right to self-defense, as encapsulated in the 2nd Amendment, is the key to all of the other rights described in the Bill of Rights. Free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and a free press are secured and kept secure by an armed citizenry.
10. Our form of government is NOT a 'pure democracy' or 'majority rule.' In a Constitutional Republic such as ours, the will of the majority is tempered and limited by the rights of the minority, which are always intact and unalienable regardless of the 'will of the majority.'

Oh, by the way, THE GREEN MOVEMENT IS A SCAM!!

Swim Lessons

Our kids had swim lessons this summer. It was kind of scary and exciting. I was able to sneak away from work the other day and watch my kids swim. Andrew and Jaedyn did such a good job!

The swim lessons lasted for a week and a half. At the end of the lessons they had a graduation. All the kids got trophies.

Movies This Year

• Okay... let me just say that Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost was dumb dumb dumb. 93 minutes of my life I will never get back. I now have to make up for this stupid movie by going to 3 chick flicks in the row.
  
• Star Trek is one of the best movies this year - it changed my life.
• I can't wait for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
• I haven't seen Terminator Salvation yet. I will probably just rent that one.
• The Watchmen (yes I went and saw it - I'm sorry!) was kinda dumb but kinda good. If you can get past the naked blue man junk it's not that bad of a movie.
  
• Knowing was okay. Nicolas Cage is not my favorite actor. His best movie was Raising Arizona. Everything went downhill after that.
• Race to Witch Mountain was a pretty good Disney movie. Good Disney movies are rare. I don't consider Pixar movies part of Disney.
  
• Up was great! The kids loved it. It wasn't the best Pixar of all times (The Incredibles) but it was good.
• We rented Taken. I liked all the violence and killin'.
  
• Monsters Vs. Aliens could have been better but it got long and I think the kids got bored.
• Wolverine was awesome but not as awesome as Star Trek (Star Trek changed my life!)
• We haven't seen Angles and Demons. We should have seen that instead of wasting our lives watching Land of the Lost.
• We haven't seen Night at the Museum yet
• We haven't seen Transformers yet

Random

Is it just me or does Office 2007 just suck? I went from Office 2003 to 2007 recently. Oh my gosh! I went from being an Excel/Word/PowerPoint guru to being an idiot. What was Microsoft thinking?

Oh well... I have a feeling in the near future I won't be paying for any software. I will be running Ubuntu as my primary OS and OpenOffice. Everything else will run through Firefox.

I've been playing with Windows 7 for a few months and I really like it. I hope Microsoft doesn't do any stupid pricing thing that will prohibit people from upgrading from Vista. They really need to sell home site licenses so I can install 7 on any computer in the house. I would pay for something like that...

On another note: The Bishop was out of town and I was volunteered to do a Bishop's Fireside on Sunday night. I really love the youth of our Ward. They are all amazing. I am really thankful they were nice enough to listen to my ramblings on Sunday about the importance of Education.

The youth in the Palo Verde Ward are awesome. The youth leadership are amazing.

Andrew

Today is Andrew’s 5th birthday. This blog will be rambling about my Sweet Boy.

Time flies when you have a boy like Andrew. In my blog today I’m going to take a few minutes to talk about my boy, Andrew. Mela and I are so privileged to have such a choice child.

Andrew has boundless energy. He does not slow down for anyone or anything. He doesn’t even slow down to eat. Eating is a distraction for him. He would rather be playing with his trains or in the back yard than eating. Would that be a nice attribute to have? I wish eating was a distraction to me rather than an attraction.

Andrew loves going to Pima where he can explore and play until he just goes to sleep. Mela and I timed him one day in Pima. He woke up at about 7:30 and he played until 11:30 that night. He was full of energy the entire day. Drew is simply amazing! According to my mom the best adjective that describes Andrew is “exuberant”.

I love it when I come home from work and Andrew, with the aid of his sister, will try to scare me. I will me standing in the kitchen when I hear him and Jaedyn coming down the stairs whispering “let’s scare daddy...” I always act scared. This kind of stuff never gets old.

Andrew is a good little helper. He will help me mow the lawn, wash the trucks and fix the bikes. He doesn’t quit and he will stay with me until the job is done. I have pictures of him helping me push the lawnmower all over the lawn.

Andrew has such a sweet little personality. I love hearing him pray. He will ask Heavenly Father to bless Baby (Jaedyn), mommy & daddy, Olivia, Floppsy (his stuffed giraffe) and his trains. Often he will ask Heavenly Father to give Jesus a hug and a kiss. I am very confident our Savior get’s His hugs and kisses regularly from our Father in Heaven.

We have watched the movie Cars at least a 1000 times. It is Andrew’s favorite movie. If you asked him what he wants to watch it will almost always be Cars. He loves Thomas the Train and Speed Racer also. For the longest time I thought Andrew had very predicable viewing tastes but lately he is into The Biggest Loser and some HGTV show called For Your Home. At least he’s not into Days! Ironically, Jaedyn is my little Sci-Fi fan. She is into Battlestar Galactica Star Wars and Star Trek.

One of Andrew’s most amazing gifts is his ability to forgive. I am so glad my boy forgives his dad when I lose my patience. With Andrew he will get mad or upset and then a minute later it is gone like it never happened. I wish I could be that way.

I love my boy with all my heart.