The webeldotnet Vault
This vault contains the 1,036 earliest webeldotnet posts from February 2002 to April 2006 (some images and comments are gone forever).
Thursday, February 28, 2002 at 11:41 AM
Brought to you by the Letter People
On the television show Sesame Street, one man (Caroll Spinney) plays Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. From within the 8' 2" yellow feathered suit, Spinney watches a small monitor with the same view as the audience. He operates Big Bird's head with one hand while working Big Bird's hand with his other. When Oscar and Big Bird are in the same scene, Spinney speaks for both Muppets, while another puppeteer operates Oscar.
Tuesday, February 26, 2002 at 10:34 PM
A Pristine Clean
i flossed tonight for the first time in a long time. and it was good.
don't get me wrong ... i'm not too unhygenic (yes, it's a word ... now). i brush at least twice a day (in the shower in the morning and before bed, if not after meals too), and i even occasionally take a swig of mouthwash. but flossing has always been a little overboard ... reserved for old men in bathrobes and my cousin jessica (in no particular order). tonight, however, was different. tonight i was treating myself.
you see, on my way home from our last basketball practice ever, i decided to splurge. i've had a rough week, running here and there doing everything for everybody. so when i made a stop at kroger's to pick up some groceries, i went all-out. i bought two 99 cent boxes of doughnuts, some fruity pebbles (well, the bagged generic version at least), and even passed up my usual cheapo cardboard frozen pizza for the deluxe edition ... the rising-dough supreme edition with sauce-in-the-crust. sure, i (for some odd reason) still purchased the generic version of homestyle orange juice, but in general i was free-flowing with the benjamins*. yes, tonight i was living the high-life.
after my scrumptious feast, i headed upstairs for another rare treat ... i laid down on my bed and fell half asleep. that's right ... i didn't go to bed for the night, i just went prostrate, street clothes and all, and slumbered a bit. there's nothing as slothful as falling on your bed with a full stomach and no intention of staying awake or falling asleep. so i dozed.
when i awoke, an incredible 17 minutes later, i was seized with the urge to get ready for bed ... a full 2 hours earlier than normal. that's right, i was gonna beat the sheep to the proverbial fence, hurdling my own way into mr. sandman's backyard. just call me Captain Ambitious**. so i went into the bathroom, unsuckled my thirsty contacts from my eyeballs, and washed my formerly acne-laden face with noxema original cleansing lotion. oh, the sensation.
then came the kicker. i saw my old trusty vial of dental floss staring meekly up at me with those big puppydog eyes***, and couldn't resist. sure, the mint flavor had left years ago, but i knew that the real gusto that floss carried was in its cleaning power ... so i went full-throttle, cleaning between every pair of teeth. and although my gums bled like mount saint helens, it felt good, especially when baptised with some colgate tartar control with baking soda and peroxide (fresh mint flavor, of course).
so good, in fact, that i had to take a detour just to write this entry. ah, this is the high life. good night ... my trusty pillow and sleeping bag**** await.
-----------------------
* a ghetto term for cash
** or, alternatively, you can just call me lance.
*** ok, it didn't really have eyes. you're so literal.
**** yes, i am infatuated with my trusty pillow and sleeping bag*****.
***** go ahead, have your laugh. just don't forget us little people.
Monday, February 25, 2002 at 4:55 PM
We All Cuss for Asparagus
aw man, i hate that. i just had to lecture 3 seventh graders about swearing. they're really good kids, and they were just trying to be funny, but they just really didn't understand what they were doing.
"mr. webel, we didn't cuss ... we only said '_ _ _ _'!"
i tried to explain to them that it's not the words they used, but their intention for using them. every word, in reality, is just a combination of letters, a symbol used to communicate a meaning. it's the meaning behind the actual vocabulary that's important. i could say the word "blue" as a four-letter-swear, if i wanted to (using my intonation, body language, and facial expressions). but these guys just thought it was all harmless, as long as they didn't use the infamous 7 dirty words.
James 5:12 says, "Above all, my brothers, do not swear--not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned." our american world is so full of embellished speech ... of people whose word is not good enough so they need to try to impress people by swearing. but we're called to something higher than that ... we are to be men and women of character. when i say something i shouldn't need to cuss to get someone's attention or make what i say memorable. that's what character is there for. but how do you explain that to a seventh grade boy?
for real, how can i?
Windoze
this is a picture of an actual poster in the hallway in my school. i don't think i need to say too much to explain this one ... but let me point something out. notice the menu that is being pulled down on the upper-left side of the poster. notice the font ... that font is Chicago (and yeah, it's also the font used in the title of the poster). Chicago is only used on the Macintosh (it used to be the default font, back before OS9 and OSX).in other words, this Bill Gates poster, where he's telling kids to read, was obviously made on a Mac and endorses the operating system directly. i love it. does this guy (or any of his thousands of subworkers) have an original creative bone in his entire body? at least he seems embarassed ... his skin tone matches the color of this page ...
Sunday, February 24, 2002 at 6:46 PM
How 2 Right
i just read this article on the web entitled Write a Better Weblog, by Dennis Mahoney. i don't quite know who this dennis character is, but i'm going to call him Big D (note the capitalization ... we'll get to that later).
his article really made me realize something ... that there are people out there actually trying to make a name for themselves, trying to "publish" stuff, through the web. Big D says that "Now[adays], you�re lucky to get a hundred regulars, even if your work is excellent.". a hundred regulars? that would be hilariously fun! but i never really expected anyone to visit this site, except for the 3 or 4 people who are actually demented enough to care about what i'm thinking about! it takes time and effort (or perhaps just a hint of boredom or procrastination) to want to visit a website like this regularly. but i guess it's comforting to know that i could become famous through this weblog.
hey, wait a second! did i just say that? did you really think that i thought i could become famous? or that that thought would even possibly be comforting to me? gotcha. hee hee hee. you know, they took the word "gullible" out of the dictionary ...
here's a quote (or, as truly grammatically-correct writers would say, a quotation): "Declarative sentences are good. Web readers demand pith." i agree. i can be assertive. i can take a stand on issues, declare what is absotivley posolutely the truth. check this out:
jello is good.
need i say more? i think i need. the other thing Big D got me thinking about is capitalization. i've long been criticized by pretty much everyone (especially by "Professionals") for my tendency to shrink away from capitalizaion. when i'm just being me, being good old lance, i usually want to express things in a slightly casual way. some of it might be manufactured humility and some of it might be a knee-jerk reaction. i'm not trying to shove anyone in your face, and i'm a pretty casual guy (not a casual pretty guy, that's Leonardo DiCaprio). plus, lower-case usually looks better, even if it doesn't communicate the message as clearly. here's a declaritive sentence for you ... PEOPLE WHO WRITE IN ALL-CAPS SHOULD BE SHOT. they need to chill out. they need to walk it off. serif fonts (the ones like Times New Roman, with little fancy lines on the edges of the letters) kinda go into this same category. they're simpler, humbler, and cleaner. i'd like to be that way. so i think i'll continue to write that way.
if you get a job application from me in all lower-case, i really hope you'll want to meet me to discover why. otherwise i probably wouldn't enjoy working with you (and vice-versa) anyways! if you see a capital letter in my writing (or even an all-caps word), you can usually be sure that i intentionally put it there (and it might just make you wonder why). for instance, i always capitalize Jesus' name, even in the most casual of settings ... i wonder why? i don't think it's a typo ...
anyways, to wrap up this rather long entry, let me just say that i've oft been told that i'm a good writer (of course it's true, i just used the word "oft"!). i guess i have a knack for putting words together in the "right" way, for communicating messages in a clear and interesting fashion. but i'm perfectly willing to produce mediocrity for the sake of just being myself. and who knows, perhaps i'll get a few hundred readers a day from that. :)
Friday, February 22, 2002 at 3:33 PM
Bungee Madness
there's something insanely great about stopping in the middle of something and feeling the uncanny urge to blurt out, "We're getting PAID for this?!" oh yeah ... getting on a giant inflatable apparatus and tying a kid to a long bungee cord then telling him to run and jump as high as he can. you can't beat it. although tomorrow inflation will once again cause havok ... i'm heading up to the preble county fairgrounds, where we (pleasant vineyard) are doing a youth retreat for middle school kids ... and we're renting out an inflatable jousting arena. junior-highers on a large inflated structure weilding oversized Q-tips! yee-ha!
Your Title Here
i decided to try adding titles to my posts. it looks a little better and more organized. hmm ... i don't know ...
in general, i'm having second thoughts about this whole red/pink design thing. something's drastically missing. on top of that, it just looks kinda 2D. it's the start of something, but i know there's something i should be going for that's better ... cleaner ... something that draws you in.
you know, it's fun to get back into the whole web design thing. i like this. it's neat to be to the point where i understand what i'm doing enough to be able to conceptualize something in my brain and actually know how to make that work on the web. now i just need to work on the conceptualizing a little more. hmm ...
Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 10:14 PM
Mmmbop
oh wow. on the way home from school today, i decided to stop at microcenter (a computer store) in hopes that there might be a new imac there on display. and boy, was there an imac on display. this was the first time i'd ever seen or actually touched one ... and i almost got kicked out for drooling all over the thing. i seriously thought they'd have me arrested for loitering or trespassing or something as i inspected every inch of the thing.
i know, that sounds lame, but this machine is literally a work of art. the entrails of the machine are all housed in a semi-spherical base the size of a half basketball. the screen, a bright 15' lcd (with a viewing area as big as normal 17" crt displays), hovers weightlessly above the base and moves anywhere you want at the touch of a finger. oh, yeah. and inside that whole thing is a blazing G4 and a superdrive, which reads and rips cd's and dvd's (yes, you can burn your own dvd's with it for $5 per disc).i will concede a couple of design things, now that i've seen it up close. i don't like the metallic apple logo (too shiney and flat, they should've gone with brushed metal as the theme) and the keys on the keyboard are too opaque and white (stick with transparent). at first, it took me awhile to adjust to the operating system (i've never used osX, the unix-based standard for macs now, before), but i could tell that it would simplify (and make seamless) the functionality and day-to-day operation of the machine in general. and i'm still uncertain whether or not i'd go desktop or simply spring for the portable version ...
all that being said, i'm nowhere near being in the market for a new computer (i haven't owned one for 4 years now). hey, i've got 30ish at my disposal at work. but i admire apple's insistance on innovating and pushing the envelope. we should be using computers, not computers using us (as i've discovered most pc's actually do). sure, it may take awhile before we get over the paradigm of mouse/keyboard-driven desktop/windows-based computing and get more lifelike and organic, but i have no doubt that apple will be the one to pioneer it (in about 2010, i predict). will we be able to handle it?
enough garbledy gook. time to go cook some brownies. :)
Wednesday, February 20, 2002 at 9:19 PM
And We Have Thrift-off!
i'm so excited! i just got back from a quality shopping experience ... the salvation army thrift store on route 4 is having a sale on winter clothing ... i got 5 quality sweaters for $.25 each and a top-of-the-line overcoat (brand new, with liner) for $1. not too shabby ... it cracks me up that people probably spent over $300 on these clothes new and i just got them all for $2.37 (including tax). and they're softer now than when they were new (and i don't have to worry about them shrinking in the dryer). bring it!
Bummer.
hmm ... i don't know what happenned with that last post, but i seem to be unable to fix it ... oh well, i'll continue here ...
i'll be going to the Florida Educational Technology Convention, an in-your-face and out-your-external-audiotory-meatus (that's your ear canal) barrage of technological ideas and innoventions. it lasts for three days (but i'm stretching it to eight) and looks to be a really awesome experience. i'll be staying in the luxurious international drive days inn ($39) and travelling in style on my snifty rollerblades (very free). but i'm quite unfamiliar with the area, and would love to get any other ideas about what to do or how to make the most of my vacation. have any ideas? know where to get any?
Monday, February 18, 2002 at 11:35 PM
one of the hardest things about being a teacher (perhaps the single hardest thing for me personally) is coming up with good lesson plans. sometimes i know what the objectives for classtime are, what the students really need to learn, but it is so incredibly hard to come up with a creative, fun, and effective way of reaching that objective in 50 minutes of class time.
tonight i was struggling to try to come up with a new way of working on typing tomorrow in my classes ... i was just searching through the internet, and was inspired by an awesome idea. Musical Computers. similar to musical chairs, i'm going to have music playing in the background (something the kiddy's will like, like one of those rock and roller bands or something) and a prompt on each screen, then give the kids a certain amount of time (until the music stops) to add to the story they're working on. when the music stops, they'll switch computers and begin to work on that story. by the end of class time, we'll have 25-30 very interesting stories (remember, this is middle school), 50 minutes of typing experience, and the chance to really work individually with the students on their typing skills without them even knowing it. bring it on! i'll let you know how this turns out as the week progresses.
what an interesting day. presidents' day, a day where we celebrate the birthdays of two randomly chosen presidents of the united states. kinda silly in concept, but absolutely brilliant in effectiveness. what better way to get us everyday americans to truly appreciate our presidents than by giving america the day off, giving us an extra sabbath-rest! i must say, i do love and respect good old A Blinkin and company.
today i had the pleasure of hanging out with annie whaley all day. she's an old college friend who's still a junior at miami. it was a leisurely day, we just ran a whole bunch of errands. we washed my sleeping bag at a laundrimat, looked at eyeglasses, had lunch at jimmy john's, went to the closed post office, visited kara cutshall (where we watched trading spaces and washed her computer monitor), drove around oxford, listened to music, bought a chicken dinner at thriftway, rented a movie (hearts in atlantis), ate generic cocoa puffs, and generally did a lot of nothing.
it became increasingly obvious as the day went on that i am simply a boring host. there weren't too many interesting things to do, and the simple fact that i usually spend so much of my spare time alone really made it a little awkward to just hang out with somebody. but as the hours progressed, i began to notice something really special. annie didn't care! she seemed to somehow tolerate me and my critical humor, my bland sense of adventure and generally old post-college lifepace. in fact, she seemed to enjoy being around me, a fact that still bewilders me a little. how special that is ... to have a friend who just likes you because you're you, not because you can easily figure out commercial washers or pick out movies or give her lifelong memories every moment of the day (good thing, eh?). it was nice simply to be with annie today, to share a few hours of normalcy and inactivity. i have a feeling that those are the things that will, in the long haul, be memorable anyway.
Tuesday, February 12, 2002 at 9:29 PM
i borrowed a well-liked cd from the library yesterday (we'll call it "Bob"), and was enjoying it immensely while driving down I-275 in louie, when i noticed a very disturbing song title on the jacket ... "Untitled."
for some reason, it really irked me. how bogus! of course the song is titled ... the title is "Untitled"! i think it should be illegal to ever use that word with a capital letter, unless if you're Art Kaufman or Wired Magazine (both of whom have perfected real-life dramatic irony) and your intention is be blantantly hypocritical. sure, it's ok to describe something (in third-person) that doesn't actually have a title as being untitled, but to title something like that is nothing short of lame.
Monday, February 11, 2002 at 8:30 AM
i have rodents.
yes, you read that right. there are small, presumably furry, creatures lingering about and causing havok in my office. let me list the evidence, which has been growing stronger:
first, i found one of my favorite sweatshirts (the massive miami one) with a fist-sized hole in the front and a frayed sleeve. at first, i suspected mischevious junior highers (sorry, guys). but then the evidence grew ... next, i found spiraleyeguy, the doll that my friend amber sewed for me (i use him has a hall pass) with missing braids. a modern day sampson, spiraleyeguy's strength has never quite been the same. then i discovered that tim (mr. clark), whose office is next to mine, has also found a sweatshirt with a hole in it. he too suspected students. after that came the most incriminating evidence. another stuffed animal i had in the office, a cat from pleasant vineyard, had his shirt literally eaten off of his back. craziness! along with this find, however, i found a whole bunch of little droppings, or poopies, scattered on my windowsill. i was wondering what kind of animal might actually eat fabric, but the answer was to come ... next, i remembered that there was a small hole in a fabric bag that i used to take stuff to school. i went and found the bag, and low and behold (what exactly does that saying mean?) the hole is now massive (i should call it a whole).
with the damage up to 2 sweatshirts, a bag, and two small stuffed creatures, tim and i both came into the office today and found that our food had been disturbed (my chocolate-covered raisins and his cereal bar). on top of that, his office smells like something has died there. hmm. an astute colleague pointed out that the tresspasser probably uses the fabric to build up its nest. which is a scary thought.
so i'm seriously considering calling ghostbusters. it literally is creepy. can you say R.O.U.S. (rodent of unusual size)? what should i do?
Sunday, February 10, 2002 at 9:10 PM
this morning i had quite an interesting church experience. a friend of mine, therese, regularly attends a traditional catholic latin mass, while i usually attend a very contemporary protestant church service. last night on the phone we decided to swap churches, to go to hers first then mine second.
st. gertrude the great's, the latin mass, was somewhat what i expected but still quite surprising to me. i had been to very traditional catholic services before, but i still didn't really understand everything that was going on. this wasn't merely because the whole thing was in latin (it's all greek to me) ... i simply couldn't follow everything that was happening. most of the action was taken by the priest, altar boys, and choir, and the rest of the congregation was "assisting", or basically being present while the mass took place. it was extremely solemn, in a good and needed way. there was so much time for reflection and prayer, for focus and perspective. i'd say more about it, but i'm very hesitant to without first learning more about what was actually being done and why (so i borrowed a book from therese about it). i'll probably say more later once i learn more.
next we went to the cincy vineyard, quite the polar opposite, for another unique service. this week was an all-worship (mostly music) service, with baptisms plopped right in the middle. it too was beautiful. the congregation participated so much more in the service, and there was a sense of joy and bubbliciousness that was so appropriate for the display of new life (baptism). these were really simple yet profound ... family members (fathers, wives) actually dunked the people being baptised, and there was such a jubilant spirit in the room, it brought tears to my eyes.
but it really got me thinking ... what do you think about the variation in sunday-morning worship? do you attend somewhere? what is it like?
Saturday, February 09, 2002 at 9:38 PM
oh, man. nothing makes me feel whiter than being part of a congregation (or audience) that claps on the downbeat to a gospel choir. i just had that horrifying experience ... it makes me want to shrivel up like a little white raisin.
brainwashed.
what a funny word. i was thinking about it this morning as i cut my hair. i've been called that before. mostly because of my faith (and indirectly because of the grace that's been given me). while at miami, i was very open, and in a sense public, about Christianity and Jesus. i loved confronting the avoidant masses with claims of Truth. academia seemed on the surface to be open and confrontational, while underneath that facade i found quite an ignorant and fleeting look into reality. they didn't like minds that had made up their minds.
so anyways, people knew me as a Christian, and threw me into that category in their minds, so when they thought about the Christian "masses" at miami, they clumped me in. perhaps it was the numbers that made us "brainwashed" ... perhaps it was the unusual claims of absolute Truth. perhaps it was just antiestablishment rhetoric ... whatever the case, i always took offense at the word. to be brainwashed was a negative thing, an insult and dig at my ability to think.
but think about it. usually it's positive to "wash" something, to clean it. we wash our cars, our clothes, our bodies, our animals, our finances, at least occassionally (i never can quite spell that word right). so why is it negative to wash our brains? in fact, i think that's a pretty good word to describe what has happened to my mind. it has been transformed. in two ways.
first, in my temporal choices. in glee club we sang a song called "got a mind to do right." an old black spiritual, it sung of the changed choices that a person makes when Jesus is in his life. how true. i want to make good choices, to live as a Christian, to serve others and understand the human soul.
more importantly, however, my mind has been transformed, changed. i now have Eternity living within me, something not of this world or time or space. not only can i think and choose on a temporal level, i can now understand (and seek to understand) what is not revealed by our 5 senses. my mind is not only clean, it is cleansed and filled.
so yeah, i'm brainwashed. and boy is it nice. :)
Friday, February 08, 2002 at 9:18 PM
oh, fyi, let me tell you about this drastically new version of webL. i somehow found myself going to webel.net for the first time in years (literally), and i was quite embarassed. that page was pretty useless and just plain ugly. not only that, but it still said that i was deep into college [and that couldn't be farther from the truth].
so i trashed the thing, just put up the first design that came into my mind. i thought more and more about function, about what this site could actually be used for, and realized that people would really only visit if they wanted to see the innards of my skull, or "what's up with me", as the popular saying goes. so what better way than a rambling weblog (or "blog"). i'm still figuring out how to work this completely (i can't quite get the comments thing to work), but i think it's going to be vastly better than the bland informational frameset that was once "the eye of the aardvark." what do you think (once i get the comment thing working, of course)?
welcome to the new webL. we'll see how this works ... but i think a glimpse into my mind can only be accomplished through little glimpses into little parts of my mind. like the medulla oblongata. compared to the cerebrum, that's most definately a little part of my mind. but when you glimpse at it, it's easy to see that my medulla oblongata looks very much like a stalk of celery. yeah.
top that, slim goodbody.
