Micah had a presentation today in his class. They have been learning about the planets, and Micah had to tell the class about the planet Mercury. This is him practicing with us last night...


The Planet Mercury from Chris Ediger on Vimeo.

So, we decide to finally B-sideite the bullet and get HD at the house - after a couple of years of waiting and right in time to catch the greatest time of the year, March Madness, in all it's glory.

Everything seemed fine until Thursday when the actual games began. All of a sudden we realized that we weren't getting any of the games in HD. None. After checking into things we realized what was happening. Because of the number of games going on, the local CBS affiliate decided to Multicast the game - works great if you have digital cable, which we don't. DirecTV has a solution as well - it's called "Mega March Madness" and it costs $69.

The good news is that now that a couple of days are gone, and the number of games on at the same time has gone down, CBS is broadcasting their HD signal some on their main channel. The only problem is that it doesn't consider the KU vs. UNLV game tonight to be worthy of broadcasting non-stop on it's main channel (guess there's not a large Kansas or Nevada fan base here).

Solution? How about make your own HD antenna out of wire clothes hangers & subvert the system. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, and a little home brew video via Metacafe ("Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna: Better Than Store Bought!"), we now are getting the CBS Multicast, including the KU game tonight, in sterling HD!

And yes, the antenna hides pretty nicely behind our TV unit. As the guy says in the video, "put it in the back where nobody can see it, its not the best looking thing in the world."

I still remember realizing that the Presidential Physical Fitness Award testing would be happening at my grade school. I wouldn't put it past myself that I faked sickness to try & miss those dreaded days. The humiliation of trying to do pull-ups in front of my peers still gives me the willies.

I thought about looking up the requirements and posting them here, but then realized that I still probably couldn't do the pull-ups required of an eight-year-old, so I decided against it.

Nearly five years, sometimes daily, sometimes monthly (or worse) - I love writing & blogging. Every once in awhile I have to do either a gut check (because of some kind of internal guilt about not doing it enough) or a reality check (because of some kind of outside event). The former happened again yesterday.

I really have no idea who reads/doesn't read this blog. Primarily I blog for myself - any other benefits are worthwhile, but not the real reason I do it. So, when I get a comment on a post it is a nice bonus for me. Friends of mine, family members, adding their two cents to my own thoughts, is something I really enjoy, even if I don't fish for it enough. Every once in awhile, though, I'll get a random comment from someone I don't know, about something I could care less about. Such happened yesterday.

Someone chose to comment on a four year old post - one that was really a quite personal, spiritual post for me at the time - and to add their own theological baggage into the mix. Sorry, not going there. I thought for a couple of minutes about sending my thoughts to him, but decided it wasn't worth the energy. I appreciate spiritual 'sparing' from people I know, love and respect, but could really care less to receive it from strangers who think they have to add their legalistic commentary to several-year old posts on the blogs of people they don't know.

I blog for a reflective outlet for myself
I blog to share the happenings of our family with friends & family
I blog to preserve memories
I blog to capture thoughts & ideas
I blog to hopefully inspire & challenge others
I don't blog to further a personal ego
I don't blog as a platform to debate

Okay, so I actually began writing this post yesterday morning shortly after March Madness began. Now it's Friday morning, I have the day off, and I am finally getting around to finish it. Thus is my life of late - especially in the blogging world. I have been blogging somewhat regularly since Emerie was born (read "Baby Emerie Arrives!" for proof) - that was just about 5 years ago. Hard to believe. There has been ebb & flow, mostly aligned with the natural ebb & flow of our lives. But it is something that still refreshes me and something I really crave to do more. Oh well.

Enjoying the tournament so far. Got to see the Jayhawks first round game thanks to CBS March Madness On Demand online. As I said earlier this week, I'm probably more pumped about this year's tournament than I have been in quite awhile. Case in point: I am officially a part of 9 pools this year! A few are big, nationwide pools (ESPN & Second Act's Facebook pool, & the CBS/Facebook brackets). A couple are from my recent past (LifeWay & Threads). And four are from my present - our annual Friends & Family pool, GiANT Impact, Catalyst & one extra on the side. Doing pretty well - just missed three picks yesterday. Of course, Micah is beating me - he only missed one :-)

Slept in this morning - something I haven't really been able to do in awhile. Our dog, Mercy, has been waking Josiah & I up almost every night for the past week for some strange reason. She decided to let us sleep last night, only to have Emerie wake me up needing something in the middle of the night. Oh well, so goes parenthood :-)

Here we go! I'm probably more stoked about March Madness this year than the last several - maybe because KU played incredible yesterday in an amazing Big 12 Championship against Texas. Who knows - all I know is that I'm ready for Thursday to get here!

We are once again hosting a March Madness pool for our family & friends - and you're invited!

Head over to MarchManiac.com & click on the "Friends & Family" pool link to begin!

I'm a Facebook fan. I've used it to keep up with out-of-town & out-of-state friends, re-connect with former schoolmates & keep current on what is happening in my 'social graph.' I'm even a fan of the Facebook Apps that were launched last year (who doesn't love a good game of Scrabulous?). The one thing that I'm not a fan of are the endless 'requests' that now flood my account from people who are a bit too Facebook-obsessed, in my opinion.

I think Facebook realized pretty early on this side-effect of their apps system & introduced the one feature that, for me, is hands-down the best feature available on this popular social app - "Block This Application."

The beauty of this little feature is that if I get tired of being hounded to become a Zombie, receive a Hug, or join a Mob Wars, I can quickly & easily opt out of receiving any future hounding from any one of those apps. Oh, wait... just blocked 5 more annoying apps :-)