The Blog Less Traveled

A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon.

Four worms were placed into four separate jars.

The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.

At the conclusion of the sermon, the Minister reported the following results:

The first worm in alcohol – Dead
The second worm in cigarette smoke – Dead
The third worm in chocolate syrup – Dead
The fourth worm in good clean soil – Alive

So the Minister asked the congregation, “What can you learn from this demonstration?”

Maxine, who was sitting in the back, quickly raised her hand and said,

“As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!”

That pretty much ended the service.

If you choose to believe all the newspaper headlines and stories on TV, we’re in quite a predicament. Most of the news is pretty dire and disheartening – bank failures, auto bailouts, security fraud, etc. Don’t get me wrong. People are suffering. There are definitely some problems out there in the economy and world in general, but news organizations seem preoccupied with only bringing you the worst that the world has to offer. If you just look around a little, it’s not too hard to find the good out there. With that idea in mind, I thought I’d share some of the things that I’m thankful for.

Family – consider yourself very fortunate if you have family members that you love and want to be with. There are a lot of families out there that don’t even want to be together and that is sad.

Friends – I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, so I can’t say I have a ton of friends. However, the ones that I do have, I appreciate very much.

Health – this one’s a biggy for me. If you’re in generally good health, consider yourself very lucky. There are so many people out there that would give anything to have a healthy and pain free body. With the exception of the occasional back problem, I’ve been very fortunate. Knock on wood!

House – a roof over my head and a warm bed at night.

Cheap Gas – a few months ago, people would have been happy to have $3/gallon gas. Now it’s less than $1.50/gallon. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but it sure is nice to fill up the car for less than $20.

Employment Rate – The national employment rate is over 93%. It sounds a lot better than hearing the unemployment rate rose to 6.7%, doesn’t it?

So there you have it. I’m sure if you look around, you’ll find there are many things that you can be thankful for. Have a very Merry Christmas and a super New Year.

An old farmer went to town to see a movie. The ticket agent asked, “Sir, what’s that on your shoulder?”

The old farmer said, “That’s my pet rooster Chucky. Wherever I go, Chucky goes.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the ticket agent. “We can’t allow animals in the theater.”

The old farmer went around the corner and stuffed the bird down his pants. He returned to the booth, bought a ticket and entered the theater. He sat down next to two old widows named Mildred and Marge.

The movie started and the rooster began to squirm. The old farmer unzipped his pants so Chucky could stick his head out and watch the movie.

“Marge,” whispered Mildred.

“What?” said Marge.

“I think the guy next to me is a pervert.”

“What makes you think so?” asked Marge.

“He unzipped his pants and he has his thing out,” whispered Mildred.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” said Marge. “At our age we’ve seen ‘em all.”

“I thought so,” said Mildred, “but this one’s eating my popcorn!”

I thought I’d do a little write-up on the Apple TV. I’ve shown the unit to several people over the last year and most never knew it existed or knew very little about it. For those not familiar with it, the Apple TV is a media entertainment center made by Apple, Inc. It’s essentially a compact computer with no screen or keyboard. You connect the unit to your widescreen TV via HDMI or Component Video connections. The unit is quite compact at about 7.5” in width/length and about 1” high. You’ll need a broadband Internet connection, a wired or wireless network connection and an iTunes account from Apple. To take full advantage of all features, you really need to install iTunes on one of your computers. The unit can work with Apple or Windows computers.

The unit provides two methods of playing media files on your TV. You can stream them directly off your computer or transfer them first to the Apple TV and then play them. Either way works fine unless you have a marginal wireless network in which case streaming some video files may get somewhat choppy at times. In addition to letting you view all the photos in your iPhoto library or music/video/podcast files in iTunes, you can rent or purchase pretty much any movie DVD. Also, you can rent most TV shows in case you miss an episode. The unit also lets you connect to YouTube and watch anything available on that site. The quality of most YouTube videos isn’t that great but it’s nice to be able to watch it on the widescreen, nonetheless.

The other day, I hacked the Apple TV and installed Boxee software on it. This is alpha software that isn’t officially supported by Apple. Boxee is a media management software application with a user-friendly interface that can run under Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc. The really cool thing about Boxee is that it lets you connect to the Internet and get access to dozens of websites that have free movies and TV shows. You can connect to CBS.com and Hulu.com (NBC and Fox) and get access to all their current and past TV shows. Instead of paying to watch a past TV show on iTunes, you can get it for free, legally. If you want to see old TV series classics like Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel, etc., it’s all there for free. There are also thousands of free classic movies available on other media websites that Boxee is set up to access.

I highly recommend the Apple TV to anyone that has a widescreen TV. The ease of displaying all your various media from one location will make you wonder how you got along without it. At only $229 for the 40GB version, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment.