An FYI and a question:
I’ve been hinting for some time that with my transition into professional counseling that this blog will be changing significantly as well. So I have a couple ideas of what is coming, but in short I feel a need to separate my more…professional posts from my personal ones. I have three ideas of how this might happen and I want your ideas:
1. Leave everything on one mo blog. Personal posts become password protected for friends and family, and all posts get sent to facebook for friends there to read.
2. Leave one mo blog for my professional posts, more personal stuff gets moved to facebook…that’s where I tend to be doing more of my social networking now anyway.
3. one mo blog stays a personal blog, and I begin blogging on matt-otto.com as a professional blog.
I do have a direction I’m leaning in for various reasons, but I’d like to hear ideas before deciding (including if any of you have ideas I haven’t thought of).
Thanks!
Random blog
I’m wrapping up my first week at the new job, and I love it.
I just had to share that, I want to be on to post more soon, but this is about all I can do right now.
I did also want to let you know that I’m looking out my office window at a lovely old Frederick neighborhood in the foreground. I the bacground I’m watching the clouds from the current storm system blowing by and touching the tops of the Catoctin mountains as they go.
I am amazed at the beauty of God’s creation.
Did I mention I love my new job.
Random
Ok, so I stole the headline from the great Peter Schmuck, so sue me.
This past week has been probably the most fun week of watching Orioles baseball I’ve had since the 1997 season, and I spent most of that season working at a Boy Scout camp and checking the box scores in the paper whenever I could. We’ve seen two rookie pitchers win their debut games, and another rookie hit a walk off 3 run homer in the 11th to win a game. Plus, Jenny and I took all the kids to the game on Monday, our first time going to the yard as a whole family, yes even Emma and Mia were there…and the O’s won. Now, the week gets punctuated by Matt Wieters debut tonight. For those who don’t know Matt Wieters is the #1 prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America, and is projected to be an allstar for many years to come. Don’t believe me, check out this website. My favorite fact: “Matt Wieters Is So Good That Jim Palmer Stopped Talking About Himself.” or maybe “Even Atheists Believe In Matt Wieters.”
Anyway, it’s an exciting day. The O’s are finally headed in the right direction after so many long years of losing. I’m considering going down to the yard for my 4th game already this season!
Now, what should I change the name of my fantasy baseball team, which up to this point has been called “Waiting for Wieters”.
Oh, one more thing: On Monday when we went to the game as I mentioned it was a dugout club game. It’s the first one we’ve gone to. We signed Zach and Cayla up for the club this year and we were not disappointed in our inaugural trip. The O’s really do those games up right with giveaways and games for the kids, cheap tickets for the adults, and a fun atmosphere with other families who love the O’s.
Random Sports
She has served us well for the past 4+ years. Grinding and brewing our coffee on an almost daily basis. She has kept me sane through late nights up with babies and grad school papers. Sure, she was not without her faults, the grinder started to get stuck in the coffee maker, making in insanely difficult to clean. However it was ultimately a slow leak that became water pouring out the back of the machine every time we made a pot that was her demise. Still, she was a good soldier, she served us well for more than half of our married life, and she will be missed.
Random coffee, humor
For my treatment of psychopathology class I’m doing a hypothetical case write-up abut gender identity disorder on Teena “Brandon Teena” Brandon using Boys Don’t Cry as my material for the write-up.
It got me thinking: I wonder how many of my more liberal readers would be upset knowing that being transgendered is considered a “sexual identity disorder”? On the other side, how many of my more conservative readers would be upset that homosexuality is no longer considered a disorder by the American Psychological Association?
I don’t mean this as flame bait, I’m really just curious.
Random Counseling
My sister is working on starting her own photography business. She’s really good. But don’t take my word for it, check out her new blog!
Random
I took some time out of my busy school schedule this past Wednesday night to give myself a distraction and fix my TV. I thought I’d share the results because I’m really proud of myself.
So, here’s the story, shortly after Christmas I got a new TV off of craigslist. It’s a 55 inch projection HDTV, and I got it for super cheap. Only problem is the picture wasn’t perfect. The blue was messed up, it was muted in places, and created a blue halo effect in other places as you can see from the picture on the right.
So I did some research and found out that Philips/Manavox projection TV’s have a problem with blue/green algae growing in the coolant in the blue and sometimes green picture tubes. This leads to a cloudy blue picture. So I opened up the back and checked out the picture coming from each of the three tubes to see if this was the issue. Check out the results:
As you can see, the blue was just a little cloudy. I got online and found a tutorial on how to drain the old coolant and put new, clean stuff in. It wasn’t an easy procedure. Actually, most of the tutorials I read said it was one of the hardest projection repairs to make, but I decided to give it the old college try anyway. After all, the worst thing that would happen is I’d screw up the TV and be out a couple hundred bucks. So I opened up the back again and after draining the old fluid I took apart the blue lense assembly (the one on the right, everything above the silver, metal part) cleaned the whole thing and put it back together.
Here’s the really cool picture. After I drained the fluid I got a this of the old fluid (on the left) next to the new fluid (on the right) All that orangish/brownish stuff is algae. Pretty cool huh, there was algae in our TV!
Anyway, bottom line a few hours and a quick trip to Wal-Mart later to buy a tool I was missing the TV is fixed. It looks great and we got a really cheap, really big HDTV!
Pretty cool huh!
Random
Ravens are in the playoffs!!!
I’m pretty excited about this. Preseason the ravens were picked to finish last in their division, and win about 4 games. Now they are sitting at 11 and 5 and play the Dolphins in the first round this week. So exciting.
Besides watching football, it’s been a busy week around here. We’ve been running around from parents to parents opening presents and playing lots. The nice thing is Jenny doesn’t go back to work till next Monday, so we have the next six days to sit back, relax and enjoy some quality time as a family. As soon as I finish posting this I’m going to get the girls ready to go to the library to pick out some books to read. Jenny is spending the day with her mom and sister.
BTW: The Ravens are in the playoffs.
My mom got the girls each Princess Devotional Bibles for Christmas. I had to laugh. These are not Bibles by any of my definition of the word except that they do have some scripture in them. However, I decided to get past that and read one of the devotions to them last night, along with the scripture passage that went with it. I’m personally wrestling with the theological…um…issues of constantly referring to the reader as “God’s princess’” and the american christian commercial machine cashing in on the whole princess phenomenon created by the Disney corporation. However, the whole process did lead to some really good discussion with Cayla. We’ve been reading scripture to her on a semi-regular basis for a couple years, and she’s always asked questions, but this seemed to really connect with her. It was probably because it’s pink, and has a shiny jeweled crown on the front.
BTW RAVENS WON!
I had a couple seasonal posts in my mind for around Christmas, but a community mini-disaster arouse that took my mind from them. I’m going to take notes about what those posts are and put them away for next year. Maybe I’ll write about the disaster and the impact on me.
Ok, that’s it. More coming soon.
Oh, and did I mention that THE RAVENS ARE IN THE PLAYOFFS!!!
Faith, Family, Random Sports
1. Door Matts 1849.05
2. Dragan Breath 1789.35
3. Lumbee Pride 1756.25
4. The Force 1726.15
5. Fett’s BountyHunters 1713.60
6. Discombobulators 1674.20
7. Bitch Slappin’ Ho’s 1663.65
8. Howling Monkeys 1659.15
9. Short Bus Revenge 1620.80
10. The Weenies 1590.95
11. Aesclepiads 1579.80
12. Panzers 1370.15
In an improbable comback, my fantasy football team came back from an early 11th place deficit to win the Honza Family (my brother in law’s family) Fantasy Football League. I have to admit, I’m really going to have fun rubbing this in their faces until next seasons draft in August 
Random fantasy sports
For those of you who like football and have ESPN you’ll want to tune in tomorrow night at 9 pm ET when they rebroadcast the 1958 NFL championship game, more popularly known as the greatest game ever played. For those who don’t know this is widely considered the game that put the NFL on the map, and changed the way the game was played. Johnny Unitas threw the ball 40-some times in the course of the game, which was unheard of back in those days. More importantly, it was broadcast nationwide, and was the first sudden-death overtime game in NFL history.
Of course those of us from Baltimore also know it as the first of Baltimore’s 4 NFL & Superbowl championships. A lot has been shared in print and on the radio lately about how much that championship and that team meant to this city, but none better (in my opinion) than this interview with longtime Baltimore citizen, columnist and author Michael Olesker by Mark and the Bulldog on 105.7 the Fan. If you’ve ever wondered why it has taken, and continues to take Baltimore so long to get over the loss of the team with the blue horseshoe listen to this interview.
If you get bored by the first three quarters of the game (even the Colts greats admit that the first three quarters were not their best football), stick it out till the final quarter and ensuing overtime. You won’t regret it.
Random Baltimore, colts, football, Sports
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