February 2007


Medical23 Feb 2007 10:09 pm

One thing I’ve been wondering, what do you call a male midwife?

Maybe there isn’t such a thing.

Music15 Feb 2007 05:55 pm

You just can’t help but like the Oak Ridge Boys. Still going strong after how many years? Decades. It’s nothing short of amazing to keep personnel that consistent for so long a time.

It wasn’t always easy going though, they had a big fallout in ’87 and kicked out the baritone, William Lee Golden. Their rhythm guitarist, Steve Sanders, stepped in and sang baritone until ’95. To the Boys’ credit, they patched things up and got Golden back on board. I’d sure like to know all the details behind that story.

Sanders was having a lot of personal problems. He actually gave notice he was quitting, but then walked out mere hours before a show. They called in Duane Allen’s son Lee to fill in, which he did for a short time until Golden came back (source). Sanders committed suicide a few years later.

Other than that period, they’ve had the same personnel since about ’73.

And who would have ever guessed that at one time Joe Bonsall had more hair than William Lee Golden!

When I was a kid, we had an Oaks record that I absolutely loved. It’s probably the first music that I remember really liking. Because of my obsession with it, and the fact that an authority figure really did not like that particular record, one day it sadly disappeared!

It was the ’69 Dove Awards Album of the Year “It’s Happening.” I loved that album. I’d like to get it again someday, it’s not on eBay right now.

From the Heart” is a gospel album they made in ’01 that I wish I had. They did another mainstream country project in ’06, “Front Row Seats.” Check out their video from it called Hard to be Cool (in a Minivan), it’s great! I loved it. (Very large file)

One thing I find interesting about the song is the fact that it appears tenor Joe Bonsall has the lead for the whole song. And when the harmony parts join in on the chorus, he doesn’t move to the top of the stack, evidently Duane sings tenor above him. I’m certainly no expert on the Oak’s music, but I didn’t know they ever did that.

ITF Headquarters14 Feb 2007 01:44 pm

Edit: I have had 8 large cups of hot tea in the last 24 hours.

Misc12 Feb 2007 09:26 pm

I was surprised to hear of this story about a man snorkeling in a river in Oregon and being shot in the head by a gunman who thought the swimmer was a nutria.

I suppose that’s because I’ve shot my share of nutria in backwoods creeks and ponds.

And I wondered, how do you mistake a snorkeler with a nutria?!

A few more details clarified things a little bit. The shooter was a felon, and charged with the possession of a firearm as well as possession of meth and mari-joo-ana.

That explains things a little more!

ITF Headquarters&Misc09 Feb 2007 08:29 pm

I’ve been getting some complaints from high-ranking and influential ITF constituents about being greeted by an evil, wicked, vile snake when they first arrive at ITF. So it’s time to move the snake down the page, I guess.

My wife just left for work, and I just ate supper. I fried the last of the hamburger that was in the fridge, along with some of the sausage. I tore half of an onion into petals and threw it in the frying pan also. Now that I have finished eating everything I wish I had more.

I will try to resist.

We’ve had some guests recently at the ITF headquarters. The baritone was here a couple of nights ago, then his parents came to visit last night. We had a great time with them.

The last few weeks have been unreasonably and uninhabitably cold. Wind chills have been well below zero a few times, and one night the temp dropped to -8 F. I have been staying indoors as much as possible.

Family05 Feb 2007 04:48 pm

I like to say “Potawatomi.”

Remember the Real Firefox? Here’s some more pics from that day at the zoo.

An evil, wicked, vile snake.
Bison fascinate me. I like them a lot. They taste wonderful, but they’re expensive.
There was a moat thing filled with carp. You could get fish food out of a machine and toss it in for the carp school. They were so thick they’d come half out of the water trying to get the food. Sometimes one would come up and then he couldn’t get back in the water, he’d be laying on top of a solid layer of fish.
Crocs! I am fascinated with crocs.
Some big ol’ longhorn beef.
And of course a trip to the zoo wouldn’t be complete without a few lions.
Tech03 Feb 2007 01:26 pm

I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 a few days ago. It went pretty well, I had to update a few plugins and wrestle with my theme a little bit, but I got everything smoothed out and working well. I thought.

Today I noticed that all my images and captions were no longer centered. I poked around in the code and noticed that there were some extra paragraph tags inserted for no reason, and they weren’t closed. This was messing up my CSS code thereby ruining the image layout.

For some reason, 2.1 is insisting on inserting lone <p> tags within custom <div> tags. Infuriating.

I found on the WordPress Forums that I’m not the only one with this problem. There is a solution posted (detailed here and here), but it isn’t working for me. I’ll keep an eye on those threads and see if something else comes up.

Update:
Actually, scratch that, it does work. By my count it’s line 67 instead of 66, I commented out the wrong code.

ITF Business&Misc01 Feb 2007 01:05 pm

It’s always fun to look at search strings for incoming traffic. Here are a few queries that Google in its infinite wisdom decided to reward with ITF:

ice tea wife
muhc care of the professional voice singers
church ladies food recipes
smuckers ice tea
forever chicken
valium before surgery wisdom teeth
halcion resistance dental anesthesia
put food in microwave
glen zehr
my melody
peace ice tea you are going to hate it
buddy smbi
endoscopy sedative “didn t” work
song with words sweet tea in them
thundercheese
potluck wedding reception phrasing
tell me how to make ice tea as good as big boys
ask for some of her sweet tea country song

These aren’t just funny, though, some are touching. I feel for the poor guy whose endoscopy sedative didn’t work, I can identify. And the halcion resistance. I’m glad I can be moral support for people like this who are in need.