Author: Jonathan Blundell

I'm a husband, father of three, blogger, podcaster, author and media geek who is hoping to live a simple life and follow The Way.

Praise

My buddy just called and said another friend of ours was released from jail today on bond.
Huge praise!
He was arrested for suspected DWI. There’s a long story involved, but basically the breathalyser installed in his truck was registering a presence of alcohol after he used his asthma inhaler.
Our buddy’s mother testified along with his community group leader and his boss.
So he’s out on a very minimal bond and his next court date is set for April 16th.
Please keep him in your prayers.

Interesting family event

I received an email from another Ancestry.com user today (boy technology is great).

The e-mail was in regards to Col. Cullin Earp. Apparently, he’s a Confederate Civil War veteran and his body is being exhumed and moved to a new/more respectful location.

I originally thought the e-mail referred to my 5th great-grandfather, Capt. Cullin Earp, who had been captain of a regiment in Washington County, North Carolina, in 1779. But I quickly realized either my information was off, or the information I received about Col. Cullin Earp was off.

Thanks to my mom’s cousin Mary we quickly (or so we’re led to believe) got things straightened out. Col. Cullin R. Earp is my grandmother’s first cousin thrice removed (that’s not confusing :-)).

My records showed Cullin Earp in our family tree but that’s about all the information I had on him other than his parents, and siblings. Had no idea he was a Col. in the Confederacy.

Well regardless, great information found through this crazy thing we call the Interweb.

Col. Earp (pronounced “Arp”) was just 37 years old when he died in 1865. As a young adult in his 20s, he earned a livelihood raising crops in the Gilmer area. But during the last several years of his life, he was thrust into a military maelstrom that transformed him from a simple farmer into a respected officer and an East Texas hero.

From 1862 through 1864, Col. Earp and his 10th Texas Calvary CSA participated in at least 21 Civil War battles or engagements, a number of which resulted in massive casualties on both sides. As part of the famed Ector’s Brigade, Earp commanded 10th Texas troops at clashes throughout the Deep South, including Vicksburg, Miss.; the bloody battle of Chickamauga, Ga.; the Atlanta, Ga. Siege; and the battle of Franklin, Tenn.

Given a 3-month furlough, he returned to Upshur County in February 1865, likely sick or wounded. In April, Lee surrendered to Grant, ending the Civil War and Earp’s military service. Six months later, he died, survived by his second wife but no children.

Read more about the upcoming ceremony for Col. Cullin R. Earp from the Gilmer Mirror.

Green Tip

This came from a co-worker on our office’s Green Team:

The website changethemargins.com is calling for printer owners everywhere to take the simple step of, well, changing their margins from the current luxurious standard 1.25 inches to a the more modest .75 inches. It may sound like a small change, but if everyone in the nation did it, we’d save a little less than a Rhode Island’s worth of trees every year. Does tinkering with Word’s cumbersome preferences scare the fonts right out of you? Another goal of the site is to petition Microsoft to change the default margins on all its Office products.

Changing your margins in Microsoft Word:
Go to “File,” then “Page Setup.”
Once on “Page Setup,” click the “Default” key, and you’ll be offered “Do you want to change the default settings for the page set up? This change will affect all new documents based on the normal template.”

Set each margin to .75 and save an immense amount of paper.

Moby’s new CD drops today

Moby’s new CD Last Night dropped today. Great stuff.

You can do like I did and download the entire album in Mp3 format (aka no digital file management malarkey like iTunes or Zune) for $9.49 from Amazon.com. Awesome! Who would have thought we’d reach a point where I could listen to a podcast from NPR on my computer at work, and within a few clicks have a brand new album delivered to my computer and my Zune? Awesome.

Or if you’d prefer, you can purchase a CD copy of the album for $9.99 from Amazon (plus shipping & handling):

Google and Virgin join in plans to colonize Mars

Imagine if you will – the universe’s first (known) Open Source Planet. Google and Virgin Group have teamed together and with plans to colonize Mars. Very cool!

(it\'s an April Fool\'s Joke)

From Google:

For thousands of years, the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world’s every last nook, cranny and subdivision.

An invitation.
Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars…

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Virgin Group today announced the launch of Virgle Inc., a jointly owned and operated venture dedicated to the establishment of a human settlement on Mars.

“Some people are calling Virgle an ‘interplanetary Noah’s Ark,'” said Virgin Group President and Founder Sir Richard Branson, who conceived the new venture. “I’m one of them. It’s a potentially remarkable business, but more than that, it’s a glorious adventure. For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we’ll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though.”

The Virgle 100 Year Plan’s milestones will include Virgle Pioneer selection (2008-2010), the first manned journey to Mars (2016), a Virgle Inc. initial public offering to capitalize on the first manned journey to Mars (2016), the founding of the first permanent Martian municipality, Virgle City (2050), and the achievement of a truly self-sustaining Martian civilization with a population exceeding 100,000 (2108).

“Virgle is the ultimate application of a principle we’ve always believed at Google: that you can do well by doing good,” said Google co-founder Larry Page, who plans to share leadership of the new Martian civilization with Branson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

“We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best – okay, fine, only — base of web search volume and advertising inventory,” Page added. “So, you know, it’s, like, win-win.”

The original contingent of Virgle Pioneers will be selected by numerous criteria, including an online questionnaire, video submission, personal accomplishments, expertise in scientific, artistic, sociological and/or political fields of endeavor, and inadequate Google and Virgin personal performance reviews.

You can apply to help plan this “open source community” online at: www.google.com/virgle or find out just how real Virgle is.

The Alphabet Game

I don’t know how many other folks play this, but I always remember growing up and going on trips with my family and as soon as we (the kids) started getting bored, mom or dad would start the Alphabet Game.

Basically your goal is to find each letter of the alphabet on signs, cars, or other objects you can see outside your car window. You go from A to Z.

Apparently Laurie’s family played this too, but with slightly different rules from what I remember. In their family, they had to call out the word and letter they were using so no one else could use it. For example, “Apple – A, Cannibal – B, Cannibal – C, Drive – D.”

We played the game together several times on our trip to Memphis and I also played the game by myself several times while she was reading or napping.

All this to say – Q has got to be the hardest letter to find. I made it all the way to P this morning on the way to work and waited a good 20 miles before I finally saw a Q. And it was on a Quiznos right next to my bus stop.

On my block-and-a-half walk to my office I made it all the way to Z and then back again through the alphabet to X before I walked in the front door of my office. But boy – that Q can drive a guy nuts!