Christopher A. Wheeler

Today, the day we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Audrey Elizabeth, I say to her, Happy Birthday.

And to my wife, I say this:

Thank you for awakening me during my slumber that August night. How fortunate that the specific seed which fertilized your ovum was able to find the correct fallopian tube, for any other of my seed would have produced a different child. Thank you for nurturing her during the nine months of gestation. And thank you for the work of labor, in which you pushed this child through the birth canal and into the world.

Tonight, to celebrate, we shall have Red Lobster, and cake!!!

Rusty and Erin Bromwell to the world of blogging. You can check out their website at www.erinandrusty.com.

American Idol starts in 2 minutes.

I predict Katharine gets sent home tonight, but I don’t think she deserves it. I think Elliott should go home. They were all good, but he was the least good of the three.

But Katharine, wow, she BLEW ME AWAY with her performance last night of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I literally started to tear up it was so beautiful.

We’ll see what happens in an hour.

It’s 2:30am. I have a Social Psychology final exam at 7:30am, so that is just five hours away. I’ll need to get on the bus around 6:30-ish to get there on time and get a good seat. My last exam of the semester is at noon, in Microbiology. I’m not looking forward to that at all. All the name of these microorganisms are giving me headaches and stuff. And I’m starting to not feel so well in the belly, like I normally do when I don’t get enough sleep. At this point I’m getting pretty sleepy too and I’m trying to decide whether I should go to sleep or not. Would it be worth it, to get maybe three hours of sleep? Is it going to be worth it to stay up and keep studying?

UPDATE: It is 8:14am. I am done with Social Psychology. Now I have 3 hours and 45 minutes until Microbiology (it’s now 8:15am).

UPDATE: I finished my semester at 12:26pm today. Thank freaking goodness that is over.

Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites (EMPHASIS ADDED), the Internet’s key oversight agency voted to reject a proposal to create a red-light district on the Internet.
…
Anti-porn advocates, however, countered that sites would be free to keep their current “.com” address, in effect making porn more easily accessible by creating yet another channel to house it.
…
The porn industry trade group Free Speech Coalition believes a domain name for kids-friendly sites would be more appropriate.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

I think this is a HORRIBLE decision. Conservative groups AND porn site operators were on the same side of this issue? This thought alone to me seems ridiculous. I’m sure whatever conservative groups that were behind supporting this decision meant well, but their reasoning, to me, seems to be flawed.

The argument that porn sites would still be able to keep their .com addresses, so allowing them to have a .xxx domain would make pornography more accessible, is absurd. If anything, this should make pornography LESS accessible. With specific .xxx domains, it would be very easy to block children, or even adults, from seeing material on these sites. Sure, some pornographic sites will still keep their .com addresses, so they will be harder to filter, but putting an automatic ban on any .xxx addresses would make it easier to block at least SOME pornography, and blocking some pornography is better than blocking none at all. In addition to blocking access to webpages, it would be much easier to filter pornographic spam emails as well.

A separate domain name especially for kids sites sounds like a great idea. It could be something like .kids or such. But how does that help me stop my child from seeing pornography? Would I only let my child view websites with the .kids domain? What about other kid-appropriate sites that have .com domains, like www.nickjr.com or www.cubs.com or even www.mikelaughead.com? Those sites are kid-friendly. But if I allow my son to view those sites, I am potentially allowing him access, even if it is accidental, to a pornographic .com. When it comes to protecting children, it should be easier, not harder, for parents shield them from things that are not appropriate. Allowing .xxx domain names for pornographic sites would have the effect of making it easier for parents to protect their children.

OK, let me start this by saying that I was NOT looking forward to this week on American Idol. I am not an Elvis fan at all; in fact, there is only one Elvis song that I think I can say that I like.

Taylor Hicks

• Jailhouse Rock – I think that perhaps this was the most ridiculous performance of the night. Taylor Hicks has got NOTHING on Jon Peter Lewis. OK, I really just didn’t think this performance was great at all, too karaoke-ish for my tastes.
• In The Ghetto – By far, to me, the best performance of the night. Again, never heard the song before, but I really felt it. It was a perfect choice of song for him, and he did it well.

Chris Daughtry

• Suspicious Minds – Never heard of this song, though Kate said she loves it. I guess it was ok, but it seemed a little boring, and even predictable.
• Little Less Conversation – This is the aforementioned only Elvis song that I like. I think it was pretty good. Actually, I quite enjoyed it.

Elliott Yamin

• If I Can Dream – Again, I have never heard this song, and I thought it was boring. I couldn’t get in to it at all. I will say though, his vocals were great. Just boring.
• Trouble – Again, vocally, really good. Really, really, good. Again, I just couldn’t get in to it. Should I fault the singers if I hate the songs? I guess I don’t know.

Katharine McPhee

• Hound Dog / All Shook Up – It wasn’t until I heard Katharine sing this song last night that I realized how… dumb the lyrics to this song are. You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine. Maybe there is some hidden meaning there that I am not getting. It’s not likely that I will try to figure it out either. Katharine did ok I guess, she was kinda pitchy though. And in the Top 4, you shouldn’t be forgetting lyrics.
• Can’t Help Falling in Love with You – I think this started out great, but it just seemed like it got a little over the top by the time it was over. I do like how she tried to change it up a bit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she needs to do more… just do it a little differently.

WHO I THINK SHOULD GO: Taylor Hicks
He did have the best performance of the night, but I also feel like he had the worst as well. I know that earlier in the competition I really liked him, but over the past few weeks I will say my enthusiasm for Taylor has waned. Don’t get me wrong, I still think he’s good, but I don’t think he’s as good as the other three, and I think he will be safe, as opposed to…

WHO I THINK WILL GO: Elliott Yamin
I really don’t think that Elliott deserves to go, but let’s face it, at this point in the competition, somebody good is going to have to go. It’s not like in weeks previous where there was a contestant who was clearly worse than the others. I base my opinion on Elliott leaving based solely on the fact that he was in the bottom last week.

At this point in the competition, my favorites are as follows:

1. Katharine McPhee
2. Elliott Yamin
3. Chris Daughtry
4. Taylor Hicks

I know Katharine wasn’t the best this week, but I feel she has really proven herself throughout the competition as the best.

Man, the Cubs started out the season ok, but now they’re on a six game losing streak. I think the main difference between when they were doing good, and now, is when they were doing good, I was watching the games on TV, but I’ve been too busy lately. They must not feel my positive energy anymore. So to all you Cubs fans out there, I apologize.

Short post, just commenting on the fact that it seems no matter what term I search for, the Wikipedia entry almost always seems to fall in the top 10 returns on Google. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; in fact, I quite welcome it.

So yesterday after the Pitch, Hit & Run Competition that Michael was in, we took a drive to the Amana Colonies and the Iowa Renaissance Festival while Kate stayed home and studied for her Brain and Behavior final. Michael and Audrey got to enjoy their first funnel cake (an authentic Renaissance treat) while we we waiting for the Joust to start.

The Joust was fun, if not a little WWE’ish. The “knights” were performing wrestling moves, like clotheslines, and one of them stood on top of his horse like it was a turnbuckle and jumped onto his opponent who he had knocked on the ground with his lance. OK, so it was kinda lame, but also still fun at the same time.

So yesterday Michael was in the MLB Pitch, Hit & Run Competition in North Liberty. The name of the competition says it all. Michael was one of 8 kids in the 7/8 year old category, but he was one of the younger kids there. In fact, there was only one kid that was smaller than him, and I always thought Michael was a little big for his age.

Anyways, so Michael didn’t do so well, but he had fun. He was so nervous because he had to go first in each of the three categories. He was really disappointed that he didn’t do better, and I was really afraid for a bit that he was going to cry about it, but suprisingly he didn’t. I’m so proud of him because of how well he was able to deal with it, and for doing his best, even though he was scared.