BrianJarrett.com

The new windows are awesome! The installer just finished up the job today. We also had a new storm door installed on the front of the house and we finally got a locking entry door installed on the garage. We loved our old house but it just wasn’t big enough; with these changes we’re slowly starting to transform the new house into a house similar to our old one. It takes time though; looks like the backyard will be a project on the books for next year.

After an excessive amount of hacking CSS and Wordpress php pages I’ve finished the changes to the site design (for now). For the most part it should look pretty similar but now my sidebar and my main content area are truly in two columns instead of the old jacked-up “two columns in one column” approach. I’d been wanting to fix it for some time but just hadn’t.

I also added some cool little arrows at the bottom for previous and next navigation and improved the footer while I was at it. I’m all about increasing my pieces of flair.

I originally based this on the Simpla theme by Phu and then …read more »

Ben Stein is quite possibly the smartest idiot in the world. I just can’t figure this guy out. He was a Nixon speech writer and he’s obviously intelligent; I’m familiar with his credentials and have witnessed his remarkable memory at work. But the same guy who graduated at the top of his class at Yale said the 911 attacks were the result of “atheistic evil” when we know inconclusively that the people who planned and executed that attack were anything but atheists; they were devout and pious Muslims. Those attacks were a shameful example of “religious evil”, and were not atheistic in any sense of the term.

He’s either stupid or a liar and, as I said, I don’t think he’s stupid.

So the same guy who brought us the catch phrase “Bueller” and blatantly misrepresented atheism is now apparently doing the same thing with evolution and science. His film …read more »

The new windows have arrived and will be installed this following Monday.  I doubt they’re going to get it all done in a single day but hopefully they’ll be able to finish up the following day.  I can’t wait to finally be able to open the windows in our house without scraping metal, stuck screens, and smashed fingers!

Wow, I’ve never felt an earthquake before! A 5.2 earthquake hit just outside Evansville (about 120 miles from here) early this morning. I slept through that but around 10:15 today-just a few minutes ago-I felt an aftershock. I was in the bathroom and heard a low rumble then felt the floor start to bounce. It felt like how our apartment back in West Virginia …read more »

I found this article on the web today describing the Pope’s visit to the US during which he met with some victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic church. I find this excerpt most shocking:

The scale of the abuse is still the subject of some uncertainty, but the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which did a study for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that 4,392 priests had been accused of abusing 10,667 individuals between 1950 and 2002. The crisis led in December 2002 to the resignation of Law, who was criticized for failing to remove abusive priests from ministry. John Paul II named Law to oversee a prominent basilica in Rome and appointed O’Malley to replace him as archbishop of Boston.

I still can’t wrap my head around 10,000+ victims. That’s staggering. What’s more unbelievable is …read more »

If you’ll remember not too long ago we were out to dinner, minding our own business, when some woman decided to give me free advice on how to raise my children. Apparently she felt that indoctrinating my child and turning him into a “Jesus-Boy” was the choice I should make or else we’d never get to heaven…blah, blah, blah.

I must have inverted cross on my forehead because last night, at the same place, I had more unsolicited advice thrown my way. This time it was a couple of old women. At first it was innocent enough, just like last time, talking about how cute the kids were and whatnot. Then, as they were leaving, they told me …read more »

Here’s an article from the Washington Post online that caught my attention today. Here is the most frightening and disturbing piece:

As recounted by former speechwriter Bill McGurn, who was at the meeting, Bush told Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun that “the church is the rock — it is the only thing that can withstand the wave of secularization, which says you can kill someone else to make your own life more convenient. He said the Catholic Church must never give in on this.”

This is an obvious attack on secularists with an implicit threat …read more »

Looks like some US cities have been caught tampering with stoplights to decrease the duration of the yellow light, causing more people to run them, thus generating more revenue.

And they said the cameras were there to make things safer. Right. Check out this article on techdirt.com. Some highlights: …read more »

I saw one of these while driving past the Catholic Supply in South City (no, that’s not a joke). It was prominently displayed in the window in all its plastic glory.

Target actually carries these things, believe it or not. Not only does he look awesome (and European) he talks as well (in English). He has a five out of five star rating (of course).

He has product features too. Action Jesus brings the following to the table: …read more »