I do employ rel="nofollow" under the following conditions:

• When your comment is first posted, the nofollow attribute is added to your entry.
• Once your comment has stayed where it is for three days from the time of its posting, the nofollow attribute is removed from your comment.

I went with this option, rather than sticking to WordPress’s default nofollow forever settings, because there are people with legitimate sites out there that deserve a little link loving.

The whole thing is made possible with Kimmo Suominen’s excellent DoFollow plugin for WordPress. You can use it to set a number of days that the nofollow attribute will reside on comments, and then be removed.

As comment spammers get smarter, some of them will slip through the cracks of even the best spam filters money can buy. It’s worth it to have a little opportunity to get the hot embers off your lap before they burn you.

There are people out there who are more than willing to help with Alcohol Rehab — it’s not an easy thing to stop drinking booze on your own, when you’re used to turning up the bottle every night. That’s why there are people who are willing to work with you, in a one-on-one situation.

Drug Rehab is something I can honestly say I understand quite well. When I was younger, I used to sit around with my friends. We’d pass the bong, take heavy hits, pop pills, and get drunk all together. I know what it’s like to be stoned, drunk, and wondering why the world looked like a bloody fish bowl. It’s hard to just quit doing drugs just like that, and expect to be whole and normal.

I have family who have been down this road before. You can’t just stop overnight. You need help. You need the support that only someone else can provide.

I suggest that if you’re in the kind of situation above, that you take the money that you’re wasting on getting messed up, and spend it on getting some help.

This is a public service announcement.

So, what’re your five odd facts?

Don’t get the wrong idea: I Don’t want kids. But these two playing in the hospital waiting room was too Cute.

<@Xial>
So, I had this weird dream the other night.
I was walking to a corner store with my aunt and my cousins. In this store, they were playing Hakim, and it was crowded. People were selling drugs and stuff there.
They also had imported scratch-off tickets from the middle eastern regions.
One of the tickets had the words ‘AL BED’ printed on the face.
ap :: Hakim - Nazra (MP3, 179kbps, 4.63mb, 1:29/3:37)

<Kolmeck>
Al Bed? weird…

<@Xial>
I bought the ticket, and it was a winner. Four free tickets.
Interesting trivia for you: Unscrambled, AL BED is BLADE.
(And I only notice this now that I’m writing about it.)
More interesting trivia: I haven’t listened to Hakim in MONTHS.

<Kolmeck>
Hakim? what is that?

<@Xial>
ap :: Hakim - El Hak’ale (MP3, 176kbps, 6.21mb, 0:10/4:55)
Specifically, it was the song that I’m playing right now.
That’s how I recognized it.
Yet More Interesting Trivia: “EL HAK’ALE” translated to “IT’S YOUR FAULT”.

Right now, I’m sitting awake, because of another dream I had.

I was dreaming of our old house, but in better condition. I was in the front yard, and it was about 9 pm. I don’t know what I was doing outside, but I was digging something. I saw a snake hiding in a hole, and as I went to prod it with the shovel, it slithered off. Something prompted me to turn around, and as I did, a green rattlesnake struck me and bit my right nipple. As it hit, I woke up, with my pulse racing, which was not good. I felt my heart trying to jump out of my chest.

Something in my soul is telling me that something is going to go terribly wrong, and I’m afraid. Terribly afraid.

They gave people waiting for the Today show shirts, stickers, signs, silly putty, and something to look up when they got home. It also seems that they’re getting ready for the next big thing coming out of their camp, which has me curious.

Of course, you might enjoy the little (Okay, 9.5 minutes long) video they have up for the event, complete with drinks, and a visit to what looked like a FedEx-Kinko’s.

Now, I’m not a big Today fan (Matt Lauer, “… you’re right. He does interrupt.” — Father of the Pride), so I missed that on the television, but maybe someone here has seen it or can find it on the internets?

Christ, It’s a Matt Lauer. Get in the PayPerPost.

I’m now fairly sure it’s the VIDEO CARD, since it only acts a fool during anything that really uses the card. Screensavers, games, etc.

Result: I gotta come up with the clams to buy a video card, or hopefully find my old 32MB Geforce2.

Until then, however, I get to deal with frozen Windows.

I’ve had a fairly agnostic view of the world over the past half-decade, finding myself unimpressed with religion since my father died. Mother had been trying to get me to go to church with her for years, but I told her that I wasn’t going to a brainwashing session, which is what I felt her church was, basically.

I didn’t trust her pastor then.

When he left, and they got another one — the Rev. Dr. Henry Lyons (blah blah blah), I REALLY refused to go then. I think that snake oil comes to mind when dealing with him.

When mom died, we were stuck with him presiding over the funeral.

He turned a Saturday funeral into a ‘worship’ service (Hah!), and tried to get us to join his church. He made a couple of low volume remarks to his own members that basically pressed the red button. By that point, all I wanted to do was put my mother in the ground, so we could get away from him.

I really didn’t want to go to church, but mother had been asking me to go.
I can’t tell mom “No” forever, can I?

So, Over the past couple of months, I’ve had a number of customers at work, attempting to show me the power of Christ through their words and actions. A couple of them have asked me to come to their church, and I said that if I ever got a Sunday off, I would.

Well, I had yesterday off. I had a choice of Without Walls International Church, or Manhattan Avenue Church of Christ. I opted for the latter, since there was a football game scheduled for yesterday, and Without Walls isn’t even a mile away from the stadium.

I was quite surprised.

Everyone was so friendly and welcoming at Manhattan Avenue CoC, which was quite disarming for me. I sat in the back, as far back as their setup would allow, not knowing what to expect. I was used to the Missionary Baptist style of church, with lots of loud music, louder preachers, and services that not only never started on time, but would go on for a few hours.

We started at 10:30, give or take a few (quite forgiveable) minutes.
We finished at about 8 minutes to noon.
My eardrums did not bleed. In fact, I was sorta straining to hear some of what was said.

I remarked to the minister after church, “Y’know, if this were my old church, we’d have just been getting to the sermon right about … now.”

I spent some time talking with Minister Grayson (feel free to correct me, because I KNOW you’re reading this :D), and we ended up heading off to lunch. We talked a fair bit more, and I feel like I may go back. Not this coming Sunday, but hopefully the next one: I did make a promise to the other guy from Without Walls, and I try to be as good to my words as I want others to be, regarding me.

While it fixed a LOT of issues with our old house, this one has its own batch of issues.

If I were to be able to have home improvement done that I’d like, at no cost to me, I think I would have to go with:

Having a driveway poured down, so my aunt and I can stop having to cope with dirt, and especially so we don’t have to worry about the heavy rains we’ve had lately.

Maybe a dog house of some sort for Chilo, so we can put him outside during the day, but give him something to crawl into, should it start pouring. (we’ll just have to make sure to put it at a high point in the yard, so he doesn’t go floating away :))

Some electrical work around this house would be nice: We’ve got a lot of those old 2-Prong outlets, but a lot of our stuff is meant for 3-Prong outlets. Hopefully that’d be easy to fix.

Handrailing to go around our porch area would be nifty, too, as well as a map of where a bunch of these in-house light switches go to.

What would you do to your house? PayPerPost would love to know.

I get threatened by Sprint, telling me that they’re going to cut my phone service off (to which I say, HOLD UP WAIT A MINUTE LET ME PUT SOME PIMPIN IN IT, and explain that they just moved my billing schedule. I had made most of my payment on the first week of this month, which meant I only owed $30. This billing change raises it up to $117. They apologized.)

My headaches got more severe, inducing white spots in my vision. My left arm also malfunctioned, going weak, causing me to drop everything I put in that hand. My left hip also went gimpy. I spent $125 on a doctor’s visit, and she suggests I go to the hospital or to a standalone center, and get an MRI or a CT Scan from around the shoulders on up. She suspects a pinched nerve or something.

My main hard drive seems to have toasted itself. I’m having a spot of trouble getting a copy of Windows 2000 (which I have the legit key stored in my cellphone).

I’m exhausted and my arm hurts.
However, if I take my $60 prescription (OUCH), I’ll fall asleep before getting and installing windows.

If I don’t get this done, I’m not going to church in the morning. :/