Camp Odayin Family Camp 2008

Diary Entry For October 19, 2008

It was Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy time as the Shortarmguy family traveled to Camp St. Croix on the St. Croix River in Wisconisn.  We were there as guests of Camp Odayin which offers a variety of camping programs for children with Heart Disease.

The Autumn colors were in full effect making for a beautiful morning along the shores of the St. Croix River.  The mist that hung over the water was a little spooky, though.  I began to question whether these were real geese or if they were Ghost geese.  Ghost geese can be pretty nasty I hear.

I like Camp, but there’s an awful lot of hugging and singing and just general happiness. Sometimes I think there’s too much of that in the world.

It was fun to watch my wife and boys compete in the Twister Challenge.  They had to bend all over and several times ended up squishing one another.  Now that’s something to sing about.

We shared a cabin with the Braier Family who were wonderful people.  Here they’re seen hamming it up in their outfits for the Pirate Lunch.  We came to discover that Bob and his wife Gail are professional magicians!!  Here’s their website.  Bob even showed the boys several tricks including my favorite where he was able to turn a handful of one dollar bills into a handful of hundred dollar bills!  A trick like that has to come in really handy during economic times like these!

We also enjoyed dressing up like pirates.  I so rarely get to wear my hook any more, so it’s really fun to get a chance to do so.

It wasn’t all just fun and games at camp, though.  This was a gathering of a whole bunch of families who’s kids have some kind of a heart condition.  Dr. Baker runs the Heart Catheterization Lab at Children’s Hospital and has been with us through some pretty stressful events in both Luke and Avery’s lives.  We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend a couple hours with him as he discussed parent concerns about their Heart Children as well as the latest advancements in medical technology.  Our time spent with him alone was worth the entire camp admission!

This is one of the Camp Odayin counselors.  Their entire team was just so nice to my entire family.  We had a blast as we played games and socialized with other families that had similar backgrounds to ours.  If you come from a family with a Heart child, you really should look into participating in the Camp Odayin activities.  And if you don’t come from a family like that, you should probably look into getting a Heart child.  

Not everyone was nice to us, though.  On Saturday, we had lunch with this woman and her family.  The food is served on trays family style and at the end of the meal, both she and Avery reached for the last chocolate chip cookie.  Harsh words were exchanged and then things began getting physical.  They started out thumb wrestling, then it moved into arm wrestling, then finally switched to a full mixed martial arts match with bare knuckle boxing and round house kicks.  I’d love to say that Avery prevailed, but his opponent was quite a bit bigger than him and when she started delivering those knees to his head, it was all over.

Nice Emails of the Week

Todd, 

Love your site, I’ve been a regular visitor for a couple of years now.   My business partner took this pic this morning in Bangalore, India.

Transportation for the family of 5….

Notice how Dad is wearing the helmet.

Keep up the great work!

Cheers,

Luke Reeves

Don’t Celebrate a Bank Robbery

Best Knockout Ever!

Best Restaurant Commercial Ever!

This was sent to me with the caption Woman with Two Big Boobs!

The Canadian Border on November 5th.

Nunchucks

This tattoo is fun for the whole family!

Fun Halloween Stuff

Happy Halloween, 2008!

Click Here

For More Funny

Halloween Pictures!

Quote of the Week

Overheard recently on Wall Street:

“This is worse than a divorce. I’ve lost half of my net worth and I still have my wife”

 

Jokes of the Week

MARRIED LIFE

 

MAKES MY EYES TEAR UP, SUCH A  HAPPY ENDING!

A couple had only been married for two weeks and the husband, although very much  in love, couldn’t wait to go out on the town and party with his old  buddies.

So, he said to his new wife, ‘Honey, I’ll be right  back.’

‘Where are you going, Coochy Coo?’ asked the  wife.

‘I’m going to the bar, Pretty Face,’ he answered. I’m going to  have a beer.’

The wife said, ‘You want a beer, my love?’ She opened the door to  the refrigerator and showed him 25 different kinds of beer, brands from 12  different countries: Germany, Holland, Japan, India, etc.

The husband didn’t know what to do,  and the only thing that he could think of saying was, ‘Yes, Lollipop … but at  the bar… You know … they have frozen glasses… ‘

He didn’t get to finish the sentence, because  the wife interrupted him by saying, ‘You want a frozen glass, Puppy Face?’ She  took a huge beer mug out of the freezer, so frozen that she was getting chills  just holding it.

The husband, looking a bit pale, said, ‘Yes, Tootsie Roll, but at  the bar they have those hors d’oeuvres that are really delicious… I won’t be  long. I’ll be right back. I promise. OK?

‘You want hors d’oeuvres, Poochie  Pooh?’ She opened the oven and took out 5 dishes of different hors d’oeuvres:  chicken wings, pigs in blankets, mushroom caps, and little  quiches.

‘But my sweet honey… at the bar. you know there’s swearing,  dirty words and all that…’

‘You want dirty words, Cutie Pie?  LISTEN UP CHICKEN SHIT! SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, SHUT THE HELL UP, DRINK YOUR BEER IN  YOUR FROZEN MUG AND EAT YOUR HORS D’OEUVRES BECAUSE YOUR MARRIED ASS ISN’T GOING TO A DAMNED BAR!  THAT SHIT IS  OVER, GOT IT,  JACKASS?’

and….they lived happily ever after. Isn’t that a sweet story?

Shortarmguy’s Favorite Websites

October 19, 2008

Todd Swank, vice president of marketing at Nor-Tech, a Burnsville, Minn.-based system builder, is also surprised to see Microsoft comparing PCs notebooks to Macs notebooks in terms of price. “PC notebooks have been under $1,000 for years. It’s understandable that Apple has everyone freaked out, but this seems like the wrong approach for Microsoft to take,” he said.

Microsoft: Notebook PCs Still Better Value Than MacBooks,  Channelweb, 10/15/08

 

Todd Swank, vice president of marketing at Nor-Tech, a Burnsville, Minn.-based system builder, said his company is already seeing customers asking about SSDs, especially for their ruggedized systems.

“They don’t want too many moving parts in ruggedized systems,” Swank said. “And they’re willing to pay for the reliability.”

For now, SSDs, especially the enterprise-class models, are targeted at a very limited niche market, Swank said.

And that is probably good news to traditional hard drive manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital who will be facing competition from a whole range of non-disk drive vendors like Intel, Swank said.

“The entire business model of hard drive manufacturers is at stake,” he said. “They’re in denial. It’s nice to see Intel come out with a product like this. When we see Intel come out with flash drives like this, Seagate and Western Digital will be freaking out.”

Intel Intros Enterprise-Class SSDs For Hi-Performance Data,  Channelweb, 10/15/08

 

Palin As President — Now this site is pretty funny!

Infocom Games — Who has been gaming long enough to remember Zork?  How about Planetfall?  These text based games were simply awesome when I was a kid playing with my old Commodore 64 back in the 80’s.  Now every one of these classic games from Infocom is available in full on this site.  Have fun!

The Eyeballing Game — How accurately can you measure stuff?

Shortarmguy’s Emails To Make You Think

Email Shortarmguy at Shortarmguy@aol.com

October 19, 2008

Monkeys & stocks

Let Me See If I Understand This Correctly.

       Once upon a time, in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort. The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.
 
       While the man was away the assistant told the villagers, “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.” The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again, and once again there were monkeys everywhere.

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.