Even though I live in an area that is incredibly ‘organic’ in nearly every sense of the word, I’ve never been too conscious of what I eat. A couple of years ago though Jess and I were told about the dangers of a type of fat that is in a lot of food and upon further investigation we found out that Trans Fats are absolutely horrible for you.

Before I go on I just want to say I’m still not that conscious about eating healthy but this thing in particular is really bad.

Trans-Fats are identified most easily by the word HYDROGENATED.
Go ahead and look at the ingredients of some of the food in your house – crackers, chips, frozen dinners, pretty much everything I like to eat seems to have some sort of Hydrogenated Oil in it. What’s dangerous about Hydrogenated Oils? Trans fats are a man made fat. Because they are man made your body doesn’t know exactly what to do with them. Trans fats actually lower your good cholesterol and raise you bad cholesterol. They also contribute to heart disease and diabetes.

What’s funny about Trans fats it that they are found in a lot of ‘fat free’ food. For instance margarine is nearly 100% Trans fat. In the long run it’s actually a lot better to eat butter than this man made substance.

Why use Trans-Fats? They help preserve taste, they’re cheaper, and give food items a longer shelf life.

Trans fats are getting more attention as KFC recently announced a switch to a non-hydrogenated oil to cook their chicken in and the entire state of New York is considering a flat out ban of Trans-Fats for all restaurants.

As for me, I’m torn. My favorite snack, Totinos, has betrayed me with hydrogenated oils.

So we are inside of 3 weeks now. My wife looks as beautiful as ever (you’ll have to take my word for it since I’m not posting a pic on this entry) and my boy is already as strong as an ox and dishing out some punishment on her. Just last night I felt his wee little foot pushing up on her stomach and I pushed down ever so slightly and actually moved it! Pretty wierd and cool.

So we’ve been given 3 different due dates all within a few days of each other: November 11,13,15

Mommy’s prediction: November 10

Daddy’s prediction: November 17

If you have one, throw it down in the comments. The winner will recieve naming rights of the child!

Whilst you wait expectantly for our child to be born, check out the music I’m currently listening to. Ohmega Watts and Quantic would be the type of music I would have going if I were to ever own a hipster type club along with perhaps some Digable Planets.

I’ve heard about internet scams for quite some time now. The Nigerian scam is the most popular but there are other ones as well where scammers use popular sites like Ebay and Craigs List to sucker people.

So what are the odds that in one week I would be contacted by 3 such scammers - one Nigerian dude and two through Craigs List.

Here’s the initial email sent directly to my hotmail which is a variation of the Nigerian scam:

From the desk of
Barrister Peter Water
EMAIL:peterwater2003@yahoo.com

Best regards,
Barrister Peter Water (SAN).

Hmm, let’s see would a legit lawyer (barrister) use a yahoo email address? How about no contact info except said email? The links about the plane crash and the oil company both check out but that doesn’t mean anything. Since I hadn’t ever been scammed before I was curious though, so after responding I was asked to provide the following information:
Your full name
Your contact address
Phone and fax number
Date of birth
Occupation
Marital status

Now I don’t know if this is all one needs to steal someones identity or whatnot but I obviously wasn’t going to send this to some dude with a yahoo email and no contact info, so our short relationship ended.

The Craigs List scam was related to 4 speakers that I’m trying to sell for our church. I recieved two inquiring emails on the same day and both were similar and written by someone who does not have English as their first language. The difference between the two was that one wanted to pay through a money order and one through an escrow site similar to PayPal.

I found out two things about that:
1. Bogus Money Orders can actually be processed by a bank but once they’re found to be invalid you will be responsible.
2. There are actually a variety of PayPal like sites set up by scammers that look very legit.

So the moral of the story - although it’s getting easier and easier to do online business there are a lot of ways to lose.

Even if you’re not from this area there’s a good chance that you know what Humboldt is (in-) famous for. This is the harvest season in our area, and no, I’m not not talking about your average vegetables. Stories of marijuana busts this time of year are very common and it’s been said that this illegal commodity is a vital part of our economy.

Well now our reputation has made it into pop culture.
Jess and I are big Lost fans, and this last Wednesday night our ears pricked when a character involved with a sub-plot mentioned he was hitch-hiking to Eureka. As the sub-plot developed, this hitch-hiker ended up in an area south of Eureka working with ‘farmers’ who were growing pot in a huge greenhouse.

So there you have it. I’ve heard about our rep in other states, countries, and now in Pop-Culture.

Only in Humboldt County…
So this guy is walking by a live lobster tank at a store in Eureka. He sees the lobsters huddled in the corner and senses their emotional needs, which were many. So what does the guy do? Yup, he buys them all, packs them up, and ships them back to Maine. Of course they were replaced the next day. After getting some press (which most likely encouraged him) he now wants the tank removed.

You can read my response here.

One of my all time favorite movies as a kid was this little known flick called Condorman. With the wonder of YouTube I found a clip of the movie. It’s obviously not as cool as it used to be but I’m thinking about renting it again anyways. You can watch the clip here.

So things have been dang busy lately which is why the blog is lookin a wee bit sparse on the entries. If you are interested in checking out weekly devotions and videos I also mantain a blog for our young adult ministries, OASIS at www.oasis411.blogspot.com - there’s also a link under ‘friends’ on the side bar.

I recently built my first website (for our church) which we just launced at www.fcceureka.org which you can check. It’s not amazing by any stretch but it’s better than what we had.

If I were to pick a big ‘ol company to work for it would have to be Google.
Why, you ask? I could give you a list or you can just check out Google’s newest office in NYC here.