I have fond memories of my Atari 2600 system.  It was my first videogame system and at the time was truly cutting edge.  Who can ever forget the games such as Combat, Pitfall!, Breakout, River Raid or Kaboom!.  That system is antiquated at best compared to today's technology, but it holds a special place in my hear.  Thus, it is interesting that I recently ran across a long article on the history of Atari.  It is about 20 pages long and so you may not want to read it all at once, but it is interesting nonetheless.

I had the good fortune of attending the DNC a few years back when John Kerry was the Democratic nominee.  You probably remember it, John Kerry walked on stage and said "John Kerry, reporting for duty!"  I watched it live and the current DNC made me think of it.

The interesting thing about the convention is that it brings out the true believers.  All of my readers, I am sure, have their political perspectives and if you are like me then your views are not tied to party lines.  That said, the attendees at the convention (and this applies to either Democratic or Republican conventions) are the true believers.  These are people who hang on every word and truly believe in the candidate and the party.

Drawing an analogy, the DNC reminded me of one of those Beatles concerts from many years ago.  At the time, the fans swooned and were completely enthralled by the band.  It didn't matter they sang because it was the Beatles and you loved them.  The convention struck me as eerily similar.  These are people who truly believe and are enthralled by politics.  I am not sure if anyone really listened to what was being or if it even mattered.  Everyone was just so hyped that they probably would have cheered if Kerry had said that he was going to get a sex change and marry himself!  It truly felt like they were brainwashed and in some ways, perhaps they were.  Everyone fed off of everyone's else excitement resulting every increasing excitement and group think.  I viewed this all as a political outsider and as more of a sociology experiment rather than a coming to God moment.

In short, regardless of your political leanings, the DNC or RNC is well worth attending.  I feel fortunate to have been there and owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Jamie who included me.

We recently had a problem in our house with our refrigerator.  Our house came with a fancy big name unit and we found that it was having major problems.  As often happens with these kinds of things, it quickly became clear that the cost to repair was more than the cost of a new one and so we started shopping.

We looked all over the place included the big box stores, but wanted to get more personal service and ensure that someone would take away our old unit.  We eventually settled on a local appliance store figuring that a company in business for 40+ years must be doing something right.  Right?  In our case wrong!

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I posted in the past about the amazing video with the guy dancing all over the world.  I still love that video to this day and find it very uplifting and enjoyable to watch.  I recently stumbled across another video by him.  Evidently, the folks at Yahoo were so enamored by the video, they asked him to come over and record a video with them.  You can find the result in this blog post.  The video is also very good, but does not have the power of the international video linked above.

On a side note, the blog post above from Yahoo includes some links to articles discussing the videos.  The song that is in the background was composed just for the video and the singer is an 17 year-old girl from Minnepolis!  I had not idea; I thought that it was recorded by some professional artist.  Not so. The words are actually from a poem called "Stream of Life" by Rabindranath Tagore and here is the translation:

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

Here are a couple of additional links related to this topic.

Theme song from video (on amazon.com)

Article on Minnpost.com

Second article on Minnpost.com

Is it just me or does it seem like beach volleyball is always on TV?  t is odd, I never have too much time for TV, but it seems that as of late every time I turn on the Olympics, beach volleyball is on.  I cannot figure it out.  Either it is that NBC has all of a sudden become obsessed with this sport or that somehow my timing is such that I only tune in when the sport is on.  Personally, I think that it is probably a combination of both.  On a flip side, I now feel that a personal friendship with Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh and will be heart-broken if they lose.  Not!