Looking for an easy read this summer?  Look no further than The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir.  This was a good book that held my attention and moved along very quickly.  Before I knew it I was halfway through the book.  The story is about a cop who was disabled in the line of duty and strong armed into early retirement.  He now works as a night watchman at a condo and doesn’t have much going on in his life.  A murder/suicide in the building where he works changes all that.  Suddenly he is back into his old investigative habits trying to uncover the truth behind the murder/suicide and maybe even how this is linked to the attack that left him with the bum leg.  I won’t give any more of the book away, but I think that you will like it.  I didn’t realize until about 150 pages into the book that it was actually a “Christian Fiction” book.  I actually never knew that such a genre existed, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t go overboard with the Christian theme.  In the end the main character doesn’t suddenly turn to God, no miracles happen, and he doesn’t go into the seminary.  If you enjoy mysteries or stories about cops then I feel sure that this will be a great book to pack on your trip to the beach this summer. 

You can get a copy of the book at the Random House Website

So I decided that in an effort to post on here more often I would sign up for and do a couple of book reviews on here.  This way I’m forced to write something, and I get free books too!  My first book came a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been slowly working through it.  I didn’t know what to think of the book based on the title, but it has turned out to be an easy read, and really interesting. 

Some of the points that I thought were especially interesting were:

Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting

God doesn’t have a blueprint for your life

Throughout the book, the author gives good examples of how these beliefs can end up hurting you in the end, and what the bible actually says about many of these beliefs. 

You can buy the book from Amazon, or you can be the first to post a comment on here, and I will send you a free copy!

Miranda just sent me the best link that I’ve seen in a long time. This is the mega-page of charts. I’m drooling

click here

Finally something useful came from twitter.

Came across this email recently, and wanted to share with everyone.  I always think that Graphs can really really help to make a point, and this one sure does.

April 21, 2009 | By Nathaniel Ward

Barack Obama, Budget Cutter?

On Monday, President Barack Obama announced his plan to cull $100 million in spending from the federal budget. While cutting down bloated federal spending is always a good idea, and $100 million is certainly a lot of money, this cut fails to effectively address overspending.

A Heritage Foundation graphic makes clear why a $100 million cut is small potatoes:

Writing on National Review Online, Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl puts the budget cut in context. “Out of a $4 trillion in spending this year,” he explains, “this is the rounding error of a rounding error.”

• It is 1/40,000 of the federal budget;

• It is 1/7,830 the size of the recent “stimulus” bill;

• It would close 1/1,845 of this year’s budget deficit;

• It is the amount the federal government spends every 13 minutes; and

• For a family earning $40,000 annually, it is the equivalent of cutting $1 from their family budget.

“So why bother?” Riedl asks. “Because it may enhance the president’s ‘budget-cutter’ image. Seriously.”

I love Charts.  I read just about anything that I can get my hands on, and what better way to make learning and reading more fun than to display boring data in a way that catches your eye, makes you think, and makes it easy to understand the information?  I am always trying to find an excuse to make some type of chart at work.  I’ve made basic bar charts, pareto charts, and even speedometer charts (that was the most recent, and it was FUN).  One of the charts that I would love to have (hint hint, birthday alert) is the Death and Taxes poster from WallStats.  This Poster graphically represents the entire federal budget in an easy to read and understand format.  No more looking through page after page of federal budget text, I can quickly see where my money is going, and what the Federal Government is putting a priority on.  There are some other great graphics on the WallStats.com website.  I wanted to share two of them here for you.  The first one attempts to explain the reason that GM is in the mess that they are currently in, and the second one is a visual guide to the current credit crisis.  Both of them are excellent and really make the information digestable.  Enjoy, and try not to let the information ruin your weekend.

The fall of GM explained in graphical form

The Credit Crisis Explained

Below is my take on the new government website Recovery.gov

Two weeks ago I didn’t know very much about the Great Depression.  I knew that it happened 1929 to 1941, and that it had something to do with people making runs on the banks resulting in many bank failures.  I knew that the stock market crashed, and many people were out of work for a long time.  Other than that I didnt’ pay too much attention to things that happened before I was born.  But now with the stock market tanking again, and several (though not nearly as many) banks failing, I thought I might want to take a closer look at the events and outcomes of the Great Depression.  A collegue at work loaned me a great essay by the same name as the title of this post to start of my study of this period in time.  This essay delves into some of the common misconceptions of the Great Depression.  The gist of the essay is that government intervention did not bring America out of the Great Depression, and may have even kept us in a depression longer than we would’ve been if they had done nothing.  It goes on to say that Hoover was not actually a believer in “hands-off” government, and enacted several policies that had very damaging consequences before the great depression even started.  I won’t bore you with all of the details here, but I will send you the essay in electronic form if you would like to read it.  Who knows, you might even learn something!

Valerie Painter is in town.  Valerie has been practicing with her new BB/Pellet gun, and is getting to be a good shot.  After espousing the dangers of all things gun related for many years, Val reversed her position and decided to get a BB gun.  I told her “You’ll shoot your eye out!”, but she got one anyways.  Some random dogs that have been in the yard is what prompted the move.  We had seen the dogs before, but usually they were just passing through, on their way to who knows where.  But last week they were at our house, and they weren’t passing through, but instead torturing a stray cat in our barn.  The cat ended up dying, and Val started getting mad.  She decided that the next time the dogs came back she wanted to teach them a lesson.  I offered up the shotgun, but she only wanted to get them to leave, not start a pet cemetary behind our house.  So we headed off to the sports store, and Val got a BB gun with a pink stock.  It’s a pump, and I don’t know how much it’s going to hurt the dogs since right now Valerie can only pump it about three times before her arm strength gives out.  Now she knows how to load the bb’s, as well as the pellets, and how to avoid shooting herself in the foot by utilizing the safety.  So far the dogs haven’t been back, so Val has only gotten to practice on the paper targets and some soda bottles.  Maybe the dogs heard her practicing, and figured that they should stay away.  I’m one step closer to convincing Val to allow handguns in the house.  Let’s hope I can convince her before they are outlawed.

I would’ve kept my trusty Buick for a couple more years. I was reading the other day when I came across the following chart showing the most ticketed cars and the least ticketed cars. The good news is that I don’t have a hummer, so I’m not being targeted more than anyone else. The bad news is that three of the 10 vehicles that are least ticketed are Buicks, and I got rid of mine. I guess that stems from the fact that the majority of Buick drivers are over the age of seventy and are more of a risk of driving too slow rather than too fast. I wonder how many tickets are given out each year for drivers driving too slow? Anyways, I was sad to get rid of the Buick, but after it was cutting off on me while I was driving on I-285 in Atlanta, I had to either get a different car or up my life insurance. The car that I have now is not on either list, so I guess it’s about average for tickets. What about you, do you find that you got more tickets in one car versus another one?

Congratulations to our 44th President, Barack Obama.  I hear that Obama is going to take communication from the White House out of the dark ages, and into the twenty first century.  I got to see it first hand the other day.  Obama is blogging, has videos on youtube, and he just asked to be my friend on Facebook.  Of course I said yes (I don’t want any guys in suits and dark glasses coming to visit me). Today I logged in, and there was a message from Obama on facebook.  It read-

“Hey Buddy, just wanted to let you know I had to raid your social security account to pay for the inaguration.  It was a rockin’ party, I hope you at least got to see it on TV.  Thanks again, and keep hope alive that I can refill that account of yours before you retire.

Your friend,

Barack”

The moral of the story is twofold.  Be careful who you become friends with on facebook, and sometimes more communication is not always better.  I would’ve been fine not knowing that my account was empty, and continuing to pour money into what I thought was a secure account for my future.

Well we ended up getting some snow here in Spartanburg, which was enough to close the schools, but not enough to close Tindall. Only the road just outside my house was icy, the others were clear. Val ended up with a two hour delay, so she’s enjoying a little bit more rest before she has to head in to work. All South Carolina drivers who have a pickup truck should be instructed to stay home when it snows. Just because your vehicle is high off the ground, doesn’t mean that you won’t fishtail in the ice. I had to pass about three trucks that were driving sideways on the way in this morning. I guess five years in Virginia and learning to drive in the snow and ice did come in handy. Now if I just had the trusty old Buick.

Who would’ve known that I’d be living out one of the funniest lines from one of the funniest movies. I thought Eddie emptying the septic tank from his tenement on wheels was only something that happened in movies (specifically Christmas Vacation.) But after Valerie noticed that our toilet was flushing slowly, and I noticed some damp spots in the back yard, I knew this was no movie. Apparently septic tanks can fill up, and roots cause havoc with them emptying out correctly. So we are utilizing other people’s bathrooms until Monday when we can call someone to come out and pump it out. Hopefully the guy that comes to do it isn’t named Eddie, and he doesn’t have a plate in his head. Ahh the joys of living out in the country. Who knew that I needed to put septic system suction in the budget?

She wouldn’t be a daughter of Brian if she didn’t already have her own webpage. The Peanut (working title, until she’s born) has her own space on the web where she is detailing her life in the womb. Check it out, but don’t forget about this website.

www.peanutpainter.com

Healthy baby! Valerie and I were at the doctor’s office on Tuesday for an in-depth ultrasound. The baby looked huge on the big flat screen monitor, but the nurse said that it’s weight was estimated at just eleven (11) ounces. I guess it still has a lot of growing to do. Valerie and I did want to know the sex of the child, so the nurse started by looking for that. Valerie wore a pink shirt, and I wore a blue shirt to let everyone know which team we were pulling for. Unfortunately the baby had it’s legs crossed, and the nurse couldn’t see anything in the beginning. It’s strange; I thought babies were sitting in the mom’s belly sideways, like their head is pointing to the right, and their feed are pointing to the left. But this one was sitting straight up and down. I don’t know if they can tell which way is up or not, but maybe they can, in which case I would want to sit up as well. The nurse measured everything that there is to measure on the baby. Arm bones, leg bones, heart, heartbeat, brain (which she said was developing nicely. Turns out the Baby Plus system is working. Or maybe it’s just good genes!) They didn’t check to see that it had ten fingers and ten toes, so hopefully that’s as normal as the rest of it. The entire time that the nurse was trying to see different parts of the baby, it would move it’s arm in the way, or just move around all together. It was very active. If that’s a sign of things to come, I think Val and I are in for some excitement. No more quiet nights watching Jeopardy, and no more sleeping in on Saturday mornings. Life will never be the same, but that is OK by me. Sometime around the beginning of May, Valerie and I will welcome a baby girl into our family. Yes, you read that right, the Peanut is a Shenut!! Now I have four months to read up on dolls, dresses, and other girly things. Valerie and I decided with as much as she has been moving around, she must be getting ready for dance lessons. I’ll post a picture after the holidays. For now it’s time to Eat, Drink and be Merry. Merry Christmas everyone!