The Daytona 500!

I've said here before that there's an old saying something to the effect that "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy" Today was another example of this. Today marked the 2008 running of the Daytona 500. Yeh, it's stock car racing at its finest. The superbowl of motorsports. This year, a kindred spirit won the event. Ryan Newman, driver of the #12 Dodge, won the race in a nail-biter exciting finish. Ryan Newman is an engineer and a Purdue alum, and I am an engineer and a former Purdue student, so we are sympatico! Ryan celebrated with a cool smoky burnout after his victory . . .



You may be thinking that NASCAR is not sophisticated or redneck, but in my mind, that is just fine. We had a great time with our friends at my brother's during his annual Daytona 500 party, and we are looking forward to another fun year of auto racing. So while we are having fun with everything else (playing Emma, listening to music, building models, reading, etc.) you can bet that there will be a NASCAR race on the TV in the background.

While we're on the subject, I've been trying to decide who I should pull for in the Sprint Cup series this year. You see, I have a reputation of pulling for the underdog, and each year the guy I've pulled for has always lost his ride. Well, this year, I've decided to pitch my spirit behind a new driver, and there's always hope that I'll change my record. So Clint Bowyer, in the No. 07 Jack Daniels Chevrolet, get that championship in '08.




Peace from the Hive

Some Clarification at the Hive

Greetings to all the faithful visitors to the Hive during our long dormant period. Contrary to theory, we HAVE NOT suffered Colony Collapse Disorder, rather just a little break from posting. So I hope all visitors hereto have been well since my last post.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. My last post referenced the book of Parilipomenon from the Old Testament. Several visitors were inquisitive of this reference, so I thought a bit of explanation was in order.

My Bible (Given to me by my wife-to-be for my birthday in 1997) is the Douay-Rheims Version of the Catholic Bible. The significance of this designation is that this version of the Bible was translated into English from the Latin Vulgate Bible, translated by St. Jerome in the 1st century A.D. from the original languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic). As such, in my mind (and that of many scholars), it represents the most faithful English translation of the Bible. This translation is considered a faithful word-for-word translation of the original manuscripts, many of which have been lost to history. By Approbation of His Eminence James Cardinal Gibbons this book is an approved version of the Catholic Bible.

As such, there are some differences between this version and modern versions of the Bible. The books of Paralipomenon are an example. In the modern Catholic Bible, these books are more recognizably referred (I think) to as the books of Kings (1 and 2) I have not done a cross-reference to verify this. Many of the names of the books in the Douay-Rhiems version are different from more modern translations, and I won't bore you with all of those now, but rather I'll save that for future posts.

Until then, thanks for keeping faith in the Hive. We're still here, we just get a little lazy about posting every once in a while.

Until next time, Cheerio!!

Steven's Neatest Hive

Happy New Year

"So do with me that I may build a house to the name of the Lord my God, to dedicate it to burn incense before him, and to perfume with aromatical spices, and for the continual setting forth of bread, and for the holocausts, morning and evening, and on the sabbaths, and on the new moons, and the solemnites of the Lord our God for ever, which are commanded for Israel. For the house which I desire to build, is great: for our God is great above all gods."

- 2 Paralipomenon 4:5

Happy New Year from the Hive.

Santa Claus is Back in Town

First of all, I'd like to wish everyone who visits the Hive a Merry Christmas. It's been a good year for us here and we are full of the Christmas Spirit. So much so, in fact, that we decided to exchange gifts with one another last night a couple of days early.

Now there is something I should point out before we go any further. 2008 is tenth year of Janie's and my wedding anniversary. So for Christmas this year we decided to splurge and spoil each other with a nice gift. So please don't think we go around buying stuff like this every day.

Which leads me to the point of this post. For those of you who don't know, I'm a beginner guitarist with lots of passion and enthusiasm, but at this point, very little skill. But a couple of things have inspired me to give the ol' six-string a try. Two were my Dad and My Grandaddy. My Dad plays bass guitar as well as guitar and he can really make it sing. My Grandaddy played guitar for years and was so good it just seemed like it came natural to him. Now I love the sound of live music, and hearing those guys play inspired me to give it a try myself. The third inspiration was my Grandaddy's guitar. I can't remember exactly what it looked like because I haven't seen it in years, and I don't know exactly what happened to it when he passed away, but I'm just almost sure it was a semi-hollow body. When I heard him play I knew that was the guitar for me.

And now I have one.



The bad boy you see me holding in this image is my new Epiphone Sheraton II archtop guitar. It's a semi-hollowbody, just like my Grandaddy's, and this is the same model ax that was slung by none other than John Lee Hooker. So I figure if it's good enough for the Boogie Man, then it should suit my needs. Pictures do not do this work of art justice. It is an absolute piece of beauty, and even on my cheap old amp it sounds great. I can't wait for the chance to plug it in on my Dad's big Fender tube amp and hear it the way it was meant to sound. Even a hacker like me can make beautiful sounds come from this instrument.

Now I new this one was special from the minute I picked it up. It took a ton of effort from Janie, the help of my brother and sister in-law, and Janie's Dad to get this guitar to me. There is a lot of soul in this instrument simply from the huge effort put forth just so I could have it for Christmas. For those of you that helped to pull this off I can't thank you enough. I can assure you that your hard work was not for naught. For years to come I'll be able to tell everyone about the journey this instrument took to get to me.

Lastly, if you ask me (or B.B. King), every guitar good should have a name, and the name for this one hit me last night like a ton of bricks. So from here on out, when I talk about Emma and when I play and sing, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Peace.

Evel Knievel

Well it's been a long time since I've made a post here at the hive. About 2 months by my reckoning. So I don't know how many hard-core fans are still hanging on. But this is one of those nights where I can't sleep, so I thought I would make a post for all of you who still bother to check in.

In case you haven't heard, Evel Knievel passed away yesterday. The young folks probably are saying "big deal", while the older folks, for the most part, are probably saying "big deal". But my perspective is a bit different.

You see, as you have probably figured out from previous posts here at the hive, I'm pretty much a kid at heart. Always have been. And I remember, as a kid, seeing footgage of Evel jumping his motorcycle over busses, cars, canyons, pretty much anything that needed to be jumped. I just thought that was the coolest thing.



I even had all of the Evel Knievel toys when I was a kid, and as I recounted to Janie, I actually wore my Evel Knievel toy motorcycle out jumping it over anything I could find. Later in life, I got really interested in riding dirt bikes and for meny years enjoyed jumping myself (although I neverd measured up to Evel's standards) so the daredevil spirit lived on. I also thought it was cool that Evel rode a Harley Davidson (American made) and wore a red, white, and blue suit.

Now there is no argument that Evel led a checkered life, and had a few brushes with The Law, along with some less-than-savory choices of action. But he did embody a few ideals that we hold sacred here at the hive:

-Work hard,
-Be good at what you do,
-If you fall down, get back up,
-Communicate effectively,
-Love your Country,
-Ride your motorcycle :-)

Rest in Peace, Evel, we here at the Hive classify you as a true American, and you have added a good slab of fun to our lives.

Neal is a Marine

The Hive has been dormant for quite some time now. As a matter of fact, I didn't realize how long it had been. But we're back, for now, at least to commemorate what I consider a notable occasion. Neal (my nephew) has graduated from basic training camp and is now a Marine. I thought this was a good time to revisit the Marine Silent Drill Team. enjoi

It Flies!!

The proof is in the performance . . .

Over the weekend, I steeled myself to 2+ years of painstaking construction and decided to try and take the helicopter for a flight. You are probably thinking this is no big deal (after all, it's SUPPOSED to fly, right?) and in the grand scheme of things, you are correct. But after assembling all of the cogs, gears, wires, and etc, despite all of the confidence one may have, there are always those feelings of trepidation . . . Besides, with all of that time invested, this has become a labor of love, and images of this thing chopping itself to pieces upon sudden and inappropriate contact with the ground were prevalant in my mind.

But,

It flew!!

Now I shouldn't make more out of this than it really is. Aside from the fact that this is simply a toy, for enjoyment, the first flight was less than spectacular. The helicopter actually lost purchase with the ground for no more than a few seconds, at which time I hastily (luckily) saved it from chopping itself to pieces in the aforementioned scenario. There are no photos of this event, because even if Wyatt Earp himself were on the camera's hair trigger, he would be hard-pressed to have captured the fateful moment. But hey, the Wright Brothers didn't fly from New York to Paris on their first flight, so I consider it the little accomplishment that it is. After all, here I was given this box of miscellaneous gears and electronics and I somehow managed to assemble them into this semblance of a flying machine.

Unfortunately, this inaugural flight proved out one thing; this machine has problems. A trip back to the workbench and several more hours of fine tuning are in order, not without the help of the accomodating German enablers who sent me my box of goodies. But it's all about fun, so stay tuned, as one of two exciting things will happen: 1) My helicopter will soar to the air with all of the majesty (reduced to 1:16 scale) of its full-sized counterparts, or 2) My helicopter will chop itself to pieces upon sudden and inappropriate contact with the ground. Either outcome is guaranteed to be dramatic. Stay tuned as this nail-biter plays out . . .