Just to prove that you can't believe anything you read on the web, I've been published on the internet again, in a sense. Many of you may remember that some friends of mine and I were applying for a patent a few years back. Well, the government is considering giving us a patent for a rectangular mechanical heart valve. Typically, they reject the first attempt, and then you make revisions, and they might accept the second time. We expect the initial rejection in a few months. I'll keep you posted. In the mean time, if anyone wants to buy one, it will cost $5000. Just send me a check and a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

See ye'all at New Years'!

dan

hey check out this princess bride website. it has great pictures, including custom made desktop pictures for your computers.

i wanted to let you all know that any visitors to my apartment, upon passing through its entrance, are immediately confronted by a poster of the princess bride, provided to me like manna from heaven by mo dee. of course, should anyone forget a line or two of the movie (referred to as the second unforgiveable sin in a lost book of the new testament) i have a full print-out of the movie on the coffee table.

in related news, i watched the ring over seven days ago, but i never died.

Hey, Rob! Can you give us the run down again on New Years? When would you like folks to arrive (when are folks planning to arrive?) When would like to get ride of us?! I'm working on plane reservations and just wanted to touch base. What are travel plans looking like for everyone?

Can't wait to see everyone!

Amanda

Has anyone seen Rounders? It's a poker movie that Betsy and I saw. It's about me and my friend who gets me out of jail and I take all his money and blow it gambling. Well, in any case, Betsy and I are organizing poker nights on Tuesdays, and we're hoping to make a profession of it. Last week, we won $3. If anyone wants to play, feel free to stop by on a Tuesday night.
Is it strange to anyone else that Doug's and Rob's lady friends don't have names? The answer is yes. I have met "Ann," Doug's lady friend, and she is a nice person and a lot of fun. It's not clear why Doug would want to bring her near the BLD, but that's not for me to judge. The most exciting news about Doug, apart from the girlfriend and job (boring!), is that he may be getting a car. For those of you who have lived in Boston, you know that Doug is a hard man to get a hold of mainly because he hides out in Brighton, where cars go to die. But soon, revitalized with some hot wheels, Doug will be takin' it to the streets. Very exciting developments in Beantown that have affected property values as far away as Wrentham. My rent went up $7 just this month. The Fed is apparently going to respond by cutting interest rates another 1/32nd of a point.
Also, Betsy and I are taking dance lessons. Originally $50 for four sessions... not bad. After one session, they told me the price would go up to $2000. Apparently I'm 40 times as hard to teach as the average person.

Well, all the cool kids seem to be posting now, so I thought it was about time for me to make my debut, being the coolest early church historian around and all. Unfortunately, correspondence is one of the many areas where I am clearly the weakest link in the Papsdorf clan (even Sherlock leaves messages for his doggie buddies every day), so I don't really have any important news to share that Jill hasn't already posted.

School is going well, and this is my last full semester of course work. Next semester I'll take my PhD comps and then start work on a dissertation. The current idea for a topic is "The Emergence of Latin Pauline Commentaries from 350-450 AD." I'm sure you all can't wait until it comes out in book form, but I'm afraid you'll have to hold out for at least 2 or 3 years.

Apart from schoolwork, orchestrating our church coup and running errands, I devote the remainder of my time to contemplating the significance of profound truths. To give you an idea of what I mean I'll offer my most recent insight. Please ponder and discuss:

For the first time in approximately six years it is likely that both Doug and Rob have spent more time with a significant other over the last several days than Kevin and I have. Is this a sign of the end?

Break on through ... to the other side? Doug's post welcomes Jon and Amanda to the dark side, but curiously omits to mention Rob. Perhaps this has something to do with their conspiracy to bring dates to BLD New Year's Party in Sacramento? In related news, I am seeing a woman again. Shannon finally has a day off so I will see her. The last time we saw each other was Tuesday.

Post vs. Publish ... Post only posts your message internally, whereas Post & Publish also updates the actual web page.

In other news, I'm also currently dating someone. And yes, she'll be at New Year's, so now everyone has even more incentive.

Welcome to the dark side, Jon & Amanda.

Boy, you never know ... Welcome to Amanda, who has joined this blog with a bang. I can't believe my post made her chuckle out loud, especially given my innocuous suggestion, which was more a way of inducing Rob to divulge some details rather than a suggestion for Dan's agenda. Indeed, I recommend that one seeks Dan's prayers only with caution, because they're pretty effective, so you have to be careful what you ask for. I'm not kidding about that. If I were kidding, I'd ask Dan to pray for ND's football team, but even though I hold them in great esteem, I don't know that they're worth his time. Amanda, sounds like Kellogg really deserves its #1 ranking. At least they appreciate TPB. But I could explain game theory in terms of the Vezzini/Wesley interaction for free, and you have to pay big $$$ to have some schlep with an MBA explain it for you. I guess they're not #1 for nothin'.

As for the difference between "post" and "post & publish", I think that it doesn't require an advanced degree to recognize that the latter has "& publish," whereas the former just has "post." Any more questions? Actually, I have no idea what the difference is. And that's all for now folks. I'll be here all week.

Kevin, What's the difference between 'Post' and 'Post & Publish'?

So I'm finally stepping up and posting to this crazy blog thing! I just embarrassed myself by chuckling out loud in the library at Kevin's suggestion that Dan should pray for Rob's girlfriend by name. And then a moment later it occurred to me that maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe I should pray for her, too! Seriously, Rob, I'm looking forward to meeting her at New Year's. And congrats on the new rank!

The highlight of my business school career thus far (other than having Business Week rank Kellogg #1 in the country, of course) was having my Strategy professor (Strategy is short for Management and Economic Strategy) pop TPB into the video machine to show us Hursty and Kevin's iocane scene to illustrate game theory. (Yes, they actually teach us to make business decisions off of stuff like that!...well sort of.)

Hursty, let's meet for dinner somewhere between Chicago and Cleveland sometime!

Fantastic . . . Welcome to both Jon and Rob. Now we need to work on Adin and Lincoln. Everybody send them emails. I only know their alumni addresses, so I guess we should use those. Rob, congratulations on making Captain. Oh captain my captain. So are you a "real" captain? I mean, it sounded like some equivocation there. Federally recognized? As one philosopher once said, I may not be internationally known, but I'm known to rock the microphone. So there. I guess you don't want to share your reasons for seeking a higher probability of being deployed? Well, maybe you can get deployed to guard airports or something like that. Does this girl/woman have a name? We need a name so that Dan can mention her personally in his prayers. Jon, looking forward to your future provocative postings.

Following Jon's lead as usual... I'm here now too and it looks like there's a lot of news to catch up on. Hi everyone. And you better come to CA for New Year's- it is not an option. It will be fun. If you won't come, I'm sending Lincoln to spend quality time with you. That will teach you to skip out...

As for news - I'm finally a Captain in the US Army. Technically, I'm in the CA Army National Guard, but the rank is federally recognized. I also recently petitioned to move to the Individual Ready Reserve. It's interesting that I'm trying to move into a group that has a higher probability of getting activated and deployed than the one I'm currently a part of. I do have my reasons though.

And finally, I'm dating an actual girl. Well, a woman actually. You will all meet her at New Year's if you come. I do my best for incentive!!

Hello all. I was reinvited to join this blog today by kcw since i didn't get the initial invitation. Hope all is well with everyone. I will publish something more provacative on a later date. But I have a new apartment, new car, and new laptop. I don't have any money, but that is overrated. I am hoping to work out my coaching schedule so I can get to CA for New Year's.

Preemption . . . Jill has beaten me to the punch in relaying news of the visit of the Papsdorfs to "Charm City" (aka Baltimore). I wasn't neglecting them in my post on Dan. Rather, I was trying to space out the news. But instead my account of the news made it seem that I was spaced out. Josh and Jill came to Baltimore for a few hours; they lingered over some fine pasta with meat sauce, as well as Caesar salad. We then strolled through parts of downtown Baltimore, an abridged version of the tour given to Jonathan Hurst the previous weekend. We noted the markers for the homeruns hit in Camden Yards, including a blast by Jim Thome. It was great to catch up with them. I'm reliably informed that Josh is already on the pastoral council of his church, policing orthodoxy at the request of the pastor, who is impressed by Josh's theological sophistication. We better keep an eye on that parish. Also, Josh and Jill will be leading a bible study; apparently nobody else in the parish had ever done that before. Unfortunately, Shannon had to leave early. She is now working nights. Because her shift is 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. (which actually is almost 2.5 shifts, I guess), we are not seeing too much of each other these days. Well, that's it for now. All other potential news is reserved for a future post.

Also -- wanted to extend congratulations to Dan for getting published. I, too, was completely mystified by the abstract but I did notice that you learned that "Further examination of the connection between flow properties and the tribology of joint replacement prostheses is warranted." That's always imperative in science.

A whole chunk of posting by Kevin and no mention of the Papsdorf visit to Baltimore. Ok, so we were only there for a few hours -- but we did spend $10 for some pasta and the Walsh tour of downtown Baltimore, so I'd hope for at least a mention. Be sure to ask what Baltimoreans believe in...they don't seem to be sure. (Note to all BLDers: All visits to Kevin and Shannon should be scheduled around Ravens and Orioles games until further notice. Their rent is subsidized by parking for Baltimore athletic events.) Also, I'm not sure, but their apartment building might actually be a cult. Signs all over the place offered money for bringing more people in...sounds suspicious to me. Seriously, it was great to see Kevin and Shannon for a little while -- and perhaps even a small miracle that they were both home.

We also drove through Smyrna on the way from Baltimore to New York City. We discovered Lincoln at an unnamed automobile dealership attempting to convince some defenceless senior citizen (probably a veteran) to liquidate all the retirement savings for a $40,000 truck with $700 monthly payments. Josh and I rushed to the rescue and convinced this pillar of society (the senior citizen, not Lincoln) to purchase a ScootAbout instead.

Actually, Lincoln was hard at work serving the community of Smyrna by providing quality automobiles at an outstanding price. He has not, however, visited our lovely blog and was therefore woefully behind in the BLD news. We should all email him once a day until he posts his own blog so the rest of you could have the great knowledge we now have of Lincoln's life.

There's other news, but I'll leave something for Josh to do while I'm away this week at our conference. I'll be manning the Cyber Cafe in Houston if anyone wants to visit.

Publication . . . Dan, congratulations on your first publication. I attempted to understand it, but had difficulty. Perhaps it was due to lack of effort (indeed, I did not try _that_ hard to understand it), but I think that one of the main reasons was that I got hooked up on the abstract, which spoke of "the tribology of joint replacement prostheses." I confess to not knowing what "tribology" is. My first thought was that it was the study of the scholarship of Laurence Tribe . My second thought was that it was some degenerate form of a Paula Abdul album that I once received from Columbia Records after I failed to send in my response card declining the monthly offer in time (excerpt: "NOW YOU ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS. WHY IT'S THE STUDY OF THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN YOU AND ME ). My third, and most enlightening, thought, was that I had no idea what you were talking about. So I decided that I would wait for an explanation of "tribeology" before devoting any more time to attempting to understand the publication. I hope that an explanation is forthcoming. And yes, it has been a while since people have posted (excepting your weekly criticisms of Randy Fasani, ROB, how 'bout an answer?), but people do read. And people do post.

In keeping with the theme that Dan has established, here is a link to the first published opinion by my judge that I had some part in shaping (note that you need acrobat reader to view b/c it's a pdf file). It's not "my" publication or opinion because it's my judge's, but lots of the work of a clerk is to research and, often, to write a first draft of an opinion. I can't say how much or how little contribution I had to this opinion (it's bad form), but it was one of the cases that I worked on for my judge. The facts are pretty interesting. Enjoy.

Finally, an administrative note: To make a link on your submission, just highlight the text that you want to turn into a link, and then click on the little globe icon or hit ctrl+shift+a and then type the http address into the dialogue box that pops up.
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Dan, that's awesome! It's good to know who to go to with my synovial fluid questions. Do you think we could turn your research into a movie?
Seriously, that's wonderful, congratulations!
PS. I'm sorry, I would like to make my blog posts have pretty links but I can't figure it out here at work.

Even though no one posts here anymore, i'm hoping people read it on occasion. Though my name may never be in lights like Maurissa's is already, I have finally become a published author. Read about my fantastic and groundbreaking work in the area of synovial fluid rheology in the most recent issue of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research. Look for future installments related to the tribology of joint replacement...