Ed Buford - Just Another Geek

Sweet New Head Phones.

I was gifted with a great new set of headphones for Christmas this year. These Sony MDR-7509 are the best sounding head phones I’ve ever heard. Merry Christmas to me!

The Boy Next Door 7

December 29th 1978 Harlan was killed in a firearms accident. It was the afternoon, I heard about it an hour later. I went numb, I don’t know what I said or if I even said anything. I remember that I didn’t cry, not then anyways. When John died I spoke with many people from my church that let me know that if John wasn’t fully invested in Christ he was bound for hell. There was no doubt in my mind that Harlan wasn’t fully or even partially invested in Christ. I remember my sister telling me it was ok to cry, but I was in shock.

The funeral parlor was long and narrow, filled with folding chairs in the center and some pew like couches on the side walls towards the front of the room. I don’t remember going there, I was just there. I walked to the front of the room, it was Randall I saw first, he grabbed my hand and pulled me down closer to him. He reached up and grabbed me by the back of the head and pulled my head next to his. His grip was very strong from years in the wheelchair. He cried, so did I.

Harlan’s Dad was a professed atheist, as far as I know he was never interested in thinking about God, that was changing. Harlan’s Dad pulled me close to him in the only embrace we ever had. His eyes were filled with tears, there was nothing to say. I can’t remember anything he said, but I knew he was remembering all the years Harlan and I played together.

I remember my Dad and Harlan’s Dad talking about God that day. I remember that he couldn’t believe this was the end, that there was no meaning to life, that death was the end. I was proud of my Dad that day as he spoke, about God being a God of hope and a God of love. It’s funny but as Harlan’s Dad was choosing to believe in God, I was beginning to reject him.

Harlan’s Dad wrote the epitaph on his headstone it reads: Went to sleep in Jesus in the setting of the sun.

The Boy Next Door 6

It was late spring when they told me John was dead. It seemed like hours past as I tried to speak. How, why, when I asked; it was a tractor accident he was driving and there was another kid on it with him when the tractor rolled over and both boys died.

I hadn’t seen John in some time, and now I realized that I never would again. What would I say to him if I had a chance, I didn’t know, but I knew I would have loved the chance.

I went to the funeral home and John’s brother and parents were there. His brother and I talked for a long time. I remember his tears….

Not long afterwards Harlan turned seventeen. He stopped by to see me while I was working on my Grandma’s house. He was lean and strong, and not the fat little boy that I once knew. He had dropped out of school and gone to work for his Dad as a roofer.
He had moved in with a girl and talked about how great life was. It had been at least a year since I’d seen him. I remember how different he seemed.

He was eager to talk about John… we did. I knew this was a chance for me to talk about God; I tried, he resisted. I could tell we both were sorry we hadn’t stayed the three musketeers. I could read the pain in his eyes, it was the same pain I saw when they removed Randal’s legs. There were no words to speak about the distance between us. I knew we would both change the past if we could… but we couldn’t.

The Boy Next Door 5

Middle school was a new time in my life; I found new friends and activities and found myself drifting away from Harlan and John. We were still friends but we each headed in our own direction. John went with me to church from time to time and I’m pretty sure he began trusting God.

I continued to go to church, and at fifteen I gave my life to Christ at a church camp in Ohio. I was well aware there were some problems with the duplicity of the leadership at my church but I was sure I had met God and I wanted to live my life for him.

I came back from church camp and was baptized at my church. My dad was baptized with me, it was a wonderful thing. Dad had found God in a foxhole during WWII, but had never been baptized. It’s been awesome to have that memory over the years.

I dove headlong into the theology and philosophy of my church, but could not understand how being “saved” seemed to be more of a club than a calling. I knew Jesus loved me, but I couldn’t understand why that message was mixed with the misanthropic disdain for those who would not change their ways.

I heard from the pulpit about how Satan led an army of gays, rock and rollers, Catholics, Jews, unbelievers, and every other group who didn’t follow their beliefs. They made it clear to me that most everyone who didn’t believe what they did was destined for hell.
They explained how I should turn my back on those who wouldn’t turn from their evil ways. It’s funny now but in retrospect they talked way more about staying out of hell then they did about a loving God who offered heaven.

The Boy Next Door 4

I was in sixth grade when I met John. Our teacher made the public humiliation of John a class pastime. John may not have had the best head for school but he certainly didn’t deserve the daily verbal thrashing our teacher gave him in front of the class. John became the laughing stock of sixth grade, but he stood up under the weight of it when I was sure it would have broken me.

It might have been because I couldn’t stand to watch John endure his daily dose of belittlement and have no friends to boot, that prompted me to befriend John. But I soon counted John as one of my closest friend. John spent most every weekend at my house in during the sixth grade and spent full weeks during that summer. It seemed like he would go home and be back the next day.

Harlan not only accepted John but we all became deep friends. It was the first time we had a mutual friend who make it into our inner circle. Before long we were the three musketeers and we were sure it would always be that way.

Adding Email to your VBScripts

I have scripts that run every night to do some type of nightly maintenance. After they’ve been in service for a while, I tend to forget they even exist until there’s a problem. So I started adding email alerts to my vbscripts. The only catch here is that you need an Exchange server to bounce these off of.

So here’s the script:

Set objEmail = CreateObject("CDO.Message")

objEmail.From = "EmailAddress@YourDomain.com"
objEmail.To = "EmailAddress@YourDomain.com"
objEmail.Subject = "Whatever You Want the Subject to be"
objEmail.Textbody = "This Shoud say something you want it to say"
'objEmail.AddAttachment "C:\1\test12.txt"

objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "youremailservername"
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 25
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Update

objEmail.Send

You need to change the email addresses to addresses in your domain and you need to change the name of the mail server to your exchange servers name. If your exchange servers inside FQDN is email.yourdomain.local then I would just use the name of email.

Have fun with it.

Shocking Discovery

While searching the Moon at google I made the discovery that the moon is really made out of cheese.

Yes, you can zoom in so close that you can see the true make up of the Moon

Interesting new Search Engine

Ask MS. Dewey

This is too much fun.... my favorite search is: Gun
Try searching on it several times.

Are Spammers working weekends?

I was looking at Threat Watch from the guys over at MessageLabs and noticed that Spam seems to be increasing during the weekends.
















I can’t think of anyone who should have to work weekends more than these guys…

New Strongbad email

Stongbads new Decemberween wishlist Too funny!

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