Brawny

Has anybody else noticed that the Brawny paper towel brand has changed its icon? I remember the commercials on TV they used to have where they'd focus in on their Brawny man as it got superimposed on the plastic wrapping of the paper towel. There he was, a big, burly, white guy with a full beard, big ol' axe, and a checkered lumberjack shirt. If ever there was a man who's " brawny" it would be him. Nobody would question his masculinity.

But sometime, I don't know when, Brawny changed their dude. He's not so brawny anymore. Go check for yourself. To start, he's clean shaven. He's still white, but he's got good looking black hair. He's not wearing the lumberjack plaid anymore either. It's crazy. It's as if Brawny's about to make a name change to Metro. Although, I'm not too sure about paper towel sales if they were to make the switch-a-roo. I mean how useful can Metro be?

The pop up blocker

There've been a number of pop up blocker applications available for free recently. For a while now, I've been using PanicWare's Pop Up Stopper and I've been happy with it. It blocked all pop ups including those I didn't want it to block, but that was fine. All I had to do was push down the control button when I wanted to see a poll on CNN or ESPN or wanted to buy something on Amazon.

But then after hearing all the buzz about the Google toolbar with its pop up blocker feature, I decided that I wanted to be cool too and join the bandwagon. So I downloaded the google toolbar. All of a sudden, pop ups came well... popping up. Warnings, online casinos, viagra, etc.. You'd figure that hey, two pop up blockers equals double the protection from pop ups. But no. Apparently, two pop up blockers equal no protection from pop ups. So I tried to get rid of the google toolbar and go back to the original set up. No luck. The google toolbar has forever corrupted my computer's pop up blocking capabilities. I was unfaithful to my pop up blocker and now I'm having to deal with the repercussions of my poor decisions. Suddenly, this blog post is starting to sound like a public service announcement addressing the issue of STDs. *Fade to black, keyboard background music* The more you know...

The end of an era

Gone are my days as a 4.0 student. I just checked my grades online for the winter quarter. And although I didn't maintain my perfect record for two straight terms, it was never really my goal at the beginning. I recognize that it may sound like I'm trying to justify the outcome now that I know how it's turned out.

Some historical context is required here... like good exegesis!

When I went to my academic counselor's office to sign up for my classes for the winter quarter, my counselor looked at the classes I wanted to take and said very plainly, "You're going to die." No words of encouragement, no talking about alternatives, just "you're going to die." Why? Because I wanted to sign up for 5 classes (which I ended up doing). I wasn't aiming to get straight As again with 5 classes. I just knew that if I was planning on coming home for the summer and wanted to stay on pace to graduate in 3 years, I had to take 5 classes in either the winter or spring quarter. I guess my counselor's not prophetic because I'm still alive!

As an additional note, I am yet to rejoin the "Cs earn degrees" club in seminary!