Ben Wisdom

The brain connections are forming fast!...

In Ben or Jack? (Carol)

Well, probably in Jack the fastest, but I'm sure Ben's still learning, too! Especially about Jack!

My boy has been going potty first thing! Without even being told! I'm such a proud Mama!

You parents are weird :P

eat something good for me!

Let me know if you find any REAL gyros with real tzatziki there, and not the "steak-umm" processed stuff...that's why I opt for anything kabobish here in the States...and have fun!

We have a Maytag from Lowes that has lasted 3...no problems yet

(Rachel) ....a dishwasher other than Ben Wisdom of course. ;-)

get a whirlpool...

I have a Whirlpool that I bought new from Craigslist. It's been running great for about 2 years now. Never had a problem with it.

Bosch

LOL, Rachel. I'm sure Ben's a great dishwasher.

Bosch.

We had a Whirlpool that was original to the house than lasted, oh, 20 years, then we've had our current Whirlpool for the last 3 or so... No problems at all.

What's breaking in the dishwasher, Rachel? Sometimes you can get replacement parts, but sometimes fixing it costs as much as a new one....

ours is also a Whirlpool, and I'm pretty sure it's been here since the house's "makeover" about 6-7 years ago. No problems.

Check Consumer Reports. They are usually good at identifying the good ones.

(Rachel) Geez... I knew someone was going to say Bosch! Not doing it for a house I'm not going to stay in forever. But it sounds like Whirlpool is pretty well liked too. Last repair guy in here said GE or Whirlpool. We went with GE. :-(
Leanne - you're right, in our experience, repair costs are more than the dishwasher itself.
Rob - I don't really trust Consumer Reports for durability anymore. Performance sure, but not durability.

The problem I've found with Consumer Reports is that they are TOO specific. They are so careful in their testing, that they test specific models with specific model numbers, and you can almost NEVER find that specific model number in a store... the companies change them so often so they are always "new and improved"... with one small new feature. ... Read MoreSo, I may check out CR, to see if one brand name stands above all the competition, but, I don't get too far down in the weeds. And you're right, they test something for how it does "now", and maybe run 100 loads, but there's no way they can really test how something stands up to real use over years of time.

Maytaq, Whirlpool, and KitchenAid are all good. We have a Maytag, and it's lasted a while, though we do have to regularly give it a hard-water deposit treatment ("Dishwater Magic!").

A dishwasher that lasts more than 2 years? Yeah, it's called a husband...bwwaaahahahahaaaa.

well, if it was personal, it would be against yourself... Oh, I get it, some people might be offended if you don't respond IMMEDIATELY... well, not me, I know you're busy!

Here's my public profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/benwisdom

Good job! Way to network!

You may catch something good with a net that big!

I'd like to think I've only just begun. I'm going to finish "collecting" other former colleagues that have since moved on to other things, and I've approached Pastor Mathias and an elder or two about starting a First Presbyterian LinkedIn group. I'm not quite a "fisher of men" in the strict biblical sense, but it may be close. :)

Of course, I've got nothing on Nina. She's the "Linkedinningest" person I ever did see. She connects to at least five people a day, and all the website says about how many connections she has is "500+"!

Sounds like he has his dad's sense of humor!

And Jack likes blue!

wow, what a difference!

Great picture... that's what true citizenship and patriotism is all about.

Telling...a picture is worth a thousand words.

Hah! So much hot air concentrated in one space. It's like "We are the World" version 2.0.

Cute.

Soooooo cute! And look how MUCH she looks like Jack in this picture!

cute, cute, cute, cute, cute! She is such a doll!

Two "passies"; how much better can it get?

That's great. She's beautiful.

Whatever that bear is whispering in Jack's ear is making him smile.

Such a cutie!

Isaiah likes this photo!! He shouted "hey that is my friend.....uh.....

He is getting so much bigger.... enjoy it while you can. Before you know it, he will be grown.

And it's ordinary citizens rather than the mainstream media bringing ACORN down... great stuff.

Yeah... we are in serious trouble.

See the insiders selling millions of dollars worth of stock? They know something, and they're getting out of the market quickly.

Well, I certainly can't "like" it, but but I have to acknowledge the sad truth.

This is an ideological struggle, pure and simple. The Left is emotionally wedded to the concept as a "moral" right and the Right is logically against the implications of Govt. control of our lives and the economic issues plus unconstitutionality of the whole thing. Safety and security vs. individual responsibilty and personal property rights. ... Read MoreUnfortunately, most of our citizens have no clue what the economic implications are and even citizens like me aren't really aware of the systemic problem being argued (since guys like me know only the Govt. health care system via Tricare and we're busy actually defending the country).

My wife has suffered long and hard at the hands of the current system. I'll vote for anything that is against what the health care industry is lobbying for.

I don't really know why anybody would even remotely care about the poor health care insurance industry. Oh, please, lets make sure United or Blue Cross can continue to rape us.

Put "air quotes" around the word "poor."

I'm sorry to hear that, Ben. As someone with a chronic disease, I've had my share of run-ins with various systems as well, both market-based (United HealthCare) and government-based (Tri-Care). Without getting too personal (this is FB after all), I'd be interested to hear the general nature of your bad experiences, as we could probably find ... Read Morecommon ground therein.

We could probably start here: The Realm of the Market isn't the be-all and end-all solution to anything, and it can do evil things, too.

My wife is a chronic pain patient. We've had so many denials for treatment, therapy, etc. that have had to be appealed. We've had all sorts of double billing done by medical practitioners. I've personally had scripts changed from brand to generic (and it's not even the same drug) by my prescription insurance (Medco) because they don't want to pay ... Read Morefor the higher priced drug.

Have you ever priced out private insurance? When I started my own company, I was looking a $1300/mo just to insure my wife. And that was before they even knew about her conditions. INSANITY.

On the doctors side, your GP barely makes anything from an office visit, so their incentive is to get you in and out as quickly as possible. This translates to much poorer care for you as a patient. From what I've read there's a shortage of new GP's now - everyone wants to be a specialist, because that's the only way to make money as a doctor now.

I do feel for you, Ben R. I went through my Ben's things with hm, and I too have a lot of complicated stuff to deal with. But a lot that's wrong with the system is because the camel's nose (the gov't) is in the tent, with both a byazantine maze of laws for the insurance companies, and on the other side, the over-involvement of the courts. You are ... Read Moreexactly right that the Doctors (GPs and Family Docs) and patients are the ones most caught in the mess. But to turn the whole thing into a giant Medicare... would be a disaster, because Medicare is a disaster. It's VERY complex, but the way to solve it is probably not a 1000+ page bill that few have read, with all its unintended consequences.
I hope your wife can get some relief and feel better. I know what it's like.

I think that a lot of what is wrong with the system is because it's all about money and not about patient care.

I wish we had a system like the UK does. Free health care for everybody. No insurance, etc. If you're sick, you see a doctor - any doctor. I'd gladly take the $400/mo I pay in premiums to United (I don't even have vision coverage - that would have been an extra $100/mo) and pay that in taxes to a working universal health care system.

In a UK-style system, your $400 a month would pay more bureaucrats than doctors. The National Health Service bureaucracy in Britain as an institution is second in size only to the People's Liberation Army in China. This leads to extreme inefficiency and poor quality of care, news stories about which are legion if one just looks for them. A ... Read Moregovernment-run system would still be all about money: saving government funds at the expense of patient care. To extend the baseball metaphor, government makes a good umpire but a poor team manager.

It is more likely that your individual health insurance price could be brought down from $1300/mo much closer to $400/mo by instituting such measures as are mentioned in this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

- Making premiums tax-deductible or as a tax-credit would reduce out-of-pocket expense.
- Eliminating Intra-state monopolies by enabling people to buy insurance across state lines.... Read More
- Cap unquantifiable damages in lawsuits would reduce malpractice insurance premium for providers and pass those savings onto the patients.
- Removing government mandates that insurance must cover absolutely everything on the "long tail" of care will reduce premiums so that plans can be more flexible to cover the top of the exponential curve more effectively for each individual.

Money is one of the seven things that make the world go around, and that can't be avoided. When a society tries to avoid it, it makes its people absolutely miserable, like the Soviet Union. What needs to be done is to strengthen other motivators in the healthcare arena like neighborly charity, scientific rigor, personal responsibility, even ... Read Morereligious hospitality (Where do you think the word hospital came from?). Giving government absolute power over the health and lives of its citizens, which is the ultimate longterm intent of the legislation currently in Congress, will be catastrophic our overall cultural health. The broad-sword of the state makes an awful surgeon's scalpel.

I think that if you polled the majority of Britons, they'd say that they were quite happy with their health care. Conversely, if you polled the majority of Americans, they'd say that they were fed up with the bureaucracy of their private insurance. I am generally a Republican-leaning Libertarian, but in this case I am all for the gov't running ... Read Morehealth care.

As for tax deductions, etc. for private care, that still doesn't help having to cough up the $1300/mo. If I get money back in April, that's great. But what about the other 11 months, when I have a decision about putting food on the table or paying premiums to Aetna? (Not that I'm in that position, but many are.)

Hurray! Congratulations, Ben...

and I loved the story of it , My mom showed me the stuff from the wedding .
GOD is indeed good !!

Good grief...you remember the exact day......ah, but that is Ben. :)

ha ha that is so like Ben... I have no idea when I first met Tim, and we disagree as to where it was...

Facebook won't let me like like, like, like, like, so I'll leave a comment! I'm so GLAD Ben met Rachel! She's the BEST!

MEEE TOOO! I was just depending on God that he had the perfect young woman for beloved Ben!

Here is the story that Uncle Doug mentioned:

http://www.fromwitsend.org/ourweddingprogram/weddingprogram3.htm

Rachel is a wonderful help meet for Ben and a super duper mom for Jack and Nora! The Wisdom boys are blessed.

Yes thats it ! Keeping track of dates good job

Congratulations! And she is definitely a keeper!!

(Rachel) Why does it say Aug 5? It should say Sept 4.

It's getting back at you for outsmarting it. Pay no attention. (Carol)

May be calendar in the camera's "brain" is off... but agree with Carol!

Whatever that bear is whispering in Jack's ear is making him smile.

Such a cutie!

Isaiah likes this photo!! He shouted "hey that is my friend.....uh.....

He is getting so much bigger.... enjoy it while you can. Before you know it, he will be grown.

Is "L"-shaped recovery? Or just stability?

Rachel was baking hot dog corn muffins for lunch, and she realized that there was some melted plastic in the oven. I held the rack while she tried to scrape it off. She got most of it off, but some of it fell to the bottom of the oven. After a few minutes, it caught fire.

Lunch was ruined, and there wasn't anything else much in the house to eat. So with our ox thoroughly in the ditch, we made sure the flame was gone, threw open the windows, turned on the fans, got a late lunch at Five Guys, and went to the park.

All in all, it was a nice, breezy afternoon.

Oh my! I'm glad that "all's well that ends well!"

I forgot to mention that the melted plastic was from a small container that Jack in the oven the other day when he was pretending to bake.

Vultures are an under-appreciated bird as are crows - they are the garbage collectors of nature. I don't think our American ones are having ANY survival problems, though! I heard or read somewhere recently that it was illegal to kill crows in England way back when, since they disposed of a lot of nasty stuff laying around. Always a good ecological sign if there are both in your area.

You can't afford two? Normally they're plural. :-)

Ben hasn't adopted stereo yet. He's a mono purist. :)

It really is just a headphone, well more like an earplug. Good enough for talk radio and music from the 40's, right? I only use mono as a matter of courtesy at work so that people can get my attention when they need to. If I had some dark glasses I would look like a secret service agent.

Still better than what we had before, IMHO.

Better by what measure? Unemployment is still rising. The market is so bad more and more people are just giving up on looking for work. The federal deficit will quadruple and the federal debt will double in the next decade.

At least the problems are being addressed instead of ignored. "We're not in a recession" when pretty much everyone in the world knew we were - had actions been taken back then instead of swept under the rug, maybe things would have been better. By a lot of measures the economy is starting to recover, and hopefully unemployment will start to go down.

It's wishful thinking to expect change to happen overnight, although I do appreciate that people are suffering through all of this. I don't think people should give up looking for jobs - people may need to set their expectations a little lower. When I was laid off in 2001 I had to take a survival job for a few years (with an accompanying $32k pay cut) until I found something that brought me back up to the level that I was at. Sucks, but I wanted to keep my house and not have to move back home.

Ben R.-- We WEREN'T in a recession until the 4th quarter of '07. Who took control of Congress in '06? The Democrats. Was Bush wrong to sign TARP I? Yes. Yet, who signed the $787 billion "stimulus" bill and the $900 million supplemental that was full of pork projects for his ACORN buddies and polticial allies this year? Obama. A December 1, 2008, ... Read Morereport from the National Bureau of Economic Research stated that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007 (when economic activity peaked), based on a number of measures including job losses, declines in personal income, and declines in real GDP.
At least it's being addressed? You address it by not spending money you don't have and growing the federal government!!!! You cut taxes, give more money back to consumers and the private sector to spur entrepreneurship and consumer spending on goods and services.

The economy was a disaster before Q4 '07. I actually don't think TARP was a bad idea, and I don't mind the stimulus projects. Pork projects are a reality from politicians from both parties. Look at what a mess the Dems have made of Jersey.

As far as spending money we don't have, how has the war in Iraq been paid for? That was supposed to have ... Read Morebeen financed by the Iraqis and their oil money. You want to talk about saddling future generations with debt? My kids will be paying off that war. It'd be nice to have not spent that money in the first place.

Ditto. Fear of what might be coming and stasis because that's all congress has been working on alllllll year...

That works for very nearly any word, if you say it over and over enough.

I like dipthong too. It's just a neat word. Actually, it could be used as an insult. "You--you--DIPthong!"

Yeah, I went through that. Then I got some Lactaid. Life is good again.

That happened to me as well... just don't forget the Lactaid as Jason said.

Yeah dude, and to break it to you, it probably isn't just the lactose, but the dairy proteins themselves. I should know, I got those genes too, and the horrible stomach cramps to prove it (I cut dairy a few months after gluten).

Distant second consolation prize is the various alternamilks (rice, almond, soy), but there is such a thing as coconut-milk based mint choc chip ice-cream. It is amazing.

Yep, got the cramps, about 8 hours after ingestion, give or take. And I think that you're right about it not just being the lactose. I've taken the Lactaid and still get the cramps. I'll have to look into the coconut-based ice cream, though. Ice cream is hard to give up.

Welcome to the club...... guess we can trace which side of the family you get it from :-(

I can still do yogurt and hard cheeses, but a nice glass of milk is long in the past :-(

There are some good non-dairy frozen ice 'creams' -- worst case scenario, find out what grocery store in your area caters to those who keep kosher..... there will be ... Read Moreparve (no dairy) soy and rice products. Ditto on cookbooks - look for Passover (no wheat products and many non-dairy recipes to be served with meat). I've had some amazing non-dairy desserts with meat meals!

Me, too! If I drink milk at all, it's soy (like on cereal), and soy ice cream, too. Naomi does well on goat milk, but it has a very strong taste, and I only drink it if there's no soy milk in the house!

Don't do soy...very bad for boys as it mimics estrogen. Rice Dream is a better option, and they make an ice cream that isn't half bad. Frank had milk problems too, his solution: Raw Milk. Seriously, the pastuerizing was the problem.

You know what I told you........but do you listen...NO :P

He never listens, Becca.

No Bekah, I heard you. Rachel is going make yoghurt out of the milk you gave us to see if I can tolerate milk from a Jersey cow as opposed to a Holstein. And also since it's raw that might help too. We'll see. I bought soMe of that coconut ice cream on the way home from work, too.

You're in good company, Ben. Two of us three feel your pain. Actually goat milk is quite good once you get used to it. Publix carries goat cheese. There is also a local dairy called Happy Cow Creamery or something like that who claim that their milk does not bother lactose intolerant people because of the way they raise the cows and handle the milk. Rosewood Market sells it. (Carol)

I like humanity, it's people I don't like. :)

uh-oh, Grandma W sent him home with bubble wrap again! :)

whoa, i was just doing that the other day myself!

I have lots of bubble wrap. You'll have to do a duet next time you visit! :)

Hopefully Jack retains his optimism...it ain't easy. Canis Familiaris is much easier to love as a species, overall.

I'm going to pick up Snow Leopard tonight or tomorrow!

Also glad for the gut upgrade this afternoon. Still looking for a job upgrade, though...

Laptop is done, desktop with about half an hour to go.

He's a future engineer ;)

...lots of people are praying for you....

ditto

You have peace because you trust God. You need have no fear. Yes, many prayers on your behalf.

You have learned the secret!! Phil. 4:12b,13

Join My Mafia: http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/status_invite.php?from=552702519

I might be the first to go under their system. I am too expensive. Oh well I am ready.

Hey - this is Rachel. Beka - it took 1.5 pounds of nuts, 2 pints of olive oil and .5 pounds of Parmesan. That's when I decided the pesto making had gotten excessive. I really expected less volume from the basil. We'll bring you some.
Ginny - I didn't feel like I had the time or inclination to make several batches at different times, so I just ... Read Morepulled up the plants entirely. I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew yesterday when a certain three year old was trying to help pick off leaves. Ha!

Wow, Rachel! That's a lot! I'm sure a certain three year old didn't make it easier... he likes to "help"! I did the batch thing because I only have 12 plants, and I only have a little tiny mini food processor. It makes a batch that uses 1 3/4 cup basil leaves, 1/4 cup nuts, and 1/2 c olive oil. I did 5 little batches today. I leave out the cheese, because Chris can't have it. It still tastes pretty good

wow, you're getting all organized! Or bored!

Yes! Both!

This is actually a 6" square tile that my brother gave me for my birthday this year. It's by a guy named Rob Ryan. See here:
http://www.liberty.co.uk/fcp/product/Liberty/Home-Gifts/%27My-Adventure-Is-About-To-Begin%27-Tile,--Rob-Ryan/11550
and here:
http://swellsome.typepad.com/swellsome/2007/11/my-adventure-is.html

It looks like something you would have done. Pretty neat.