meJoe.com

I can't believe how popular this topic has been of late. Here are some links to sheet music for the Mario Brothers theme and many more video games.

Video Game Sheet Music, thanks to Brian's Web page. Available in tons of different formats too. I've also found a Super Mario Brothers Theme Song MIDI and the famous Nerd playing Mario movie

Mario is cool.

We were competing against teams from Dell, IBM, Grande and much more. A rare picture of me (joe)!

The competition was furious, but our team came up with a second place in the Stock Car division of the Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) Austin. The event was held in Austin Texas by Knowbility, the Austin based non-profit Web Accessbility group. Thanks Sharron!

We were also show-cased by UTSA Today on the home page and in the story entitled, UTSA team takes second in statewide Web site accessibility design competition. They got a great photo of our team!

For over 40 years now the US Federal Government has blocked trade and communications with Cuba. Both chambers of Congress can change this now.

I don't typically talk politics on this site, but I just had to bring up this issue which touches my family so directly. My wife is Cuban and we have many relatives that live there. We would like for the Federal Government to remove its restrictions and allow the free flow of people, information and trade to Cuba.

Right now there is a Transportation and Treasury Department appropriations bill that has passed both the House and Senate. This bill contains the wording that would make it illegal to use government funds to continue the embargo. The bill has support on both sides of the isle from both the House and Senate, passing with an overhelming majority.

Hope it passes and doesn't get stripped from the bill.

• The UN doesn't support it, though thats never influenced us in the past I guess.
• Some companies already do business with Cuba.
• Closed Cuba: Bush puts politics over a sensible opening for change - Detroit Free Press Editorial

Here is a copy of a letter that I have sent out to my Reps in Washington.

RE: Embargo on Cuba

I write in regards to related bills that were recently passed in both the House and the Senate. I do not want to see the Cuba provision dropped. Doing so would deny the democratic process (majority votes in both chambers) and continue an unpopular and unsuccessful policy. Removing the embargo on Cuba is the best move for Texas, the US, and the oppressed Cuban people.

Cuba's population of 10 million is an excellent market for Texas goods such as beef, farm products and technology. Texas is also better positioned than most states to take advantage of trade relations because of it's large hispanic population and expertise in foreign trade. We are loosing out on all good opportunities as Europeans purchase hotels and other business interests that will provide impressive growth and profit to their owners.

Our family members are being harmed by this unsuccesful policy. My wife's family is slowly wasting in the oppresive environment and stagnant economy. My daughter rarely is able to visit or communicate with her grandma and grandpa. I have never met my new family there.

The embargo on Cuba is destructive to Americans and Cubans. Please pass this legislation!

Sincerely,
Joseph and Alizon McBride
San Antonio

Most people don't know them.

You can find out who they are at the Consumer's Unition site.

Mine are listed here:

• Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)
• Senator John Cornyn (R)
• Representative Henry Bonilla (R-23)

A blogger's worst nightmare. A Microsoft employee was fired because of a picture he posted on his personal Web site.

This thing is all over the Web, I can't believe that his server can handle it. Another contribution…

In Of Blogging and Unemployment, Michael Hanscom talks about the post, Even Microsoft wants G5s that got him fired.

Apparently he took a photo of some Macintosh G5s being unloaded from Microsoft dock in Redmond WA. The photo plus details about the location of the goods lead to his eventual termination for security reasons.

I can't say that it was particularly wise of him took take such an openly critical stance against his employer, aside from the fact that this is a security violation. I don't think I would do it and I work at a university, where “academic freedom” is taken very seriously.

Still, you can't help but feel sorry for the poor guy. At least the there are good predictions about the economy.

Well, the blogging craze has been exposed. One study of 3,634 weblogs found that two-thirds had not been updated for at least two months and about 25% hadn't changed since the day they were launched!

We all get into these ruts, the ones where your last entrys date quickly slips away on you (the blogger). You've got something great to write on and you push it into tommorrow, and then push again, and again. Good thing I read this AP story, The Web is Littered With Yesteryear's Castoffs - Web Sites Long Abandoned, a story about some of the lack of motivation by bloggers and site creators. It shamed, err, motivated me into making this little entry.

Bishop Armstrong of the South Dakota Methodists comments on Robert (Bob) McBride, my grandfather. My grandfather was a Methodist Minister whom was involved in many politically historic moments in recent American Indian history.

On Liberalism

By Bishop Armstrong

I am fed up with labels, labels like "fundamentalist",
"conservative", "radical", and "liberal".
Usually they are used as weapons, labels are; used to attack and condemn those with
whom we disagree.

Fundamentalists are considered—by some—narrow-minded nincompoops
whose belief systems are based on a nonsensical framework of irrational
superstitions.

Conservatives are those—according to some—who are mired in the
past. Their heads are buried in the sand. Their theme song is,
"Come weal or come woe our status I quo."

Radicals, of course, are dangerous. They are revolutionaries. They
want to overturn everything. They would throw out every sacred baby with all
the dirty bath water.

And liberals? Well, we know about liberals. Our president, speaking
to a group of partisan compatriots in New Orleans, hissed the words:
"Liberal, liberal, liberal…" as if a liberal was the antitheses
of everything good and noble, everything red, white and blue in America.
Liberalism is viewed—by some—as a disease that needs to be exercised from
the system of the body politic.

Well, frankly, I claim to be each of the above.

I’m a fundamentalist, and so are you. We believe that what we
believe is the fundamental essence of what really matters.

I’m a conservative. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t a
conservative, nor would you. I believe with all my heart that there are
certain values, certain traditions, certain stories out of the past that need to be
preserved. That is what the Church is all about. It keeps the old, old
story alive! Conservatism.

I’m a radical—at least I hope I am. The dictionary definition
suggests that a radical is someone who gets to the root of the matter. A
radical is someone who deals with the bedrock basics of reality. Well, of
course, that’s me. Isn’t that you?

And I am liberal without shame or without apology. Liberalism is a noble
tradition in the history of humankind. It has made an inestimable
contribution to the formation of America. It provides a leaven; a balance in
the checks and balances that are a part of the genius of this democracy.
Liberalism is the gospel of the open mind. It insists that the story is not
yet finished. There are new frontiers to conquer; new challenges to face; new
aspects of truth to be explored.

I want to be—in fact I think I’m called to be—a
fundamentalist, a conservative, a radical, a liberal. All of those
things. And so are you. And so is the Church. Jesus was.

"Love God with your heart and soul and strength and mind. Love your
neighbor as yourself." (Luke 10:27) That was Jesus’
fundamentalism.

"I haven’t come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have
come to fulfill them." (MT. 5:17) He did not trash tradition.
That was conservatism.

He came to be with the poor, release the captive, set a liberty the
oppressed. He challenged both church and state. He threw over the
moneychangers’ tables. He died on a cross. Yet—he refused
to die. He transcended death. Now that’s dealing with bedrock
basics. That’s radical.

Again and again Jesus said, "Of old it was said unto you… but I say
unto you." (Mt. 5:22) Fresh insights. "Of old it was said unto
you… but I say unto you." New understandings. Liberalism.

For the moment I want to talk about liberalism.

This school is considered "liberal".

Most denominations represented here today are considered
"liberal".

Many of us in this room are branded "liberal".

I’ve been called a lot of things. The national secretary of the Moral
Majority once called me the "anti-Christ." He said I was a
"communist". To be called a liberal ain’t
nuthin’. Yet liberalism is receiving such bad press these days.
It is being featured as one of the major themes in what promises to be a vicious
presidential campaign. Why, do you realize that Michael Dukakis is a
card-carrying member of the ACLU? Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Shades of McCarthyism.

So let’s talk about liberalism not as a theory, not as an ideal, but as a
way of approaching life. Let me tell you about Bob McBride.

Bob was born in Denver, but he grew up during harsh Depression years in
Harrisburg, South Dakota. He went to the University of South Dakota.
After teaching English and Latin in small town South Dakota and after serving in
the Korean War, he went back to school and became a Methodist minister. He
never served a high steeple church—nothing even approaching a high steeple
church. His parishes included Hurley, Viborg, Davis, Whit Lake, Kimball,
Underwood, Wagner, Delmont, Caputa, Howard, and Roswell. Did you ever hear of
any of those metropolis?

Yet, when he died less than a month ago after a brief illness the largest
newspaper in the state eulogized him in a lead article. He nudged the
Republican National Convention out of the headlines. (He would have loved
that.) His funeral service couldn’t be held in the Methodist Church in
Howard. It wasn’t big enough. It was held in the Catholic
Church. It wasn’t big enough either. People from all over the
state and region filled the church and stood beyond its walls. Former
Governor Bill Janklow said, "Gosh, he gave me hell. He was one of my
harshest critics. But I really respected Bob McBride. …He said the
same thing in church that he said on the street, that he said in personal letters,
that he told you in private." Senator George McGovern got in touch with
the family from Washington.

What made Bob tick? Among other things, he was a liberal in the truest
sense of the word.

He was a "troublemaker". (Not all liberals are
troublemakers.) When members of the Yankton Sioux tribe of Indians took over
the pork plant in Wagner (Bob was the pastor there) Bob joined them in the plant,
was on with them there helped negotiate a settlement. Later he would join
protesters in putting lilies near a missile silo site in western South
Dakota. Bill Walsh, of the Bob’s closest friends and a former Roman
Catholic priest, said, "[Bob] was in constant trouble insofar as he spoke
constantly from the pulpit about social issues." Those who were
privileged to be Bob’s bishops and district superintendents during his
ministerial lifetime were besieged with phone calls from his critics within the
churches he served and beyond. He was a troublemaker.

He was a political activist. Just this last June he barely missed a
primary bid for a House seat in the South Dakota state Legislature. He had
tried it before. When I lived in South Dakota I received calls about his
standing in the heart of downtown Rapid City passing out his campaign literature on
street corners to passing motorists. Whenever George McGovern ran for
anything Bob McBride was there to help whip the troops into shape and advance the
cause.

Perhaps more important than any of this, however, was the fact that Bob
"enabled" people; he "empowered" people. He helped
found We the People, a state lobbying group. He helped found South
Dakota’s Peace and Justice Center in Watertown. He helped found Dakota
Rural Action, a 200-member organization that has been dealing with a variety of
farm issues in these drought-plagued eighties. Theresa Keavnedy of Dakota
Rural Action said, "[Bob] built you up, like what you said counted. You
knew he treated everyone that way but it didn’t spoil it somehow."

More than twenty years ago Bob and his family lived in the tiny town of
Hurley. Pete Temple was a developmentally disabled man. Bob made him
the assistant scoutmaster for the local troop giving him responsibility and
dignity. When Bob died last month Temple said, "He’s one of my
best friends. Him and me always went out of town together to basketball
games. He was a wonderful, good guy". Bob did that for
people; he made each person feel like someone very special.

Troublemaker, political activist, enabler—beautiful Christ-like human
being. Don Veglahn, his District Superintendent when he died, said,
"Bob had a greater capacity for the downtrodden than anybody I’ve
known." He and his wife Elsie (and how many stars she deserves in her
crown!) were the parents of eight children, yet they were always taking people into
their home, from exchange students from South America and Europe to drifters from
the Rosebud Reservation. Sam Sully of the Yankton Sioux Housing Authority said,
"He never missed a meeting in reference to Indian Civil Rights… his
home was always open for a meal, for a bed at night or for products from his
garden." Once Bob helped Sully and his cousin get jobs in a steel
mill. He bought plane tickets for them so they could get to Chicago and take
the jobs. Lutheran Social Services say he was always doing something like
that—for Vietnamese refugees, for Hungarian and Rumanian refugees. Now
remember, this was a small town preacher with a wife and eight children—and
very little money. Yet, as a matter of course, he gave himself away.

Why spend so much time talking about one obscure preacher in a windswept,
sun-baked out-of-the-way state? For three reasons.

One, he was a self-proclaimed liberal. When you deal with the Bob
McBride’s of this world you’d better not sell liberalism short.

Two, for a lifetime he served little churches in little towns. And he
would have been the first to say, so what! He understood ministry as servant hood
and no Conference Journal in this world, no bishop, no cabinet, could define
success or failure for him. He was not subject to the mercenary standards
that dominate society today.

Three, you are here in seminary. You will soon be immersed—and
necessarily so—in academic pursuits; in theology and philosophy and
Bible and ethics and pastoral care. You will be hitting the books and writing
the papers and sweating a lot. In the midst of all of this travail
don’t lose sight of what ministry is all about. Be the kind of
fundamentalist Jesus was, the kind of conservative Jesus was, the kind of radical
Jesus was, the kind of liberal Jesus was. And once in a while be haunted by a
sort of hazy image of a little man with a gentle smile named Bob McBride hovering
out there somewhere over the Great Plains loving people, helping people, empowering
people, bringing dignity and a wondrous simplicity to the everyday routines of
life.