The Obsessed Programmer

We have a final word on how to send donations to the project to rebuild the Puma family home in Chincha Alta, Peru.  Checks should be made out to “Amigos of Honduras” and sent to me at the following address:

Ben Dilts–Amigos of Honduras
PO Box 1854
Park City, UT 84060

Please consider making a contribution.  As we’ve come closer to the actual event, new estimates show the total cost, including locally-hired skilled labor, to be around $15,000.  We need to have most of the funds in hand by about October 27th to have time to send it to Peru before we arrive there on November 3rd.

You can download a PDF of a flier (which looks best in color, but OK in black and white) requesting contributions here: http://www.bendilts.com/Liliana/fundraising.pdf.  Please distribute this widely.

Thank you from myself, Liliana, and her family!

I haven’t written on this blog since almost six weeks ago, when I posted about Liliana Puma’s family being devastated by the record-breaking earthquake that essentially leveled the city they live in.  Many have asked me for updated information on the status of Liliana and her family.

Liliana’s family, along with all other families in their immediate vicinity, has been sustained entirely by help from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The word from her family is that government aid still has not come to their area, but that the Church has helped by providing food, water, medicine, and minimal temporary shelter from the elements.

Read on for pictures and good news…

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My girlfriend, Liliana, is from Peru.  Her family lives in the city that was recently leveled by a 7.9-magnitude earthquake followed by 18 (!) aftershocks of at least magnitude 5.0.  Miraculously, all of her family survived, even though their house collapsed and the school her siblings attend was destroyed.  Although they are all alive, they are sleeping in the streets in wintertime, and they face the additional danger of rampant looting.

Please, please pray for Liliana Puma and her family.

Zane Benefits–the company I work for, and have worked for since its founding in Spring 2006–has made front-page news in the Wall Street Journal.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22zane+benefits%22

Tell everyone you know who owns a business that their new option for affordable health benefits is now national news.

As many of you may know, I don’t get television in my house.  There’s just not enough good material on cable TV to warrant $15-45/mo.  Instead, I pay $17/mo for a Blockbuster DVD subscription (like Netflix).  The DVDs work out great, since they’re mostly movies, and we have a projector with a 108″ screen (mine) and a nice Boston Acoustics/Onkyo surround sound system (Tom’s) to enjoy them on.

The problem is, Tom and I have pretty much run out of movies we wanted to watch.  So I started renting seasons of TV series.  Having just finished a series of my choosing, Arrested Development (AWESOME, by the way), we moved on to one of Tom’s favorites.

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Last night I went to a party at Lee Daniels’s house.  I had lots of fun in the swimming pool in particular.  He had the greatest pool toys ever–foam noodles that concealed pump-action water bazookas.  The bad news is that I was shot in the ear.  Ever since then, my left ear has felt and sounded like it has an earplug in it.  After a few hours, it was really bothering me that it wasn’t clearing out like my other ear.

I didn’t sleep much at all last night; I just rolled over and over and shook my head around and banged it against my pillow trying to clear something out of there.  Now it’s the next morning and I’m still at about 40% volume in the let ear.  Any advice from my loyal readership?

Yesterday was the first day of summer, and let me tell you, it’s going to be a good one.

In fact, since it got warm enough to start playing outside, I’ve learned to wakeboard, almost collapsed from heat exhaustion, biked some of the best single-track in North America, almost got eaten by a bear, thrown a volleyball barbecue and had 30-some people show up, almost got my friend Katy killed in a waterfall, rode a four-wheeler (ATV) for the first time, and played some of the best soccer in my life.

Yes, the days are just packed.

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I just received a letter in the mail today on Estari letterhead. I’ve received a few of them lately as a stockholder, asking for nominations for board memberships, etc. I opened it with dull interest and was quickly shocked.

It was from Estari’s auditors, who in going through old records, found an item with my name on it. The claim is that I owe Estari, inc. $2,399.80. Rather, I owed them that amount on 5/3/2004, and actually owe them that principle plus 8% interest over the last 3 years. They asked for my confirmation of the overdue debt in writing.

I pride myself on never having entered into debt. I’ve never spent more money than I’d earned through honest labor. Not for a car, not for education, not even yet for a place to live. I couldn’t imagine what this debt was over, especially such an odd amount. Then I saw the “Description of Collateral”.

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I celebrated Easter, the true meaning of Easter, several weeks later than most people this year.  Easter is, in my mind, the most important Christian holiday; we celebrate the literal resurrection of Christ.  His resurrection was the greatest watershed moment in the history of the earth.  I celebrated this event with a symbolic reenactment of the resurrection yesterday night.

That’s right, our hot tub is back from the dead.

Pictures will be posted as they become available.

It makes me sick to my stomach that the American people require a Supreme Court ruling to tell them that partial-birth abortions are an abomination. Consider this short, unemotional description of the procedure:

The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.

Read that one more time.

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