All About Bentley

I just finished reading the Bible! The whole thing. One of my goals for 2007 was to follow a daily bible reading schedule. I've tried doing this for the last few years but got so far behind at times that I just couldn't make myself catch up. But this year I did it. I think the furthest behind I ever got was 5 days and that was just over this Christmas holiday. I started off with the NIV this year but Deborah reads the Message. About halfway through the year I started reading it too and have really grown to like it. I'm really proud of myself. For someone that calls himself a Christian I really dont know my bible very well so this was something I really felt I needed to do. And yesterday we bought a chronological bible and I plan on reading it in 2008.

The language is a wee bit colorful but I'm posting this anyway. Featuring Elwood Bentley as Clarence.

Ok I'm obviously not Jewish but when making the Christmas Card below I also made this Hanukkah greeting, and it cracks me up so I thought I'd share:

I just discovered that my old buddy Chad has a link to my page from his page. I'm so touched. Chad and I worked together about 10 years ago. I changed jobs, he went into the Air Force and for awhile we stayed in touch. And he hosted my website for free for a long time. But I haven't talked to him in a few years now. And to find a link to my site from his....I'm touched. So see, the day IS getter better (in reference to my previous post from about 30 minutes ago)

Well I just talked to my new neighbor. I'd met him once before but just a quick hello. He's about to graduate from college and is apparently a trust fund baby or something, and he paid cash for his house. Anyway, this time we had a nice little chat. Oh and its 3:30am. And about 20 minutes ago I was asleep. He and about 20 of his friends are having a little get together. And they're being really loud, and drinking, and using language I don't care to use. So as the man of the house and the father of 3 I have to maintain the peace. I kept telling myself before I went over to keep my cool. I forgot when I got there. But as I started talking I calmed myself. We agreed that if he just turned down the music and kept his friends in the house it would be OK. Not sure about the friends but so far he's not keeping up his end of the bargain about the music. If I went back with my kids in their PJ's crying because they couldn't sleep maybe that would help. Sorry for the ...

I've added music to this blog. Probably not anything anyone but me likes though. If you dont like it scroll ALLLLLLLL the way to the bottom and you'll see the player. You can stop it from there. Or just turn off your sound. And I'm sure I'll take it off soon enough, I dont typically include multimedia on my websites. Keep checking back, I'll have pictures of the Bentleys Winter Wonderland posted in the next few days. I know everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting for pictures.

Zane was eating a bowl of fruit loops for breakfast yesterday morning. While he was looking at the back of the box I asked him if he knew the name of the Fruit Loops mascot. He said "yeah, Uncle Fruit Loop". Not sure where he got that from, but who cares, I'm still laughing about it.

The view from my hotel room is awesome. It's just like my own little paradise.

I'm headed to Austin in about 3 hours for a training class. I'm fulfilling my dream of being a male model and I have to take a class to learn how to properly get my groove on on the catwalk. I'm going to be so famous. No wait...no that wasn't it, this week is the class on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). It's something I need to know for work. I guess after that I'll move up to MDAP and then HDAP. Then I'll go to Wrestlemania and take on Hulk Hogan. Well instead of writing this I guess I should go pack. I need to remember to leave room for my championship belt.

I accomplished something pretty big this weekend. I was able to mark something off my list of "things to do before I die". I finally experienced the joy of a fried Twinkie . And ironically it will probably be one of the contributing factors to my death. It's a double-edged sword I guess. We went to the Oklahoma State Fair this weekend. I was quickly reminded why I hadn't been in 9 years. I suppose if the temperature hadn't been in the 90s, and I didn't have a very active 5 year old with me, and we'd been smart enough to bring a backpack to put all our free crap in, it probably would have been a better experience. But it killed a few hours and we ate some tasty stuff. We skipped all of the rides except for the big slide. That's a must for every fair visitor with little kids. The car show is always fun and it was really cool to see the Jeep Hurricane up close and personal. Shelbie and Zane got their picture taken with some Sea Lions. We went to Sea World...

I don't really have anything worthwhile....wait..didn't I do this last week?

I don't really have anything worthwhile to mention, I'm just excited for the weekend. Plus I haven't written anything in here in a few days. So here you go, a worthless post. Enjoy!

Well I finally committed to a new custom domain name. I'm still sad that I no longer have "allaboutbentley.com", but thanks to Mark and his suggestions, I've decided upon "www.whosyourbentley.com". And for coming up with the winning name, Mark will receive ... well nothing, but I do appreciate him coming up with it. I'm guessing it was a take off of the days when I sold T-Shirts online that said "Whos Ya Daddy?" on them. I had to stop though because it was some sort of copyright infringement or something. Anyway thats a different story. Now I guess I need to make a new logo for the top of my page.

Guess what boys and girls....remember when I won the Senseo Coffee maker ? I filled out a second " Share Senseo " questionnaire and today received my email confirming I had won...again. HA! Except they do a little bit of cross-verification and won't deliver to the same address twice. So this one is going to my mother-in-laws house. Got to keep those brownie points up ya know. And that tells me if you didn't get one the first time, try again...and again and again.

My front windshield has been covered in grime for about the last 2 weeks making it a little tricky to see when driving into the sun. I'm out of washer fluid so during lunch I went to Albertsons to fill my car up, and then I went inside the store to get a new bottle of fluid. When I found out it was $2.50 I said no thank you, paid $2.39 for my Monster energy drink, and went on my way. Update: I hate having to explain things, that takes all the fun out of it and it taints my post, but you can get a big bottle of washer fluid for about $1 at Wal-Mart. That's why I didn't buy it at Albertsons. How is Albertsons even still in business?

Last night Deborah and I got home from the store to find the kids had a special surprise for us. The back porch was cleaned off and the patio table was set, complete with table cloth, paper floral arrangement, and a snack and drink for each of us. The sign on the table indicated we were dining at "The Casa". I mentioned that we were eating at our own little Bistro. Zane corrected me, we were in fact eating at a "Home-ro.

I recently made the discovery that Blogger (the kind folks hosting this here blog) can host a blog under your own domain name. So instead of "allaboutbentley.blogspot.com", this blog could be accessed at "www.allaboutbentley.com". Only problem is, I let that name expire, and some yahoo snatched it up. So now I'm searching for new ideas for a domain name that reflects my family name. Every domain I've come up with so far is taken: "bentley.com", "scottbentley.com", "thebentleys.com" etc. I could do something like "allaboutbentley.info" but those are cheesy, and no one would remember them. So, if you have any good suggestions, feel free to send them my way.

School has finally started. All 3 of our kids are now in school, with Zane starting Kindergarten today. Kindergarten always starts 2 days later than all the older grades in Edmond. I think Mom is having a pretty rough time with Zane finally going to school, but she'll be all right once the routine is going.

I have this oddity at my house, something I haven't wanted to mention for fear of being an outcast. We have a magic box at our house. Seriously. I know right now you're thinking, "What is this freak talking about?". Well I guess if you're still reading, then you must be interested....so read on. There is a red box that lives in my closet. It's an old box, I've had it for about 20 years. It's not really a box...more of a basket. It's plastic and has an open top. I'm not sure where it came from, I think China. It sits on the floor at the back of my closet. Every morning I throw dirty clothes in it. Every night they're clean and put away. It's the most amazing thing. I love my magic box.

Or maybe you can

Yes co-workers, I worked in the middle of the night, so as expected here's a new post. Hey what else am I going to do at this time of day. So, what with football season right around the corner, and me being up in the middle of the night for work, doing nothing more than monitoring a 2 hour test, I got nostalgic and went to YouTube looking for Sooner football videos . I started feeling like a real homer when I was watching highlights of the 2000 national championship season and feeling a little choked up. There are a ton of good highlights. It's awesome seeing Roy Williams just crush people. Who can forget his Superman move against Texas . And I love watching Quentin Griffin scramble , its like his legs aren't attached to his body. I was always afraid he was going to get killed but he always hopped right up. I didn't even go to the school for crying out loud. But I've been a Sooner football fan since I was about 10, and I think I love it a little more every year,...

I guess I wasn't as excited about the kids leaving as I thought because I had them leaving a week later than they actually are. They leave on the 27th of July, not the 3rd of August . Not sure how I screwed that up, but SWEET! And now it's not even 9 days, it's only 6. YES!

I was driving home from work tonight, heading east on 178th street. It was around 5:20. As I was approaching Portland, I could see 2 news helicopter hovering over the road a mile or so ahead of me. Is it a fire? I don't see any smoke. Ok so it's probably a wreck. Close, it was this. And be sure and watch the video. Man if I'd just come home 5 minutes earlier I could have seen it in person. Update: They changed their video. It was 100% just the raw video from the news helicopter of the last 5 minutes or so of the chase. Now's it just the news story version. Not nearly as cool.

That's how many days are left until my kids, all 3 of them, are gone for the week. This is a first. I love my kids but I'm ready, and I know Deborah is too. This will be her first real break from all of them. She had a weekend away a few months ago, but this is the first time the two of us will be together, without kids, for an extended period, ever. Finally.

Because of the 3 feet of rain we've had over the last few months, we've had a small infestation of frogs in our yard. Every time we're in the front or backyard, we can count on seeing at least one little frog hop bye. Zane loves them. I found him carrying one around in his shirt pocket the other night. He also likes to bury them in his sand box, but so far he's been pretty gentle overall and they have escaped any real torture. Unfortunately this evening, one wasn't so lucky. I was running the gas trimmer around the flower bed in my front yard, and all of a sudden this little frog went flying by. Yep, I wacked it. I didn't kill it, just chopped off 2 1/2 legs. And cut it up pretty good. I didn't know what to do, I was too grossed out at the prospect of putting it out of it's misery. So instead I just kicked it into the bushes. Farewell little buddy.

It's raining....again.

Here's the newest addition to our back yard.

I think this Fourth of July was probably one of THE most boring on record for the Bentley household. Deborah and I both have had a bad cold this week and really didn't feel like getting up and doing anything on the 4th. We were going to go to the parade , but it started at 8:45am, and I think we woke up feeling like death at about 8:50. So that was disappointment number 1. Disappointment number 2 was that for the first time in 4 years we didn't have our friends house to go to outside of the city limits, so that meant we didn't get to buy any fireworks. So instead we went to Target and bought a Slip-N-Slide and 3 water guns. Thinking back we probably should have gotten the kids something too. One of the guns was a Super Soaker Max Infusion Flash Flood (and it only cost $15. 'Sup with Amazon.com and $45 for a water gun. Geez). Anyway, we ended the day with some grilled hot dogs, and watching the fireworks show at UCO , but half-a** as our day was, we didn't feel lik...

My "free" Senseo coffee maker is here! The mail man delivered it Saturday afternoon. I was so excited. I ripped open the box, carefully read the instructions, cleaned the system, and then after putting in the coffee pod and adding water, in about 2 minutes I had myself a cup of coffee. I took the first sip and ... well...it was coffee, that's about it. But it was easy, there's no denying that.

Will you morons quit throwing your money away on $500+ cell phones. It's making life more difficult on those of us that actually have some sense.

I don't remember how I came about it now, but sometime last week I came across the website "www.sharesenseo.com" . It's a promotional website for the Senseo Coffee Pod System . I filled out their questionnaire and then 2 days ago received an email that I had qualified to receive one of their systems free (except I have to pay $15 shipping and handling). I followed the instructions in the email, and then was told it would be 4-6 weeks before delivery. But a few hours later I had another email with my DHL tracking number. Woohoo, free coffee for me (well $15, whatever). I guess if I like the coffee it makes, it will become part of my daily grind. I did a little research and it seems that these units are all units that have been returned somewhere, but are supposed to work. I hope mine doesn't have a latte problems.

I realize this is in bad taste, and I do feel terrible for this girl, but I couldn't resist: I feel like a real heel mentioning these things, and some of them are kinda corny but, Did you hear about the girl who's feet were cut off at Six Flags? I guess the ride defeated her Bless her soul (sole) They were playing FootLoose over the park speakers Apparently she was only a few feet off the ground When she got off the ride at first she just tried to walk it off She was in pretty bad shape but thankfully she didn't kick the bucket On the trip to the hospital the ambulance was acting up. They were afraid they might have to tow(toe) it. Workers at the park put their best foot forward and located her detached parts They hoofed it to the hospital Apparently they were only a few feet behind the ambulance Although the woman was a teenager at first the hospital put her in the childrens ward. She was two feet shorter than the average girl her age. Six Flags withheld any comments at fi...

Well its official. I love dark chocolate M&M's more than I hate being overweight.

Here's a chart of the average gas prices for Oklahoma City for the last 5 years. While its not on the legend, everywhere there is a sudden spike up represents the times that Scott filled up his car.

I ordered something off of Amazon.com the other day, and according to UPS, it was delivered today. But there was nothing on my porch. I'm guessing it got dropped off at one of my neighbors houses by mistake. Which is not uncommon, seems to happen about every other time they deliver a package to us. But I'm tired of it and I didn't want to go track it down. So instead I called UPS customer service. They told me that I could call the shipper, which would be Amazon, and Amazon could call UPS back and request a "tracer". Wow a "tracer", that sounds pretty serious. But instead Amazon just said, "How about we just ship another one at no charge to you?". Oh...ok. More than likely one of my neighbors will show up with the other one tomorrow, and I was really only hoping to rip UPS a new one, but hey, go ahead and send me another one. Too bad it was only a $20 item. I wonder what they would have said if it was a digital camera or something. Hmmm...

We just got back from our vacation to San Antonio, Texas. It was a firs t for us, going somewhere other than the grandparents house. We had a great time, but I'm having a hard time adjusting back to the real world. I enjoyed having a maid, eating out, eating anything I wanted, the kids not being bored. I'm already looking forward to our next vacation. Hopefully its not another 15 years away. Tanner, Shelbie, Zane and my thumbprint in front of the Alamo, our hotel on the riverwalk (Omni La Mansion Del Rio), and a killer whale at SeaWorld.

Mine is the 2nd from the left

Hey someone has actually signed up as a referral to my AGLOCO accoun!!! We're going to make so much money!!!! Click ->here<- if you want to be rich too. Or do nothing and be a poor pathetic slob. Your choice!

I like Cheez-Its. Hey who doesn't. But I didn't want them for lunch. For lunch today I brought some leftover cajun/rice/chicken thing that we mix up at home. It's one of my favorite things we make (so you'd think I'd have a name for it). It actually tastes best when you throw some Fritos over the top of it. We didn't have any so I planned on getting some out of the vending machine at work. So there they were, vending machine number B2. I put in my money...and pressed A2. Cheez-Its. Dang. There goes my whole lunch.

I don't know what it is about this commercial but it cracks me up:

Do you remember AllAdvantage.com? Well if not they were one of the great internet success/bust stories. It was a good idea, users would run a small advertising banner on their desktop and for whatever amount of time they were online, with these Ads scrolling in front of them, they would get paid. Not much, the real money came with referrals. And people were making a loooot of money. Thousands. Not sure why they went bust. But there's a new player and I'm signing up. You should too: www.agloco.com .

Originally The Dream The Reality! Actually this has been the reality for a few months, I just never blogged about it.

If you watch enough TV or movies, and interact with people from the north east, you get the impression that people don't think much about us in the southern most states. Because of this I thought I'd make a list of noteable things about Oklahoma, people from Oklahoma, etc: 1) Sooners Football 2) Carrie Underwood 3) Garth Brooks 4) Vince Gill 5) Reba McEntire 6) University of Oklahoma Gymnastics - Men were national champs in 2002,2003,2005 and 2006 7) Oklahoma State University Wrestling - Four consecutive national titles between 2002-2006 8) Very low cost of living 9) Relocate Americas Best Places to live in 2005 listed 2 Oklahoma towns in the top 5 10) Tied with California for having the most "Miss Americas", including the last 2 years in a row

Hey have you seen those RedBox DVD Rental kiosks at McDonalds? Those things are awesome. They have a decent collection of new releases, and they're only $1 a night. I'm on bachelor week this week (as one might have guessed by the sudden increase in posts) and as always I'm catching up on guy movies. I've already made 2 trips to my nearest RedBox. If you create an account online you get 1 night free, and I don't need any movie for more than a night. So far I've rented 3 movies for a grand total of $2.16 when tax is included. The kiosk asks you for your email address, so we'll see how soon I start getting bombarded with spam, but, its kinda cool because before I even get back to the house, there's an email receipt waiting for me.

My son has had an obsession with getting an electric guitar for quite a while now. What (pre)teen boy doesn't these days. They all want to be rock stars. At first I ignored him when he asked me about the possibility of getting one. But after 2 months of him walking around the house playing this mini child sized acoustic guitar that he got when he was about 5, I started thinking that maybe he was truly interested. I've been looking around for inexpensive starter sets with both guitar and amp, and finally found what I was looking for at Guitar Center . Unfortunately for him, they finally restocked the set yesterday, and he left for spring break today. So, I couldn't let a perfectly good electric guitar sit around untouched. I took it out and started playing with it a little bit, using Guitar Guru as my guide. I'm practicing "More than a Feeling" by Boston. I've just got down the first 7 notes...and my fingers are killing me. I guess I want to be a rock star ...

Well not the deal of the century, but for me its OK I guess. I had a lawn mower that is about 6 years old. From the day I bought it the grass bag was warped and never closed correctly, and when I mowed, grass would fly up in my face. I had to hold it closed with clothes pins. And then last summer, the self propel drive on the mower went out. We (my son and I) pushed mowed the rest of the summer, but it was pretty difficult for my son, so I ended up doing most of it. Looking into buying new parts was a grand total of $175.78. That's a lot of money to spend on an older mower. So I sold it for $75 and bought a new mower. So the cost of the parts I would have had to spend, plus the $75 I got for the old one, paid for a new mower. OK like I said, not the deal of the century...but I'm pretty pleased.

I'm in the middle of one of my all night tests for work. Those of us involved in the testing are communicating with our in-house chat system. Sometimes peoples abbreviations when chatting online seem silly to me. Sometimes for "thanks", which is already a short word, people put "tnks". It reads to me like "tanks". I always want to respond with "grenades" but I know they wont have a clue what I'm talking about. And maybe you don't either. Oh well it makes me laugh, and thats really whats important. Another one that bothers me is when they respond to a question I might have with "yes" but they only type "y". I read that as "why". So I'll respond with a reason. Which confuses them. One of my favorites, and its very common, is "brb" which we all know is "be right back" At first glance I always think they've typed "burp" and I'll want to respond with "excuse you...

I was really hoping to see Eddie Murphy win Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Dream Girls" but Alan Arkin came up the winner. Not that I've seen "Dream Girls", it's just cool to see someone excel outside of there normal element.

Starting a few months back, I had been having some trouble with my cable modem. It would lose connectivity every 5 or 10 minutes, then it would come back online for 5 or 10 more, and so on. I called the cable company and they sent a guy out to fix me up. I thought he'd fixed my problem, but the next day it was back. I was looking online at my cable companys tech support site and saw a place to send in an email for help, so I did that. I even specified something like "please dont send me back generic tech support tips like unplugging the cable modem and plugging it back in because I've done all that, multiple times". And of course when I got there response back it was a big list of things like "try unplugging your cable modem and plugging it back in". Anyway I responded to that email, overflowing with sarcasm and frustration, and got a response back. "We've upgraded our equipment in your area. If you have an older cable modem it might not meet our st...

We went to see the Arcadia Round Barn yesterday. I guess there are quite a few round barns in the United States, but this was a first for me. I expected it to be out in a pasture, with a little farm house nearby. It's actually right next to Route 66 , and there are a bunch of crappy old houses surrounding it. It was a little disappointing. But, if you live close, and you have absolutely nothing else to do, then go see it. Down the road a little bit is where construction is underway for Pops . It's supposed to be a futuristic soda fountain/rest stop/gas station. The big thing about Pops is this big crazy 80 foot soda pop bottle that sits out in front. I had read about it in a local magazine about 6 months ago, but never given it anouther thought, so it was pretty cool to all of a sudden see this big bottle looming in the distance.

Last week we were expecting a huge snow storm. It gave us the cold shoulder. We just got a bunch of rain. But this morning, when we have about a 40% chance for rain, it's snowing like crazy. This is insane. And of course we have plans this morning. We never do much on Saturday, usually just sit around the house being bored. So today we made plans to go to the movies...and it's snowing. Not that a little snow will keep us from the movies, but Deborah and I, since college, have found ourselves out in the snow just about everytime we see a flake. And its not on purpose, just works out that way. But I would love to sit here on the couch and just watch the snow. Instead we're running around getting the kids fed so we can hit the movies. Deborah, Shelbie and Zane are going to see "Happily Never After". Tanner and I are going to see "Epic Movie". They start around the same time and end 10 minutes apart. The movie starts at 10:30, so I'm guessing with the...

I recently got a new laptop at work and am supposed to be returning the old one some time. But before I did I thought I'd play with Ubuntu. Last night i took the Ubuntu installation CD that I created about 3 weeks ago, threw it in the old laptop, started it up, and bam, it's done. Now I'm sitting on my couch, connected wirelessly to the internet, and I did virtually no configuration. The only thing I had to do was go to the network settings, select that I had a wireless network, and put its name in. Bam, I'm online. It was awesome. I use RedHat Linux at work for about 99% of what I do, but it's all at the server level, not from a true end-user standpoint, so I'm not real familiar with the user side of things....surfing the web, checking email, word processing, that sort of thing. I'm anxious to see what all I can do with this. Another thing I found interesting was that for about the last year, my laptop, running XP, would not keep the system date and time ...

About once or twice a month I get to stay up late doing some testing for work. Tonight/this morning is just such an occasion. For the most part I stay busy getting things setup, monitoring the test, stopping and restarting things, but eventually, once everything is running, I'm free to sit back and simply watch my computer screen and make sure nothing looks out of the ordinary. It can be quite boring. So, what I often do is swivel 90 degrees counter-clockwise to my desktop PC and watch a movie. This morning I didn't feel like going the movie route and opted to fire up the WinTV. Its a gamble at this time of day to find anything worth watching on TV. It's mostly just news and infomercials. But TVLand has rescued me this morning. I'm watching "Green Acres". That silly Mr. Douglas farming in his suit and tie just cracks me up.

Today is my birthday. My day started off great, with my wife and kids hoping up in bed with me with home-made cards and signs and a hostess Ding Dong with a candle in it. I don't have any big plans today even though I took the day off of work. I was planning on just puttering around the house alone but with the recent ice storm, school is out today so my wife and kids are home which is very cool. But, last night, not knowing school was going to be out yet, I rescheduled a date with the life insurance man for today thinking I wouldn't have anything better to do. So now instead of making plans with my wife and kids I have to wait for him to come over. I could reschedule but he's a close family friend and I don't want to keep rescheduling him, he might think I'm just putting him off. We'll be having big meal out somewhere today, but I haven't decided when or where. But it won't be The Cracker Barrel . This year, if I have any memories of my birthday meal, I...

Ok this is a little late. This is us on Christmas Eve. Our Christmas Eve is about as big as Christmas day at our house. It's just the 5 of on Christmas Eve us but we already have quite a bit of tradition, and a lot of food. Deborahs parents and sister came on Christmas day to help ward off the post Christmas blues. Worked pretty well. The kids got lots of fun stuff from Santa.