Mind of Josh

Interweb Wednesday - WFF and Amazon Student

2011-08-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

To the none of you that follow this blog, I'm sorry I didn't post an IW last week. Guess what? I'll do two today.

First up, the launch of Wallet-friendly Foods. It's a website I created to help bring together recipes and ideas about healthy, cheap eating. Still in development, but it's there and you can start frequenting it and commenting about how great it might be one day.

Secondly, I discovered Amazon Student the other day. It's amazing. If you know about Amazon Prime, it's the same idea. Amazon Prime allows you to pay a membership fee and then get free two-day shipping on all eligible orders for the time of your membership. Amazon Student, however is FREE for the first six months if you have a .edu address. If you get textbooks and prefer to get them quickly, or purchase from Amazon often, this is the way to go. I haven't decided if I'm ready to pay the $40 a year after the first six months to keep it, but you can't beat that free two day shipping for half a year.

Interweb Wednesday: Map of Online Communities

2011-08-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

I've decided I'm going to start a series called "Interweb Wednesday" where I bring you fun or interesting things from around the web.

This week I want to show you something. Maybe you always know where you're going on the internet, but maybe you don't. And if not, then I think this map by xkcd will help. The image is safe for all ages, but I make no guarantee about their website.

Click for larger version

I particularly like the associated references to other aspects of the said demographics. For example the ferry from Gaia(an MMO) to 4chan(a forum) and the fact that FarmVille and Happy Farm are bordered by the Dopamine Sea. But I think my favorite place is in the western portion of the country Facebook, where we find the "Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions". Of course, being created last summer there are already areas that have changed. For example there's no Google+. What's interesting is that they created another map three years prior and had to update it massively for this one. The internet is a continually shifting landscape and I believe it is probably growing to encompass a larger portion of the megacontinent of spoken word.

Enjoy,

-j

Trying to beat the heat.

2011-08-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

If you don't live in Texas you may have missed the ~~horrible~~ ~~terrible~~ ~~sweltering~~ lovely weather we've been having. I can't remember the last day that it didn't get over 100°F. Yeesh.

So with the utility bill soaring like Icarus, we decided something had to be done. We have a large front window that is great for natural lighting. It also gets pretty full afternoon sun so it was really heating up the living room. We bought thermal curtains for that window and we also replaced the thermostat. Here's the original thermostat.

I think the technology behind these was invented in 1950. It wasn't very accurate and the a/c always seemed to be running without end, which coincidentally sounded like money being siphoned out of my wallet. So I bought a digital programmable thermostat and replaced it.

The thermometer is housed in the front piece. It's a spiraled piece of metal that will expand and contract with the temperature. As it increases the metal expands and swings to the right. Assuming it's calibrated, expansion and contraction of metal is a fairly constant calculation.

Here's the temperature set mechanism. The left lever sets whether it's auto or constant and the right lever sets whether you're heating, cooling or off. The bottom lever lines up with the thermometer on the front (so you can see what you're setting it to) and changes the tilt of the mercury bulb at the top. As the temperature increases, the mercury expands and moves across the bulb, completing the open circuit. It's actually pretty clever. But again this is all assuming it's calibrated correctly. And as I found out removing it, the bottom screw anchoring the unit to the wall was not actually holding anything. This meant that the whole thing could swing which invalidates the pitch of the mercury bulb. This explains why sometimes I would smack it and the a/c would come on or go off. Lovely.

But never fear, I pulled that dinosaur off the wall and installed the new one. It's pretty. Ignore the now-exposed unpainted portion of my wall back there.

And look, it lights up! ooooh. aaaaah.

Here's hoping that, like Icarus, the energy bill will also plummet back to Earth.

********update************

I just realized that the mechanism of the old thermostat would have to work in reverse for heating the house. The heat would stay on unless it was warm enough to cause the mercury to expand and complete the circuit, at which point it would cut off.

"College Move-In" or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Horde"

2011-08-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

It's August. August has many meaning here:
1. It's hot. Really, really hot.
2. Your utility bill is really high (if you're unsure why, see 1).
3. Get in your last minute get-aways because
4. School is starting.

That's right, next week the kids go back to school. That's not so bad. It's the natural order of things. But one of the things we deal with here and maybe you don't where you live is this: College Move-in. They come in droves, like locusts. The first few have already started trickling in. They come from all over and they all drive at different speeds. Our town doubles or triples its population (depending on whether or not you count the parents and siblings). The roads grind to a halt and a half mile trip will be a half hour trip. Road crews are literally patching all road projects and reinforcing the bordering intersections in the next two weeks in preparation. If you forget and accidentally go to the get groceries or normal everyday items at any store that weekend, you will pay for it for several hours.

I've begun to make a checklist of things we need to have done before move in weekend so that we can go into bunker mode until it blows over and the parents all go home. As I look over my list I wander, How is this different from how I would prepare for a zombie apocalypse? I mean it, look through this list.

If it were zombies I would add "__Get some ammunition and guns." before "__Go home and lock the door." That's really the only difference. Here's my self portrait at ideal preparedness based on things I have at my house:

Hmmm....maybe that reveals a little too much about me.

Of course all the selfish whining aside, I do love the college kids coming back. There are lots of small things about living near the University that irritate me, but this town wouldn't be the same without them. I miss seeing the goofiness. I miss going to football games and stuff with them. Where else can a restaurant stay in business that only sells chicken fingers? Where can you have six frozen yogurt places within a quarter of a square mile?

View Fro-Yo in a larger map

And that doesn't include three others, outside that area but probably within ten minutes drive from any of those. Not to mention coffee shops. You can't throw a rock without hitting a coffee shop in this town. It's awesome. I give this place another year before I can pretty much have wi-fi anywhere. All because of college kids.

But most importantly I miss seeing them at church. I miss seeing their enthusiasm with knowing God more and serving in ministries. I miss seeing how they appreciate a home-cooked meal. If you have college kids in your town, love on them. I love what our church and several others do on move in weekend. We help move them into the dorms. We haul enormous TVs and pink plushy bean bag chairs up four flights of stairs because we want them to know that Jesus loves them, so we love them.

Push through move-in and love them. I was one once, and trust me, they need it. Sometimes they need a meal, sometimes a couch or bed to crash on. Sometimes they need a knock upside the head because you love em too much to let them do something dumb. However it plays out, love them.

Hannah Coulter and the Great Out of Doors

2011-08-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

If I'm not careful this whole blog is going to become about books.

If you missed my tweets, I recently got a free download of "Hannah Coulter" in audio format and it was a great book. I decided to listen all the way through before I started "The Subtle Knife" and I'm glad I did. Most of the fiction I read is "speculative" fiction. Science fiction, fantasy, weird stuff, etc. I think I forgot that there can be a real narrative to an ordinary person's life. As though you have to have some kind of grand adventure to make your life worth reading about. To be honest the last nonfiction I read was "End of the Spear" by Steve Saint. Not your average life. His dad was one of the missionaries speared by Waodoni warriors back in the 50s. Then he and his mom and aunt moved in with the Waodoni and eventually became family. As an adult he moved away had a family of his own and then moved them back and helped the Waodoni be able to provide for themselves in a changing world. That's a horribly brief summary of a book you really should read, but you get my point.

Hannah Coulter on the other hand was this really great reminder that in every life there are crises and triumphs. Moments where we feel the blessing and wonder of God. Marriage, babies, looking out over a beautiful landscape. Moments where we feel our life is crumbling around us. The death of a friend, divorce, war. In short it was a really good book, even though nobody took a ring to a volcano, battled evil wizards or talked to a lion.

And more than that it gave me a renewed desire for the outdoors and getting away from being so plugged in all the time. I know there's a certain level of hypocrisy in that statement, given the present media, but it often saddens me to see how we've enslaved ourselves to our "conveniences". My dad never forced me to go hunting or fishing with him. I went some, but he never wanted it to be something I didn't enjoy because I'd been forced to go, so he always waited for me to ask and most of the time I just didn't think to. Sometimes I wish he'd kicked my butt outside a few more times or told me I was going either way. Because I love going now, but the busy-ness of life and living in a different town makes it hard to find the time. So Dad, if you're reading this, I'm really excited about opening weekend coming up. Even if we don't hit a thing, I'm pumped about getting away from the phones and computers and noise with you and being out in God's creation. Maybe we'll see something majestic. And maybe something tasty.

IT'S ALIVE! and Morally Ambiguous Fiction

2011-08-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

I'm resurrecting this blog. So I pretty much expect nobody to read it. But I figured I might try to post somewhat regularly. Even if it's about nothing. So if you plan on reading this regularly, I apologize in advance for the likely garbage posts.

Moving on...

I just finished Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass. I remember a few years ago when the movie came out there was a big stink about how Pullman was an avowed atheist and was "the anti-Lewis" and good Christians shouldn't go see it and all. I went and saw it anyway. Oops. I didn't really see what all the fuss was about. I could definitely see some anti-religious establishment themes in it, but not much beyond that. I thought the movie was mediocre. It looked like something that fell pretty short of it's potential, based on how neat the ideas and characters were.

So the other day I started listening to the audiobook. As I listened it became pretty obvious that the movie differed greatly. The basic theme stayed the same but vast sections of character development, world explanation and back story had just been tossed aside. Also the chronology in the movie was kind of jumbled from the book, and the book made much more sense. That being said, I can't exactly say I liked the book. I didn't hate it, but it didn't leave me with warm fuzzies. I may go ahead and finish the series, but I don't expect it to be something I cherish when I finish. Lord of the Rings, Narnia and Harry Potter I cherish. Ender's Game I cherish. The "His Dark Materials" series (as it's called) not so much.

***WARNING: SPOILERS***

Here's the main reason I wasn't that fond of it: it's morally ambiguous. The book get's pretty obviously anti-Church if nothing else towards the end. But I can deal with that. Similar to DaVinci Code or those types of books, where those in the church use their power to gain control over people, instead of shepherding a flock. I can deal with that if at the end, the hero is good. But in this book Lyra (the main character) is more or less a pathological liar. Everytime she gets into a tight spot, she lies her way out and the book pretty much glorifies it. I get that the bad guys are bad. But the good guy(girl) wasn't really that good.

In Narnia, Harry Potter, and LotR the good guys and bad guys are pretty obvious, barring a few sneaks. There are clear lines between what is right and what is wrong. In Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, a large point of the book is how the adults use the children to do terrible things. They are technically the good guys, but they are conflicted characters because they are forced to do terrible things. But the terrible things they do keep them awake at night, because they hate it and are presented as good men.
You could argue that the desire for the good to triumph over evil is an archaic stereotype, but I think it's more than that. I think a fantasy/sci-fi story, particularly one in which the protagonist is a child, needs a positive moral because otherwise it's just a bizarre version of our world. We are awash in a sea of moral ambiguity today. If I wanted a story that glorified moral ambiguity I'd just read the newspaper. Homosexual partners can't have the rights of married people (agreed) but heterosexual non-marrieds can if they live together for a while (what?). A man can be guilty of double homocide if he attacks a pregnant mother (no matter how far along), but if she gives permission to a doctor, then it's okay. When I pick up a book I want something that moves beyond the drudgery and confusion of this world. Make the villain bad. Make them vile, repulsive and evil, but give me a hero. And your hero can be flawed, that's fine. Frodo wanted to keep the ring, Edmund followed the White Witch for a while, Harry was a selfish brat half the time. But in the end, give me something that inspires.

For another good read check out Andrew Peterson's posts on Harry Potter and Writing Fantasy

Orevwa

2010-10-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

So much has happened since July. But like most blogs I've tried in the past, I just didn't keep up with this. If you want to know what's going on in our lives my preference is that you come over and spend some time with us. If you just have to blog-stalk check out the family blog that ricci keeps up with. I sometimes guest post. So this is my goodbye post. I'm going to leave it up for a while, but eventually I'll probably take it down. So if there's anything worthwhile in these posts, copy it soon.

Thanks to A and H the two people who read this, but I talk to you enough that I don't worry about our relationship after this ;)

Finances [Man Talk]

2010-07-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

It has taken way too long, but I'm finally getting around to the man talk on finances. Ricci and I are right in the middle of the Radical sermons/book so I may have a Finances part 2 talk afterwords. We're reevaluating our financial situation right now. In the mean time I wanted to talk about the basics. I'm going to use "man" language so if you're a girl reading this, don't be offended. There's no swearing, I just not gonna sugar coat anything. Man Talks are meant to be honest whether or not they make you feel good.

As a Christ-follower, we are called to tithe. I think a lot of people are not properly explained what this means, so I'll attempt to break it down here. Tithe literally means a tenth (or ten percent). If you receive income, you owe God ten percent back through the church. This helps provide for the needs of the church and the pastor. When I say "owe" I mean that ten percent is the baseline minimum that we should be giving. If you don't tithe will it keep you from salvation? Will God send plagues to eat your flesh? Um...that's silly. I mean God has the power of plagues so He could do it if He wanted. And honestly if you are unwilling to give God back ten percent of what He has trusted you with, you might want to really question your salvation, but finances tend to be more a question of obedience and your attitude toward God.
Note: I'm going to talk about our family's finances a little here. Not with numerical detail but in regards to things God has laid on our heart and how we've responded. None of this is to brag, but just an attempt at transparency and what God has done in us.

See, God gives us everything we have to begin with. Our jobs, the money from those jobs, the food, clothes, cars, places to live we pay for with those jobs, etc. We don't own any of that stuff. The Bible says that you and I are stewards of it. God has trusted us to use those resources wisely. When you shift your thinking from "God why do I have to give you my stuff?" to "God thanks for everything else you provide us with!" it makes it a lot easier to give.

This is where we start to really be tested. Ready? When you see that God is still providing for you in spite of that ten percent, He will often challenge you to give more. This is what we call "offerings". He commands us to give ten percent to the church, but often he wants us to give more. It's very easy at this point to once again say, "No God. That's my 90%. You said you only needed 10%!" How selfish of us!

We cannot outgive God. Try it. Ricci and I give our tithes from the gross on our paychecks (before taxes, etc.). I don't say this to brag, just to share our conviction. The point of the tithe is like the first fruit offerings from the Old Testament. God wants our first and best, not the rejects and leftovers. God then laid on our hearts to give a higher percent than ten for every paycheck. It made us nervous. It made me sweat a little, because we don't make that much when you count up the cost of rent,utilities, etc. But we obeyed, and you know what? God provided for us. He gives us enough to live on. Another reason we give tithes and offerings on the gross is so that if there's a tax return we've already given God his share on that.

I had this idea that "Hey since I've already tithed, that money back is ours to spend how we like". We were thinking about getting a nice new computer. Ours is getting old and Ricci could use the new one for some blog design and photography processing. God laughed at me. I didn't think that was very funny. I had already given God his due and more right? Shouldn't we get to spend this on whatever? Apparently not. God laid a cause on our hearts that used most of that money. At first we were frustrated but God totally blew us away. Besides providing for our needs (this wasn't really the question since we were going to buy a computer), He allowed us to help someone out and in turn be encouraged and blessed in spirit beyond what we could have hoped for.

Some of you may be saying, "After I pay all of my bills, I don't have ten percent left over for God." There's a couple of things wrong with this picture:

First I don't know that God demands we give out of our gross (though you would then have to tithe from your tax return or the money you owe the IRS), but if these are part of our first fruits to God (besides our hearts, attitudes and other intangibles) then we have to make tithes and offerings non-negotiable. No question, we do it. The easiest way to do this is to give tithes and offerings as soon as you get paid. That way what you're left with is what you get, and you don't have to worry about spending what's God's. Sometimes Ricci and I forget the check book at home or something like that. We're not the perfect example. But we make it a point to remember and not spend our money down to the point that we cannot give to God. Factor it into your budget so that it's already taken out of your expendable money.

The second problem with the previous statement: If you've given God what's his and then paid your bills and you're finding that it's hard to make ends meet, you might need to reevaluate your spending. I'm not saying it's always easy. Sometimes God will put people in situations where we have to rely on others to help us. But before you put yourself in this category look at what you're paying for. So much of what we spend the money God has entrusted to us is unnecessary.

Going out to eat? please. Cable? come on. Internet? not essential. Cell phones? you could go without it if you needed to.

There are other things too, but there's no way I could write everything here. I'm not saying these things are bad or sinful, just that you wouldn't die if you gave it up. Sometimes we are doing great and then God asks us to give to something up. If you can't afford it, chances are you're going to have to sacrifice something. We recently had to give up netflix. We didn't want to. I drug my heels. But the Holy Spirit kept telling me to get over it. That's just one example, but you kinda get the idea.

These aren't just suggestions for married people either. In fact if you're a single guy and you don't tithe now, what makes you think marriage will change that? You need to be an example to others and if a godly woman looks at you and sees you aren't tithing, she should move on because you are not showing her that you can lead your family in the area of finances.

So in closing:
Give God what's His: At least ten percent, but possibly more.
Make giving non-negotiable. It's a command so do it. Simple.
If you're giving properly and the ends don't meet, see what you can cut.

I could give lots of other advice on saving money, but that's a whole other subject.

Orevwa (Haitian for goodbye)

Haitian Creole

2010-07-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

So with the team recently coming back from Haiti, and reading more about Mosaic Village I decided to see what resources were available online for learning Haitian Creole. Don't freak out, we're not moving to Haiti. Actually I haven't even felt a call to be part of a trip to Haiti. But I also haven't heard God say "Oh by the way, Josh, I'm never gonna call you to do anything in Haiti so you can just mark that one off the list."

My point is, I checked it out because knowing a language is simply equipping yourself in case God calls you somewhere. Especially for us because we know that we will be involved with missions at some point. I've seen on the website for Doctors Without Borders the need for French speaking aids for work in Chad, Niger, DRC, and Haiti and it got me thinking. So then when I saw that the Hendricks were learning Creole prior to their move to Haiti I decided to see what resources were available.

The first place I turned was to Rosetta Stone. I could never actually afford Rosetta Stone, but from what I understand it is the best and fastest language learning software and the Texas A&M libraries have copies of Rosetta Stone in several languages. So I looked, but they do not have a version for Haitian Creole. My next attempt was the TAMU libraries to see if they had RS in French. Haitian Creole is based on French with a mix of African languages and some others as well. So French would be the next best thing. Unfortunately TAMU libraries did not have French Rosetta Stone. I made a purchase suggestion that they buy it, since they do have Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese. But that could take a while, so I started looking online.

And that's when I found Byki. Byki is a division of Transparent Languages and offers a lot of different languages. For all of their languages they have the "express" version, which is very basic and the "deluxe" version which is more in depth. The great thing about this is that the "express" version is free. If you decide you like their method and want a full knowledge of whichever language, you buy the deluxe version ($50-70 as opposed to $130 for lesson 1 with RS). I'm really excited because they have Afrikaans, a derivitive of Dutch/German used Namibia and South Africa. But that's off topic. The best thing I found though, is that right now the full amount of resources for Haitian Creole are available for free. That's right. For freeeeeeeeeee (thank you Bedtime Stories).

So if you're interested in learning Haitian Creole head over to Byki. You can either download the express version of Haitian Creole which right now has the full thing, or you can register for Byki Online which allows you to use the same materials from the web without using hard drive space. Byki also has several Twitter accounts for daily phrases in some of the languages. Sorry I know it sounds like I'm gushing but I'm really excited.

I think everyone should have to learn more than one language. I really do. Go to Europe or Africa and as any random kid how many languages they know. They may not be perfectly fluent, but I'll bet they can converse in at least two if not three or four. Heck, go down to south Texas where the population is mostly Hispanic. In America, most of us don't live near an international border so we get this haughty attitude of "If you're gonna live in this country, learn the language!" That's an acceptable attitude if you aren't a Christian. I'm not saying we shouldn't have an official language, but as a Christian we are called to look out for aliens and treat them like any other person. It's hardly Christ-like to have the attitude "I'll share Jesus with you if you'll learn English first!"

Don't get me started on the political hot-button issue of immigration. If you really want to know my opinion I'll talk with you about it. But this is not the venue. Basically I think everyone should obey the established laws. That said, people from another country are still PEOPLE. Not trash. Not dogs. They need Jesus just like we do.

So check out Byki, download some software or follow a twitter account, learn a language, and be equipped for God to use you in a cool way. I don't think Byki is a Christian organization I just suggest them because they have free resources. If you have resources that allow you to still be wise with your money go for it. See if your library has a copy of Rosetta Stone or other tools. If you know anybody that works for the DoD and had to learn a language they probably have a copy. It doesn't matter what you use, the point is to let God use you.

Radical dude!

2010-07-01T18:48:00.000-07:00

This was a phrase often followed by "Cowabunga!" when I was younger. I was a big fan of Ninja Turtles. But that is not what this post is about. If you've been to our family blog you've seen that we're about to start going through the "Radical" series by David Platt. We put this off for a while because everyone who recommended it was changed. That sounds dumb, but what I mean is, we weren't ready to give up our selfishness. We could see this series made people really question a lot of things in their lives and we weren't ready to that yet.

One of the families that it really made a difference on was the Hendricks. They talked about it a lot. And not only because of Radical, but definitely out of a series of God-orchestrated events which included Radical they are now moving to Haiti. See what I mean? Anyway I was reading through their blog, as well as the blog for their new mission-community-connection-whatever organization Mosaic Village and I finally stopped fighting it. Ricci and I are going to start going through this series and I'm pretty sure it's going to rock our nice little boat. I told Ricci this feeling is the spiritual equivalent of knowing you have to go get a shot. You know it's gonna hurt. You might cry. And it might even be sore for a while. But you also know that it's good for you so need to just suck it up and do it.

In unrelated news, Ricci and I were in HEB getting hot dogs for my work party for the 4th of July. I grabbed a package of Hebrew Nationals, because they aren't horrible for you. Basically they're kosher dogs. Upon flipping the package over I counted how many franks there were so I'd know how many packages to get. "1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Okay there's...wait...seven?" I counted again, because it was an odd number. There were definitely seven. "Why would they have seven?" I asked. And then simultaneously Ricci and I looked at each other and said "It's a perfect number!" and then couldn't stop laughing in the meat section of the grocery store.

So there you go. Something serious and something light. Have a great day

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

2010-06-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

I folded the Bellezandra blog. I need control too much.

But I have started a new blog called Android Orange. It'll be more what I wanted to do with Bellezandra. SciFi/Tech pulp. Short stories, so I don't have to worry about publishing them before I know the end. And hopefully some of you will contribute to it eventually.

That's all for now.

-J

Xbox 360 Elite Arcade. sort of.

2010-06-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

I decided to revive my brother's Xbox 360 Elite (black one) from the infamous Red Rings of Death, a hardware failure generally due to overheating. He took the hard drive out of it and put it in a new one so there's no way to save games, but I figured I'd give it a shot just to see if I could fix it. So I brought it back to college station, opened it up and got to work. I pulled the CPU and GPU (central processing unit and graphics processing unit) off the motherboard and replaced the thermal conducting paste. This basically makes a better thermal conduit between the processors and the heatsinks so the they cool off faster or better.

Naturally the next step was to put it back together and see if I had fixed the problem. Oh wait, that's right I left all the cables in Waco.

Fail....

I'll let you know if I get some cables to test it out and get it fixed.

Week In Review

2010-06-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the sum up.

Last Friday night we went to see Toy Story 3 with Trent & Andrea. Definitely worth your money to see it in theaters. I kinda want to go watch it again. And I may have done that with only two movies in my life.

On Saturday we ate burgers and watermelon with the Loyds, Amys, and Bucks.

Sunday MW came to stay for the week. That was fun, but now she's gone again.

Been watching/listening to World Cup 2010. Did you see the game against Algeria? Was that a nail-biter or what? Landon Donovan scored in minute 91. One goal made the difference between going home and coming out on top of the group. Crazy. So we play Ghana on saturday and England plays Germany. Missed out on how the Group Play ended? Here's the brackets for the start of knockout. Two teams advanced out of each group and are placed on opposite sides of the bracket. That way they can't face each other again unless it's at the final game (first/second or third/fourth). Personally I see Brazil or Portugal/Spain winning it all. I'd love us to win but I'm just excited we made it out of Group Play. For us to win we'd have to beat Ghana, Uruguay/S.Korea, then probably Brazil to face whoever's the final team. Yeah right. But good luck to Donovan, Bradley, Dempsey, Howard and the rest. USA!

Also been praying for the Haiti team from LHBC. One of the group was sending out tweets, but the last we got was yesterday morning. Pray for their safety, their perseverance in the heat, and their attitudes to reflect Christ to those they minister to.

Alright gotta get back.

Long Overdue

2010-06-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

Holy Swiss-cheese Batman! Long time no update.

I'm evaluating my priorities a lot lately. Trying to figure out what's important, and what I should and shouldn't be spending my time on.

Gardening has been sort of a failure with the fluctuating weather and the destructive dog.

I've been spending a lot of time watching/listening to the world cup. The world cup is cool, and honestly this year it's anybody's guess who will win. There's nothing wrong with having some pride in your country and enjoying competition. But we can't let it be more important than God's work. And we can't let it make us act more excited or crazy about a football (that's soccer) game than the fact that God sent his son Jesus Christ to die for for us and then empower us with the Holy Spirit to be free from sin.

Right now our church has a team in Haiti that's working with JoyHouse. If you want to be involved, pray for them and for their work and you can also follow on of the team members on Twitter @BrianPauler.

There's more going on with the med school process too but it's hard to explain and hard to talk about. Suffice to say, waiting on the Lord is very difficult.

Maybe this week I'll get around to another Man Talk. I want to talk about Finances. Anyway, if I get around to it you can read it, if not I probably got busy with other stuff this week. But I'll leave you with this thought that I get convicted over often:

If you're wondering whether or not God is your first priority, look at how you spend your time and money. When commitments conflict, or when you have to choose between what you want to do and the morals you claim, what do you choose?

David Attenborough, Life, and Returning home

2010-05-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

That's right kids, it's almost here. On June first BBC America will release the real version of LIFE to dvd. Not the one with Oprah. Psh! Life narrated by the one and only Sir David Attenborough. Those three letters mean he was knighted. Let's see Oprah do that!

When Discovery Channel decided to air Life, they had Oprah narrate it instead of using DA's original narration, much like they did with Sigourney Weaver on Planet Earth. Nothing against Sigourney, I just think we need to let experts do their work. If we need rescuing from a parasitic facehugging alien species we'll call you Miss Weaver. Leave the documentary writing and narration to the man who has been the writer of more nature documentaries than you can shake a stick at, and a narrator of even more than that. He was also a senior manager at BBC and the controller of BBC Two

And also his older brother Richard played Hammond in Jurassic Park and Santa in Miracle on 34th street. So let's keep the American female personalities away from our nature shows and let the man do his thing. I mean really he's 84 and still doing this? That's amazing.

-----

Moving on, I left Ames today and I've checked into my hotel in Des Moines. As I was pulling into the parking lot I heard a noise that sounded like the very fabric of reality being torn asunder. My car shook and I almost lost control of my bodily functions. Then just as quickly it ended and I tried to make sense of the chaos that had started and faded so abruptly. Then I remembered I was across the street from the airport...

Then it happened twice more in about a minute but I didn't pee myself rest assured.

I can't wait to get home. I'm not excited however about flying out at 6, but what can you do? At least I'm going home.

By the by, the first chapter of The Bellezandra is up. Yu can find it here. Let me know if you like it. Or if you hate it. Either way I'll keep working on it. Maybe I'll put the second chapter up befre the end of May. But I wn't get much of anything dne if my stupid, piece f junk "O" key keeps ignring me!!!

o oooo oooooooooooooooo

Okay it can work if it wants t.
crap.

Day 1 at NVSL

2010-05-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

My first day was more or less uneventful. I'm pretty sure that's how it will stay. It's a nice facility, because it's their brand new building. They have windows which makes me jealous. And the rooms have negative air pressure to keep you from letting possibly contaminated air into the hallway. Basically a vent in the lab ceiling keeps sucking air in so you have to push harder than you'd think to open the door out into the hallway. The cool part about that is the indicator to make sure it's working. Above each door is a plastic dome on each side of the wall with a hole for air. Within this dome system is a clear pipe with a slight slant towards the hallway. This pipe contains a bright pink ball (like ping pong ball size). When the doors are closed, the negative air pressure brings the ball up the pipe, through the wall and into the lab room. When a door is opened the negative pressure is dispersed coming in the doorway and is not enough to keep the ball in the room so it rolls out onto the hall side of the door. Simple yet awesome.

Other than that it was kinda hum-drum diagnostic work. I don't have to shower in but I do have to shower out. I don't get to wear my own clothes in the labs. I wear provided scrubs. That would be neat if they matched. Or coordinated. Or fit. I had a maroonish (not quite fuchsia) top and purple pants. Which would have been acceptable if I hadn't spent the first half of the day trying to keep them up. I finally figured out how to cinch them up enough to stay on. But this further reinforces my confusion toward the "sagging" trend that I so often see in my neighborhood. If these guys are tough like they say, and looking for fights as they often seem, wouldn't having your PANTS ON THE GROUND get in the way of not getting beat up? Haha.

Anyway, the coolest part of my day was after work. I went to Olde Main Brewery and Restaurant, the same place I went for dinner last night, with a guy at NVSL named Leo. Leo knows the owner and the brewmaster so I got to go down and see where the fermentation and everything takes place. It was pretty cool to see the whole process and hear nerdy beer talk.

Alright well I'm off to eat dinner and maybe work on some more Bellezandra story and sketches.

***Just to reiterate in case you missed it in my bottle cap talk: I drink beer from time to time (it's expensive, so not often), and even less in public, but getting drunk is never okay. The Bible is pretty clear. If I'm with somebody that I might offend or cause to stumble in their walk I don't drink. If you have an issue with that email me and we can talk about it.

Arrival

2010-05-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

This morning I left the Easterwood Airport to fly to Ames, Iowa for some work training. I always forget how awesome clouds look from above. This isn't as well lit as I'd hoped but you get the idea. It was pretty sweet.

I'm not sure what you think of when you think of Iowa, but I honestly was hoping for something like this:

This was not the case.

It's cold and rainy here. It's as though by going north I went back in time to January or something. Oh well. I do have a very nice room. Here's my humongous bed. This is bigger than our bed at home. That's my backpack in the middle so you can have a frame of reference. It's pretty swell other than the howling wind outside my window. But I can overlook that.

And also I have a large desk and wifi. You probably already knew that though because we both know that I wouldn't pay extra just to have internet at my hotel. I'm cheap. Anyway, I got some writing done on Bellezandra on the way from DFW but it's surprisingly hard to write or draw during turbulence. I was thinking Um...hello? I'm trying to shade with a bic pen here. It's difficult enough as it is without you shaking the whole plane Mr. Airpocket! I'll try to post some later and then put the link on here sometime this week to the site.

Today I don't really have much to do. Just get here and get settled. And get some sleep too. Tomorrow I have to start training. I have to shower in and shower out every time I enter/exit the lab this week. In my head I see something like Andromeda Strain. But knowing how glamorized CSI is for lab work, I assume government diagnostic facilities aren't much nicer than mine. I couldn't find the book I wanted to bring this morning and I almost grabbed Richard Preston's Panic at Level 4, but then thought Nah, I don't want to have nightmares about giving everyone Ebola or something because I'm clumsy. I won't be able to take my phone into the lab so I'll update this tomorrow evening. Well, my tummy's getting angry and I'm tired so I'm going to find some food and a nap. Catch yall on the flip side!

(....what does that even mean?)

****UPDATE*******
I forgot to give a shout out to MW, who may as well be my sister. Thanks for keeping my baby girl company this week. You're awesome.

Writing

2010-05-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

For the one of you actually following this blog (thanks Heather), sorry I've been a little AWOL. I have managed to get an electric fence up around my raised bed, but we've been out of town a lot and haven't had time to actually put anything in there.

My main project right now is finishing up my medical school application as well as my public health school application. The med school app will be for fall 2011 admission and the public health app will be for this coming fall. I'm going to try to take a few classes to get some foundations for med school as well as improve my grades.

Interspersed between that I'm working on a couple of stories. Yep, I'm trying my hand at writing. I get all of these neat (at least I think so) ideas in my head but I never write them down so eventually they just shrivel and die in my brain. But I've started writing bits and pieces down this time so these may actually get written out. They probably won't ever get published but I'd at least like to write them out for myself because I really like my characters and think their stories deserve to be told. Is that weird?

One is about a group of teenagers in semi-post-apocalyptic America making their way from L.A. to New York. That one I'm keeping pretty tight reigns on because I've written the most on it and if possible I would like to see it in print one day.

The other is just an idea right now that I'm trying to flesh out. Here's a really basic synopsis of my thoughts so far:

An apothecary searching for his lost king, a military hero framed as a traitor, a pair of thieves looking for their big break and a young adventurer looking for his place in the world. Their journeys will bring them together in the land of Kaladea where the land gives way to endless sky, and they may find the answers to all of their questions in a mysterious air ship, a behemoth of unexplained origin, known only as the Bellezandra.

I'm trying to decide how to write this one. I think it might be a fun experiment to do it as a serialized blog, a chapter at a time. But then I question the quality because I know that I'll get to the end and go "I wish I'd done this at the beginning so I could that at the end." Do I write it and publish a chapter at a time, write it all out and then release it one chapter at a time or just write it all and release it all at once?

Thoughts?

Man Talk: Qualifications for Elders

2010-04-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

I got an email from my pastor this week that detailed the qualifications of being an Elder listed in the Bible. As Christian men, these are things that we are supposed to strive for. This week I figured I'd just list some of the stuff from that email, because it's worded much better than I could say it.

Titus 1:5-9   Titus 1:5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what  remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed  you-- Titus 1:6  if anyone is  above reproach, the  husband of one wife, and  his children are faithful and not open to the charge of debauchery  or insubordination. Titus  1:7  For an overseer, as God's steward, must be  above reproach. He must  not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or  greedy for gain, Titus 1:8  but  hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and  disciplined. Titus 1:9  He must  hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be  able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those  who contradict it.  

1 Timothy 3:1-7  1Ti 3:1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of  overseer, he desires a noble task. 1Ti 3:2  Therefore an overseer  must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded,  self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,  1Ti 3:3  not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not  quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 1Ti  3:4  He must manage his own household well, with all  dignity keeping his children submissive, 1Ti 3:5  for  if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he  care for God's church? 1Ti 3:6  He must  not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up  with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 1Ti  3:7  Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders,  so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

And here's a summary of the qualifications laid out in those verses. Men, think about these. Pray that God will show you how you can improve these areas in your lives. These are practical qualities that we can all work on.

The first 15 deal with moral issues:

Above reproach. - literally means "unaccused". “Reproach” is to bring down. If we are "above" reproach, then there is no justifiable way to be brought down by accusation. That is the key to this position, because even Jesus was accused, and so was Paul among others. So, it is not just that one be without accusation from anyone for anything, but that there be no justifiable reason for accusation of wrong.
Sober-minded – This refers to the ability to think clearly and spiritually about important matters with balanced judgment.
Self-controlled - He must also exhibit self-control over the desires of the flesh, and have the discipline of patient, and wise judgment.
Respectable – Literally able to be respected. This is by others both inside the church and out. He must have a character that others desire to emulate and follow.
Hospitable – His life must be transparent and accessible to others. It requires that his home is open to minister to the needs of others. It is an “others-centeredness” that follows his Christ-centeredness.
Not violent, but gentle – Kind, gracious, fair, mild, appropriate. He is patient with others, never returning evil for evil. He should not be easily irritated or have a temper problem, whether displayed physically or verbally.
A lover of good – Loving others and desiring their good. As Jesus said, “only God is good”, therefore to love good, is to love God, because all that is truly good comes from God.
Upright – Being a pursuer of righteousness and desiring to live according to God’s Word. This man will be able to make righteous and fair decisions in the church.
Holy – Pure and undefiled and set apart for God to obey His will.
Disciplined – literally means “strong” or “having power over”. This is self-discipline in all aspects of life, and is shown in his fight against ungodliness in his flesh.
Not a drunkard - There should be no abuse of substance that would bring shame to the church. Dependence on these things contradicts self-discipline.
Not quarrelsome – He must be able to defuse disputes in the church and not add to them with his own opinions. He must be a peacemaker, always seeking to be a minister of reconciliation.
Not a lover of money – Scripture says you cannot serve both God and money, and the love of money is the root of all evil.
Not be arrogant – He must not be a self-focused person, always insisting, boasting, or manipulating to his own desires. He must, like Christ, consider others more important than himself. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Not be quick-tempered – To be slow to anger and abounding in love is to be like the Lord who deals patiently with sinners.

The next 3 are situational qualifications:

Able to teach – This is the primary distinguishing mark of the office of elder relating to his duties in the church. He must be able to accurately handle the Word of truth, and know it well enough to be able to rebuke those who contradict sound doctrine. This duty is essential in maintaining the spiritual health and growth of the church. This is not necessarily referring to public preaching, but does require the aptitude to communicate truth to others, individually or in groups, for the glory of God and the good of the church.
Not a recent convert – When a recent convert assumes an important role in leadership, he may succumb to the temptations of pride to the detriment of the church.
Well thought of by outsiders – Outsiders are non-Christians before whom an elder must maintain a good reputation. The opinions of outsiders should be of utmost respect for the elder based on what is known through their relationship.

The next 2 qualifications relate to the family of the elder

Husband of one wife – This does not mean that an elder must be married. If that were the case it would disqualify the writer, Paul, not to mention Jesus from being an elder in a church. This phrase refers to the man’s faithfulness to his wife once he is married. Elders are to lead in setting the example for devotion to their wives. Obviously, this prohibits polygamy, but does not necessarily exclude a man who has remarried after his wife dies or an unbelieving wife divorces him.
Manage his own household well– relates to a man’s role as a father and his relationship to his children. An elder must have respectful and obedient children. If he cannot manage his household, then he cannot manage the household of God.

Bird bath and Grimm

2010-04-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

I meant to post these pictures last weekend. Ricci went out of town and my brother came into town to hang out and go to Island Party. The first pic is a bird bath that my brother and I painted and put together. Thanks Zach!

It's a fish! When the birds are in the bath it looks like a huge bass is eating it. We made it by putting a terra cotta drainage pan on top of a terra cotta pot.

And here's some more pics of Grimm.

He's a fan of Island Party. You can tell how fluffy he is by seeing how much skinnier his front half looks when the shirt is pulled tight. What a goofball. Well I gotta go mow the yard and play with this dufus dog. Have a great weekend!

Man Talk: Fundamentals

2010-04-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

For my first Man Talk Thursday (I know it's Friday but I started writing it last night), I wanted to start with the basics. There are so many things I want to talk about that it's hard for me to organize them and put an order of importance on them. So I'll start with the problem and the prerequisites for how we fix it. This is long so take a big breath.

Here's the issue: Where are the men? Specifically in the church. A large majority of the faithful church members in America are women. Most of the members who serve in a ministry are women. Don't get me wrong, women need to serve as well, but in the Bible God clearly sets out leadership as the role for the man. We've sissified the way we do worship and even the way our churches are decorated to accommodate women, because that's who mostly attends.

The next book I want to read is one we mentioned a couple of times recently in "The Man Class" at church, called Guyland by Michael Kimmel. Here's the synopsis which does a pretty good job of defining the problem, even from a secular standpoint:

The passage from adolescence to adulthood was once clear. Today, growing up has become more complex and confusing, as young men drift casually through college and beyond—hanging out, partying, playing with tech toys, watching sports. But beneath the appearance of a simple extended boyhood, a more dangerous social world has developed, far away from the traditional signposts and cultural signals that once helped boys navigate their way to manhood—a territory Michael Kimmel has identified as "Guyland."

Coming from somebody who just recently graduated from college, I definitely understand the appeal of this "guyland" we've created. In the past as a boy grew older he was given more responsibility and eventually became a man. But now, you don't really have to if you don't want to. A variety of issues have led to growing up not being necessary until a male is almost thirty if they choose.

1. Society has redefined masculinity and pushed us to embrace our "feminine side". WHAT?! As men we can have feelings, we can laugh and cry together at the appropriate times, but we shouldn't have to become women to do that. Or there's the other extreme where we try to show off how macho we are all the time. Who hits hardest and burps the loudest? He's the man. Wrong. Mark Driscoll has a great sermon here about where real masculinity is and how it's neither of those.

2. Another issue is how we spend our time, especially college-aged men. I'm not saying older guys don't deal with this too, but in college (and even high school) I wasted a lot of time on video games, browsing the internet and watching TV/movies. We don't accept responsibility and we spend every free second we have on fleeting stuff. I like video games. A lot actually. But when we stand before God to be judged will we be able to say that the time we spent playing games actually meant anything? When I start playing a game I have this unexplainable impulse to know every detail of the story and beat all the sidequests to 100% completion. WHY? Does it develop my character? Does it help me love my neighbor or my wife? Does it bring me closer to God? But that's getting into another subject that I want to talk about some other time: idolatry
What this boils down to is laziness and selfishness. We aren't pushed to work hard or take responsibility so we play all day. We're old enough to be grown ups, but we've settled for acting like little kids.

The Solution: We need boys to grow up and be men. Men who aren't afraid to fight the good fight for integrity and purity, both personal and for their families. Men who teach their boys to grow up and be men and who teach their daughters that they are loved and shouldn't settle for immature little boys.

But how do we get there?

1. Salvation. Jesus was the ultimate man. Not the lame girly Jesus with silky hair and a soft glowing radiance that we always see in Sunday School pictures:

This guy. Not really masculine. But the Jesus who was the ultimate counter-culture figure? Who told society that women and children were worth more than just property; the same Jesus that made a whip and drove money changers out of the temple; the same Jesus that will come back with his robe dipped in blood, out of whose mouth will come a sword to strike down the nations? He's definitely masculine. Sounds awesome right? We are promised all of His power through the Holy Spirit if we will ask Him to forgive our sins and be our Lord. Until we have Salvation through Jesus Christ's death and resurrection we are incapable of doing anything different.

2. Take responsibility. Make Christ your (our) priority. We spend time reading the Bible and praying, and being involved in the local church body. The more we know him and adjust our lives to true Biblical manhood, we will see a change. What does that look like practically? Stay tuned for more Man Talks to find out.

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PS - I just saw this commercial for the new Double Down from KFC. If this isn't an insult to manhood I don't know what is. This is so laughable. First, this has to be the most unhealthy thing on the planet for you. And then they write the commercial so they may as well be saying "If you're a man, you better get to KFC pronto and start shoving these in your face! You girl!" Please. If you have any self respect you will not let fried chicken determine what is manly for you. That is all.

Food, Inc. and the unholy excesses of America

2010-04-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Rant Ahead!

We just finished watching "Food, Inc." I have to say it's pretty shocking and appalling. From the way meat is processed, to what's in the filler, to the way immigrant workers and farmers are treated, to the way Mansanto has a near monopoly on seeds. Seriously you guys should check this movie out because it's scary what's behind our food industry.

And on top of this is the way the government rolls over because the lobbyists rub their bellies with money. I have huge issues with the justice system in this country right now. I'm conservative on a lot of issues, but I also have big problems with big business.

Well, let me step back. In my opinion a HUGE portion of the problem is how we as Americans want the cheapest version of whatever, without asking what the cost is on the other end. Where do they cut those costs? What is the effect on the nutrition of our food? What is the effect on the people in the developing nations around the world who produce what we wear? Here's the issue in my opinion: it's more expensive to eat and shop healthy and morally (meaning not disenfranchising people). People act like they can't afford veggies because they are more expensive than Hot Pockets.

Try giving up your cable. Or getting a cheaper phone plan. Carpool. Do something to cut your costs elsewhere. We need to put in effort somewhere or one day when we finally wake up to the huge problems and demand something be done about it, the corporations will say, "But you've been buying this stuff from us for 50 years!" Isn't it worth paying a little more for something healthy? Try thinking of it this way: when you buy the cheap junk food, it's cheap because there's no nutrition in it. When you buy the good stuff (maybe it's organic, maybe it's just local) you're paying for the vitamins in it. Food Inc, does a good job at the end of telling the viewer things they can do to help influence the industry. Not that we can really make them have a heart change, but we can influence business by buying local and organic so that they the at least have to start putting it in there stores.

By the way, this same rationale goes for the people who complain about outsourced jobs and then go buy everything at Walmart. *Facepalm* Der! You want everything cheap, so they outsource what they can to cut costs. Then you complain that they outsourced the jobs. What did we think would happen? And I know that I said "you" a lot in this post. I'm not excluded from this. But I will say that Ricci and I have recently been making the effort to be aware of the work conditions and what is in our food, clothes, etc. We get our meat from Yonder Way Farms in Brenham now. And we try to get our produce from local farmers markets for the most part. We still go to HEB when we need something quick, because yes we still settle for convenience sometimes. But I'm proud to say we haven't been to Walmart in two months. Sure it's inconvenient but I sleep better, so I'm okay with it.

We're also working on a garden to grow what we can on our own. Once I get a shock wire, hopefully we'll be able to plant some veggies. Thanks for reading this til the end, and hopefully this helps you take a closer look at where your food comes from.

Shameless plug

2010-04-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

While organizing all of the photos on our external hard drive I stumbled upon some pictures of the checker sets I did for my father-in-law and my brother-in-law. Enjoy

This one is blue and gold with Shiner Blonde and Shiner Heifeweizen caps

The next one is traditional black and red, with Shiner Smokhaus and Zeigenbock caps for playing pieces

Many thanks go to my awesome wife Ricci, who helped me with color schemes and touch up painting. And she also gave me the idea to keep the caps in mason jars, but that's totally optional. So if anybody thinks these are neat and wants one let me know what colors and what kind of caps. If you provide the caps it will definitely be cheaper, but I can usually get some from friends, family, HEB or World Market if you have an idea of what you like.

If you see me standing in the bottled soda aisle at HEB for 20 minutes, you know I'm checking out caps. I'm working on some Mexican flavored water ones right now that have a lime on one cap and a cluster of grapes on the other. Only the lime one tastes gross so it's taking a while to muster my strength.

Gardening and Man Talk

2010-04-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

I was holding off on posting about this until I knew that Grimm hadn't destroyed it. I think it's safe to say he now has the understanding of what will happen enough to stay out.

This past weekend we put together the frame for the raised bed and planted some plants in pots in the garden. We (by which I mean Ricci) got all the mulch and dividers straightened out. We planted tomato, marigold (thanks Adam), petunias, citronella, mint and lamb's ear in pots, and we have jalepeños and bell peppers that are waiting to be put into the raised bed. I just don't quite trust my dog enough to leave them alone without some sort of border so we don't have any dirt or plants in the raised bed right now.

And here's the table my folks got us for my birthday. Check out the sweet Texas star base for the umbrella.

Also get ready because I think I'm gonna start have Man Talk Thursdays. I'm taking two classes at church (Experiencing God and The Man Class) as well as co-directing Cubbies and I'm learning a lot about Godly manhood and leadership. So next week I'm going to start passing along the little bit of wisdom that I've accumulated.

Actually I will say this for Man Talk right now:

I think every guy should read Wild at Heart by John Eldridge, Every Man's Battle by Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker, and Mike Yorkey and Six Battles Every Man Must Win by Bill Perkins.

All three tread on similar ground and some even repeat each other but it's all Godly advice so we call that reinforcement. Every Man's Battle deals with how sexuality has permeated our society and how we as men allow God to free us from sexual sins. Wild at Heart and Six Battles go more into Godly masculinity. WaH speaks more about how God has designed men, how we deal with wounds in our past and how we start acting like mature Christians. Six Battles is similar but with an emphasis on David's Mighty Men as examples of how if we put our lives in God's hands and stop settling and being passive He can make us into bad dudes. And by bad dudes I mean men that don't compromise and who get angry and fight not for stupid things like sports teams but for what matters to God.

It's been a tough semester of self examination and ironing out a lot of little areas where I say no to God or just roll over and settle for passivity. But I can't remember a time in my life where I've grown as much. Okay I have to stop for now or I'll go on forever. Thanks for dropping in.

Presents!

2010-04-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

Hey kiddies!

In spite of all the recent chaos around here, some really cool stuff has happened. Even though it wasn't a surprise anymore, Ricci and my family threw me a really awesome birthday party last weekend. My cousin(in law?) Ryan and my cousin Jenny's boyfriend Derek built me a workbench for the garage and brought that down.

They even set up the peg board organizer and put in most of my tools for me which was really nice. As you can see, it's wired for electricity and has a fluorescent light. They even put a surge protector on it and hooked up my power-drill battery charger. Woo woo!

So that's neat. I also got a table, chairs and large umbrella for the back porch. Ricci and I had breakfast there this morning. So fun.

In other news, the AWANAs program at our church is starting a recycling drive to raise money and buy bicycles for GFA missionaries. So sitting next to my new work bench are all the cans mom and dad brought. If you're in the BCS area and want to donate your aluminum cans, please do!

Also, now that I have a workbench I'm kinda itchin' to do some more bottlecap checkerboards. If anybody is interested in having some made let me know what you want and I'll try to figure out an estimate. Although I guess I should wait a couple of weeks until I finish taking my MCAT. Anyway, that's it for now.

Long Overdue Facelift and Update

2010-03-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

Wow. I took a look at my last post. September 29. Haha.

So much has happened since then. If you read this I assume you know me because this isn't that interesting of a read. Moving on, since September I got a job working at TVMDL (Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Labs) in the Serology department. We've also rearranged the house a bunch of times and I tried (and more or less failed) to convert some standard nerf guns into awesome looking and higher powered versions. I haven't given up completely, but I have put it away for now. The last time I tried I couldn't get the mechanism working when I put it back together so I rage quit.

If you didn't notice, Ricci made me a sweet header for the blog. It's actually blueprints from the Batmobile. How sweet is that?

From now on this blog will be more about actual projects and plans. It seems dumb to say that but it wasn't actually about that before. Right now I'm working on a couple of things. Ricci and I tried to set up an herb garden but Grimm decided that he thought it looked better when he dug up the mulch and tore apart the tarp underneath. So now I have to keep pulling out weeds. Eventually I'll get it put back in order and we'll plant some things. But there's no rush since he also managed to eat or destroy all of the seedlings Ricci was growing to plant out there. For a couple photos of the traumatic incident look here. Keep in mind the photos were taken the same day.

I also have the wood cut to make a 4 x 8 raised bed for veggies in the backyard, but after the last incident, I'm not sure I want to put anything back there until I have a shock wire or something to keep Grimmace the Menace out.

I did finish making bottle cap checker boards. One for myself and three that I made for Christmas presents. I like them but again, a lot of work so it might be a while, or at least a really special occasion before I make another.

I'm not sure when, but at some point we bought, and put together a cheap set of bookshelves to hold most of our books. That's all I can think of for now. I'll keep a list of my projects on the right so maybe I'll do a better job of keeping this updated. We'll see. I think I've used almost all of my tags in this post, haha.

Bottle Caps!

2009-09-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

So I've been collected bottle caps for the past year or so. I started out just keeping a cap of everything I tried, which kinda led me to start trying more and more different things. But as with most people I have certain drinks that I prefer and I thought "What could I do with all these caps?" I remembered seeing a checkers set that my dad had made once out of epoxied pepsi and dr pepper bottle caps and figured I'd try my hand at it. So I've been collecting more and more over the past six months or so and filling certain ones with epoxy.

I'm proud to say that this past weekend (with lots of help from Ricci's Gramps and her dad, Bill) I made my first checker board. Gramps helped with the design and did most of the sawing with Bill. I actually only helped in that part. But I watched carefully so that now I can do it myself. Then I painted the squares and stained the whole thing to look old. I'll put pictures up later. Assuming that the last couple caps finish drying by this evening I will have a full set to play "Corona Extra" against "Corona Light".

Quick Disclaimer: I drink beer from time to time, but I don't get drunk. I think the Bible is pretty clear that being drunk is sinful, but drinking in itself is not. I don't hang out at bars either because of the associations people sometimes make. Nuff said.

Moving on, my general policy is to take the first bottle cap I get from a drink and add it to my collection. After that I just add duplicates to another jar/ziploc/whatever container I'm using. I hope to have some way to display them one day but for now they sit in a closet. As I was sorting out a batch of bottlecaps my in-laws had saved for me (yeah I sort them, order is a good thing) I was feeling pretty good about my collection. I knew it wasn't the biggest but I was kind of proud of my modest little collection.

Then I stumbled across Bottle Cap-O-Rama and was put to shame. I probably have between fifty and a hundred different bottle caps. Whoever runs this site (I would assume a guy, but there's a girl on the top banner so I'm not sure...) has nearly 2500! Wowsers! Looks like I have a ways to go.

Also he/she had links to John T. Unger's bottle cap mosaic fish site. Awesome. I watched the video of how he does it and it looks pretty tedious. It seems pretty steep to charge $500 for some wall art but as I learned this weekend making that checker board, hand made stuff is expensive and time consuming for the person making it. Granted, he doesn't buy all the beer himself, but the wood, metal, and nails plus the time and energy he puts in definitely make it worth more than you might think on first glance.

Back to Bottle Cap O Rama, I haven't quite finished absorbing all attainable knowledge from their "links" section so I may post more.

I also started my training class at work on Adobe Photoshop so look to better designs for this page in the future and less bleak cyber wastelands.

*update*
I just found a link from BCoR to bottlecaps.de and it made me slightly more depressed about my collection. hundreds of thousands.....

Transformers 2

2009-09-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

So I have really made an effort to not let this blog become a page for ranting. You can ask my wife, I am good at ranting. I go off and it will sometimes be almost an hour later that she stops me because she just doesn't want to hear it anymore. So if you don't want to read a long rant skip this post. Also if you don't want spoilers (though in my opinion this movie is already spoiled) skip it. That said, let's begin:

I wasn't going to write this up for the aforementioned reason of trying to not be whiny all the time. Unfortunately I got a forward from my boss because A&M always shows movies on campus for two bucks after they leave theaters and this Friday it's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Here's the review that was in the email:

The battle for Earth has ended but the battle for the universe has just begun. After returning to Cybertron, Starscream assumes command of the Decepticons, and has decided to return to Earth with force. The Autobots believing that peace was possible finds out that Megatron's dead body has been stolen from the US Military by Skorpinox and revives him using his own spark. Now Megatron is back seeking revenge and with Starscream and more Decepticon reinforcements on the way, the Autobots with reinforcements of their own, may have more to deal with then meets the eye.

And here's the review from Netflix:
Unlikely hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and his foxy girlfriend, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), return with tough-as-nails Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) to assist the Autobots in another epic battle against the evil Decepticons in this supercharged sequel to the 2007 megahit. Blockbuster impresario Michael Bay brings his trademark pyrotechnics to the proceedings, while comic whiz Rainn Wilson joins the cast as a college professor.

Please do NOT go see this movie because you love Rainn Wilson. I think he's hilarious but (1) he's only in five minutes of the film and (2) it's straight up garbage. I'm going to take my time dissecting this so be prepared to read for a while.

If you haven't seen the first movie, don't worry. It was decent. Worth watching even.
Here's basically what happens in the second movie (sorry if some of this is out of order):
-5 minute narration from Optimus about how he and a bunch of other Autobots(henceforth "A") teamed up with an international group of human soldiers to hunt down the remaining Decepticons(henceforth "D") for the past two years.
This drug on way too long, and it attempts to catch you up on a bunch of background they didn't want to actually film.

-This team bungles some mission in Hong Kong or Shanghai (I can't remember which) and ends up causing a lot of collateral damage. The D here is ENORMOUS and as he's finally dying he utters out something about "The Fallen". There are a couple of Autobots here from the old show like Arcee that are seen but there is no character development so people who never saw it have no idea. Also the introduce the obnoxious twin robots that are "ghetto" and spend the whole time cussing and fighting each other. And by whole time I do mean the whole movie.

-The government decides to shut down the project and suggest the A's go home because, since the AllSpark is gone, the D's are only sticking around to kill A's. The A's consent but believe that the D's are planning something based on what the D in Shanghai said about "The Fallen". Meanwhile Sam Witwicky is leaving for college and his girlfriend Mikaela (who has the IQ and personality of a meter stick but can somehow rework cars and motorcycles?) attempts to breakup with him. He says they can work it out long distance, blah blah blah.
Where are the transformers in this scene?

-Sam drops a piece of the AllSpark from the hoodie he wore in the first movie, gets blasted in the eye with symbols and spends the rest of the movie freaking out and spouting off gibberish. A bunch of household appliance come to life and Bumblebee has to blast them. One remote control car-bot gets away.
-Sam moves to college and leaves Bumblebee.
Somehow, even though Bumblebee's voice got fixed at the end of the first movie, it is broken again and communication with him is forced to rely on cheap laughs from related songs and radio clips played through his speakers. Yeah, because that didn't get obnoxious by the end of the first one.

-Insert thirty minutes of overdone college move-in humor. He meets some fellow nerd/techies and the form a gang to make money uploading viral video.
Again, where are the transformers?

-Evil tiny car bot attacks Mikaela for piece of AllSpark. She captures it and decides to take it to Sam. The thing cusses at her a bunch. Actually the whole movie cusses a bunch. Like over the top, unnecessary for a movie based on toys for little kids.

-D's patch into government satellite and watch conversation where military details all the secrets they don't want D's to learn. D's then find Megatron's body, revive him and take him to their secret moon base where an ancient D, The Fallen, is residing with a bunch of D's trying to creating a D factory.
WHAT?! None of this made any sense. The satellite D was named "Soundwave", who was an actual D in the old show. He was like a boombox or something and had a bunch of mini-D casette tape robots that would help him out. This was the one time where they took the name of an original character and put it on something else that made more sense for the story. Okay that's cool. You can hack into the government's most secret satellite, I'll accept that. But that took you thirty minutes. What were you doing for TWO YEARS???? Just floating around in geosynchronous orbit waiting for this exact conversation??

-There's a bunch of backstory about the Fallen being Megatron's master and that's why Megatron came to earth. The Fallen wanted to use the Matrix of Leadership (MoL) to start a machine on Earth that would create Energon (transformer energy-food/fuel) but destroy the sun and all life on Earth. Ancient "Primes" stopped him by taking the MoL and killing themselves to seal it away. He's been waiting on the moon for thousands of years for revenge.
What's all this stuff about The Fallen? The fallen was never in any Transformers show before now. And in the first movie Megatron just came to Earth for the AllSpark so he could make a massive army of D's. If you're gonna create something original at least follow your own story. Continuity fail. Also the MoL was from the comics and old show. I didn't read the comics but in the animated movie it bestowed a fancy upgrade on Hot Rod and made him into Rodimus Prime after OP died. In the animated series it is closer in function to the AllSpark from movie 1, not just a key for the SunHarvester. The SunHarvester plot isn't bad it just doesn't really mesh with the first movie.

-Sam goes to a party and starts doing the symbol freakout when he decides to leave. Bumblebee has shown up for some reason (I can't remember)and as they start to leave, some college "hottie" gets in and starts trying to blatantly seduce him. She pretty much tries to prostitute herself out to him while some jock is chasing him out of the party. She climbs into the passenger seat and starts seductively describing cars and stuff. They get back to his dorm and she conveniently gets him onto the bed around the same time Mikaela is arriving to show Sam the evil toy car. Insert overdone "She tried to kiss me" scene - (WHERE ARE THE ROBOTS THEY NAMED THIS MOVIE AFTER?! What does this have to do with anything?!) - but wait! Turns out the girl who for some ridiculous reason is way too attracted to shia labeouf is actually a D! A chase scene ensues which ends with Mikaela smashing Robot McSkankgirl against lightpole in her car. Okay...so you somehow pretended like the last thirty minutes were not irrelevant and were actually an assassination attempt...but...if they could look like people, why didn't they just impersonate AirForce personnel and get all the government secrets TWO YEARS AGO??

My memory is kinda fuzzy about the details of what happens next. I was kinda losing interest on account of no robots fighting.

-Somehow Sam gets separated from the group and captured by Megatron. The D's try to torture him into giving them the information from his symbol brain blast and then try to take it by force by cutting his head open. I was thinking about doing it myself so the emotional appeal was kinda lost on me here.

-The Autobots show up and Sam gets away with OP. They end up in some forest and the best scene of the whole movie takes place where OP pulls out two swords and fights off four or five D's including Megatron to protect Sam. I think he kills a couple and then ends up getting killed. Yes, that's right Optimus Prime dies. The other A's show up and carry Sam away to safety. Nice timing, where have you been?

-Somehow (again, losing interest so I don't remember as well) Sam and Mikeala end up at the Smithsonian, while the A's are being told they have to go home by the government. Sam and Mikaela end up ressurecting an SR71 Blackbird who happens to be a really ancient D (but for some reason he doesn't mind helping.) He gives a lot of backstory on the Fallen and somehow they end up in Egypt looking for the MoL, with that annoying government guy from the first movie, Sam's nerd friend and the ghetto bots (Skids and Mudflap).

-After finding the MoL, Sam sends a message to AF Capt. Lennox from the first movie who sends a message to his CO. Lennox and Tyrese change course of some cargo planes that are carrying the A's and ejects a government guy with a parachute into the dessert. (This was funny, but I assume he will be discharged at some point). Sam and gang begin making their way to meet up with Lennox, thinking MoL will revive OP. The MoL crumbles into dust, which Sam scoops up into his handy small cloth bag. (Where did he get this? This might have been explained, I just don't remember.)

-In an effort to slow down some D's following them, the ghetto bots, gov. dude, and nerd friend stop to fight in a construction zone (?). Enter the Constructicons, another reference to the old toys/show/comics. These are a bunch of construction vehicles that transform together to form a giant D called Devastator. He pretty much trashes all of the good guys without actually killing anyone (unfortunately, because these are the most annoying characters, besides Megan Fox). Devastastor starts destroying pyramids to find the SunHarvester.

-The A's with Lennox start fighting a bunch of D's. Sam is trying to get to OP with his magic dust. (I'm fuzzy here because it was about two hours and I was just tired.) I think that at some point Megatron or the Fallen gets a hold of the fairy dust which does nothing for him, and then the MoL magically reforms in Sam's hands. He brings back OP. OP fights the Fallen with some extra parts from the Blackbird (I still don't know what the point of this guy was. I think he was just some comic relief and story telling. I'm not really sure what side he was on. He is called a D when they ressurect him but then he helps the good guys?)

-The gov dude calls some ship off the Mediterranean Coast that just happens to have a secret weapon that he knows about. He gets them to shoot it at the coordinates and kill Devastator. (Really? You killed Devastator in one shot? Two A's with alien guns got thrown around like rag dolls but your secret human weapon killed him in one shot?)

OP kills the Fallen. Megatron and Starscream and any other D's flee like little girls. Everyone is happy, blah, blah, blah. OP has some closing monologue about freedom, etc. There will probably be a third movie that I will not see.

Okay to fair there are a few things I liked about this movie. The fight scene with OP in the woods was sweet. Soundwave was cool. I liked that they actually showed the tension between Starscream and Megatron. Sorry I didn't talk about that but it was only a sentence or two here and there.

Megan Fox is the worst actress ever. There was waaay too much cussing in this movie. Also there was too many unfunny sexual references even beyond Megan Fox and the Prostituticon at Sam's college. The RC-D humps Megan Fox's leg, Sam's dogs hump each other, Devastator just happens to have two hanging wrecking balls between his legs, etc.

In reference to the synopsis above I assume they get this information from the people that made this movie because most of that is impossible to discern from the movie:

*The first line talks about the battle being for the universe not for Earth. Which is true except that it's all about draining the sun and killing everyone on Earth. But that's all.

*About Skorpinok, you can hardly even tell what's going on when they are resurrecting Megatron at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. They rip apart someone in the background and shove parts onto M, and then bring him back with a piece of spark the stole from a gov facility.

*Also it says that Starscream returned to Cybertron, which is possible, but it didn't say it was Cybertron. It looked like the moon to me. But that's giving them the credit of following the animated series where there was a base on the moon.

*I'm sure there were a lot of things like this, where they intended something but it was never said outright, so we don't know.

Also there is no character development with anyone new, except maybe the Fallen. Starscream and Megatron are developed a little. Nothing is developed with the relationship between any of the A's, especially since there are a bunch of new ones. They just all get shoved into the background. I assume we are supposed to know Skorpinok's name from the old shows or the toys. That's the only way I knew it since they never said it.

I guess maybe I just had my hopes too high for this film. I thought there would be character development and rational plot lines. I was wrong. Just a bunch of senseless explosions, swearing and sex. If I wanted that I would watch something from Terentino or Frank Miller. Actually those guys put a little plot in there though. So Sin City may have been better than Transformers 2.

Feel free to leave comments disagreeing or clarifying any of the parts I left fuzzy. Again sorry this was so long and angry I just felt like I was going to bust every time somebody brought up Transformers 2. I'll be good now that I have it down on paper. Or blog. whatever.

MLIA from this morning

2009-09-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

This made my morning. Sometimes, despite all our efforts a child or two gets "left behind". Take for example this quote from MLIA this morning:

Today, in Spanish class, my teacher asked everyone to take turns telling the class why they’ve chosen to learn Spanish. The 16 year old pregnant girl that sits in front of me seriously said, “My baby is half Mexican, and I want to be able to understand it when it’s born.” MLIA

simply brilliant.

Two new websites

2009-09-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

So in the past two days I have discovered two new websites that I like. I want to share them with you.

1. People of Walmart

This is a site dedicated to pictures of all those weird, gross, and creepy people you see at wally world. Priceless. Normally I don't read the comments on these kinds of websites but here I typically read most of the way down. Why? Because the best part about Walmart is everyone goes, so there's usually a comment somewhere like "Oh yeah I've seen that guy around town. Soooo creeeeepy..." It gives comfort and validation knowing nobody photoshopped the shirtless man with his crack exposed.

ex:

2. My Life is Average

If you're familiar with FML then this site is similar. Only the posts aren't about terrible things that happened to people and the language is usually cleaner. But similar "twitter style" postings about weird goofy things that happen in people's lives.

ex:
Today, a new kid from England with glasses came onto our speech class, the teacher asked him to share something unique about him to the class. He pulled up his bangs to reveal a lighting bolt scar and claimed that he fell on a rock. Yeah right, Harry Potter. MLIA

Today I realized that my e-mail automatically sorts any e-mails from the government into the spam folder. I'm proud to know that my inbox is willing to stick it to the man. MLIA

Today, While leaving Wal-mart me and my mother passed an advertisment of Miley Cyrus promoting her new clothing line. My mother asked me if I was a fan of Miley Cyrus, I said No. She responded by buying me Ice Cream and telling me what a good daughter I was. Me: 1, Miley Cyrus: 0. MLIA.

ps - i hate twitter. It didn't do anything to me personally, I just don't think people need to know every time you fart or whatever.

books and games update

2009-09-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

I finished Call it Courage last week. So good. I think it was only like a hundred pages but definitely worth it. It's about a boy, Mafatu, who lives on an island but is scared of the water because he lost his mom and nearly drowned when he was very young. At a certain point he decides to prove his courage to everyone and sets out on his own.

I also finished The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I think some of the endings were supposed to be a surprise but this game is aimed at people from 10-20something so I guessed most of it. I did not guess however that the final boss would transform four or five times and that that fight would take an hour and a half.... not bitter....

So now I just have to beat Super Mario Galaxy and I can get rid of my one player games. Unless of course they come out with another cool one player game. They did release the metroid prime games with wii controls....

I also started Jack London's White Fang. I never read this or saw the movie as a kid. Nobody warned me how violent this is. It's kind of intense. But good so far.

I know this is random but does anybody know where I can get a copy of the classic Risk game? I have the "vintage" one from Target that looks like a book but the pieces are kinda crummy. And if you buy it new it's all corporations and junk. The Risk 2210 might be fun but I really want the classic.

Alrighty well I'm gonna get back to White Fang.

-Josh out

Information overload (get ready)

2009-08-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post. So here's a super fast recap of what's been going on since:

1. Grimm and I went back to the park. We went much further in this time and it was a lot tougher. Fun but exhausting.

2. Went to the book sale and picked up a paperback copy of White Fang and a hardback of Martin Eden (both by Jack London), a hardback of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and coffe table book about Volkswagen Beetles, a giant pop-up encyclopedia of dinosaurs, as well as a couple of books for Ricci. Grand total: $5. That's right, five smackaroos. That's why I went ahead and got the paperback of White Fang. I'll read it now for a buck and if I really want a hard copy later I'll find one. Afterwords we went by Halfprice because Ricci wanted a copy of Madeline hardback that I had seen the day before. It was a reprint though so she didn't want to spend five bucks on it. However I picked up a copy of Call it Courage for a quarter. No joke with tax and all I only spent 27 cents. Awesome.

3. Ricci's great-grandfather Pappo passed on weekend before last. The funeral was last Monday and then we went back this past Saturday to his farm with a bunch of the family to clean up and take things to remember him and his wife Nanny by. I never met Nanny because she died 12 or so years ago, long before I had any relation to the Barnes, Lowaks or Fenners. It's really cool to go through all of their stuff (in a totally respectful way). I picked up a couple of pins for my collection and some glasses from the old Pearl brewery. It was good to see the family laughing and joking about the things they remembered about that house or about Nanny and Pappo.

4. Ricci and I (mostly Ricci) spent last Tuesday decorating one of the guest bedrooms. She painted the walls green and we hung up a bunch of my old posters. I tend to hang out in there because it's mostly my old stuff as opposed to the frilly stuff in our bedroom. If we stay here for med school we're going to get a big desk and that will be my office/study room. That's why Ricci wanted to make it look nice, so I could enjoy being in there for hours on end when I study. Part of the decorating process included buying a shadow box for all of my pins and buttons. So now I can actually display them all. There's still some room for more but I'll probably have to buy another box in a couple years.

5. Zach and Brandon came in last Thursday so we could all go watch Rifftrax Live: Plan 9 from Outer Space. From the same guys that did Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes a new movie-riffing show. However this one skips all the in-between stuff and goes right to poking fun at movies. Rifftrax.com offers downloadable audio of people making fun of movies. Then you provide the movie and play them at the same time on your computer or with a dvd player and iPod. This way they don't have to deal with royalties, etc. and can riff a movie as soon as it's released. For this event, however they were doing a live riffing of Plan 9 from Outer Space in Nashville, Tennessee. That was broadcast live to hundreds of theaters across the country. So the three of us went to go see it here, and had a blast. Zach also had a bootleg copy of Transformers 2 (though I don't support bootlegging or piracy). I watched and was dissappointed. I might go into that in another post, but it's too long for this one.

6. This week I got in my first issue of Wired magazine, my Cabella's fall 2009 catalog, and picked up a hardback copy of The Boxcar Children for a buck. I also finished Island Boy and I think I'm going to start Call it Courage next. IB was good. Not as good as I remember CiC being but I'm more partial to survival stories so I have nothing against Island Boy. It's a good read, though definitely aimed at a younger audience. It does a great job of telling the story while giving a view of life in ancient Hawaii.

I'm trying to finish all of my one-player games for the wii by Christmas so I can sell them back. I have Zelda:Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy. Both are enjoyable but Mario definitely moves faster and is less confusing/tedious, though the camera angles and controls for Galaxy often make me nauseous. I don't do backwards and upside down very well.

I found my leatherman. Very exciting/humbling. It was right where it was supposed to be. Somehow I thought I had lost it for several months... :|

Lastly, this morning when I got up to run with Grimm at 6, I found a swarm of ants on the counter attacking some rice krispie treats. awesome.

Sorry that was the update equivalent of a wildebeest stampede. ( In the gorge! Simba's down there!)

Josh out.

Books!

2009-08-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

If you've been keeping up you know that Ricci and I will be working on making bookshelves soon. We have books laying all over the house, which is only bad because I have a hard time finding the book I'm looking for. You'll notice I added a section on the side for books I'm reading, will read, and don't own but am looking for. I have an old (really old) Weekly Reader hardcover version of Island Boy that sits out on our living room table because Ricci thinks it has a cool little illustration on it. I've started reading it again because I remember really enjoying it when I was younger.

I've thought about buying the Barnes and Nobles Classics reprints of White Fang, Call of the Wild, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but I'd like to find old hardcover versions that I can display like Island Boy. Hopefully this saturday I might find some of those at the Hendricks' book sale. If not I'll start looking at HalfPrice and Amazon.

I think Grimm and I might go back to Brother's park again because we had a blast and he was so exhausted that he slept through the whole night even though we moved his crate out of our room. Here's hoping!

Betrayal

2009-08-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

WHAT?! Ricci and I got the original Star Wars movies on dvd from some friends as our wedding present. We were pumped. And I'm still grateful don't get me wrong. But we just watched Return of the Jedi and it had all the extra garbage George Lucas decided to slap in (rather un-seamlessly I might add) in 97. Like the nasty singing dancing alien thing in Jabba's palace. And replacing the sarlac with Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. And the scene with the fireworks on all the planets when the Empire falls apart. I saw these with my family in theaters as a fourth grader when they were rereleased as "Special Editions" in 1997 so I had adjusted to their unnecessary stupidity. I didn't like them but I didn't let it ruin the movie for me. Unbeknownst to me however was that after making episodes 1, 2 and 3 Lucas re-added things to the originals, I can only assume to try to make the horrible gap between the trilogies less ragged and ugly.

Things like when it shows a particular planet during the fireworks scene, we hear a familiar (aka loathed, detested, hated with the fire of a thousand suns because he is the worst character in the entire series) yell, "Wesa Free!". Okay... I thought maybe I'd never noticed that because I saw it before Phantom Menace. It was plausible that since PM came out only a few years later they were already well into making it and wanted to give a little tease. I could have believed that. Until the worst betrayal of all. Worse than Lando giving Han over to Vader. Worse than Sal helping to set up Michael Corleone's assassination. In the final scene where Luke smiles to the ghosts of Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi, his father appears but as Anakin Skywalker and not Darth Vader. It is a nice moment where we see what Anakin could have been if he had chosen the path of good. But that wasn't good enough for Lucas, no. He replaced Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christianson. That cardboard hack of an actor from episodes two and three! WHAT?! Why?!

Thanks Georgy! Seeing as you didn't screw it up enough when you made 1, 2 and 3 so that I have to show my children these movies in the order they were made in so that when Vader says "I am your father!" they don't go "Yes...and...? Didn't we already know that?" But now when I show them 4,5 and 6 at the end they will go "Who's that long haired sissy dude next to Obi Wan dad?"

What next? Are you gonna tell me Mr. Rogers was a drug dealer? I'm more upset about this than the fact that the moon landing may have been faked.

Sigh....tear.....deep breath......okay....I think I'll be alright......

Moving on...To quell some of my earlier anxiousness to get out into the unknown, I took Grimm to Brother's Park and we followed the creek bed through the woods. I packed a pop tart, two water bottles, binoculars, a camera and my knife into my backpack and we headed out. I tried to use a cloth belt (army belt/d-ring belt/whatever you call it) to strap my knife sheath to my thigh but it kept sliding down so I put it on my actual belt. We saw a rabbit and a squirrel and it was a lot of fun. We may go back this weekend. I'll let you know.

Wanted: wilderness or frontier

2009-08-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

I started rereading Wild at Heart by John Eldridge. And I'm itching to go camping even worse now. Seriously any place you guys know of to go camping let me know. Even if it's somewhere close. I've been looking at knives, tents, boots, everything because I haven't had the chance to really get away in so long. I've got really bad cabin fever right now. Yesterday I was cleaning up the branches on the trees in our backyard and then decided to climb the other one. Sure I knocked a couple of dead branches down but I really just wanted to test that tree out. Guys you know what I'm talking about. I want to get out and do some exploring!

Two posts in one day. Aren't you lucky!

2009-08-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

"A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this." Deuteronomy 22:5

Finally! Biblical proof that it is not okay for guys to wear girl-pants! This is not pointed at anyone in particular, so don't get all huffy if you wear girl pants. But seriously. Ew.

Now I read the verses around this one because I didn't want anyone to say "yeah but you totally took that out of context". We've seen that done countless times. Especially living in Aggieland with the shirt that says "I will cut off the horns of the wicked (Psalm 75:10)". Because the second half of that verse says "but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up." I'm not dogging people who wear that shirt, I just don't want people to seriously think that God prefers Texas A&M over that school in Austin. If He did wouldn't we have won a few more football games? ;)

I guess my point is that there's not really a way to take this verse out of context. Check it out for yourself. That's what we're supposed to do. But God's laying out simple rules and instructions for the Isrealites. If you see your neighbors oxen wandering around, don't be a jerk. Get it back to him. If that's too far away hold onto it until he comes for it. Don't cross dress cause I think it's gross. Don't put a donkey and an oxen together to plow your field. They are not bff and will probably just screw up your crop rows.

That's a paraphrase, but close enough.

In conclusion:

Yes....

No...

Any questions?

Bookshelves

2009-08-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I was trying to find a particular book and I couldn't. I looked on the very small bookshelf we have. I looked through the books stacked on the shelf in the closet in the guest bedrooms. I looked in the closet in our bedroom. I looked through the stacks of books on the floor of both guest bedrooms and on the guest bed. Still never found it. But I did get desperately frustrated that we have no proper place for our books. So I'm going to Lowe's and HomeDepot today to price up wood and build us one, since pre-made shelves are really expensive or really crummily built. Is that a word? Crummily.... It is now.

I thought about floating shelves but I'd rather not screw stuff into the wall if I can help it. If anybody has good ideas or links for DIY shelving let me know.

Apology

2009-08-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Okay on further looking into "Emails from Crazy People", the website I talked about in the last post, I realized that it is not held to the same "G-rated" standard as most of the cheezburger network. So yeah... sorry about that. I'm not sure I can really recommend that anymore.

In other news I just found out that I sort of know a comic book artist. I mean we've met a couple of times and I know his kids pretty well. Aaaaanyway, his name is Darrin Stephens he works with Jorge Vega to create Kaeru Boy, a comic book about an unlikely hero. I haven't really had the chance to get my hands on a copy yet so I can't say much. But I have seen pictures and I'm excited. Darrin and Jorge make up KidKong Entertainment. It's good clean fun. I'm excited about reading a comic that isn't oversexed like so many (by which I pretty much mean all) today. Here's to you Darrin, Jorge and Kaeru Boy

The Cheezburger Network

2009-07-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

If you aren't familiar with the "Cheezburger" network, I suggest you familiarize yourself with it now. The Cheezburger network is a group of websites that started with ICanHasCheezburger.com.

While this was a blatant rip off of Lolcats, ICHC took the idea, organized it and has since become a monumentally better website than the actual lolcats.com. They eventually expanded with IHasAHotdog.com (the dog equivalent) and other sites for different categories of captioned pictures. My personal favorite is of course Failblog.org. Now failblog is not always as kid-friendly as ICHC or IHH, but is by far the funniest. I also recommend ROFLrazzi and PunditKitchen. All of these can be reached by the tabs at the top of each site, which is another reason this site far surpassed lolcats.com. The different sites are integrated and look simply like different pages on the same site. Bravo cheezburger network.

Anyway I saw a post on Failblog about a new project under development called "emails from crazy people" and decided to check it out. It's not tabbed into the rest of the network yet because it's still under development but from the first post I read, I'm sure this one will be a classic soon.

Here are some guidelines if you decide to check these sites out for the first time:

ICHC - scroll down to the bottom and click "last" so that you start at the beginning. Otherwise you will probably be in the dark about certain jokes. This one and the dog one have their own language that you will have to familiarize yourself with. Things are intentionally mispelled, etc. Basement cat is kitty Satan and ceiling cat is a reference to God. also if you don't know what LOL and ROFL mean you're gonna be way behind.

Hotdog - pretty similar to ICHC. I would suggest starting with ICHC to get a feel for the language and typical jokes and then moving over to IHH.

Roflrazzi - Keep up with pop culture references.

Pundit Kitchen - Keep up with political and news references. Don't get offended, nobody is attacking your moral grounds. Some people just have it coming.

GraphJam - charts and graphs. Gets old kinda fast because the jokes are recycled too often.

Once Upon a Win - "Hey remember this? It was neat!". that's it

Failblog - this one is easy. just laugh at dumb people.

Engrish Funny - funny mistranslations. It gets a B+ in my book, because it's not as good as engrish.com, which it totally rippped off.

Forums - Just don't. Seriously. The cheezburger and hotdog forums are full of people talking like they are animals and it gets obnoxiously preschooly. PK is people who are offended about the picture and often ends up in a debate about gays or abortion or the war in the middle east. Failblog is often funny to read but if you write something on there and don't triple spellcheck it and double fact check they WILL throw you under the bus and whatever point you were trying to make will be completely ignored. So my advice is to avoid writing on the comments/forums.

There you have it. The Cheezburger Network and there new project Emails from Crazy People.

Enjoy

Background

2009-07-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

New background is up. Because...you know...you obviously didn't see it or whatever.

Anyway...

Thanks to:

Photoshop CS2
My wife
CBB

I've been reading up on how to write html. It's not terribly difficult but sometimes it's hard to find where in the blogger template I'm supposed to put what I've learned. So thanks to CBB for explaining it. Now that I've gotten a background I think I'll work on a cool header and we'll see what follows. Stay tuned!

Give Me Something To Do

2009-07-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

Alright I've started this blog for several reasons, but mostly I was bored at work. I'm not slacking off, there's just actually nothing to do and it's driving me crazy. Unfortunately until I find a real job I gotta come in and do nothing so we can pay the bills. I'm going to use this to talk about my momentary fixations, whether it's projects I'm working on, things I'd like to do someday, or something I just want to know more about. I think this will be something where I ask a lot of questions and will hopefully get helpful comments. Thanks for reading and enjoy.

ps - my first project will be to make this thing not so boring without the use of templates or somebody else's layouts.