In the Nick of Time

I heard this might be coming, and I couldn't believe it. I have never heard of such a thing, but it looks like more and more municipalities are adopting measures to eliminate Garbage Disposals.

First, can we all please agree on what these things are called? Are they Garbage Disposals? Garbage Disposers? or, Erators?

We have one in our house. The imprint on the drain collar actually says "InsinkErator" on top and "Food Disposer" on the bottom. All this is fresh in my mind because I just installed it last weekend.

I hated the one that was in there--probably the original one and praise the Lord, it quit working a couple of weeks ago. A perfect excuse to get a new one. This thing was amazing. When you turned it on, it sounded like the whole kitchen was about to take off--or fall apart. And to make things even better, it didn't ever seem to want to do it's job. Usually when you turn these things on, they suck down whatever food is lying nearby. But with this one, you had to run the water AND shove the food scraps down in there!

So, it quit working. First, it made a terrible rattling noise. I shined a light inside. Couldn't really see anything--not that I knew what I was looking for--flipped the switch, more grating noise. A day or two later, nothing. Just a buzz. Wouldn't move. PERFECT!

I bought a new one a few days later. A Badger. A $100, 3/4 HP, 3 year in home warranty, "noise baffling" disposal (disposer). I spent last Saturday afternoon taking the old one out, putting the new one in and it works great! It's so quiet! It chops up the food. I never knew I could be so excited over a garbage disposal (disposer).

So now, there is this news item informing me that I squeaked it in under the wire. The city is banning disposals.

Under the ban, homeowners can continue to use existing disposals, but no new devices can be installed and existing ones can't be replaced when they quit working....Violators face fines of up to $25,000 per day.

Why pick on the lowly disposal (erator)?

City officials said putting food and grease through a disposal and into the municipal sewer system clogs the lines and frequently causes back-ups and overflows.

Raleigh has had almost 100 sewer overflows in the last three years, with raw sewage sometimes flowing into area streams. The state Division of Water Quality has threatened to fine the city for each overflow if it doesn't correct the problem.

Really? So this is going to cause people to put less down the drain? Grease will slide down with or without a disposal (disposer) and whatever food items can go down the drain will likely be larger than if they had first run through an erator (disposal, disposer). I just hope ours lasts for years and years, or until they alleviate the ban!

Wait, Wha.....?

I created a little space by emptying my trash and didn't see this message the rest of the day, but that still doesn't make me feel much better...

Eclipse

These are the best pictures I got of the eclipse from last week. Yes, their blurry. They were taken with my little Coolpix S200 digital camera, on a tripod. Full digital zoom in play (hence the blur) ISO at 800, I think and the exposure set to +20.



Now that I look at them again, I realize of the 20 or so that I took, at various exposures and settings, even these pretty much look the same.

It is funny to me that I was so drawn to it--not in a howling ware wolf kind of way, but in a "Ooo cool, look at that, watch it before it's all over for two years" kind of way. I guess the simple fact that it is a rare occurrence prompted me to take the pictures. That, and you don't see a red moon very often. Even less than a blue moon, I guess!

Streetview comes to Raleigh

This is really cool. And no, I'm not concerned about privace issues--not until they come into my house and start taking Panoramic pictures of my living room.

Google has updated their streetview maps in 12 new locations. Here is a screen shot of my house. Looks like I was probably at work when the Google video van came by.

Using RSS

If you haven't tried using an RSS reader, I would strongly suggest you look into it. There are a variety of readers available for free (just type "RSS reader" into a Google search and you'll be able to choose from many). Readers are frequently built into email apps like Thunderbird or Mac's Mail.app, or you can find online varieties, where you log into a single web service that catalogs all your feeds for you.

RSS has been around for a while. For the uninitiated, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is a simple (oddly enough) and automated way for you to keep up with some of your most frequented sites.

I resisted using a reader for a long time. Part of this was because I enjoyed going to the various blogs I liked to read, or news sites, or fun sites, and browse through them. After a while, however, selecting "open all in tabs" when you have 30 bookmarks under one subject heading not only takes forever to load, but it can become cumbersome to go through each site, only to find that there is nothing new in half of them since the last time you looked.

The beauty of RSS is that once you subscribe to a page, the data comes to you. Whenever there's a new blog post, a new news story, or whatever it is your favorite site is pushing through, you know about it because it appears in your feed. No need to continually check web sites over and over.

I first gave RSS a try at home in our Thunderbird email client. More recently with the addition of RSS in Leopard's version of Mail, I tried it in there for a while. The cool thing about the mail client is that you can be offline and read the feeds because they are stored locally for a period of time.

I didn't explore using Mail for my reader for very long, because I lost my settings when my HD crashed and I just never brought it back. You can see below some of the feeds I had. The thing I never explored in Mail's reader is how if at all these feeds can be organized. I never got far enough to see if you can create folders to put these various feeds in.



In steps Google.

Google reader has become my RSS reader of choice. Not only does it allow for organization of feeds into user-specified subjects, it lets me share my favorites (in fact, if you haven't noticed, I've installed a widget on the top right column of this page that shows my recently shared RSS items), email the articles directly from the reader, and customize its interface through Firefox extensions such as Better Reader. By the way, you can subscribe to my shared items by following this link.

So, for all of you wondering how to set up and subscribe to your very own reader, let me show you! I recently set up my wife's Gmail account and took screen shots along the way.

How to set up Google Reader

First, you'll need to go to the Google home page. Once there click the "sign in" tab in the upper right.



If you don't have a Gmail address or a Google account already in place, you can create one here, otherwise, enter your Gmail address and password.



Once logged in, click on the "more" tab.



Click on "Reader" at the bottom of the list.



You'll need to set up your reader account by verifying your Google account info again.



At this point you can add some suggested subscriptions. These are sites that Google has thrown together by category that are of general interest. Add what you'd like.



Next, go to your favorite news site, blog, etc, and look either for text on the page that says "subscribe using RSS" or push this little button if your browser supports it in the right hand side of the location window.



If you are given a list of options from which program you would like to use to assign this feed, be sure to select Google Reader.

Click "Add to Google Reader"



Once added, you can decide if you'd like to keep it as is, unsubscribe or organize your feed into a folder you specify. If the folder you'd like isn't there, select "New Folder..."



Finally, label the folder name you'd like and your feed will live there.

Now whenever someone updates their blog, you'll know if it because it will appear in this folder.

There are many more options and tricks with Google reader, many of which are shown to you from the main Reader page. I think it's a snazzy reader.

If you set up an account and begin sharing your favorite posts, send me your subscription url so I can add that to my reader!

"It would be in good taste to stop the music now."

Really? Who does this guy think he is? Come on, the music means you shut up and sit down - just like everyone else. Way to make your momma proud. (Watch the whole video and you'll see what I'm talking about--in case you missed it!)

Tax Rip Off

If you are filing your taxes using Turbo Tax, be warned: The fees they are charging now for the convenience of having your returned wired to you has increased.

It was just a few years ago they charged about $10 for the federal return to be wired to you. Now, the states have evidently caught on. It's now going to cost a lot more to get your money back using Turbo Tax.

Sleep, Sleep, Sleep

Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

Well THAT explains a few things. Here is a list or interesting random facts about sleep.

I must be sleep deprived since I routinely fall asleep within five minutes of laying down.

How to Read a Book

Last weekend I had a nice opportunity to run a few household errands and end my time with about an hour at Borders. I had a partially used gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket and needed to get...something. It's not that I don't enjoy being at home. I'm rather a bit of a homebody. It's just that sometime we introverts need to get recharged by getting away from the din of the home team. Even if it means going to a place where there is a crowd of people. At least they're strangers.

The decision to buy a book was a difficult one. I already have several books sitting on my shelf, waiting to be scanned by my eyeballs. Do I really need to get another one? If I do, will it just go to the end of the long line and finally get read some time next year?

As I approached the store, there were several boxes outside. There was the $6.99 set of books in boxes on tables on the left hand side of the door, and there was the $3.99 set of books in boxes on tables on the right hand side of the door. I started browsing the $6.99 books. I probably spent a whole half hour outside browsing through the selection.

The first book that grabbed my attention was Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season. I flipped through this book and thought it looked very interesting. A lot of two things I like in there: baseball, and history. I flipped through, looked at old photos of ball players in their baggy uniforms, with cigarettes hanging out of their months, either smirking at the camera, or looking oblivious to it all together. I held on to that book for a while. It was a hard back and $6.99 seemed pretty good, even though it would leave about $10 on my card. I kept looking.

Next I saw a very intriguing book. Capone: The Man and the Era. It too looked interesting. Also some history. Also old black and white photos of guys with hats on, cigarettes hanging from their mouths, and sometimes even smiling. I put down the Robinson book. I flipped through Capone and saw names I recognized: O'Hare, Ness, and the notorious Capone brothers. As I looked through the book I realized that all that I really knew about Capone I know from the 1987 movie (and one of my favorites), "The Untouchables." What a cast that movie had! Robert Di Nero as Capone, Kevin Costner as Ness, Andy Garcia and Sean Connery as part of the "Untouchable" gang. What a great movie! I put the book down. I was never going to really read it. I had already seen the movie.

I remembered the book I had come for--or at least to look for and hold in my hand and flip through and see if I really wanted it, see if I could really stomach it. It was Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. The atheist manifesto of "how dumb can you Christians really be to believe there is a god" rhetoric. I found it, flipped through it, and then decided not to buy it. Not here. It's not that I didn't want to be seen carrying it, it was that I didn't want to pay full price for it thereby endorsing his creed. Much better to buy it used on half.com or something like that later.

I was running out of time. What am I going to get? Then--I remembered. The book I had heard of for some time and never purchased. The book that will undoubtedly become the subject of future blog posts. The book with the ironic title: How to Read a Book.

Mac and Cheese Sales Increase Equals Recession?

From one of my favorites, the Freakonomics blog, comes speculation from this story about how the sales of Mac and Cheese may be interpreted as an economic indicator. What do you think?

I recall buying Mac and Cheese for 25 cents a box during special sales in college. Yes, better than just about any other meal a college student living off campus could possibly afford, Mac and Cheese became at least a weekly staple.

Yeah, right!

I get invited to join all sorts of little groups and applications on Facebook, most of which I usually ignore. And his one? I don't think so. I don't want to see my rating...! And besides, what would it say about me if I accepted this invite? Alright, fess up all you out there who have added this...!

Lost Season 3, Episode 23

I just finished watching the last episode of the third season of Lost. We needed a little refresher it had been a long time! Thanks Sheri for loaning us the DVDs! Yes, it's late, it's 12:38 AM, yes I'm going to regret it later, but I have to get this out there while it's still fresh.

I have a problem with these two technical issues. First, Charlie volunteers to go down into the Looking Glass sub station to disable the jammer. This radio frequency jammer was designed (evidently) by Ben and his crew to prevent any transitions off the island. It is a thorough jammer that is supposed to cover a broad range of frequencies. So my question: How in the world can the "others" communicate via the walkie-talkies all over the island? Shouldn't they be jammed too? Surely they would require a repeater.

Second, the Satellite phone or whatever device it was that Naomi, the parachutist brought onto the island could not overcome Rousseau's transmission. Now her transmission would be on a specific frequency, the Sat phone was new and certainly would be digital, and would not be affected by her transmission. Further, when Jack and the French woman enter the transmitter station (whose message, by the way, is still picked up in previous episodes despite the jamming), all she does is walk over and stop the tape. OK--first really? That tape has been running undisturbed for the last 16 years 24/7 and it still works? And second, stopping the tape from playing, while creating a silence, does not open up the frequency. It only makes the frequency quiet. We see no one actually turn off the transmitter.

Alright, I feel better now. Looking forward to season 4 which we will not be home to watch so we'll have to record it using old VCR technology and watch it Friday night instead.

My Nohari Window

This is the one nobody wants to do. But I'll do it. I'll be vulnerable! This is the inverse of the Johari window below. Where as the Johari window generally is kind enough to use positive characteristics to describe one's self, this one uses negative terms. Yikes!

You can be anonymous on this one as well! (And thanks to the couple of you who clicked away on my Johari window!) If you haven't done that one, please start with the my Johari window first!

State of the Union

In case you missed it last night (as I did), here is a convenient way to catch up on what you missed. A condensed version of the State of the Union address. Very condensed. One minute long. I have a feeling I didn't miss a whole lot.

My Johari Window

Thanks to Emily for discovering this. Take a second if you will, go here and click on five or six words that describe me. Don't worry you can be anonymous!

Blogger Label Cloud

Find out how to make the label cloud in blogger (like the one the right hand column --->) here. It's an excellent article.

Tooble - for Mac

If you've ever watched a video on YouTube and wished you had a way to keep it locally on your computer, let me introduce you to Tooble. This is a new freeware piece of software that I first heard about through this podcast.


It has an integrated search engine, as well as it's own preset categories. Once you find what you want, put check marks by the videos and click download. It will then download and convert the Youtube streams into Quicktime files and if you want, it will even import the files directly into your iTunes movie folder. Enjoy!

A little Humor

These are some pictures I have collected over the last few weeks while stumbling around the internet.

Mac users will appreciate this one.

Self-Explanatory

Highly Ironic

Is Your Computer On?

Of course it's on. You're reading this.

Do you leave your computer(s) on all night?

Read this.

I'm guilty. Four computers under my control in a day's work. I usually leave them all on. All protected, but all on--all night.

Maybe I should reconsider.

What would you do with $800?

I awoke this morning to news of the potential of an economic stimulus plan that would involve sending money our way. It could be as much as $800 for a single person, or up to $1600 for a couple.

Of course the details still need to be worked out. The political parties need to come together. There has to be some agreement. But hey, we could get a little tax refund, and then a tax refund advance. Cool!

OK, so what could we spend it on? We can't just save it. We've got to spend it. After all, it's an economic stimulus plan!

Maybe we could get a nice HD TV with it. That would help stimulate the economy.
Or how about a new iMac?

We need to do some little things around the house. Maybe a new garbage disposal. Oh yeah!

Paint. We need to paint some stuff around the house.

Curriculum. There's always something one of our kids could use to further their education.

A vacation. YES. We could make a nice trip with that! Now THAT would help the economy, wouldn't it?

But wait.

Is this a good idea? Not the vacation, the dispersion of dollars on families throughout the land. On the one hand, yeah, we wouldn't mind a little financial windfall (is there any other kind?) for our family. But from a macro-economic perspective, is this a good idea? What will be the long-term consequences?

This is probably like what a child must feel like when they fall and hurt themselves very badly or something and we attempt to pacify them with a lolly-pop. We can name more things that a wrong with the country's economic state than we can name that are right: The weakening dollar; The sub-prime mortgage crash; The lowest housing starts in years; The imbalanced trade deficit; The rising federal debt; The insurmountable consumer debt, etc, etc.

So does anybody really think handing out a few dollars to people is really gonna help? Proponents would argue that this same action in 2001 is exactly what it took to pull us out of a rising recession. But the circumstances this time around are quite different.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake said "Fiscal stimulus that comes too late will not help support economic activity in the near term, and it could be actively destabilizing if it comes at a time when growth is already improving," Who has the wisdom to discern if this short-term solution to an economic downturn is timed correctly, will yield the desired results, or even substantial enough to matter?

Thank you, I would like some cash, but no thank you, I don't think this is going to do our country any good. Are most Americans going to feel the same way or will they just thank Uncle Sam for the "gift." We'll pay for it one way or another.

Let it Snow

Yesterday we were to wake up to a "Wintry Mix." We got much-needed rain, but no snow...that all ended up in the Mountains and mostly north of us. But wait, maybe more? I'll believe it when I see it. It is January. But it is North Carolina! This is from the News and Observer:

I'm more better than you--evidently

From MacDailyNews, a study of some 7,500 Mac users suggest that Mac enthusiasts are "...more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large." And, "...receptive to their own inner feelings and may feel both happiness and unhappiness more intensely than others."

Yup, that's me.

Twitter

For some reason (it's Matt's fault, really), I've signed up for a Twitter account. You can follow me here. It also syncs with my Facebook status. I'm following far more people than are following me. Probably because I haven't gotten the word out.

Word is out. What's your Twitter handle?

More computer problems

Everything's back to normal. It's ok. This news is a couple weeks old. My laptop's hard drive died. This was not as big of a crisis as the home computer discussed in previous posts. The reasons for that are these:

1. All my financial data is on my home computer. When that went down, I almost didn't know how to pay a bill, or even what money I had (not much, I assure you)
2. I use iDisk. This is a really cool service through .Mac that keeps my data syncronized between my laptop and my desktop at work. All my finale files, word docs, pdf files, and everything are kept on an Apple server somewhere, plus the files are kept locally on my desktop hard drive and my laptop hard drive so I can work off line if I want to, then when I reconnect, the data is synchronized.
3. I back up fairly regularly. I have been using SuperDuper for some time, though when I went to Leopard, it no longer functioned. I am now trying out Time Machine, however, which is very cool.
4. I use the Google Browser Sync firefox extension. This is cool because any computer that I use keeps all of my bookmarks, passwords, cache, history, everything syncronized between my browsers. After installing Firefox on this machine, then installing that extension, all my settings came back and I was at home again.
5. Applecare. I walked in to the Apple store, they tested the computer, determined the hard drive failed, and replaced my hard drive for "free." Plus my fold hard drive was discontinued for this model laptop and they had to replace it with the next model up. I went from 100GB to 120GB. Cool! If you have a Mac, Applecare is worth the extra bucks. I didn't have to do anything except tell them the machine doesn't work and they took care of it.

Computer crashes are very inconvenient, no question, but as hard drive crashes go, this was far more manageable!

Computer Crash Update

I've been away from the interweb for a while, but while I was gone typed this update for all concerned about the restoration of our home desktop:



I know you've all been wondering.

The answer is that the computer of my "crash!" post is back and running. However, I had to go through a multi-step process to see it restored. And it's honestly not fully restored, but the important data has been recovered.

After running SpinRite, I was still unable to get the computer to boot. I got further along than I had previously, but still not able to boot. A disk error was encountered in the process.

By this time, I had taken the hard drive down to my other computer and was able to retrieve important info off of it. Mostly my Quicken data. I could retreive pictures from the "my pictures" folder too, so I knew the drive was not totally lost, even though it wouldn't boot.

This began another very irritating process. The re-installation of Windows XP.

I have a hollographic XP Home Edition install disc. After getting about 50% through the installation process (did I mention I purchased a new hard drive from TigerDirect on Capitol? A Seagate 250GB for $80!), I encountered a "cyclic redundancy error." A WHAT?

Apparently a Cyclic Redundancy Error is a fancy way of saying that an error has been encountered in reading the disk, and really what is going on is that the software suspects that the disk is not authentic. I restarted and tried again, and again. Every time I got to the screen that said "39 minutes to finish the install," I got this error. VERY very frustrating.

Let me just pause and say that a few weeks prior to this incident, I received a new copy of mace os 10.5 "Leopard." My installation on this laptop took about 3 hours total time. I went from 10.4 to 10.5 and had absolutely no trouble. All my data was maintained and the OS upgrade was flawless.

Back to the Windows machine. Thom tried to help me resolve this issue. He attempted to assist me with this issue, babysitting my machine during the week of dress rehearsals and trying to get it to go. But in spite of cleaning the lens on the DVD drive, cleaning the disk itself, it became clear that the error was not able to be overcome. Either a much deeper issue existed in the hard ware, or there really was a simple error on the disk. (Neither of us had an extra home XP disk lying around).

Thom recommended I take the computer to Intrex, where for $50 I could have them run a diagnostic on the memory, CPU, HD (new HD), and motherboard. They did, and they found now trouble.

Once they began to install XP however, they encountered the same error I encountered. HA! I feel a little vindicated. The solution? They simply swapped my install disk with theirs and it worked like a charm. Stupid.

So now I have windows machine up and running again on a fresh hard drive AND my old HD in the computer primarily to retrieve my old data when needed.

I've also tried something I've never done before. I'm running everything as a user rather than as admin. I have a password protected "admin" account, a "Janet" account and a "Brian" account. Since I like to use Google's firefox bookmark plugin, keeping seperate accounts between Janet and me will allow us to bookmark our browsing separately.

Computer crashes, life goes on. Computers are becoming like cars. We're very dependent on them to the point that if they crash we almost don't know what to do!

Alternative Sunday School

As you get ready for church tomorrow (or today, or next week depending on when you read this!), consider what some parents are doing to educate their kids:

An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It's important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it's O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

I am very curious to know what the basis of these "morals and values" are for those who don't believe in a Moral Law-Giver.

Read more in this article.

Time for Lord of the Rings

This is the time of year that I get the irresistible urge to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love these movies. I love the story, I love the grand scale of the movies, I love the acting, I love detail of the smallest minutia. I love the sound track. And I love the extended edtion DVDs (thanks, Jason!) with all the behind the scenes interviews and commentary. I appreciate the vision of Peter Jackson and I'm really excited that he is now going to be directing "The Hobbit." Rumors are that he'll be filming it in 3D as well!

Why do I get the urge to watch these movies this time of year? I guess because this is the time when the movies were released both theatrically and when the extended DVDs were released.

So far, I've watched the first disc of The Fellowship and I am nearing the end of the second disc. Right now, Boromir is trying to take the ring from Frodo. I'll probably watch the rest of the trilogy over the next couple of weeks.

CRASH!

"Crash" fortunately is not the sound of a bone-breaking fall, or the collision of vehicles hitting each other at high speeds.

And I'm not referring to the movie "Crash," one of my all-time favorites.

It's the sound of a hard drive. My hard drive.

Don't you just love that?

After a great time visiting family at Thanksgiving, covering parts of Pennsylvania, while passing through Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and of course, North Carolina in one four-day period, the last thing I wanted to come home to was a hard drive that was unresponsive.

But I did. And it was.

We have two computers at our house. The primary computer is the one that has the hot-running "Prescott" Intel P-IV chip in it. (and by "hot," I don't necessarily mean it is fast, I mean it runs very very hot! warms up the whole room!) It is also the machine that holds our itunes library, Picasa photos over the last four or five years, Quicken, email, etc., etc. This is not a hard drive I can afford to lose, but clearly there are some bad sectors.

Even though I had turned both the machines off while we were gone (which may have caused the problem, who knows? I leave my computers on 24/7), when we fired it up, it didn't take long for the error to reveal itself.

Well, I am attempting to recover my hard drive data with a little piece of software called Spinrite. I learned of this program because I am a regular listener of the fairly geeky Security Now podcast. This software is interesting. It is a svelte, compact little piece of machine-language software that boots from either your floppy drive or your CD-Rom drive. Once you buy it, you run it to create a little .iso file that that it runs from either source (including even a USB flash drive, though I couldn't get my computer to boot to that). My computer doesn't have a floppy drive, only a DVD drive so I knew I was going to have to get this little program onto a CD.

If I didn't have the other computer, commonly referred to as "the kid's computer," I don't think this would have worked. Fortunately, though it is several years old, it has a little 4X CDRW burner. After downloading some freeware that allows you to install .iso files to the boot sector (this is very important, otherwise the bios will not see this disc as a bootable disc, but only as a disc with an .iso file on it!), I got the Prescott computer to load the software and start working on the drive. It found the bad sectors right away and started trying to recover the data.

As I understand it, the software works literally bit by bit, flipping each bit from what it is to the the opposite, then back again (0 to 1, back to 0). If the sector is bad, it saves that bit to another part of the drive that is healthy. My drive is 160 GB. Spinrite has been running now for six days, non-stop. It is 80% finished with the drive. After this week's long investment, I hope it can salvage the drive long enough for me to copy it to a new hard drive! I'll keep anyone interested posted in this exciting saga.

I'm Dreaming of No Christmas Music - not now anyway

File this one under "Puh-leeze!"

I don't often listen to the radio. I've become a podcast junkie. But yesterday I was without my iPod and decided to not listen to talk radio. I was shocked to flip around the dial and hear a Christmas song (if Rod Stewart's "Favorite Things" counts as a Christmas song). But then I pushed the scan button and heard Elvis singing "Blue Christmas." I kept flipping. More Christmas music.

Why? Why must we endure this? I like Christmas. I even like Christmas music. But I like it only between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Really radio stations in Raleigh? Really?

We're a week away from Thanksgiving! Let us enjoy THAT first.

Oh--and the decorations. I couldn't believe as I walked into a Home Depot before Halloween that all the Christmas trees and lights were up.

Get ready for Christmas after Labor Day next year.

The only word you'll ever need

Sheila and Abe

It's funny how YouTube intuitively links videos from one to the next. I guess it's based on the tagging system. Well, I had posted a video of Tommy Walker doing "To God Be The Glory" for the benefit of our team here and after reading a comment someone had left there, I noticed a link was made to this Abe Laboriel and Friends video below.

This video was made this past summer at the Saddleback worship conference. Not only was I there, but the person who shot this video had have been sitting almost next to me as this was the exact perspective I had on that little mini-concert. Sheila E, who some of you may remember from the 80's, is now following Christ and is playing at the drums. You can see her come down and grab her father out of the crowd to come up and play some of the Latin instruments with her. It's ashame the audio isn't better. We miss all the goodness and deep pockets of Abraham on the bass. It was fun though a little crazy.

Here's a picture I took of Sheila playing her trademark white-with-butterflies latin percussion.

An esoteric funny

While checking the web on compatibility issues between Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and Finale, I stumbled upon this post from a user on a Finale message board that made me laugh out loud:

I got Leopard today too. It was a gift from my son because his pit bull ate my 10.4 system discs. The dog runs fine on 10.4.

Like Bart, I will install it on a non-essential Mac and check it out.

Bill

Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

Much attention has been given to the problem of students relying on Wikipedia as a source of information, but one professor has turned that problem on its head: instead of term papers, her students now write Wikipedia entries. [Link]

This is awesome! Yes, there are still entries in Wikipedia that need to be filled. Maybe once Wikipedia gets filled up, the prof can turn her attention toward Mahalo!

Blogged with Flock

Seeking a theology of NT music.

I thought it would be interesting to repost a portion of comments I made on a church music blog/discussion board concerning the analysis of a contemporary piece of music. It was late as I typed this initially, but for some reason I was able to crystallize my yet unanswered questions into concise form.

First, the OT idea of doing something skillfully related to music always has to do with performance. The musicians were skillful in the way they played or sang. Never [to my knowledge] is there a mention of the songs played or sung being written skillfully. Yeah, it may be splitting hairs, but isn't it interesting that the text goes out of its way sometimes to describe the skill of the musicians while saying very little about the music itself?

Second, and this may have been thoroughly covered elsewhere in previous discussions, so I apologize for bring it up, but how do we derive a New Testament theology of musical practice from Old Testament descriptions where the New Testament is curiously silent? What are we to conclude about the absolute qualifications of music and musicians from the Jewish/Chosen setting of the Old Testament to the Church/Gentile setting of the comparatively silent (on music) setting of the New Testament?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Productive Day?

I sometimes find myself measuring the productivity of my day by how much trash ends up in my trash can. I don't know if that is a useful tool or not, but at least I feel good about having done something!

I can't WAIT!!

Looking forward to a great game tonight:

Young People Rejecting Christianity, Seeing it as Homophobic

A study released last week by the Barna Group found that under-30s -- both Christian and non-Christian -- are strikingly more critical of Christianity than their peers were just a decade ago.Ten years ago, "the vast majority" of non-Christians had generally favorable views of Christianity. Now, that number stands at just 16%.

From the article:

There's a surprisingly unified sense between young adults, both inside and outside the faith, that the divisive, judgmental authoritarianism that's dominated Evangelical Christianity for the past 30 years has run its course. Furthermore: the "insiders" (as Barna terms Christians) see the same issues and agree with many of the criticisms as those on the outside -- and are openly talking about taking their theology in some new directions. There's an emerging sense that it's time to let go of the harsh legalism that's defined American Protestantism for the past three decades, and return to something more like the Social Gospel that demanded more of Christians than merely passing judgment on the details of other people's lives.

read more | digg story

Bias in the media?

Is there bias in the media? I mean the baseball media? I mean, east coast, New York-centric media?

On the day the Indians become the first team in all of baseball to clinch their division title, here are the offerings on the baseball portion of MSNBC:



Yankee's clinch? No. Sox Clinch? No. Indians? YES. Story about Cleveland? NO.

Magic Number: 5

For some reason, I enjoy reading the opposing team's home town paper to get their take on their sports team. Again, from the Detroit Free Press's Michael Rosenberg:

Well, I always wondered what it's like to be an obituary writer.

The Tigers are dead. Finished. Sans pulse. They are sleeping with the fishes, by which I mean the Marlins.

The Tigers are now 6 1/2 games behind the Indians with 10 to play. That's like being 6 1/2 miles behind in a five-mile race. Their wild-card hopes aren't much better: They are five games behind the Yankees in the loss column.

When the Tigers show up at Jacobs Fields this morning, they ought to wear black uniforms. Sure, it would be weird, but black would go nicely with their red faces.

Something like this is rare for Cleveland fans so we have to enjoy it while we can. But it's nice to see the diligence of a long-term plan coming to fruition. No panic, just stay the course. I like that.

Magic Number: 7

From the Detroit Free Press:

I won't say the Tigers are finished. But if my life depended on them making the playoffs, I'd buy a lot more life insurance.

In the bottom of the 11th inning Monday night, Cleveland's Casey Blake hit one out of the park, and that means the Tigers will likely be out of the postseason.

Wish I could be in NEO, I'd be at a few of these games!

540 extension added to Google Maps

FINALLY, directions from our house to somewhere in north Raleigh will start out correctly. No longer will we be directed all the way over the Triangle Town Blvd to pick up 540 but the maps have now been updated with the nine-month old extension that goes down to 64. What's interesting is that if you click over to the hybrid or satellite view, you'll see 540 still under construction. Also, the western side of 540 into RTP has not been updated. A bit of lag time at Google Maps...

I Use Adium

There was a time, not too long ago when I first migrated to OS X (from OS 9--that was a long wait for me! but that's another story all together) that I signed up for iChat. At first I ignored it. I never used it. My reasons were simple. First, I resented being interrupted at any given moment by someone, anyone who sees me online. Second, there's the phone. There's email. There are cell phones. There were already a variety of ways to reach me. And of course, most compelling, the two people at the time with whom I would most likely share a chat were in the offices next to me. So why bother?

After moving to NC, I decided to resurrect iChat. I played with it for a while but soon discovered that some of my friends, litterally from all over the world, were on several different chat services. As it turned out, I unwittingly had accounts on many of these chat services already in place. I was an early adapter of ICQ, back in the dial up days.
I rarely used it. I have a Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and AIM account (iChat works on AIM). How could I see if my friends were online without having to check all these different services?

Enter Adium. This is a great little program for MAC OS X. It combines all of your various chat accounts into one place. As you can see, you may access me from any one of these services below:


You can organize your contacts in various ways, by a custom-assigned buddy list, or by account. My list automatically resizes as people come and go. It lives in the bottom right hand corner of my screen. It may look like any of these windows at various times:


I've now decided that the reason I live with chat on so much has more to do with just knowing that I can reach someone quickly and easily. (Yes, I'll admit, email has become just too slow!). I've enjoyed the instant contact with someone who may be across the hall or half way around the world. Just like most chat clients, you can set away messages if you're busy, or sometimes, you just can't reply to someone right way--no different then not answering your phone just because someone calls.

For those of you wondering what the Windows equivalent of this program would be, I would suggest Trillian, though since I tried it last, it didn't compete with Adium's slickness.

Send me your chat address!

Say What?

Beauty? Yes.
Brains? Well--did I mention the beauty thing?

Let's blame it on the nerves, not the hair color.

Ex-Korn Guitarist Writes About Choosing Jesus Over Sex, Drugs, and R&R

I don't know much about Korn, but now I have a new interest. Click on "read more" below to read this interesting article that is actually a review of a book written by Brian Welch. A couple of excerpts from the article:

"Save Me From Myself" is a primer on the miserable rock star existence he led before he turned to Jesus, seemingly out of the blue, in 2005...The decision to seek God followed an email from a concerned friend. The Bible verse contained in the email made Welch recall a memory from childhood about how moved he'd been when he tried to talk to Jesus. His transformation wasn't instant -- Welch brooded over it and kept snorting meth even as he called to the Lord for help -- but it has been permanent so far.

and

One refreshing piece of Welch's tale is that he doesn't claim life became perfect when he was saved. He has still drifted, trying to determine his path as he sought spiritual mentors, donated to charity, sued his band over money before making peace with them, battled another crippling depression and had a crisis of faith. He will also perk ears with his belief that "All of the man-made religion crap in this world has to die . . . All that prideful, controlling religious crap is what drives young people away from churches." That message might convince the rebel crowd that he's not a holy roller out to shove doctrines down their throat.

Things that interest me about these quotes: 1) The turning point seemed to originate from a concerned friend. 2) Never underestimate the power of scripture! I wonder what the verse was--maybe his book says. 3) Could your/my church have ever reached a guy like this?

read more | digg story

"Armageddon is here" - Jim Cramer

Meltdown:

312 keys vs 88 keys

The future of music is here. What a crazy idea! I'm gonna be obsolete.

I am an Autodidact

I recently stumbled upon this Wikipedia entry and began to feel good about myself. What a weird thing to say. I read an entry that I think describes most of us, but I want it to describe me continually through out my life.

The entry, on Autodidacticism, describes a person who is self-educated or self-directed in learning. An autodidact, also known as an automath, is a mostly self-taught person.

Yes, I have a formal education. Yes, I is a high school and college graduit, and I even have a Master of Arts degree thrown in for good measure. But it was during that graduate time when I learned what it meant to have depth--or maybe that I learned that there is so much depth. Every discipline has it's own basic level of understanding, but one can always keep diving into levels below the "vocabulary" level where you begin to discover that there is a great deal of interconnectivity in the area you are exploring and many other disciplines.

From the article:

A person may become an autodidact at nearly any point in his or her life. While some may have been educated in a conventional manner in a particular field, they may choose to educate themselves in other, often unrelated areas.

That's me. I love exploring various interests in music, church history, American history, baseball history, baseball current, how the internet works, websites, how computers work, networking, how the mind works, social connectivity, streamlining, efficiency, lateral thinking, philosophy, art analysis, movie making, Bible study, word study, Christian apologetics, weight training, pedagogical issues in many fields. I love to dig into something but frustratingly come to a place where I don't know what to do with what I've learned. Still, the fun for me is in the learning!

Sober Truth from David Walker

This is truly alarming. If you have ten minutes, this is worth watching. What do we do about it?

Except for Me, of course!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Cool of the Day

I know it's hot everywhere, but this does not look promising...
These are the dog days, I guess, with a capital "D" (Dog or Days, take your pick). I know it's hot everywhere, but this is ridiculous. And 87% humidity? Sheesh! I went out for a little jog this morning, around 6:30, and couldn't breathe! I know, come January, we'll all be hoping for a slice of this...maybe.

Oh, and how can the wind have a direction if it's clocked at "O mpg?"

9 Reasons why An Apple a Day Really Keeps the Doctor away

I try to eat an apple almost every day. We've been partial to Gala apples but we've lately tried other kinds and enjoyed them as well. I bet I eat at least four in a week. How many do you eat?

read more | digg story

Breathe Man, Breathe!!

First in the A.L to 14 wins. I guess he can look any way he wants if he keeps pitching the way he has.

I Make Comments

I found this little Digg app--oddly enough posted on Digg-- and began playing around with it. I guess it's not an app, it is a web page that does some digging for you about yourself. It searches through the stories you've left comments on and displays them all in a list, as well as how they were rated by the readers. One of the funny things in the early version of this web site was that it showed only the comments, not the stories, so it was kind of funny to look through some of the comments over the last few years and try to extrapolate the story. Here are some comments I left on various stories:

No one [Janet Reno] is more eminently qualified [Janet Reno] to cast judgment [Janet Reno] on our current attorney general [Janet Reno] than Bill Clinton.

That one was dugg down quite a bit.

I guess this one had something to do with the recent exchange-your-video-in-the-store story:

This was interesting to me from the article: "The biggest variable cost is the two-way postage. And so the best customers are the ones that don't return movies that often. For the business to work, the average has to be less than five movies per customer per month. If customers return movies too quickly, your only real choice is to slow down their shipments." I was thinking through this a bit--this means that if 30 people go to a blockbuster brick and mortar in one day, all rent a new movie by returning a mail-in envelope, Blockbuster benefits in the following ways: 1) they get 30 more people into their store than would otherwise have come 2) this gives them a better chance to sell crap (previously viewed movies, candy, popcorn, magazines) 3) once people are in the store, they may be enticed to rent a movie they otherwise weren't planning on renting (and paying for it) and 4) I think this is huge for Blockbuster: they can consolidate the return shipping. So now instead of 30 individual envelopes and postal changes, they can put it all in one big envelope, send it back to the mother ship from the store and save a few bucks. that's gotta add up.

And this post was about "the devil's interval," something of which I know a thing or two:

The notion that the tritone is a "bad" interval stemmed from the early music theorists attempting to justify it's usage through ratios. To the Greeks, perfection existed in fours. (The four temperaments is an example). So the Pythagorean ratios of intervals were a further way to understand and catalog intervals as useful or not useful. This is why (to this day) we call some intervals "perfect" such as the unison (1:1) octave (2:1) fifth (3:2) and fourth (4:3). The ratios have to do with the mathematical relationship of string length and the tones/intervals produced. The "tritone," has a ratio of 45:32 in the Pythagorean tuning system, which is by far the most dissonant interval (mathematically speaking) of the octave. It should also be pointed out that the tritone splits the octave exactly. Starting on C, a tritone up is F#. From F# a tritone up is C. This article does a lousy job of differentiating between the melodic tritone as opposed to the harmonic tritone. The tritone exists in modern day music as a complete consonance to our ears. (Jazz, blues and pop sometimes END songs on these chords--this would have been unheard of 100-150 years ago). At the time of the Renaissance, we began to see composers using this interval harmonically as passing notes. Eventually the interval appeared in harmonic situations and as modal music became less-used in place of tonal music, the rise of the dominant chord led to composers employing the "passing 7th" as part of the dominant sonority. Composers used the tritone interval for centuries, but typically avoided the interval melodically except for effect. (as was mentioned in the article) It is only because of medieval mysticism and lack of historical context that the "feared" tritone became known as the devil's interval.

And every once in a while I feel compelled to set people straight, quoting a previous post:

"And by the way, to the submitters of this crap...the dfefiition of stupidity ois repeateing hte same thing over and over again and expecting differnet results." I'll ignore the irony oozing from the statement above, and just point out that this was originally coined by Albert Einstein as he gave a tongue-in-cheek definition of insanity.

I know my US geography!

The hard part was spelling them all correctly...

Click here to try the quiz.

Department of useless information

I just wanted to point out some things I've added on the right hand column.

First, the Facebook profile/status. You have to join Facebook in order to see everything. I have reconnected with several college and even high school friends through Facebook. They are developing an interesting revenue model as product recommendations, books, movies, etc are more meaningful from people you are already friends with than from total strangers. Facebook may become the new Google. Though I doubt Google is going anywhere!

I also added a last.fm app. This relays the last songs I listened to in my iTunes. If I'm currently listening, it updates more frequently. Like Pandora, last.fm can stream "radio" to your desktop based on your current library and listening habits, or based on the name of an artist or group you type in. CBS just bought last.fm. Evidently last.fm, more than just a social and recommending network, offers feedback to producers of the music such as when how far into a track people listened to a particular song, what they advanced to, how many times a track gets played, etc. If you're ok with that kind of information going out about your listening habits, it can be a pretty fun little tool.

Finally, I have my Digg app, which shows the latest stories I've dug. Fairly self-explanatory.

Tension

I sometimes think about conflicting things in my life and wonder what it says about me and the direction of my family. I also wonder on a macro level about how these things affect our culture, and the future of our culture. It has been said that our post-modern times are fundamentally contradictory. We think the world is falling apart, yet we consume and waste like there's no tomorrow. Religion is down, but spirituality is up. We build huge homes, yet the typical family spends less and less time together in them. We buy in to all these time-saving devices, yet feel as though we've never been busier.

My tensions, or conflicts are many, but here are some related specifically to technology that I've been thinking about lately.

On the one hand, I want a huge 1080p HD television with a BluRay player and HD satellite or cable so I can enjoy and experience the best in modern home theater entertainment. On the other hand, I want to get rid of our 27 inch CRT because of the low priority I want to place on it and how, compared to the average family, how infrequently we watch it.

On the one hand, I want to subscribe to cable or satellite service that delivers a million channels, especially the ones I know I enjoy, History channel, ESPN, Discovery, and so on, mostly so that I can spend my time flipping through all my options, not necessarily settling on one thing to watch. On the other hand, I need to be content with my life line cable, the major networks, a couple of Spanish channels, some PBS, WGN and TNT. Oh, and CPAN 2, for some reason. Why pay the money for all those extra channels if we're trying so hard to de-emphasize TV in our family?

On the one hand, I want an iPhone. Those things look so cool! On the other hand, I want to get rid of my cell phone. Not because I dislike it, but because let's face it, do I really NEED a cell phone? I pay Sprint $68/month so that people can reach me nearly on demand; yet I have email, voice mail at home and voice mail at work. I'm not THAT important!

On the one hand, I should dump MLB. It's a commitment. I've replaced the vacuum created by hardly watching TV with baseball. But for some reason I enjoy it so much. On the other hand...um, I enjoy it so much!

One the one hand, I should dump my online Blockbuster subscription. What a crazy thing it is to devalue TV/Cable/Satellite, think I'm clever because I'm not spending extra money on all those channels but then get movies I sometimes don't care about in the mail. And then I watch them! I should read a book! On the other hand, I enjoy movies. I like being caught up on what's being produced. I like the story telling, the art, even-- the production of movies. I enjoy a story, of just about any subject, told well.

As I type this I am becoming aware that what I'm dealing with is not a conflict of interests, but a conflict of values. I do value gadgets. I don't know why. I guess I also value the art of movies, the drama (though not all see it that way) of baseball.

I have not settled on where the moderate level of all these things would be. I jump in to a thing and soak it all up sometimes, even if it means just soaking it up on the periphery. I am not sure I have arrived at priorities. I mean, beyond the very important things of God, my wife, and my kids, these other things must descend in some meaningful way from there. I am uneasy or, uncertain, anyway, about how all this should balance in my life.

The Immediate Media Age: Of Broadband & Blogs

Our whole lives are about doing more in less time, trying to cram everything into 24 hours, in a day that is filled with constant interruptions. Instant messages, emails, and the constant chirping of cell phones have surely and slowly squeezed our attention spans.

This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg but I like how Om Malik summed up our instant blogging culture (case in point, this post, courtesy of Digg!) You may have seen or heard Om on CrankyGeeks.

read more | digg story

Honest Mechanic

One of the hard things about moving to a new area is finding a trustworthy mechanic. There are the usual suspects, that place in particular that everyone suggests by the church, but my experience with them has been costly and not all that I had hoped.

There was the time I asked for the a/c to be charged on the van, only to find that I had a serious enough of a leak in the condenser that it leaked the refrigerant immediately. They put a dye in to help spot the leak, but it was such an obvious gash that no dye was needed. Yes, it was reasonable to charge me for the work, but nothing "stuck." So I was charged for the dye, the refrigerant, and the fee to set everything up with no compassion for not stopping to charge the a/c even though he said he could hear it leaking from the beginning. They offered to replace/repair the condenser for $700. After a little research I found some one else to do the work for $500. It pays to make a few phone calls.

But the guy who did the work, though he did good work, was all the way on the south side of town, complete opposite side. So I had to find someone else.

That's when I found Parrish's. I don't remember the exact circumstance, but I know I needed some muffler work done. Right away, they showed me what the problem was, what the factory replacement would be, what the after market would be, and "Oh, I have some pipe here I can cut and use for this piece so you'll only have to buy this shorter one." Saved me a lot of money.

I've continued to go back ever since. The latest adventure that kinda sealed the deal for me as a permanent customer was when I realized that our van was past the time of needing a timing belt change. Did the previous owner do it? Was there any way to find out?

I asked them if they could check.

First diagnosis was that it was too hard to tell, until they got into it, that is, and by that time, I might as well go ahead and replace it. Well, I thought, it's got to be done, better go ahead and do it. This was going to cost $900.

The next day I got a call around noon from Robert saying that he hadn't gotten that far into it but was able to check the belt and see that it had already recently been changed. Relief!

I got to thinking about what some unscrupulous mechanic might do--and what he could have easily done himslef. I had already given permission to change it, he could have done the work, collected the labor--or worse yet, NOT do the work, claim that he had, and I never would have known the difference. But in his honesty, he saved us a ton of money and didn't even charge for the labor to get as far as he did!

My sister in law has been threatening for some time to write a book about customer service. (Her experiences warrant a whole new post--maybe even a blog!) These guys need to be the subject of the preface, or the how-to-do-it-right section. A humble, unpretentious hole-in-the-wall auto shop with great service, honesty and one very happy and returning customer.

Summer update

I feel like I owe someone a blog post. Truth is, I have so many things I could post about, I don't know where to start. Maybe I'll do the Gary Underwood bullet points to get caught up and go from there.

• We recently returned from a long trip. First a drive to Iowa, where we spent time with Janet's family, here sister in the Waterloo area and her folks 45 minutes away on "the farm." While we were there we celebrated Lindsey's 6th birthday and the Chezik's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a great time!
• We stopped in at the National Farm Toy Museum. An interesting slice of Americana.
• I got to go to a worship conference at Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA. it was great! more on that some other time.
• I visited the Y a couple of times while in CA. I like the Y in Raleigh better.
• On the first night in the OC I skipped early registration and went to an Angels baseball game. They played KC who swept them in the three game series.
• It's humorous to me that in CA, the highways are all qualified by the locals with "the." It's not "take 405 to exit 106," it's "take the 405 to exit 106." I'm gonna start referring to 440 and 540 as "the 440" and "the 540" and see if it catches on.
• At church, I feel like we could do a lot of things better, but I also feel like we do things as well as most churches. I'm mostly referring to music and tech here.
  
• I had the largest pork tenderloin sandwich I had ever eaten at this fair, in IA.
• The Mississippi River begins in Itasca State Park, Minnesota, and flows south 2,350 miles, to the Gulf of Mexico. I learned this at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, in Dubuque, IA.
• I have become a fan of Hampton Inns.
• Before our trip, we had to spend about $860 in our van, plus get it inspected.
• While returning to Iowa from CA, via DFW, I missed my connecting flight and had to sleep overnight in Ft. Worth. I hooked up with a couple of dangerous characters:
  
  
  
  
• Over the course of many hours of driving, one of the ways I entertained myself was to "read" by audiobook Crime and Punishment. I'm about 1/3 through it.
• Man, was it hard to go to work this morning. The services went well, but it was a lot of work! God works in spite of us.