Thursday, June 30, 2005

More Links

http://www.slingmedia.com- Great. Another thing to add to the home entertainment system. Stream TV (including Tivo'd stuff) through the internet to any remote device. (How cool to watch something you recorded on your phone)

http://earth.google.com - Satellite photography at it's finest. My favorite is fly thoughs of driving directions.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/ - One of my favorite stores..and located right here in downtown Fairfax.

http://www.woot.com/ - Interesting concept. One item is sold per day.

Friday, June 24, 2005

A mind teaser

I've been trying to wrap my mind around a couple of things this evening. First, I'm typing this on a very old laptop. It's a Pentium 133 with I believe 32 MB. The good news is that it has MMX technology!! (For those of you that don't know, MMX was supposed to be this awesome thing but it never really fulfilled what was promised.)

This poor laptop has Linux on it. It takes approximately 5 min to get to any given web page and the hardware is so old that I'm afraid to download anything else (truth be told I did download firefox but can't figure out how to install it..stupid linux)

In the age of gigabytes, terabits, and such, it's really amazing to work on this machine and think, "Gosh, someone actually used this at one point for a productive use besides writing a silly blog" It's amazing how technology has advanced.

The second thing that I've been trying to wrap my mind around is some scripture I've just read (prior to turning on the laptop. I see now that I've done this in the wrong order). I've been reading Matthew and one of the things that really interests me is that it says Jesus did/said something so that it fulfilled a prophesy.

We all watch movies where people see/hear the future or something like that and typically it's bad news so people try and change it. Normally in these circumstances you can't or you don't realize what was prosephied about etc. (A good example would be Minority Report where Cruise thinks he's in control but he's really just following the path that was prosephied about him)

So at like 600 BC prophets talked about the Servant, the Messiah, the one to fix everything. And Jesus fulfills them..all of them. The thing I don't know if I get is if Jesus knew what he was doing. I know that he knew he was the Messiah. But did he talk in parables at one point because it was just easier to talk to people that way or because he knew the prophesy and needed to fulfill it.

What are your thoughts?

Random Stuff to Do

I spend a little bit of time surfing the internet trying to kill time. When I find some good nuggets I'll go ahead and post them. These links can be funny, interesting, or just a plain waste of time. At any rate I found it interesting enough to take the time to post them..

http://www.lostvectors.com/bowmaster/ : Game
You are the bowmaster. Fling arrows to enemies attacking your fort. Action type game.

http://www.miniglobz.com/games/twin2_en.html : Game
This game is called twin spin 2. You move the rotating balls around to knock out other balls. More of a puzzle type game.

http://www.venganza.org/ : Funny
Open Letter to the Kansas School Board. " In the begining the Flying Spaghetti Monster created a mountain, trees, and a midget "

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Count your blessings, name them one by one

Count your blessings, see what God hath done.

Our small group is meeting in a park this summer. We are trying to spread the word and see the demographic of the area. The series of lessons is on Sermon on the Mount. We are calling it, Sermons in the Park.

I had the honor of doing the lesson last week and I started with the Beatitudes. For those of you who don't know them or want to read what we talked about: http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=5&version=31 Verses 5-11.

With the exception of Shayna, everyone in our small group has gone to church pretty much their entire lives. I always feel intimidated teaching because 2 of the people have master's degrees in bible/divinity. The first question I ask though, seems to not elicit immediate responses (which means it's a poorly worded question, or they don't know how to tell me I'm a moron without hurting my feelings).

If read the passage, each one starts the same way.. blessed is some person. So the question is pretty simple. Each of these people are blessed..but what does blessed mean? Christians use the term all the time. When something happens that's good to us (we got a job or something like that) we say God blessed us.

But is that really being blessed? Verse 4 says blessed are those who mourn. When my grandmother died I sure didn't feel blessed. I felt sorrow. Anyways, we got a large variety of answers. Some ranging from lucky to being right with God to happiness/joy that God is with you regardless of your surroundings.

So what do you say? Are you blessed? What makes you say that? What is your definition?

Christopher Nolan is a friggin' Genius!

Don't know how many of you know who Christopher Nolan is. He's a director that has done some interesting movies in the past. Most notably is Memento. If you havn't seen Memento, go rent it and see if you can figure out the begining..

His latest work though, is fantastic. You might have heard of it, it's called Batman Begins. Not only has he resurrected the entire Batman movie franchise, he's taken it from laughing stock with George Clooney (whoever thought that clooney would make a good batman, should be drug out into the street and shot) and Arnold Swartznegger (pretty much the same thing as Clooney) to better than Tim Burton's classic with Keaton and Nicholson. If Nolan were to quit making any other type of film and just make Batman movies I would watch every one of them. It's that good.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Tick tock, tick tock

It's almost here. You can see the signs. Smell it in the air. If you listen, very softly you can make off a tiny sound in the distance. Redskins war drums, Bronco's hooves galloping, dolphins jumping through hoops, falcons eagles cardinals all squaking and crowing.

Football season..it's coming.

I just had a realization today. The fantasy football leagues are live. I just created one. It's great. The season..it's almost here.

I don't know if anyone else has seen the movie fever pitch. It's basically a movie about Jimmy Fallon who's a die hard Red Sox fan. Jimmy and I share a lot of the same characteristics. First, we both have bad hair cuts, second..well he makes way more money..and is a lot funnier..and probably better looking. But the point of the whole movie is that during off season he's a normal guy. During the regular season..he's a nut.

I'm the same way. I love Fantasy Football. The stats, players, etc. It's just a great hobby to have. I'm really lucky that I have a wife who understands my compulsion and allows me to participate in as many leagues as I do. I'm sure she realized that FF season was already here. One of my leagues is a dynasty league, so it goes year round. The past 2 weeks I've been sitting at the computer pouring over spreadsheets. She asks "what are you doing?"

"Fantasy Football stuff dear"

I'm going to try and limit my compulsion this year..3 maybe 4 leagues. No more than 5 though. I do have to work..but boy oh boy work will be better with some FF to cheer me up.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Great googa mooga, what a storm

I don't usually get scared. Whenever I go to haunted houses, I expect all the stuff to jump out at me. I think nothing of it when it does. Rollercoasters thrill me. I may scream like a little girl who just scraped her knee, but I don't really have a fear.

The last time I got scared was Monday night. Here in VA we had a doozy of a storm. Storms in and of themselves aern't really that scarey. I actaully really like storms. I love to watch the lightning and hear the thunder. It's amazing to see nature's power.

The scarey part is when I am trying to sleep through a storm and it gets really bad. Shayna and I decided to leave the window open and a fan going when we went to bed that night. The storm comes in, and there are these huge cracks of thunder and lightning. The first really big one startles me awake. I shrug it off and go back to sleep. The second really big one startles Shayna. And she flies over on to my side of the bed and holds on to me.

It's at this point I realize that maybe having the window open isn't such a hot idea. I close the window and even though we can still hear the storm, we aern't getting the full fury.

The only other time I was scared by a storm like that was when Shayna and I went to a wedding in PA. We stayed at a bed and breakfast and we had to sleep in a sunroom. The entire room was made of glass panels (even the ceiling). It was quite cozy and nice to look at the stars while in bed. However, when the storm rolled in, all I could do was hide under the covers and try not to let the flashes of lightning all around me get to me.

Monday, June 06, 2005

So Long Darla and Bryant, and thanks for all the laughs

This weekend was a bitter sweet weekend for me. On Sunday, Shayna and I bid adeu to our friends Darla and Bryant.

It was bitter because we no longer will get to see them. They are moving to Texas which is pretty much the equivalent to moving to another country. They have their own weird laws there, everyone talks funny, and quite honestly every texan I've ever met loves Texas more than the US.

It's sweet for the same reason... Just kidding. :-)

It's sweet because Bryant his finally achieved his lifelong goal of being a gov't agent. I don't know if I'm allowed to say who he works for (that happens a lot in DC). Quite honestly I don't even know what he does. All I know is that he's wanted to do this for a long time and he is so totally thrilled with where God is putting him (even if it is in Texas).

I don't keep up with friends when I move away or they move away in the sense that we talk on the phone a whole lot or correspond with emails. I see life as temporary relationships really and that you should enjoy them while they are with you. Don't get me wrong, I have friendships for life but that doesn't really mean I have the same relationship with a person for my entire life. I guess that's a pretty bad attitude to have, but really, who keeps up with every one of their friends? Especially those that you hardly ever see. I think I'm just being a bit more open about it.

I won't say good bye to Darla and Bryant because they aern't dying (even though they are moving to Texas), but I'll say have a nice life. Hopefully we'll meet up again.