The Fortress of Solitude

Free Time

2006-03-28T20:04:50Z

Renee is currently between jobs. Her job moved off to China and she was offered 10 weeks of severence or a job that was going to be next to impossible to do. Being the wise and lovely woman that she is, Renee chose the former and has been sitting about for the last few weeks - with my blessing. I sort of like having her home, but we both know that she will needs something to do or else she will get quite stir crazy. In the meantime, she has a lot of free time and as such is finding new and interesting things to fill it.

One of the main things she is doing is, as she puts it, "acquainting herself with all things Jane Austen." We had seen the most recent version of Pride and Prejudice in the theater, so she decided reading the original work might be interesting. Soon, I found her devouring Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Northanger Abbey as well as watching Emma which recently appeared on cable and was taped. I believe we are in the half dozen range of the number of times it has now been watched. We reupped our Netflix account and just finished the five hour BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice which I enjoyed and have Sense and Sensibility on the way now. She has discovered websites devoted to Austen's works and is preparing to do a group read of Northanger Abbey starting Saturday. I am even to the point where I will have to read Pride and Prejudice just to stay fluent, despite having seen it twice adapted to film.

For my part, my free time has taken a more electronic turn. I have been playing City of Heroes for the last two years, but my interest has begun to wane, despite the inherent joy of bringing the bad guys to justice. This is not to say that I have not found other distractions. One of my co-workers suggested I check out the newest version of Bethesda Studio's Elder Scroll series - Oblivion and quite honestly I am completely hooked. The game is designed to let you actually explore and to play different types of characters and honestly, that pimply-faced Dungeons and Dragons player from 25 or 30 years ago has hit the ground running. I am loving the game, the graphics, nearly everything. The only regret I have is that it takes time away from Renee, but I am trying to be sensitive to that and play accordingly - but honestly, the damn thing is quite a time sink.

IPod: Window to Your Soul

2006-02-14T18:10:11Z

If you asked me my favorite word, I would have to say "home." Home to me reflects a feeling of safety and security, a place where I can just be myself and things are the way I like them. I am the poster boy for the term "home-body" (which I realize I have no idea if it is one word or two or hyphenated, but so be it).Anyway, because my job is requiring me to spend more time traveling, I have done my best to pad my not-being-at-home times with bits and pieces that make it less of a knock. One of those ways has been the purchase of an IPod.

I have quite a few CDs and have gotten to the point that I become really tired having to listen to other people's music when I am away from home and so decided to invest in one of Apple's little electronic pieces of crack so that I could always have the music that I like with me. And after a few months, I have come to realize more and more that what I listen to on this little doodad is probably a truer reflection of who I am than the face I show the world - and that scares me a little.

Example, you ask? Okay, how about the fact that I listen on a regular basis to podcasts about Battlestar Galactica, movie reviews from a couple of guys in Chicago on Cinecast, and listen to drive time radio from Australia? How about the fact that I have The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis in Lewis's own voice as he gives the radio addresses from which the book is derived? How about the fact that I have a combination of music from Third Day, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, REM, Green Day, the cast of Rent, Michael W. Smith, Teddy Geiger, Elton John, and a host of other little known and well-known artists?

Ultimately, the issue with a person's IPod is that it reflects your true likes and desires. You could probably get the same insight from searching my house to figure out my interests (though I have not found a comics related podcast... Hmmmm... might need to look into that) but in that case I could have you arrested for breaking and entering. The thing is that I am putting this true image of myself on a portable device and taking it into the world.

Nothing good is going to come of this, believe me.

Rereading Old Books and Enjoying

2005-11-17T13:10:05Z

Age has its benefits, some obvious and some not so. I have run into one of the less obvious ones lately: sometimes books that you didn't particularly enjoy when you were younger are much more enjoyable when you have a few years under your belt.

In Sydney, there is this wonderful science fiction book store called Galaxy Books. It is a walk down in the CBD and is FULL of wonderful sci-fi and fantasy books, videos, etc. I wandered by it between meetings on my first trip and it is a regular stop when I am in Sydney anymore. The staff is friendly and knowledgable and even up to the ocassional challenge, like the time I was preparing for my flight back to the US and asked for a recommendation of a book that 8 hours into the flight I was going to hate because I wanted to get off the plane but had hours left. There are pictures on the walls of well known authors that have done book signings including Feist and Pratchett. There is even a picture of the late Douglas Adams. Interestingly, all of the overseas authors look vaguely jet-lagged in the pictures though that might just be me projecting.

The real joy of Galaxy however is the sheer volume of titles and the depth of back titles. The place is every sci-fi/fantasy readers dream and I often wander about sad that I can't take more home. On our last trip, I decided that I needed to go ahead and pick up the latest Stephen Donaldson installment of the Thomas Covenant series and that presented me with a bit of a quandry. If you are not familiar with the books, there have already been two trilogies in the series. The first I read when I was a teen and thoroughly enjoyed, though it is not typical fantasy. The "hero" in the story is not much of hero to be honest, though I can say that I found the books compelling. The second series however I could never get into. There was something about it that never clicked with me and to be honest though I know I read the first book, I think I may have skimmed a bit of the second and the third, apart from a couple of major plot points was a bit of a blur. So, I thought that I should not only get the latest book, but since Galaxy had the second trilogy in a single handy volume, I decided to go ahead and get it and seriously read it through this time. The result of this endevour was to find that I had changed sufficiently to really enjoy the second set of books. I guess age and experience made them more accessible or something and I could empathize with some of the feelings more than I ever had before.

On a somewhat different note (but somewhat keeping with the theme), I also discovered a wonderful bookstore in Perth called Boffins. Boffins is a technical and specialty bookstore and was worth a visit if just for the name. I did find, though that it is a fantastic bookstore with lots of diverse and interesting titles. I ended up picking up three books while I was there: a history of aspirin that looks facinating, a book on the history of the alphabet that should be full of the type of useless knowledge that I live for, and (my favorite purchase) a book titled I Hate Myself and Want To Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard which is immensely funny and well worth having. (For those interested, the most depressing song according to the author is a song called The Christmas Shoes</ib> by the Christian group Newsong about a little boy who is out to buy gold shoes for his mom on Christmas Eve because she is going to die and he wants her shoes to be like the streets of heaven. A jaunty little number that is basically designed to have people weeping in the Wal-Mart parking lot.)

Oh. My. Goodness.

2005-10-11T19:06:35Z

I saw this today which seems to suggest a radical shift in a number of areas of life.

First off, when I was growing up, people would go around on Halloween with little coin boxes doing the "Trick or Treat for UNICEF" bit which I vaguely remember being associated with the Charles Schultz characters from Charlie Brown. It would seems as if the UN has decided to go with the "Screw this cutesy crap! Bring on the cluster bombs!" mentality of advertising, rather like having Carrot Top as your spokesperson. I can't say that watching beloved childhood icons (well, not beloved by me, but obviously beloved by someone) carpet bombed is going to necessarily promote my more giving nature, but it is definitely an interesting tact to take.

Secondly, can we expect to see other childhood animation characters starring in some PSAs with more adult themes? Barney, Betty, and Bam-Bam Rubble in a child abuse ad? Scooby-Doo and Shaggy in a spay/neuter PSA? Characters from GI Joe alerting the public to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy? Yosemite Sam doing an ad for gun control? I can't say that this would be a good thought.

Update

2005-10-07T12:02:58Z

I thought I should touch base here. It seems like forever since I have written anything much. I am not sure if it is lack of time or lack of desire that has fueled that, but there you go.

Renee and I are celebrating our 16th anniversary today. Dinner and gifts are pretty much the order of the day, especially since we are heading to Oz (Australia) again come the end of the month. Renee has determined that it is time that we did some tourist things while we are there, so we are doing the Sydney Harbor Bridge Climb and trying to figure out if we can afford a night or two out in the middle of the country at Uluru (or Ayer's Rock, as the Europeans called it). Of course a trip to Oz means a lot of work for me in preparation for the trip (Renee vacations and I work), but that is just work.

The date for the move to our new facility at church is set, November 13th. The move will take place the week before, and Renee and I are returning to Columbia the night before from Australia so we can be part of the festivities. I am getting particularly excited to see this happen and I know it is going to make a huge impact on our community. Fun!

Renee's brother was in town last week and there is a whole drama involved there, which is sad and amusing at the same time. He is living with the mother of a friend of his (a former roommate) and the ex-roommate, the mother, and Ronny came down for a visit last week. This trip revealed that Ronny and the mother are now more than housemates, but are romantically attached which is only weird and sad because she is 67 and he is 42. She seems nice enough if a little ditzy, but the whole thing is so... odd and uncomfortable. Of course, I had an extended giggling fit after hearing about it because I just could not get the image out of my head of the conversation between Ronny and the former roommate about this development. That would have had to been amusing...

Apart from that, Renee and I have been to the theater more of late than usual. We saw the Corpse Bride which was nice, but not great and Serenity which was exceedingly enjoyable. We will probably try and catch Wallace and Gromit this weekend as I am a fan and because it is just harmless fun. City of Heroes doesn't get played much because I seem to have decided to spend more time trying to determine if the networks here are putting anything decent into their new season. A number of horror/suspense/sci-fi type shows are on and of the lot, the best seems to be Threshold in my opinion though I am also trying to see if either Invasion or Nightstalker will hook me.

So that is about it...

Family Stories

2005-09-30T12:09:01Z

"...my cousin Henry who was born with no bladder..."

I stopped washing the dish in my hand and turned to look at Renee in my grandmother's dining room with my patented "Did I Just Hear That Right?" look. Renee and I have started to take her dinner on Thursday nights so that she has more company than just my parents and my uncle occasionally. We make sure she gets a good meal, that she gets her medicine (she is on blood thinners which she insists on referring to as "rat poison" because the chemical is also used as that at times), and try and do a few things for her around the house. It is good to spend time with her and we learn alot... sometimes more than we want.

"My sister..." Okay we need to stop here. My mother's side of the family is a mess. She has one brother which works out great, but Grandmother is one of 12 and my grandfather was one of 13 so I have more great uncles, great aunts, and second cousins than you can shake a stick at. I am only slightly ashamed to say that over the years I have pretty much taken to tuning out the names because they all blur together after a while. There are just a few that I know personally since they are mostly up in Ohio and I don't go to the reunions much, mainly because it scares me that there are that many people in the world with a disposition to having the same sense of humor I have.

"My sister had decided that to just dress him as a girl, since it would be easier to conceal all the padding in girl's clothes, but she got sick soon after and wasn't able to do that. Which is a good thing, because he ended up singing bass in the church choir and having to shave." At this point, my mind is scrambling to keep up. Okay, so I have just learned that my great aunt had a son with no bladder than she was going to try to pass off as a girl for convenience, but in the end was not able to. Interesting, if not a little creepy.

When your grandmother is telling a story, there are lots of questions that you can't ask, which is frustrating to some extent. For instance, I realize that he didn't have a bladder and hiding the early 20th century version of Depends might have been easier under a skirt, but unless there was some other issue that you haven't let on, wouldn't the... ummm... well, wouldn't it become obvious he was quite a bit better endowed than the other girls pretty quickly? As I said, some questions are better not asked to a 96 year old.

"Henry ended up going to the doctor as an adult and they tried to fix the problem by running his urine back through his intestines so that he could control it with his bowels... and that is what killed him. Since the small intestines is where we absorb our food, he died soon after of ureaic poisoning." Wait, wait, wait...

At this point, very little is getting cleaned because I am just flabbergasted. Who knew we had such an interesting story just floating in the family history. The fact that some incredibly stupid surgeon decided that he needed to improve on God's design and combine going #1 and #2 into going #3 (or would you average it and it would become #1 and a half) is fascinating enough, but even more so the fact that for years this guy just wandered around widdling on himself constantly and no one ever took him to a doctor. Amazing...

So, I thought I should share this little family insight.

Meme Conformity...

2005-09-20T19:42:57Z

LJ Interests meme results

buffy the vampire slayer:
After hearing some buzz, I started watching this about middle of its second season. I love doing that, because the reruns are new to me.

I stopped watching about the end of the Mayor/Faith storyline because quite honestly, it wasn't fun anymore.
cats:
I like cats. I have always owned a cat with the exception of about three years at the beginning of college. Any animal that can leap multiple times its own height, with retractable claws, and the ability to look completely oblivious as to why you are yelling at it when it is caught shredding your new couch deserves our respect.
christianity:
I thought Christianity was bogus for years. I was that guy who mocked people's faith in high school. Oops...

Now I am a deacon in a Southern Baptist church, teach 10th graders on Sunday morning (they sometimes hang out at the house as well), and do my best to place my faith in my Savior.
derek webb:
One of the founders of the Houston Christian band Caedmon's Call. He has had an interesting solo career and his work tends to provoke me, which I like.
gardening:
When done right, playing in the dirt can be a joy. When done wrong, it is too much like work. But try sitting on a bench with a the wind blowing through a bed of lavendar and tell me that it wasn't worth the effort.
j.r.r. tolkien:
The Man... his work is the standard by which all other fantasy fiction is compared... and generally pales.
maine coon:
A type of cat. The largest domesticated breed of cat, the male Maine Coons can top out in the 25 lb. range. We own two at the moment: Sophie, a three year old female who has hands down the sweetest disposition of any cat I have ever met and Mac, a two year old male who currently weighs about 23 lbs and who has discovered the best way to awaken me to feed him in the wee hours of the morning is a quick hop on the solar plexus.
music:
I am not musical... well, I sing alright. I can carry a tune, but I don't play an instrument, which I think I would enjoy, because there are times that when listening to music I think that there is something inside me that if I could play would all but burst if I didn't get that feeling out of me. Is it just me or do other people get that too?
ps2:
Guilty pleasure... got it a few years ago and found the joys of Kingdom Hearts which is anime meets Mickey Mouse. I was raised on text based video games (Zork and the like) so I think of them as a somewhat cerebral exercise and honestly, sometimes it is just fun to mash buttons and blow the crap out of things. (I await Servo's inevitable rebuttle)
silars bald:
A local Christian band from a Presbyterian church near our home. Fun to listen to them when they come home to play because of the stories and because I think they finally get to let their hair down when they do. They impressed me by playing "Please Come To Boston" at the first concert I saw them at which was in a church and it confused the church attendees because they didn't know if they were supposed to clap if it didn't mention Jesus.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

My Official "What????" Moments in Relation to Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-30T17:13:51Z

1. The governor of Mississippi has been quoted as saying that the hurricane is "our tsunami." All right... both have to do with massive amounts of water, displaced people, and destruction to infrastructure, but the death toll of the two events should be dramatically different, because while Katrina is a horrible, horrible tragedy, the people of the region had TWO DAYS to prepare as opposed to absolutely no time at all.

2. In the second "politicians really shouldn't speak unless their staff has okayed the sound byte" moment, the Louisiana governor was quoted yesterday as saying that "power and phone service is easier to restore than life." Not exactly news and the sentiment is sound, but this probably will not go down as one of the most intelligent comments ever uttered.

3. The following appears in a news story about looting in New Orleans:

Looters filled industrial-sized garbage cans with clothing and jewelry and floated them down the street on bits of plywood and insulation as National Guard lumbered by.

Mike Franklin stood on the trolley tracks and watched the spectacle unfold.

"To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society," he said.

It would seem that when the rescue workers arrive with supplies, they don't need to take up room for crates full of justification, because it would seem that the flood brought an abundance of that with it.

Were our hearts not burning...?

2005-08-17T12:05:27Z

I am finding myself in the middle of a stressful time where most of the areas of my life are making demands on me that I am not comfortable with, but find it necessary to do. This coupled with the fact that I keep making mistakes on different things is causing me ever and ever greater stress which I don't seem to be handling well. To the point that when one of my bosses gave me some of his usual unreasonable vitrol, I found that it had shot right past my usual defenses and I was angry, frustrated, and nearly in tears. Tears, people! I am a 41 year old adult Southern male! The only time we cry is when a pet dies or the cooler is empty.

I ranted to Renee about this on the IM yesterday and she quite rightly pointed out that my mindset and hope was not based on my faith at that point but on my own strength and abilities. She of course nailed it and we talked about that I needed to refocus myself on the things that are truly important and live life in the light of that rather than my circumstances. Easy to say, hard to do.

But last night, I spent about 20 minutes reading a chapter in a wonderful book by Breenan Manning called The Ragamuffin Gospel. If you have any desire to read a truly great book, I can tell you flat out beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is one. Manning goes about reminding us that we are loved with a furious love by God who has shown this love with His actions throughout the ages. He clearly points out the hypocrisy that prevades the thinking in the Western Church and reminds us that we live by grace, the unmerited favor of God, and grace alone. I find that time and time and time again, my heart burns with the words that he speaks, convicted of their truth and humbled by their implicaton. I have on multiple occasions had to go and read a section to Renee because the power of what is written is too much for me not to share, not to talk to someone else about. I went to bed last night realizing that I would be a fool to not enjoy the life I had been given because I have been given too great a gift to squander it by living life like there was no hope and no joy.

I woke up at 5 AM this morning to Renee asking if I had cut off the soaker hose that I had cut on in one of the garden beds last night. I realized that I had not and that it had then been running about 8 hours. I pulled on shorts and wandered through the bog that was part of our lawn to cut it off. Okay, so today hasn't started off that great and it looks like my continued screw-ups are likely to continue, but you know what? Doesn't make what I read last night any less true...

If This Is Wrong, Then I Don't Want To Be Right...

2005-08-08T15:02:47Z

Is it wrong to form a strong emotional attachment to a piece of software?

As part of my job, I have to make appointments in cities and towns that I am not familiar with when I go on a business trip. For years I have tried to haul out a map and make sure that my appoints are in some sort of proximity to each other. This was after running around Hong Kong during the first week in September, sweating through two shirts a day to get to appointments that were blocks from each other only to find that my next appointment was back where the first meeting was. D'oh!

So, I am currently planning a trip to Houston in a couple of weeks and decided there has to be a better way. Enter Google Earth. Using the push pin feature, I have been able to plot out all of my appointments on one map and be able to tell where they are and plan accordingly. This is the missing piece to my trip planning and I am so happy I am giddy! Yay for Google Earth!

Now if you will excuse me, the software and I would like to be alone.

Game Over, Man! Game Over!

2005-07-27T12:10:53Z

It is sad in one's life to realize that you have lived four decades on the planet and when something momentous happens in your life, the only place you can turn to is writing about it in a blog. I have come to the disturbing realization that I have one person in the entire world that I can be just flat out myself with and tell them how I feel and what I am thinking and in this case, I can't confide in her, because of the circumstances of the situation.

Before you jump to any conclusions, Renee and I are fine, but we are about to experience some things that pretty much mean the end of a faint hope we have been holding on to for quite a while. I need to protect Renee and bolster her during this because it is going to be very rough on her and she doesn't need to have her burden added to by my feelings. She is letting this directly impact her self-esteem, and I refuse to let her see how I feel for fear that it will make her feel worse.

What I could really use right now is someone to sit down with and tell them how much I hate this situation, how impotent it makes me feel, how hard it is, and how freakin' unfair it seems. The issue is that this would require me being really, really honest with someone and there is no one in my life I could do that with. I have one friend who has experienced something similar and he and his wife have pretty much always been at peace with it, so that and the fact that he is about the least sympathetic person humanly imaginable pretty much takes him out of the running. Dad and I have never been particularly close and though I could talk to him about it, he would talk to Mom and then half of central South Carolina would be privy to my thoughts and feelings. There are a couple of other people who know me well enough that I could talk to possibly, but they are women and I would feel awkward and in someway disloyal to Renee if I shared these feelings with any lady but her. I could post about it, more than I have (and even this I feel someone leary of), but I will be quite honest - and please take this in the spirit in which it is intended, gentle reader - you guys really don't know me. You have never met me or spoken to me and to be quite honest, I could be just about anybody, because all you know is what I write.

So here I sit in my office with the huge thing sitting in the middle of my life right now and no one to share it with. Ah, well... time to pick it up and soldier on.

Random Bits

2005-07-22T12:52:51Z

1. I picked up Fast Food Nation for my trip back from White Plains yesterday. I find it facinating how writers of books similar to this attribute grand importance to their subject matter. I read Salt: A World History a year or so ago on an overseas trip and it was amazing how salt was the key factor in almost every major political and social change over the past 5,000 years. Similarly, it would seem every social ill currently plaguing the U.S. can be traced back to Ronald McDonald. Funny how a guy in big red shoes can wield that much power.

2. If you are a fan of Battlestar Galactica, I can up your geek enjoyment a bit. While browsing podcasts the other day, I found one published by Sci-Fi in which Ronald D. Moore, the creative force behind the show, does a commentary to go along with the show. I was not watching the video, but I listened to it on the plane ride Tuesday and must say that it definitely adds a layer of appreciation to how the show is put together. Check it out.

3. I had an odd experience a couple of times this trip that I don't usually have traveling overseas: people commented on my accent. Now I don't think I have an accent, but obviously I do. One of the ladies I met with mentioned my accent in passing, saying that she could tell where I was from, because I had a "South Carolina accent." So, does that mean I sound uneducated? Like I am likely to secede from a conversation at any minute? That I am likely start yelling "Earnhardt!" at the top of my lungs? What?

The second experience was a little more pleasant though a bit awkward. I ended up in a Container Store looking for shelf liners for the wire shelves in our closet. Sophie likes to lie on them in the morning and we currently have magazines on the shelf so she doesn't put a paw through. If you have ever been to the Container Store, they have a huge amount of stuff and I decided it was simpler to ask the question than not, so I found a sales person and inquired as to their location. She showed me where they were, but they didn't have one that were 12" wide which is what I needed. I told her I would take the 16" ones and cut them, when she said I could order them. "Well, I am not from around here" was my reply to which she said "I didn't think so, since you have that really sexy accent." Oookkkaaayy..... That was different. I think I just sputtered alot after that.

4. Use of an interesting phrase from the flight attendent on one of my flights - "In the unfortunate event of a water landing..." I think a water landing deserves a bit more than an "unfortunate event" though I suppose phrasing it as "in the event that we are completely buggered and the plane hits water..." might be frowned upon by the airline.

Warning: Product May Contain Computer-rendered Naughty Bits

2005-07-13T20:22:37Z

I have been trying to expand my horizons a bit lately by reading more than the same six websites every couple of hours. The whole Intraweb stretches out before us and I am like a cyber-goldfish, swimming around my self-imposed bowl and hardly every venturing much past these few comfortable sites. To this end, I have signed up for Bloglines and have subscribed to a number of sites with technical news and other general assorted geekiness. The experiment seems to be working as I am finding out lots of interesting stuff, much of which would never have crossed my scope before.

Case in point are a couple of articles regarding the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For the record, I would like to mention that I have never played the game or the one before it, so any comments I may make regarding the content of the game have been gleaned from the press. The game was developed by a game house called Rockstar and involves lots of driving and shooting and general mayhem. It is very popular and I know has been played by a number of my on-line friends and from what I have gathered has been worth hours of fun.

The issue that these articles discusses is the fact that a modification (or mod) called Hot Coffee has come out that allows the player to have ... um... well... I guess the easiest way to put this is that it allows the game to become like something off of Cinemax late on a Friday night. The game-based flesh and sexual activity has come to the attention of parents and seems to have become a matter of some concern.

Now, the fact that kids might have access to this, though concerning is not the point I find interesting. The question that has been raised is if the mod introduces these pieces of code into the game or if they simply unlock something that was already there. The argument is that if the images were not already there, Rockstar is not liable for them and comes out smelling like a rose. If however they were there and were locked in the game, then things become a bit more grey. Games are rated rather like movies and this game, though violent, was rated without the sexual content. So, if the content becomes accessible, does the game need a more strict rating? Does content in a game that is not generally accessible need to be considered when a game is rated? Did Rockstar seek to deceive the rating board by not telling them about these scenes? Rockstar was silent about this issue for longer than one might have imagined, especially if they are were innocent, but in the end their press release placed the blame on the people who released the mod, though never denying that the images were in the game or not.

Ultimately, it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.

IPod: The Mac Gateway Drug

2005-07-08T12:00:54Z

A few years back when they first came out, I purchased an MP3 player. It was from Compaq and it was small, but had annoyingly small capacity. At the time, I didn't get a new memory card for it, and by the time I decided to, the type that fit it were no longer in production, making the thing next to useless. I mean, who wants to be forced to listen to the same song three times during a 45 minute run?

This has not in anyway shape or form caused me hardship, though while I was traveling in Australia this year, I decided that I really would like a nice portable music player with some space to take, as I heard it put recently, the "soundtrack of my life" with me rather than having to resort to listening to whatever I could find or lugging CDs with me. Admittedly, the laptop does okay, but short battery life makes it next to useless on a 12+ hour flight.

So last weekend, Renee and I went to Atlanta and while we were in one of the local malls, I took the opportunity to swing by the Apple store that was situated therein. Obviously, when you think portable music, the word that comes to mind is not Compaq, but IPod so I had a pretty good idea that I wanted to purchase one. Renee and I checked out the selection and after a bit of discussion, during which we debated the usefulness of spending an extra $100 and getting the one that holds 60 Gig worth of music rather than just 20 (needless to say I was on the pro side, while Renee was a bit more on the con side). The result was that I wandered out with a bloody expensive piece of equipment that holds 60 gigs (give or take a bit) of music and an adapter that lets me transmit the music to a radio and thereby play it in the car or around the house and still be sociable.

As I have always been more of a PC user than Mac, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to use the wheel interface ("Okay, I don't click it up and down but actually sort of rotate it to run the menus? That's weird") but I have found in the intervening week, that the folks at Apple definitely have a sense of style when it comes to interfaces and presentation. PCs in my mind have always been about wires and cards and DOS screens - just technical stuff. My experience with the IPod has given me the impression of a neat package, of clean simple lines, etc. I know it is just an impression and I am not going to let it turn my head completely, but I do find it interesting how I am categorizing things in my head.

So now, I am one of the teaming masses who has cut themselves farther out of human contact by slapping on a pair of earphones rather than talking to the people around me. I am not listening to local radio as I drive, finding out what the state government did, or discovering what is happening on the national scene, but rather am listening to podcasts of Australian morning radio shows where two musicians are trying to fit the lyrics of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" to the tune of R.E.M.'s "The End of the World As We Know It" or doing a rap version of "Bohemian Rhapsody." I am either part of the problem or part of the solution - I will get back to you on which one.

Movies, Holidays, Doctor Who, Exercise, Google Earth, etc. (i.e. Miscellaneous Stuff)

2005-07-01T12:25:04Z

Renee and I have finished our first full week with the new exercise machine. I have to say that it has been enjoyable though I had to drag myself from the bed yesterday to go run. I lay there toying with the idea to lie in, but then a part of me (a quite sarcastic part, I was surprised to find out) basically convinced me of how incredibly lame and spineless it would be to miss a day the first week for no better reason than I wanted to toss and turn for another 10 to 20 minutes.

Renee and I went last night to go see Bewitched with some of the students. Not a great movie, but honestly it was a non-offensive piece of fluff and the time spent with the kids was well worth the price of admission. One interesting bit of info that came out of this was that Rottentomatoes.Com who I sort of used as a barometer of movies in the past has now fallen out of favor. I was reading over the reviews for the movie (which rated quite poorly there) when I realized that the majority of the reviews were from people who shelled out money for a URL. Do I really care what the guy at JackieKCooper.com thinks for the movie, or the ladies of TheMovieChicks.Com? I am definitely going to have to keep a closer eye on that.

I was quite pleased in the midst of our annual rise of national patriotism to have actually heard someone mention that it is Canada Day today. Huzzah to our Canadian brethren! (P.S. - You can take Celine Dion back whenever you like).

Renee and I decided that apart from a quick trip to Atlanta - leave this afternoon, spend the night, and return tomorrow afternoon - we are spending the 4th close to home. We will try and venture out to the lake and see the fireworks tomorrow night and maybe go to Fort Jackson for the display on Monday. July 4th will also find us up in Chapin to pick blueberries, because we do it every year we are in town and it is a psuedo-tradition at this point.

I downloaded Google Earth onto my PC at work and it is sort of fun, though it has limited actual uses for me in a real world situation. I was going to show it to Renee from our home PC last night, but it seems they have limited the downloads for the moment, so I am out of luck. Ah, well...

We are currently watching the Leisure Hive episodes from Doctor Who. It has been years since we have watched them and while I did enjoy the new ones I saw while in Australia, I have to say that no matter how engaging I find Tom Baker, the pacing in these things does leave something to be desired. I also realized that I have not seen many, if any, of the episodes with William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, or John Pertwee episodes, as well as few of the later ones. I have decided to avail myself of Netflix library to fix this issue.

Making sure to get all of the Meme-ny goodness!

2005-07-01T12:02:11Z

Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me.

It can only be one word.

No more.

Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.

FEAR MY PECS!!!!

2005-06-24T13:52:31Z

Renee and I joined our local Y about three years ago at the beginning of the year. We were both tired all the time and had no energy, so we spent the money for a monthly membership to the new YMCA complex they had built in our area. The facilities were nice, the people were friendly, and I never felt like when it was like the horror stories I had heard about other gyms with either guys who were serious weightlifters that intimidated others or where the gym was just a singles bar with weight machines.

Renee and I went pretty regularly for the first four or five months and we got stronger, in better shape, and felt alot better. I really enjoyed going to the gym and would make time to do it. But then something - and for the life of me I can't remember what - happened and we quit going. The time between going got longer and longer and though we tried a couple of times to start again we never did. We continued to pay for it, making ourselves the promise that we were going to go back, but it has not happened.

As would be expected, getting older and slower metabolisms have kicked in and Renee and I have gained some weight in the mean time. Being that I am relatively tall (6'3") and have slim body type and have only been fat for about a year when I was six and pumped full of cortisone, I don't look particularly fat at 205 lbs. but the fact that the 205 is not in a particularly attractive form on my frame has been bugging me of late.

Enter Renee. She decided that the issue was that we were not making the time to go to the gym because of the effort involved in getting our stuff together and driving there, exercising, and returning home - a total time investment of about 75 to 90 minutes. As tight as our schedule has been of late, it has often been a convenient excuse not to go, so she decided to take out that excuse and use part of our money from the sales commissions and buy an exercise machine for the house. The result? I had four huge boxes delivered over the past three days containing a Bowflex.

Last night I spent two hours putting it together. It is a rather clever design allowing for alot of different exercises from one relatively standard set-up. This morning I got up and spent 20 minutes of quality time with the machine figuring out how to switch things around and doing my exercises. The only downside to the machine was that I was told to lie down to do one exercise and promptly clunked my head on the machine - the Bowflex is not designed for someone my height to lie down on. With a little arranging, I was able to do it, but I have to keep this in mind in the future.

So soon, my pictures will cause women to swoon and men to tremble. I will be lean, fit, and buff! Fear my pecs!!! Tremble before my glutes!!!

That's right... I am a Tower of Jell-O

2005-06-23T19:05:13Z

That's right, boys and girls... I am a wishy-washy bastard.

While I was in Australia (or upon my return, I am not sure which), I read through my Livejournal and realized that the majority of it either involved me whining about something or would generally only interest me and... well, no one, when I come to think about it. That along with a tight time schedule and my desire not to become like some like some of the people I saw posting caused me to delete my account. I was going to break free from the bondage of telling other people things that they really wouldn't care about like the fact that I saw Alexis Bledel, the young lady who played Rory Gilmore on the Gilmore Girls at LAX on my way to Australia or that Episode III was such a glaring disappointment to me that I enjoyed the trailer for Fantastic Four more than the movie. I was no longer going to bore you with my rants about how Tom Cruise is making that bold transition from pretty pretty box office superstar to nutty nutty cult boy or how I have yet to find anyone who is talking about the woman from Georgia who disappeared before her wedding, but who Katie Couric was claiming "everyone is talking about." No longer would you hear me rant about my brother-in-law and how he called me up to write a will for the elderly woman he is living with or how I have taken to listening to drive time radio from Australia in the evenings when I get home. All of this and more I was going to spare you from having to endure on an infrequent basis.

But then I say... nahhh, screw it and reactivated my account.

Meme Stuff

2005-05-29T07:38:41Z

1. Reply and I’ll write something about you.
2. I will then tell you what song/movie/book/play reminds me of you.
3. I will say something that only makes sense to you and me.
4. I will tell you my first memory of you.
5. I will tell you what animal/flower/color/something else you remind me of.
6. I’ll then tell you something that I’ve always wondered about you.
7. Then post this in your own journal...

Pressure Cooker

2005-05-23T17:16:35Z

Things are hopping for me as this work week begins.

On Thursday, I begin the trek to Australia for two weeks and with that comes all kinds of last minute issues (bill paying, yard maintainence, suits cleaned, etc.) along with the vital job of getting all of my appointments filled. This seems to have been a particularly slow process this time and I will spend the evening hours on the phone with the folks Down-Under putting it all to bed.

My brother-in-law is staying with us for the next couple of days. He has finally gotten his settlement from his motorcycle accident and is up by $15K. The overall settlement was $70K, but after the hospital bills were paid ($23,000), Ronny ended up with $15,000 and the lawyer with a whopping $32,000 which is utterly amazing. I guess now I understand why these guys sell their self-respect on TV: the going rate of self-esteem is huge!

On top of all this, the ministry issue has become a huge issue. The present paid staff member had to be confronted on Sunday morning with the fact that he now reported to our team and was going to be micro-managed by us. Not fun, especially since I am about as non-confrontational as a man can be. To make matters worse, the staff member informed me the same morning that he and his wife are expecting. Ouch. Interesting timing, Lord...

The meeting went relatively well and the decision to do what we are doing was confirmed so many times during the meeting. From the number of questions that he could not answer regarding "planned" activities to the fact that he is taking teenagers to the beach with a chaperone ratio of 10 to 1, the whole thing screamed the need to have more oversight and more active hands involved. Unfortunately, I am going to be out of pocket for two weeks, so I will be doing things on my end long distance, but hopefully we will be able to handle things.

Two interesting side effects from all of this: I am praying more and I am dreaming more. My prayer life has never been fantastic, I am afraid to say, but I have had to time and again spend long periods before the Lord on these issues and cast my burdens on Him, knowing I can't handle it. That is a good thing that has come out of this. An odd thing that has surfaced is that I am a dreaming quite vivid dreams the last three nights as well. We are talking 3-D, Sens-A-Round sound, etc. And most of them are making decent sense. Not sure what the connection is, but It is definitely interesting.

My New Movie Obsession For A While

2005-05-16T15:38:45Z

December was a lonely time this past year. After 3 years of going to the theater in the dead of night to see the saga of Middle Earth play out before me, this year was a bit of a let down. And worse, yet there was no relief in the foreseeable future... until...

Behold!

Renee and I have been rereading it of late by a happy coincidence and I still think one of the finest lines in the whole of the book comes when one of the children, upon finding out that Aslan is a lion asks if he is safe the reply is:

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you."

Where to begin...

2005-05-10T19:21:08Z

I returned to work this week after Renee and I taking a week off, and honestly, I have been toying with the idea of not writing here or on E2 any longer. Life has gotten... well, somewhat complicated over the holiday, which I will get to in a bit and I was not sure if I really had the time or energy to write put together these write-ups any longer. But, here I am writing again, so I suppose that I have come to a decision about that...

I have been asked to take on, along with another man, the task of planning and directing one of the major ministry sections of our church. We are preparing to move to a new facility, our congregation having out grown the one we are currently worshipping and ministering in. The two of us had expressed concern about the direction of this ministry and the result was that we were asked if we could get us to where we needed to be. Both of us said yes, which is good, but the more I think about it also seems completely insane.

The result is that we have a great deal of work to do and very little time or resources to get it done. Currently I am trying to educate myself concerning the right way to get the job done and trying to make myself a listing of all of the tasks that need to be done and strategically think about how they can be done. On top of this, I am having to balance the rest of my life - marriage, family, friends, and work - all of which seem to have have their own little melodramas attached to them at present. Visits to my grandmother in the nursing home, trying to find time to run and exercise, working on home projects, preparing for my next Australia trip, plus making sure that Renee and I have time with each other and I keep up with my present commitments at church are all coming together to make for a tighter and tighter schedule. My belief is that ultimately all of this is going to make me more dependent on God, because, honestly, looking at it right now, there is no way that I can do this on my own...

Frustation

2005-04-29T11:39:17Z

It has been a frustrating week overall.

Work has been frustrating in oh, so many ways. An error was discovered in our system and I was treated to one of the guys I work for basically throwing a temper tantrum, which if you think is unattractive in a pre-schooler you will find is infinitely more so in someone who is in their mid-40's. The issue was bad and the fact that the team who does the checking didn't find something this obvious was made all the worse by the fact that their leader refused to take any responsibility for the issue. It has made for a couple of pretty tense days around here since I am the king of unconfrontation.

Equally frustrating at the moment is an issue with our new youth pastor. I won't gossip or get too involved in the situation, but the upshot is that he seems to have very little in the way of vision for the ministry and is allowing huge changes that will ultimately be detrimental to its overall success to be made without so much as a peep. As Renee and I invest an awful lot in these kids and this ministry and believe it is some of the most important work that we do, I can't but be peeved when I see it being put into the hands of someone who doesn't seem to know what he is doing.

My youth group frustration is on the surface because we had a leaders' meeting with him last night and afterward we and two other couples stood in the kitchen and voiced our frustration and annoyance until close to 11. It is good to know we are not the only ones who feel this way, but again, the only way to deal with it is to either go to him (which involves confrontation) or to go to the senior pastor, which is not something I am inclined to do since we will be moving the whole congregation to a new facility in September and honestly, the man has enough on his plate at the moment.

Finally, keyed up from the meeting last night, I didn't sleep well last night and when I am frustrated I tend to dream. One of the dreams that woke me was of my Siamese cat Gabby. Gabby has been gone three years this fall and I still miss her greatly despite the fact that we have two wonderful cats now. I know with everything else in life to get weepy over an old pet, seems sort of lame, but there you go. Anyway, this morning I got to work early since Renee and I are starting a week's holiday starting tomorrow and found on my E2 account a notification that doyle had book marked the October 14, 2002 daylog, which I had a node in. At of curiosity I went to see what I had written and found that it was my write-up about Gabby's death. So there I sat in an empty office, weeping like a child - they say timing is everything.

How to Entertain Your Cat on A Fine Spring Day

2005-04-26T12:53:10Z

Renee and I have two Maine Coon cats, Mac and Sophie. They are both relatively young and you may have seen pictures of them on E2 or elsewhere. If not, here they are:

So, on Saturday, I am at the computer, playing City of Heroes when over the sound of battle I hear Renee yelling. I turned down the sound and called back for her to repeat. "There is a BIRD in the house!!!" came the reply.

Now, because Mac and Sophie are pure breeds and either or both of them could have been show cats, when we purchased them I signed a form that said I would not allow them outside. That worked fine for me, since we didn't intend to let them outside anyway, but having seen them play, we often wondered what would happen if a rodent or a bird got on their radar. Well, today, I got to find out.

Sophie was not particularly interested in the whole affair and retreated upstairs, but we imagine that this was due to the fact that Mac is quite a bit larger then her and he was going full bore after the bird. By the time I had come downstairs, he had stunned the wren and was crouched waiting for it to come out from under the dining room chair where it had sought refuge. I grabbed a mixing bowl from the kitchen, while Renee scooped up the cat and deposited him in a convenient bathroom for the duration.

Now I have had some experience getting animals out of the house in one piece (or there abouts). I have used mixing bowls and tupperware to containers to rescue lizards, spiders, bees and other assorted fauna from the house and replace them in a more natural habitat. I do this mainly because I don't particularly care to have their deaths on my conscience if I look favorably upon their species. So since the bird was stunned, it was little problem dumping the bowl over it, sliding a magazine under it and depositing it on the deck to regain its senses and fily off.

We have yet to figure out exactly how the bird got in the house, but we ended up with a mournful boy-cat for a bit as he seemed a bit pissed that we had gotten rid of his toy. Ah, well... he will recover...

Now Showing at the Multiplex.

2005-04-25T17:28:53Z

Renee and I watched in the last five days or so three different movies, which is probably not that great a feat, but considering that we probably had seen three movies in the past five months prior to that, I was pretty impressed with our bad selves. Admittedly two of them were on DVD, so we did not have to leave the comfort of our own home, but still...

And so, the reviews:

First off was the movie "Raising Helen" with Kate Hudson, John Corban, and Joan Cusack. This one honestly came off of Netflix because I though Renee might enjoy it. We saw the preview in the movies and she made affirmative noises afterward and since we didn't catch it in the theater, I thought I would have it shipped to the house to check it out. The movie was your typical fare for the heart tugging "orphan and aunts trying to deal with the loss of the children's parents" movie. There was the teenage daughter, the middle son, and the cute moppet who multiple times makes references to her "nose boogies." Awwww...

John Corban plays the likable love interest who happens to be a Lutheran pastor. I like Corban just becasue he comes off as a likable guy and the fact that he is so much taller than your average actor that he towers over most of the cast - in a good way. The movie also has Joan Cusack, who I like in one of her less likable roles as the straight-laced sister to Kate Hudson's character. Joan is good in most parts but this one is completely forgetable. The movie does get points because it has Felicity Huffman in it and I like her, but overall, wait for it to come on cable.

2 Stars out of Five

Renee and I had not been out in a while, so I decided we would go out on Friday night and decided that our choices for films were either the Interpreter or Sahara. Renee chose the Interpreter which stars Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. She chose well. The fact that the director is Sydney Pollack and the fact that it was filmed inside the UN made this thriller a good choice. Pollack does a great job revealing the two main characters little by little, giving us information and glimpses into who they are just a bit at a time.

Kidman is one of those actresses that I honestly don't think I like until I see her in something and then I realize that I sort of do like her. It is one of those weird things where I have made up my mind about something and then figure out that I remembered it wrong. Similarly, I have a hard time of thinking about Sean Penn past his marriage to Madonna and him playing Jeff Spicoli, but then I see him in this and go "Hey, he is pretty good." So much for my opinions on these things.

4 Stars out of Five

This was the film that I was most looking forward to. An independent film, Primer tells the story of two guys who happen to build a time machine in their garage. The dialogue is very true to life with people speaking over each other and the storyline is complex to the point of being quite hard to keep up with. I have to say that I enjoyed it and probably need to watch it a couple of more times to get the full understanding of what is going on, but it definitely highlights how people would truly react with being given the ability to change things.

3 Stars out of Five