rats!

i wasn’t able to update yesterday, but i had a good reason.

a rat ate the power adapter for my laptop.

cool, huh?  i saw it last night.  i’ve never really wanted to kill anything before but i was pretty determined to kill this thing.  with a knife.  through it’s diseased body.

also, last night i did the hokey-pokey on rollerskates.  sometimes life takes strange turns, doesn’t it?

we’re gearing up for anaheim around here.  i can’t wait! 

anaheim!

i’m starting to get excited about the upcoming CORE staff trip to the national youth worker convention in anaheim. we’ll be participating in a guided spiritual retreat at a monastery, critical cocerns courses prior to the conference, and the conference itself.  it should be lots and lots of fun!  (not to mention an opportunity for some fun video blogs!)

ruby pt. 2 + zork

i did a (very) little bit of research on ruby and found a cool feature on the ruby homepage.

it’s a ruby tutorial that actually allows you to play with ruby code in your browser. check it out! whether or not you’re interested in coding, you should find it interesting.

speaking of cool things, does anyone remember zork? it’s an old text-based computer game that i remember playing as a kid.  i spent an hour or so playing an online version, and it was amazing.  it reminded me of the old days when i used to mess around in the ms-dos command line.  fun stuff.

check it out here.

ruby

i’ve wanted to learn a programming language for a long time now…like, 6 or 7 years. i love technology, and i’d really like to dig a little deeper into it, so i’m going to learn ruby.

i love web apps, i love what i’ve seen ruby on rails do, and it seems to line up with things that interest me, so i’m gonna do it.

i’ll let you all know how it goes.

greenville follow-up

i returned from our high school fall retreat at ymca camp greenville on last night. the retreat was great! i really enjoyed spending time with the students (especially my small group), playing fun games, playing some new songs, geeking out with tami, watching horrible cartoons, catching up with new leaders and other such things.

i also went to a show tonight. it was at the earl, a local restaurant and venue, which is only a couple of miles from my house, which is cool. the artist is one of my favorites, and it was the first time i’ve seen him live, so that was very cool.

fyi, i’ll be adding some new video blogs in the next couple of days. believe it or not, i actually got some requests. weird, huh? who knew anyone watched those.

by the way if you don’t a comment, i really don’t know your reading. don’t be a lurker! if you’re reading this, get involved!

fall retreat

tomorrow i’ll be heading out with all the CORE students, volunteers and staff to our annual high school fall retreat at YMCA camp greenville.  this weekend is theoretically when the leaves are at their fall best (which is great if you’re into leaf watching.)  today is full of the pleasant bustle that always precedes our smaller retreats.  there’s a wonderful rhythm to it all.

this is going to be a tech-free weekend.  (by tech-free, we mean no sound system, no computers, no cell phones, etc.  it doesn’t mean that we won’t be carrying flashlights, taking pictures, wearing manufactured clothing or using ramps, pullies or other simple machines.)  that means i’m leaving my beloved macbook behind, so i won’t be blogging for a few days, at least until sunday night.  i think it will be nice to get away for a little while, especially considering i spend 8-10 hours a day in front of a computer (i know…).

if you pray, please pray for our retreat.  this retreat in particular has been a milestone in the lives of many students (including myself a short time ago), and we want it to continue to be that way.  if you have anything particular you’d like to share, leave a comment.  perhaps i can pass your thoughts along to the students.

open source software

I’m writing this in in a program called neooffice. It’s a version of open office, which is an open source alternative to microsoft office (by the way, the spell check does not recognize the word “microsoft”…that is amazing.)

for those of you who may not be familiar with the term open source, wikipedia defines it as software whose “computer software source code is available under a copyright license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form.”

it’s a pretty simple concept. essentially, the code that makes up the core of a piece of software (it’s source code) is available to anyone. that means anyone can take it and do whatever they want with it, in effect making the software free. it is often created by communities who volunteer their time to create software simply out of a passion for computing and the open source philosophy.

there are open source alternatives for practically every program you can think of. i use firefox instead of internet explorer to browse the web. in fact, everyone should use firefox instead of internet explorer. it’s performance is superior, it’s more secure, and it’s totally free. (firefox version 2 should be really quite soon now). There are open source alternatives to photoshop (GIMP), microsoft office (open office), outlook (thunderbird). there are even open source operating systems (like windows or mac osx) that you can install on your pc, the most prominent of which is linux (currently the most popular distribution of linux is called ubuntu).

the open source movement is beautful for lots of reasons. It’s free (free as in beer and free as in speech), it’s made by volunteers, it is constantly updated and it often outperforms corporate software.

if you’ve never used any open source software, give it a shot. download firefox today. i promise you’ll never use ie again. if you have an old pc lying around collecting dust, take an afternoon and intall ubuntu on it. that’s what i’ll be doing on my next free saturday. the next time you need a piece of software, browse the web for an open source alternative. you may be surprised with your results.

for more info read here.

bell collection

yesterday i visited my grandmother in her new apartment, and i noticed something strange. she has a bell collection that she keeps on a shelf above her television. they’re from different cities across the us (and few from overseas), and theyre all very different from one another. some are very small, some larger. some are crystal, some are made from not-crystal (sorry, i don’t know what bells are made of).

as i noted their differences i wondered if they sounded different, so i picked one up and rang it. or, rather, didn’t ring it. i just shook it and heard nothing. i looked, and the ringer (?) was there, but attached to stiff wire so it wouldnt move.

the bell didnt ring. i quickly found out that most of them dont ring. theyre not made to.

what is the deal with that?

if a bell doesnt ring, is it a bell? isnt it ringing that defines it as a bell? why would anyone want something that was bell-like in every way, expect for it’s function?

what a strange world we live in.

we are so many layers separated from anything real. most of us have never grown, caught or killed our food. most of us have never touched a dead person. we work while sitting still and eat fake food, so we get fat. we don’t want to be fat so we go to gyms and run on simulated ground that moves for us while we stand stationary.

we have bells that don’t ring.

i think that’s why we run into phenomena like cutting. something in us is screaming “none of this is real! i just want to feel something!”

any thoughts?

drive-time

it took me an hour-and-a-half to get from my house (grant park) to leah’s (marietta).

an hour-and-a-half.

my trip included an ill-fated detour, two turn-arounds, a stop at train tracks and (believe it or not) driving beneath fallen power lines, surrounded by flames.

this is a true story.

bad tea

i’m sitting at caribou with john, working on some AML stuff.  every time i get tea at a coffee place (especially starbucks or caribou), the tea is terrible!  it’s never strong enough.

the problem is serving size. they’re too big.  and having too much water makes for weak tea.  i ordered a “small” and it was what i would consider a large.  strange.

i’ve been watching a lot of curb your enthusiasm recently.  i’d never seen it until last weekend.  larry david is amazing!  if you haven’t seen it, check it out.  very funny.

i’m listening to the “npr shuffle” podcast, and they opened with a feature on sparkle horse’s new album. are any of you guys familiar?  i like what i heard.