Thankful Thursday: My Ex-Girlfriend

I was just telling my mother via IM that I was glad to have had the girlfriend I had before Jessica because she really made Jessica stand out.  That probably sounds like a slight, but later changes in her life lead me to believe that she grew a lot as a person, as did I.  The ex-girlfriend is often a marker for comparison, and I just didn’t have a lot of girlfriends so this one had the unfortunate position based on a weird High School boy and his whims as well as various other circumstances which will remain shrouded in mystery because she doesn’t need me to air things that I have no business airing. I’m genuinely grateful for the roughly three months we ‘went out’ because it gave me a greater context.  The XGF had to put up with my ‘no kissing’ rule which meant that on a few occasions when she wanted me to kiss her I had to refrain and she probably felt I was holding back.  Perceptive, and accurate.  My no kissing rule involved not kissing a girl unless I knew I was going to marry her.  That made things a bit restrictive as you can imagine.  But with out the XGF I would have missed out on Jessica’s brilliance in the particular context I did.

Jessica’s love for Christ, her genuine listening to me, and her commitment to her family and desire to respect her parents made her stand out like Yao Ming at an ewok convention.  Her honesty was compelling.  Her asking questions and wondering about biblical things meant she was trying to sort through things and make sense of what she was learning and it meant: she was learning.  Jessica was an amazing friend before she was a girlfriend and it was just brilliant to watch her grow in life, in the Lord, and in her desire to make something of her life.  Of course she also looked amazing, had a great brain (her intelligence has always kept me humble) and she liked good food – so it was a great match.  Jessica’s desire to serve her friends was also amazing.  She was still a teenager, but a teenager with a compassionate attitude of service and her willingness to serve blew my mind.

Without the XGF I’d have still probably been drawn to Jessica, but I was very glad to have the contrast that I did.  Jessica is really who I’m thankful for, but I’m also thankful for and still sometimes pray for the XGF simply because she’s a person whom I cared for and I hope she’s doing well.  I hope she’s found a great guy, and I hope that she’s living a great life.

Lat-eral Damage

My latissimi dorsi are hugely sore.  I have been playing Wii Boxing for the last three nights.  Parts of my body that don’t understand exercise are being exercised by a video game system that I didn’t even know could work me out.  Its the bomb.

Or in the words of Switchfoot, “This is the bomb that I’ve been waiting for.”  I’m very, very glad to be sore.  I need to exercise this sad frame and turn it into a fighting machine for my 31st birthday next month.

Build-a-boyfriend

Context: at a build-a-bear with three teenaged girls for my daughters birthday.

Teenager builds a bear for her boyfriend and then declares that the bear is just like her boyfriend.

So I say, “He sounds nice, supportive, and comforting.”

“My boyfriend?,” she asks.
“No, your bear. I would never assume those qualities of a teenage boy.”

Dear NBC Olympic Editors

Hi, its me, Randy, I just wanted to drop you a line to say, “We don’t need any more Volleyball coverage,” and also, “Can you edit the BMX video down to more BMX and less announcer garbage?”  Thanks.  Because I love global athletic events as much as the next bipod, but I really, really don’t like the 5 minute commercial breaks and the 1.5 minute BMX races wrapped in 5 minutes of announcers with diarrhea of the mouth.

We don’t need to hear the announcers saying things like, “They really can’t afford mistakes like this in an event of this caliber.”  Really?  I had no idea.  I thought that the Olympics were like kindergarden for the X-Games.  I thought that the athletes would be scored by how many wounds they could get from crashing, falling, slipping, and gashing their heads on diving boards.  Its a good thing the announcer is there to help my make up for the brain cells I’m losing from watching all of those 5 minute long commercial breaks.

One last thing: Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete and I respect him a lot.  But I don’t need to see replays of his wins as the start and finish of every viewing session.  I leave you with the immortal words of Merlin Mann:

NBC’s stirring piano score makes this montage of memories from 10 days of watching TV recaps of time-delayed sports highlights VERY moving.

The Essence of Religion

A quote from my Uncle, Eric Peterman, who puts things in a way I can really enjoy and understand them:

The essence of religion (and there are all colors) is to avoid the necessity of actual grace by contriving means by which I avoid offending God and by which I please God. In short, in that view I try to out-Grace God.

Grace needs to be amazing.  So amazing that we’re in awe of it.  If we try to live the Christian life without ‘using’ Grace we miss the point that it is the very life system by which we operate.

IE7 ClearType Gripe

I fully understand why Internet Explorer 7 uses clear type. Some people’s eyes work better with ClearType. It is simply an accessibility nightmare in my humble opinion. Actually, the problem is not in the ClearType – which works better on some displays than others – but it is in the Internet Explorer ‘Advanced Options’ dialog. If you’re a glutton for punishment take a glance at it [click on the screenshot below for a larger version].

As a designer please use consistent text to give users the simplicity of vocabulary.  If all of the options use enable or disable rather than both, this will help.  Worse is the ClearType option which says, “Use…”  that’s neither enable or disable and it makes the scanning of the text even more frustrating because its even more words your brain has to parse as you scan over the text.  If you design interfaces – please consider being consistent.  I have some software I need to update to take this into account, but please – all new software should be written with greatest usability in mind, and all older software should really be updated.

The Advanced Options Tab in Internet Explorer 7

The Advanced Options Tab in Internet Explorer 7

Canon S3IS: 10,000+

I’ve just crossed the 10,000 picture threshold on my Canon S3IS.  I’ve used it for personal photography, portrait photography and for product photography.  I have taken many great pictures with it (some of which can be found here) and I still love it.  It is definitely a consumer level camera compared to some of the options available to the Digital SLR camera owners, but this is a fantastic camera and I highly recommend it (and its preceding S5IS available as the latest revision as of this writing) to the person looking for a great video, photography and otherwise awesome digital documentation device.  I’d show you the 10,000th picture except that its a picture for a client – so you don’t get to see it 🙂

And now onto the other things I need to do with it.

The Burninator

Jessica discoverd that while I like fresh, hot coffee her leg does not.  She’s got a substantial second degree burn down her left thigh and has been out of commission since Friday morning.  Since Jessica has been out of commission, I have partially been out of my normal commission so as to take care of her and the girls and attempt to fake my way through housework.

All is well and the wound is healing, but I’d appreciate prayers for my bride’s body, my sanity, and the girls to be the most obedient two and nearly six year olds on the planet.

A Spore Critter




A Spore Critter

Originally uploaded by RandyPeterman

This weekend I picked up the $9.99 Spore Creature Creator at the store. Its only a pre-game utility for a game that will be out next month. We may not even get the game, but the utility has been a hoot to play with with the girls because they can create creatures and then watch them be silly. No gore, no sex. Just fun. Thought I’d pass this video along since it was cute.

Get Your Cake On

Jessica used to work with a friend making cakes.

You can find cakes that pretty much everyone should be embarrased by at this awesome (new to me) blog:

Cake Wrecks

I want you to know that even my most recent attempt at making Jessica’s birthday cake was better than many of the examples here.