Monthly Archives: May 2007

Dancing with the Stars: I Love My Children

I danced last night with Abigial to the soundtrack of whatever was playing on dancing with the stars.  I think the judges would have kicked us off the show for our out of control, wacky, jerky and impromptu movements.  Abby laughed over and over so I figured that our ‘dancing’ was doing the trick.  Jessica, our only judge gave us a ten each time, to which Abby responded by either bowing or raising her hands in victory.  I even scored a victory peck on the lips.  Its good to dance with a child star like Abby because she really throws herself into it.  I just have to catch her.

Fair

I have been a big fan of Poor Old Lu since the mid 90’s when two brothers who were in a (sphhhblunk rock) rock band with me encouraged me to give them another listen. When I had listened to the demo tape at the Christian bookstore I had heard a slower song and shut the tape player off. Yeah, I was really a good music listener back then. However, after borrowing their copy of ‘Sin’ I became hooked. Fast forward to 2005. Poor Old Lu is gone (for now), but Aaron Sprinkle, their guitarist has a lower priority solo career. Aaron’s touring band turns into his band Fair. Fair isn’t Poor Old Lu 2.0. Fair is more like Aaron Sprinkle 4.0. Its got a good solid sound, great harmonies, and a nice driving feel at places and careful respect for the delicate intricacies of dynamics in other places.

Genre: Rock
Released: 2006
Rating: 4.5 ear canals out of a total 5 ear canals
Theological Content: Could Play on Secular Radio without anyone knowing the band was Christian unless you knew they were Christian, in which case you can pick up underdones & themes.

If you’ve not heard Fair I’d check them out on iTunes or Amazon.com.

Recommended Tracks:

  • The Attic
  • Carelessness
  • Cut Down Sideways
  • Confidently Dreaming
  • The Dumbfound Game
  • Unglued

Because I’m Insensitive Like That

So today I had the privelege of leading the church service. I went through the announcements and prayer requests in the bulletin and then asked if anyone had any other prayer requests. One of the gentlemen said, “Bud [lastname withheld to protect the innocent].” Which made me ask Bud, who was sitting in another pew, what was going on. He replied, “They think I’m too skinny.”

So I said, “You’re going for the super model look, eh? You’re going to be on America’s Next Top Senior Model?”

Yes, I was on a microphone amplified throughout the building. Apparently I am missing that part of the brain that hinders my mouth from spouting out humor at the expense of the elderly.

**Oh, and for the record: Bud has a good sense of humor and thought it was funny.**

Make Your Own Filet Mignon!

OK, so this isn’t news, but did you know you can buy a Tenderloin at your favorite wholesaler (Costco, for example) and butcher it at home for filets that are significantly cheaper than the grocery store, and super juicy?  Sure, if you’re a vegetarian I’ve just suggested you go suck on a dirty gym sock, but for the omnivorous folks out there, wow!  We had tried this for Easter this year and had limited success because our tenderloin was spread between too many people.  However, tonight Kurt & Becky kindly invited us over for Kurt’s birthday (Happy Birthday, again!  Don’t eat the Pie!) where Kurt’s parents had kindly bought another tenderloin for us all to share.

WOW!  All my base are belong to Pismo.  Yummy stuff!  The butchering of the tenderloin isn’t that difficult and you will end up with approximately 10 tenderloins and meat for some very tasty philly cheesesteak sandwiches for about $50.00 (USD).  Give it a shot if you get the loot, its well worth it.

Microsoft and PHP (via a Yahoo! Merger)

Matt Mullenweg asks, “If Microsoft were to buy Yahoo, I wonder if that would have an impact on PHP?” I think that everyone will have to say, “Yes.” on some level. There are two ways that this impact could take place:

1) PHP is challenged to compete with other languages in the market, that’s either ASP, Ruby, Perl, Python or some new language that comes around. JSP could be re-written to be easier (ha! Like that’s going to happen). PHP is going to be challenged by these languages, at least one of which is tied into Microsoft.
2) PHP will be challenged because Yahoo! needs more of something to deal with their demand. If Microsoft is after Yahoo! for revenue/ad related things then the engines running the machines will be left alone over time. People will adopt PHP (or whatever language) because of its functionality. I personally think that WordPress is a compelling reason to use PHP, Yahoo’s use of it is not as strong as WordPress’ because its easy to get your hands on the source and learn PHP from it.

Yahoo! has a commitment to PHP at present, unless Microsoft dumps their entire staff in charge of making Yahoo! what it is, its going to be a slow transition if it were to change over to .NET/ASP. Industry leaders in the web development/software development community are at Yahoo! working on code and making choices, if Yahoo! loses interest for them they’ll move somewhere else and employ their killer PHP skills there.

PHP libraries like PHP Cake (which I’m using for a new project) make using PHP fun and easy. I think PHP will be around for years to come because of what it is: fast, easy and powerful. I hope Microsoft causes PHP to change, Yahoo! or not. I also hope that Yahoo! opens up more than their YUI library so that coders can learn PHP stuff from them as well.

Thanks Matt for the interesting question!

Thankful Thursday: Frenz

I’m grateful for my friends.  I’ve got friends around the world and its pretty humbling that people would be in any way interested in my life.  I find that people still want to talk to me even though I’m a complete nut case 😀  What’s even more amazing is that my friends look out for me at times, pray for me many times, joke with me and put up with my wacky sense of humor.  I’m thankful for you folks – its an honor to have you call me friend.