Author Archives: Randy Peterman

Thankful Thursday: Mike Doyle

One of the elders at my church is Mike Doyle.  Every time I get together with Mike (and his wife and son) I’m blown away by their down-to-earth, practical lives.  Mike’s theology isn’t high-fa-luting, its not full of robust vocabulary, instead its sometimes terse, sometimes ‘vulgar’ [in the old sense of the word and not the raunchy sense], and often peppered with concepts that are familiar now that I’ve been around him for three years.  Mike loves to talk about beholding Jesus Christ.  Mike loves to talk about the Christian’s identification with Christ on the cross and afterward.  Mike loves to talk about how proud he is of his son, his wife or someone that he’s been teaching/discipling.

Mike loves the sheep he’s been assigned as a shepherd at Holly Hills Bible Church and I love being one of them.

Rewarded

Today I was skyping with my brother (as in video chatting) and we ended up talking about computers.  I must be totally rewarded (as in r*tard*d) because I ended up explaining to him why his next computer should be an Apple.  Yes, they’re great, but in the end I should have talked with him about something besides computer.  My relationship with him as a brother goes back far enough that we should get beyond 0’s and 1’s 🙂

Recent Reading

I’ve been reading a finance blog the last week, and since I’ve enjoyed it, I thought I’d pass along the link: The Simple Dollar.  There are many, many things that I’ve learned about the philosophical side of money growing up, but somehow I’ve managed to not apply them until recently.  We pay the price for those bad choices longer than the instant gratification lets us think about.  I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today doesn’t do well when you repeat the transaction a thousand times.  Give it a look-see.  Look for more from me on the money front in the future, I have a plan!

Funniest Cruise Story Ever!

My old boss (and sort of boss now that I’m a contractor for the same company) wrote about his latest cruise – he’s still on it – but its been painfully stupid.  You can read about it here.

I would encourage you to leave a comment of your own cruise experience if you’ve been on one because it’ll surely be read by others who find this post amusing!

Jonesing for Indy

Today I saw my first photo of the Indiana star Harrison Ford in his getup for the next movie to be released next year.  I loved  the Indiana Jones movies growing up.  Harrison Ford was such a super-hero without the actual baggage of having super powers.  In other words he was so real life that I actually thought I could grow up to be a computer programmer.  Wait, no, I actually thought I could grow up to fight Nazis and bad guys in general while being concerned with archeology.  As it turns out I’m concerned with Archeology for Biblical reasons, but not for Nazi-fighting or actual digging.

Jonesing for Indy

Oh, and I’m glad I’m not a professor, but I’m glad I get to teach a Bible Study and sometimes Sunday School.  Those are teaching of a type I can handle.  I’m really, really glad that the ladies in those classes don’t write, “I love you,” on their eye lids.  Ha!

Subscribing to Podcasts: A Clever Tutorial

Hey, I know that some of you are dog tired of hearing me talk about RSS Feeds, podcasts and technology that you don’t need to use or want to use.  But trust me: your life will be better for it.  If you want to see one of the neatest podcast subscription tutorials, head over to coverville.com and follow the instructions on the ‘subscribe’ page.  They’re nifty.

Slight Site Tweak

For the few of you that read this blog within a browser and not through RSS, I’ve made a small number of changes that should hopefully help you.

  • I’ve set the categories to indent so that its easier to find categories that are of the sub nature
  • I’ve added a small blog-roll. I’ve got more sites that I track, but these come recommended for general readership (more will be added over time)
  • I’ve removed the archives. I have archives dating back to about the time that Cortez was sailing around looking for West Indians to kill with disease, swords and social networks.

A lesser known fact is that the Pordcast has moved to https://randypeterman.com/thepordcast/. Since its not active at the moment that’s not a huge loss. I do plan to resurrect it in the next few months with a new series on finances. Something that I know far too little about but plan on exploring and sharing with you what I find. As long as its not West Indians with socialized medicine and a penchant for corn roasted over bat guano.

Thankful Thursday: My Dad

Sure, its a few days late but being Father’s Day last week I needed to surprise the internets after the fact. My dad and mom are probably tired of me thanking them for the things they did growing up. They’re probably tired of me telling them that they have influenced me indelibly, but they’ll just have to deal with it.

My dad has been a tremendous role model for me.  He’s been a godly man, a humble man, a loving man, and as many of you can imagine he’s been a humorous man.  My dad taught me about puns, spoonerisms, play on words and various other silly things from an early age on.  I’m thankful for the laughter that he has brought to my own life for coming on three decades.  Outside of the list above my dad has dealt with pain and suffering well, too.  In his own life he’s dealt with a chronic disease and not made a big deal of it other than to share silly stories where that disease caused something funny or amusing to happen.  There are many events I could retell as events that I’m very thankful for, but I will share two.

The first landmark event was when my dad gathered the family around the kitchen table and humbly apologized for having worked such long hours as we were younger.  His admission to not spending enough time with the family was an act that redirected the family moving forward.  He made adjustments in his life and began spending much more time with us.  I knew my dad in High School unlike almost every single one of my friends and acquaintances.  He was my dad, and he was my friend.

Another critical series of events for me was right around when I turned 20.  My dad began to disciple me and teach me some important principles in the Bible that for some reason never showed up in Sunday School or Church for the first twenty years of my life.  Those times were rich with value, great in fellowship and important because of the content and things I would learn.  Some of those very things I’ve been trying to pass onto Sunday School students of my own for the last decade.

I’m very, very thankful for my dad, he’s been an incredible influence on my family and I look forward to the future as his adult son.

Creators Syndicate: An Old Model Shows Off Its Old Assets

I just got an email from Creators Syndicate this morning.  Some woman (I’m assuming its a woman) by the name of Andrea Fryrear (which is an unfortunate last name if you break it up as a compound word) sent me an email (with a from name of only ‘Andrea’ which is a good way to get tagged as spam Ms. Fryrear) asking me to take down a farside cartoon that I had posted on my website.  A single cartoon that I had found on the internet and copied onto my site.  I immediately complied because I want to be a law abiding citizen.  However, I had some questions for her: 1) How could I legally re-use the cartoon (could I pay a license fee) 2) Could I link to a Far Side book on Amazon.com and then the cartoon could potentially be a revenue generating advertisement for them?  I haven’t gotten a reply yet, but the whole thing bugged me.

Gary Larson apparently has written about the subject and you can read about it on the syndicate website.  It strikes me as a problematic solution to the real issue: the interwebs is a new model for publishing businesses and they must deal with the change.  There are tons of ways they could go about making the new model work for them:

1) Require all comics that are republished by independent publishers (like bloggers) link to their site where they sell the books, mugs, shirts, cell phone wrappers, bumper stickers and collectible enema boxes to people who link through

2) Require the images to be linking to amazon.com with their associates ID so that they get to make money on Amazon.com selling their stuff

3) Give it away realizing that the more exposure they have the more likely people will seek out the funny/good content in sources that pay them (such as newspapers, paying websites, and again, Amazon.com)

4) Give it away and just say, “Gee, this interweb thing will hopefully be a passing fad.”

But sitting around hiring people like Andrea (who I am sure is really nice and probably makes a killer vegetarian salad when you come over to her house because she wouldn’t even hurt dead meat) to send out emails and seek out places where their old model is leaking and stick her finges in them is not an ideal method.