Category Archives: Opinion

Color Me “Religionist”

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This is not a post for everyone. If you are not a protestant, if you are not a Christian, this is not for you. You will take offense at this most likely. With that said… I’ve probably sucked you in and you’ll continue to read and then get upset at me. I’m not sorry if you ignore this warning 🙂

I subscribe to the Bible in a Year Podcast. This weekend the host/reader/producer of the podcast, Rick, posted a ‘special’ podcast wherein someone else did a “study” on prayer. I place quotes around the study because it was really hinky. The first prayer he looked at was all of the following:

Jesus. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I recognize that Rick is a Catholic. I recognize that Catholicism is amazingly different from protestantism. I also recognize Jesus as my personal Savior. This is not a prayer. This is the name of my savior, a person. When I pray, it is not one word, it is to one person: God. To put this in perspective, prayer is communication with God. Similarly talking to my wife is communication with Jessica. I would not, no matter how goofy I am, walk up to my wife and say:

Jessica.

And then walk away.

I stopped listening to the podcast after about 10 minutes (I wasn’t keeping track, it could have been less, I’m just guessing). Why is it that I get so riled up about others trying to pray in single word prayers? Mostly because when Christ was talking to His disciples in John 15 he calls them friends. The principle in this context is that believers are not just removed from the Law, but that they are brought close to God and are hidden in Him (Colossians 3:3). If you have a friend in Jesus you’re not going to pray His name! His name is priceless, precious and special because He is a friend. It is not a prayer. Paul wrote in I Thessellonians 5:17 that we should pray without ceasing. Try praying that prayer very long and you’re going to give up and move along. However, if you are praying to your friend Jesus you will have lots to talk about. You will have lots to be thankful for, lots to request that He would be glorified, and lots that you can ask about for wisdom. You can pray for opportunities to share the Gospel, you can pray for lots of things, but it won’t just be His name over and over.

I’m still subscribing to the podcast because its nice to get incremented sections of scripture to listen to. I will not be listening to the rest of the special messages to avoid this sort of rant in the future. If I do listen, I will not blog about them :).You don’t need to read too many of these sorts of things.

OK, sorry if you’ve read even though I warned you not to and you’re now all bent out of shape about it. Like the title suggests I’m an intolerant Religionist. I guess this makes me a “fighting fundy.” [actually, not, I’m not much of a fighter.]

Supersize My Upsell

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This morning I took my Honda in to get its oil changed. I took it to the neighborhood Jiffylube because that’s the nearest oil changing station. When I arrived they asked me to go inside where an older man was glad to start chatting with me. I didn’t mind the company but he was really far too interested in the price of my house. Then, a woman called me out to the oil changing bay to ask me about my personal information so that they’d know what size socks to send me at Christmas. OK, not really. She wanted my home address and phone number. I told her I was married, but that didn’t deter here.

Then the big up sell scheme came in. They didn’t want to change my oil. No, just changing the oil was going to be too little for them. Instead they spent 4 minutes walking me through very nicely done graphical screens showing happy little icons saying, “Pick me!” However, because I’m in no way going to buy their schpiel on how I will get better gas mileage if I pay them an extra $30.00 I passed on everything. They would have to show me the prettiest charts with large doctoral dissertations proving that my $30.00 would save me $40.00 in the long run.

With the time they wasted trying to upsell me they could have finished my oil change and I could have gone onto the grocery store and stood in the long lines there sooner. But I’m getting whiney, so I’ll stop now 😉

The Brothers Grimm Beats Eks Vs. Sever

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However, its not much better. This movie had potential. However, however… blah, blah, blah. Don’t go see it. Save your money for something else. It’s dark, only sort of intense, and the transformer/werewolf thing was a weird-wolf. The rapunzel witch looks like she dated Yoda when they were both several hundred years younger.

Sorry, I’d put more energy into this review, but its not worth it. Just don’t go see it. Listen to me, the reviewers on rottentomatoes.com and your wallet: you have better things to do with your currency.

Rice + Chicken = BFF

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Apologies for the BFF reference. Since we all know that forever doesn’t last very long with food, I suppose I could hvae written Rice + Chicken = BFWSL. But I digress. When Jessica is gone at lunch time I like to make a tasty treat for myself. I grab whatever leftover meat products I have in the fridge (if you’re a vegetarian you could use Tofu based meat substitutes you have left over), I throw them into a lightly cooking oil sprayed pan and then let them warm up a bit. Then I add leftover rice (we usually have some of that around here, thank the Lord) and some salsa (usually we have the industrial sized Pace sitting in the back of the fridge for when Jess doesn’t make salsa fresca). I usually add water to help the rice moisturize (after exfoliating and washing of course) and put the lid on to help trap the steam. I often stir the ingredients to help assure that all is well and nothing burns or gets funky on me.

When I’m about to eat the food I plunk it onto a fine eating surface (read: a plate) and add some cheese (read: mozzerella or cheddar – again, if you’re vegitarian you could use tofu based cheese-like products) and then head down to my TV and turn on the food network to see if I can pick up any hot tips (Not hot chicks, unless you’re referring to other hot chicken dishes) on how to make more yummy food.

Randy’s Ande’s Mint Chip Ice Cream: AKA Govern-Mint

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The mint chip ice cream was a smashing success at Abby’s birthday party as well as at the church ice cream social we had last night. I felt bad for the other couple that brought pink mint ice cream (mink ice cream?) to the event because I was the first on the table and they were the last. However, it was good clean fun either way and I highly recommend to myself to post the recipe we used here so you can try it at home.

Oh, and at the ice cream social two sister-in-laws (two wives of the Matthew’s brothers) sang a fantastic cover of a song by Caedman’s Call. It was really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good. I would pay real money to listen to things like that regularly. I’m going to see if they’ll come over to ‘The Pordcast Studios’ and record it so that we can share it with the world.

When You Buy A Home, Buy A DeWalt

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We just bought our house nearly 4 months ago. The week after we moved in I bought a DeWalt drill. That has been the best $130.00 I’ve spent so far (besides the refrigerator so we could store fresh foods and left-overs, and that cost nearly ten times as much). Last night while assembling Abby’s new playthings all of the instructions had large circles with slashes through them – over a power drill. I laughed. Why? Because my DeWalt has tension settings so that I could avoid the problem with less expensive power drills: stripping out the plastic with the threading on the screws. The instructions said no power tools but I can’t imagine hand cranking a 2.5 inch, finely threaded screw X 4 X 4 [16 times].

Then I put up the cabinet doors for the kitchen and while I was frustrated with a few of the doors themselves, the screws went right in, and the magnetic tip held the screw in place so I could hold the door in place with my other hand. Do yourself a favor and buy a good drill when you get into various repair and home improvement projects. In the world of power tools, money buys lasting, quality tools. Don’t eat out a couple times in a month and spend the extra money on the upgrade to your tool package, you’ll thank yourself many times over.

All Things To All Men

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When I was in seminary I met a guy named Ezra Boggs. He happened to know more about various musicians than me, and he was into the local indy scene. I was humbled by this since it seemed that lots of folks were ignorant of it and he new way more than me. I was also humbled by his attitude of being an instrument or the living of Christ out for all men to see. I bought his band Not Called Common‘s CD “Love Songs for My Enemies” on iTunes today. The lyrics are intense, though the vocals are a little hard to pickup in some of the mixes.

Either way, read this article: All Things To All Men that Ezra wrote. It caused me to sit with a slight tear in my eye as I humbly realized that God works outside of my world in a bigger way than I’ll ever imagine.

Amen.

I Must [Not] Be Original

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I read some time ago that the desire to be all original all the time is a sign of imaturity. I’m sure that if I had the quote it would be handy, but I haven’t got it. Therefore, you’ll have to know that that quote is not original to me, but it does pop into my mind with some regularity. I appreciate art that I see that represents a style for the first time (usually, with some exceptions), I appreciate music that I’ve heard for the first time that sounds new or different. Heck, sometimes I hear something new, don’t like it, but then it grows on me (read: Mukula). My buddy Tony Nuzzi kept saying he liked it and I kept saying, “No.” After a while I listened to it again and realized that it was much like some Beck music I was listening to. Doh!

There’s a lot to be said for originality in software as well. However, doing something a new and different way just to make it new and different and unlike its predecessors is either arogant or ignorant. People are used to certain things and not delivering on what they’re used to is more than likely going to reduce usability and confuse them. Originality in what your software does, however, is fantastically cool. Everytime a new web app gets talked about but no one says what its going to do, I get a little excited, hoping that it will be something new and revolutionary. However, I have not thought of anything original in the world of software design and programming with a few exceptions, and those may or may not be original, but they were not seen by me before my design and use of them.

In short, I want to re-affirm the idea that always being original, all the time is going to slow you down, keep you distracted and may actually prevent you from making the breakthrough that would be original had you been in the right place and right time to achieve that originality. Or, like Microsoft, you could just copy the Apple Interface and call it good. Because it is.

Gender Defender

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I have run into various parents that for whatever reason do not want to know what gender their baby is going to be. This is a really, really odd thing for me and something I don’t understand. Therefore, I’ve put a lot of thought into what may be the motivation for this decision. Unfortunately, since I’m a bit of a nut-job and because I have an over-active imagination I’ve come up with the following set of thoughts:

You are going to find out what gender your child is at some point in time, aren’t you? What is the problem with finding out 6 or 4 or 2 months early? If you’re not going to find out, why not hire a nurse, nanny and child care staff and then you could have the baby, ask the nurse to cover the baby up before you see the ‘lower’ part of the baby and then you’d still not know. Further, you could only see the child for non-diaper changing or bathroom related times. To help stave off any actual gender related concerns you could name the child Terry, Leslie, Kerry or Pat. Furthermore you could attempt to limit your child’s exposure to anything gender related as a whole and therefore call yourself and your parental partner parent unit one and parent unit two.

Then, of course, one day you will not that several things may happen:
Shaving, buying of feminine products, voice changes and of course the real gender identifyer hygeine products in general. It is my opinion that if it is a boy these products may not go up in demand until maybe 16 or 17 as most boys don’t figure out bathing until they realize girls care about that sort of thing. But I digress…

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not finding out until the baby is born – that’s something that each parent (set) needs to figure out – but we wanted to find out so we could start buying tampons early, I figure there’s gonna be a major price increase on those some day, just like oil, and we’ll have a major stockpile.

Like Sanding an Hour Glass

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I got a DeWalt sander a month or two ago for a refinishing project I never got to (Yes! My first non-started project for the house). However, yesterday I got to use it on our kitchen cabinet doors and it rocks! Actually, it doesn’t rock. It sands smoothly with very little vibration. I have used several different sanders in the past and this one by far holds the record for the most useful sander with the least user fatigue.

If you find yourself needing to sand something and don’t need an orbital or belt sander for the project (and you better find out what kind of sander you need or you could be sorry) this is a very, very nice sander.