Bad Christmas Song

If you stay up later than normal recording music, it might turn out bad. Or the song could just be about being bad. Apologies to Les Claypool for stealing his vocal qualities for the chorus for one of the vocal tracks. It’s rough, but so is the fact I’m going to bed later than usual.

Please, download it, laugh at my sad musicianship, and then pass this MP3 along to the MPAA, RIAA or a CPA and make sure I get sued for using some fellow’s music and lyrics. Or, someone can turn it into a funny flash animation’s sound track and then we’ll both get sued.

Enjoy the song [I’m getting nothing for Christmas].

Hot Air. Hot Water.

This morning we awoke at 6:00 AM and thought, “Holy Shnikies! It’s cold in here.” That would be because our thermostat was down lower than usual. Or so I thought. Turns out that our central heating was not working correctly so that only cool air would be blown out of the heating vents. So this afternoon after doing everything I knew how to do I walked all 200 steps to the front offive of our apartment complex and had them send the repair guy over. He scooted through our bikes and fixed the heater. Ahhh, refreshing hot air.

However, our water heater has been cold as well. Which makes for shorter showers in the house since the hottish water is not as comforting as the hot water is. So I had them fix that, too. I will say that the cold air made the hottish water feel much more like hot water. Maybe a broken heater is a good thing 😉

Geese

Flickr Photo
Geese
There have been a lot of Canadian Geese out in a field next to our apartment here. So I took some pictures. This one actually turned out OK. I really would like a zoom lense, but I’ll have to wait until I have the resources. With a Zoom lense I could have ‘gotten closer’ and the image would have been a little clearer. I also would not have had to have scared the geese!

Hebrews 1:1-3

Hebrews 1:1-3 really struck me tonight. I looked at the description there of Christ and found myself thinking how amazing Christ was compared to who I might have, in my puny mind, thought of Him as. Check it out:

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

The author of Hebrews is not known for certain. Some suggest a Pauline authorship, I have seen Timothy ascribed as well. However, the authorship is surely supernaturally the work of the Holy Spirit. This powerful opening to the book is clearly written to the Hebrews who would be ever-so-familiar with the fathers and the prophets as well as their portions and many ways. However, Christ is a newer and more important subject, one the author of Hebrews powerfully delves into in Chapter one!

We see in verse one a reference to Genesis 1:1 and at the very least the theology of John 1:1. We also see that Christ is to be the heir of all things, the kingship promised to David’s heir (ref) is His.

Verse three just blows me away. Christ is the radience of God’s glory here on earth. Whatever radience Moses may have had after being on Mt. Sanai (Exodus 34:29) was nothing compared to the radience of Christ in his ascended form (Colossians 3:1). Furthermore, Christ is not only God’s glory, but his nature as well! God’s perfect nature is in all three person’s of the Trinity, something that makes me marvel. Uphold comes from the Greek word (transliterated) fero which means to carry or bear. However, instead of this being a physical endurance, it is something that comes about ‘by the word of His power.’ God’s supernatural power sustains us, through Christ. If our sustaining comes from Him, there is no failure for His own!

After having purified His own from their sins through His death, burial, resurrection and ascension he was seated on the throne at the right hand of God. This is similar to the Colossians 3:1 passage which refers to the exact same event. This theanthropism, or attribution to God of human like qualities, is not alone in scripture, but the description of God, who is light having a left or right hand is quite poetic. The right hand is historically a place of favor and blessing. I don’t mean to be disgusting or to offend, but historically, when toilette paper was a future invention, the left hand was dirty due to its use as a cleaner hand. Therefore, being on the right hand was a blessing, and on the left hand,… well, it just wasn’t a blessing.

This picture of Christ, which continues on in the rest of the chapter and on into chapter two is powerful and contrasts that very human picture of Christ given in the Gospels. I imagine that Paul, seeing Christ on the raod to Damascus, saw Him in His glory, which sure enough, would be blinding to say the least. I also imagine that Christ, seated on His throne next to God the Father, looks at us, those who are hidden with Him with pleasure because we are in Him!

Why I Have a Business Phone

I have a Business phone because I’m technically a consultant. This means that if you go to my contact us page on the main site you’ll discover that you can call me on my (cell) phone and discuss business (and frankly most other things you might like to discuss). However, I would guess that 30% of the phone calls I get are wrong numbers.

In fact I just got a phone call from a very confused woman looking for a relative. She was looking for a gal who’s name I don’t recall. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Randy Peterman
Her: Hello, is [female name] there?
Me: No, I believe you’ve got the wrong number
Her: Is this [so-and-so’s] house?
Me: No, this is Randy Peterman
Her: Well, can I speak to [so-and-so]?
Me: No, ma’am, I think you’ve got the wrong number, this is a business. You’ve called Randy Peterman Digital Research & Development
Her: Well what happened to [so-and-so]?
Me: I don’t know ma’am, I think you’ve got the wrong number.
Her: I’m sorry, I guess I’ve got the wrong number

Well, at least we both hung up the phone not knowing the correct number she was trying to call, and agreeing that she had the wrong number. It kinda reminded me of this (mp3 file, should be playable on most computers post Windows 3.1 and Mac OS IV).

Full Weekend

This weekend, like so many holiday season weekends, was full. Yesterday was Abby’s dance recital. The recital mostly consisted of her walking around the stage saying, “Daddy? Where’s my daddy?” Which made me feel special; it also made me laugh. However, it was cute and I enjoyed that she wanted to know I was watching. She never found me up high in the auditorium, but that was OK, she had fun, and so did we.

Tonight we had a church Christmas party, which was fun. I lead the music, which went better than I expected. However, apparently I’m known as the ‘fast music guy’ because when we got to ‘Away in the Manger’ I was trying to do it slow and they blitzed through the song. I’m sure that since I was supposed to be the leader I failed to communicate enough about the tempo ahead of time with lead in chords. I’ll post some little video clips from the dance recital tomorrow after I get some rest!

When Two Year Olds Are Quiet

If you’re a parent, then you’ve experienced the fun of children doing the unexpected (unless of course you have an infant who is imobile). This evening at around 4:55 we discovered that Abby had climbed into the bathtub and managed to empty most of her blueberry shampoo and some of her milky-white-make-you-clean soap into the bathtub and also all over herself. To make matters worse she was clothed. So I had to strip her, removing a wet pull-up, and then get bath water running.

I’ve got video footage from shortly after the discovery of the explorer. It’s in QuickTime format (since Mac’s rule).

PodCasting: Not Just for MP3 Junkies

Nick Bradbury released the latest beta of FeedDemon which does something that no other person I’ve read talks about: PodCasting without the iPod. Maybe I missed something before, but I thought that to use PodCasting you had to have one. However, to clear up any misconceptions, I’m going to say it officially: With FeedDemon you don’t need an iPod. Or any other MP3 toting device (though it would rock if I could get them into my Nokia 3300 MP3 friendly cell phone, but I digress). What is so cool is that FeedDemon will suck the RSS enclosures onto your machine and it will add them to playlists for your Windows Media Player or iTunes!

So, here’s what you do

  1. Buy FeedDemon if you haven’t already
  2. Download the beta
  3. Setup the FeedStation (Tools | Open FeedStation)
  4. Subscribe to feeds that have Enclusures (included in the beta, make sure you subscribe to the PodCasting Channel Group)
  5. If you set FeedStation to download the files at some time you’ll have to wait until they’re downloaded, otherwise once the downloads are there the playlists will be available in their respective players. No iPod or Rio needed!

Rock on Nick!