BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

Current Mood:  excited

Last weekend at my church Jon our senior pastor spoke on politics. In the bulletin he put Rich Nathan’s latest letter to his congregation.

This idea, about being a resident alien, pretty much underlies all of my thinking as of late on politics.

I don’t think I can ignore the country I’m living in and the wonderful opportunity of effortlessly making my opinion heard. But neither can I believe that Christians can rely on the government to be our co-opted agent for the advancement of the kingdom.

I do think that our application of scripture and our understanding of world we live can cause intelligent and thinking Christians to have opposing viewpoints. And, being Christians, we can express our concerns, ideas, and opinions in a manner that is uplifting and thought provoking.

Armed with a great sermon and letter rattling in my noggin, I asked to lead the small group this week. I read Rich’s letter aloud, and opened with a question I think we all have an answer for.

‘What, if any, particular concern facing our country do you find the most scary.’

We had a great talk, and we proceeded to talk about things we can do to help deal with any of those fears, and then went on to talk about the particular areas we feel like God is pulling on our heart about.

There are people leaning conservative and some hard-core democrats, and everything in between in my group. We had a completely civil, respectful, and I believe productive discussion. My favorite part was talking about what we can do to get involved in the topics that God has really put on our hearts. I learned about some things I’ve never heard about before, and I got to give some of my thoughts on world-wide genocide. About half the small group hadn’t heard about Darfur, which sadly didn’t surprise me.

So, anyway, I was really excited by how well it went. It made me remember that all of us are just trying to make the best of what we see around us. And that most people I know are really trying to do their best to impact their little corner of the world for the better. And with how disappointed I’ve been of the really partisan, emotionally charged, and divisive government we have had for a while now, this really helped to affirm my suspicion that things are changing. Christians are listening more than ever and many more than before standing up for issues like poverty, social justice, and health care as well as our typical platform. Democrats are re-learning to speak a language that people of faith can understand and relate to. And all this makes me pretty excited to see what we can accomplish in the next decade or so as a nation and as Christians.

I’ve been playing quite a bit now and I have some likes and dislikes that I thought might be worth noting.
( Likes )
( Dislikes )
Despite these dislikes I think this might be my favorite if just because of online play and the course design being way crazier. Also the rubber band AI is always OK for playing with newbies - so we had a lot of good times at my party the other day.

In other notes, I’m home sick today so I’ve just about beaten all the GP circuits. And I’ve unlocked all but a handful of the ‘fast’ staff ghosts on time trials. I’ve gotten one 3-star round, and a handful of 2-stars and a bunch of A’s, B’s, and 1-stars. I hear you have to get 1-star ranking on a bunch of GP circuits to unlock certain things. That might be tough w/ the AI bombing me all the time when I’m in front for 2 laps. I plan on doing a little work, but I’ll mostly be trying to relax and eat (my throat is hurting so that it is hard to swallow), so if you want to IM me or give me a call (college people who are out of finals) I might be up for a little online action.

Current Mood:  frustrated

So while I was diligently planning my security system and working out ways to fund it someone (meaning the same person as before) broke into my house again and re-stole all the stuff that was just re-bought to replace the other stolen things.

This includes: The new wii, all the games, the new laptop, and about 2/3 or 3/4 of our DVDs.

This time, no broken window. Oh no, the entire front door was kicked in, now necessitating my front door being boarded up. This incident comes complete with a new round of me paying the deductible, and getting more insurance company checks.

The ironic part, the check for the window repair and the depreciation value of the wii arrived yesterday.

It is no longer a matter of figuring out how to pay for a security system, it is just where we are willing to put the debt required to buy the thing or to build it.

Needless to say, we are more than a little upset today. I had to bail from work before 2pm, and having been through the process once before we were able to make all the calls and get things boarded up before 7pm. The CSI people came out and fingerprinted the crap out of my house this time. And the guy pulled out all my AV stuff from the TV stand this time in order to pull out my ipod dock along with the Wii.

I was fortunately able to use this as an excuse to properly re-route and cable tie all the system wiring, and make it all look really clean.

Again, I feel super blessed that no one was hurt, and that the police have responded really well to this break-in. I’m also very happy that this time I properly installed the lojack software on the laptop so if it connects to the internet we should be able to find it.

So anyway, if I’m not participating in much this weekend or for the next week or so, that is why.

Circuit city is going to have Wii’s tomorrow, so I’ll get up a little early and head there before church and get a new Wii.

Here is the question; Given that some of the games I had, I have no desire to replace, what should I get?

The games I used to have:
Zelda - beat it, never play it anymore.
Mario Galaxy - It looks pretty and is kinda fun, but was way easy and gave me a headache
SSX Blur - A great unwind game for me. Could play for a few minutes at a time and then put it down if I wanted. But didn’t really play it much anymore
Raymonds Raving Rabbids 2 - Had just opened it before it was stolen. Hadn’t even been put in the Wii yet. Read a review that said the original is better and cheaper to boot since it is older.
Guitar Hero 3 - Easily my current favorite. Apparently you can’t buy (or easily find anyway) a game-only version of this, so I will be getting a second guitar since the thieves couldn’t bother to steal the guitar with the game…dumbasses.

So, definitely re-buying Guitar Hero, and I’m pretty much set on getting Metroid Prime 3 instead of Zelda (even though Lauren hates metroid). I really want a multi-person focus on some of the games, hence the Raymond purchase before. I also bought on clearence Tony Hawk Proving Ground, but since it was uber-cheap ($15) I’m not expecting much but a basic Tony Hawk sequel.

What else should I get? Wario Ware? Raymonds Rabbids 1? An RPG? If so which one? Some game like SSX that is easy to play for short spurts? Just put my money in for a pre-order of Mario Kart and fore go the easy-out for Lauren getting me a B-day present (it comes out a week or so before my birthday, making possibly the easiest slam-dunk Ben Catlin B-day present in history). I’m not a fan of Smash Brothers in general, but I’m open to that if it is truely ‘fun’.

Thoughts?

So our house was busted into today. Someone busted in our kitchen window while we were all at work, and stole stuff, and then left the back door open.

Missing Items:

• Wii and 1 Wii-mote
• All Wii Games - but the guitar for guitar hero, and attached wii-mote still remain intact
• Digital Camera we bought in late summer
• New Laptop - ironically which came with theft tracking software which I never installed cuz I forgot about it.
• Old Pentium 3 laptop that we had loaned / given to our roomate
• Dignity and sense of safety in my own home

We have a $1000 deductible so I’m pretty sure if we get list price on the important things (i.e. everything except the old laptop and my diginity, because those were much older and harder to value) I bet I can walk into best buy or somewhere similar with a list and how much money I am going to pay for everything on the list….which will coincidentally be about $1000 less than the list price.

I’m most sad that our budget spreadsheets, the pictures we moved from the camera to the laptop, my game save-files from the wii, and Lauren’s schoolwork. Cuz everything else is replaceable.