BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

I like wine, but if you drink almost a whole bottle yourself, you don’t realize the effects until you stand up.

Besides that, things are OK. I hung out at Calebs last night, I talked to Jeff a while. Got to tell him about my fun times with my folks, and my new ideas about how big I want to dream about this church plant. That was cool.

Fighting with Laurens parents….the drama never stops with me.

I’m tipsy now…so I’m going to watch more naruto, and then enjoy the rest of the evening with my wife.

So tomorrow after I bust out of this joint, we’re heading to madison to crash at a nice econo lodge. Maybe connect with dwchang, then on to chicago. Anyone got some time to catch lunch with us, maybe at portillos. I know I need to phone wang, but what about you Rob? or anyone else? Just leave me a comment when and where would be the best time for you.

After that on to cleveland. for a little time off, which is much needed right now. Also, enough food to make me unbutton my pants…thats the ticket.

Hmm….besides that the church is starting a real service come late January. I think that will be cool. Jeff talks about it like it is all this work, and thats cool cuz it will be, but I’m just not convinced that being this cautious about it is worth my time. I know there are other people who are probably more concerned about it, but I’m seriously like “what else are we going to do.” I told him that yesterday, but there are other people who we have added on who live in the area who might not want to make that kind of commitment, but my new Big Dreaming attitude won’t let me be pleased with all this talk about how hard it is going to be.

Lauren is totally going to a ton of charity / outreach / mission type of things. It is really cool cuz she is starting to deveolop a true idea of what social justice really would look like, or how we can start participating in it. It is like she has taken this really broad approach to seeing as much of the stuff around the city that is wrong, or looked into programs around that are reaching out to the hurting parts of the community, and she is trying to look at this bigger picture. I kinda like that cuz we toss around this “social justice” phrase, but it always just says “charity” work to me. Her approach says much more about building up a true understanding of what this areas social justice would look like. Also I’m really proud of her just for approaching this in a broader manner. Usually she just focuses in on one or two little things and gets hooked on them, but she has been doing crazy kinds of stuff to get this new picture of what our church can do to better understand the city around us. Anyway, I’m proud of her, and I think this is one of the better approaches to this kind of thing I’ve ever seen….but then again, I’m biased toward broader system based approaches, and my wife.

Thats about it, hope everyone else is having a good break. Don’t forget all my geeky friends, the Nintend DS has arrived and there is already a free site to get one, more updates for those interested after I sign up and figure out what is the best offer for signing up.

Database still broken…if you want to see why look at this and pay close attention to the database section, more specifically where it says DBD::SQLite, and notice the not installed part. I’m going to email the guy in charge and ask whats up, but I’m not holding my breath. They must have decided that SQLite was not worth letting web stuff access. Oh well. Until that sorts itself out, or I upgrade to use MySQL, I’m on here……glad I keep this thing around now.

I just got back from “Finding Neverland” and let me say, it was the right movie at the right time. I loved it, but where I am with myself inside my own head is a big part of why I liked it. I fully expect a whole lot of people to not like it….except Johny Depp was great, I hope he wins an oscar.
Continue reading ‘What to say???’

Well, my site appears to be broken (at least for posting and commenting). It is nothing of my own doing this time, so I’m wondering if there are upgrades going on, or if someone hacked me using some vunerability in MT that I haven’t bothered to patch. So I’m writing here instead, cuz I feel like writing. Oh, and before I forget, the wedding pictures are all online now. Well the photographers pictures…I haven’t gone through the table cameras yet and scanned any of them.

I went Christmas shopping this weekend, we finished almost all of it. That was cool. Except my feet hurt really bad afterwards. I returned the one Ipod and picked up the 40 GB photo Ipod. My opinion of Itunes is still mixed. I don’t like it overall, to much guessing what I want to do, not enough fine tuned control. It handles the photo part really poorly. Any of my Mac fanatic friends know if Iphotos or whatever the hell that software is handles the new photo stuff better? And if it does, is it available on Windows yet? I do have to say, that having stuff right there in front of me, sortable by any ID3 tag field is nice. It is making my re-tagging, and sorting go fairly well. But I don’t like how it updates the Ipod, so I messed with some stuff, screwed up my Ipods database, and decided to reformat, and not load any music until it is all tagged corectly - artist, song name, and genre. Also, I need to figure out what I want to do with a making a playlist to associate with the wedding slideshow.

Well, at any rate Ipods are cool, and I’m thinking about how to use PodCasting to distribute sermons…what was a great idea Rob had, and I’m very interested in it now. It is essentially the idea of using RSS feeds with files linked to them to collect things while you sleep so it is available in the morning. People have alread writen software to do this for you, and then it dumps it onto the Ipod. Very nice.

My laptop is broken, I have it at work with me, and I’m going to work on it after 5. Lauren is going to a meeting, so no hurry to get home. Other than that Naruto is pretty cool, on episode 51. Just after the Rock Lee vs. Gaara fight. Very cool. That Gaara guy seems like a punk though. Kinda sux he has this stupid magical shield of sand, and can get his ass kicked and it still works. Rock Lee had some cool techniques though, even though he can’t do any illusionary things. Also, I need to finish metroid, because 2 looks cool and I want to finish this one before I get (or recieve in the case of Christmas) the next one.

Thanksgiving…I’m leaving either tuesday night or wednesday morning. If anyone wants to catch me in Madison or Chicago, leave a comment, cuz I haven’t planned anything for sure yet, so I have time to work.

Finally, I’m feel kinda out of place here. It seems like everyone is starting to figure things out, and settle in. But in everything I do, I’m just accepting how it is, and moving forward, not fitting in. Last night we were talking about starting a service for the church plant, and I so totally would have nothing to do that I’m good at. There is no tech for acoustic worship without a projector, even if there was I don’t like doing tech all that well unless I get to really go nuts with it. Even the sound board gets boring after a while….which is why I doze off and forget to turn peoples mics on/off at the appropriate times. Also there are these pillar things that are in Jeffs “diagram” for our church vision…I suck at all of them. They are like charity stuff (I’m not using social justice because I think that is just a popular buzz word for doing charity), being silent and contemplating, discipling, worship, supernatural stuff, and evangelism. I suck at all of those. Lauren tried to tell me I don’t suck at discipling, but I don’t know if I agree with her. Hell I can’t get my own self straight, let alone help point people in the right direction.

At any rate, I’ll probably just work really hard at whatever needs to be done with the service just to make sure things get done, since I’m not actually good at anything that needs to be done, or there is someone else who is better or percieved as better. So no where to fit there either. But at least I can help things move along. I can set up chairs, pass out stuff, fill a seat and make things look like it is more popular..etc. So that will be what I do to take my mind off the fact that I don’t have anything to do that I feel like is actually worth me doing. Also I want to point out I will be right back where I said I would never be again setting up tables and chairs, and helping prep stuff for a service. At least I decided I want to go to this church…better than just being dragged into doing it like it was with my parents leading the church.

Work is going a little better, I’m doing some important stuff. Mostly with this bastard program called “Crystal Reports” which will not connect to our database for some reason. I blame microsoft and the database software for distributing this crap across the network with dynamic links to configuration files.

Well, I’m back to work, and then fixing my laptop and finishing re-tagging my mp3’s…fun stuff.

X-posted to my LiveJournal.

So today I found out instead of getting an Ipod / mini / IRiver / Rio Carbon from mp3players4free, they will send you $275 via Paypal, or a $275 Visa gift card. How Cool is that? They just added this thing to the list of “free gifts.” No hasseling with returning the thing to get the photoipod. I thought that was cool.

Oh, and if you want to skip getting the smaller Ipod and just jump to the photo Ipod at 40GB, check out freephotoipods.

Just thought there might be a few people out there interested in this. Continue on with your boring almost no new posts on LJ day.

Lauren went the cause conference this weekend. So I decided I would occupy my time with a variety of things. Friday night I stopped off and found out I was in the wrong DMV to get a license if you are from out of state, then got some groceries at Sams, and went to a conference at the Church of the Open Door (don’t ask, I dont’ know why it is called that). That was cool. I met a really nice guy. Prayed for some people / sorta led some prayer with people who were very new to the 5 step model. They were introducing it at this conference and talked a lot about Kingdom stuff. The speaker was Todd Hunter, former head of the Vineyard. He was pretty good, but I can see how Burt Wagner would make a better head of a movement.

I watched many episodes of Naruto Friday when I got home, and Saturday morning. Then I returned some borrowed comics, bought more comics, and talked to the comic store people who were very cool. Then I went to Lake Calhoun and sat and read my comics. That area is very very nice. I could totally live in that neighborhood and feel good about myself.

Came home, watched a lot…and I mean a lot of Naruto. Then I put the boards in my comics, closed up my box, and picked up around the house so Lauren would be happy about the cleanliness of it when she got home. Cooked dinner, talked to Dan Mast for a long time, watched more Naruto until Lauren got home at 2am. Talked to Lauren for a good long time, went to sleep.

Then Sunday was nice, we did a lot of normal stuff, but we did go for a walk and enjoy the nice day.

Monday I found some things out. 1. I need my brothers and Rob to clear and I get the second Ipod, which means if things go quickly this week, I can totally have it in time to get return it, and get the photoipod before we go to thanksgiving. That is the goal. 2. All the games I considered buying for my GBA (even though I might, but probably not yet, have a DS by then) aren’t comming out until after I leave for Cleveland. That includes Final Fantasy 1& 2 combo, and zelda: the minish cap (which I found out doesn’t come out till next year…WTF!!! I thought it was out already)

So Zelda 2 it is…it is cheap, I haven’t beat it, and I don’t feel like I can call myself a zelda player until I do..even though it is the bastard zelda.

Other than that, more pictures are going to be added to the website tonight probably. I found a tool to make it go faster, so I should finish that up tonight.

That is all for now, hope you all are having fun.

Well I’m waiting to get something that looks like a task that involves selling things. I haven’ talked to customer yet, and I am only somewhat familiar with our quoting software. I work a lot helping build computers in the back, and I get paid like 2.5 times what I did at school to do similar work.

My wife and Dad both think I should look for a different job. I don’t know if I agree with them, but sometimes the grass always looks greener on the other side, if you know what I’m saying.

I have a couple other things I’ve been mulling over in my head. Sooner or later I’ll write about them. One is about me maybe becoming politically active, and the other is about some thinking about thinking I’ve been doing. I mean I’ve been thinking about how I approach things, and what is the right and wrong way to arrive at conclusions about them.

Anyway, that is enough for now, I’m going in the back to finish soldering a bunch of cables I’m making.