BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

Driving in to work today I noticed more noise coming from the car when I hit bumps.

Run out to get a shake a McD’s and notice my muffler is hanging sideways. Look under the car. The hole in before the Catalytic converter is no longer a hole….it is a complete break in the exhuast. The muffler clamps the hold it on straight broke, and the whole exhuast is hanging by the O2 Sensor and a small clip in the middle of the mid-pipe between the cat and exhaust..and it is hanging completely sideways.

So, before I go home the whole exhaust has to come off or has to be tied back up so it isn’t dragging when I hit bumps.

Just my luck…and on a friday too.

All Da Way to Schwifty-five.

So this post is dedicated to not only mangling the english language in spelling…..oh….I won’t stop there

That is right…today…is use EVEN WORSE THAN USUAL PUNCTUATION DAY!!!!!!!

Brought to you by this post, and 10 minutes of work time w/o anything to do before I go home! <:o

Besides feeling the need to use terrible punctuation…1 w1LL bR34k 1nt0 r4Nd0m c4p1t4L1z4T10n5 4nD Numb3rs m1X3d 1n w/ sp3LL1ng.

That takes tooooooo LONG!!!!

Other updates, I went out this weekend and had a wonderful dinner at Jax Cafe. It cost more than the processor I want for my computer upgrade, but it was worth every cent. No the food wasn’t that good, but it was great fun to go to a place w/ nice ambiance and get dressed up and everything.

Well, my ten minutes is up, time to go to a brewery to eat dinner w/ Jeff and maybe sample some of this amazing beer Phil H. is talking about.

Ben Steinberg (a.k.a. the Bald Kid) emailed me last night / this morning. Everything is so drastic in his life. He feels something at all, he runs with it, or shuts down his emotions. Most the time he shuts down anything that isn’t absolutely necessary in his mind / heart. I know what that is like to a lesser degree, and I’ve been to some of the places he is in (in his mind). I think the problem is he lives in those places, and I was merely (or still am sometimes) a visitor.

It was great to hear from him. Sometimes I really miss the relationship we had. He was somewhat reminiscing in his email. Brought up the old days of watching wrestling, playing mortal kombat or mario kart, and skating. All fond memories.

Man, makes me really miss C-U, and days of less responsibility in general. I wish I had a purpose for my life. I feel like a cash cow that is primarily functioning to get money to enable other people to do things. I feel like I have strong leadership potential (not gifting….you like that word choice James ), but no people to lead….which means I’m not really a leader. A good leader draws people to him / her, and hears God speak, so he can direct them in His ways. I don’t think I do that….I know I’m not now, cuz I’m not gathering anyone to anywhere.

So, like Steinberg, I just want to know where I fit….not just comfortable and mold to where I am. Oh, and I want to raise people from the dead…or at least see an amputated leg grow back or something. I think that is one of the bestest moments for gathering people to the church, and I really think it is great to be able to see God give people their physical and spiritual needs.

Well, we finished our first official public church service. It was pretty cool. About 35 to 40 people showed up including the team. I ran sound, that went OK. I was able to get a better sound out of it this week than last I think…which is probably to be expected since we have about 30 minutes of practice time if we’re lucky.

Jeff preached a good sermon, mostly on stuff I’d heard him talk about one time or another before, but it was a great first public service kind of sermon. Worship was cool, and ministry time was more to what I would expect from a typical Vineyard service. It is always nice to have new people to pray for.

It seemed like several of the people that came were part of the Minneapolis Vineyard which burnt out rather badly I heard. It is sad to hear stories like that. But I wonder if those people will come back. It seemed like they all had churches they were fairly happy with, so I don’t know what was up. I think they mostly wanted to come check us out and support our efforts….but I didn’t really ask why they showed up, so maybe they will come back. I really wonder how we can keep up the publicity to attract new people, cuz I found that to be a fairly exhausting use of my time last weekend. Maybe if we just had some crazy miracles we wouldn’t have to worry about publicity.

Other than that I’m really worried about Lauren, she has developed something resembling Asthma attacks that are fairly severe and completely unrelated to any physical activity she is participating in. It was particularly bad last night when we were going to bed, and she had one while watching a movie. Both activities that involve laying down or sitting…not exercising. Man, I hate doctors sometimes…it is annoying when they just snap diagnose people. Now this inhaler she has isn’t really doing anything. I wonder if it is adult onset asthma, or something else.

I prayed for her last night, and it is getting depressing to pray for physical healing. I muster up every last bit of faith I can, completely convince myself that this should work, and then *POOF* ….Nothing. People keep telling me that they think I have the gift of healing (mostly Lauren…and sometimes Dirk), but I never operate in that gifting so I fail to see how I can actually have that anointing on my life. And I don’t fail for lack of trying. Frustrating.

Well. Other than that, the weekend was good. Walked on the ice on Lake Calhoun on Saturday, got a comic…they for some reason didn’t have the last spiderman book I missed…so I only picked up “Strange” issue 2. Watched Garden State again…liked it a little better this time. I noticed more subtle uses of color this time.

Well, day two is come and gone.

It would be nice if I got a good sense of when I can stop this fast. But basically I heard (I think) that I need to just deal with it, and be happy…even rejoice that I get to suffer like this. So, besides that I basically heard “Suck it up, I’ll let you know when you can stop. Get over yourself, it really isn’t that bad.”

Well, that being said, I have some other things I’ve learned.

1. Drinking a double stout and an old engine oil stout for dinner is cheating. I was hoping it wasn’t but I was wrong. That was three hours or better of not hungry.

2. Going to poker night is good, going to poker night while fasting and everyone else is drinking beer and eating chips is not so good. At least I won my money back. I’m getting better at poker…and I have some strategies on how to change up my play for next week….got to keep them guessing.

3. Without discipline you will drink too much stuff. Like today I almost killed one of those big plastic things of V8, two large cokes, and a can of Mt. Dew….for the record….I’m still FREAKING STARVING!

4. Work is a lot harder while fasting….plan for this to be the case…don’t wait for your boss to give you hard work to do…like cold calling people to try to sell them more computer stuff. That happened to me today…it sucked.

All in all this is going pretty good. I am grouchy, but actually less upset than I was when I started. I had one of those pissed off moments at God for being here w/o my old crew to watch the Super Bowl. Not that anything is wrong w/ my current crew, but I really just missed my old one….and I see these guys a lot…when I had seen my old crew this much I was kinda tired of seeing them too.

So, after a lot of bitching on the way to work and throughout the day, I had an awesome fun time relaxing at poker night, and I’ve been praying more today instead of just bitching. And that is good. I guess I’m kinda getting psyched up spiritually for our service.

Oh, before I forget. Why do people fast? I was saying to Caleb that I thought the big part of fasting was that it was supposed to be a reminder to pray every time you think about being hungry, and he said that for him that bit was only about a 1/3 to a 1/4 of it. But he never said what the rest was (or I forgot or didn’t hear cuz it was loud). So I got to thinking. I heard someone say it is kind of a way petitioning God. I don’t really like that much, so I’m trying to stay away from that mind set…I don’t see it leading down positive paths. So what other reasons do you fast for? What do you usually get out of it? If you don’t get anything out of it, why do you do it?

K, So I’m sick and freaking tired of renaming and retagging mp3’s I download from various churches websites.

Schmelzer is about the worst, sugarland vineyard is probably the best so far.

Here is a simple guide to naming your sermons you put online.

1. Unless you have sermons online from prior to 2000, your naming scheme should be “Date - title of sermon” and the date should be in the yymmdd.

This is because who gives a crap if it has the 200x full date if you don’t have sermons from 1999 or earlier, and it is easier to sort if the file name starts w/ the year then the month and day. This will make sure they display in chronological order on your computers file lists.

2. Sort your directories by the author if you want or put their name after the date in the file name if you want them in one directory….do not put their name first. This makes sorting a terrible bitch.

3. All new mp3 playing software supports what they call ID3 tags, and they support ID3 version 2.something. This means you should USE ID3 TAGS. Hell, the Ipod doesn’t give a shit about the file name, it only lets you sort by your tags, so bad or no tags is not professional and not a good way to present your sermons online. To that end, I will detail how to properly tag your mp3’s for sermons.

4. The Title tag is the name of your sermon preferably precede by the date in the same format as the file name and a dash. Thus it looks like this “050204 - Bitching about MP3 tagging” in the title section. This makes it really simple to chronologically sort your mp3’s. Just putting the word “sermon” in the title is not acceptable.

5. The author is going to be the guy talking. Not the name of the church, not the senior pastor….the person who delivered the sermon is the only thing that can be here.

6. The album should be the church…not the sermon series. There is another better place for the series. So for my example it would be “Mercy Vineyard Church”…except I wouldn’t be actually ever preaching about file naming.

7. Comment section should be the word “Series: ” followed by the name of the series. You can sort by this field if you need to in any mp3 playing software, so this is a great place for this.

8. Genre should be either “Sermon” or “Spoken Word”. Use “Sermon” if it is an ID3 ver. 2.0 or higher tag, and “Spoken Word” if it is ver. 1.x. This is only because you are limited with what you can put in the old version. But most everything that is anything should support the 2.x version of the tags. No new mp3 player will have a problem w/ ver. 2.x tags.

9. The rest is pretty self explanatory. The track # is the number in the series, the year is the year….this time w/ the full 200x.

There you have it….I will not settle for less in our naming whenever we put our sermons online…neither should other places.