Pardon the mess...

With the new year, I made the update to blogger beta (now blogger standard!) and now I'm playing around with widgets. I miss some of the customizability of the old layout templates, but some of the new stuff works pretty well too. If I find that I don't like the new layouts much, I'll end up reverting back to the old one.

That's one way to kick off the new year

One of the first things I hear in 2007:

"Oh, that means you're 39 years old?"

Looks like I've still got it.

Happy New Year to all. Whoever and wherever you are, I pray blessings for you this year, and most of all, the ultimate and all-transcending blessing of knowing God through Jesus Christ more fully, whether you now know him or not.

A moment from Jeremiah

Who I am:

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? - Jeremiah 17:9

What I plead for:

Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise. - Jeremiah 17:14

What I dream of:

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. - Jeremiah 17:7-8

Not yet a merry Christmas

I'll admit, I'm kind of envious right now of all the folks who are already on vacation, bundled up at home with their families, or out travelling, without a care in the world.

Me, I'm just struggling to get through to the weekend. It oughta be fun to head up to Reno/Tahoe with the family for a day, but I can't even look that far ahead since work is still so busy with our Friday deadline. Just about everyone and their mother is on vacation next week, so I might be able to relax a little bit at the office, but that too seems rather far away. Plus, the fact that a bunch of people are already on vacation is making work really difficult when the people you need to talk to aren't there.

For some, the Christmas/New Year's holidays are their favorite because of the extended time off, family, gifts, Christmas music, and the whole shebang. For others, it's the most stressful time because of the expectations associated with gift buying and having to force a "holiday cheer" since everyone else is... plus deadlines!

I don't want to be a Scrooge. I'm trying to keep focused on the miraculous gift of the Incarnation, the sobering wonder (there's a paradox for ya) of the Gospel, and hopefully in a few days I'll be back to my merry, sardonic self.

Side note... if you want to hear some brilliantly written, original Christmas music, check out Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God. If I were a songwriter, these would be the types of songs I'd want to write - stories put with melodies, teachable, and memorable.

Incarnation

by Paul Harvey

The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy..." (Luke 2:10, NIV)

You know the Christmas story, the story of God born as a man in a manger and all that, escapes some moderns. Mostly I think because they seek complex answers to their questions and this one is so utterly simple.

So, for the cynic, and the skeptic, and the unconvinced, I submit a modern parable.

The man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge. He was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright with his dealings with other men, but he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas time.

It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise.

He just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man. He told his wife, "I'm truly sorry to distress you, but I'm not going to church with you this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite, that he'd much rather stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so, he stayed home and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier, and then went back to his fireside chair, and began to read his newspaper.

Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another, sort of a thump or a thud.

At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds, huddled miserably in the snow.

They'd been caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it.

Hurriedly, he put on a coat and galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the door wide and turned on a light.

But the birds did not come in.

He figured food would entice them in, so he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow lighted wide-open doorway of the stable.

But, to his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow.

He tried catching them; he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them, waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then he realized that they were afraid of him. He resigned himself, "To them, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them, to help them. But how?"

Because any move that he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not be led or shooed, because they feared him.

"If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "And mingle with them, and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe, warm barn."

"But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand."

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind, and he stood there listening to the bells, listening to the bells heralding the glad tidings of Our Savior's birth, and he sank to his knees in the snow.

Okay, now you can say it's cold

Something that I do, that I'm guessing probably annoys my friends, is something I picked up from a coworker friend of mine who grew up in the American Midwest. Basically, the premise goes: it's never cold in California, it's just "cool" or "chilly". So whenever one of my born-and-raised-in-California friends starts complaining about the "freezing" 52 degree weather, I almost reflexively now say "chilly, not freezing". On the one hand, I'm trying to remind all of us not to take the blessing of great weather (relatively) in CA for granted; on the other, sometimes I am teasing and probably crossing the line into being a jerk/annoyance. I really need to pick my spots better.

Anyway, with a low of 31 degrees expected tonight... okay. Now it's freezing.

Just did the switch to blogger beta... so far I'm annoyed that it doesn't pick up html formatting in the Blogger Profile that I use to update the "Current Listening/Reading/Watching" section over on the right, squishing everything into one long unreadable paragraph. I'll have to play more with templates and plugins. Any helpful suggestions from more experienced beta bloggers?

Looks like I'll have to rely on Tim Rattay or Alex Smith to carry my fantasy football team to victory and glory in the final this upcoming Sunday (week 16). I'm sure my opponent is quaking in his boots at the thought of a present or past 49er QB putting up big numbers.

Song lyric of the week: "Well I know that falling down ain't graceful, but I thank the Lord that falling's full of grace." (Andrew Peterson, "The Chasing Song")

Sickbed update

Haven't shaved in two days, got my hood on over my head... I must look like the Unabomber right now. Should I keep the stubble?

On the plus side, after 9 hrs of sleep last night, I feel like I'm on the upswing now after bottoming out yesterday with the trifecta of cough, runny nose, and congestion. Now, I'm just coughing periodically.

Looks like it's going to be miserable weather this weekend. On the plus side, I'll be heading to Tahoe for Christmas with my family for a night, so maybe we'll have some okay snow.

I noticed last night that my default position for falling asleep is strikingly similar to the position they put corpses into in coffins - flat on back, with hands folded across the chest. What can I say, it's the most relaxed for me.

What position do you fall asleep in?

Ruminations from a sickbed

Only in my line of work can I spend almost all day in bed and still be just about as productive as I would have been in my cube. Yay for modern technology. One day when Cisco's TelePresence(c) becomes commonplace tech, we won't ever have to meet anyone in person anymore to do work.

Random thoughts...

- I bought a pack of BreatheRight strips (the band-aid look-alikes that go across the bridge of the nose) to help curb any snoring I might do when sharing a room with someone on trips. For their intended purpose though, they're quite the lifesaver in opening up congested nasal passages when you're sick, allowing you to breathe much easier. Without one I might not have gotten much sleep last night.

- Achtung Baby is just a solid album from beginning to end.

- Made the fantasy football playoffs in the only league I'm in, which was quite gratifying since football isn't really my sport. Got a first-round bye too, which should hopefully give Colston (my best GM move of the year) some time to rehab and get back to producing big #s from the TE position.

- Watched "An Inconvenient Truth" with Shally last night. Quite thought-provoking and did a good job sketching the immediacy and severity of the environmental problem facing all of us, particularly in the US. Thing is, in this country we've made comfort to be the ultimate king and goal, and anything that makes us change our comfort level is hard to do. Will write more about this in a separate post.

- While waiting for a test to run this morning, I watched this video and was doomed for the rest of the day. Stupid jingle getting stuck in my head. Not only that, but what did I have for lunch? "Chicken noodle soup with a... smoothie on the side." I dare you to watch the video. I double dare ya.

- In Hawaii, the topic of conversation swung to how many of my blog posts can become monolithic treatises to wade through (like some concert reviews, etc.). Mike P suggested that I (or someone else) set up a parallel site with a 1-sentence synopsis of my posts - for example, a few screens of text could be condensed down to "I was tired." Maybe I'll try going through a day posting no more than 3 sentences at a time or something.

- Check out this NY Times article for a bunch of free services available for the cell phone, including free Google searches/directory assistance, free international calls, customizable voice mails, and price comparisons.

Amusing "creative" writing assignment

From here. Gary's parts look like something I would write...

Prof. Miller's In-class Assignment for Wednesday
Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? "Well, today we will experiment with a new form called the 'tandem story'. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca (last name deleted), and Gary (last name deleted).

THE STORY:
(first paragraph by Rebecca) At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary) Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,....", he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca) He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary) Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

(Rebecca) This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary) Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of f*****g TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels."

(Rebecca) @#$(*&.

(Gary) !$#@%%.

(TEACHER) A+ - I really liked this one. Only group to get an A

Wii! (that's just fun to say)

Got the chance to play a Wii a few nights ago for the first time. Aside from the fact that we were playing "Rayman Raving Rabbids" - with creepy, cracked out artwork, characters including bucktoothed psycho rabbits and disgustingly happy worms, and some weird contexts ("Fact: Rabbits don't milk cows. But they can dance!"), playing the Wii was actually quite fun. It's an unassuming form factor that looks like a DVD drive, and the controllers look like remote controls, but the button+motion play style is surprisingly intuitive and easy to pick up for non-gamers, yet challenging enough physically to keep anyone of any skill level entertained. Having the increased play-motions available must have game designers salivating at the chance to think beyond the box of button combinations for gameplay.

Read an interesting article today that said the Xbox360, by virtue of its introduction last year, may have positioned itself to dominate this round of the console wars, simply because they have a lot more product available, from consoles to games, than the dueling Wii and PS3 platforms. In general, it seems that there are 2 primary groups of gamers - serious and casual. In the previous iteration, the serious gamers gravitated towards the PS2 for the wide variety of games, and the casual gamers went to the Gamecube for the fun party games, while the XBox was mostly left out in the cold (with the exception of Halo). Since the Wii has probably cornered the market on casual gamers already, Xbox360 will probably shoehorn out the PS3 from being able to replicate the dominance that the PS2 experienced.

Separate note as we enter into the commercialized Christmas season... good quote from Shaun Groves:

What should you get for the person who has everything? Nothing. So why don't we give them that this Christmas? Seriously. What is it that keeps us from giving nothing to people who have everything...and people who have enough?