Things I Hate.... (part 2)

Verizon Wireless' ordering system. Apparently no one at Verizon has ever had the thought that they should allow customers to order a phone that is currently out of stock. Could this be because they've never had a phone popular enough to be out of stock?

I just wanted to order a new Voyager and make a change to my plan. Seemed simple enough. But after an hour an half, two managers and one employee, they finally gave up (I had already given up long before this). I ordered the phone today. After the phone arrives at my house, I will have to go back to make changes to my plan.

Crazy....

Things I Hate....

Christmas lights. Actually I don't hate Christmas lights. I kind of like the soft glow that all the icicle lights give around the house. I don't even mind putting up and taking down the lights. I know where the lights go on our house and pretty much have the system down. It's usually pretty simple.

Usually being the operative word. Our lights were getting pretty old last year. Bulbs were burning out at an alarming rate and being out in the elements for several years was taking a toll. So I thought I would just buy some new strings of lights. Simple enough. The problem is, simple usually isn't.

First of all, new icicle lights are a pain in the neck. They are packed with all the icicles bunched up. So you can't just put the lights up, you must staighten out all the wires of each icicle. Even after you straighten the wires, they want to go back to their previous form. Here's an idea for the makers of icicle lights. Package the lights with the icicles pulled nice and straight. Sure the package will be bigger. But I'd pay more for lights packaged that way. I'm sure others would too.

Secondly, after straightening all the little individual icicles, we started hanging the lights and discovered that the new strings of lights were shorter than the old strings. The new strings are 22 feet long, according to the box. The old strings must have been about 25 feet long. Now my carefully planned lighting arrangement no longer works. Ugh.

A few more extension cords and some rearranging and it all worked out. But what should have been a relatively easy task of hanging the lights, turned into a pain in the neck.

Why is it the simple things in life always seem to so hard? Is it because of our expectations? When we expect something to be difficult, do we come at it with a different mental attitude than when we expect it to be simple? Is that why we often don't believe the simple things in life? We say, "That can't be right, it's too easy." We usually expect it to be difficult. I wonder if that's part of the reason why people don't believe in Jesus - it's just too simple. Certainly the creation of the world must have been more difficult than God simply speaking. Certainly salvation must be harder than just believing in Jesus. I wonder how I can tell my friends that it really is that easy...

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. It’s probably my favorite holiday. It’s certainly the least commercialized holiday. You don’t have to buy presents for somebody, chocolates, cards, or just about anything else. It’s just a great day to hang out with your family and friends, maybe watch a little football, and enjoy each other’s company. I suppose that it may be a great day for turkey farmers and retailers, but overall it’s really not a very commercialized holiday. I like that about Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a time for us to do nothing other than be thankful. But on holidays like this, I always wonder what might my atheists and agnostic friends are thankful for. Or more correctly, who they are thankful to? It seems like in the never ending battle to move God out of the public’s view, that nothing is sacred; we will remove God from everything. We even are trying to remove God from Christmas! And if we’re gonna remove God from everything, then we have to remove Him from thanksgiving to. And if we do that, then who are we thankful to? Are we just thankful to fate, the odds, or some other nebulous entity?

In all fairness, my atheist and agnostic friends have no problem with this. They believe they feel perfectly thankful and they are grateful for the things they have. They have no issue with today. But for me, it just seems odd. How can you be thankful to no one? I know that I am thankful to God for all blessings over the past year. I can’t begin to list them all.

I am also thankful that long ago, an Indian named Squanto chose to befriend some Europeans who weren’t going to make it through the winter. Squanto could help them, because previously he had been captured and had been a slave. He knew English and he knew how to help. And even though he had plenty of good reason not to help those Europeans, he did it anyway. That amazes me every time I think about it. I’m thankful he did it.

I wonder if I could do the same. Could I offer help to someone at great personal sacrifice to myself? Can I do the right thing, regardless of what has happened to me in my past?

That is worth pondering about…

The Only Way to Play Soccer

I'm not much of a soccer player. But if you're going to play, this looks a lot more fun!

Gibson Robot Guitar

So you like to play guitar, but you hate to tune it. Or you'd love to play some alternative tunings, but it's just too much effort to tune and retune your axe. Well Gibson has a guitar just for you.

Watch the video here

Kind of cool, but there's no price listed anywhere that I can find. I guess I'll be tuning my guitar the old fashioned way.

Fun with Words

Play this word game and supposedly you donate rice to the United Nations. I don't know if that is true, but it was fun to trying a figure out these words.

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

Man, I need to improve my vocabulary. Some of these words are difficult.

What's the highest Vocab Level you got?

"The Last Supper" Up Close and Personal

An online tool lets you focus in on da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper to an unbelievable level of detail. Use the zoom bar in the bottom center to zoom in and out of the painting. It only took 1677 pictures to get this amount of detail. Wow!

There’s some good info about the painting at Wikipedia if you want to learn more about the painting and the ongoing challenge of preserving it.

[HT Think Christian]

Leaning tower of Pisa loses title

According to Ananova, a German church steeple has knocked the leaning tower of Pisa from the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most lopsided building.


The tower in the village of Suurhusen applied in June for the title and has now officially beaten the famous landmark in Pisa. Guinness Book of Records confirmed the award after officials measured it leaning at a 5.19 degree angle compared to only 3.97 degree angle at which the tower of Pisa leans.

The church was built in middle of the 13th century but a 90ft tower was added in 1450. The tower was built on wooden foundations and the combination of the oak wood foundations and wet soil has caused the tower to slowly lean to one side over the years. Several attempts to stop the tower from leaning any further have been made since 1982, and it was eventually stabilized in 1996.

The church is still in use and also offers guided tours but church officials are appealing for donations to help maintain the building.

I guess if your building is falling down, you might as well make the most of it. But who really wants this record? I'm guessing the tower of Pisa will still be wildly more popular with the tourists. Maybe this church will see a slight rise in visitors, I don't know. But what will that really do? Will they make enough money to fix or replace the tower? It seems doubtful. Are they just using the money raised from tourists maintain the building, since they don't seem to have enough money from the congregation to do so? It just seems there's no real plan here.

I wonder how many things I start out with in my own life with no real plan. No real plan of what happens next. Something seems like a good idea so I set out on a course of action, without fully contemplating what the end-game is. Generally not a good idea... I think sometimes I need to more carefully ponder the entire plan, before I get started.

Wow, that was horrible!

I watched CSI Miami for the first time tonight. All I can say is ouch! That show is horrible! I'm not an expert reviewer or anything close to that, but what stiff acting. Horrible...

Fantasy Football

I'm having a horrible year in Fantasy Football.
I've scored over 130 points, twice, and lost both times.
I've been in the top 3 or 4 scores several times and lost. Which is also what happened this week. I've got the 3rd highest score in the league, but lose again. Man, what a string of bad luck...

It's a good think basketball starts tonight - I need a distraction...

I Hate Halloween

One of things I dread each year is Halloween. What’s a Christian to do with that holiday? Certainly what is being celebrated on that day isn’t very Christian in nature. And one could make the case that not only is not Christian, but it’s down-right anti-Christian. But then there are Christians that say, 'the original meaning has been lost and we really aren’t celebrating the day of the dead, it’s just a fun night for the kids to dress up and have some fun.' No harm in that, is there? Or maybe our churches offer a Harvest festival, that’s so close to Halloween, it’s hard to tell the difference. But it has a different name, so it must be ok. Or so the reasoning goes.

I've got no problem with kids wanting to have a fun night, dress up and get some candy. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. But when I think about celebrating death, monsters, gore, and in general, evil - that's not what I want my kids celebrating.

Each year Halloween seems to get bigger, more commercialized and more popular. The home decoration for Halloween now rival or surpase the home decorations for Christmas. I don't know if I should read too much into that, but it seems to indicate that we value what Halloween stands for more than we value the birth of Christ. That just doesn't seem right to me.

Rest assurred, when the little kids come to my door on Halloween, we've got some candy for them. But I have to wonder, isn't there a way to have some fun, get some candy and not celebrate evil? I think that's worth pondering...

More Necks Equals More Notes?

Here is Steve Vai playing G3 in Denver. This guy is crazy good. I love the tapping toward the end.

Odd Music

A friend emailed this to me. This is an interesting site. Lots of crazy instruments. Some of them are pretty cool. Some of them are, well, just odd. Lots of pics and some sample sounds too.

Odd Music

I hope you've got some time to spare.

David Crowder Guitar Hero

The David Crowder Band rocked Dallas last week at the House of Blues. Here he is playing the guitar from “Guitar Hero” for one of his songs. Only Crowder...



[HT: Church Video Ideas]

LA Metro Bus Passes Are Killing Me

My son takes the LA Metro bus to high school every day. This works pretty well most of the time. There's an occasional late bus. But usually it's not too bad. The only part of the system that is really broken is purchasing the bus passes. This part is unbelievably difficult.

High school students can get a discount card and then purchase a monthly sticker to place on the pass. This is a pretty good system and decent deal if you are riding the bus almost everyday. So far so good. Once a year we have to drive over the nearest Metro outlet (which isn't all that close) and get a new student card. Not super convenient, but not too bad. The monthly sticker part is a major pain.

The local Ralphs is supposed to have monthly stickers. They don't start selling them for the next month until the 28th of the current month. If you don't get your sticker on the 28th or 29th they are sold out. It's crazy. Your only option then is to drive over the Metro outlet and get one there.

You would think Ralphs would purchase more stickers. I'm no businessman, but this seems like common sense. If you sell out every month, you could sell more. If you sell more, you'll make more money. Doesn't this seem like a good deal? But no, every month they are just perfectly happy to sell out of stickers instead of selling more.

The year before my kid started high school, you could purchase stickers online. What a great idea! But LA Metro removed this option, "for your convenience." I don't think they were thinking about my convenience when they removed that option. They were thinking about their own convenience. So now my only option is to drive over to the nearest Metro outlet. You would think a city the size of LA would have a pretty good network of Metro outlets. But no, that would make it far too easy for people to ride the bus. So all of LA has to go to one of four locations. Crazy.

So this month, Ralphs was predictably sold out of stickers and I drove over to the Metro outlet -- only to find out that they are closed on Mondays!!!! I went back on Tuesday to find a huge line that took half an hour to wait through. Argh! Why is it the simplest things are the most difficult?

In the unlikely event that someone from Ralphs is reading this, BUY MORE STICKERS TO SELL! If someone from LA Metro is reading this, BRING BACK PURCHASING THE STICKERS ONLINE.

[/rant]

Bigger May Not Always Be Better

This is one heck of a saw! Assuming it's a saw. I have no idea what this thing is or what it's used for. But it looks like a big saw...

Sometimes we think bigger is better. A bigger SUV must be better than a small one. A bigger home is more desirable than a small one. A bigger engine in the car/boat/truck is better. A supersized meal is better than that regular size meal. A bigger power tool is better (more power... grunt). But at some point, bigger is too big.

Sometimes it seems we can spend too much effort, too much time, too much energy in trying to get the biggest and best of everything. Trying to keep up with neighbors. While we are busy chasing things, we often forget something much more important - people. We will spend too many hours at work. Too much time hanging with our buds. Too much time chasing activities we like to do. And too little time with our families. Why do we sacrifice our relationships with the people we care about to chase money and things? That's worth pondering about...

Holiday Shopping Idea

Yea, I know. For most of us, it's way too early to think about Christmas and what you are going to buy for everyone. But some of you are bound to be getting started early – this is for you.

Do you wonder what to get for that guy who has everything? He loves the gadgets and toys, but he has them all. I’m betting he doesn’t have this – the iRobot® Looj Robot Gutter Cleaning Robot. Yup, that’s right. A robot to clean your gutters. Here's a video of the Looj in action.

What could be cooler than that for the guy who has everything?

Unbelievable Guitar Wizard!

The legendary blues guitar hero, Buddy Guy, invites 8 year old guitar whiz, Quinn Sullivan, on stage for an impromptu jam.



After viewing that, I may never play guitar again. That kid is that good.

Guys you might meet...

My friend Ray sent me this video of the 11 guys you might meet at a pickup basketball game. I think I know some of these guys!


11 Guys At The Playground - Watch more free videos

New Family Member

This is Kaylee (click on the picture to view a larger pic). She's a Jenday Conure. She's still a baby, her birthday is June 1, 2007. She's quite friendly and seemed to be content with her new home.

We also have Sunshine, a.k.a. Scrappy, a Cockatiel. I think owning a full blown parrot is going to be a bit different than owning a cockatiel. But this should be fun.

Any bird owners out there with some tips for me?