Quest Week 2

Ok that pretty much rocked! Thanks for everyone sharing and talking and hanging out. I'm really excited to see where this is going.

Here's the info you need for next week. First of all there's a ton of reading so here are the links. You need to download and read both documents. Get started on it right away.

quest-3
quest-3-book-excerpt

Next week we'll be meeting at the Sawmiller's and Jeremy will be facilitating the discussion.  Instead of me putting directions on here (or even their address) just email or call them for directions.

I picked up a bike

I finally found a great bike and a descent value. I got a Giant Cypress. I've been riding it for a few days and I'm enjoying it greatly. And, get this, I'm riding it in the morning!

Quest Group - Don't forget

Don't forget to bring in the signed Week One reading that has the group agreement. Just click on this link - quest01.

As a reminder here's what we talked about:

• We'll keep the 7pm start time


• We'll try to keep it under 2 hours


• We'll meet at the Johnstone's next time and then start rotating to other's homes


• We'll eat before the meeting and share snacks


• Anyone interested in hosting at their home or bringing snacks, email John and he'll schedule


• Next time John will lead the discussion again and the following week we'll take turns leading the discussion

Here is the reading for week 2. quest02. Write out your answers to the discussion questions and bring them with you.

See ya Sunday.

Little ditty I played with

fusion-ho-down
Here's a little fusion ho-down that is completely useless but it's always fun to play with garageband.

New Family Tradition: Toledo Zoo!

We had a great time today! Erin, Jack and I went to the Toledo zoo. We actually bought season passes. We saw all the cool animals, ate good food, and had a great time. The weather was perfect too. Jack may be a bit young for really getting into animals (he'd rather watch other crabby kids, heh), but he was in a great mood the whole time. He especially loved the Dippin-Dots. Jack is stylin his cool lid

Well, I started some morning discipline…

It wasn’t a huge step. More of just moving my feet just a tiny bit rather than a strong step. After Erin ran this morning she came back and I put on my “running shoes” and walked for a half hour. Ya, not so tough but man it was awesome out this morning. I mean AWESOME. Though I don’t care if it’s raining or whatever… but man, sun was shining, light breeze, and hardly anyone out (just a few crazy runners). I came back home and read the rest of Daniel (strange ending to that book). And thus begins my life of discipline. I’m hoping and praying that I can keep up with this for both my physical and spiritual life.

Quest Group Week One

I had an awesome time with my new Quest group this week. Thanks for coming y'all. Here is a link to the Week One reading that has the group agreement you need to sign and bring in. Just click on this link - quest01.

Here's what we talked about:

• We'll keep the 7pm start time


• We'll try to keep it under 2 hours


• We'll meet at the Johnstone's next time and then start rotating to other's homes


• We'll eat before the meeting and share snacks


• Anyone interested in hosting at their home or bringing snacks, email John and he'll schedule


• Next time John will lead the discussion again and the following week we'll take turns leading the discussion

Here is yoru reading for week 2. quest02. Like we talked about, read it early this week so you can roll it around in your head this week. Think about the discussion questions so you have something to talk about.

One thing I did not think about was that next week is Memorial weekend. I know of one couple who will be away? Do you all want to skip next week and dive back in the following week or hang the Roddens out to dry? ha!

You all rock!

Let's see what apple does with 10.5.7

About the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update
Normally I'd wait to see the fallout of a new OS update before installing, but meh.

Video of Jack

Jack and Erin on the swings

Backing Up is Good to Do

Ya, now I'm taking an evening to back up my precious laptop. Backing up is a tough biz. It seems to be more complicated than it needs to be. Backing up to an external hard drive (hd) is easy. But when you're backing up a laptop you need to keep it tethered to a USB or firewire cable to make sure it stays backed up (or at least you have to make sure it's tethered when you go to bed). But what if you have a house fire? You really should have an off-site backup. We use Mozy.com for our off-site backup. We pay a yearly rate for unlimited backup but that only allows you to back up one computer. The way around that for my house of 5 computers, is to have each comptuer back up to a folder on Erin's desktop PC. And have that PC back up to the Internet later that night. The only problem we've run into is that Mozy has a hard time telling what's new this backup and what's not new. So it tries to back up all 15 GB each time. Not cool. It takes a special mojo to get back up done reliably well. Hopefully I'll learn more as this goes on.

Star Trek

Got to see the new Star Trek movie today. I was ready for dissapointment and ready to be annoyed. But ya know what? Not only was the movie great, it also kept with the Star Trek mythos. Well, it kidna did, if you can call changing the past staying in the mythos. The actors did an excellent job portraying the younger versions of the characters we who have enjoyed the franchise have enjoyed for years. I'm not sure how I feel about how they got a clean slate but if it brings about more movies like I just saw, I think I'll deal with it.

DiskWarrior to the Rescue

Ok, I'm in a great mood now. Sad that repairing something jacks me up so much but whatever... it just does! My beloved laptop's hard drive failed a few nights ago with the dreaded Node problem. One file on a mac's hard drive, once corrupted, can prevent booting and cannot be repaired by OS X's beloved Disk Utility. So I purchased DiskWarrior and it arrived this morning and fixed the bad node and several other bugaboos on the drive. Thanks DW for saving my un-backed-up butt and BOO Apple for allowing such a week link in the file system chain with no way to resolve it.

A Quiet Night At Home

Time to kick back and relax... ok... enough of that I'm bored... time for bed. :)

I hate Murphy

Not Called to Understand

I was reading Daniel 8 just now. Daniel had some messed up dreams/visions. Rams and Goats fighting etc... But even Daniel didn't have an interpretation... he sat as I would with mouth open, mind in total confusion trying to figure out WHAT THE HECK any of what he had just dreamed had to do with ANYTHING.

This may not apply to mine (or your life) cuz I'm not Daniel. But it does offer me one consoling thought that I don't have to understand. There's not guilt in being confused. I can try to figure it out but there may be no prize for working it out. If it is obviously from God, just listen. If action is necessary, the directions will come along with it, otherwise wait.

I've done it! Mwa ha ha ha

I've been enjoying my Samsung Omnia (i910) for quite a while now. it's a great phone that sports a nifty interface, speedy performance, wifi, good bluetooth, awesome form factor and just about every feature a smartphone should have. My biggest gripe about the phone has been that Verizon has deemed to disable the built in GPS chip (or rather crippled it) to only work with it's own VZ Navigator (for fees) software.

Saturday night I updated my phones firmware ROM following instructions from the great phone site MoDaCo. I really did it to gain some functionality other than GPS but got to test it today and indeed it works. It really needs to be in a window to work due to a week receiver? But man is it nice to make your hardware do what it was designed to do and what we have as consumers, the right to do.

The upgrade should also improve the battery life, fix a low volume issue, give some interface tweaks as well and I look forward to fiddling with it.

Jack's Wheels

I hate phone companies

Ok, my boss Dan just got his 23rd phone (exaggeration) and he and I went thought and it was down to the Samsung Saga (windows mobile) or the Blackberry Storm. He went to the store today and picked up the storm and was told that it would sync his email, calendar, and contacts through our Exchange server that we host here at work. Well guess what. It WILL sync email but not calendar or contacts. If you want those two features, you have to add Blackberry Enterprise add ons for Exchange. BOOO. Here's my rant points:

1. Boo Blackberry for making someone either add expensive, enterprise software


2. Boo Blackberry for making us use USB cables to do anything useful with our phone


3. Boo Verizon for not making it super clear before the customer goes home what the phone can and can NOT do


4. Boo to the customer service reps who are apparently ignorant of their products and services.

Is it really that hard???