da Blog

Since I have nothing exciting to post at the moment, why not just copy stuff from someone else’s blog?  Here’s some from a great post by my friend, Joe:

Because that’s what this movie is about: WALL-E is the protector of EVE and the life she carries inside of her. It’s one of the most beautiful — and perhaps unexpected — metaphors for life, and the role of a husband to protect his wife and family, that I’ve ever seen.

This is just a tiny bit of a great article, so go read it already.  Also, check out Joe’s blog for more great stuff about gaming, life, and cool movies.  Who knows, you might even find Joe and I doing some sort of discussion podcast sometime in the future.  I know, that sounds scary.  I’d probably get bored listening to it myself.

Today’s readings from the Roman Catholic liturgy brought home something I’ve been thinking about for the past couple days. Here’s what Jesus said in Matthew 7:

Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.

From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.

It reminds me of what Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay said about Tuesday’s release, Good Monsters. For the cover story of CCM, he explained:

[Good Monsters is about the process of] maturing in a person’s life, coming to grips with incredible good and incredible evil in the same body and being willing to share the bad parts and the good parts with others in the community.

This rings true in my life because the world of Christian community is exactly what I am joining. The past couple days we have been moving into a brand new house. With this move, we have about thirty people living within a block of each other. We’re working on bringing “a new way to live” to the University of Minnesota campus. Central to our life is large amounts of common space and having as many daily meals as possible together. We have morning prayer and evening prayer. And we try to keep our lives on a common schedule.

This, I suppose, is a very radical form of community because we keep almost everything in common. But in a couple weeks, I will be joining a larger community. In two weeks I will be giving my life to Christian community. I will say that I love the people in the People of Praise so much that I am willing to bind my life with theirs. There is no fear that I will no like it or not want to be a part of it later in life; its exciting to be a part of the move of God’s spirit.

Is there risks? Yes. Is it going to be easy? No. But all of us are “good monsters”, are not perfect, but are still OK with that. The editor of CCM said in response to Dan’s comments, “I’m certainly not mature enough to intentionally live my life out in community with the kind of humility, gentleness, and risk Dan’s talking about. But I aspire to it.” I’m not mature in many ways, but I’m deciding to live my life with others for good and bad.

Here I am with three signs the world is coming to an end:

• The Krispy Kreme store at the Mall of America has closed its doors.
• My favorite studio, Pixar, has been bought by Disney.
• Kanye West poses for the cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus.

It’s a crazy world.

Check out this Honda Civic ad. It’s amazing.

After work today I’m gonna stop by my mailbox and pick up my Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD. It’s gonna be sweet. I probably won’t get a chance to watch any of it until Thanksgiving, but oh well.

I have all the Star Wars movies now! Yes, that makes me a real geek, I think. But somebody found something fun to do: watch all of the movies at the same time! Here’s the start of what he found - some very cool stuff.

Deepspace5 - “I hope you appreciate your purchase.”

No, it’s not 1996. It’s not even 2002. It’s 2005. But let’s give the soundman room to turn the music up.

My latest fetish are from a rather academic company called Etymotic Research. Mostly, they research technologies for audio in the ear, mostly hearing aids. But they also have started manufacturing amazing products for the audio quality nerds in the hizouse.

Look at those beauts. The sound gets right down into your ear, and from what I’m told, it really works. Many geeks on many podcasts swear by these things when they want something for portable listening with their iPod. Everybody seems to think they sound amazing (like one of my favorite spots, iLounge), and I believe it.

Besides cool headphones, apparently they also sell high-quality earpplugs. I think I need a set of those. With the stupid foam earplugs, it just sounds like somebody’s muffling the sound. With these, reportedly, it just lessens the sound, not make it sound that you’re listening to it through a speaker covered with a pillow.

Yes, mom, I want to save my hearing. But it comes at a cost: these things are expensive. But you can get me some $25 earplugs for Christmas if you like, really.

I’ve been reading up on stuff and found that, in the old days, they didn’t have computers. And therefore, the mathematicians and physicists of the world needed some help. So, until the computers were easy to get, they used a slide rule. It’s like those tables we used in Stats class except they’re printed really small on plastic instead of in the back of a big book.

If you want to learn how to do it the hard way, you can invest in a slide rule too! Apparently these things are the real deal because they were put in their boxes almost 50 years ago. Now that’s an antique!

I remember one year that Mr. Jehring and Mr. Hall were offering the relic “Slide Rule of Antioch” if you won the chess tournament, but I sure as heck didn’t win.

Yes, folks, this was a Star Wars weekend for me. I went home to my parents’ and on Saturday night we watched A New Home, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi. All in a row! It was tons of fun!

Mom and dad hadn’t seen the new one yet, so we went to Revenge of the Sith again on Monday. Of course, there were tons of great food, lots of guests, and other things this weekend, but that’s not about Star Wars, so I won’t mention that.

I had nothing really good to say, except for the hundreds of things that happened in the last couple days and I wanted to blog but was unable to becuase of server switching. It’s almost like not having a phone number for two days. I’m OK now, though. I’m going to my parent’s for the weekend.

Speaking of which, I should try out that technology that WordPress has to let me e-mail blog posts to a secret address and it’ll post them for me. That’d be cool. So you might e-mail blog posts from me this weekend, ya never know.

No, I didn’t get a job.

But for the past 48 hours, I have been working with a group of friends on a friend’s roof. It’s been a gratifying experience. I’d say we spent 24 of the last 48 hours at the house, for sure. Good thing there was good food.

I was on the cleanup and go-to detail. When people weren’t saying, “Dan, can you get me a pair of tinsnips?” or “I need some more nails!” I was cleaning up all the old shingles on the ground. I didn’t really feel confident on the roof, so it was cool with me.

It was really nice, for sure, to just have some good stuff to do. I’ve been missing getting up early and going off to a job. Plus, it was fun to hang out with friends.

I just got cleaned up, and now they’re cookin’ dinner over there, so I’m goin’ back. Gotta love these early days of burgers and brats on the grill. (In Minnesota, it’s too cold for about 4-6 months to do outdoor food.) Actually, another nice thing was that it was cold this weekend while we did the roof… but a tiny bit too cold, in my opinion. 55° or 60° would have been nicer, but it’s better to be cold than too warm.