Happy Birthday, Becky!

Only the best birthday wishes to my beautiful wife who turns 29 today. She is a faithful partner, dear friend, and loving mother to our girls. I am truly blessed.

Becky’s parents are in town this week, so we’ll all go out for dinner to our new favorite BBQ place tonight to celebrate. And, woohoo for me, I knew what I wanted to get her for a gift, bought it on time, and got it wrapped up. Well, sort of wrapped up. It’s at least in a box… Maybe I’m getting this husbandly-gift-giving stuff down finally… :-)

Enough DaVinci, already!

I’ve heard just about enough about The DaVinci Code by now.

First, the hoopla over the best-selling novel.

Then, the adulation from the press and all of the discussion regarding the “historicity” of the fiction.

Next, the Christian reaction to the movie, covering the entire spectrum from “Cool” to “Yawn” to “EVIL, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES AND BURN THE HERETICS WHILE YOU’RE RUNNING!!!”.

So it was with some hesitation that I read a piece on Opinion Journal today entitled “Debunking the Debunkers”. The topic: how would C.S. Lewis have responded to DaVinci Code fans? I was glad I read the article.

“I have been reading poems, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life,” Lewis wrote. “I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this [the Bible].”

So said Lewis, and he was right.

The wrap-up:

Here is the real harm of these modern conspiracy theories: They may appeal to our emotions, but they violate our common sense. They reject reason, just as surely as they reject revelation. “I do not wish to reduce the skeptical element in your minds,” Lewis explained. “I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.”

Good stuff.

Softball as it was meant to be

Monday night was our second church softball game of the year, and it was beautiful. We were afraid the rain was going to keep us from playing, but it held off until just after we finished. The night was perfect, we had enough players, and we played solid the whole game. We got hits when we needed them, even our weakest players drew some walks, came around and scored, and I managed a couple good defensive plays at third base. This reminds me why I enjoy softball so much - the fun with friends, a good competitive game…. what a blessing, and good times.

How far do we go to be "relevant"?

That’s the question that the InternetMonk asks in a column over the weekend. His summary:

The Gospel is relevant. Our methods can’t be irrelevant, but they have to allow the relevance of Christ to come to the forefront.

Amen, brother.

Follow-up on the technology saga

Yesterday my PDA totally locked up, just froze with the backlight on and nothing on screen. Finally last night the battery gave out. But apparently there is happy news! My dear wife reports from home today that when she plugged it in to the charger, it came back up and appears to be working correctly. Let’s hope that it keeps it up - I don’t like my choices for replacing it, even if I could afford them:

First there’s the Palm brand products. I like their OS, but I’m getting a sour taste in my mouth for them after my recent troubles.

  • Cheap-o Palm Zire 22. Does most of what I need, but has a lousy screen (160x160 res) and is under-powered. $99.
  • Palm Tungsten E2. What I have right now. Causing problems after 9 months. $199.
  • Palm Tungsten TX. Bigger screen than what I have, plus it has Wi-Fi built in. $299.

Or, I could make the big leap and go to the ones running Windows CE, or whatever the heck they call it now.

The trouble there is that the bottom-of-the-line units start, price-wise, about the same place that the Palms stop. I could get the basic Dell Axim for about $250 right now, sans case and extended warranty.

Let’s just hope my E2 is back alive and good to go for a while. As much as I rely on it to keep me on schedule, $250 for a product that lasts only 9 months is ridiculous.

it's not my week for technology

On the heels of my stereo receiver biting the dust, tonight I pulled my Palm Tungsten E2 out of my pocket to schedule a lunch meeting, and it came up dead. The backlight stayed on, the screen was blank, and it wouldn’t respond to a reset, even a hard reset. I’ve only had it for 9 months. Of course, the Palm warranty is only 90 days… what a rip-off.

I don’t know what I want to do about a PDA now. I might try going without it for a couple weeks and see how much I miss it… but I know it’ll be bad. If I hadn’t just spent $200 on a stereo, buying a new PDA wouldn’t seem totally out of the question, but now… grrr… and I’m not very motivated to want to buy another Palm brand PDA. I’ll have to see what kind of employee discount I can get on a Dell handheld, maybe.

A slide projector... and a bedsheet!

[Kudos to Roger for playing along with the Veggie Tales reference.]

A follow-up on yesterday’s adventures with the stereo receiver. I hit my local Best Buy last night (and boy, do we need some competition for them in town, but that’s another post…) and ended up purchasing a Yamaha HTR-5930 receiver. It’s got the usual bells and whistles: Dolby ProLogic and DTS decoding, 100 watts per channel, etc. It was actually quite easy to hook up last night and get running; more intuitive than the Onkyo that died.

Didn’t have time to play with it much last night - it was getting too late. But a little bit of LoTR:The Two Towers on DVD was enough to assure me that this thing will kick out some serious sound.

Stereophonic Multimedia Event

No, not the blog. My entertainment center, usually. But last weekend for some reason the LCD display of my Onkyo HTS-650 reciever bit the dust. The amp still works, but you can’t see the display, so you can’t tell what source is selected, or what options, or anything like that. This isn’t the first thing to break on this receiver; it totally died a couple of years ago when it was still under warranty. Back then, two trips to the authorized repair shop in Coralville were enough to get it fixed. It’s no longer under warranty now, though.

I could take it in to see about getting it repaired, but I’m having a hard time being motivated to do that since the thing seems to have a failure history. What’s gonna break next? It doesn’t make sense to keep taking it in for repairs when after only a few repairs it would’ve been cheaper to buy something new.

I think I’m going stereo shopping tonight.

Mitt Happens

I met Mitt Romney yesterday. Well, if you can consider shaking his hand and saying hello “meeting” him. Mr. Romney is the governor of Massachusetts and a probable candidate for President in 2008. As with all presidential campaigns, the early path has to run through Iowa. And so Governor Romney found his way to Cedar Rapids to give the commencement address at Coe College on Sunday and then meet with various political groups yesterday. One of the groups he was meeting was our Christian Action group here in Linn County. Since the head of that group is also one of our elders at Noelridge, they held the meeting there at our little church. So for half an hour or so, I sat back and ran sound while Governor Romney answered questions brought by our local people.

I have a difficult time trying not to be cynical about politicians. Now, of course, Romney will tell you he’s not a politician. But he sure comes across as one. Besides the perfectly-styled hair, the booming voice, the picture-perfect blonde wife who gushes about their family, well, there’s something in the performance, too. I was pretty impressed, he was doing a pretty good job at what was, I imagine, his usual 5-minute introductory speech. But then he introduced his wife, and she came up and said a few things about their children and grandchildren. OK, nice so far. But then she says how she knows people have been saying a lot of nice things about her husband, but how she knows that the most important things to him are his family. Now that statement by itself is just fine. But as she says the phrase “people have been saying a lot of nice things about my husband”, the Governor emits far too loud a chuckle and an obvious “aw shucks” kind of look. It was so obviously rehearsed that it was painful. And from there on out, the cynicism kicked in. He was just another politician performing.

I suppose the American system is just so big now that it’s unreasonable to think that a “normal guy” could be elected president; so, instead of electing the best “normal guy”, we have to elect the best politician. But back in my heart somewhere I wish a really real normal guy could make it. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way - go read Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series. He propels his “normal guy” hero on a path from history teacher and CIA consultant all the way up to POTUS. And of course then Clancy lets him give all the conservative speeches that Clancy (not-so-)secretly wishes a real POTUS would give. So the dream is alive… just unlikely.

So now we’re back to Mr. Romney. It will be interesting to see how his (as of yet unannounced) candidacy goes. His success will largely depend on who decides to run against him. I will also be curious to see if his Mormon beliefs hurt him any. I tend to think that the religious right will look past it. Oh, are we really starting the presidential election cycle already? The season in Iowa seems eternal. I guess we still have one more year of relative peace.

The Pursuit of God in the Company of Friends

Dick Staub on the Staublog (which needs to move to some software that supports RSS in an awful way) today notes a phrase that caught my ear:

People like that I sign my correspondence “yours for the pursuit of God in the company of friends.” When I was younger I thought a lot about “doing” things for the kingdom of God. Now I think more about loving people in my day.

I like that phrase. “The pursuit of God in the company of friends.” Sounds like what I want to be doing.