Going after the dove sellers

The point being, while we know that Jesus was upset about economic exploitation going on in the temple, his focus on the dove sellers sharpens the message and priorities. Jesus doesn’t, for instance, go after the sellers of lambs. Jesus’s anger is stirred at the way the poor are being treated and economically exploited.

Interesting stuff from Richard Beck.

On Playing and Variety

My primary instrument has always been (and likely always will be) keys of some sort. I started piano lessons when I was 7. I started playing for church at age 14. I first started playing with a church worship band in college at age 19. I’ve led worship while playing the piano hundreds of times. Those fingers on the keys at the top of my blog are my fingers, playing piano at my sister’s wedding.

Back in high school I taught myself to play guitar, and I’m a reasonable hack there, though my fingerings are never very clean. From there I did a lot of playing bass lines on the guitar, though I’ve only played bass as part of a band a handful of times. Keys are where it’s at for me. And that’s worked to fill the need where I’ve been. After college there haven’t been an abundance of other keyboardists.

For the last year or so, though, while I love playing keys in the worship band, the instruments that are in my head all the time, the ones I dream about playing, are bass and drums. I’m not sure why. Maybe because so much of the music I listen to is guitar/bass/drums driven instead of piano-driven? Maybe I’m just getting bored with piano right now?

In reality, I’m a passable bass player. I can keep tempo on the drums, but one listen to a real drummer (of which we have several at church) quickly reminds me that I’m just a hack. (Of course, I have no practice… maybe I’d pick it up quickly?)

I don’t know where this leaves me or even really what my conclusion is. It’s just odd to observe that after having piano ingrained in my brain for almost 30 years, I’m now doing a lot of my primary thinking in terms of other instruments. (It’s suppose it’s also entirely possible that piano is just so ingrained that I don’t notice it any more.)

Verizon Wireless woes

Back around Thanksgiving my wife and I made the jump from US Cellular to Verizon, for the express purpose of getting iPhones. And I’ve gotta say, as a first-time iPhone owner: the iPhone 5 is fantastic. The hardware is exemplary. Everything happens quickly, the Apple software is (mostly) beautiful and (almost always) consistent, and the battery life… well, the battery life is almost unbelievable after my two years as a Galaxy S owner.

Over the past couple of weeks, though, we’ve noticed some issues with my wife’s telephone. Mine works just fine, but if you try to call her, about 90% of the time it’ll ring twice on your end and go straight to voice mail. She never even gets an indication that someone is trying to call. She can be in the same room as me, with good signal, etc, but while calls to me work just fine, calls to her get re-routed. (She gets texts just fine.)

So, I’ve entered the Verizon support hassle. First call to tech support started with 10 minutes on hold. After that a helpful support gal looked into some network settings, tried calling my wife’s phone, and after two consecutive calls got through, declared the phone fixed. Once we hung up I tried calling my wife from my phone and it went straight to VM. Then I tried calling her phone via Google Talk’s free calling service, and that, too, went straight to VM. Four times in a row.

My next attempt has been via @VZWSupport on Twitter. It took about two days to finally get some action from them, but after some short diagnostic questions they now have a new SIM card headed out to us via Fedex. Guess we’ll see if that solves the problem. A Google search for this issue leads me to believe that the new SIM card might just be step 1 in a longer tech-support dance, but seeing as it’s a new year I’ll try to hold out hope for a quicker solution.

My 2012 reading

Time for my annual roundup of what I read over the past year. While I’m often lousy at cataloging things, this list is easy enough thanks to Goodreads and their nice little iPhone app.

(If you just want to look at the list, go check it out over on Goodreads.)

I read 59 books this year. 36 were fiction, 23 were non-fiction. Most of that non-fiction was theology, with just a couple of biographies / histories thrown in. (I need to read some more history. I don’t read enough of it anymore.)

I rated far more things with five stars this year than I have in previous years. (15 books got 5 stars! That’s more than a quarter of everything I read!) I don’t know whether that means my rating standards are slipping or that my book selection standards are improving, but at least it means I have some good books to recommend.

There are five novels I gave five stars this year:

  • The Fiddler’s Gun by A. S. Peterson - a fun Revolutionary War novel focused on the adventures of a teenage girl. (I’ve got the sequel, The Fiddler’s Green, sitting in my to-read pile… should get it read in 2013 sometime.)
  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - a short Young Adult novel focused on two teenagers who are dying of cancer. It’s not as painful as it sounds, but it’s challenging and insightful.
  • Redshirts, by John Scalzi - an odd sort of meta sci-fi romp that otherwise defies comparison
  • The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr. - a fascinating fantasy story which I’m indebted to the Rabbit Room folks for recommending.
  • Gathering String, by Mimi Johnson - a top-notch suspense/mystery novel whose author is a lovely lade I met once at a tweetup in Cedar Rapids.

On the non-fiction side, there were more 5-star books, but a few among those that particularly stood out:

I’m back at the reading for 2013, trying to finish up some Thomas Merton that I started back in December. If you’re so inclined, add me as a friend on Goodreads so we can interact about our reading throughout the year!

Carols for Christmas

For at least twenty years my mother has been requesting that I record some of my piano stylings. For one reason and another I’ve never gotten to it, until now. My mom got her copy last weekend when we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family, so now I’m free and clear to share it with you all. I’m calling it Carols for Christmas.

Carols for Christmas - photo credit to bterryhampton on Flickr.

It’s just over 30 minutes worth of music, all piano versions of traditional Christmas carols. There’s not a lot in the way of production - I recorded them using my Casio midi controller keyboard in single takes in GarageBand and did a minimal amount of editing to remove the clunky notes. The perfectionist part of me wishes I had another 80 hours to really refine and polish the arrangements and recordings; the engineer in me has declared “good enough”. The engineer won the debate this time.

So please enjoy Carols for Christmas as my gift to you this season. This download link will let you listen and/or download MP3s from Dropbox.

Merry Christmas!

Advent... or not

‘Tis the season of Advent, or at least lots of church bloggers are telling me. A time of anticipation, longing, and waiting. Even evangelical churches that aren’t big on use of the church calendar seem to mark out the time for Advent.

It’s curious in a way. We evangelicals don’t observe much of the rest of the traditional church calendar. Christmas? That’s a single day. (That 12 Days of Christmas song is just some weird anachronism.) Pentecost? We remember the story, but don’t mark the day. Lent? Heck no, that’s a weird Catholic thing. Ascension? Is that even a thing we remember?

The churches I grew up in didn’t follow the church calendar, so the only taste I got of it was when visiting my grandparents’ Lutheran church on occasion. 17th Sunday after Pentecost? What the what? It’s not until this past decade as I’ve gained friends in more liturgical denominations that my awareness has been heightened to the greater observance of the calendar. (Kari, for instance, has done some lovely posts on Advent, Lent, and Ordinary Time.)

Seeing how the larger church observes the calendar helps me understand some of the celebrational whiplash that I feel throughout the year. Why do they do Lent for 40 days but then Easter is just one day? Oh, Easter is actually supposed to be celebrated longer than just the day? *lightbulb*

It also helps me explain the dissonance I felt on the first Sunday in December when our church worship kicked off with Angels We Have Heard on High. (It was assuaged briefly this past week when we opened with O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, but quickly returned when we closed the service with Joy to the World!.)

Don’t get me wrong - I love the Christmas hymns. But it does feel like we miss something when we bypass all the anticipation and spread our Jesus-is-born celebration across the whole month of December.

Could it be that the anticipation of Advent is the tension that stretches the boundary between heaven and earth so thin that when we finally do reach Christmas Eve, our hearts can glimpse heaven breaking through?

At the end of Sally Lloyd-Jones’ beautiful Jesus Storybook Bible, she writes about the revelation to John, and she says this:

One day, John knew, Heaven would come down and mend God’s broken world and make it our true, perfect home once again.

And he knew, in some mysterious way that would be hard to explain, that everything was going to be more wonderful for once having been so sad.

In the same way, Advent makes Christmas more wonderful, if only because the heightened anticipation makes us keenly ready to celebrate Jesus’ birth.

Let us anticipate together His coming.

Closely intertwined

I think it may take the American evangelical church another decade or so to really realize how closely intertwined they are with the Republican party, but my prayer is that the realization hits sooner rather than later. What compounds the issue is that our view of American exceptionalism makes us prideful enough that we are resistant to learn from our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world on the topic.

-- me, in an email a few minutes ago

My Favorite Elected Official

The primary focus this election day is on the race for President, as well it should be. After I leave work I’ll head over to my precinct to cast my ballot. (I just can’t get into the early voting thing - I like voting in my neighborhood on the day of.) Unfortunately, I won’t be able to vote for my favorite elected public official, since he’s only on the ballot in one small township in Wisconsin. However, let me take a couple of paragraphs to remind us that elected officials serve in roles both great and small, and we should be thankful for all of them.

This is my dad. He serves as the town clerk for the tiny township of Marshall in Richland County, Wisconsin. He was first appointed to this post to fill out the term of the previous clerk. He has since been elected to the post at least once - maybe a couple of times, I can’t keep track of their election cycles.

As township clerk, Dad is responsible for keeping the township’s paperwork, paying the (few) employees, keeping the books, setting the agenda for and recording the town board meetings, running elections, and in general making sure the town’s business is conducted efficiently and legally. For this he gets paid a minimal salary - not anywhere close to full-time, but maybe a little better than minimum wage. (Mom has been appointed the volunteer assistant town clerk so that she can cover township meetings if he’s out of town.)

Town business is seemingly never done; any time we visit the phone seems to ring on a daily basis with some issue or another. Maybe the town patrolman (who drives the plow in the winter and fixes the roads in the summer) needs help with a persnickety citizen; maybe some citizen needs reassurance on why their property is being reassessed for tax purposes; maybe the town chairman wants to confirm the next meeting’s business. Each phone call gets a patient and thorough discussion as Dad walks them through the issues.

The responsibility of running the elections is, by itself, a significant role - especially when you consider the number of elections that have been held in Wisconsin the past couple of years. During the recall effort for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, first there were primaries. Then there was the recall. Then there were some county elections sandwiched around those. Dad was running a different election every second or third week for a few months. Craziness.

There can’t be many elected positions more minor than that of town clerk for a township of less than 600 people, but I’m proud of my Dad for taking the responsibility seriously and serving the people in his township to the best of his ability. Today as we vote for our leaders at the highest levels, let’s not forget the servants at the lowest levels, too. They are worthy of our respect, our prayers, and our thanks today and every day as they serve.

My India Trip, Days 7 and 8

OK, I’ve been back for almost two weeks now, I should finish up reporting on my India trip. At a minimum, I should describe my trip back home.

My itinerary to head back home started in Hyderabad, taking a Jet Airways (an Indian carrier) flight to Mumbai, then catching Delta back to Amsterdam, Atlanta, and finally Cedar Rapids. I had three and a half hours to make the transfer in Mumbai… that should be enough, right?

When I showed up to the Hyderabad airport, I had a small heart attack when the Jet Airways ticket agent told me that my seat had not been confirmed (even though my itinerary document said ‘confirmed’!) and that the plane was nearly full. I stood there and prayed as he made a phone call to see what could be done. Finally he did get me a seat - the last seat on the plane. Crisis #1 averted.

Made it through security and back to the terminal only to find that my flight had been delayed by 20 minutes. Suddenly I started getting more concerned about my connection. My concerns would end up being valid.

We finally got to Mumbai, where the process for transferring from the domestic to the international terminal is a bit involved. First you deplane and head down to baggage claim. You’ve gotta pick up your checked bag and carry it with you. Then you stand in line for a shuttle bus to go between terminals. That shuttle only runs once every 30 minutes. To actually get on the bus you have to go through security (again), running your bags through the x-ray and getting wanded by a guard. The bus was getting full and it was looking like I wasn’t going to fit. I pushed my way down the ramp and told the guy what time my flight was. He checked his watch, threw my bags underneath in the baggage compartment, and hustled me onto the already-full bus. Phew.

The ride to the terminal seemed to take forever. For what is no more than a 1-mile distance, I think the bus took 15 minutes to get there. We must’ve covered every inch of terminal. And the bus doesn’t drop you off any place convenient; it just stops by departure terminal entrance A. I needed to get to entrance D.

I hustled off the bus, grabbed my bags, and was helped out by one of the airport guys who works for tips. He asked my airline, grabbed one of my bags, and had me hustle with him down to entrance D. He got me to the end of the line and then asked for a tip. For $10, he said, he could get me through the lines. It ended up being the best $10 I spent on the trip.

With my $10 in his hand, he pushed to the front of the initial security line and shoved my passport and itinerary under the nose of the security officer. After getting waved along, we then rushed to the Delta counter. The Delta folks were asking if I was on the Amsterdam flight even before I could get to the counter. I shoved my passport at them, threw my checked bag on the belt, and within seconds they handed me back my boarding passes and passport and told me to run to the next line. Off I ran.

A Delta agent met me at that point and ran me up to security, cutting me nearly to the front of that line. After once again putting my bags through the x-ray and getting wanded, I then hustled off to the immigration line.

Maybe I’m just a naif, but I didn’t expect hundreds of people in the immigration line at midnight on a Friday night. Fortunately I was able to cut nearly to the front of the business class immigration line, joining four other Americans trying to make the same flight that I was. We picked the wrong immigration line, though. The guy checking our forms and passports was super-slow. The guy next to him was clearing 3 passengers for every 1 that cleared our line. But finally I cleared that line as well.

At that point the Delta agent pointed me in the direction of the gate and said “go”. So there I was, at this point just past the scheduled departure time for my flight, running down the Mumbai terminal at 1:00 AM. Made it to the gate, with gate agents waiting for us 5 to make the flight. Hustled down the jetway, only to have to go through security again, this time taking off my shoes. (I think I went through that screening a grand total of 5 times that Friday night. Crazy.)

Finally I was on the airplane, in my seat. Then it was just a nine-and-a-half hour flight to Amsterdam, a (more sane) transfer there, ten hours to Atlanta, a couple hours sitting there, and then two hours home.

If I do the India trip again, at a minimum I now know to schedule at least 5 hours for transfer between flights. I might also opt to fly Emirates Air, which goes from Hyderabad -> Dubai -> Chicago. (I do love the Delta miles, though…)

So that was my excitement on the trip home from India. I’ve got one more post percolating with some final thoughts, which hopefully I can write up soon.

Home entertainment setup with a HTPC

I’ll get to a summary post or two about my India trip in upcoming days, but today I’d rather go on about my frustration with my auxiliary home theater PC setup.

Basic review: my main HTPC setup works great. I’m running Windows 7 on a tower with 2.5 TB of HDD and a Windows Media Center remote, and it all works very nicely, including the Netflix plugin for Windows Media Center. No complaints at all.

What’s driving me batty right now is my secondary setup up in my bedroom. For the last couple of years I’ve actually been pretty happy using Plex on my Mac Mini as the setup; it can playback recorded TV across my network from the HTPC, the Netflix plugin worked nicely, and there was even a HDHomeRun plugin so I can watch live TV streaming from my networked tuner.

But a few months ago the Netflix plugin for Plex broke - rather, Netflix updated their API and the plugin developer hasn’t been able to keep up. Which means the only good way to watch Netflix in that room (which the kids want to do nearly every morning) is to open up Netflix in the browser. Not such a good solution. So, I’m trying to figure out another solution that won’t cost me too much.

One option would be a Roku. It has a good Netflix app, a Plex app which in theory will connect right up to my existing Plex Media Server to watch recorded TV, and even has an app for Amazon Streaming Video, which we get with our Prime membership but have never really used. (Bonus!) Downside: HDHomeRun doesn’t work, and you don’t get a basic web browser, which means no watching live TV, and no streaming any other video off the net from more, um, dubious sources.

I know that XMBC is floating around out there with a Mac app, but it’s a pain in the rear to configure and not pretty at all, and I don’t know that it even supports Netflix. So that’s a non-starter.

A better option would be to buy a netbook computer (this 11" Asus model has good reviews) for about $300 and hook it up in place of the Mini. I could get another Windows Media Center remote and just duplicate my main install (save for the big disk drives). That way I know I’d get Netflix, the HDHomeRun tuner would work, all the videos would playback (perhaps even without as much transcoding as I’m doing now), and I’d still have a browser. The downside: it’d cost me $300. Even if I could sell the Mini, I’d still be down a couple hundred bucks. That’s antihistamine money.

The other option that occurs to me is that I could do the same thing with the old Dell laptop that I’m typing this post on. It’s already got Win 7, and with a fresh Windows install it’d be plenty fast enough. The downside is that this is the PC that the kids now use for their computer time, and where we’ve got it setup isn’t conducive to switching it out with the Mini.

Guess I’ll keep thinking. Anybody have any good ideas?

Update: After running through the options with my wife, she says “$300 for the best option? Forget it. For $300 I can get out of bed and open a browser if they want to watch Netflix.” Guess that answers the question.