Last time I was in Colorado, my friends Joe and Becky tried to convince me that when I get older, I’m going to look like this particular actor in the movie Amazing Grace. None of us bothered to figure out his name at the time, but I just got a text from Joe with the answer - “Nicholas Farrell is the guy Bec and I think you’ll look like in 20 years”. A few quick google searches later and…well…here’s me in 20 years:
Do you agree? I have to say that I wouldn’t be altogether disappointed if I end up looking like that some day…obviously the priest’s collar would be absent.
Nicholas Farrell has also been in Bloody Sunday (an excellent movie) and played the lead in Chariots of Fire (just added to the top of my netflix queue) among other things.
Brief update:
I’m on vacation in San Diego this week and enjoying several days of nothing. It’s a welcome break from the busyness of the past few months. With all my new-found free time, I’m taking a crack at reworking this blog among other things. So, you might see some changes (including a new URL?) coming shortly.
I just got done watching 3:10 to Yuma and I liked it just as much the second time around. It’s just a good story, good acting, and good story-telling. It’s just a well done movie, that’s all. And, while the movie is all about moral choices, it’s actually not what led me to write this post. I was watching one of the special features on the DVD - a 13 min. documentary on the real wild west - and they mentioned Abraham Lincoln. It was a very quick comment, but they flashed this photo of Lincoln:
Now, do yourself a favor and click on the photo to see the high resolution original. Even though the photo’s blurry, it’s amazing how much detail is visible. Lincoln’s old looking hands, his bunched up suit jacket, his regal stature, and shiny boots. If you look a little longer, you’ll notice the general with his calculating gaze, long nose, and long beard. The Pinkerton bodyguard with his checked shirt and wrinkled suit. And then there’s the man casually laying down in the background…a mere 20 feet from the President of the United States!
This sort of stuff fascinates me. Perhaps the bodyguard would’ve bothered to press his suit that morning had he known he would be immortalized in a timeless photograph. Maybe the lounging man would’ve decided to stand if he knew the full weight of the moment. And yet these men made their choices and we’re left to ponder their meaning. Now, I’m not about to suggest that any great insight can be drawn from these insignificant choices by otherwise insignificant men. I am, however, suggesting that there exist choices whose outcomes have a greater impact on society as a whole.
Take, for instance, John Wilkes Booth. What if he had not assassinated President Lincoln? Would the world be a different place today? I believe it would be drastically different. Drastically different. I can’t even say for certain that I would be living if Booth hadn’t succeeded at Ford’s Theatre on that night. That’s an odd thought to ponder, but what if Lincoln had survived and some new domestic policy was enacted causing my great-great grandparents to never meet? What if his survival somehow eliminated the need for World War or created the foundation for new battles we’ve never heard of? The scenarios are endless and the idea that today’s world would be what we currently know it to be is literally impossible.
The thought that our choices are made in a bubble and only impact ourselves is false. The choices we make on a daily basis have the potential to have a great impact on the lives of friends, family, and complete strangers who aren’t even born yet. Lately I’ve been experiencing the fruit of choices I made 5, 10, 15 years ago - some good and some bad - and having to sort through the consequences. There’s nothing like being knee deep in life to realize the value of making wise choices as often as possible. I believe God gives us free will - complete and total free will - and the ability to forge ahead in whichever direction we please. The older I get (almost 30 now), the more I see the value in choosing the right direction to begin with.
Firefox 3 (a web browser far superior to Internet Explorer) was released today and having used the beta versions for several months, I can safely say that it’s awesome…even on a Mac: Get Firefox Now
“We cannot save ourselves nor sanctify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, He will not give us character, He will not make us walk aright. We have to do all that ourselves, we have to work out the salvation God has worked in.“ - Oswald Chambers
Back in January, I attended Mars Hill church up here in Seattle and was happy to find a thriving mega church that still has its roots firmly planted in the bible. It’s not a church that’s lost its way or been diluted by the culture in an unbiblical way. It’s a church that preaches Jesus and attempts to stand behind that in everything it does. Mark Driscoll, their head pastor, leads the way with a no nonsense, in-your-face approach that is offensive to some and maybe a little rough around the edges, but at the end of the day, I find it very hard to disagree with anything he says. He merely loves Jesus and wants to encourage others to do the same.
After I first attended Mars Hill (actually, my only time attending), I vowed to listen to the weekly sermons online as a supplement to the sermon at my regular church. While I can’t say that I’ve heard every one since, I have listened to a half-dozen or so and am consistently discovering new thoughts, ideas, and ways of looking at faith. The thing is that Driscoll, as abrupt as he can be, is a gifted communicator and is just very interesting to listen to. He keeps my attention throughout his 1hr+ sermons and by the end of it, I find myself wanting to learn more about Jesus. That, to me, says that he’s someone I need to keep listening to.
One of my recent favorites … a great sermon on the “Emerging Church”: Emerging Church Sermon
My parent’s own re-entry into the world of blogging has made me realize that I’ve been neglecting my own blog and, while I can’t promise that this post will get me back into the habit, it probably won’t hurt.
One reason this blog has been so silent these past few weeks is that I’ve been incredibly busy at work. We had 7 of our international staff in town for a couple weeks and, during that time, I had to give a big presentation to our whole staff, purchase and set-up brand new laptops for everyone, and finishing developing a staff website! It’s that last item that really killed me…I think it was 21 days with only 1 day off (cause I had a migraine)…and most of those days were 12+ hours. I’ll let my trash can speak for itself…
Since then (and that was a couple weeks ago), it’s calmed down a bit…enough for me to take a 3 day weekend and go visit some friends and family in Oregon. I stayed with my brother and his wife…we had a great time watching Ironman and then playing GTA IV. Went bowling with my old roommates James and Ben, and spent 7 hours climbing mount hood. We didn’t make it all the way to the top, but got pretty close as the pictures will show!
This week, it’s been back to work at COTN where there’s always plenty going on. Over the next week, we’re packing and shipping 3 40-foot shipping containers full of supplies to Sierra Leone. The first one left today and there’ll be two more going out next week! At the same time, we’re doing our annual feeding event next Friday where we package 285,000 meals in one night (more info at 285k.org)! To add to the craziness of that, we found out recently that there is a rice shortage and that the 20,000 lbs. we need for the event is going to be hard to come by! In fact, the only reason I’m still in the office this late on a Friday is that I’m waiting for someone to deliver 200 lbs. of rice! We even made the front page of the paper a couple weeks back!
In addition to all that stuff, we’ve been busy working on some new things in the IT Department. We’ve been putting together a new file server for the organization and we just got the final piece today so, we were finally able to fire it up. The thing is LOUD!! It’s been a fun little project and it feels like Christmas getting to open and assemble all the new gadgets.
Server Specs:
6 Terabytes (6,000 Gigabytes) of storage
Dual Quad-Core Xeon processors
4 Gigabytes of RAM
Redundant power supplies
That’s all for now! It might be a couple days…or maybe another month before I post again! =)
Individual cities have started to do their own events and last weekend, there was an event here in Seattle which I decided to check out. Here’s the footage:
I’m not even really a fan of Radiohead, but earlier today, they released their latest single with a bit of a contest attached. They released the individual tracks for download so that people could make their own remixes of the song! Pretty cool idea…and It seemed like a good excuse to spend a few hours playing around in Garageband…so, I grabbed the vocal track and went to town…and here are the results!
Just hit play…and vote if you’d like. It’s just a little bit on the techno side… =)
Read the first post entitled “How to find out what side of the brain you are using?”. Then figure out which you are and try to make it switch. This has been fascinating me for the last week or so. Sometimes I can make it switch by really concentrating on it. Sometimes I can move back and forth between artsy, creative thoughts and logical, programmer-like thoughts and it will switch. And sometimes, I’ll look away for just a second and when I look back, it’s switched. Right now it’s going counter-clockwise. Click the link and you’ll see what I’m talking about: Right/Left Brain Test.
Another cool page that someone just told me about is freerice.com. Basically, you play a vocabulary game and each time you get an answer right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Program. 20 grains doesn’t sound like a lot, but since starting, they’ve donated 22 billion grains of rice…and that IS a lot. I’m up to 960 in only a couple minutes…and I’m improving my vocabulary at the same time. Pretty cool…
