I’ve been threatening for a week or two to post on some significant news – good news, I think – in my church and some other stuff that’s been on my mind. I still intend to, but every time I get an opportunity to do so, I just don’t feel inspired to do it.
I’m in some sort of blogging funk where I just don’t want to. Hence all the tinkering with my site templates and whatnot. 🙂
Hopefully I’ll get over it soon.

I was having trouble with my old wireless router. I’ve had it about 2 years and it was dropping my internet connection, even from the PC that was actually plugged into it.
For only about $35 I got a new Dlink router running 802.11g instead of the old Netgear running 802.11b. (My laptop’s internal wireless card is 802.11g)
Wow, pages load fast now. b to g. I really didn’t think I’d notice the difference.

From Daniel at Alien Soil (some borrowed/stolen from him or his commenters)…

• There is little better than a warm sunny evening and an old, rear wheel drive, V8 powered convertible. No radio, just the sound of the wind and the low rumble of the lightly muffled exhaust. Stress? What stress?
• There is little better than my wife’s embrace.
• There is little better than a perfectly executed turn. Wide at entry, nailing the apex, wide at exit and getting around the corner a bit faster than most would dare.
• There is little better than an evening of good, deep conversation with good friends.
• There is little better than perfectly sweetened (or just right peach or raspberry) iced tea.
• There is little better than Red Robin’s Banzai Burger.
• There is little better than sleeping on a cool night with the windows wide open and the covers pulled up around your neck.
• There is little better than a weekend nap.
• There is little better than 50’s – 60’s American cars with perfect paint and flawless chrome, lowered with big aluminum or chrome wheels.
• There is little better than the satisfaction of fixing your own cars and saving $100’s.
• There is little better than close vocal harmony. Think Barbershop, folk and American Roots music.
• There is little better than fresh McDonalds fries.
• There is little better than pulling in the driveway and watching the joyous bouncing a giggling of my girls as they rejoice that “Daddy’s home!”
• There is little better than a full throttle take off in an old V8 ragtop. Pushed back in the seat and the marvelous sound of that V8 through the open top.
• There is little better than my wife’s smile. All is right with the world if I can see her smile.

How about you? Leave them on your blog (Trackack please) or in the comments.

We are now off of the grid. Well, mostly. OK, just slightly more off the grid than before. We dropped our home phone for a pair of cell phones. Our monthly outlay for 2 phones sharing 450 minutes is only slightly more than our old phone with 125 minutes plus a land line. Because of the beauty of being able to keep my old numbers, we have the same two numbers and a new wireless carrier, Cingular instead of Verizon.
We were ready to sign up with Verizon again, but they didn’t seem to care to keep us. They advertise “new every two” where if you sign up for a new contract every two years, you get a new phone. They sold us on that 2 years ago when we re-upped then. Well, they now told us that it didn’t apply to us since we only spent $25 a month. “New every two, except for you.” I guess. Cingular gave us two free phones with a contract plus they use the GSM where you can easily transfer you phone book to a new phone when you want to by swapping the GSM card.
Anyway, in the absense of anything substantive, there you go. Hopefully better posts later in the week.

At the right is my Sony Clie in the process of getting it’s digitizer replaced. That’s the old digitizer in the upper part of the picture, the front case at the left, the rear case at the upper right and the working bits in the middle.
You might remember, that my Clie TJ27 got run over after my belt clip broke and it landed in the snow back in January. Or you might have a life and not be concerned about my trivial personal problems. Anyway, it was a little crushed, the digitizer was shattered but it still powered up just fine. I found I could order a new digitizer for about $40 from pdaparts.com. So I bought one and one for my old Clie S320 that also had acroken screen.
Changing the digitizer is a little tricky because it’s glued to the LCD. You need to use an X-acto knife to pry them apart. On the older one the whole processs took about an hour. A few screws, pry the old digitizer off adn stick the new one on. The connectors are a bit tricky, but in the end it powered up just fine. My wife wil put it to good use. (I had thought I’d Ebay it to recoup the cost of the two digitzers, but oh well.)
The newer one was a bit harder. First of all, half of the screws were these funky triwing security screws. I guess Sony thought there was something dangerous inside. Probably didn’t want folks trying to change their batteries. A coworker had bought a new case for his son’s Gameboy and it came with a little triwing screwdriver that he let me borrow. Once I got the case apart, the real fun began. In the old one, the LCD and digitizer were held in with one screw, in the new one it’s glued down. In the old one the connectors were completely exposed once you removed that screw, in the new one the connectors were sandwiched between the metal frame and a PC board and because of the way all the connectors are laid out, you can’t completely expose them. In the old one there was only the metal frame holding the LCD/digitizer assembly, in the new one the LCD/digitizer frame is tucked down inside another metal frame. The old one was merely cracked, the new one was shattered in dozens of little shards that were hard to get cleaned out.
Anyway, I know this is all very exciting. The bottom line is that it was more challenging that I anticipated, but I managed to get it all put back together. Unfortunately, since it’s been almost 3 months, the battery is dead and the charger is at work so I don’t even know if it works yet. I’ll let you know in the morning, well, later this morning.

OK, here are your questions. Post the answers in your blog and either trackback or leave a comment here when you do. Since each question naturally lead to others, most of them are multi-parters. Because of that, I’ve decided to only give four questions instead of five.
Greg

1. Who was your greatest influence spiritually in your formative years and why?
2. What is the graduate degree you’re pursuing? What lead you to that choice and where do you hope it takes you?
3. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
4. What has been the favorite car either you or your family has owned? If you could have any car you wanted now what would it be?

Shrode

1. What lead you to be in the ministry? If you weren’t a minister, what would you want to do?
2. If you could ask God one question, what would it be? Why?
3. How long have the Thinklings known each other? How much of that time were you all in one place? When did you realize that this group of guys was going to be friends for this long?
4. What has been the favorite car either you or your family has owned? If you could have any car you wanted now what would it be?

There you go. Now each of you open the invitation to interview 5 others on you blog. Maybe you’ll get a few more takers. 🙂

I was listening to my local NPR station at work, as I usually do, and was struck by todays episode of NPR’s Pulse of the Planet. They talked about the Tully NY ice festival that celebrates the days when ice would be cut out of a frozen lake nearby. That got me thinking about how folks in Florida got ice? I’m sure that I’m missing something there, but it rarely gets that cold down in Key West, what did they do?
Then I though about folks that live in tropical places, say on the equator a hundred or two hundred years ago. These people probably never left their immediate area for their entire life. It seems logical, then, that they never saw ice and probably didn’t even know that water would freeze. Can you imagine?
Then I thought of all that I know and all that my daughters are being taught. My 7 1/2 year old brought home a protractor from school and my 6 year old is doing amazing at reading. I know about atoms and protons, I understand trigonometry, I can tell you how plastic is molded, I understand the basics about electricity and combustion engines, I can operate a computer and a car, I know what photosynthesis is and I understand what my blood, lungs, and kidneys do. I can remember my ATM password, my PC login, how to program my VCR and how to set the clock in my minivan.
Rewind a thousand years and most folks can’t read. I imagine that most can’t do more than basic math, there are no machines to speak of, no electricity, not much knowledge of medicine. I’m amazed at the expansion of knowledge and that the human brain just keep soaking it in. In my average, limited brain I have more knowledge than entire towns did centuries ago. My daughters will probable know even more.
Amazing.

Jared posted an interview another blogger did of him on his site. He answered the questions and then asked for 5 participants to be interviewed. Foolish man that I am, I stepped up and became number 5. Little did I know that he’d ask such tough questions. Oh well, here goes.
1. Today you are being executed (for a crime you didn’t commit, naturally). What did you request for your last meal?
Wow, that’s a tough one. I can think of a number of great meals, but one thing is certain. I’d tell the prison chef to take the night off and have my wife cook the meal for me. In 12 years of marriage, I can count on one hand the number of bad meals I’ve had. I’m a huge fan of “N Noodles”. You know beef-n-noodles, tuna-n-noodles, etc. Her meatloaf is awesome as is her potato soup and ground beef vegetable soup. That being said, I’d probably want prime rib, grilled medium, French fries (I love fries), corn on the cob and Handel’s ice cream. Maria would fins a way to marinate or otherwise season the steak so that it was absolutely out of this world.
2. You’ve got a weekend free and money is no object. You can’t leave town, but you can do anything you want in the city where you live. What do you do?
Can’t leave town? Well, I’d get a room in the Harrison House bed and breakfast (I’m assuming we’ve got a sitter. :-). Maria and I like to go out to eat, so we’d go out to eat at R.J. Snappers and probably a Cameron Mitchell restaurant or two (The Fish Market and Cap City Diner come to mind.) We’d spend some time shopping at Easton, a trendy upscale mall that has the feel of a town square and we might visit the Franklin Park Conservatory.
3. Who was the most influential person on your life when you were a kid? How did they influence you?
That’s a tough one. I think I’d have to say my friend Wayne McKay in High School. He was a year behind me and moved to Maumee OH before my Junior year, I think. I was decidedly unpopular. The guys my age on my little one block street were very popular and I was always trying, sometimes successfully, to worm my way into their activities. Well, about the time Wayne moved into town, I was finally coming to grips with the fact that they did not want me around. They were starting to drink too, which made me nervous. Wayne came to town and he just wanted to hang out with me. For some reason, he and I clicked and I had a friend that I could trust and talk to about just about anything. In hindsight, I don’t think I was as good a friend to him. After High School I went to college and he went to work. He was a DJ for a company that did High School dances for a while and eventually found his way into a job as an assistant stage manager on an around the world cruise in the late 80’s. We kept in tough for a while, but I lost him about 12 or 15 yeas ago. I think about him every now and then and wonder what he’s up to.
4. Your house is on fire but thankfully is everyone is safe. However, you only have seconds to get out of the house. What one item do you take the time to save on your way out?
Man, first I’m being executed, now my house is on fire! One item, huh? Well I’m torn between the sentimental and the practical. The practical side says grab my wife’s PC because it has all of our finances on it. The sentimental says gab the scrapbooks. My wife is an avid scrap-booker and we have about 12-15 awesome books chronicling our life. I think the PC would win because it’s close to the door and it also has our digital photos on it. (If I had time to go back I’d get the garage door up and get my 1960 Thunderbird Convertible out too.)
5. If they made a movie of your life, who should play you?
I’m not big on actors and stuff, so this was tough. I guess I’d say Keanu Reeves. He’s about my age (3 years older) and he’s done serious, deep roles (Matrix) but he’s done goofy stuff too (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.) I like to think that I’m a pretty deep and serious person, but I have a goofy side too. Probably a lousy choice, but I can’t think of anyone else.
Well, there you go. So the deal now is that the first 5 comments get to be interviewed to. I’ll give you 5 questions and you post the answers on your blog or in the comments of mine.

Searching for some help with a batch file at work, I stumbled on this page listing a bunch of freeware. Adaware SE, a spy-ware removal tool, is a the top of the list. I was aware if that one as well as the Google Toolbar for IE (someone has done a FireFox version too.) Just above that was Fontlist which allows you to see any phrase displayed in every font on your PC.
But farther down the list was, for this fat fingered typist, the Holy Grail of free IE browser extensions, IEspell. I can now spell check my posts directly in MT and I can spell check my comments on other blogs and forums I visit. Any place you enter text in IE, you can spell check. How cool is that?

For those of my readers who also read the Thinklings, their site appears to be down. The thinklings.org domain is messed up but you can still get to the site via thinklings.com. That applies to Jared’s site (Mysterium Tremendum) too.
Also, Messy Christian has moved her blog away from TypePad to a stand alone Moveable Type blog at www.messychristian.com. Her TypePad blog will go away at the end of the month.
I haven’t changed either link at the left yet, I’ll get to that later.
UPDATE: I fixed the link to Messy Christian and the Thinklings seem to be back to normal now.