Following up on a post at Radical Congruency, I checked Technorati to see who, if anyone, links to me. It found several that I knew about (Thinklings, Mysterium Tremendum, Country Keepers) but failed for some reason to find Virusdoc. It did, however, turn out two that I wasn’t aware of, Dawson Baily and Requiest. Rong of Requiest has commented here before, but I wasn’t aware that he’d linked to me. Thanks for the linkage guys. Go check them out, I will be. Oh, and if you’re doing some stealth surfing, be aware that Requiest has music playing on his site.

I’ve added a couple new links at left. I recently discovered a site that posts regular – daily actually – updates on the churches in the ICOC. Although the ICOC doesn’t exsist as it once was (a good thing), it is still near to my heart as the movement of churches that led me to be what I am today. It’s good for me to find a source of information for the ICOC chuches around the world. Look for ICOCinfo at left.
I’ve also added a link to Disciples Today. DT is an ICOC web portal dedicated to the “connection of disciples and churches so that we might glorify God, mature as Christians, deepen our fellowship and accomplish God’s dream for every person to have the opportunity for a relationship with him.” The bulk of the content is subsciber only, but the news area and the links to the icoc churches is accessable to all.

While I’m on the subject of not writing much, I’d like to comment on the purpose of blogging. I do this blog mainly because writing brings clarity to my thoughts. There’s just something about putting words to the page that helps to crystallize things. I can’t explain it, it just does. The second reason (close second) is for the community. I feel as though I’ve developed some real relationships with some of you in blog-land (I can’t stand the word ‘blogsphere’), mostly in the comments on other blogs. This community has expanded my mind, forced me to learn new words and phrases (emergent church for example) and generally helped me see the greater world outside my own.
The second reason, though, sometimes seems to conflict with the first. Because you, dear reader, are out there I feel this pressure to perform. I need to keep writing or you may go away. Not only that, but I’ve got to write something substantive, at least once and a while. It can’t be all fluff about the new Hyundai Sonata, you deserve more! So at times like this, when I don’t have much to say, I get a little servous that I’m not living up to my commitment to you.
Some would say, forget the readers, this is your blog for your thoughts and ideas. But you see if it were only about me I wouldn’t have a blog, I’d have a diary. I want others to see it, I long for someone to read it and tell me what they think. A little confession here; sometimes when I post something I think is particularly good, I find my self checking in every hour or two to see if anyone’s commented on it. Pretty pathetic, huh? I’m usually disappointed, which is frankly good for my humility.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I’m not trying to complain, just commenting on this odd idea of continually writing my thoughts for the entire world to see. It’s nothing that other bloggers haven’t felt or even written about, but it’s on my mind, so I wrote it down. I’ll be back in an hour to see if you have any thoughts. 🙂

A quick update to my lniks at right:
Gary Petersen at Country Keepers had moved his blog from Radio Userland to WordPress. He’s left his old blog up for a bit, so his new one has a new address. Update your links to: www.countrykeepers.com/wp
My church’s web address is moved to: www.columbuschurchofchrist.com.
I’ve added a new link to a blog that I read often. Didymus is a former member of a church like mine, that is affiliated with the ICOC. The link is long overdue, I’ve been reading it for a long time.

I’ve added a new link section with a couple of links. I’ve taken to using my own site for my ‘favorites’ so I’ve got to get all the places I enjoy in the side bar so I don’t forget to cheack them.
The section I’ve added is for automotive stuff. I love cars and I plan on making car posts a little more prominent here. These are car sites I like to visit.
The first is Odyclub, a forum dedicated to the Honda Odyssey minivan. Yeah, there’s actually a club out there for a minivan. It also happens to be where Virusdoc (my most loyal reader and biggest commenter) and I met. It’s a civil place full of all kinds of people and more discussion about a minivan than you thought possible.
The second is Autoblog, a fantastic source for all news car related. It’s simply a weblog that compiles links and stories about cars. They post like a dozen or more articles a day, so if you don’t visit often you miss a lot.
The third is a recent find, Car Design News. Back when I was entering design school at the University of Cincinnati my ultimate dream and goal was to get into auto design. Ultimately I don’t think I had the right skills for that kind of work, and I also fell in love with Product Design, so my career didn’t follow that path. But I still have a love in my heart for it. I love looking at the sketches and models of future designs and dream about creating that kind of stuff (I’ve done a few back in school, but none lately adn not of th caliber you see at CDN). This site tracks the trends in car design and puts them on display. To get to the higher quality images requires a pretty steep membership fee ($100/year) but there’s plenty to see without it. There’s even tutorials on car design and sketching.

I added a link at the left to Mysterium Tremendum. Mysterium Tremendum is the personal blog of Jared, one of the Thinklings. He’s quite the prolific poster, sometimes posting several posts a day. He’s also one of the most prolific at the Thinklings as well. I try to stop in pretty regularly because there’s almost always good stuff to read.

It’s Salguod Update Saturday!
Music is a big part of my life. I love a whole bunch of different kinds of music. There’s not many types that I don’t like. For example, my CD collection includes both Jane’s Adiction and Amy Grant; Aerosmith and the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. I’ve added a few online links to great music for those with high speed connections.
In recent years I’ve discovered the beauty of the diverse music available on public radio. Ironically, I discovered it through a boss that would play the morning news from NPR. At 9:00 the music would come on. He didn’t like the music much, but never changed the station (unless the music got too wierd, which it would sometimes do). I grew to love the music more that the news. Here in Columbus, we’re blessed with some great local music shows as well as national ones on our local station, WCBE. You can listen to WCBE online at the link on the right.
On WCBE in the evenings they play the World Cafe from WXPN in Phillidelphia. Well, it turns out that the World Cafe is a much bigger show than the 2 hours a night on WCBE, playing from 2:00 PM until 7:00 PM Monday through Thursday, 2-5 on Friday. Additionally, there are other good music shows there as well, including one just for kids. You can listen to WXPN online at the link on the right.
I also added a link to Launch from Yahoo. It’s a subscription service, but you can listen for free if you don’t mind a lower quality stream. There a bunch of stations to choose from, but the best thing is the ability to create you own station. You go through and rate different genres, artists and individual songs. Then Launch plays music from it’s library based on your preferences. Once you get a bunch of stuff rated, it actually works pretty well. The more you rate, the better it is. The ‘Listen’ link at left is to my Launch station.
Lastly, I added a link to the Singing Buckeyes , a local barbershop chorus I sing with. I love to sing. I got my love for singing, and probably for music, from my Dad. He’s been singing barbershop with the Maumee Valley Seaway Commanders in Toledo for some 37 years. He’s been a part of probably a dozen quartets, two of them Johnny Appleseed disctrict champions, and placing as high as 13th in SPEBSQSA international contest. The Singing Buckeyes are an incredible organizaition. Each August they operate Harmony Camp where 200+ High School kids come to learn the secrets of barbershop harmony. It’s the largest camp of it’s kind in the country. They also put on the Buckeye Invitational Harmony Festival, singing valentines, spring and Christmas shows and competition in the fall.

It’s been encouraging to have a few of you sign up (on the left) for email notification of new posts. As the list expanded, I realised that I hadn’t provided a way to ‘ubnsubscribe’. I’ve updated the text at the left to provide for that. Unfortunately, Movabletype doen’t provide for automatic removing from the notification list like it does for adding, so you need to do it by email.
So if you’ve gotten another one of these blasted emails from that Salguod guy and wish they would stop, email me and I’ll take you off the list.
BTW – There are some on my list that I don’t know. Why not email me and tell me a bit about yourself and how you found salguod.net? I’d appeciate it.

Another place I visit occasionally is Heal Your Church Website. HYCW is a blog that attempts to clean the net of tacky, and worse, ineffective and unuseable church websites. How does he do that? He visits the sites and then critiques them. He also writes a lot about the struggles he and others run into in maintaining church web sites. It’s full of technical stuff that is frequently over my head, but it has helped me a lot in the learning curve for creating and running my own website.
His Scripturizer plug in for Movabletype is what turns the scripture references I (and you) type in here to links to the verse at BibleGateway.
I’ve also added a link to his email obfuscator. It’s a great tool that generates a clickable email link that’s sufficiantly garbled to ward off the spambots. See it in action at the left.

Now that I’ve finished an overhaul of my side menus, I need to update my links. There are more places that I like to visit and have been doing so regularly. It’s time they made it onto the list.
The first of these is Radical Congruency. These guys come at Christianity from a similar background as I do, the Churches of Christ / Restoration Movement. It’s always nice to find folks with a similar perspective on things. But more than that, there’s some deep thought provoking articles posted there. I like to read stuff that makes me think and reveals to me new things about God. These guys do that.