"The lights aren't twinkling, Clark." (Christmas Vacation)

Straight Rambling Thoughts

1. Who is in charge in La-La land (Hollywood) when a steaming pile of dung is made, and some odd reason, released, only to become known as the failure it is at the box office. For said pile of dung, I point you here: Blonde Ambition

2. America needs serious tort reform. When some lazy 40-year old and his buddies are so ingrained in interacting all by their lonesome over the holiday season rather than watching "A Christmas Story" or reading something carbon-based, they feel slighted, wronged, transgressed to the point of filing a $5 million lawsuit against Microsoft because XBOX Live was down a little bit. Hint: Maybe the uber geeks of MS were telling you something- GET OUT OF YOUR MOM'S BASEMENT!

3. In Washington State, we are officially tech-tied. We can be ticketed if using our cell phones while driving and committing an infraction or accident. I don't blame the lawmakers on this one. I think it's good. But when will we have a law passed that tickets people who have trouble operating a motor vehicle when operating a motor vehicle?

4. An odd conversation popped up about our current political progress. One topic was the so-called $10,000/month Secret Service rent Bill Clinton is charging the US government (which I am lacking confirmation on that). So I had a crafty way of dealing with saving the government untold monies associated with Presidential pensions, Secret Service detail, and all the related administrative costs associated with keeping "safe" a person who holds many a secrets.

5. What is a Triscuit? I came up with the combreviation of "triage" and "biscuit" because a triscuit looks like a wheat-woven gauze bandage. So if anyone has some accidents this year during the "Big Game" (NFL prohibits the use of Super Bowl title as a basis of copyright infringement in one of the most ludicrous methods of watering down the grassroots appeal of a major sporting event), don't leave the game: just strap a salty triscuit to your wound, and bind it with some long licorice. Never leave the game.

"Look at that thing's teeth!" (Strange Wilderness)

Yeah, I don't care if my favorite scene is cut, but this is going to be hilarious.

"So...." (National Treasure 2)

Wow. December 12 was the last post. Hmmm. I've been a little busy preparing and getting things ready for Christmas Eve and beyond. I'm running a cool little light show as part of the Christmas Eve services at The Rock. A night before the big show, and I'm pretty calm. Check back at 4:59pm tomorrow to see how well I'm holding up. Just kidding.

Here are some numbers for you:
2 - Days prepping and arranging the system
3 - Services @ 5:00, 6:30, & 8:00pm on Christmas Eve.
4 - Number of Christmas Eve Services at the current location.
5 - Number of Christmas Eve Services I've been to.
11 - Hours spent programming lights for one event.
16 - Additional dimmer channels used (96 total).
28 - Intelligent lights utilized.
64 - # of light cues for song.
195 - Seconds of accompanying song.
200 - # of feet of additional socapex cable.
800 - Watts of power per channel on dimmer rack.
8000 - Watts of some "special" components.

We'll just see tomorrow what all those numbers add up to. ;-)

"With great power, comes great responsibility." (Spider-Man)

Just go here.

Watch the videos.

That is cool, coming from someone who loved the game growing up. I used to play for hours on a Mac SE.

Some things have come down the pipe that I'm very excited about. The big one is Mitosis 08 in April. We have a direction graphically and a theme. It will be a different type of conference that the Church needs. Not TRC, but the Church body as a whole. And our speaker line up is awesome.

Stay tuned.

"By the power of Greyskull!" (Hot Fuzz)

Last week I was at the Performance Racing Industry tradeshow in Orlando, FL. Awesome. Lots of shiny go-fast parts. The amount of product literature is astounding. I think we came back with 10 inches of catalogs, pamphlets, and fliers. That is a lot of info to trudge along with for 8 or 9 hours.

I could tell at the tradeshows which companies had a strong European base, or were European, just by the display booth. Some were obvious, like Brembo, but I didn't know AP Brakes was from the UK. The booths were clean, crisp, and brighter.

"I don't want to sell or process anything that's been sold or processed." (Say Anything)

Sometimes my defense turns into offense. But sometimes on purpose. On The Rock Church's YouTube channel, some "stirring" conversation about one of the videos led to this post:

User Oneak: no, i dont. Have you ever noticed that the idea of god has to be preached and tought over and over? It also must be engrained in a person from a young age, or shown to a person at their most desperate hour.
However, things that are ACTUALLY facts, like Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, only needs to be tought once.
The very fact that jesus needs to be injected into EVERYTHING at ALL TIMES just shows the fagility of the belief. THE TRUTH IS NEVER FRAGILE.

And that prompted my response:
fyi, facts are taught over and over and over. it's called school. and there's the famous quote "people who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
and other facts, like how to spell "taught" "fragility" obviously are needed to be "ingrained" over and over.
thomas edison took many (over 2000) iterations before he successfully created the incandescent light bulb. it didn't happen over night. he had to fail numerous times before he was successful.

And I did look up "ingrained" and it can be spelled either way. Also in my haste I placed a space in overnight.

The comment "The truth is never fragile" caught my attention. Truth isn't, but our preconceived notions and expectancy of truth are.