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Friday Random Linkness One Year Anniversary
Aug 13, 2010 Friday Random Linkness Comments Off
52 weeks ago, I started a weekly tradition called Friday Random Linkness. The goal was to keep me focused on my other blog posts and to keep the randomness confined to one day. Shockingly, I have actually held to this tradition all year (except for my one month fast from Social Media).
Today, in honor of the past year, here are my top 20 favorite random links from the year, in the order I posted them:
OK…I think the British have convinced me to stop texting while driving. (Warning: this is graphic…and one line is haunting me: “Mommy, Daddy, please wake up.”)
Need parallel parking lessons? Take them from this kid.
OK…this mashup is sick: Bob Marley vs. Iron Maiden.
According to BBC (you read that right), researchers have determined that a zombie attack would lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it. Duh.
Addicted to NoelHeikkinen.com so much you aren’t getting any work done? Turn off your Mac’s networking for a couple hours. Love this.
Wow. Trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.
As you watch these 12 videos of stupid people crashing cars don’t forget that it could be you.
My favorite cover of Single Ladies yet…
Think I can talk Steve, Paul, and Dan into doing something like this?
Another brilliant Improv Everywhere: Where’s Rob?
Wow. This story of a 20ish year old couple adopting a teenager is so cool.
Excellent article on inappropriate language.
This is so addicting! First person Tetris.
Wow. Check out this stunning video depicting Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine in WW2.
Christopher Hitchens on the atonement.
The world belongs to those who hustle (absolutely a must read).
Wow. This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
My new favorite commercial of all time.
Bilingual cuteness.
Job
Aug 11, 2010 Old Testament Book Summaries Comments Off
Over a year ago, I was blogging my way through the Old Testament and I stopped. I figure I will periodically pick it up again as we encounter various books in the Text Project. Since we are reading through Job right now, I figured I’d start here.
Job
Author
Nobody, this side of heaven, can identify the author of this book.
Date
Experts are all over on this one, just like with the Authorship. Some place Job way back to 2000BC, some in the 6th century BC, and some in the 3rd century BC. The only thing for certain is that you can’t be dogmatic on your view.
Theme
You think you know suffering? You know nothing of suffering. Job was just about as close to perfect as a man can get. He was a moral, upstanding, godly individual and his life fell apart. In the matter of minutes, he loses a huge fortune and a large loving family.
His response is to ask God “why?” This is a good thing. Then he eventually turns to demanding an answer from God. This is not a good thing. God sets him straight.
There’s also a great set of dialogue between Job and his wife, as well as Job and his friends. Pretty much everyone blames Job or God, but he won’t go there.
What this book teaches me about Jesus
Like Jesus himself said, “God sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike.” Suffering happens to all of us, no matter of “good” we think we are. But Jesus came and suffered the most, even though he deserved it the least.
Random Thoughts
Job is a masterpiece of literature. The author is a literary genius, he is well versed in science and human nature as well. If you can pull it off, sit down and read it straight through in one sitting.
Tags: bible, job, old testament, suffering
Re:Train
Aug 9, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge Comments Off
Dan and I will be spending the week in Seattle as we begin taking Master’s classes in The Missional Leadership Program at The Resurgence Training Center. This year we are going to attempt the crazy plan of going to school in Seattle, all while trying to be good dads and husbands and continue pastoring full-time at Riv.
It’s going to be an interesting year, so we would appreciate your prayers and understanding if we seem dazed and confused on occasion. Luckily, we have amazing wives who are very supportive of what we are doing and a kick butt assistant who will manage our schedules and protect our time ferociously.
Tags: personal
Friday Random Linkness
Aug 6, 2010 Friday Random Linkness Comments Off
I love Bob Newhart.
Inside a wave.
Awesome dive into a blue hole.
How to pull a tooth out with a rocket.
My favorite headline of all time: “Student Throws Puppy at Hell’s Angels, Escapes On Bulldozer”
Read the Stats on Slacking and then get back to work!
What’s Next?
Aug 3, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge Comments Off
Now that I am back from my Social Media Fast, it’s time to jump into the new year (Riv’s calendar really goes along with a school calendar). With this new season of life and a little bit of perspective from my month off, I am going to modify my use of Social Media a smidge. Here’s what I am thinking:
Twitter
I am suspecting this is going to be the hardest part of my Social Media world to jump back into. That’s odd because it was one of the hardest habits for me to break. Now that I am not Tweeting constantly, though, it’s weird to start up again. Not sure how this one is going to change, but I know it will…
Facebook
By far, Facebook is my primary mode of connection with people at Riv and around the world. I am excited to get back in there and start connecting again, but I am going to limit my Facebook time so it is not a distraction from Riv, family and school (yes, I said school…more on that later). Not sure what the limits are going to be, but I am thinking about starting the day on Facebook and ending it the same way and trying to stay off in between. We’ll see…
Blog
I have been blogging for a very very long time and I plan to continue for a very very long time. However, I have noticed that since I started importing my blog into Facebook, my readership has decreased on the actual blog site. In particular, the comments have almost completely died out unless I specifically request feedback. There has been a corresponding increase of comments over on Facebook which makes sense. Because of this, I am going to continue writing on my blog (and importing the feed to Facebook) but I am disabling comments (unless a specific post warrants it). If people want to comment, they can do so on Facebook.
I’d love your thoughts on this, but of course you’ll have to give them to me over on Facebook.
Tags: facebook, personal, social media, twitter
I’m Back!
Aug 2, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge Comments Off
I’m back from my month long Social Media Fast. Did you miss me?
I figured my first post should be a little look at what this month has been like without Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
Week 1
Countless times a day, I found myself starting to log into Facebook. It made me realize the number of “breaks” I take during the average day to consume Social Media. Once I began to eliminate that urge, I learned something: I am much much more productive when I don’t have Facebook as a distraction. As I re-enter the Facebook world, I am going to have to seriously discipline myself to only login a few times a day.
Week 2
This was when my need to Twitter really emerged. All of these little things kept happening that I wanted to tell the world about: the day I hiccuped for 8 hours straight, when one of my boys said, “Dad, do we HAVE to listen to rock music?”, when a flash flood almost washed away our tent when camping, etc. etc. etc. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to share this, I like the community it builds with people, it was just hard for me not to go there.
Week 3-4
These were vacation weeks for me so the temptation to blog, Facebook, and Twitter weren’t very strong except when I took pictures I really wanted to share.
Week 5
Last week was perhaps the hardest week because I was back from vacation and really trying to get things planned out for the fall. It felt like everything was “back to normal” except my social media stuff. I found myself craving normalcy.
Summary
This was a great thing for me in many ways and I think I may make a habit of doing this each July. Here were the best things about the month:
- My family vacation was truly that: a FAMILY vacation. I wasn’t consumed with having to share all the details with the world, and a lot of the time I would just leave my gadgets (including my phone) in the hotel room or van.
- I got a lot of reading done (which was one of my goals).
- The fast helped me to be less narcissistic. That’s one of the great downfalls about social media: we share every detail of our lives with other people and it makes is feel so dang important. It tends to place us in the center of the universe.
Anyhoo…tomorrow I am going to post a few thoughts on what happens next with me and Social Media.
Tags: facebook, personal, social media, twitter
iFast
Jul 1, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge 3 Comments
Everyone who knows me knows that I am a tech-junky. In particular, I’m a bit of an Apple Fanboy. I am always tapping away at my MacBook Pro or iPhone or iPad. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can become a bit obsessive.
In fact, I’ve been thinking about my social media consumption and production lately and I think it’s time for a break. Conveniently for me, my iPhone is dead and I’m not going to replace it until next month.
So, for the month of July I’m fasting from social media. Here are the parameters I am laying out for myself:
No Twitter. No tweeting, no reading other people’s tweets. A lot of time I’m not really living in the moment, rather I’m trying to capture the moment to share with others in 140 characters or less.
No Facebook. I don’t need to catch up on everyone’s lives, photos, and status updates this month. I also don’t need to share everything from my world. Sorry to everyone with July birthdays…you’ll just have to live without me saying “happy birthday.”
No Blogging. Most of the time, I love writing for my blog. Sometimes it’s a chore. This month, it doesn’t matter because I won’t be doing any of it.
No Reading Blogs. This one might be the hardest for me, since I have a lot of blogs I like to keep up on and no one would know if I snuck a peak. But it’s time for some offline thinking.
Limited Email. I’ll periodically check my personal email, but for the most part I’m going to let my assistant handle my work email. If something earth-shattering is happening that needs my attention, I’ll have her let me know but for the most part I don’t think the world will end if I don’t respond to email. To this end, I’m going to disconnect my iPad from my work email account so it’s harder for me to access. Maybe I’ll let my assistant change my password too. Yeah, I think I will.
So what will I do with all of the time / mental energy I save?
Read books. I have a whole lot of books I want to catch up on (and yes, a bunch of them are on my iPad…not giving that up).
Read the Bible, pray, and plan for the fall.
Vacation with the Fam. This month I have the coolest vacation plans ever but I don’t need to share every detail of them online.
That’s about it. My plan is to be back online in August. Who knows, though, I may like this offline world more than I think…
Tags: facebook, fasting, personal, social media, twitter
Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye?
Jun 29, 2010 Book Reviews Comments Off
A few weeks ago at Riv, I asked for a single person to volunteer to read the book “Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye” and to let me know what they thought of it. My friend Lisa took me up on the challenge and posted an exhaustive (and personal) review on her site.
Here is a shorter review specifically for the readers of my blog. Thanks, Lisa. You rock.
The author is theologically sound and covers a wide range of scripture to make her points. Most books on singleness seem to rely on either 1 Corinthians 7 or Ruth. McCulley touches on both, of course, but also digs into many more obscure, seemingly tangential passages. For instance, she actually references Leviticus 19:23-25 (you don’t actually get to eat any produce from a vineyard until year 5) to talk about how Proverbs 31:16 (“from her earnings she plants a vineyard”) is actually about long-term investment.
She offers numerous examples of how other single women have used their singleness to be a blessing. This is key. Other books seem to just say to use singleness well and leave it at that. For instance, if they’re talking about being an influence among children, they don’t seem to go much farther than suggesting that we should teach a Sunday School class. McCulley talks about strategically developing relationships with kids and their parents (volunteering to babysit so the parents can go on a date; getting permission to step in and offer corrective advice to specific children). The second half of the book offers up a ton of tips like these. The very fact that she goes for breadth – not depth – makes it a LOT easier to find ways to apply it to my own life.
She emphasizes singleness and marriage as both temporary states throughout. As part of this she makes it clear that the desire for a husband never really goes away. This gets a little more personal for me. Somewhere along the line I got it in my head that if I were truly “gifted” with singleness there would come a point where I functionally became an asexual being, and I’d no longer be attracted to the various men in my life. I’ve prayed while struggling with my feelings for various men that this one would be the last; that either he would be the one I’d actually marry or I’d just no longer have to deal with such feelings ever again. The fact that life just doesn’t work that way is so obvious that nobody ever bothers to actually state it. Most books instead focus on the whole “don’t be the aggressor in the relationship” thing. These books always feel like they operate under the assumption that (a) women choose when they fall in love and (b) single women are by default desperate enough for marriage to initiate a relationship. Okay, yes, it’s important to talk about that, but (a) initiating a relationship as a female may be unwise but does not guarantee its failure, and (b) some of us have long since learned that knowledge and can we please move on to something else. So it’s refreshing to have a book that helps you live like a single in spite of your emotions toward any particular man.
Tags: marriage, singleness
Marital Rating Scale for Wives
Jun 28, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge Comments Off
This weekend I read a bit of the Marital Rating Scale for Wives, originally published in 1936. Here’s the entire thing for your rating pleasure. Click on the thumbnail to view it in your browser. If you want to download a PDF version, you can do so by clicking here.
Why I’m not getting an iPhone4…yet.
Jun 24, 2010 Apple 5 Comments
The iPhone 4 officially hits stores today and I’ve been getting the same question a lot lately:
Are you getting the new iPhone?
I figured I’d just go ahead and throw my answer up here. No, I’m not getting it…yet. Now I know this may kill my reputation as an Apple Fanboy, but here are the reasons I am waiting:
I need to combat materialism in my life. If I were to upgrade to the iPhone 4, it would be purely because I want a new toy. Now that’s not all bad, but for me right now it would be. Between my iPhone and my iPad, I have all the technology I need. Any more would be ridiculous. This week, materialism and idolatry has a face and that face has a Retina Display.
I’m still amazed everyday with my iPhone 3g. Note I said “iPhone 3g” – I didn’t upgrade to the 3gS either. The only reason I upgraded from the original iPhone to the 3g was the GPS functionality. That, for me, was huge. Last week the dock connector died on my phone and the temptation was strong to buy a new one, but I found the part online for $13. If I’m able to get the phone working, I plan on using it for quite awhile longer. It serves my needs and then some. (Check out this great article that essentially says the same thing.) Of course, if the part doesn’t work, the “yet” part of this post kicks in.
Changes are looming. Although I haven’t had too many problems with AT&T, I am interested to see if other carriers are going to be carrying the iPhone soon. There seem to be a lot of indicators pointing in that direction, and since I am not currently in a contract I am not interested in tying myself to AT&T for another two years.
Well, there ya go. I’m not getting an iPhone 4…yet. But if you get one, make sure you let me play with it a bit. You might change my mind.
Tags: apple, iphone, materialism
