Answers to "What is web ministry?"

Answers from Weaving a Web of Connections morning group breakouts :

What is web ministry?

-methoblog

-is technology plus community.

-facebook & twitter & website & blogging all feeding to each other

-a portal of grace

-making disciples

-high-tech high touch discipleship

-24/7 access to spread the gospel

-evangelism a go-go

-circuit writers of the technological age

-marketing tool for a free product : grace

test post from Mac OS blogger widget

African groundnut soup

Prep : 

3 c. onions, chopped

3 celery stalks, diced

2 bell peppers, diced

1 lime , juiced

3 limes, wedges

28 oz. canned tomatoes, diced

1 c. brown rice

1 tbsp oil

6 c. water

1 dash cayenne

2 tbsp curry powder

1 tsp salt

1 tbso sugar

1/2 c. natural peanut butter

chopped cilantro

chopped scallions

ground peanuts

Cooking : 

-In a large pot, saute onions & celery (10 mins)

-Add the bell peppers & saute (5 mins)

-Add the cayenne & curry powder. 

-Add the rice, water, tomatoes & salt. Stir well. 

-Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered (40 mins)

Finishing : 

-Whisk in the peanut butter, lime juice, & sugar. 

-Add water if soup is too thick. 

-Season to taste.

-Serve topped with scallions, cilantro, peanuts, lime wedges

Test post

testing future scheduled posting. This should be posted around 5pm central today.

Sierpinski Valentine

I love it!

 

 

Sent to you by Matt via Google Reader:

 

 

Sierpinski Valentine

via xkcd.com on 2/12/09

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to xkcd.com using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

Jimmy sings!

What is John the Methodist up to now?

While he claims to have found gainful, fulltime employment now that he's no longer pursuing life as a candidate for ministry, several recent newsposts have begun to lead me to believe otherwise.

The first of which, he posted himself : 

http://locustsandhoney.blogspot.com/2009/02/civil-defense-in-land-of-undead.html

After leaving Austin, TX, signs indicate he went north, to Indiana : 

http://i.gizmodo.com/5145386/velociraptors-now-hunting-drivers-on-indiana-roads

And from there, westward to Colorado Springs, CO : 

http://i.gizmodo.com/5146206/today-is-a-good-day-to-rob-convenience-stores-with-a-batleth

I see this as a cry for help. Can we please reach out together to help John before his multi-state sci-fi criminal overlord spree takes him to California?

"More Brains Needed"

"BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors.

More Brains Needed


In an unsuprising move, this initiative is being supported by the SPCZ (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Zombies )

Borborygmi

The plural of borborygmus.

An Experiment in Improving UM Social Media Exposure

Kevin Watson at deeplycommitted has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methodist bloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly on-line. So, he wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methodist bloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks.

If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week.

Based on the results of the experiment, Kevin will get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and let them know the ways in which Methodist bloggers are often an underused resource.

Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISKTrScpzQ

h/t to Joseph

"India's Enron"

I've worked in call centers for 10 years now. I came across this article this morning. All I can say is "Ouch"

 

This is a test post. There should be a gorilla.

Happy New Year!

Happy Anniversary

Today my wife and I are celebrating 9 wonderful years of marriage together. We went and saw Slumdog Millionaire (AWESOME movie) and are now eating at a japanese hibachi. Here's to starting year 10!

Not quite 1984...

...but still a great year :

http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Academy_of_Science_Fiction_Fantasy_And_Horror_Films_USA/1983

11th Grade

yeargh.

After spending 2 hours fighting rush hour traffic & holiday shoppers (who made the commute home worse), I made it home without harm, despite the rain-slicked roads and poor visibility. For that, I am grateful.


However,
For the red Chevy pickup truck that cut me off,
For the 3 cars that decided to tailgate me,
For the multitude of drivers who couldn't decide which lane they wanted to be in,

I must ask forgiveness, for I uttered a multitude of silent profanities against you inside the warmth of the cabin of my car.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry Passes Away






via io9

Oh,yeah, that's it.

Now I rememeber.





I like the song a whole lot, my wife likes Leonard Cohen quite a bit. I enjoyed the article, and while I already knew that he had spent a good stretch of time at the Zen monastery, I enjoyed his comment about married life :

“I’ve never been married, but I’ve lived a married life. It hardly matters. I remember Roshi saying to the monks, ‘You lead hard lives, you rise early, you spend hours on stone floors, but if you want to try something really hard, try marriage. That is the true monastery. Try the monastery of marriage.”

Not sure how cool or interesting it is in retrospect, but I thought so at the time.

Obligatory Wikipedia entry on the song.
Also a link to a BBC article on various covers.

Other covers of the song :

Leonard Cohen's (only fair, he wrote it)


Rufus Wainwright (my favorite version, and the first I heard) :


4 guys from Northern Europe (who's names I can't spell or pronounce. One of them was the winner of World Idol (beat Kelly Clarkson)) :




Also, the fact that a gospel-themed version of a song written by a Jewish Zen Buddhist monk* should appear on british TV during the Christmas season is either ironically funny, or appropriately fitting, or both.


*okay, to be fair,that's stretching it a bit, he wrote it long before he became a monk...

Ah, well.

Last night, before going to bed, I had thought of something really cool and interesting to blog about this morning. Now, I find that I've completely forgotten what it was supposed to be. Maybe I dreamt it. Ah, well.

Everything changes.

My boss & friend, Kevin, is leaving in a week, to start work at another company. I have worked with Kevin for (almost) 10 years now. I've been working in the call center industry for (almost) 10 years now. When I dropped out of college to start working as as an agent, answering phones, Kevin was my very first team manager. I eventually had other team managers, and was, along the way, promoted to mentor, intranet administrator, client advocate, and to team manager myself. Kevin had left my department to go to become a forecast analyst in WorkForce Management (another department within call centers). A position became open in that department, Kevin recommended me, I interviewed, and got the job. I worked as his peer, with him training me, until he was eventually promoted to manager, and then I worked for him. We both ended up moving to our current company, through a mutual friend, giving our two week's notice at the old company on the same day. Kevin took a 3-day weekend, and I a 2, so I started here 1 day earlier than him; I would joke that this now made me his "senior". A while back, our company was growing, and the director of our department had the opportunity to add some managers, and Kevin was appointed as the manager over myself, as well as some others. Sometime after that, our company went through a series of layoffs, mostly affecting executives, directors, and management. Our director was one of those affected (he has since found employement again), and Kevin was appointed as the interim director. Kevin is now going to work for the company that we had both previously left, but now as a director, and with greatly expanded roles and responsibilities. I know that he his very intelligent, driven, skilled, and capable, both for the analytical work that we do, and for the leadership role that he will be taking on.

I have worked very closely with him, for close to a decade now, and have had many opporunities to break bread (eat lunch) and share faith with him (he is a Baptist, and I am a Methodist). We work well together (we were referred to, by others, as Peanut Butter and Jelly, on more than one occasion), and even have similar temperaments (he is ISTJ, and I am INTJ, if you're into that sort of thing). Whenever one of us had a hard problem with a formula in excel, or needed someone to bounce ideas off of, we were usually the first one that the other would go to ( "Are you free for a consultation?").

I am excited for my friend as he embarks on a new phase in his career, and I will miss our daily interactions, but I am ultimately grateful to God for the experience and friendship that we've been allowed to share.

In Memoriam

For Kathleen.

Because others have said & shared in their own, and better ways, I found today how I might contribute. After noting that she already had her own Wikipedia entry, I have updated a couple of other places there that were lacking.  Noting that Wikipedia has a tendency to occasionally be in flux, I took screenshots.

GIMP stuff.

A couple of images I created using GIMP 2. Learning paths and the fill tool.

Sierpinksi gasket transformation using alternating white/grey/black




Approximation of a golden spiral :

Correlations between zombies and Republicans

“The question is, why?” asked Annalee Newitz, editor of io9.com, a pop culture Web site.

One answer: These gore-flecked flicks are really competing parables about class warfare.

“Democrats, who want to redistribute wealth to 'Main Street,' fear the Wall Street vampires who bleed the nation dry,” Newitz argued, noting that Dracula and his ilk arose from the aristocracy. “Republicans fear a revolt of the poor and disenfranchised, dressed in rags and coming to the White House to eat their brains.”

Sign-On San Diego via Slashdot

Slashdot mentions we should thank John for such greats as Mars Attacks and ID4.

Socialists are best represented by lycanthropes, and the Libertarians are most closely tied to any sort of horror from space.

Break & lunch-time activity today (retro geometry class coolness)

During my break this morning, and my lunch, I sat at my desk.

Using :
1) a blank sheet of paper
2) a compass
3) a straight-edge (which happened to be a ruler, but I didn't use it to measure anything)
4) a mechanical pencil
5) a little bit of knowledge from wikipedia

I did these things :
1) made my own graph paper (1 sheet)
2) created an approximation of a Golden Spiral.

I learned these things :
1) Either I bought a lousy compass, or I'm too heavy-handed for it. It kept "losing" it's setting. I'm going to replace it with one with a wheel lock.
2) It's easy to make graph paper on your own . However, it is HARD : for it to come out with all the points aligned, orthagonal, and evenly spaced. Little errors, made during the first couple of steps, compound over time, and with interest.

Seven Random Things

Seven Random Rules

Here are the rules:
Post the rules on your blog.
Write 7 random things about yourself.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post.
Pass on the tag.
—

7 things:

1) I went to, but never graduated from college. I went to learn, but when it felt like I wasn't learning anything new from attending class, that some of my professors were idiots, and that I could get paid full-time to do PC support over the phone (which I was doing as a part-time job at the college I attended), I quit going. I've not stopped learning (I read wikipedia almost constantly) and I don't have any college debt to pay off.

2) I grew up listening to country & western. I love bluegrass. But I also have an appreciation for Hassidic Reggae (Matisyahu) and like artists like Pink & Rihanna as well.

3) I no longer answer phones doing technical support, but have worked for call center companies for the last 9 years, 6 of which have been as a forecast analyst. I use excel to do things. dark and arcane voodoo fortune-telling magic things. (maybe that last part is hyperbole)

4) I need to have something to fidget with when I get nervous. A coin, a pencil and paper, knitting, a computer, a guitar, but something.

5) I wasn't allowed to have cats growing up, but my wife and I have adopted 3 from the local animal shelter. Abby, Keyser Soze, and Inigo Montoya.

6) I play D&D with friends (from church eve) on the weekends sometimes, and play WoW occasionally (I even started a human priest character named johnwesley)

7) I am sometimes a rebel about not following rules. I will forgo the passing along of the tag, but feel free to pick it up if you would like.

October LT meeting devotional : Wesleyan Quadrilateral with books as visual aids.

I opened by reading this from the British Methodist Church's website.

I then referenced the Wikipedia article on the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

For examples/visual references, I had : 

• Scripture - the Holy Bible (Old and New Testaments) : 
• 5 Bibles : 1 KJV, 2 NKJV, 1 NLT, 1 ESV

• Tradition - the two millennia history of the Christian Church
• A copy of each of the following : The UMC Book of Discipline, The UMC Book of Worship, The UMC Hymnal

• Reason - rational thinking and sensible interpretation
• A copy of of Asimov's Guide to the Bible

• Experience - a Christian's personal and communal journey in Christ
• The Bible I took with me on Walk to Emmaus. Also, in that Bible are several personally-meaningful bookmarks, such as a piece of agape marking 1 Ki 19:10-12 , which is a reference to a sermon given by a former Assistant Pastor ; Also, a Wellspring UMC bumper sticker  marking a reference to our namesake Isa 55:1.

ZombApocaLegolypse

[Flickr] via [The Brothers Brick] via [Gizmodo]

Another David Foster Wallace reference

http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=122

Babylon A.D. ...

Babylon AD has some good parts (visual effects, cinematography, soundtrack/score) and some bad parts (bad dialogue - it was obvious the director & script writer failed his remedial ESL class). Vin Diesel does a good job of acting with what he's been given, as does Michelle Yeoh. I joked to my wife that this movie was like watching the live-action version of Golden Compass with Vin as the polar bear and an annoying french girl as Lyra.

Slideshow for Jennie

The rest of the vacation pictures...

There may be some duplicates as iPhoto was being a pain and not wanting to upload to picasaweb...

At the airport again...

This time it's at Orlando International, waiting for the flight home. I have more pictures of Disney World, and Jennie's granddad, aunt, uncle, and cousins. I'll post those later when we have more free time. We had fun staying at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. They have a salt water pool, and a shower stall with a built-in bench. Jennie and I had a king size bed, and it was, I think, the most comfortable hotel bed I've ever slept in. Nice sheets, down pillows. About the only thing I could have asked for was an HDTV and more channels on the TV, but who had time for that? We were on vacation...

We were going to have to pay to check in the bags, but since we upgraded to 1st class tickets, the two bags to be checked were included for free.

I'm off now to go read The Subtle Knife, but if I get bored with that, then I've got two paperback Gene Wolfe's that I picked up at the Altamonte mall Barnes and Noble...

Ladies

Kathy, Kendra, Kaylan, Jennie

Grandpa's apartment

Cousin Penny