T-shirt Idea

Inspiration: a mountain of CiCi's pizza crusts 92 pieces high!

Any and all suggestions and constructive criticisms welcome.

What's up with The Chad

I must apologize for rarely updating this thing, and when I do not putting anything about what's going on in my life. I feel like I'm getting into the swing of things here in Florida. Still learning how to plan ahead, important life lesson that plan to learn sometime soon. Sometimes working ahead is pointless though, for example today I got a postcard in the mail telling me that there is an area wide teen worship in Orlando NEXT SUNDAY. This happens quite often, maybe I'm just out of the loop. But we'll try to go, I'll probably have to recruit parents to drive because we're not allowed to take the van (they're not safe apparently), unless we can get enough participation for the bus...if it is out of the shop by then.

I've been dabbling with some ideas for a logo for the youth group and t-shirts for the summer and camp. I got my man Landry to help with a logo/letterhead sort of thing, and now I'm trying to think of a true logo/icon sort of thing. Not sure what direction to take. Here's what Landry came up with:

The little "shwoosh" thing in the lower center is the congregation's logo, trying to tie the YG in with the congregation instead of making it it's own thing. But I'm thinking the YG still needs its own icon thingy to go along with it.

In other news we got a new piano! It's a hammer action Yamaha. I love it. Maybe I'll post a vid or audio sometime of some stuff I'm working on. I've also been messing around on Garage Band a lot with vocals, guitar, and keys, maybe one day I'll end up with something I deem sharable.

Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a Demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Who said football is worthless.

For those who don't know who Tim Tebow is, read this paragraph, skip ahead if you do. He is the starting quarterback for the Florida Gators.  His parents are missionaries in the Philippines and he often works in their orphanage during the summers.  He is frequently seen preaching and leading Bible studies in Florida prisons in his free time.  He wears "Phil 4:13" on his face for every game.  He has won numerous awards including college football's most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy.

In July, at a news conference, the following question was posed to Mr. Tebow:

"I don't mean to sound cynical, but between winning the national championship and winning the Heisman, saving the world in the Philippines and all, did you ever, like, sneak a cigarette when you were in high school? Do you ever do anything wrong? Do you feel like everything is sort of on cruise control for you?"

His response (in part):

"You know, everybody, they can look and say how easy it is. But it's definitely not that easy. The difference is 'cause not many people want to wake up at 5, go through workouts, go speak to young kids, go back, eat lunch, go to class, go to tutoring, go speak at a prison at night, come back. I mean, more people would do those things; they just don't want to sacrifice.

"You know, there's a lot of leaders out there. But, unfortunately, there aren't a lot of good ones. So that's always been my dream and my goal, is to be someone like Danny Wuerffel was to me, to be someone that a parent can say, 'Hey, this kid did it the right way.' That's always been my dream and my goal more so than winning a trophy or winning a championship.

"So if it's cynical or whatnot, that's fine. If people don't believe it, that's fine. There's always going to be naysayers, people that are going to say it's fake. But that's fine because you can't control everybody. But I can control what I do, my attitude, how I approach the situation. So how I approach the situation is I want to do everything in my power that football gives me to influence as many people as I can for the good because that's gonna mean so much more when it's all said and done than just playing football and winning championships."

This kid impresses me more every day.  

My favorite part: "...more people would do these things; they just don't want to sacrifice."

What would we be doing with our day if we were really, I mean really willing to sacrifice?

You can find the original article by Pat Forde on espn.com here.

Interesting stuff recently on Foxnews.com

Some news stories lately have really grabbed me lately. All of them science related. I'll present them in order from the painfully obvious to the most mind blowing.

#1: Topic: Climate Change

What grabbed me in this article was the "why didn't I think of that" factor. Pop quiz: (T or F) If sea ice in the arctic melts, sea levels will rise. The answer is: False.  Because ice, even if it is floating above the surface, is still displacing water. Just like in your 4th grade science experiment, if you put a piece of ice in a glass of water and mark the water level, when the ice melts, has the water level gone up or down? Neither! So why should melting ice make sea levels go up? Just another example of junk-science being used to fool us into panicking about global warming.

#2: Topic:  Nuclear Missile Defense

The article says it best, this looks like something straight out of a "Terminator" movie.  Basically a huge, self-propelled, self-guided bullet, this amazing device is designed to hunt down and ram enemy ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) warheads.  It's a cylinder with rocket boosters pointing in every direction that allow it to fly through space....just watch the video linked in the article. Whoa.

#3: Topic: Prosthetic Limbs

Three words: watch. the. video.  You'll find yourself trying to figure out if it's been doctored or is actually from a sci-fi movie. It's not. It's real.  And it's awesome.  Prosthetic limbs that are anatomically correct, and can be controlled by either an ingenious control system integrated into your shoe, by attaching control systems to muscles and tendons, or mere thought.  Imagine feeding yourself for the first time in 26 years, like the man in the video.  Who knows how close we are to a fully functional, fully integrated prosthetic hand that is indistinguishable from the real thing to the naked eye.  Just like Luke Skywalker. 20 years ago: science fiction. Today: reality.  God has allowed man to progress so much these last 100 years.  Who knows what's in store around the corner.

Welp...here we go.

Since I havn't posted in so long, here's some short quips pertaining to my thoughts on the election. I got a catalog from Despair.com in the mail for some reason and found some of their products were slightly profound/ironic.

A rejected Obama campaign slogan.

Something to post on the Whitehouse door come January.

Another rejected Obama poster.

Large corporations new outlook on labor during the Obama presidency.

The credit crisis is your fault.

An unheeded warning (the ship represents the USSR).

I blame the media.

I'm thinking of putting this on the church bus (unrelated).

"I think that Karl Marx quote, 'to each according to his need, from each according to his ability,' really sums up Obama's campaign. What? Karl Marx isn't one of the Marx brothers??"
-Obama voter.

In Other News

Things are going really well down here in FL. There's lots to be done around here and I'm still just trying to hit my stride. The congregation is great, not without its problems, but that is to be expected.

I'm searching for an apartment. I hate shopping for expensive things (i.e. apartments, cars, etc.) I am THE WORST haggler/bargain shopper ever.

If Florida wins out and gets left out of the national championship, I will only be a little upset, even though I know they can beat anyone in the country the way they are playing right now. Losing to Ole Miss is just too big of a loss. BUT, if there are two other 1 loss teams in the championship, I'll be upset. That's neither here nor there, just throwing it out there.

Bye!

Yay for va-ca!

So I have the WHOLE week off this week so I have lots of time to do the lots of things I havn't had lots of time to do. before.

Today I cleaned my car.  Trust me, it needed it.  It took me all afternoon and a trip to O'Reily's Autoparts.  I warshed, waxed, rain-ex-ed, armor-alled, replaced the windshield wipers, scrubbed the carpets/seats, and took all the junk out of there (cept the trunk still has a bunch of copper wire I need to recycle).  Boyitellyahwhat, it is like getting a new car.  Just in time to drive it 20 hours to Tampa.

The wifey and I saw "Iron Man" this weekend.  It was really good. Left me wanting more.  I'm looking forward to the sequel and the upcoming Captain America movie which is supposedly going to intertwine with Iron Man and other Marvel movies including (possibly) X-men and Spiderman.  The possibilities are endless, as are the profits I'm sure.  

Still getting ready for the move, no news on that front really.  Hope everyone is doing well.