Welcome to foot..... ball

Brandi has a great post on her new found passion - football. Ok, passion may be a bit of an exageration but she has learned to enjoy the sport and her Dallas Cowboys.

Football wasn’t a very big part of my life growing up. Even though I went to a large high school in Texas with a good team and lived with a Dallas Cowboys loving dad, I never got into it. It was too complicated, the games were too long, there were better things to do.
I knew going into it that being with Aaron was going to add a lot more football to my life. His dad was a coach, all three boys played in high school and his brother played in college. It’s not just a passive hobby in their house. It’s a lifestyle.

Not much happening today

I head into work in a few minutes, but otherwise nothing major happening today.
We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday at my parents and then with Laurie's family in the afternoon and evening.
I think the highlight of the evening revolved around my mom taking the smallest sip ever of my glass of wine and then dropping her coffee on the floor as she recoiled from the "horrible taste."
Then a short time later we watched my granddad enjoy a glass of that same wine - the same man we never imagined would drink a glass of wine.
My mom does not like wine. Guess that will never change. And sometimes your family can surprise you no matter how well you think you know them.
I also had a great time getting to know more members of Laurie's family and giving her nephew Jake a hard time.
He's going to be a fun addition to my new extended family - whether he likes it or not.
Well I better head in to the office but if you're skipping out on the stores and looking for gifts online here are some great deals from Apple today (available exclusively online:

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iPod nano - Save up to $21 plus free laser engraving. Starting at $149.00.

iPod 30GB and 80GB - Save up to $31 plus free laser engraving. Starting at $249.00.

iPod Hi-Fi. Save $51.00.

Apple wireless Mighty Mouse. Save $11.00.
Click the link below for these and other savings:

Black Friday Sale

Apple is holding a number of specials online this Friday.
If you're looking for an iPod or Mac product for that someone special this year, check the Apple website for great deals this Friday. From Apple:

For ONE DAY ONLY, this Friday November 24th, the Apple Store will have a special Black Friday shopping event. Historically Black Friday has been a big day for us here at The Apple Store – and we want you to join in the fun!

Kitchen substitute

If you're having trouble finding a rare jar of Fish Sauce this holiday season or maybe buckwheat flour you can either (A) find a better supermarket, or (B) visit: foodsubs.com.
Foodsubs.com gives you substitutions for loads of "special" ingredients.
Check it out.
Oh and by the way, a decent substitute for Fish Sauce is Soy Sauce - but of course you loose all the fishiness.

Meaty Thanksgiving download

Lifehacker has put together a great PC Rescue Kit for all of us who tend to spend more than a few hours during the holidays fixing computers for family members - not that there's anything wrong with that...

Next week here in the U.S. many of us will be heading home to see family, share a turkey feast, watch some football.... and help out our less technically-inclined relatives. The pumpkin pie might not even be on the table before you get that inevitable request: "Can you take a look at my computer? It's been really slow lately."
Last year we covered how to how to fix Mom and Dad's computer when you head home for the holidays. This year, we'll save you the trouble of chasing down half a dozen PC fix-it tools in the midst of your post-turkey coma. Instead we've put together everything you'll need to right your famliy's borked computer into one meaty Thanksgiving download.
Introducing Lifehacker's Thanksgiving PC Rescue Kit
After a large dose of turkey and tryptophan, the last thing you want to do is cruise around the interwebs downloading this, that and the other to get the folks' PC in order. So we've gone ahead and done the work for you. Right-click the following link and choose "Save As:"
Lifehacker's Thanksgiving PC Rescue Kit (17MB)
This zip file contains half a dozen free tools we recommend to scan and clean and protect a malware-laden PC. Either download right now and save to your thumb drive, or bookmark this page for next week's tech support session. The entire file is less than 17 megabytes, which will leave room on your USB drive for those Neil Diamond tracks Mom asked you to download for her.

Also, don't forget to run Windows updater to be sure the system software is up to date and run a scan disk and disk deframenter as well.
And if you really want to have fun, change your parent's browser from Internet Explorer to Firefox. That might save you some headaches in the future.

Payin' da bills

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Rich Young Ruler

This reminds me a lot about Austin Street:

poverty is so hard to see
when it’s only on your tv and twenty miles across town
where we’re all living so good
that we moved out of Jesus’ neighborhood
where he’s hungry and not feeling so good
from going through our trash
he says, more than just your cash and coin
i want your time, i want your voice
i want the things you just can’t give me

so what must we do
here in the west we want to follow you
we speak the language and we keep all the rules
even a few we made up
come on and follow me
but sell your house, sell your suv
sell your stocks, sell your security
and give it to the poor
what is this, hey what’s the deal
i don’t sleep around and i don’t steal
i want the things you just can’t give me

because what you do to the least of these
my brother’s, you have done it to me
because i want the things you just can’t give me

- Derek Webb

download the album for free at: freederekwebb.com

San Antonio pastor using Myspace

Love this:

Robert Emmitt had seen TV reports of sexual predators preying on teens on MySpace.com, figuring, like many parents, it amounted to a Pandora's box of danger.
Not something to espouse as the senior pastor of one of the city's largest congregations, Community Bible Church.
But that was before a 26-year-old techie on his church staff suggested he join the MySpace craze to illustrate a sermon series on setting healthy personal boundaries.
Now Emmitt spends about a half-hour per week swapping messages with the 240-plus cyberspace friends he collected in just four weeks as a MySpace user…
To Kevin Hendricks, chief blogger for Church Marketing Sucks, these Christian alternatives created "yet another Christian ghetto" — just like art, music and books made to respond to secular originals.
"When we as Christians see something cool, we say, 'Well that involves interaction with the secular world, and that's scary. It might get dirty and ugly.' But what happens is you lose this interaction (with the public) if you're only talking to people in your church."

Anyone else know of pastor's using Myspace? What about you? Have you joined the Christian alternative sites or are you sticking with "the original" or are you avoiding it all like the plague?

Fellowship of Cowboy Churches points to continued growth

This group is based here in Waxahachie...
From The Baptist Press:

Pastors and western-heritage church leaders who believe God must be a cowboy at heart voted to ramp up the growth of the cowboy church movement at the Texas Fellowship of Cowboy Churches 2006 Annual Cowboy Gathering, prior to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting.
Fellowship members voted to increase their current budget of $120,000 to $290,500, hire two staff members, double church planting school funds from $4,800 to $10,000, double ranch house school funding to $8,000 and quadruple event funding.
The BGCT 2007 budget, approved by messengers to the annual meeting, increased funding for the fellowship fourfold—earmarking $25,500 for western-heritage churches.

Can evangelicals change the face of enviromentalism

The Baptist Standard writes about a new film that suggests that traditionally right-wing Republican evangelicals could have a big part in key enviromental reform:

A Canadian film team has released in United States theatres The Great Warming, a movie about climate change and the initiatives aimed at reversing its trend toward permanent ecologic damage.
Unlike other recent environmental movies, like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, The Great Warming portrays evangelicals as a group with the potential to push governmental policies toward sustainable living.
It also has hearty endorsements from the National Council of Churches, the Evangelical Environmental Network, and the Coalition on Environment and Jewish Life, all of which have urged churches to host screenings and discussion groups about the movie...
Historically, evangelicals haven’t cared much for talk about climate change. Cizik said that’s because “environmentalism has a sort of a ‘left-wing tilt.’” Plus, many pastors never have preached about caring for creation. Once church members begin hearing sermons about the environment, he said, they’ll realize it’s an important issue.
The response will become significant when evangelicals change not only their lifestyles but their votes. Evangelicals comprise between 40 percent and 50 percent of the Republican base. Cizik said he believes if the largest group in the Republican coalition would demand its leaders work on climate change, clean air and pure water, then GOP leaders would listen.

I wrote about this somewhat a while back after reading Rob Bell's book Velvet Elvis.When we think about creation, remember that God calls it "good."
The word is used throughout the Creation narrative to say that God perceives his creation as "good."

"The God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.' And it was so. The next verse is significant: The land produced vegetation. Notice it doesn't say, 'God produced vegetation.'"

God empowered creation to do something.
We are empowered with loads of potential. All of creation is.
And this is for all you "tree-huggin-haters" :-) (who I admit, I used to be one of you):

"God then makes people whom he puts right in the middle of all this loaded creation, commanding them to care for creation, to manage it, to lovingly use it, to creatively order it... They are in intimate relationship with their enviroment. They are enviromentalists. Being deeply connected with their enviroment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence.
That is why litter and polution are spiritual issues.
And until that last sentence makes perfect sense, we haven't fully grasped what it means to be human and live in God's world." DOH!

Clean out your inbox

This one may be best for my dad. He typically has several hundred emails in his inbox at any given time.
Grant Robinson has several ideas for keeping that e-mail inbox clear of messages to save you time thoughout the day.
I did a little house keeping myself and managed to get my inbox down to two messages that I've left in there simply as a reminder to respond to. I've set up other folders in Outlook along with rules to automatically sort my e-mail as it comes in.
I have one for Laurie, Family (immediate, extended and future), daily newsletters/emails and several others. It's kept my inbox clutter free all day. Now I don't sit sorting through as much e-mail. I only look at and respond to e-mails in particular categories, rather than sorting through a lot of other stuff that's not important.

Payin' da bills

Blog rundown

With 10 posts or so in the last two hours, I'm sure you all wish you were reading this blog with an RSS reader, so you didn't have to search through a bunch of stuff you don't like.
But since the majority of my readers don't use an RSS reader here's a quick rundown of all the posts over the last couple days for quick and easy access:

Wes Riddle's weekly column: Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

Solar powered cellphones

More efficient home building

UMHB advances in the DIII playoffs

encounter's weekly podcast is up

Modern day temples to consumerism

Xians should show the world what we're for

I will walk through the valley if you want me to

Update on Austin Stret

It's Sunday night and I should be in bed

Orange Noise's current Top 10 requests

Internet hits the road
While you've got some extra time, why don't you subscribe to our RSS feed? Or if you prefer, feel free to get stranger in a strange land delivered straight to your e-mail inbox by entering your e-mail address in the box on the left hand column.

payin' da bills:

Horse Sense: Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

“I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord” (Psalms 116: 17). To conceive of giving thanks as a sacrifice sounds strange. Particularly in this day and age when sacrifice is the last thing in the world we should want to do, why give thanks? In the Muslim East, they fast for a month during Ramadan. Muslims will give up food and water and sensual pleasures during daylight hours, in order to purify themselves spiritually and reinvigorate a sense of gratitude for the daily blessings God bestows. In theory, they give up something but gain something else of greater value. Sacrifice is defined as a giving up or foregoing of some valued thing for the sake of something of greater value or having more pressing claim. Giving thanks is a bit more esoteric than, say, giving up a camel steak and saffron rice till the sun goes down. But when we do give thanks, it is indeed for the sake of something of greater value. Thanksgiving is an expression of gratitude and appreciation, an acknowledgment of kindness or favor; and when we give thanks, the giving of it results in a conjunction of spirit twixt man and God. The thing we gain of greater value is a special harmony and atonement, or if you prefer, the experience of at onement with Him. So if you’ve struggled finding that perfect gift ‘for the Man who has everything,’ try a little thanks and praise. His response is fabulous. And all you’ve given up or foregone is the selfish sense of who you are, the nagging needs and imperfect conditions that surround you, for a moment or on a day like Thanksgiving. We avail ourselves of what we have in the instant we give thanks.
When I consulted a children’s dictionary to see what it said about Thanksgiving, it said only this: ‘a national holiday celebrated the fourth Thursday in November.’ Other than mentioning that the word was a noun, there was no indication of the substance in the word itself. It reminded me of the hollowness about so many words these days like Republic, Constitution and liberty. And all the words are related, you see, because Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. commemorates the first harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts) in 1621, when Pilgrims celebrated their survival with a feast. This nation grew from their modest, humble start. And the constancy of faith and heritage that makes the Pilgrims part of who we are today, which partially knits the fabric of what it means to be an American, has always included a regular resort to thanksgiving. No holiday is more uniquely American in fact, though other nations have emulated our example. No activity is more patriotic moreover, than observing together this special Day, as one nation under God, giving thanks for our many blessings. For even in times of war and the sacrifice of blood and treasure, there is reason for the additional sacrifice of thanksgiving. In the darkest days of the War Between the States, Lincoln nevertheless proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving. When war raged about the globe and the specter of fascism threatened, Congress by joint resolution in 1941 decreed Thanksgiving Day should be the fourth Thursday of every November.
So if this is why and what we do, what shall you say? As I imagine, there are many who find themselves too hardened or bruised, perhaps too cynical to be easily thankful. Yet say at least as much as possible. I am grateful for life, even in diminished quality; and for love in any measure—mine or someone else’s. I am grateful for friendships long enduring, and others freshly new. I am grateful for family far and near, imperfect and oft times mistaken, precious always nonetheless; for home and a place that’s real, for the better home here in my heart and in my mind’s eye; and for the one that waits, fashioned without hands eternal in the heavens. I am grateful for freedom and those who defend it, though relative and constrained at times, peer pressured and overregulated, it is subject still to the will of the people and to political redress. I am grateful for plenty in this land, for the challenge of pushing away the pumpkin pie rather than scratching the earth for kernels. I am grateful for thought and the ability to reason, to be sentient, to consider, reflect, mull it over and realize, yea even with all the human limitations, open to wonder and awe. I am grateful too for music, and for the butterfly I saw upon a rose.
_____________________
Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary. Email: wes@wesriddle.com.

Solar powered cell phones

From Treehugger and T3 gadget mag:

Japanese celphone juggernaut Docomo is prototyping this "hybrid mobile phone with solar panels." It looks small enough for Derek Zoolander, and as British gadget mag T3 says, "Powered solely by the beating rays of our closest star, it means you’ll never run out of natter-juice, and puts an end to travel chargers and emergency batteries."

payin' da bills: