What does 200 calories look like

WiseGeek has a photo gallery showing what 200 calories of various foods looks like.
Enjoy.

CWF on HBO

We filmed footage for this sometime back in 2006 and HBO will be airing a special Thurs. Jan. 25 featuring the CWF. From the description there's not telling what they'll say or show.

FRIENDS OF GOD
Journalist and filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi takes viewers on a road trip to chronicle the leaders and followers who comprise the booming evangelical Christian movement. Travelling through the red state heartland of the U.S. that helped elect and re-elect George Bush, Pelosi meets with an array of outspoken evangelicals, from television celebrities like Joel Osteen, Jerry Falwell and Ted Haggard to leaders of groups like the Christian Wrestling Federation and the car club, as well as regular folks committed to carrying out the Creationist messages.

Tune in at 8 p.m. CST on Jan. 25, 2006 to see Friends of God.

Terabyte drives

Cnet reports:

Last year, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies predicted hard-drive companies would announce 1 terabyte drives by the end of 2006. Hitachi was only off by a few days.
The company said on Thursday that it will come out with a 3.5-inch-diameter 1 terabyte drive for desktops in the first quarter, then follow up in the second quarter with 3.5-inch terabyte drives for digital video recorders, bundled with software called Audio-Visual Storage Manager for easier retrieval of data, and corporate storage systems.
Hitachi terabyte drives
The Deskstar 7K1000 will cost $399 when it comes out. That comes to about 40 cents a gigabyte. Hitachi will also come out with a similar 750GB drive. Rival Seagate Technology will come out with a 1 terabyte drive in the first half of 2007.

I'm drooling over the size of this drive.
That's enough room to hold 250,000 Mp3 files - or as CNet puts it - enough music to play continuously for two years without ever repeating.
The article also reports that the entire Library of Congress could be held on 10 terabytes.
This comes after the 50th birthday of the hard drive last year.
The original weighed a ton and held 5 MB.

Watered down objections

The Baptist Standard has an interesting article on the SBC stance towards drinking.

A growing number of Baptists may have brought in the New Year by raising a glass of something a bit stronger than iced tea, some cultural observers speculate. Baptist attitudes toward alcohol consumption seem to be in transition, they insist.
Consider the spirited debate—and debate about spirits—sparked last summer when messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting approved a resolution opposing the consumption of alcoholic beverages—and an amendment disqualifying imbibers from service as trustees of SBC entities.

Jews don't recognize Jesus as the Messiah
Protestants don't recognize the Pope as the head of the Church
Baptists don't recognize each other in the beer store

Treading water

Leonard Fin is having trouble with treading water as a 20-something. Sound familiar? He thinks his current status has to do with the Discovery Channel and a rafting trip he took in high school.

My friends from high school who wanted to be doctors received their white jackets a few days ago. My aspiring-dentist housemates from college are fixing real teeth … and those of us who didn’t want to be doctors and lawyers and such? Since we’re not busy celebrating our budding professional careers, what are we up to, here and now, in our mid-20s?
Well, personally, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Wondering why I’ve turned out this way, wondering if there’s still enough time to fix it and get a real career. I’ve also been looking back on high school thinking about what started the path to here. And how much a few things mattered. Things I never would have thought about then. Things like The Discovery Channel and raft trips.

What about you? What led you to your current status in life?

Texas Comptroller website gets a makeover

Susan Combs has taken office and apparently wanted no one to confuse her with the former Independent candidate for Texas Grandma who ran the CPA office.
So now the offices website, www.cpa.state.tx.us has a complete new look, including a nice Waxahachie green.

Public service requires a solemn oath to offer your very best. I am committed to an agenda that places the public interest at the center of every task, every day. The Comptroller’s Office must always be accountable and responsive to the people of Texas. You can count on this; it is my pledge to you.
I know that behind every taxpayer dollar is a hardworking person whose valuable contribution is reflected in every cent. Your money counts. That is why we will work tirelessly to find new ways to save taxpayer dollars and insist on accountability in the collection and expenditure of them. We will do this in a spirit of teamwork with every office in state government and by embracing new ways to increase efficiency through information technology, innovation and cooperation.

Reaching the world

This is shared from Wade Burleson:

I caught my Wednesday Night group off guard. We've been going through the BF&M 2000 for the last few weeks and we just did Salvation last week. So I came in and said that we were going to think a little more about salvation, but specifically missions.
I told them that they had just been appointed as missionaries to reach a tribe whose name I made up. I said that they had just been dropped into the valley where their tribe is located (incidentally, I said that the tribe was about 9,000 strong located within a ten mile radius (this happens to be the number of people within a ten mile radius of our church)). I then asked them how, not knowing anything about their tribe, they were going to reach them with the Gospel? I set up a dry-erase board and we began 45 minutes of brain-storming. They came up with some excellent ideas.

The ideas flowed and then suddenly someone spoke up - "hey these are all ideas we could use right here in our town."
My friend Mike told me once, before another friend went on a mission trip, that he took our friend around town to show him apartments, soccer fields, basketball courts, senior homes, parks etc. All the things he would see on his mission trip. Every economic class was represented and Mike told our friend that while he was heading overseas to do mission work - those same things could be done in his own neighborhood.
I think both are an important reminder.

And this is from Marni on the topic:

Definitely a great read, and as often the case, the comments are almost as good as the blog...Thanks for sending this.
At a church we used to attend, our pastor read a letter. I can't remember if the letter was addressed to our church or another local one, but it made a loud and clear point. The letter congratulated us (sarcastically) on the mission trip we had made to a foreign country to "win souls for Jesus". The writer was a 20 year old young woman. A few months earlier, both her parents died in a car accident. A local church reached out to her and some members were sharing the good news of the gospel with her. In her letter, she wrote the church members told her belief in Jesus as the Son of God and asking Him to be Lord of your life is the ONLY way to Heaven. Then she said the chilling part..."If that's true, then my parents never knew that and now they are in hell. I live 5 minutes from your church. Why did you go all the way to Romania to tell people about Jesus, but my family lived a mile from your congregation and no one ever told us?"
We sat in complete silence for several minutes. It was VERY convicting and God has never let me forget that. I am certainly not knocking foreign missions because God calls us to go far away sometimes and the whole world needs to know and so few take God up on that call. But the pastor in Wade's blog is right and the letter from the distraught young woman was right. We should be working in our own backyard too. I see that constantly and consistently with encounter am I'm grateful God called us to encounter to be a part of that. I'll continue to pray for God to keep us free from the junk that tangles us up so much that we forget we're a church and why we do what we do.

Ouch.

Make your own envelopes

Instead of buying envelopes for all those letters you send why not go the extra mile and make your own from magazines and card stock.
Not only will the receiver be surprised by the creative spark you have but you'll also save some money and a few trees.

Via DIYHappy.com

Jesus is coming in 07

According to an Associated Press-AOL News poll, 25% of people in the U.S. anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ in 2007. Other predictions for 2007 from the survey include:

* 90% think higher gas prices are likely.
* 60% think the U.S. will be a victim of a terrorist attack.
* 57% think it is likely that another state will legalize gay marriage.
* 35% predict the military draft will be reinstated.
* 35% predict a cure for cancer will be found.
* 19% think scientists are likely to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Via Church Relevance.

Not going to lie, but I hope He waits till several months after April 28 at least.
But until then remember our the greatest commandment "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
And as my dad always says, "See you here, there or in the air."

Christmas footage

I shot some random video footage over the Christmas holidays of my future niece and nephew.
Hope you enjoy -- especially Brooklyn's reaction to her early Christmas gift...

An animated proposal

Jeff needed to propose to his girlfriend (now wife), Natasha.
So he assembled a team of 20 animators to assist him, including co-workers, as well as students from his 3D character animation class at the Art Institute of California-San Francisco.
The team created more than four minutes of animation in just three months.
When it was completed he surprised Natasha by bringing her to the Parkway Movie Theater in Oakland, where they played the animation on the big screen in front of over 100 friends and family members.
It's these kind of guys that make it hard for the rest of you.

Wayne Watson's open letter

I just found an open letter from Wayne Watson published on his website.
The letter discloses his recent divorce from his wife.

This is a very difficult letter to write. For the past few years, being off the day-to-day radar of the music industry, as we know it, it’s become easy for me to think my life holds interest only to close friends and family.
But, this is a different day - a new season. God is opening doors again and with that comes the responsibility of greater accountability to those who have been gracious enough to show renewed interest in my life and the music that comes from it.
As painful as this is to tell you, I want you to be aware that Lynn and I separated in April of ‘05 after 31 years of marriage. The divorce was finalized in November - almost a year ago now. It was not impulsive and was not a quick exit for someone or something else. It was an agonizing decision. The problems were long standing. After counseling and a lot of soul searching, I can only say that our marriage became impossible to live out together day by day. Between God and me, regarding all that has taken place, I am at peace.

I met Wayne in the Spring of 2003 at UMHB and he has a true heart of a minister and of God. I won't even begin to speculate on what may have happened here, but I only hope the church can gather around two wounded souls and give them the support they need.

CSS and Firefox cheats

Just learning how to work with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)? You'll definitely want to print a copy of blogger Leslie Franke's cheat sheet.
Frankie also has a cheat sheet for Firefox.
Via Lifehacker

Power your church/ministry website with WordPress

If you're still behind the curve, remember it is 2007 and your church and ministry needs a website. Why not use WordPress or Blogger to power your site?
It's as easy to use as blogging and with RSS already built in, visitors can always have the latest information delivered to their e-mail or RSS reader.
Seriously, it doesn't get much easier.
And here are a few great themes to plug-in and get started with.
Delta Theme (as seen above)
Several other themes by the same designer
And here's a great example of how you can really put WordPress to work: Missouri Valley Baptist
Or there's also a sample site, Cory Miller did to show off how you can make a website with minimal effort and maintenance with Blogger.

Thanks to Cory Miller for the links.

2006 by the numbers

Brandi always comes up with great ideas for her blog posts so I’m taking her latest and adapting it for me. Here’s a look at 2006 by the numbers.

States visited: 4
African countries visited: 1
Airports I’ve been in or landed at: 8
Nights I spent in the African bush: 1
Times our caravan was stuck in the mud on the way to said bush: 7
Times our van broke down on the way to or from said bush: 7
Gubernatorial candidates met: 3
Famous people met: 2
New churches joined: 1
Times I’ve said I love my new church: 6,749
New tires on my truck: 2
Months left on my apartment lease before I met Laurie: 13
Months left on my apartment lease when I proposed: 9
Months left on my apartment lease when we get married: 3
Softball teams I’ve played on (at least one game): 4
Softball championships said teams won: 1 and one 2nd place
Wrestling shows I’ve taken part of: more than 15
Books read: 7
Hard drives replaced on my laptop: 1
Power supplies replaced on my laptop: 2
Number of times a co-worker has complained about their Mac computers: 8,224
Logic boards replaced on Laurie's Mac: 1
Number of times I’ve wished I could work on OS 9 again: 0
Videos produced for church: 5
Videos posted on YouTube: 37
Pictures posted on Flickr: 1,327
Friends on MySpace: 287
Current total number of posts to my personal blog: 1,915
Recorded visits to my personal blog: 10,020
Blogs currently subscribed to: 65
Lifelong memories made with friends and family: countless
Days until I'm married: 117

Here’s to 2007 and seeing all the changes that it brings with it. May God bless you this year and may His face shine upon you.