.Mac = ?

Allrighty. I just got a new iMac at home, and am wanting to synchronize the information from my office Mac and my home Mac. So Mac offers these .Mac accounts, for which I signed up with a free 60-day trial.

I was excited about trying this, because I know it can provide an easy way to synchronize stuff, as well as a good way to publish websites. I am thinking of taking my youth group blog and making it into a full web page, which I think would be a good move. Then again, I've so far been unimpressed with iWeb. It is beautiful, as far as the templates are concerned, but I prefer the blogging features available to me on Blogger. With iWeb, you have the option of adding only 1 picture per post, and It's fairly rigid in your options on layout. So part of me is pretty uninclined to go with it, because I can do more with Blogger.

I have really grown to love Macs over the last year, and I don't think I'll ever buy another PC unless some drastic things happen (and they could). It's simple to use. It never crashes. The programs it comes with are fantastic, and they communicate well with each other. Even the PC programs like MS Office on the Mac are better.

But a lot of what .Mac is offering, I can already do using Google applications. I e-mail important documents to myself. I already have all my contacts on Gmail, and don't really have a need to put them all into my local hard drive, or onto an iDisk for that matter. I also use Google calendar, which works just fine. I publish photos of events on Picasa Web, which works every bit as well as the Mac galleries.

I'm trying to justify the expense of .Mac for the very few extra tools it would offer me.

Anyone know of some things I'm not seeing here?

God only knows where your life can take you

I got to speak at chapel at my alma mater, Ezell-Harding, a few weeks ago. One of the points I made to the kids is that you simply have no idea where you could end up in life. When I was a senior in high school:

- I had no girlfriend, and no prospects.
- I had never been out of the country.
- I thought I was going to be a business major, or maybe an accountant.
- I didn't own a car, as I had spent as much money as possible on guitars and home entertainment equipment.

Exactly 5 years later:
- I was married to a girl from Durango, Mexico
- I had been out of the country to Mexico and Honduras multiple times
- I was a preacher for a church in Rose Bud, Arkansas (which I would have never heard of otherwise).
- I was a home owner, and had a dog and a cat.

I'll never forget the first time I went to visit some of the members at Rose Bud, and I ended up driving on dirt roads for the first time in my life. I was smiling to myself, talking to God, saying, "Where in the world are you taking me? How did I ever end up here?" When we were in Arkansas for the funeral this weekend, on the way to visit the family, we stopped to take some pictures of this road. Rose Bud brought me so many new experiences in so many different ways.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined my life the way it has turned out. I'm confident I will experience a lot more twists and turns as life continues. But it's all been good, and as I look back, I can see that God has been with me the whole way.

We are all shaped by our experiences. The good memories and positive examples give us something to treasure and to strive for. The bad experiences and hurt leave us with scars that persist and affect us. I continue to be amazed at just how much we grew to love the people in Arkansas. They will forever be a part of who I am. Relationships are an amazing gift from God.

Twins

Can I embarrass myself a bit? This is my friend Nathan Miller. After we got back from our retreat the other day, we showed up for church Sunday night wearing exactly the same shirt. Not a similar shirt. The same one. Our wives hee-hawed a lot over that one. Now we're always paranoid about what the other one will wear. At least we both have a sense of humor about it.

Farewell to a Dear Friend

I've just learned that Wayne Davis passed away at about 2:15 this afternoon. Wayne has been battling with Lou Gehrig's disease for the better part of probably 5 years, though he's only known about it for the last couple of years. He went into a coma last night, and died peacefully this afternoon. This picture is from our going away banquet at the Rose Bud Church of Christ in May of 2007 (there was a Hawaiian theme, if you couldn't tell).

Around March of last year, Wayne and I had a talk, and he let me know that he wanted me to perform his funeral. He was very open about the fact that his condition was terminal, and I've never seen someone face a horrible disease with any more courage than Wayne has.

The last time I spoke to him was about 3 weeks ago. As always, he was cheerful and encouraging. He never passed up an opportunity to let Carolina and me know that he loves us and is proud of us.

He was the quintessential cowboy. He loved horses and the outdoors. He was very indepenent, and I know he was so frustrated as his body had declined and he was no longer able to do most things for himself. For Carolina and I, he and his wife Ruby became our grandparents while we were in Arkansas with no family around. We love them like family. I've had a long time to get used to the idea that Wayne was going to leave us, and even now that I'm living so far away from them, this is still a tough loss. It won't be the same without him around.

He wanted very much for the other people at church to see what it means to face a terminal disease while standing firm on the hope and peace that can only come from God. I'll miss his good nature, his encouragement, and his constant chuckling...he managed to find something joyful in every situation.

For the rest of my life, part of my motivation to stay faithful to God is that I want to see my dear friend and brother Wayne again.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. We'll miss you so much.

Lord's Prayer by a 2 Year Old

I'm always impacted by how much children tend to really love singing hymns. Most babies around us at church really perk up during the songs, and it's cute listening to them try to learn the words and the melodies. With that in mind, I thought this was worth passing on:

For all you Tennesseeans out there...

Don't forget that this coming weekend is a Sales Tax Holiday! Here are the terms about what is exempt and what is not. This includes a lot of different items including clothing. I've got my target set on a computer. We currently own 3; all of which run miserably, and two of which need to end up at a dump somewhere. I'm preparing to make the swap all around, and I doubt I'll ever look back. You can spend up to $1,500 on a computer bundle and not have to pay taxes. This is not only for students, but is open to anyone.

Airplane on Google Maps

I was looking up my friend's house on Google Maps, and it just so happens that the instant the satellite was taking the picture, there was an airplane flying over it!


View Larger Map

If you have not tried out the Street View stuff in Google maps, it is INCREDIBLE. Most of Nashville you can look at from a ground-level perspective. Click here, then choose to see the Street view, and you can look all around my church building!

It's Paper Time

As much as it pains me, I'm going to have to decrease the amount of blogging I do for the next few weeks. I've got three papers:

1. I am writing about a proper interpretation of Genesis 6, what it means for God to "repent" or "relent". Did God know it would all go wrong, or does he deny himself foreknowledge? That sort of thing. It's a theological paper instead of an exegetical paper. That's due April 10th.

2. I have one for Christian ethics where I am going to tackle the subject of environmentalism. It's not a subject that I'm especially interested in, but it seems that you can't brush your teeth without someone screaming at you to "Go green!" as you do it. I'm going to try and decide what a Christian's responsibility is to his/her environment. This will end up being a sermon a few months down the road at OH.

3. I have to do a book review for my Providence & Suffering class. I think I'm going to use C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed. It's due near the end of April.

I may do some posting between now and then, but not with much frequency. I wish you all the best, and I'll look forward to posting more regularly once the grad school storm dies down.

-Mark <><

My First Nascar Race

Carolina and I went with our youth group to the Pepsi 300 on Saturday at the Nashville Super Speedway. It was my first experience at something like this, and I thought I would record a few of my musings about the experience.

1. Having been able to see it in person, I understand a lot more about how it works. I never had known about the way they would pick the initial order of the cars, as it seemed to me that this would play a major role in who could win. The qualifying is where each car is allowed to go around the track several times and they count the car's two fastest laps. They then order the cars by which one made the two fastest qualifying laps.
   
2. It is extremely loud. Had I not had ear plugs, I would be deaf today.
3. Most hardcore fans have these nifty radios which allow you to hear the conversations between lookout people on the roofs, pit crews, and the drivers. One of the families who came from our church had one. This was a really cool thing I thought, which enhanced the experience.
4. The cars move much faster in person than they appear to on television. It struck me how fast they were going when I knew that the track was about a mile long, yet they were circling it in very short amounts of time.
5. Pit crews are incredibly fast. In a matter of seconds, they can change out tires and refill the tank with gas.
6. Nascar is very fan-friendly. You are allowed to bring a cooler (within a certain size range) and bring all your own snacks. It is not as expensive as going to some other kinds of events and sports, and being able to avoid the cost of concessions is a huge plus. I paid $30 per ticket, which included the entire day's events (from 10am-4:30pm) and also a hot dog and coke from the concession stand. Also, they didn't charge anything for parking. The bleachers had backs on them, so they were reasonably comfortable. Cameras are also allowed.
7. This is the only race I've seen, but it seems to me like Nascar has less highs and lows like basketball. There is pretty much constant movement, but the cars are all moving at similar speeds and it's very hard for one to pass another. So it's high-action in terms of there not being much down time, but low action in terms of cars constantly passing each other. There were a couple of times where one car's engine blew out, and another car ended up spinning and going into the grass. But one car was in the lead something like 123 of the first 167 laps (until his spin out). And he wasn't barely in the lead...it was by nearly 1/2 a lap. The couple who are big Nascar fans told me it was one of the more boring races they've seen. I still enjoyed it, but there was not as much passing and swerving as I would have hoped for.
   

Overall, I liked it. It was "Family Day" so we were sitting in a non-alcohol section, and there were probably more people than usual who didn't know much about Nascar. Everything I knew about Nascar before this, I learned from Ricky Bobby. Even though there was a terrible wind chill, I loved that we were able to sit up high with a great view. This track is near Lebanon, TN, with few things around it, and on a warmer day, I would love being able to sit there, relax, and enjoy the experience.

I think I'll probably organize another trip for the youth group to go again next year. Below is a picture of the winner: #29 whose name is Wimmer, I think. It was his first win in 5 years. The youtube video is a clip I took as the race was starting. It was pretty exciting whenever they would get the green flag and take off.

I've Got Rhythm #3

Here is my third video installment of my attempts at learning Pete Huttlinger's "I've Got Rhythm" arrangement. It's the most difficult piece I've ever learned. The chords are complex and they change at a ruthless pace. At the same time, it's really rewarding to set goals and to see yourself make progress towards them. My ultimate goal is to be able to perform this somewhere. Again, I'm not trying to show it perfected yet, because there is still one last section of the song I haven't learned, but I think you can see a large difference between this post and my previous posts. I have 3 papers due during April, so it may be the Summer before I can dedicate much more time to learning the next section and smoothing it all out, but I've gotten enough of it down now where I'm confident I can complete it.