Posts

Posted on

Wisdom from +Love

Stand Firm has posted this great piece written by Bill Love, the Bishop of Albany (NY). The piece is a great summary of the differences between the GAFCON and Lambeth conferences earlier this summer. Here’s an excerpt:

Unfortunately in many cases, the very ones calling for others to listen are unwilling to listen themselves. For some, the listening process will not be complete or successful until the other side is worn down and finally agrees with their position. Given the current debate on issues of human sexuality, when virtually every argument both for and against homosexual behavior, sex outside of marriage, and abortion have already been made numerous times over, the question ultimately must be asked – When is enough, enough? The longer the debate goes on, the more divided we seem to become and the more distracted we are from proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A major distinction between GAFCON and Lambeth concerning this issue is that for GAFCON, the debate seems to be over, for Lambeth, no end is in sight.

It’s a great article, if a bit long. It’s very much worth the read!

Posted on

Mad Men: “Maidenform”

All the Internet pundits out there just gushed over this episode, calling it “the best of the season” and “the best episode ever”. On the other hand, while I feel that the episode had some great moments, there was just something that I didn’t like about it. Like last week’s episode, it felt “off” for some reason (this episode even more so). That doesn’t mean that Mad Men isn’t still the best show on TV right now. Let’s hop right in to the recap:

This episode begins with Betty, Joan and Peggy getting dressed. In the background, “The Infanta” from The Decemberists’ 2005 album Picaresque plays. I did not like the modern music playing during the opening, and that has nothing to do with my like or dislike of The Decemberists – any modern music would put me off. Although I don’t want to paint Mad Men’s producers into a “you must use music from 1962″ corner, I hope they don’t do that again.

Anyway, at the office, Don meets with everyone over the Playtex account. It seems that the Playtex people – whose advertising has always plainly advertised the merits of their bras – are interested in possibly changing their campaign to mimic the dreamy, fantasy world of their main competitor, Maidenform. As was the case with American Airlines, Duck is all for giving Playtex a new look, while Don is unconvinced that change would be good for Playtex. Once again, the two openly disagree.

As Duck leaves the meeting, his secretary rushes up to him to tell him that his ex-wife, children and dog are waiting for him:

It seems that Duck’s former mother-in-law is sick, and his ex-wife needs to spend some time with her; thus, she dumps the kids (and dog) with Duck. Duck takes it in stride, though, telling the kids that he has a great hotel room lined up, and has awesome tickets to a play.

While all this is going on, Pete, Peggy and Sal discuss the direction of the Clearasil account. Pete thinks up his own tagline (“Thanks Clearasil”) over the muted objections of Peggy, who has her own ideas for the campaign.

On Memorial Day, we see the Drapers at a country club party. Don runs in to a guy that “did some work” for the CIA in Cuba, while Betty runs bumps to Arthur Case. The two have an enlightening conversation (“Lets be friends!”). As soon as the Draper children rush up and hug their mother’s waist, Arthur seems to instantly lose interest in Betty. It’s hard to tell what will happen from that. Betty previously pushed Arthur away when he tried to kiss her, but as we know from previous episodes, Betty is a sexual time bomb waiting to go off. Although she appears to value her marriage more than anything, I wonder if she’ll be strong enough to avoid infidelity in the future.

Continue reading “Mad Men: “Maidenform””

Posted on

Packaged Sandwiches: US vs. UK

In the US, packaged sandwiches – and by this, I specifically mean those that come in the triangular boxes – are the lowest form of cuisine there is. People typically only eat them if there are no other food options. It’s the kind of thing you’d eat if you’re stuck in an airport at 4am and all the restaurants are closed, or if your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, the nearest diner is 50 miles away, and packaged sandwiches are all the service station has to eat.

The sandwiches always seem half stale, are thin on the ingredients, and usually only come in three or four flavors: ham and cheese, baloney and cheese, tuna or chicken salad (and maybe, if you’re in the South, pimento cheese). Honestly, the only people I’ve seen that eat these poor little sandwiches on a regular basis are construction workers and people on the go all the time, like messengers or delivery people. I’m 37 years-old, and it’s always been this way here in the US, at least in my lifetime.

In the UK, on the other hand, people seem to eat these sandwiches all the time. And why not? They usually taste pretty fresh, and they come in a freakin’ galaxy of flavors. Here’s a short list of just a few of the flavors offered by Marks & Spencer, a single British retailer:

Aromatic Duck, B.L.T., British Ham & Cheddar, Chicken & Bacon, Chicken & Balsamic Roasted Tomatoes, Chicken & Stuffing, Chicken & Sweetcorn, Chicken, Avocado & Bacon, Coronation Chicken, Crayfish & Rocket, Egg & Bacon, King Prawn & Bacon Caesar, Poached Salmon, Red Salmon & Cucumber, Roast Beef & Horseradish, Sausage & Ketchup, Seafood Cocktail, Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese

I can’t speak for the rest of the UK, but in London and Bath you can buy sandwiches just like these almost anywhere. Drug stores (chemists) sell them. Convenience stores (newsagents) sell them. Many department stores (like the aforementioned Marks & Spencer) sell them. And almost any time of the day, you can look around and see someone eating one of these sandwiches.

Continue reading “Packaged Sandwiches: US vs. UK”

Posted on

R.I.P. Don LaFontaine

Dammit – would people stop dying today?

Voiceover actor extraordinaire Don LaFontaine – who lent his voice to thousands of movie trailers, and even turned “In a world…” into a catchphrase – died today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from “complications in the treatment of an ongoing illness”. He was 68.

Read his obit at Yahoo! here.

Posted on

RFID and Mythbusters

You’re probably familiar with Mythbusters, a show on the Discovery Channel that tries to debunk urban legends and other myths using scientific experiments. Well, it seems that the show’s producers wanted to do a piece on RFID, the tiny, controversial microchips that are increasingly coming into use on credit cards, passports and other items. According to Mythbusters’ Adam Savage, the show was ready to expose “the weak security behind most RFID implementations but was shut down by lawyers from ‘American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else… [who] absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode'”.

Check out his comments about it on YouTube:

Scary… but why can’t the credit card companies simply take the money they’re giving to their lawyers and give it to their engineers instead, so that they could actually, you know… fix the problem?

Posted on

R.I.P. Jerry Reed

Jerry Reed, country music and film star and an Atlanta native, has passed away at the age of 71.

Reed, a talented guitarist, was best known for his movie roles in the Smokey and the Bandit films and Gator, as well his country music hits like “East Bound and Down” and “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot”.

Yahoo! reports that the star died of “complications from emphysema”.

Goodbye, Snowman! You’ll be missed!

Posted on

REVISITED: Weave On Your Own Server

Weave is an extension for Firefox that allows you to back up and synchronize your bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form entries across multiple computers. It’s a nifty little plug-in that takes up the slack for the much loved (and dearly departed) Google Browser Sync. Unfortunately, the Weave extension and service are in beta testing mode, and the backend servers that Mozilla uses to make Weave work are usually overwhelmed, making synchronization as slow as molasses. To make matters worse, the Mozilla servers are frequently taken offline for various reasons, so not only is synching slow, it doesn’t even work much of the time.

In this post from a couple of weeks ago, I linked to an article that showed you how to set up Weave on any WebDAV enabled server. Unfortunately, I was never able to get this working on this very server; apparently WordPress and WebDAV don’t play well together, and I was never able to find the Apache settings I needed to tweak to get it to work.

However, I recently came across this “easy as pie” method for setting up Weave using the free “online disk” service MyDisk.se:

Continue reading “REVISITED: Weave On Your Own Server”

Posted on

Ricardo Colclough: Oooooops!

Former Pittsburgh Steeler Ricardo Colclough was arrested for DUI here in Charlotte at 2:35am Saturday morning.

Colclough, who won a Super Bowl ring as part of the 2005 Steeler team, was released by Pittsburgh in 2007 after playing three games. He was then picked up by the Cleveland Browns, who kept him for the rest of the 2007-2008 season. Released by the Browns, Colclough came to Charlotte, where he seemed to be assured a spot as a backup cornerback and kick returner for the Panthers.

Unfortunately, the arrest couldn’t have come at a worse time for Colclough, coming on the very weekend when all NFL teams have to trim their rosters from 76 to 53 players. The Panthers have apparently released Colclough, and mainly because of the DUI. Interestingly, the arrest came less than a day after Colclough recovered a fumble in a preseason game against… the Pittsburgh Steelers. Perhaps he was out partying with old friends? Couldn’t someone have picked up the tab for a taxi?

If you’re bored today, why not head over to this Mecklenburg County website and look up his arrest record, complete with the mug shot shown above. You can search using his name, or PID #: 0000364673  JID #: 08-069265

Posted on

COOL APP: Folder Guide

If you’re like me, you spend an awful lot of time moving back and forth between a certain group of folders in Windows Explorer. I spend a lot of time in my “Music” and “Video” folders, in addition to server shares and temporary “download folders”. Going back and forth between them can be a pain, and that’s why I just love this new program I found called Folder Guide:

You simply install the Folder Guide software, then right-click on any whitespace in a Windows Explorer window. Choose the “Folder Guide” option and then choose “Settings”. From there, you can choose any folder on your computer (and an alias for it) to add to the Explorer context menu. Once you’ve added a few folders, all you need to do is right-click on a whitepace and choose Folder Guide > FOLDER to switch directly to the folder alias in question.

If you think that Folder Guide works a lot like the “Save Image in Folder” extension for Firefox, you’d be correct. Moving from one folder to another is as easy as pie with Folder Guide. Best of all, the program is free and doesn’t have a tray icon. In fact, Folder Guide only runs as a separate EXE file when you have its “Settings” window open.

I’ve been using Folder Guide for almost a week now and I love it! I especially love that it works within the “Open\Save” dialog box too… just right-click a whitespace in the dialog box and choose your folder with FolderGuide, then save the file just where you want it!

Read more about it (or download it) here.