Cruise Pics!

By popular demand, ok, just by Wendy’s request, we’ve posted our cruise pics!  Here’s the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jeppys/EasternCaribbeanCruise08

We sure had a lot of fun, and luckily, we got a few good pics as well.

My Little Experiment

I’ve needed to eat less for a while now. A few months ago, I decided to do a multi-day fast after hearing some co-workers describe its positive effects on the mind and body. I was most desirous for the effect of reconditioning my mind to know what it really needs to survive (in terms of food). I knew I ate too much, and I knew I should change my ways. Heck, I even wanted to change my ways, but it just wasn’t happening.

Enter the fast. It made sense that not eating for several days and still feeling ok and being able to function normally would help improve my chances of being able to curb my appetites. My only obstacle was that I felt I needed to go to the doctor to get his input on it; unfortunately, I procrastinate few things more than visiting my physician.

Well, the good news is that I went to him last week, and I started my fast yesterday! The last time I ate was Sunday night, and I will not eat again until Friday morning. Each day I will drink LOTS of water, about 24 ounces of juice, and a very little bit of low calorie Gatorade for electrolytes. I will try to live my life in a normal fashion to prove my original point.

I was going to wait until after the fast to post an entry so that I could sum up all I learned and felt, but I had an interesting insight that I didn’t expect: I really LOVE eating good tasting things! Obvious, I know, but I miss tasting all the things I take for granted every day. Forget the nourishment, I miss the taste! Hopefully, after this is over, I’ll take a little more time to enjoy my food instead of “horking it down”. Besides, I’d probably eat less.

Feeling Like a Criminal

I haven’t had many chances to feel as if I am offensive to the law, but I was recently put in such a position. We had to go to the bank recently to deposit some checks. Normally, we go through the drive-through or ATM, but we needed to meet some people inside. While waiting in line, I kept the checks in my coat pocket so as not to appear pretentious.

When my turn arrived, I reached my hand towards the checks (in the inner pocket next to my left breast). As I was making that motion, the teller, very subtly, lowered his hand from the level of the bottom of his ribs to his hips, just below the rim of his counter. As I pulled my hand out of my pocket unarmed and holding only checks, he, just as subtly brought his left hand back to its original position, away from what I can only presume was an alarm button that surely would have ruined my day.

It didn’t bother me too much in the moment, but in reflecting on the situation after we left, I felt deeply troubled that I had been viewed as someone capable of committing such a crime. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone. If nothing else, it left me having a greater resolve to give others the benefit of the doubt and see them in the nest light possible.

Good Insights Through Oversights

While working on a new project, I saw an opportunity to use an old piece of code I’d written several months ago.  I knew basically what it did and put it in without remembering specifically how it accomplished this task.  I usually look into those things to make sure I’m familiar with their inner workings, but I didn’t feel the need to this time.

Well, after moving on and doing some testing, I noticed that my implementation of the code was causing the whole thing to break, so I pulled it open and compared my implementation of the code I had imported to the code itself.  To my surprise, I noticed some other problem completely unrelated that I would have missed completely if not viewing this particular error in this particular context.

I felt very grateful that I had ran into some trouble early on because it showed me problems that I couldn’t have identified any other way. I couldn’t help but think that the Lord has designed this life in a similar way. If nothing else, our trials, adversities, etc. can help us identify our weaknesses such that we can correct them earlier rather than later and grow in the process.

Haven’t Written in a While

Not a lot to report, but we are doing ok…now. Jessica is just finishing getting over a bad bout of bronchitis. We’ve been staying busy, and a little too much at that.

Jessica just finished her Weight Loss Challenge at work, and she got 3rd place! Congratulations Jessica! They gave her $50 for doing so well.

In other exciting news, we are going on a cruise again this year. We enjoyed it so much last year that we couldn’t pass it up again. Might as well while we can, right? We got our brand new passports and everything, so we’re counting down the days. We’ll be leaving out of Fort Lauderdale and stopping by Jamaica, Bahamas, Cozumel, and a Princess Cruise Line private island. Check it out below and stay tuned in a couple months or so for pictures/video!

Continue This Story!

I was just doing some browsing around and came around something Jessica and I did a while ago and thought I’d share. It’s at a site called “Continue This Story!” by designer Hal Gatewood.

The site lets you start writing a story and then pass it off to someone else to continue it (hence the name). You send them a code that they enter in at the site, and it lets them continue it. They can then send a code back to you or to somebody else, and well, you get the idea.

Anyway, Jessica and I wrote a story there a couple years ago, and I still laugh a little when I read it. Click.

uTorrent in VMWare Fusion

Ok, so we got a new iMac. Hooray for us! Now what do I do? Start tinkering of course. I’d read a lot about VMWare Fusion (virtualization software for running virtual computers inside a running OS), so I installed it and started my 30-day evaluation, and one of the first things I wanted to do in it was install uTorrent (my favorite torrent client) because I was sick of Tomato Torrent (a Mac client) not responding to the trackers, and I didn’t want to have to reboot into XP everytime I wanted to start a download.

Anyway…after installing uTorrent in the virtual machine (XP), it occurred to me that I was going to have problems with port forwarding. I didn’t know how Fusion handled port forwarding and networking in general between my host machine (the iMac) and the virtual machine. Read on for the walkthrough of my solution…

Different Times, These Are

I was at dinner with my wife and her Grandma tonight, and something was said that made me realize that these days and those to come are much different than the ones I grew up in. For example, if you needed to discuss something with someone across town, you used to pick up the telephone and have an actual conversation (gasp!). Now, the phones grow dusty as our fingers peck away our conversations through email, IM, and blogging.

It seems logical that as technology entrenches itself in our personal lives more and more, we should grow further and further apart. Reading text in the same font and in the same little boxes regardless of who sends them should eventually overcome the experience of hearing a human voice, right?

Well, one thing is the same yesterday, today, and forever: Logic does not always prevail.

Not In Iraq = Not Supporting Troops

It looks like sound-minded liberals have made another excellent point for hating Mitt Romney:

“It is alright if they ” (referring to Mitt’s sons) “want to stay out of the military but they should not support this war and claim they support our military.” (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/8/124251/9472)

Following the lead of our far-more-intelligent, left-wing friends, I will now stop supporting our troops because I really don’t want to get shot at. We obviously shouldn’t be supporting people who are stupid enough to go into such dangerous situations (oh wait, that’s John Kerry’s position).

Seriously, though, do liberals really believe

New (Green) House Pictures

Well, Jessica has been hard at work, and it shows!  We think our new look in our living room is just right for us, and we thought you all might like to see it too!  Just go to our House Pictures Album to check out the green goodness in the first four pictures of the album.  If you contrast it with the next four pictures after that (from January), you’ll see the difference as well as many other changes that the observant observer would observe.