4 seconds!

You know when you have an idea pop in your head and you need to goto the internet…and you open up your browser of choice and by the time the window loads you forgot where you were going to go?

Yeah. I hate that.

I hate spam.

Why must the spammers hate me. I certainly don’t like them any either. First it was the trackbacks, and as soon as I turned those off they started submitting comments. Luckily the worst I’ve gotten is some links to Cialis and Viagra. Tame compared to what I got before.

For the last 2 weeks I’ve had to delete at least 5-10 comments a day off of my blog from bots that are randomly posting. I tried modifying all the spam settings within typo, but none seems to work. I think I’m just going to have to switch blog applications. C’est la vie.

Suzy Get Your Gun

For a very long time I’ve been promising certain people the videos from my South Dakota trip last summer. I already posted the pictures in August. I had not (until now) posted the videos from the same trip.

The reason for not posting is a little involved, but suffice it to say I couldn’t find the 40 dollar cable I bought that I needed to take the videos from my video camera to my computer. I had taken several videos off of the camera from EC camp over the summer, but in a few shorts months the cable had been lost in realms unknown. So it sat for a while.

This past week my sister ended up buying a speaker dock accessory for her ipod nano that I got her over Christmas. It’s basically a little dock that you can put your ipod in that has speakers attached so you can listen to music. Well it just so turns out that the dock came with a cable to hook the dock up to your computer for transfering files or for recharging the ipod battery. And wouldn’t you know it, it ’sthe same cable!

So now I had the cable….gosh, where did I put that video tape? Yep, I had no idea. I spent about an hour Tuesday night and a half hour last night looking for it. It turns out it was in the video camera when we took the camera to North Carolina when my cousin got married. My mom had stashed it in a bag somewhere, and just happened to remember where it was.

So now that I had everything I needed I spent an hour last night getting all of the video off of the camera onto my computer. I then spent some time trying to get flash video working on my own, which was disastrous. I never should have wasted my time. It’s just too complicated. So I let youtube do the work. I uploaded all the videos earlier tonight and setup a page on my blog to view them all. You can view it here.

So hopefully you enjoy all of them. It’ll take you about a half hour to watch them all. Some are more exciting than others, but here are two of my favorites.

“It very much reminded me of….nothing.”

“That’s the best part!”

German Journey

I’ve stepped up my German learning, or at least I’m trying to. I’m now falling asleep to German TV, and waking up to it (when I actually wake up like I should :)). I can set my TV to wake up at a certain time, so I used to have it wake me up 15 minutes before my alarm and set it to the German TV station. I don’t know why I stopped, but I have now started doing that again as well as listening to the German channel before I goto bed. It’s been pretty cool. I don’t understand more that 5 or 10 percent, but it’s cool when I am able to pick out the words, and actually know what they mean.

Pam also suggested I listen to German TV more to train myself to hear it. She suggested online TV which I’ve been doing as well, but I figure since I’ve got it on my Satellite I might as well use it. Her suggestion kind of spurned me on to actually doing it. I’m listening to it in the background right now. It’s amazing when you understand a language that your brain can pick up key phrases even when you’re not paying attention, such as your name, or things you’re interested in, or “FIRE!”, etc. Obviously I can do that in English. My goal is to know German well enough to be able to hear it and understand it without really trying. My fluent by 30 goal is a little more than 2 and a half years away. So much to learn. :)

I’ve actually been looking online for stuff as well and found a couple of videos I liked on Youtube. Music is a pretty good way to learn a language and Paul Van Dyk is one of my favorite DJs. I think I’m also going to have to find a CD by this band Wir Sind Helden. I really like their style. Do you think Amazon.de will deliver to Chicago? :)

I think they’re cool even if you don’t know any German. Enjoy.

“Wir Sind Wir” by Peter Heppner and Paul Van Dyk

“Nur Ein Wort” by Wir Sind Helden

It Was an Engaging Party

Eric asked the love of his life for her hand in Marriage earlier today. I guess it was an all day engagement date. You have to give the guy huge props for planning such an event. They spent pretty much the whole day together, and then had an engagement party at his tonight house to celebrate. There must have been 40 people there. It was pretty cool for me because I knew quite a few people there. We had people from Bethel, the Journey (Friday Bible Study), our Sunday small group (which now that I think about it maybe had the name Islands of Shalom…I’ll have to ask them on Sunday.), as well as people from Eric’s and Karen’s families. The people I didn’t know were the trinity crowd, as well as most of Karen’s family.

Anyways, the party was a lot of fun. We surprised Karen, who didn’t know about the party, mingled some, ate food, and generally just hung out. Eric also provided a slide show with all the pictures from the day. All in all it was a pretty cool experience.

I’m very excited for them, since this is a new big step in their lives. The wedding is coming up pretty quick (May 4th - Are you serious? :)), so they’ve got quite a bit of planning to do, though I heard rumor they had already done some of it. They’re both awesome people, and I think they’ll do big things for God as a couple. I can’t wait to see what that looks like, and I look forward to seeing that play out.

Here are some pictures from the party. The rest can be found on my gallery here.

Surprise!

Where’s the best place to watch a slidewhow? Front row of course!

I need to practice more

So I was able to play volleyball tonight. I subbed on my friend Godfrey’s team in his Church league. It was a lot of fun, but I realized a couple of things.

1. I will probably continue to be mediocre at volleyball unless I play more than once every 6 months.
2. I hate playing volleyball with glasses.

I think in the next 6 months I’m going to try and play some more. It’s just a matter of finding the time for it. I really would like to get better, but it just hasn’t been a priority as of late. If only the willow creek north shore league hadn’t closed up shop I might still be playing. Ah well.

Anyways, playing was a lot of fun, but I was pretty mediocre. We ended up wining 2 out of 3, and I had a couple of passes, but that was about it. My serving was horrible, unless you’re trying to make the ball go out of bounds by whizzing it past the right pole that holds the net up. :)

After volleyball lots of people from the league ended up hanging out at Applebee’s, so it was nice to reconnect with Godfrey a little bit, since I don’t hang out with him all that much (though I hung out with him twice this past week). He’s getting married and moving to California, so I won’t see him very much anymore.

And for those of you who care, I almost finished an entire bacon cheeseburger and fries (Almost). :)

Rollenspiel!

I thought it might be fun to post my german homework from tonight. I can think of at least one person that might think it’s interesting. The rest of you will have to suffer through it. :)

Ich komme an der Jungenherberge an. Ich frage den Herbergsvater viele Fragen.

**Ich:** Hallo.
**Herbergsvater:** Hallo. Kann ich Sie hilfen?
**Ich:** Ja, wieviel kostet es zum Aufenthalt über Nacht?
**Herbergsvater:** Es kostet 26 Euro pro Nacht.
**Ich:** Das is nicht so schlecht!…bekomme ich Essen?
**Herbergsvater:** Ja, das stimmt.
**Ich:** OK. Wann servieren Sie Essen?
**Herbergsvater:** Frühstück ist um 8 Uhr Morgen…Mittagsessen ist um halb 1, und Abendessen ist um 18 Uhr.
**Ich:** Sehr gut. Danke. Sind andere Leute von anderen Ländern hier?
**Herbergsvater:** Ja, viele. Wir haben viele Leute von Italien, Frankreich, und Österreich.
**Ich:** Wunderbar! Wie weit ist der Stadt?
**Herbergsvater:** Um 4 Kilometer.
**Ich:** Danke. Haben ein guter tag!

Google’s poor translation here.
FYI: Jungenherberge actually means Youth Hostel not boy lodging, and Herbergsvater is a Youth Hostel Director, not a Harsh Supply Father.

Webcam Back In Action

Ever since I got my new laptop I’ve been trying to find a new webcam application for linux that supports my built in isight camera. It was a painful search, but in the end I found an app that does it. It’s a little darker than I’d like, but I think that’s because I can’t adjust the brightness/contrast the way I can when I’m in OSX. Anyways, it should update every 30 seconds, so if you’re bored and you want to watch me work feel free. :)

I’ve Been Slackin’

So I’ve been slacking. To anyone who knows simple math, the time period between this post and the last is roughly 5 days. That’s 3 days more than my promised post of every 2 days. Oh the travesty. To be honest things have been a bit crazy, but I could have taken time to write and I didn’t.

Anyways, I’ve had a lot going on. This past weekend was pretty fun, but by Sunday night I was pretty run down. That’ll happen when you get no sleep and run around everywhere. I really should take better care of myself. It all started Thursday night. I stayed up a little too late because I wanted to watch Smallville. The preview just made it look too good. It turned out to be a heart breaker, so it probably wasn’t worth my time. Then I had to get up super early for my Men’s Breakfast with Eric and George. Last week I had to get up especially early because I was staying at my friend Corinne’s condo while she was away, and she’s a good ten minutes in the wrong direction from where Kappy’s (that’s where we meet) is. That isn’t so bad, but I had to pack and clean up, etc. It turned out Eric couldn’t come, because he went to a Teacher’s fair, so it was just George and I. The discussion was really good, and we finally went over Chapter 6 of The Pursuit of God. We’ve been trying to do that for months!

Friday night we had our The Journey at Yuki’s apartment. George taught, and I thought he did a great job. Hopefully he’ll do some more teaching at some point. I also was very convicted that I need to do some hard work in order to do some of the teaching. Eric is going to be very busy this coming semester, so I need to help pick up the slack. I’m pretty sure that’s what God wants me to do, but I’ve been kind of avoiding it I guess. Well, not really avoiding it, but more holding off on it. Anyways, I think I’m ready to move full speed ahead, though I’m not sure what that looks like. Anyways, I stayed up way too late again, and of course on Saturday I had to be up early again.

Saturday was the quiz at Joliet First Church. That was a lot of fun. It was over Acts 1-20. Quizmastering has become a lot of fun for me, and I think I do it fairly well. I think I need to do a better job of preparing though. I read through the chapters we were doing, but I really need to study it a little more in depth. I guess one of my mistake was saying Sosthenes incorrectly. Whoops. It all worked out in the end. I did the old timer’s quiz again, but once again failed to get a right answer, or a jump even. Though I did get a bonus. One of these days I’ll get a jump and a right answer. I probably just need to bite the bullet and spend a Sunday night practicing with Sara’s team down in Kankakee. After the quiz we had dinner at a Chinese buffet, which was yummy.

After dinner I headed back home to hang out with my friend Godfrey. I hadn’t seen him in a great while, and it was nice just to hang out. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings (or BW3s for those in the know) and watched the Saints, Eagles playoff game. The game was good as was the conversation. The kid is getting married in a few months, and moving to California, so I have to get in my guy time with him now. :)

After the game I headed to the Edison Park Inn (orthe EPI for short). It was Brian and Kore’s 29th birthday celebration. I should have left sooner than I did, but I was having fun learning the secrets of DJing from Perry, and it was all around a lot of fun. I ended up leaving at around 2:30 in the morning, which was roughly an hour and a half past when I wanted to leave. Brian was pretty much gone by the end of the party, and I guess they went out after that. I have no idea how they do it.

Luckily I had Sunday off from my sound/setup duties at Church, otherwise I would have had to have gotten up around 7:30. And that would have been no fun at all. I went to Edgewater Baptist Church to hear by buddy John preach. It was his first time preaching at that church and he was preaching on the Call of Abraham from Genesis 12:1-9. He did a really good job. I really enjoyed it. After that we went over to John and Joje’s place for lunch along with Joje’s mom and grandma, and John’s friend Milton. Lunch was a lot of fun, and after that we were able to watch the end of the Bears/Seahawks playoff game. Luckily the Bears won! :)

After that I pretty much went home and crashed. I had planned on getting lots of stuff done, but that didn’t really happen. I was just so tired. I ended up watching the end of the Patriots/Chargers game and did a little work. After that I watched Without a Trace with my mom, and then pretty much went to bed.

Of course my saga continues as this morning I woke up with a really bad headache. I’d guess it was probably a migraine. So I spent most of today in bed. I probably needed it, since I was pretty burnt out. What with work and all of my extra curriculars, I probably just needed a day off. I think I figured out what caused it though. On Saturday I had a ton of caffeine to keep myself awake, from Starbucks coffeee to pop. I had a ton. Then I had none yesterday which is my norm. I think I suffered from Caffeine withdrawal today. Not so much fun, but at least it’s over.

So that pretty much should get you caught up. If you actually made it this far give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it. :)

I’ve Been Hacked!

I made a startling discovery today. It turns out someone has been using my blog to spam. It wasn’t nearly as serious as I first thought, but someone was using the trackbacks functionality (the ability to link to my blog from another blog or site which lets you see who’s linked me) to link my site to porn sites. This allowed my site under trackbacks on each article (which thankfully aren’t shown by default) to show links to porn sites. Simply fantastic. You can imagine how mad/annoyed I was.

Anyways, it took me awhile to clean it up because I had to manually clean up stuff in the database, since there were probably close to 13,000 different links to various places. And that’s probably not even .01 percent of the crap that’s out there. I think it’s all removed now and I’ve disabled trackbacks. So hopefully it doesn’t happen again, but the Internet is a scary place which I chose to take up residence in, so I guess it’s to be expected. I guess I just wish people weren’t so stupid.