Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

Your eyes shone on that night They were diamonds Under the ocean’s moonlight They were diamonds It was only a moment in time You were laughing, I was falling hard. It was over Then the light of morning hid the stars. And it was over I remember it well The night I fell so deeply into your eyes And I wondered if you would feel for me The way I felt for you It was only a moment in time - A Moment in Time, The Choir And when was that moment? Was it the night when she said "yes" to my marriage proposal? Or the night that we knew that our firstborn was growing deep inside of her? Was it the night that we moved from the house that we began our life together in and struck out into uncharted water? Or was it when we realized that we were not only deeply in love with each other, but we were deeply in love with the same God? Or was it last night when we kissed each other, bade each other a good night, and drifted off to sleep? Yes. I dare say it was. I love you Diamond Eyes.

I work with an older man that likes to say "Hey, Lucky" every once and a while when he passes me in the hall. I usually just smile as I walk past him. Today I responded saying: "Hey, Crusty." I don't think he appreciated that.

I have been teaching in our "children's church" program (called HighPoint) for a while now and I will have one more lesson to give before I transition into teaching our adults in our new classes on Sunday that begin next month. I can honestly say that I have mixed feelings about it as I love the stuff we are doing in our HighPoint program and it is great to be up in front of a ton of kids every week...including my own. When I was asked to do this a while back there was a gnawing sense inside of me that this was the B-league of teaching. In other words, I had to rail against the tendency that I constructed to treat this as a second-class teaching assignment for people who couldn't quite cut it for the adult classes. When I finally snapped out of that flesh-driven thinking, I set out to pour myself into the teaching as much as I would any adult class that I would be given responsibility for. Hopefully I have succeeded in that. Thankfully, I have the 5th and 6th grade Ch...

"Is there anything a wiki can't do?" - Samuel Malachowsky Just looking for a new direction In an old familiar way The forming of a new connection To study or to play - (Keep Feeling) Fascination - Human League There are at least three things that have led to this post: my exploration of the Chromium OS, the fact that I am creating a wiki page to house a bunch of requirements that I am working on, an article of Slashdot that points to a study of the connectedness of the tweens and teens of today, a song stuck in my head since the 80's, and an off-the-cuff thought-provoking comment by a co-worker. OK, that's four things, but I was never very good at math. Anyway, it seems to me that the thin client that has been promised for such a long time is something that the average user (me in my home life) can actually work with. The web browser and the web itself has grown beyond a fun and nifty way for a business to display its wares. It is more interactive and functional ...

I am posting this from a fresh install of the Chromium OS which is an open source version of the Chrome operating system from Google. It is running off of a USB thumb drive at the present moment and is maximized for people who do a lot of work on the web. It seems to be pretty zippy and has some really nice features that are all delivered through a Chrome web browser. I know this report is a little light on the specifics but those will follow as I become more familiar with the environment.

I get into these funks on occasion and need something to snap me out of them. Every once and a while there seems to be stretches of time when I am not motivated to do anything. Even blogging, which is a release for me, is something that is on the back burner. Actually most of the stuff that I should be doing is on the back burner and I am not even sure there are front burners to occupy at this point. I get to thinking that there is something that I would like to do and I find some way to put it off until tomorrow. Of course, when tomorrow comes (does tomorrow ever really come?) then there is a way to shelve it until the next day too. I need a fire lit under my butt and I am sure someone (or something) will do it. Until then it seems like I am in a holding pattern and not all that motivated to contact the tower for clearance to land. We'll see what tomorrow brings. If it ever comes.

I received lots of music this Christmas - a lot more than in years past. Some of it was in the form of an iTunes gift card and some of it (well, all the rest of it actually) came off of my Amazon wish list. My wife is not all that keen on the mix of music that can be found at any given time on my iPod, but I just think she needs to listen a bot more to "my stuff" and she'll grow to like it. Here is a list of what I will be listening to in the weeks to come as a result of the gifts I have received: Again and Again - Mylon & Broken Heart Darn Floor, Big Bite (album) - Daniel Amos Mystery Highway (album) - Randy Stonehill and Phil Keaggy Tour de France , Autobahn , Elektro Kardiogramm , and Computer Love - Kraftwerk Freedom (album) - Whiteheart Flap Your Wings (album) - The Choir Direct (album) - Vangelis I love new music even if it is old music. It is nice to freshen things up a bit. I need that.

"Um, no." I hear those two words quite frequently in response to a question I ask my wife just about every morning: "Does this match?" This problem has been exacerbated lately my a couple of unfortunate developments. The first one came Christmas Eve when I received two pairs of really nice pants from my mother in law. Of course, they weren't blue, black, tan, or even olive. I don't even know what color they are but they fit and I like them. I mentioned to Nan that she was going to have to help me match my shirts to the pants as I had (and still have) no clue which shirts go with which pants. Another more catastrophic event sent my early-morning life into tumult. Usually I had enough time to ask Nan what goes with what, get my clothes ironed, and then get out the door. Nan is now driving the boys to school because of a busing schedule change and is now unable to give me the fashion advice I need in a timely manner. She is getting the boys up a bit later and I...

Simply this one thing, hope, is what drives me at times. Last weekend my words and actions, for the most part, were directly from the old man. My flesh just got in the way so much that I was wondering if there would be anything left of the spirit. My flesh was less than weak...it seemed to actively oppose anything of substance that I desired to do. I sat with the church and wept. More than broken over my sin I wept because there it was. In the black and white of His Word I found it again. Hope! At the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, following some of the most disappointing and disturbing stories in the entire Bible, there it was. He shouted to me right then and there, "You have this abundant life because you have hope!" And this hope is in the God of the Universe that saved me from my sin. And so much so that death himself cannot touch me.

I am working with a guy named Kamal. I can't shake thinking about Kamala the Ugandan Giant every time I hear his name. I hope someone, besides me, remembers him from the old WWF days. Thankfully I gave up watching all of that years and years ago. Yet, when I was young and impressionable, I spent many a Saturday afternoon in front of the TV taking it all in. Obviously all of this is buried deep in my psyche because it pops up at odd times and reminds me how much time I wasted on this. Another example of how youth is wasted on the young and, also, how far I've come. Or maybe not.

We chase with the hounds for the meaning of the world The unattainable meaning of the world. Earth Household, Daniel Amos Would we have found it by know? Wouldn't we have found, with at least some degree of unanimity the meaning of this cosmos or even if there was a meaning to it all? I mean, of all of the intellectual pursuits that have been initiated and concluded over the millennia wouldn't we have at least a nugget here and there if our human reason were the vehicle that we make it out to be? Yet, we try to escape this physicality on our own and fall down over and over again. We rail against the concept of revelation as a source of knowledge and muddle through it all. We pretend that the big questions have no answers or, worse yet, that there are no big questions. We pretend that we can love and deny Love. We pretend to get angry over injustice and ignore the Just One.  How pathetic we are...how frail. If it weren't told to us we would know nothing. If not for His merc...

I received a substantial iTunes gift card (thanks, Lynne') for Christmas and haven't spent it all of it yet, but I found a couple of classics that I had been missing for quite a while. The first, Again and Again by Mylon and Broken Heart is a smooth rock/jazz piece that was included on an 80's Christian music compilation. It is classic Mylon and in the same vein as a lot of the stuff found on his Big World album. I had been looking for this song for quite a while and am glad to see it on iTunes as the album it was off of is all right for Mylon and Broken Heart collectors, but not people like me. The second is called Darn Floor, Big Bite from Daniel Amos and it is every bit as good as I remember it. I had the album on cassette and wore it out/threw it out a while ago. Daniel Amos is one of those alternative bands that were way ahead of their time and not just in Christian music circles. I am going to be playing this album a lot in the days ahead along with the Whiteheart F...

There was a time, I can't remember when exactly, that I was watching the Phil Donahue show and, for some reason, the camera zoomed in tightly on a phone that was smack dab in the middle of the stage. Well, the phone had a legitimate number pasted on the bottom of it which, of course, prompted someone to dial the number. The phone rang, Phil picked it up and then hung the phone up. Then the phone rang again and he picked it up and, like a doofus, hung it back up again. I think after the phone rang for the third time they cut to a commercial. Well, that was very inspiring for me. My boss had her email client (Outlook) open and projected on the screen during staff meeting today. Recalling the Donahue phone incident I decided to email her and put "DENA ROCKS!!!!" in the subject line. I showed remarkable restraint in that I didn't put something else more insulting in the subject line, but it did get the reaction I was looking for. I guess I do like causing mayhem as long a...

For one reason or another I was thinking about the Awana Grand Prix and what I dismal failure I was last year as I kept score. OK - I wasn't a dismal failure...I was actually just this side of an abject one, but I was not satisfied with the job I did last year. So I went about getting a spreadsheet together that would automatically place the winners and losers in the correct heats and in the correct lanes for the races that were a part of the whole Grand Prix experience. As I worked through the spreadsheet I noticed that I was not a great detail person and also that I needed a solution that would allow me to enter close to any number of cars that would show up. Given the amount of clubbers we have this year that could be anywhere from 20 to 50 or so entries. That sounded like a lot of work to me. So, I went to the world wide web. And I found a great resource site, MattsResources.net , that had exactly what I was looking for. There, buried in a couple of different links, is the exac...

I had an interesting experience on Saturday. I was washing up some dishes from lunch and the like and Will mentioned that he had a favorite name for Jesus: Immanuel. He said that he liked it because it meant "God with us". I thought it was great that he had a favorite name for Christ because, when I was nine, I can't say that I had one. I hope and pray that this is a sign that his relationship with God will be deeper and more meaningful than my own. At any rate, Drew piped in and mentioned that his favorite name was Messiah. We talked a little about what that name meant (savior is a synonym) and then the boys went down into the basement to play. Well, Drew started singing the song "Jesus Messiah" by Chris Tomlin obviously prompted by our discussion of the name. Well, right then and there, I began to whistle and meditate on the words of the song. What does Name above all names really mean? Blessed redeemer - were there redeemers who were not blessed? How and why ...