Yes We Can

I have been undecided for as it relates to this upcoming election. I have been listening excitedly to speeches from Barack Obama and every time he speaks I can feel emotion rise in me. I have never experienced that listening to a politician. There is a hope and an earnest belief that we can become a better nation than we are.
I listened to his New Hampshire speech the night it aired. I loved the tone of his voice, the way the words rolled, and the passion that he invoked. I am sure this speech must have been written by a speech writer somewhere, but the delivery had me captured.
Today I saw the "Yes, We Can" Video through seesmic and it was phenomenal. The fact that Obama's tone, message, and delivery can easily be transformed into a song is excellent.

Here are the links:
http://www.dipdive.com/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/2/04722/24305/353/448138

Month of 100 Things: Conclusion

As you may have read, this past month has been my Month of 100 Things. Our friend Dawn Rundman proposed the idea not that long ago and Erin and I have been purging as the weeks have gone on.
Erin gets rid of stuff much easier than I do. I love things, regardless of value or functionality. Erin had no problem completing her list of 100 things, which if she had a blog I am sure she would inform the world of. I made a list of 68 things. As a couple we pulled together a list of 20 things. I know I am behind on my initial list, but I can assure you there still is a giant box of books in the basement that are headed towards half price books.
Here are the highlights of my list:
1 Wireless Router - broken
3 Pairs of Jeans - Old, ripped, faded, and not wearable
4 Alvin and the Chipmunks Waterglasses - I had high hopes for these being antique some day
9 T-shirts
3 boxes of mini-discs - my mini-disk player was stolen years ago
2 CD cases - since I bought my iPod I just don't travel with CDs any longer.
3 belts - every belt buckle I have bought recently has come with a free crappy belt. For some reason I kept them.
There was much much more.

All in all, I would rate this as a great experience. It has certainly added to my goal word for the year of "direction." It has also helped me prepare for our Frugal February.

Tags: SimpleLiving, Monthof100Things

Hallelujah Chorus

Thoughts on WoW: Two Days In

So, I finally did it. I installed and began a ten day trial in the World of Warcraft. I have developed some thoughts on this universe and felt compelled to share them through the interblags.

Disclaimer: These are my immediate reactions. I reserve the right to change opinions at any time, because my brain allows me to do so.I began playing MMORPG's about two years ago through a game called Dofus. It is a relatively simple design, that deals with things in turn base fashioned. This is where my roots are, you must give credit to the roots, no matter how silly they may seem. So some of my initial reactions may stem from the fact that WoW is just different that Dofus. I appreciate these differences.

WoW is clearly a pretty pretty pretty gaming environment. I love to look at it. WoW has an endgame in mind. WoW for me at this point does not require mindless grinding and appears to have a mature community for me to experience.

WoW is difficult to start playing. I selected a character and I don't think it is quite right. I have read descriptions of all the other characters and they just don't seem quite right. How I wish it were fixed: a quiz about how I prefer to play the game. i.e. do you like being a primary damage dealer?, Do you like long range spells? Do you like being relied on as a primary healer? Are you tall, short, bearded, like the cold. etc... People keep telling me to choose a character based on my playing style. I need something to help me figure this out. I know I could create a million and a half characters and test them out, but how do I find the time to do that?

I guess that is it at this point. I know discussing opinions on WoW is probably pretty sensitive, and people might think I am crazy... who knows in 2 years I may still be playing and wishing I could rid the blogoverse of this post. Meh.

Tags: WoW, MMORPG, Dofus, Opinion, Games

Microsoft Surface Parody

I am intrigued by this service that just bounced into my inbox. Anyone know anything about Xobni?

January: The Month of 100 Things

Erin and I both read Dawnline, the blog of our friend Dawn Rundman. Dawn has declared January "The Month of 100 Things" in a recent article. Erin and I will be participating in this exercise in simplification. We are going to each eliminate 100 things from our life as well as 100 things of our families. So essentially we will be beginning this new year without 300 things. I am excited about the challenges that this will bring as I am a person who really likes things.

Tags: life

Holiday Parties

Today was the annual Help Desk Winter Semester Extravaganza at my house. I realized tonight how nice it is to get together with co-workers and employees outside of work. It really helps disconnect from the daily grind and remember how great it is to work together.
That is pretty much it.

The Cool Kids

I have a great friend named Nate Houge. He happens to be the front person for the band I play in Nate Houge & the Honest Folk. I am "the Honest Folk" along with Micah Taylor. When we get the chance to play music it is awesome. I love playing good music with a message I believe in. That, however, is not what this blog posting is about. This blog posting is all about Nate Houge's awesome recent posting entitled, "God save the Cool Kids." You can and should read it... now. I have attempted to summarize it a few times and I always go back to the fact that the original is just too good and too short for you all (all 2 of you) to not read.

Enjoy

Extra Ubuntu Eye Candy: AWN

Avant Window Manger is all the fun of a dock style task bar without the closed system. I found a walk through on Ubuntu forums, but it needed some tweaking to work in the latest release.
This requires a bit of advanced editing of your apt-sources and whatnot, but the end result is quite pretty as you will see here in the screen shot to your left.


Here is the installation walk through:



1. Open Terminal and type: sudo nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Type the following at the bottom of your sources.list file.
## AWN
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator
deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42 gutsy avant-window-navigator
3. Save your edited sources.list by typing Ctrl-X in order to save your edited document.
4. Type the following in terminal:
wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/reacocard.asc
sudo apt-key add reacocard.asc
rm reacocard.asc
sudo apt-get update
5. Now install AWN by running the following command in Terminal:
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr
6. You can run AWN by going to Applications>Accessories>Avant Window Navigator.
7. I highly recommend removing your bottom panel when running AWN. You can remove it by right clicking on the panel and selecting: Delete this panel.
8. If you like AWN enough you can add it to your auto-start by going to System>Preferences>Sessions. Click Add, then type avant-window-navigator to the command field.

Many thanks to all the folks at Ubuntu Forums for providing the information for this posting in the post titled: HowTO: functional eye-candy with Avant Window Navigator and Affinity.
Enjoy

Zen and the Art of Linux Installing: Part 1

I have been playing around with Ubuntu 7.10 lately in my free time. I thought it would be interesting to archive a bit of my set-up process here for your enjoyment (perhaps). I noticed on Day 1 that my repository downloads were running very slow. My office is connected up on Internet2, so changing my repository to point to another University with Internet2 access would certainly speed things up.

Change Repositories for my local mirror:

1. Click on Applications
   
2. Select Add/Remove...
   
3. Click Preferences
   
4. Type your Password
   
5. Select the Download From: drop down box. Now select a mirror that you know is going to be fast. Sometimes it is the closest mirror. I chose mirror.cs.umn.edu because I know our Internet2 connection will deliver fast response.
   
6. Uncheck the box for Installable from CD-ROM/DVD. I never carry my CD with me, I prefer to pull everything off the local mirrors.
7. Now you can simply close the window and it will update your repository. Things should load much quicker
   

Use Add/Remove... in order to Install Fun Stuff
There are three programs I know that I want right off the bat. Add/Remove... makes this very possible. I know I want the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings, Xchat IRC, and Amarok. Installing is super easy with Add/Remove Applications. All you have to do is search, check the box and apply the changes and your ready to roll. With my repositories adjusted properly downloads are quick and everything installs wonderfully. Best of all no restart required!

Enjoy

Video: My Mornings

This is a great depiction of how my mornings have been lately.



Thanks CuteOverload

The U.S. is not a 'Christian nation'

Today in my ramblings through my e-mail I found the following article by Jon Meacham. I think it is a great review of the founders of the United States and the role Christianity played. Probably one of the more meaningful quotations in this article is,

They grounded the founding principle of the nation - that all men are created equal - in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country's tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

As a person of faith in the United States today, I find it difficult to see my own Christian faith reflected in the American Civil religion that is invoked continuously by the leadership in this country. It is refreshing to read Meacham's statement that the intent of the federal framers was not to create a Christian nation but instead to create a nation full of religious freedom.

Enjoy the article: The U.S. is not a 'Christian nation'

Happy Rocktober!

Let's kick off Rocktober the right way with a little Rock.

Religions of the Founders of the USA

I was listening to NPR earlier today and there was an interview with someone who was speaking about the Christian faith of our Founding Parents. I always wondered, just how Christian were the founders of the USA. I found a great link that divides up the religious beliefs and gives backgrounds into the personal faith lives of the first people who created the United States of America. I was excited to see that 5 Lutheran made the cut.

Faiths of the Founding Fathers

Tags: Religion, Faith

Inspirational Commercial

This is one of the better commercials I have seen in a long time. It is for a great product and features and amazing percussionist.

Cold Press Coffee

This summer the Dunn Brothers Coffee Shop in St. Paul started serving a drink named Vanilla Iced Nirvana. It is made with cold press coffee. These days I have attempted to order lattes and mochas made with cold press instead of espresso. This is usually met with a weird look from the barista and a lot of confusion when it comes time to ring up the coffee.
I have decided that it would be great to try and learn how to make cold press at home. This weekend I made my first attempt. I did my research, but I found a lot of conflicting recipes. I am working with this cold press recipe at the moment. The basic gist is coarse ground coffee, 4 parts water, 1 part coffee, steep for 3 to 24 hours. My first attempt was a 24 hour steeping (is that even a verb?). I'd love to hear tips from anyone who has attempted this. My goal is to avoid purchasing a Toddy Maker if possible.

Tags: coffee, cold press, caffeine

Game: Grow Island

I believe the original "grow" game by eyemaze is the first flash game that I was ever addicted to playing. They have pulled through with another excellent sequel.

Grow Island

Tags: flash, games

Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Noise

Here is a joyous little video featuring a great beat, puppets, and Harry Potter. In other news, I've just returned from vacation so expect a rash of posts in the near future as I attempt to play catch up.
Here is your Video:

Tags: video

Video: Mitch Hedberg

I love Mitch Hedberg. 'nuff said.

Tags: comedy, video, Mitch Hedberg