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Month: November 2007

Marriage…mawwage is what bwings us here towday…

Marriage…mawwage is what bwings us here towday…

Visiting priest took the masses for this weekend at the Cathedral. Had a different style, but I loved the bit he did on marriage. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he captured a lot of what goes on in our own minds/homes….

And marriage is hard too – it’s a lot of work. At some point we say, “Someone’s got to make the decisions. Someone needs to be in charge! Someone’s got to take initiative around here!” And then we do until we forget the other person. Christ is with each one of us all the time – and loves the something truly unique in us just as what is He loves the particular uniqueness of each other person in the world. Each one of us differently and in our differences. But *we* often forget to stop and see what it is Christ sees in them, just as he sees something beautiful in us. We get all wrapped up in what needs to be done, or what we want, and forget to take the time to discover and love that expression of Christ in our spouse. And then we forget to forgive them as Christ forgives and loves us.  And we forget to offer forgiveness and support as we want that forgiveness and support from God. It’s all too easy.

This is how I’ve felt about marriage for a long time. I feel bad for folks that just wander into marriage – even more worried for those that don’t have a real Christian understanding of marriage (that includes a lot of Christians too by the way). Marriage is the monastery in which one joyfully/willingly enters to die to themselves. It’s the relationship in which you realize the Christian ideal that life isn’t about you any more. Hopefully, you see this before you decide to say “I do” and enter into that understanding/living willingly. Hopefully too, you find someone else to give that too that feels the same way! Sadly, even in the Christian community, most probably do not. To the Christian, marriage is the place  and time and maturity where they are ready to stop living for/about themselves and can die to self in the ‘safe place’ of reciprocating love of another. This isn’t about being a floor-mat for another person – it’s about finding another that wishes the same thing for you. It requires two mature adults that have their stuff together. They need to be able to maturely call “schenanigans” on each others behavior when it’s selfish, they need to be able to challenge and support each other as equals. One can’t do this if they don’t have their own issues worked out. If both of you are looking out for the two of you, then the other, then themselves (in that order) you’ll find the real tranformative power of marriage.

That’s why having kids is so intimately linked to marriage for the Christian. If there was ever anything that teaches you life isn’t about what you want anymore, it’s having kids. Children are an extension and expansion of this self-giving. If one isn’t mature enough to be married, one is likely not mature enough to have kids – and vice versa. Yes, parenthood is often thrust on people due to poor choices, but the folks I know in those situations said they sure grew up a lot as soon as their kid was born. Often via a painful moment of ‘Come to Jesus’/realization about the way their lives are now going to go – very differently than they expected. So, hopefully, marriage is the place where children are welcomed into the world witnessing/seeing this kind of self-giving love between their parents.

Auditory illusions

Auditory illusions

This is amazing – simply amazing. You need to use headphones for it to work best, but it’s unbelievable how realistic it is. I had a nice set of headphones and it’s so convincing that I found myself totally convinced of the sounds around me – and kept subconsciously looking around for the guys talking. 🙂

Auditory illusions

Try the virtual haircut for a good sample.

Framed

Framed

I just got my photo of the Japanese Gardens printed and framed. I went and got a 24×20 print made on photo paper by a local high-quality printer who did a good job with the proofs and tweaking it for large prints. I then went over to a frame-it-yourself joint and got it put on foam-core, double-matted, and then framed. All said and done it was about $175 (framing being the majority of the cost), but it came out great.

Here’s a shot of it hanging on my wall. And least you think it’s not too big, I was using my wide-angle lens and that’s a Dell 2407 24″ screen to the side:

They think I can probably go as big as 30×24 without digital artifacts – which is huge.

If you think you might like a print (frame/unframed) let me know as now that I have the digital matte file saved with them, they can do further 24×20 (not exact dimensions) prints for a reasonable amount. Going up to 30×24 pushes it quickly to about $100/print (no frame) so just email me if you’re thinking about it, but the 24×20’s are very reasonable. Batch jobs are cheaper – so just email and if a group wants to go for prints, I’ll see what the rates are.

This one came out so good that I’m probably going to do a couple of my other photos.

Great day for hard drives

Great day for hard drives

Finally.

After years of buying hard drives that say 400gb, but format out to 372.529gb, Seagate lost a class-action suit that accused hard drive manufacturers of using misleading statements about the capacity of their hard drives.  Hard drives have traditionally used 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) bytes for 1 gigabyte, but everyone else uses 1,073,741,824 bytes = 1 gigabyte.  The difference comes from using the next power of 2 (2^30 = 1 gigabyte) vs actual byte count (1 billion bytes = 1 gigabyte).  All other computer components (i.e. memory) use the power of 2 notation; looks like HD manufacturers will need to start doing that now too.

But the good part is that you can cash in (or at least help the lawyers cash in).  Go to this online form and fill it out if you’ve bought a hard drive before January 1, 2006.

DJ Justice Hit Portland – and I was there

DJ Justice Hit Portland – and I was there

About 2-3 weeks ago, I went to the sold-out DJ Justice concert on a Thursday night. A friend tipped me off on the tickets going on sale and I got like the 125th ticket for $15 (he actually got ticket #1) – which then apparently sold out in record time. The set got started about 11pm and I just about left about 1:30am when they were finishing up. Then, off to work the next day.  Thankfully I’d gone home to bed right after work so it wasn’t too bad.

It was a good concert, but those midnight weekday midnights are hard to do.  Probably why this was the first one I’d been to in almost a year. Still, they are famous for the song D.A.N.C.E. Turns out there were a few folks there with video/sound going. Here’s two clips from the actual event:

DJ Justice does the song DANCE @ holocene Portland
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bido5jzhUS0

DJ Justice @ holocene (as shot by my buddy on his little Canon camera.  He didn’t know he was taking video while dancing – so just listen, don’t watch and it wasn’t him trying to be artistic)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TvQLqPAPbDU
(hehe, I forgot they’d used the bit from Metallica at the end)

Nissan hits 190,000

Nissan hits 190,000

Well, my trusty old ’93 Nissan just rolled over 190,000 miles yesterday on my way to work. Unfortunately I didn’t pay attention and missed seeing all those delicious 9’s roll over to the satisfying 0’s – but it’s a fun milestone anyway. There’s a big part of me that wants to get this car to 200k, which might happen next year or so if I do a bit more driving than usual.

I must admit that I’ve been ‘seeing other people’ and test driving a lot of different cars (Audi, Lexus, Nissan, BMW, Toyota’s, Subaru, etc) . Problem is that none of them have really taken my fancy yet; and the idea of plunking down 10-30k on a car isn’t really high on my list of things to do. So, I keep driving the Nissan. That and having no car payment for the last 7 years has been sickeningly sweet.