Notes from the Trail

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Ok… every now and then you have a significant ego check. You just don’t expect it to happen in the check out line at Wal-Mart. For you metropolitan bloggers out there (whom I will refer to from this point out as metroggers… another perhaps original…), you may not understand the joy and simplicity of a trip to Wal-Mart. For us more rural bloggers (uh, can we say RNB’s… red neck bloggers), this trip to bargain mecca is so much more than a shopping trip. It’s our mall, our hangout, our social extravaganza. When there’s no home game, and it’s after dark, then hey, a trip to Wal-Mart is to us what sitting in those rocking chairs at Cracker Barrell is to you city folk who think you’ve gotten in touch with your roots.

I digress. I went to Wallyworld yesterday (first popularized by Chevy Chase in the original “Vacation” but now used by those in the know to refer to theme park/bargain store/town hall/front porch place formerly known as Wal-Mart. I was there with Phillip Slaughter and his new bride, Rosie - Phillip’s the co-pastor of Journey. We had gone to pick up some supplies for our new worship location.

In line, the older lady who was checking us out looked at our threesome with familial joy and exclaimed sweetly to me, “Oh, is this your son or your daughter?” …

Later that night, after bail had been posted and a date set for my trial for “aggravated” assault… I finally realized why it’s called “aggravated..” Heck, I’m 37 stinking years old, and she thinks that Rosie or Phillip are my kids? Aaargh.

P&R kept their mouths shut as we finished checking out. I didn’t even correct the lady. I just said, “He’s also the co-pastor of our church.” She couldn’t believe it. Said he looked too young. She was also just as shocked to discover they were married. Maybe it’s P&R that look SO young rather than me looking old enough to be their father…

On the way out of Wallyworld, Phillip asks, “Can I have some candy, Dad?”

Please send your checks for bail to…..

Matt Parker came by Journey today (that makes like 72 times this week! - awesome to hang out with you, bro!) Our church has been meeting in the local 6-screen movie theater for worship for the past 7 months. We’ve been praying and seeking for a more convenient place to meet for several weeks now. The realtor company that we are leasing our current offices/children’s space from in the Wal-Mart shopping center callled yesterday. After initially telling us “no,” they gave us the green light to do a month-to-month lease in the vacant space next to Stage, which is only one store over from our current spot. Wow!

Matt, JB, Phillip, Doug, and myself spent an hour today moving all our sound equipment from the movie theater to the new location. It was during this time that I took this picture on my Audiovox SMT 5600 phone… It’s Matt holding his belt up to JB… Matt, you won’t be needing that much longer, by the way. Keep up the good work! Visit him at widebody.typepad.com and watch him blog away the pounds. By the way, thanks to Justin Baeder at radicalcongruency for giving Matt’s blog the nod yesterday! If you’re a blogger and could take the time to point others to Matt’s site to give him added accountabillity and encouragement, please do so!

Yes, I’m a tech geek
Speaking of the Audiovox phone… I got in on the beta testing program of Missing Sync for Windows Mobile. As a Mac guy, I was excited about testing this new piece of software that touts its ability to sync your Windows Mobile device with your Mac. I’d used Pocketmac with some success before this, but I wanted to try something that didn’t install a bunch of stuff all over your system. Let me say at this point though, that Missing Sync just isn’t there yet. Yes, they’ve got a commercial release, but while some are able to sync relatively well with it, there are still another group of folks with no success whatsoever. Save your money and buy a phone that will sync through iSync is my recommendation.

Nuff said!

My wife’s Emac is dying, or at least the hard drive is… We’ve sold it on Ebay and bought a replacement, but today I came home to do some design work, and she had “discovered” my G5 Powermac. We have a detached studio from our house where I office and do my graphic design and she takes pictures… (Check out anoblephoto.com; she’s awesome!) Anyway, much to my chagrin, she was enjoying the G5 experience over her Emac experience.

“Get up,” I said sweetly. She kept working. I meekly returned to the house to check my fantasy football scores before preparing for a class that I teach on Monday nights at Journey… The class is called “Biblical Mathematics: Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.” It’s basically a biblical hermeneutics class. We’re using Duvall & Hayes book, Grasping God’s Word, as well as Blomberg’s Biblical Interpretation. It’s been a great class. I’m convinced that humble, informed biblical interpretation is one of the great needs in the postmodern church. I encourage every student of God’s Word to pick up one of the above books (GGW is the more readable). I hope to have Scott Duvall as a guest author here in the near future.

Back to the point… over the last two weeks in this blog adventure of mine, I’ve felt rather “froggish” - leaping from one blog resource to another, not really knowing what I’m doing, but seeking to promote and link my site to as many as possible. I thought I would list a few sites I’ve found for those of you who are in the same boat- beginning blogging. It may help you as you blogfrog your way to syndication. (BTW, the term blogfrog has probably been used by others, but I am not aware of it.. I’m using it here in a ‘you-heard-it-here-first-maybe sense’ to mean the act of jumping between blogs, keeping up with your favorites… blogfrogging).

These are not listed in any particular order…
1. Make sure you set up your options in Typepad to offer a “Subscribe Link” and a “Syndicate” link. This will give sites and bloggers a way to connect to you better.
2. Feedburner.com Go here after copying the link that shows up on your site’s RSS or .xml feed. Paste the link in the box on Feedburner. (On Typepad, view your page, and where it says “Subscribe” or something like that, command click(Mac)/right click(PC) and copy that link… Feedburner will help you promote and connect others to your site.
3. Go to blogger.com, myblogsite.com, xanga.com and other major blog services and open up a free account. Name your blog, and post some basic info about yourself. Then as your first “Welcome” post, simply tell folks where your main blog is located. That way if someone is a member in that network and search for you, they can still find you.
4. Set up a free picture account at flickr.com and post your blog’s address there. Especially if you use iPhoto for the Mac, it becomes amazingly simple to simply send an email with some pics to your flickr email account, and it will automatically post your photos for you on your blog!
5. Go to technorati.com and set up your blog to be connected there.
6. More to come… but you have enough to keep you busy for a while.
7. I’d also encourage you to find a few well-done blogs whose subject matter/writers interest you and see who they recommend. After following them for a few days, subscribe to them. You’ll find that you’ll learn a lot from those who are ahead of you in the journey. Two blogs that have provided invaluable help and insight for me as technical resources as well as content inspiration and encouragement are:
a. radicalcongruency.com - Justin Baeder’s site
b. findingfaith.org - Kenny Tomlin’s site
c. widebody.typepad.com - Matt Parker’s site.

Nuff said…

You really need to check out Kenny Tomlin’s blog entry at findingfaith.org - “What Would an Atheist Do?” Pretty profound. Thanks, Kenny!

Nike Corporation announced today that it will be releasing a new shoe - Nike Retro Wagons. To commemorate the 1970-1980 model station wagons that had wood paneling on the side, the new shoes will feature a wood-grained Nike swoosh. See a picture of the swoosh prototype…
Ok… not really.

We came into Journey late last week to find this mysterious wood-grained swoosh lying on the floor in the main room. We have no idea where it came from or to what it belonged. It’s like the “Secret Sound” contest on the local radio station… you guess where it came from… and you win…. uh, the wood-grained swoosh! Happy guessing…

Aw shoot. Today was our last regular season game. I’ve been coaching my son’s 3rd-4th grade team. We played the Ryburn Mustangs today who were 5-0, and we lost 20-6. If we’d won we would have sealed up second place, but as it is, our 4-team league has a three-way tie for second, with each of us sitting at 2-4. To make it confusing, each team beat one another team twice. So there really is no way of settling this. I think the football board is going to resort to a coin toss to see which of us goes on to play in Star City next weekend.