Monday, February 18, 2008

Highlight & Delete

Don't you just love computers. With a simple drag of a mouse and click of a button you can delete something before it is said.
I've decided to try to do that with my volublary. There are a few words I use a lot that I want to get rid of. If you hear me use any of these you have my permission to thump me in the forehead.
1.) "Golly" - I realized recently I say this a lot. Not "Golly" like leave it to Beaver might say, but more like...."Gyah Lee". It doesnt really make much sense as a exclamation plus I heard someone else say it the other day and they sounded like an idiot.
2.) "Fabulous" - I don't say this a lot. But it does creep up sometimes. I said it at work today and got a strange look from a coworker. Why am I deleting it from my vocabulary... because I am a heterosexual male. That's reason enough.
3.) ""No way, Hose" - Why is everyone also so negative toward Hose? What did he do to make him the receiver of all bad news. I'm going to start giving George (whore-hay) ((that's probably not the correct way to spell that pronunciation)) a hard time . So from now on it's "No way, George." and "Okay, Hose".
4.) "suck or sucks" - There have been debates on this word for decades. Is it a curse word? Is it offensive? Does it infer that something is so bad it engages in inappropriate activities.? Regardless of how popular it might be I will be attempting to delete it. This will probably be the hardest to remove.
5.) - just a note - Some have suggested I loose "Dude". I enjoy that word too much. Regardless how long ago the '80's were. "Dude" will remain.

What words should you delete?

Friday, February 15, 2008

Stolen From Another Blog

Top 12 signs the worship service isn't going well...
1 The lyrics are vague enough that they could either be about God, your cocker spaniel, or your boyfriend/girlfriend.2. The congregation has at least three trained marksmen, who, if they triangulate their fire, could end this service before things get any worse...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
3. Portions of the congregation are trying to figure out a way to leave during the next prayer, assuming enough people have their eyes closed and the ushers are not blocking the exits.4. The congregation is considering sending the worship team on an extended missions trip to the most hostile places they can think of.
5. You are considering coming to the church during the week for no other reason other than to install a series of remote-operated trap doors in the platform.6. You have decided that if you bang your head really hard on the pew in front of you, you should wake up sometime during the last five minutes of the sermon, or during Wednesday night prayer meeting.7. You're tempted to stand up where you are and close the service in a word of prayer.8. You find yourself reading bulletins in your Bible that date back to last year's Good Friday service.9. You're starting to think that this particular church service would have been the basis of a great episode of Seinfeld.
10. You begin to think of funny typos that you could insert into each PowerPoint slide, but then decide that nothing could be funnier that what's already up there.
11. You long for the sweet release of death.
12 The guy running the PowerPoint is on a completely different song, but it doesn't seem to matter as the worship team is completely lost and the congregation stopped singing ten minutes ago.

This was in the news...

From Foxnews.com. I saw this and had to share it. The last two lines are priceless.

TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida pastor has a new challenge for his parishioners. It involves sex - a subject that may be taboo in many congregations

The Relevant Church in Tampa's Ybor City has issued a 30-day sex challenge.

"It's going to be tempting and awkward at the same time for sure," said parishioner Brent Cayson.

Single men and women can't have sex for 30 days, and married couples are urged to have it every day.

"If you look at studies, studies say in 30 days you can develop a habit," said Pastor Paul Wirth.

It definitely caught wives in the church by surprise.

"Our married people are far more fearful than our single people," said Wirth.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Celebrate Good Times! Come On!

Many of you have heard me rant and rave about the lack of high speed internet availability where I live. (Why Charter won't run cable down my street I'll probably never know). But alas, my struggles are finally over.

For 10 years I've dealt with dial-up internet access at my house. The fastest I've ever connected was 52kbs. A typical myspace page took 4 minutes to load completely if there was music on it. Last night I purchased a wireless modem from Verizon and am now online at speeds 10X that fast. While I'm still not exactly "high speed". I'm much higher. And that makes a lot of difference. Now that same myspace I mentioned earlier loads completely in about 15 seconds.

Unfortunately the upload speeds aren't increased much, so online gaming is still not anywhere in my future. But at least I can download something from Youtube without dying of boredom before it loads.

So, now, for only $40 more per month than what I was paying (Goodbye Earthlink!) I'm going to be able to see the same junk that I did before, but in less time. Is that a productive move? I'm not sure.

I'll be ditching my Earthlink address sometime in the coming months. Go ahead and update your files.. Here's my new e-mail....

cshawnstinson@gmail.com

(Did you know my first name is Charles? Do I look like a Charles? I think not.)

Friday, February 1, 2008

My desk is alive with the sound of music

I've done it. I've completed a task that Ive been working on for months. You're going to think this is dumb. In a way I think it's dumb. But I still feel like I've accomplished something.

Back in October I decided to copy all the songs on my ipod to my computer at work. I've got every CD that I own on my ipod so that's a ton of songs. 2756 to be exact. Since then I've been listening to my songs alphabetically every day. When I'd come in to work I'd hit play and any time I'd leave me desk I'd hit pause. I started this on October 24th and finished yesterday. That's a long time and a lot of songs. Like I said, I can acknowledge that this is really pretty lame. But it was just something to do to make the day go by quicker.

But, as with everything this taught me something. Maybe this list of things I learned will help you learn something to.

1.) I own a lot of CD's. Sadly 90% of them are from the mid 90's when I had more $ than sense. This makes for a pretty crappy CD collection. Do I really need every "Audio Adrenaline" CD?

2.) Being a member of a CD club is really stupid. Yes you might get 50 cd's for a penny, but the agreement after that really screws you. I think that's how I ended up with "Andy Griffith sings favorite Hymns". If you've fallen into this trap, be sure to mail back anything you don't want promptly.

3.) Listening to songs alphabetically can be more difficult than you'd imagine. I wasn't aware until Early December that I owned 12 different versions of "Open The Eyes Of My Heart". That hour of music almost drove me insane.

4.) Too many worship song begin with "I".

5.) Most CD's only have 2 or 3 good songs. The rest are just filler.

6.) After a while all of Garth Brooks' songs sound the same.

7.) Best CD in my collection for listening to at work may be "Queen's Greatest Hits". Worst CD is definately "Hymnz in Da House" Hymns set to club music. Imagine the Roxsbury guys listening to "It is well" with a beat. wow, that is awful!

8.) I like songs that tell a story. "This here's a song about two sets of J..)

9.) I've bought less than 15 cd's in the past 2 years. Half of those were by Johnny Cash. I'm not tired of him yet.

10.)There have been too many covers of the song "Desperado".

Well, I've accomplished my task. Listened to all my songs. From "100 years from Now" by Huey Lewis to "Your Song" by Sir Elton John. Now what am I supposed to do at work? Actually work?!?