Boom!

I had originally planned this as a pre-4th post, and I was going to introduce it by saying:

Ah, yes, it's that time of year again. That wonderful time of year. You know, the time of year when millions of Americans go and buy highly explosive materials and light them on fire. It's the Fourth of July!

At any rate I set a lot of the said stuff on fire last night. We had an hour long show that exhausted about half of my fireworks cache (I'm planning to shoot some more off for the next few days). If you didn't guess, I'm what you might call a hobbyist pyrotechnician. I enjoy finding and shooting off the fireworks almost as much as watching them.

Last night went really well too. About 8:45 P.M. C.D.T the entire family went out side to brave the mosquitoes, despite the the risk of West Nile Virus (a bird died of it about half a mile from here), and sat down. A card table full of fireworks awaited, and with that, I started by lighting a nifty new extra large round smoke bomb. It was a pretty blue one and put out enough smoke to make it a little foggy around the yard. Then I set off my personal favorite smoke bomb, Don't Smoke in a Can, which lasts probably at least a minute and dispurses a huge cloud of bright pink smoke. This thing is so powerful it shoots up a two inch flame at first and makes a loud sucking sound as it pulls air into itself.

I'll spare you the details of everything I shot off, but I'll mention some of the good ones in case anyone is inclined to rush back to the fireworks tents and grab a few more goodies before they pack up for the year.

1. Pop Goes the Fountain (Black Cat): A long — very long — display of sparkling silver sparks and pops. It keeps shooting higher and higher. Really pretty fountain and well worth the $6.00 it retailed for (iirc on all prices).
2. Boatload of Color (???): Really long, colorful fountain similar to the others but on a relatively large “cake,” causing the stream of sparks to move around. This one goes for about $7.
3. Mammoth Fountain (Black Cat): Similar in length to Pop Goes the Fountain, but multi-color, including sparking silver, red, and green. Again goes for a very long time — probably about a minute and a half. It's a great deal at $5.50.
4. Mini-fountains (Black Cat): A four pack in a little plastic bag set me back only $1, but these little fountains are perfect at dusk when you aren't quite ready to shoot off the more expensive fireworks. They went for about 20 seconds and were very colorful.
5. 2 Cool (???): This one was probably about a minute long and did several different kinds of streams of color. IIRC, it also made some noise during the performance, and best of all, it cost only $3.95!
6. Nuclear Meltdown (Black Cat): This one was our finale this year. It's very similar to the other two Black Cat fountains but adds to the excitement by stopping and then starting back up. It also goes up higher and is just generally impressive (third year I've been impressed by it!). Unfortunately this guy is only available at one of the more expensive tents and will set you back $11 for the pleasure of viewing it.

On top of these, we also enjoyed (as usual) artillery shells. Artillery shells come with a tube launcher and provide you with miniature versions of the big displays (chrysanthemums, circles, comets, etc.). These are much more cost effective than the one-use tubes and set you back only around $8-$12 for six to twelve shells unless you go for the fancy double or triple “break” ones (they do more than one effect at a time).

Well, it is getting late, so maybe I'll finish with some more fireworks reviews and the rest of my Branson post (from late May) tomorrow!

Happy Independence Day!

Hope everyone in the Blogosphere had a good one! At this point, I should remind you to read my consideration of the problems of this holiday (along with other days of the year with issues). You can do so here.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Christians and Secular Music

I've considered this debate a number of times. First on ChristianSource about a month or two ago, and just today I considered it again when Jake wrote about it. In my opinion, in our consideration of this issue we ought to judge the artist not on what they don't say but what they do say.

The artist might not mention the words “Jesus” or “God” every other breath, but do they advocate a Christian lifestyle? Do they avoid advocating sinful activities? Are the things they say in harmony with the Bible? I see no reason why a Christian band can't sing secular songs so long as this is the case.

In the discussion on ChristianSource, I brought up one of my favorite groups, Sixpence None the Richer. They are a group of Christians that created a mostly secular band. Not entirely mind you, even the name is derived from Christian thought — it's from C.S. Lewis' masterpiece, Mere Christianity. But at least for the most part, their songs are secular songs, songs about various problems and events in life. In that discussion, I wrote:

At the time when they hit the top of the charts in the late 90's with “Kiss Me,” they were attacked by many Christians for betraying their Christian
fan-base with pop music. As a Focus on the Family article noted at the time,
the song wasn't really un-Christian at all, it just wasn't a religious song.
Just like talking about Linux here on ChristianSource doesn't betray our
Christianity, talking about matters other than faith doesn't necessarily
betray an artist's Christianity. Other songs on the same album did have more
“noticeable” Christian tones, I might add.

In actuality, while Sixpence has a Christian fan-base, they have actually never aspired to be labeled a Christian band. They will readily admit to being Christian, however. Part of this, I think, is because we have boxed our artists in. We say “if you're a Christian artist and you sing about any non-Christian stuff, you're a traitor that used Christianity to make you money.” Thus, bands like Sixpence avoid the label even though it applies to them very much (and is placed on them by retailers and the like).

They've attracted Christians with songs like Breathe and Dizzy, that are very Christian. For example, here is part of Dizzy:

I'm like Peter crying crowing burning my ears still you come near, you take my hand
and place in my palm an eternal chance I give you myself
it's all that I have
broken and frail
I'm clay in your hands
and I'm spinning unconcealed
dizzy on this wheel
for you my love

It's really a touching song, as are many of their other ones, but many are secular, most notably their big hits Kiss Me, There She Goes, and Breathe Your Name. Since Kiss Me became popular in 1999, I've heard many people complain about how Sixpence was going secular. Never mind that several tracks on the CD had noticeably Christian lyrics (and less obvious paraphrases of Pauline letters). However, Sixpence has always had this mix of secular and “sacred” music — all the way back to their first CD.

This isn't an isolated incident either. Michael W. Smith often suffers similar attacks, for instance. Perhaps its out of fear that he will follow in the steps of the musician he formerly played under, Amy Grant, but I remember a few years back reading about how MWS was betraying Christians and going secular. I think people were upset about the few secular songs on Live the Life that actually made it on pop radio. Again, never mind that much of the music on the CD was Christian, MWS must be evil to do secular songs!

The problem is that Christianity isn't just about singing praises to God. That's very important, but Christians still deal with the rest of life. As long as we do, why shouldn't our artists sing about it too? Put another way, I might ask if we ought to consider the parts of the Bible that deal with the rest of life “non-holy.” I'm sure everyone would yell “blasphemy” if I suggested such. Yet, here we are saying Christian music that deals with secular, but not necessarily bad, things is somehow wrong?

It's time we stop putting artists in the box and consider them Christian not by the frequency of keywords but their testimony and the overall message of their music. Hopefully if the bagger at the grocery store says he is Christian we will accept that unless we see proof otherwise. Let's do the same for Christian artists.

Billing...

Phew. I just got done working on invoicing my clients for the month. I have one client I've done a large number of different small projects for and it took almost a half hour just to figure out exactly everything I've done (looking over all of the plans, etc.). Then I went away from the computer for a few minutes and… it was all gone. So I had to tally it all back up again.

At any rate, it's nice to get that done. One conscientious client actually asked me the other day when I was going to bill him. Now, I've almost got an entire free week unless any other projects come up… maybe I can get some of my pet projects done!

This Blog Rated

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[Thanks goes to Susan for the link.]

Sigh

Well I had hoped to catch up on SAFARI tonight, but things didn't work out that way. I ended up with a project for a client instead. It went well though, so maybe tomorrow…

Rant: Has the GOP Outlived Its Usefulness?

Think about it: “our” party has recently decided to nod approval toward a Medicare prescription bill… a bill that will cost an unimaginable amount of money to provide prescription drugs coverage to medicare recipients. This is crazy. It makes sense that Medicaid provides prescription drug coverage, but why Medicare? Why does every American senior need socialized prescription drug coverage?

Frustratingly, the part of the bill that might help dodge the large costs, allowing people to go to managed care providers for “enhance” coverage, is just a senior scam in the waiting. Right now, through what my grandmother is going through, I can see what managed care does to medicare: steal it from those who can afford to pay extra for the managed care and are tricked into signing up for it. In this case, the managed care provider called the shots as to how the hospital treated my grandmother and then refused to pay for rehab afterwards, assumedly, all the while collecting the medicare benefits my grandmother paid for through taxes — benefits that would have paid for all of these things!

So, at best, the prescription drug benefit will socialize an industry and bring the government more into everyday life. At worst, it will just feed more money into the beast that is HMO's. Neither option is good, and I can't see why any sane politician would support this.

At any rate, I'm going off track. I'll just say this: This bill is such a odd thing to support for Republicans that I think Rush Limbaugh was stumped as to what was going on — the best he could come up with was that this was an attempt to take a campaign issue away from Democrats. If I recall correctly, he even admitted once to being stumped. When was the last time that happened?

There are lots of other problems with the Republicans, right now. Many support the, I'll say it, evil PATRIOT ACT. Many support destroying embryos for stem cell research. The administration has supported turning a blind eye to Microsoft's behavior that violates antitrust regulations. The administration and congressional Republicans supported the final McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill. Colin Powell went on MTV and told teens to ignore the biblical morals that parents and religious leaders teach them and decide their own morals — “forget about taboos, forget about conservative ideas” regarding premarital sex and condom usage. The GOP Chairman was “honored” to meet with an organization that actively promotes the homosexual agenda to show the party's “tolerance.” These are all catastrophic failures going against the positions of the very people that elected these politicians.

I wonder if it isn't about time we started a new party. We've been stuck with the same two parties for far longer than any of their predecessors. I still agree with most of the Republican platform, but I think the politicians within the party are ignoring that platform. Hatch, McCain, Bush, Powell, and Ashcroft are just a few people, all of which I have agreed with at times, who are supporting these bad policies.

I think President Bush still has potential, but maybe it's time people spoke up to remind him and other leading Republicans that it's good if they are [campaign slogan]”uniters and not dividers”[/campaign slogan] but it's more important that they support the policies the people who elected them thought they promised. Thought the party stood for. The policies many people still think are right.

That leaves the question: where did the old Republican party go and how can voters who still support its positions get it back?

St. Paul's Newsletter and Content Management

For that purpose, I wrote a simple CMS (Content Management System) during March and April of 2000 (that was time consuming, it's one of the only things I remember vividly from those months). Not having any practice at such it took a long time to figure out how to write the system. In fact, other than Slashcode, I was unaware that Free Software CMSes even existed. Never having used one previous, SAFARI (Standardized Automated Format And Retrieval Interface) is a bit different than other CMSes — in fact, in many ways, it doesn't really even resemble other CMSes. For example, at the moment, SAFARI is what I term an “issue-based” CMS, meaning that it divides article sets into issues, like a print magazine.

At any rate, I'm getting ahead of myself. What I was aiming to note in this entry was that I've really gotten my speed refined on posting. Posting a newsletter (30-40 articles) use to take me about three to four hours — that includes reading over things somewhat to make sure nothing gets lost in the translation from print to web, mailing out a teaser to “NewsAlert” subscribers, and updating The Navigator/Site of the Month link on FaithTree.com. The last few times I've posted the newsletter I've actually gotten that down to between an hour and a half to two hours. I'm pretty happy with that, although I've learned some places where SAFARI needs improvement.

This works out perfectly. As some Asisaid.com readers may recall, I started a project to create a new blogging software package in March. In actuality, the new software is version 2.0 of SAFARI, but with many improvements and ideas I've gotten since I released SAFARI IssueWorks 0.90 in 2001 (which differed little from the unreleased SAFARI 2000 that runs my church's newsletter and dated from… 2000).

My idea revolves around some simple concepts that I hope to reveal very soon. If all goes well, SAFARI ContentWorks, as I've nicknamed the new version, will provide some pretty neat stuff that will make posting my church's newsletter much easier and will also have some applications to blogging. Stay tuned.

Sunday Five

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?
Kinda wavy and curly, actually, which is bad, because I really prefer it to be straight. When it's about time for a hair cut, it can get down right disagreeable with my normal style (see below). Hmm… is hair naturally short ever? I keep mine short, if that's what the question is asking.

2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime?
It darkened from a reddish color to dark brown.

3. How do your normally wear your hair?
I normally have it parted on the left side and combed over to the right. For some reason having my hair cover my forehead
more than a little bothers me, so I constantly battle with it to keep it up on top.

4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?
I don't think I'd change it much, just maybe make it a slight bit more controllable

5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?
Not that I can think of…

Busy, Busy

Well, I've been so busy I haven't gotten back to blog about anything, so I'll just mention what I want to blog about — Ozark Trip Review (Part 2, only one month late!), How I Like Mac OS X Jaguar, My Take on Harry Potter, and finally thoughts on Worship Services. All that and more whenever I get around to it.

In the mean time, since I already let the cat out of the bag (ahem), I did get Jaguar installed without killing Macbert the Ruby iMac. Woohoo! So far so good.. I've been trying out Safari, AppleWork for OS X, Sherlock 3, etc. It's a little disorienting the way Macs work, but it's been fun so far.

Maybe I'll get a good post on here tomorrow…