Wow

I knew the National Council of Churches was an extremely liberal group that has been promoting ecumenism with non-Christian religions to the point of minimizing the necessity of Christ, but I still was surprised to see just who one of their member groups is. I thought all of their members were the (fading) mainline denominations like the UCC (my old denomination, ABC and PCUSA… but they have the Amercian Swedenborgians in there too! Mary Baker Eddy would probably be hurt that they didn't want a few scientists to go along with the mystics.

Nothing like adding a weird sect/cult to your group to help in the credibility department! Yes sir! That's sort of like the other thing the NCC seems to be up to: spamming my e-mail box. They subscribed my webadmin address from my church to their daily newsletter without my requesting it.

Color Me Skeptical About This...

What Color is Your Brain?
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Thanks go to Kevin.

QOTW #5: Tea and Coffee

Assuming you like at least one of them, which is your favorite tea or coffee? What kind?

Personally, I really enjoy both, but I'd probably miss coffee the most if I had to give one up. Plain, old black coffee (or with a little cream) would be the variety I would probably hate giving up the most, although I also enjoy a Latte from Starbucks or an I.C. Mocha from St. Louis Bread Co. (a.k.a. Panera Bread) as well as various other varieties.

On the other hand, at dinner, at a restaurant, I will usually order iced tea. No sugar and no lemon. Despite my preference for plain old tea, I usually prefer tea with sugar and lemon if it is bottled tea (unless it is really good bottled tea, such as the unsweetened Nestea I finished a little while ago). Arizona Tea Co. has a good bottled sweetened tea. I also occasionally enjoy peach or lemon tea, such as that offered by Lipton (either bottled or mix) or Snapple. But overall, I'd rather have plain old tea.

In fact, if I had the opportunity to drink as much tea or coffee, and those where the only two things I could drink, I'd probably drink more tea than coffee. Yet, I'd miss coffee more, weird, huh?

Ozark Photo #1

Christopher asked about when I was going to post some photos. Well, I haven't really picked out my favorites yet, but I thought I should post at least one, considering how much I've talked about them.

This is Lake Taneycomo during the afternoon, not too far from Table Rock Dam. I'm standing at the bottom of an Army Corp of Engineers boat ramp taking the picture. It was really pretty hot that day, so the fog seems to be caused by the really cold water of Lake Taneycomo (it comes from the bottom of Table Rock, more than 250 ft. below the surface) reacting with that hot air to create a refreshingly cool fog.

Weather or Not

The Ozarks last week were delightful. And the weather was nearly perfect — there were a few rain drops on the last day, but otherwise it was really great weather for a trip. Unlike, the case in St. Louis, as Pressed has attested to. I did run into some of that weather on the way back on Thursday night, getting caught in a storm bad enough that most people were taking cover at the gas stations along the road (the only shelter in the area).

Today, we had another bad storm pass through the area. Whereas the worst had passed north or south of St. Charles/St. Peters the last few times, leaving St. Louis and outer St. Charles county with the hail and such, this time we weren't so fortunate. This one took out a nice sized chunk of several trees in the neighborhood and also gave us a dose of pea sized hail. Nothing like the stuff from last April, but still hail all the same. Fortunately, that did not put a damper on the family barbecue, which was inside anyway.

Photomania on Memorial Day Weekend

1,227. That's the number of photos from my Ozark trip. 997 of those were taken by me, the remainder were taken by my mother who also was on the trip (originally, a close family friend was going to come to, but she couldn't come due to a brief hospitalization — thus why the trip was delayed for a few days). I'll take my photos and combine them with the ones I got off the cards I borrowed from my mother to create a slideshow, perhaps in DVD format, of the whole trip. I did that for our Christmas trip, although I've never actually burned it to the DVD… I need to do that.

The new photo card reader did a good job of downloading the photos. Even thought I took some time browsing through the photos, I got done in plenty of time to get to the family memorial day barbecue dinner. That was a lot of fun too — we had very nice BBQ burgers marinated in Sweet Baby Rays Award Winning BBQ sauce and Maull's Sweet-n-Spicy BBQ sauce, pea salad (which was surprisingly good despite my normal dislike of peas), a berry jell-o salad, beans, and chips. Plus some delicious deserts, which always helps.

Afterward, the remaining family members — myself, my cousins and my parents (my uncle left after dinner) — sat down and tried out “Cranium.” That was pretty fun, it certainly is a game that provides ample opportunity for laughs. Probably the most humorous parts where when someone was blatantly ignoring the rules. For instance… well, you'd just have to be there.

All in all a great day. Did any of y'all do anything special for the holiday, or are you waiting until tomorrow?

Apology

I should apologize for whining in my one post yesterday. I realize it really isn't that big of deal. I suspect it wouldn't have seemed nearly as bad if it had not been the first thing I saw when I opened my e-mail after returning from my trip. I am still sad to see the way it happened as well as the realization that this brings to an end my ability to help in an area I've spent a lot of time in, but it isn't life or death or anything like that. It really isn't even the worst thing I'm facing, so I don't know why I made such a big deal about it.

At any rate, I'm sorry. I should have handled that better.

Memory Card Reader

Well, if you take over 500 pictures on a vacation, it is helpful to have an easy way to transfer them onto your computer. I have a memory card reader built into my HP PSC 2210 printer/copier/scanner, but it is only USB 1.1 and it is hooked up to my GNU/Linux box which (even when I have supermount or automount set up) has always required me to manually mount and unmount each card as root. A big pain!

So, I decided to buy a second card reader, this one for my Mac. I got a Lexar USB “Hi-Speed” (f/k/a USB 2.0) Multi-Card Reader for $30 at CompUSA. It supports pretty much any card presently available, including memory sticks and SD cards. The USB 2.0 functionality should be a big help in getting the photos downloaded at something resembling a decent speed, and it will allow me to place them in a iPhoto album and burn them to DVD without a lot of hassle.

Perhaps I'll give the drive a spin tomorrow.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh! (Part II)

I guess it is sort of like the difference from wading into the water slowly or diving in when it is only seventy degrees. After a absolutely peaceful week in the Ozarks mountains overlooking Table Rock Lake at quite possibly one of the most peaceful and beautiful resorts in the world, I feel like I've been thrown into an oven.

WARNING: The following post is extremely whiney and you probably should go read something else instead.

I have at least ten different computer help calls (of the non-paying variety), which wasn't all that great, but I can live with it. Then, I opened up my e-mail box yesterday to find the final blow in a long, hard struggle of mine to stay involved in publicity work at my church. As you may recall in the post I linked to, I was removed from that function concerning work to do with the 40 Days of Purpose last year. I had been given the 40 DoP position as a logical extension of a similar permanent role. I had further inherited that role since I did the publicity work, before an official role was created, as part of a committee I am on.

Ever since the official role had been created, certain people had been trying to remove me from it under the excuse of giving me “more time” (as someone under the person filling the role) to work on some of my other projects at church which, presently, aren't even under the authority of the said committee. In other words, remove me from what I am doing and also change my replacement's authority so that they would not only do what I did in that capacity but also would be the leader of other projects I've started which presently are things I work directly with the pastors on (the church web site, for instance).

I had fought that because I loved doing the publicity work. A lot of it provides for a chance to be really creative and I liked that. But, I knew the day was coming that it would be over, I just didn't know when. While I was on vacation I was e-mailed and told — in a manor that, again, attempts to give the impression of “it's for your own good” — that someone else would be handling all communication between committees and the publicity group and that person would handle creating the publicity and that person would handle coordinating with the media. The other members, myself included, would make suggestions to this person. That would “free me up” to devote my publicity time to the web site (which isn't part of the publicity group, as I noted before).

Essentially, then, myself and the team I had assembled would be a figurehead subcommittee that had no real involvement in the core of our work. While I'm not “off” the committee that coordinates these subcommittees, I would have nothing to do with what my committee was in charge of. Obviously, it seems like it is time to step down, if for no other reason than to avoid eventually having the web site reassigned as well. It's all just a bunch of bureaucracy at its worst, really.

It's not life or death or anything, but it has been draining. I had the honor to start a lot of the initiatives that the publicity group works on, so it is hard to let go, but I think that would be better than the alternative of sticking around, when I truly consider what is going on. It is also hard seeing certain people I thought very highly of using behind the scenes manipulation to alter the way this group of subcommittees work. Certainly, the majority of people involved have nothing to do with it, I'm quite sure of that from what I've learned over the last two or two and a half years, but it is saddening to see what's going on with the ones that do.

I probably shouldn't even submit this post, I guess, but here it is.

Back.

I'm back. I meant to post earlier today, but got tied up — its amazing how many things piled up to do in four days. At any rate, I'll post more tomorrow. The Hen House was delicious as usual last night — I tried their Banana Cream pie too… tasty!