A friend from church, Curt, turned 14 today. Curt told me today he plans on protesting his school’s dress code by wearing his Titans jersey and being late for class, where he’ll run through the empty halls yelling. I’m not sure what he plans on accomplishing by this. Probably some weird looks and in-school suspension. Then again the dress code is kinda silly at times. Supposedly you get in-school suspension for not having a belt. Ah yes. The ole beltless school suspension rule. I’m not sure why not having a belt consititutes a bad learning environment. How about this? Instead of having teachers spend time checking for dress code violations, they should actually teach? What a novel idea!
Curt is a good kid. Kinda looks at life on the negative side of things alot. When I ask him how’s school is going, he tells me how much he hates it. But who really liked school anyways?
We’ve got a “manadatory” meeting for adults who are going skiing this weekend. I’m not sure what is exactly earth shattering that we must have a meeting about it. Probably something to the effect of “Let’s watch everyone. Here’s the rooming list. Yadda Yadda Yadda….” I’m up for it. Who doesn’t enjoy a good meeting?
So they had a funeral at the church building today. What always leaves me scratching my head is how they get the coffin inside of the building. I mean the doors of the building aren’t wide enough for the typical coffin. We do have 2 doors next to each other. But there’s a vertical bar in between. So do they take out the bar to get the coffin in or do they turn the coffin on the side? Turning a coffin on its side would probably mess of the effect of “He looks so peaceful.” Instead it would be “oh it looks like the coffin was turned on its side.” Perhaps this is a question for our building maintainer. Am I being morbid by asking this? The church itself wasn’t designed for funerals. But then again, is any church designed specifically for funerals? The architects don’t stand around and measure doors for coffin clearance.
One word: “toddesque.” And that is all I have to say about that. “Jeffesque?” There’s no such word.

I was in Scottsville today to help a friend setup his Ebay account. The only problem was that he didn’t have a credit card and his parents were not comfortable enough with the internet to let him use theirs. So no Ebaying for him until he gets a card of his own.
He was wanting to sell some expensive Basketball card via Ebay. I am not sure why someone pays hundreds of dollars for these pieces of cardboard. But then again if it makes you happy….
We ate lunch at the Fountain Run cafe. We had a choice of a country buffet or whatever was on the menu. I choose a cheeseburger. They left too much mustard on it, but other than that it was fine. John thought we were all crazy to drive out to Fountain Run just to get a cheesburger. Fountain Run is an interesting town. Kinda in the middle of nowhere, yet they have a few churches, a bank, and a couple of restaurants.
While I was in Scottsville, I improved John’s webpage….adding more pictures. And I made a quick page for Daniel.
Then it was off to Corinth Church of Christ in Portland. They were having a special evening service where the young men conducted all of it. I think they did a good job. Skyler did a good job preaching. Didn’t even stumble through the word “propitiation.” He’s only 11 years old, yet still seemed very comfortable in the pulpit. Still I had to laugh when afterward he needed help from his mom getting his tie off. “Mom, get this tie off of me!”

Rating Frozen Pizzas. I always enjoyed Tombstone Pizza myself. I got hooked on Tombstone after taking a free sample at the local Kroger’s. Occassionally they’ll have a special “2 for 5 dollars” which everyone would stock up on. DiGiorno? Well it’s not as good as the commericals make it out to be. Kinda doughy in places.
One thing I wish Tombstone would do, would be to have a small pizza about as half the size of the standard size pizza. I can eat a half all by myself. And it seems like cooking a whole and then throwing the other half away is just a waste.
Todd Burka’s picture pages have been updated with new captions. Take a look. It’s slightly amusing.
Scott Burka has updated his webpage too with an account of his tryout with a drum and bugle corp, the Bluecoats. Scott seems really intense about this drum corp thing. I hope he isn’t setting himself up for a disappointment. His brother, Todd, had asked him what were his alternate plans if he didn’t make it in to the band. He wouldn’t give him a straight answer. So let’s hope he makes it. However sometimes I think he might be better off not doing the summer band thing. Living on the road and performing every other day is a rough life. Probably not very conducive for a Christian life. Scott’s a good kid. I hope he isn’t selling his Christianity short. But then again, it’s really none of my business what he does.
One thing I’ll be doing at New Year’s Eve is watching a rock concert at the community center put on by church members. Am I the only one sees an emperor has no clothes phenomenon in this? Case in point – usually they play one Incubus song…”Drive” and a bunch of Led Zepplin songs I’ve never heard of. If you want to impress me, play some hit music. Play songs I know. Then again if it is their band, they are certainly welcomed to pick their own music. Anyone can make up a band…Blink182 told us that. Putting a good rock band is another matter altogether.

My friends Josh and Beth wrote an original play which I went to see last night. It was more than just a morality play. It had Christian themes to it. The actors did well and didn’t appear to be robotically reading their lines at all. I know that it probably took quite a bit of time writing and setting up the play and I was happy that it turned out really well.
The only thing that left me sorta confused was when did the play end and when did the actual sermonette begin. At the end one of the play’s characters got up and said “It’s great we can get together for our Christmas Eve service here at 11PM,” which I knew wasn’t right since this was December 21 and it was 9:30PM. So he gave his sermonette and then asked us to pray with him. I was thinking “ok, this is still part of the play.” Yet the rest of the audience obviously thought the play was over and bowed their heads. I guess I’m just not used to dramatic Christian productions.
In the middle of church service this morning, David Shannon’s wireless microphone lost all battery power. We had to perform a hot swap in the middle of the sermon. Sorta embarrassing, but not necessarily for me because I don’t have anything to do with mic batteries. So I guess we can’t use rechargeable batteries anymore.
So I’m going skiing tomorrow. Driving up to Scottsville this afternoon. Leaving tomorrow for Paoli at 6:30AM. Returning to Scottsville around 11PM. I guess I might spend the night again in Scottsville, depending if I am too tired to drive back.

I am literally rolling on the floor laughing about what Todd said about me on his webpage:

“let me give a huge “much peace and one love” to jeff whittle… hes the cheese to the macaroni that is this webpage. trust me, if you see anything on here that doesnt suck – he did it.”

Todd’s misadventures will be chronicled frequently on his webpage. Let’s hope he keeps it up.
Then again, I hope my webpage doesn’t turn into a commentary about what was said on Todd’s webpage. This makes 2 days in a row that I’ve mentioned Todd’s webpage. Ok I’ll stop now.
Kevin Bass tells me that he can’t view this webpage on his web accessible cell phone. All he can see is the menu to the left. Must be those server side includes which I’m using in the HTML portion of the webpage. I’m certainly not going to develop a text only webpage.
Nashville Citysearch did a poll about the best french fries in Nashville. Residents picked McDonald’s as #1. Ugh. I could find some much better fries. Usually at Wendy’s if they are not too soggy. J Alexander’s shouldn’t be on the list. A plateful of paperthin fries does not make for a good side item to a good meal. Other cities like NYC must be more cultured than Nashville, since there’s no recognizable fast food restaurants on their best fries list.
Really I don’t usually eat fries much anymore. I’d rather order cheesesticks, even though they are much more expensive. What we really need is some cheese dipping sauce to go with the fries.

I don’t consider Friday the 13th an unlucky day. What about you? Mom always has been superstitious, always telling me “don’t say anything” hoping that it wouldn’t jinx her sports team or our good health. I, however, don’t really think anything is particularly unlucky or lucky. It’s just fate or how the cards fall.
Meanwhile, the Friday Five listing is still dead. A message on the webpage says “working on it.” I’d probably post my own questions if I was creative enough.
Mark, my brother-in-law’s 30th birthday is today. We surprised him with supper with his parents and in-laws tonight. Mark and Melissa have had to do some rearranging due to a pipe bursting in one of the spare bedrooms. They had to move out all of their furniture in order to let the carpet dry. So all of Melissa’s old princess bedroom furniture is scattered about the house.
HG Woods, one of Scott Burka’s friends, has a very interesting webpage. Although I think he could get in trouble for what he said about his former math professor. Could you get in trouble at a higher institution if you said that about a teacher and posted it on a webpage hosted by the school? Oh well. I think it’s probably safe. It’s not like HG is saying anything which could be considered libel about him. You can’t prove or disprove someone sucks in a court of law.
Really the only thing I know about HG is that he smokes cigars, makes fun of Scott, and doesn’t like a certain math teacher. Oh yeah. He’s a chemist. (All of this according to Scott).
Meanwhile, Geocities finally pulled Scott Miller’s homepage. Scott was a friend from Lipscomb. About the same time I was developing my first webpage, he was setting up his. It’s been almost 5 years since it was originally setup (maybe longer). It hadn’t been updated for years. Makes me wonder if Geocities sends out emails saying “Hey you haven’t updated your webpage. If you don’t do something to it, we’ll delete it.”

I met Matt at one of the many church camps I go to during the summer. Matt’s parents don’t go to church. Matt’s brother doesn’t go to church. Each Sunday morning Matt consciously makes the decision to go to church with his grandparents (who themselves had not been going to church very long when they first started taking Matt). Matt’s cool like that. While many of his peers are not mature enough to consider if Christianity is indeed their religion, Matt has made Christianity his religion. What would you do if you were the only person in your family who went to church? Would you still go?
Important Milestones in My Webpage Development

• January 27, 1997: Posted my first webpage on the internet. The subject: Mt. Juliet High School Alumni
• Feburary 28, 2001: Registered the domain jeffwhittle.com. The site goes online a few days later (Thanks Chuck!)
• August 24, 2001: First Blogger Post
• March 2002: Applied the ability to do comments
• December 7, 2002: Installed Movable Type on my webpage.
• December 10, 2002: Completely moved over all the coments.

Stats:

• 396 Journal Entries
• 113 Comments
• 1 Author

And no, I didn’t go through there and count all of thost entries. Moveable Type does it for me.

So I went to Portland today and kept my promise to take the kids out to eat. For some reason, kids that age tend to spend money like there’s no tomorrow. I never spent that much money when I was their age. Arcade games? Food? Golf driving range? They wanted to do all this after lunch. It was a quest to spend money and they won. Or lost depending on your perspective.
Really I almost forgot to post to this weblog. I’m very tired and just wanted to relax.
I have been trying to talk to several different people about their Central American Mission trip experiences to get a perspective on things. I need to try to think about this. I wish I knew if I was going to get a job anytime soon. It would make the decision process alot easier.

Since I did Todd Burka’s webpage his older brother, Scott, has wanted me to help him with his webpage. Well it’s up now. I think I may have inspired some friendly competition between the brothers. Todd has a webpage, therefore Scott wants one too. Both webpages are a work in progress. Maybe we’ll be able to get something better over Christmas break.
Todd really should have been older than Scott. He’s got the determined personality of an older brother. Scott comes across as being timid…even a bit unsure of himself, or at least that’s how he was growing up. Scott may have changed since then.
Speaking of webpages, I stumbled across the webpage of an aquaintance from Lipscomb. Apparently he’s in a rural part of China teaching English. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of stories to tell when he gets back.

Spenser, a young friend of mine who I know from church camp was in an accident Tuesday. He got hit in the eye with a BB. Doctors say that he should have a full recovery, but that he’d need to be on bed rest for a good 2 weeks. In any case he is very lucky not to loose vision in his eye. Hopefully he learned a valuable lesson.
Spenser is a good kid. Unfortunately his fearlessness seems to cause trouble for him at times and this is one of those times. He and his friend were seeing how close they could get to aim at each other without hitting each other.
My latest web development is Cowgirlart.com. I can’t take credit for the graphics on it, just the HTML. So if you are looking for someone to do a portrait of your horse or dog, check it out.
In other news…
“Bush is a friend of mine, he is not a moron at all.”…Jean Chretien, Canadian Prime Minister.