My sister’s webpage was featured in Education World. Congrats to her. Her philosophy is the exact opposite of mine. Whereas she wants people to view her website, I’d rather not have complete strangers to view mine.
In other news….
Time Warner says no to its own AOL Mail…this doesn’t surprise me any. I’ve used AOL’s mail before. It is very inadequate. For example it tends to delete week old unread messages. So if you go on vacation for more than a week, you will loose some of your mail. Also you cannot forward your mail to another service such as a web based account. AOL will not automatically hyperlink URLs (http:// addresses) within the text of the email. AOL users have to cut and paste a URL into their browser in order to view a webpage.
After a few years, anyone still with AOL is just with them out of pure habit or they are so entrenched in their email, they don’t want to change addresses.
HP Compaq vote merger will be counted by hand…how ironic. You’d think that 2 high tech companies could secure some type of vote by proxy service on the web. Yet, HP and Compaq are still living in the 19th century with this vote counting by hand…. all 900,000 votes.
Yassir Arafat is still ugly as sin.

Before moving along, you really should check out Scott’s Smoochin Meter. Poor Scott. Will he ever get any smoochin?

Keeping a web diary (i.e. weblog) does have its positive aspects. Twice now a long lost friend has called me making some obscure reference to something I’ve posted here. So now I know that people are reading these incoherent babblings here. I do have to keep telling myself that this weblog is public and I need to be careful about what I post here. Any criticisms are public and could get back to the person I’m criticizing.
Saturday night I saw Ocean’s Eleven with some friends in Gallatin. The movie theater where we saw it at is located on the square in Gallatin. It’s nice old movie theater. The movie was only $4 and much better than the last movie I saw, Lord of the Rings. Typically I judge a movie on how good it is by the number of times I look at my watch during the movie. I didn’t look at my watch any time during Ocean’s.
Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow. At the risk of sounding racist, there are a few words from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that have always seemed to be against racial quotas. The words are “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Somehow that always echos in my mind everytime someone mentions hiring someone or giving out scholarships based on skin color. Content of character is important. Using skin color as a basis for hiring someone is just watering down the effect of one’s integrity.

Well the wedding went off without any problems. I had a slight problem with the video tape. I ran out of tape right before the bride came in, but I was able to change it very quickly in time to video tape the bride. The wedding was enjoyable. I only knew a handful of people there, so I spent much of my time taking digital pictures of the wedding guests. I used up my memory card (that’s 84 pictures). I’d like to wish James and Miki many years of happiness.

Tonight I’ll be attending a wedding rehearsal for some friends of mine. It is my job to video tape the wedding. This is the first wedding I have taped. I’ve done some work with video taping other events, but I wouldn’t say I am an expert at it. My friend’s video camera, which I’ll be using, is very nice. It has the option of night vision.
Speaking of weddings, there’s a totally separate wedding going on at my church tonight. Since we built our new church building in 1997, our church has become quite popular for weddings among members and non members at church. I’m part of the audio visual team. Anytime someone schedules a wedding in the building, an audio/visual person has to be there to run the music and other things. Lately it has become a real pain to have to work the weddings. We do get paid for it, however it is not the most popular thing to do on a Friday night and Saturday afternoon. This one is particularly inconvenient since it comes at a bad time of the year – after Christmas and right before New Year’s. I’m not even sure who is working it. It’s been said before that our church should not be in the wedding business. Weddings, especially for non members, are secondary to our work of the Lord.
I had hoped to do a overhaul of the church’s webpage. I was planning on converting the HTML to php for easier updating. However I’ve been doing so many fun things this week, I haven’t had time to sit down and do it. Plus I am a bit apprehensive about changing it since all of these pages are already indexed by search engines. Changing the extension from .html to .php would cause a bunch of broken links, unless I put in some redirects. It is a big project, but I hope to get it done soon.

The Christmas Card Count is as follows:

• Total Number of Christmas Cards I sent out (so far): 42
• Total Number of Christmas Cards received (so far): 9
• Number of Christmas Cards I received before sending them one (thereby making me feel guilty about not sending them one and sending one anyway): 2
• Number of Christmas Cards that Contained a Picture: 1
• Number of Humorous Christmas Cards: 3
• Number of Religious Christmas Cards: 2

Come on people! Time’s a wastin’. Get those cards in the mail!!!! You know the address. We all know about how slow the mail service is anyways, so don’t worry if it is in the mail.
On another note, I did some digging around and found the first email message I ever received. I vagely remember the circumstances. Basically it was the first week at school at Lipscomb and I had dinner with a girl in the cafeteria. Afterwards she decided to send me a email message. I had almost forgotten about her by the time I read it (late September).

John Thomas, a friend of mine from church, was involved in a serious accident Sunday afternoon (yesterday). His skull was cracked and emergency surgery was performed at Vanderbilt. I hope and pray that everything turns out for the best and John is able to have a full recovery. John was our former youth minister and is very well liked amoung many of our church members.
Yesterday we had a special Veterans Day reception for our veterans at church. I was there taking a few pictures for the church bulletin. Each of our veterans introduced themselves and told where and when they served. It was great to hear the stories from the veterans. This year makes this day of rememberance even more special.

I’m writing this journal entry from Huntsville, Alabama. I’m staying with some old college friends of mine. I was at Big Spring Jam last night. It’s a three day concert. I was able to get some great pics of my favorite band, Better Than Ezra. It was somewhat chilly last night. Fall is here.
We will probably be leaving for the 2nd day of concerts in about an hour after lunch. So far I’m having a great time.

I went to visitation yesterday for Elizabeth. It all seemed so surreal. It was something out of a bad movie. Elizabeth’s friends seem to be taking it as best they could. I was able to see most of them yesterday. I am hoping that some good will come out of a bad thing. If it influences Elizabeth’s friends to live a more Godly life, then some good did come out of this.
I don’t mean to dwell on something indefinitely. If you don’t know Elizabeth, then all of this doesn’t seem personal to you. I appreciate your sympathy, but I do know that it’s somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction when someone tells you their friend passed away.
The funeral is today. It will be a long tough day.

My friend Elizabeth passed away this morning after a long fight with cancer. I’ll remember her smile, enduring spirit and positive attitude. Although I am sad for her passing, I know that God is taking care of her now.