So I finally moved all my stuff over to Movable Type. That “Link of the Moment” along the left side of the webpage? Well all that stuff is on MT now. I had been using Blogger for that part of the webpage. I was too lazy to immediately move it over. However I got tired of Blogger going down frequently. So I moved it over.
Blogger is still good for people who need a web diary and want to update it frequently. I would never pay for the pro version. The extras just don’t warrant the switchover. Blogger is a good thing. I first read about it in Yahoo Internet Life magazine which is how this weblog started. I didn’t see myself as updating it everyday, but I guess I am because there’s nothing else better to do.
Well I’ve got a job fair on Thursday. I’m not really looking forward to it because I hate kissing up to people. I hate acting enthusiastic about something I am completely bored with. But I know that it must be done. So get ready for it. I’m trying to do some research on the companies represented so I don’t sound like a complete fool when talking to people.
Is it me or do all of these weird diseases start off in China? What’s up with that? Smallpox started there in the 12th century. The flu usually starts there every Fall. Now we’ve got this SARS disorder. Good grief.

Those old form emails I found on the floppy disks? I posted them online. Usually I’d send out a long email to friends at the beginning of a new semester with the highlights of what I did over the break between semesters. It was a good opportunity to catch up. The earliest one is from January 1996. So its kinda fun to look back and find out what I was upto during that time.
Back then email wasn’t such a chore. It was something to look forward to. Email was a novelty of sorts. College buds had it. Some techies had it at home. But most people outside of the educational and technical world hadn’t heard of it yet. “Email? What’s that?” was the response of many of the generation ahead of me. The year 1997 was when the internet started getting some momentum. Soon everyone had it. And I mean everyone. Your grandmother even had it.
The ones from 1998 were posted on my old website in my pre-Blogger days. Before Blogger software was even developed, I’d usually post a commentary on my website until I got bored of it. It was too much trouble to post a new message…format the page properly….and archive my old ones. Movable Type and Blogger make me take those days for granted.
Like an old western, Bush has called out Saddam and given him 48 hours to get out of Dodge…or Baghdad whichever is easier to say. At least Bush has stood up for something. Some people can’t seem to take a stand one way or another.
Other war news:
“We have to arrive at a position that makes the most sense for the NCAA, but we don’t want a tyrant to run our lives.”
Dixie Chicks’ song falls 15% after Natalie Maines’ comments on Bush.
Its like defacing the Statue of Liberty….spraypainting your country’s national icon.

Tried upgrading to Movable Type 2.6. It didn’t turn out so well. I lost the plugin which allowed me to highlight a Bible verse reference and point to the Bible Gateway reference. Decent, but not vital for this weblog. I have it on the church webpage, which helps out ALOT.
Also when I rebuilt the site, I lost all text formating. So any hard returns ran all together. This made things look trashy. Just tried to refresh it again and again, but nothing worked out. It could have been just a faulty installation on my part. Version 2.6 doesn’t have anything earth shattering that I can’t live without. So went back to the older version of 2.51.
It took a couple of hours of aggrivation and reinstalling to get it back to normal. But everything is fixed now.
Google has bought Blogger. Blogger is that easy-to-use website which lets webusers have a blog of their own…without going to the trouble of installing Movable Type or Greymatter on their website. Google bought Dejanews a few years ago and made it better, so I’m sure this Blogger purchase is a good thing. Google knows what I want. A nice clean interface. Throwing too much information at me is why I don’t use Excite or Go.com. Obviously the rest of the web community felt the same way I did. Excite and Go failed as webportals.
So I bought one of those USB Keychain drives. This one holds 32MB. I needed something that would easily transfer files…such as those 4MB Real Audio sermons we record each Sunday. It’s always tedious to remember to bring a CDRW to put the files on. So maybe this Keychain drive will make a difference.
I’ve noticed Lightning 100 is playing Tom Petty’s “Have Love Will Travel” lately. Good song. It’s from his latest album. It’s too bad the rest of America is hung up on meaningless songs by P Ditty or Nelly. Discover good music.

As part of my devious scheme to take over the world, I’ve put in weather conditions in Mt. Juliet. Pretty soon the Weather Channel will be financially crippled for lack of viewership since everyone will be coming to my page for weather forecasts.
It’s a neat weather plug-in I found on the Movable Type discussion board. So I’ve adapted it to work here. The current conditions get updated when I update my page, not when you refresh. So don’t hit refresh, because you aren’t getting nothin’!
When I go out of town, I’ll change the city to reflect where I am at the moment. So it won’t always be Mt. Juliet’s forecast you see. All of this is because I’m the world’s biggest nerd when it comes to this stupid webpage.

I’ve been spending alot of time tonight importing in my comment entries from my Blogger posts. It has to be done manually. I’ve been able to get the comments from March, April and May 2002 in. So that leaves the rest of the year that needs to be imported.
So thanks to everyone who used the comment utility (especially “bob”) for making my job more difficult. (Justing kidding)

I continue to be amazed each time I find another person who regularly reads this webpage. I never thought I had anything interesting to say. I still don’t. I call this weblog “Incoherent Babblings” for obvious reasons. More likely visitors to this webpage have run out of things to read on the internet, and this site is a mediocre site which occupies their time infrequently.
I am afraid that sometimes I am writing too negatively on this webpage. Writing about things that bother me is much easier than writing about good things. When was the last time some politician spoke how good things are going? It doesn’t happen too often. Criticism is easy to dish out. Writing about good things is difficult much of the time.
I found out something slightly interesting. Out West, “Hardee’s” restaurants are known as “Carl Jr’s.” For some reason Carls sounds much more appetizing. It might be because I’ve already been inside of a Hardee’s so I know what to expect. Carl’s is intriguing and mysterious. I remember when the Hardee’s were all orange and blue. Most of them have changed over to the star.
A friend of mine works at Hardee’s. For him, its just a job. I joke about it with him and try to gleem company secrets from him. Like how the biscuits are made. And how many people actually use the drive thru at 5:30AM in the morning (he says there is always a line that early). But he never really tells me much.

Who actually reads this? Do I have people hanging on every word I type? Or do most people skim over the entries ever so often looking for key words of interest? I’d admit that sometimes I write entries just so “bob” can have something to read when he gets home. However most other times I write for myself. Usually it is something significant that I want to share. Other times it is something I want to remember. The general consensus on the internet is that weblogs have become overabundant…..ie the web’s new Geocities. Who cares about my daily routines, my opinions on the latest current events?
Mark Sexton told me some strange stories. It’s alot like those “what-if” scenerios which teenagers try to test you with in Sunday School. An old lady…walking down the church alise to be baptized and falling over dead of a heart attack. Two boys deciding to get baptized on the last day of church camp…..calling their parents who said to wait until they got home…..then getting killed by an 18 wheeler in front of the church building. I never thought anything like this had happened before. But according to Mark, scenerios like this had happened. His purpose for telling me these stories was to illustrate that ultimately God is our judge, and it’s not upto what anyone else thinks might have happened in the afterlife to these people.
U.S. Army is working on the 3 year PB&J sandwich

There’s an article about Weblogging in today’s Tennessean. It sounded ok. However the bulk of the article implies that the majority of webloggers are high school girls.
Speaking of weblogs, it is always a bit surprising for me to find out who exactly reads this. I really don’t post anything here very interesting. I get referred to as “JeffWhittle.com” all the time, probably due to that shirt I had printed up. But I get the picture that no one really goes to this website. But it is surprising when I find out some people actually do visit here.
As far as the frequent comment that I should be a writer – I don’t think I could ever be a writer. Throughout my life I was trained to write what the teacher wanted to hear. I composed great flowery essays with wonderfully worded language for English class. However none of it was how I really felt. If the teacher had picked out the short story to read, I always said I liked it, no matter what. I always said the author wrote very eloquently, even though I dreaded the very act of reading the essay itself. Writing this log is an outlet for me. Since I’m not forced to write it due to some English assignment, I don’t dread writing it at all.
Tonight in Bible class the 5th and 6th graders studied the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25. After going over the lesson, the teacher asked if there were any questions. One of the kids asked “What’s a virgin?” I gritted my teeth when that question was asked. (Keep in mind I am a coteacher and not the one who was standing up in front of the class at the time). I thought the teacher handled that question well. He said it was a pure woman, an accurate definition in the context of the parable. This isn’t a sex ed class, so it wasn’t the time or place to tell the kids exactly what a virgin was. I also heard some other kid whisper to another kid “I’ll tell you later….” as if he was street smart enough to know what the term meant. There’s a kid like that in every bunch.
So next week I’ve actually got to teach. It’s on the great footwashing episode of Luke 22. So at least there isn’t any controversial vocabulary which the kids would be asking questions about.
So I’ve got a list of churches to call in regards to this lottery movement. We are trying to push these yard signs and the anti-lottery movement in general. I volunteered because I have alot of time on my hands right now. However to be completely honest, the lottery referendum is not something that is causing sleepless nights for me.
Oh yeah. That roll of film we found at church? It was from the church’s Tuesday Thursday school. Apparently the firemen visited one day and one of the parents took pictures of it. I gave the roll back to the director of the Tuesday Thursday school and let her deal with it.

At times I feel obligated to write something in this weblog everyday…even though the daily entry can be dull, bleak, obscure or dim at times. I do keep track of other people’s weblogs. Many of them are updated maybe once a month and are definitely dull themselves. Has this weblog helped me? At times, yes. Sometimes it is good to get thoughts out on paper. Other times it is good to look back on times and try to decipher what I was thinking. Used to I would compose these epic emails to friends which would be a prototype of these journal entries. I needed to express my views. And friends with email was my outlet at the time. This weblog is now my outlet. Read as long as you are interested. Stop reading when this weblog has become worn out like an old cliche.
Does the world need to know? Not necessarily. Has this weblog helped you? Maybe if you are a friend or aquaintance it has helped you understand me more…as far as what drives me….what irritates me….what I’m concerned about. I put no fake facade on this. No false feelings. No feelings trying to make you think more postive of me. What you see is what you get. Then again some negative thoughts I do try to keep to myself. There is no need to express deep disguist at something or someone specific and post it here. That would be counterproductive.
I don’t consider myself a writer. I never have and I don’t now. For me English class was for the express purpose of telling the teacher what he/she wanted to hear. I never really expressed my deep down personal views on something. Never had a reason to. Never took a stance on something. To me, all books are boring. For the most part, I still feel that way. Fictional stories are not my thing. I’d rather read current events and discuss them.
I would like to find out what Wednesday night’s Bible school lesson is about. I have yet to get the book from our head teacher. I guess if he expects me to teach it, I should get a booklet. Otherwise I’ll continue to be a fly on the wall during class. Right now they’ve got me putting together a class directory…which means taking pictures and getting short biographies from the kids. I guess they think I’m good with computers and/or digital cameras. It just seems like excess paperwork for me.
I’ve been told 5 or 6 people out of our small organization of 53 people will be laid off. I still don’t know if I’ll be effected. I hate not knowing. I guess I should know something within the next few weeks. We’ll see…
On a side note, I watched Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien speak on TV today. If leaders were elected only on speaking ability, he would have never gotten elected. At times I could not understand him through his thick accent. I could probably speak better French than English.

“Well I figured out how to do a Blog. I’ll use this template to update my page semi-frequently.”
–posted 8/24/01
With those words I began keeping an online weblog one year ago today. I started the weblog for myself. You, the reader, are just along for the ride. It’s been fun. Hopefully I’ve shared some insight on my life and my opinions. I never thought this would interest anyone other than myself.
3 times I have posted from somewhere else other than my home:
Huntsville, Alabama – September 29, 2001
Knoxville, Tennessee – March 2, 2002
Ottawa, Canada � April 9 � 11, 2002
It’s really sad when you’re away from home and can only think about posting to your weblog….
Listed below are some quotes taken directly from my weblog.
“This seems like something out of a movie. Seems so unreal�.. I have found that there are some very evil people in this world.”
9/12/01
“…they would somehow try to justify Bin Laden’s actions in their warped little minds. I guess there are some people you just can’t reach.”
12/14/01
“It’s times like these when I ask myself which Middle Eastern country do we need to invade in order to lower gas prices.”
4/24/02
“Yassir Arafat is ugly.”
2/6/02
“I hate Paoli.”
12/19/01
“Where have all the Little Caesars gone?”
12/13/01
“Never ever ever ever pay full price for a Pizza Hut pizza.”
1/30/02
“Never go to the dentist on a full stomach.”
1/17/02
“Something tells me CBS’s new sitcom, Baby Bob won’t last long.”
3/15/02
“I hate it when CBS news shows interview Survivor losers and call it news.”
3/8/02
“You can find some really cool stuff at Goodwill.”
3/4/02
“I think alot of life’s questions could be answered by getting people to learn how to use a search engine.”
4/30/02
“I don’t do prayer breakfasts.”
1/19/02
“At times I feel like a stranger within my own church…”
4/26/02
“I can’t believe I just did that….using a South Park episode as a guide for missionary policy.”
3/18/02
“It’s times like these where I want to quit my job and become a youth minister.”
6/17/02
“It feels really good when you feel you’ve accomplished something through camp.”
7/28/02
“I’ve found to take every day as a gift from God. Make the most from what you’ve been given.”
12/27/01
I plan on keeping my weblog for many days to come….until it stops being relavent. Thank you for your comments and for your interest in my life.
“…than when we first begun….”