Author: Glen

Who Are the People In Your Neighborhood?

I stum­bled across this ear­li­er today while get­ting a satel­lite pho­to of my apart­ment. It’s a demo­graph­ic sum­ma­ry of my zip code. You can do one for yours as well. Inter­est­ing stuff.

Great Meeting Last Night

Last night’s Chi Alpha meet­ing was off the charts–Curt Har­low spoke and did an excel­lent job!

That would have been encour­ag­ing enough, but we had a high-water mark in atten­dance (all the peo­ple who some­times show up showed up at once, and we had six first-time guests). That was extreme­ly grat­i­fy­ing. I try not to be dri­ven by num­bers, but I def­i­nite­ly like hav­ing more bod­ies in the room…

Changed Message Archive Format

I went nuts today try­ing to fig­ure out a prob­lem with this website–I could­n’t cre­ate an entry with a link to Den­nis’ mes­sage. For some rea­son Mov­able Type (the soft­ware that main­tains this site) would­n’t save any­thing with the link text in it. It drove me up the wall!

Any­way, I wound up recon­fig­ur­ing the entire way that I archive mes­sages on this site before final­ly decid­ing to change the text direct­ly in the data­base.

I men­tion all this to explain why the front page is all links to past messages–a tem­po­rary byprod­uct of the afore­men­tioned recon­fig­u­ra­tion. It will pass as new con­tent is added.

Ministry With a Baby

First: Paula’s in charge of upload­ing pic­tures now, so if there’s a delay in new pho­tos be sure to send her an email to keep her on track. 🙂

Sec­ond: We’re very for­tu­nate: Dana was born over Spring Break, so I was able to com­plete­ly devote myself to help­ing Paula that week. After that, we had guest speak­ers sched­uled for the first two weeks of the Spring Quar­ter, so I haven’t had to obsess about mes­sage prepa­ra­tion. Most peo­ple don’t real­ize this, but prepar­ing ser­mons takes a LOT of time. I’d say I spend 15–20 hours a week pol­ish­ing up my mes­sage for Chi Alpha, and I should prob­a­bly spend more. Any­way, the bot­tom line is that I’ve real­ly been avail­able to help Paula out and still keep on top of all my min­istry respon­si­bil­i­ties.

We’re very blessed to have Dana–she sleeps a lot and does­n’t cry too much. Some­how I wind up get­ting the sleep that I need. Woohoo!

On a com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed note, this com­ic made me laugh out loud. I rarely read Get Fuzzy, but on a lark I swung by their web­site today. I’m glad I did.

Polyhedral Prophets

Usu­al­ly when Chris­tians talk about role­play­ing games you can expect a lot of heat and very lit­tle light (art­ful­ly mocked by the Dead Alewives’ clas­sic bit Dun­geons and Drag­ons). That’s why I was so thrilled to run across the arti­cle Role­play­ing the Faith which con­tained sev­er­al fas­ci­nat­ing links.

Role­play­ing is a part of geek cul­ture, and Stan­ford is a bit of a geek cam­pus, so I thought these might inter­est some of you: Reli­gion and Role­play­ing, the Chris­t­ian Gamers Guild, and Tra­cy Hick­man’s essay on Ethics in Fan­ta­sy (for the record, Hick­man is a Mor­mon).

Something Completely Unrelated to Dana

I not­ed ear­li­er that one of our our alum­ni was a final­ist in the Miss Sin­ga­pore Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion.

The finals are Sat­ur­day. Paula and I can’t wait to find out if she’s Miss Sin­ga­pore Uni­verse. Paula was quite close to Ade­line last year, and miss­es her so much she actu­al­ly began cry­ing while look­ing at pho­tos of her online.

Any­way, I stum­bled across the offi­cial page today. She’s the first gal (top left pho­to).

Of course, we already have two Miss Uni­vers­es in our house…

Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes

In hon­or of today’s very spe­cial nature, I thought I’d men­tion The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoax­es down­load sight . There’s some fun­ny stuff there.

Dana — Boogie Queen

I got out my web­cam today and shot a few sec­onds of Dana wig­gling, and put togeth­er a short video: Dana — Boo­gie Queen (WMV file, 1 MB). Yes, it’s cheesy. I’m her dad­dy and I’m allowed to do that! As I’m sure I’ll have to explain to her when she’s 16 and finds this while doing a van­i­ty search…

Update From Oxford

One of our Chi Alpha stu­dents, Andrew Wright, said this in an email about Dana: I went to Oxford today. I’m still speech­less; nev­er been more impressed in all my life. Send Dana there, but only if her beau­ty fades. It’s an awe­some school full of ugly women and I’d hate to see all the men fight­ing over your daugh­ter.

That just made me laugh.

It reminds me of a joke I’ve heard about MIT. The male/female ratio is pret­ty tilt­ed there, so if you’re a gal “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

You Know Life is Good When…

Con­tem­plat­ing my new­born daugh­ter today, I had an epiphany: you know life is good when you have peo­ple com­pet­ing for the priv­i­lege of wip­ing your bot­tom…

UPDATE: while up late with Dana, I decid­ed to put this insight into haiku form

.

Ver­sion A:
Con­cern­ing new­borns
I reflect: Life is good when
peo­ple wipe your butt

Ver­sion B:
Con­cern­ing new­borns:
they lie scream­ing as ser­vants
vie to wipe their butts