campfire anthems

arriving at some point tonight is emily’s friend jenna. she, and her 1 year old? son, jack, will be staying the weekend at our house. i’m excited for a number of reasons. let’s go through them. 1) i get to grill steaks tomorrow for dinner since we will be feeding company 2) emily will be gone a lot, giving me plenty of time to play guitar and halo without the nagging sound of “can you do that quieter?” in the background 3) i’m secretly going to enjoy playing with the small child that will be temporarily living in my guest room, unless he starts crying, then i may put him on the back porch with puma 4) um…i guess 3 reasons are enough

so there you go. that’s my weekend, other than the usual yard work. i hope yours is full of fun too.

today is the last day my direct supervisor will be here.  he is going to be gone for almost two weeks on vacation, which means i’m now in charge of a lot of things that i don’t know if i’m ready for.  later this afternoon, after our bellies are full from lunch and i probably won’t be retaining information, i am getting a crash course on how to back up the servers.  he is going to teach me how to rebuild a server in case it crashes due to a power failure in the building.  i don’t know anything about servers, but i do know that i don’t want anything drastic to happen around here because i don’t want to learn with a trial by fire.

a lot is riding on me over these next two weeks.   i can really show my company what i’m made of and what kind of leader i am.  there is definitely going to be a lot of pressure on me while he is gone but just think of me like a lump of coal.  given enough pressure i might just pop out a diamond.  maybe it will be something else.  let’s hope not

::disclaimer:: this will be the post that gets me into trouble.

i am sick and tired of people, mainly christians, dumping on barack obama. i’m not saying i support the man, but i think its absurd for all these chain letters going around through e-mail saying he is the anti-christ. have you seen these things? this is another one i got in my inbox this morning:

_THIS WILL MAKE YOU RE-THINK :_

A Trivia question in Sunday School :

How long is the beast allowed to have authority in Revelations ?

Guess the Answer?

Revelations Chapter 13, verse 5, tells us it is 42 months, and you know what
that is.

Almost a four-year term to a Presidency. All I can say is Lord Have
Mercy on us.

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is:
The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40’s, of MUSLIM descent, who
will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE
Christ-like appeal… he prophecy says that people will flock to him
and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in
power, will destroy everything .

Is it OBAMA?? I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as
many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to
a friend or media outlet, do it!

I refuse to take a chance on this unknown candidate who came out of
nowhere.

give me a break. the first thing that makes me upset is maybe not the obvious thing to some of you. we have gone and stereotyped this man as being a bad person because he has ties to a muslim descent. let me be the first to say, not all muslims do car bombing or fly airplanes into buildings. secondly, if obama is the anti-christ, what good would it do for christians to rally up against him? seriously guys, have you thought about that at all? scripture states that the anti-christ will reign over the earth. so if i’m interpreting that correctly, that means that if obama is the anti-christ, he’s probably going to be president whether you like it or not.  you are not all going to rally together and change the will of god.  its not going to happen.

i’ve got to wrap this thing up before my blood pressure peaks. all i’m saying is think about things, use a little logic and help me have one less e-mail to delete each day.

last week i entered my st. michael stained glass window tattoo in a “jesus tattoo” contest that stuff christians like was putting on. out of all the entries, my tattoo made the top 13. the top 13 was determined by a group of special celebrity judges, but its now up to the readers to pick their favorite. if you like my tattoo you should follow the link and support me with a vote in the comments section.

vote here

i saw a commercial yesterday that really bothered me. every few months or so you see one of those commercials for a commemorative coin or a collectible trinket, which serves absolutely no purchase and has absolutely no street value. well, i saw a commercial yesterday for just such a tender. usually these things don’t bother me. if you want to waste your money on a special issue statue of liberty 50 cent piece, go nuts. this newly issued commemorative piece, however, really got me thinking. if you haven’t seen it on television yet this commercial is for a special september 11th 20 dollar bill. on one side it shows the old twin towers and the number 20. on the other, it shows the image of the newly designed towers and the numbers 9 and 11, which add up to 20.

now, my problem has nothing to do with it being about 9/11, or the fact that its $20 that you can’t actually spend. no, my problem comes with the idea that a group of people, government sanctioned people, have taken a tragedy and exploited it to make a buck. i can’t imagine the profit that will be made from these dollars. i wonder how much of the profit, gained from such exploitation, will be used to pay off the national debt. i wonder how much of the profit will be donated to the victims family. i wonder how much of the profit will be used in the construction of the new towers in new york city. i wonder how much of the profit will be used to help improve national security.

my guess is none. just another way to make a quick profit. to all you .999 silver $20 commemorative september 11 dollar makers out there: if i’m wrong about all of this, i offer my sincerest apology. in fact, i hope i am wrong. if i’m right…shame on you.

if you live in florida, especially central florida, you hear it every day. you see it on the news. you read about it in the newspaper. i know that in polk county, where i live, this is a huge epidemic. what i’m talking about is the fact that the government, whether its local or state, is cutting back funding for schools, which limits the number of teachers on staff as well as the overall learning environment. i watch every day as my very smart, very capable, college educated friends struggle to find teaching jobs. i also know that the polk county school board has put a hold on hiring new teachers and substitute teachers at most schools within the county.

here we go. i’m driving around in lakeland today. because of the part of town i’m in i happen to take the road by lakeland high school/harrison arts center, which is the high school i went to way back when. because i know that the school board is cutting back on teachers and probably not paying the ones they have a deserved salary, i found it odd that they were in the middle of quite a large construction project. i just don’t get that. if the school board has budget cuts, why not dump money into teachers and education rather than a pretty new parking lot? tax payer’s money well spent i say. kudos polk county. kudos.

my job as a designer requires me to use photoshop. recently, i have really been playing with it in my space time and honing my skills to make myself more useful to potential clients, and to just have fun. i’ve gotten pretty good at altering photos and manipulating things to look the way i want them to. i came across this video and it really made me think. i think this is part of what is wrong with our culture, and this wonderful tool i use on a daily basis is being used to exploit and mislead. have a watch.

for so long i thought that being consistent was a good thing.  people always commend others for their consistency.  employees maintain mediocre jobs due to consistency of performance.  athletes get inducted into halls of fame for always performing at a certain level.  as of recently, however, i am beginning to think that consistency is actually a bad thing.  in fact, it can be incredibly detrimental to one’s being.

think of it this way.  if you are just being consistent than you are never getting any better.  i don’t want to be a consistent musician.  i want to always be honing my skill and being better than i was the last time i picked up the guitar.  i don’t want to be a consistent employee anymore.  i want to excel within my industry and have more than just a job.

what about all you christians out there?  i am guilty of living a consistent christian life.  you know, being a good person.  serving in the church.  tithing.  doesn’t god deserve us to be better than just consistent?  i know i have a lot to work on, in all areas of life, to break my cycle of consistency.  i think its time that i become better than i was the day before.  don’t you think you owe the same thing to yourself too?  have you been consistent lately?

with july coming to an end, august marks the second half of 2008.  i’m ready.  i have a vacation planned for the next half of the year.  some of my favorite holidays are coming up.  the weather will be cooling off.  the second half of the year is definitely my favorite.  i’m looking forward to having trick-or-treaters coming to my house.  i’ll have to figure out if i’m going to put gravestones in the front yard.  thanksgiving will be right around the corner too.  and as you can tell if you look at me, i love to eat good food.  then christmas.  our first christmas in our new house.  i think we may even get a real tree and put up some lights out front.

in september we will be spending some vacation time in savannah.  i haven’t been in a really long time, since i was just a small lad.  i remember hating it.  since i’ve grown up a bit, i have grown to love history and old towns.  we adventure to st. augustine occasionally and love it.  i’m really looking forward to going a bit further and seeing another old city, full of history, antiques ghost tours.  i may even eat at paula dean’s restaurant.

so yeah.  its a big second half of the year and its almost here.  are you doing anything special or looking forward to anything?

so its been 6 months that you guys have been sitting around here at the campfire.  it seems like i just started this thing a month ago.  i figured that the 6 month mark would be a good time to share a little information about my stats, readers, and other analytical information.  so here we go.

since i started this website 6 months ago…

…5,581 people have visited me

…i have had 9,015 page views

…there have been 2,369 absolute unique visitors

…emily has sent me the most traffic refferals

…my saint michael tattoo has been the most popular search engine result

…my blog is read in all 50 states as well as the district of columbia

…i have had readers in 72 countries (out of 192 countries in the united nations….37.5% of the world if you are keeping score)

i know that is probably just mundane information to you, but i think its pretty cool.  after seeing these results, and actually thinking about them, i have set up some goals for my website for this time next year.  i want to continue to spread readership through the world and reach anyone that can read/speak english.  i also want to provide 4 original desktop wallpaper calendars each month for my readers to download for free.  i want to have high enough daily traffic to sell advertising space on my website.  finally, i would love to have more comments from people throughout the world, rather than just my close friends (thanks for commenting close friends, i appreciate you, don’t let that come across wrong) so that i can see who you guys are.

as always, thanks for reading.  if it weren’t for you all out there in interweb world, this whole thing would be useless.