Captain’s Corner

I found this online and wanted to share it…

Why I Carry a Gun

I don’t carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don’t carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m angry. I carry a gun so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don’t carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don’t carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don’t carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don’t carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.

After hours of putting up Christmas trees yesterday to reset our stage for the Advent Season I needed a little time relaxing… so quite a few of us from work headed to the theater to see Quantum of Solace. I had heard some people were a little disappointed by this one… and I know why, but I must respectfully disagree with them.

There were no gadgets (Q hasn’t even been in the last 2 movies), there weren’t any really witty one liners… Bond was a man with a purpose and still really rough around the edges (in keeping with this being the beginning of Bond’s 007 career). It was a hard-pounding, rough and gritty movie. Marc Forster (director of Monster’s Ball and Stranger than Fiction) did an amazing job directing… adding some tasteful slow motion and well cut action scenes (something a little more than just the average and mediocre quick-cut all handheld that has become the norm lately). To top it off there’s actual character development of Bond’s character, it’s nice to see him learning and growing instead of the usual - I am the epitome and pinnacle of secret agents everywhere. He has his charm, but he’s volatile and unpredictable. He’s got class when he wants to, but he defaults to brute force if things get too dicey - at least until he learns different.

All in all I found it a rather enjoyable movie and I’m glad it didn’t fit the traditional Bond mold.

I just realized in the last post I alluded several times, but I’ve never announced it… Ann is pregnant again - she’s just about 12 weeks along and her first sonogram is looking great! I’ll post a scan of it here in a bit.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful day. We stayed home and the five of us (Ann, Lilybeth, Mom, Devin/Kaylee, and I) just relaxed. We played some Guitar Hero on the new PS3, watched the parade and dog show (blech) and then proceeded to eat too much - but not so much that we were sick this time! (It’s like we’re learning or something).

As is our tradition before saying the blessing over Thanksgiving dinner we all said something we were thankful for. We’ve had an amazing year here and there was a lot to be thankful for - some bittersweet, some just amazingly sweet (like the bun in the oven!). When we got to Lilybeth we decided to coach her a little bit so we asked her if she was thank for various things…

Ann: Are you thankful for Daddy?

LB: Yeah.

Me: Are you thankful for Mommy

LB: Yeah.

Ann: Are you thankful for Grandma?

LB: Yeah. (shouting now) Thank Mimi!

Now Mimi is not Lilybeth’s name for grandma… when she doesn’t call grandma “mamma” she calls here something like “gaga”. Mimi is Lilybeth’s name for Spider-Man. She has some Spider-Man PJs and a Spider-Man cell phone and a Spider-Man weeble wobble thingy… Her amazing father tries to teach her the theme song everytime she gets something with him out… and she sings along: “Miiiimiii, Miiimiii!” We all busted up laughing because Lilybeth apparently grasped the point of the conversation, and was most thankful for Spider-Man (or at least we like to think she figured it out).

Dad would have loved our worship service this week.  I realized this halfway through worship @ our 11a service and it made me realize how much I missed him, since I won’t be able to share it with him…

The mailman is bringing me a present from Austin, TX soon!

ETA:

IT’S HERE!

My mom just asked me this about one of the most iconic movie weapons of all time… The light saber

Repeat, we are GO on all systems.

So Monday morning we hit the ground running. We spent hours talking through the various failures and lacks of systems. We poured through manuals to see where we went wrong. We ran a full hour test transmission… only to still have problems. We went back to the drawing board - we thought through some things we dismissed… and we got ourselves together to try another transmission tonight.

Oh, Pastor Steve also bought us 9 weeks worth of testing by deciding to have the campus pastor preach at Firewheel this week and run the new series on a one week delay out at Firewheel - so we go through all the transmission stuff and then don’t use it - giving us 9 full run throughs to check and double check our systems and our hardware.

So, tonight… went amazing. Sure there were a few hiccups, but basically our hardware problems are ironed out. Now we just need to keep working our systems - checking for holes, setting parameters and transmission standards, and most of all, simplifying the system so that we can turn the whole thing over to our volunteers without completely wrecking them.

After last Saturday I just wanted to hang my head and cry… but this week, I feel great and I’m glad I’m part of a team that doesn’t look at failure as an excuse to throw blame or just toss our hands up in defeat, but rather we all came together and busted our butts to make sure that we learned from our mistakes and over came the problems we were dealing with. It was a long, hard week - but it was completely worth it!

So I updated to iPhone software 2.1 yesterday… And I don’t really care what other improvements it brought… Because battery life is GREATLY improved - I’m talking it wasn’t on the charger at all yesterday or last night and I still had half the battery left this morning! Which is a huge change from keeping it on the charger as much as possible just to make it through the day.

-Sent from my iPhone via the FREE Wordpress App

Metallica’s newest album is out… DEATH MAGNETIC. They fired Bob Rock - their producer on the Black Album through St. Anger… and went with Rick Rubin who has worked with U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Run D.M.C., Johnny Cash (he’s responsible for Johnny’s cover of NIN’s Hurt), Mick Jagger, Tom Petty… oh and Slayer, Danzig, Masters of Reality, and Wolfsbane (for those of you wondering if he’d done any Hard Rock/Heavy Metal).

Death Magnetic takes Metallica back to an earlier sound… stripped down and raw, and definitely away from the Nu Metal/”Hard Rock” sound of St. Anger - Metal from Metallica, who’da thunk it? Also, average song time… aproximately seven and a half minutes… Kirk is actually on this album and on it a lot!

So buy yourself some new Metallica today… you deserve it!

Oh, and here’s a little sneak peek….

I keep hearing people say this (including Cindy McCain) when they’re defending Sarah Palin’s lack of experience…

“It’s the closest point of America to Russia.”

How in the world does that equal foreign policy experience? Colbert put it in the best perspective by also saying that since Alaska has Mt. McKinley, America’s closest point to space, that she must also have space policy experience.

Just admit that she wasn’t chosen based on experience but by the fact that she isn’t mired in Washington Politics and can be an agent for change… What’s wrong with the RNC spin that they can’t turn that lemon into lemonade… BARACK OBAMA did when met with the same criticism…

For those having a hard time keeping up… it works like this:

No Experience = Agent of Change

Lots of Experience = Wise, Strong Leader

See how easy that was… and with none of the lame geographical experience qualifiers…

Me: Lilybeth, you’re acting like a baby.

LB: Uh-oooh

So I watched Rudy Guliani’s speech at the Republican National Convention tonight… he spent the whole time belittling and making fun of democrats, Obama, Hilary, and Biden as people… he barely touched issues and when he did he just spewed forth hateful (and often incorrect) rhetoric. He was absolutely the wrong thing for the RNC… they needed hope and futurism. They got unwitty and spiteful banter… and they all cheered for it.

For shame my former political party. For shame.

Now… when’s the Libertarian National Convention? I need a good dose of common sense.

So I was watching one of those “Did You Know” style countdowns… and one of the facts was:

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

At first glance this is a reasonable “fact”… despite this a good number of you reading this probably tried it.

BUT… it’s not IMPOSSIBLE.  It would be incredibly painful, but let’s face it… arms have been broken before… so have necks.  I would almost bet my house that someone, somewhere, has fallen off a roof, cliff, down a set of stairs, or just had a parachute not open and has landed in such a way that their mouth and their elbow were uncomfotably close.  In fact, I’d be almost as confident that in said predicament and the delirium that pain can cause that one of those people actually did lick their elbow.  Maybe just to prove the skeptics wrong…  I know I would.