Eternal Truth Worldwide

One of my favorite professors from seminary has a bit of a Scottish accent. As well, he is a pastor at a church that publishes the sermons he delivers on the web. The website: http://eternaltruthworldwide.com/ has several hundred of his sermons. They are all top notch and I heartily recommend them to anyone who would like to have an deep and meaningful encounter with the Christian Scriptures.
Here is a sample of one of my favorites: To Him be the Power Forever (1 Pet. 5:6-11)
Donald G. McDougall - June 10, 2007

Google Reader

The internet is too big. I think we all come to that conclusion, sooner or later. One of the best tools that I've found to keep me getting the information I want is the Google Reader. With your Google account, you can add a website's RSS feed to Google reader, then you can keep up with changes without having to visit that particular website. While that might not sound like too much of a chore, once you get alot of website you like, it's easier to go to one place (an RSS aggregator, in geek terms) than a lot of places. Anyway, one of my favorite tools from Google.

My Episodes

For those that like certain TV shows, I highly recommend the website "My Episodes". You can keep track of new episodes of your favorite show via RSS, and if you are good with a little PHP, you can even setup an iCal feed that will put your favorite shows on your google calendar.

Tahiti

So, we went to tahiti for our honeymoon. Actually, to the island of Moorea, right next to Tahiti. It is part of French Polynesia, and Melissa speaks French, so it was a perfect fit. It was a wonderful time, and we have some photos. The wedding went fabulous, and I'll post up some photos as we get them.

Christmas Lights

Back from the Honeymoon, and getting everything settled into the house. I've put up some Christmas lights. They are the rope lights from the proposal sign.

Just Married!

RSS Feed

I've setup an RSS feed for the Website. If you don't know what RSS is, it is an easy way to read lots of websites in one place (without having to visit all the websites). I recommend Google Reader.

Wedding Yay!

Melissa and I are getting married in about 24 days! Wedding planning has at times been stressful, as they apparently usually are. But all is going well, and hopefully things will turn out very nice.
We set up a wedding website, it has some photos, stories, etc. with some fun things there. After the wedding we are going on a vacation. I think most people call it a Honeymoon. We are going somewhere special for our honeymoon. It's top secret. Melissa doesn't even know. I've told her to pack two bags, one for hot weather and one for cold weather.
Here is a questions posed to any readers; Where would be a great place for a honeymoon?

Fresh Coffee

I've been drinking fresh ground coffee of late. Melissa received a double walled French Press for her Birthday, and I have been borrowing it until we get married (23 days!!). I've resorted to grinding the coffee in a blender though. The French Press is a really cool one, it is an all glass double walled one. The plunger is obviously metal, but the bottom is only glass. Great for being able to microwave water, etc. I picked this one up in a Starbucks in Seattle, but haven't been able to find them anywhere online. Thus, I am attaching an amateur photo hour rendition of the French press...

2-16-2008 Edit:
I've found them at Crate & Barrel

New House

I am getting a new house today! I am super mega excited!

Engaged

I got engaged last Saturday.  It was a fun and wonderful experience, and here are some details for the interested.So, I wanted to create a wonderful proposal.  My first idea was to have a very romantic dinner at the nice glade upon a mountaintop near McCall.  I was hoping to have tea lights and a table and a wonderful time.  However there is a strict 'burn ban,' due to massive amounts of forest fires this year, so no one can have any sort of fire at all.  So with some spots in mind, I decided to recon some places up in the woods... read more

Aero Ace

I returned to Idaho to find my brother's remote control airplane waiting for a new pilot. Twenty minutes later, I was hooked and ended up getting a plane myself. The little planes are called the Air Hogs Aero Aces, and are definitely one of the funnest hobby planes I have ever seen. I got the green one, which really is quite a performer for not having any control surfaces!

Olympic Hot Springs

A few weeks back, Melissa and I traveled to the Olympic Peninsula here in Washington and visited Olympic Hot Springs. It was a fun drive (riding the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston) over to Port Angeles, and a nice hike up to the hot springs. Not the best hot springs, but Washington doesn't have the greatest selection.

Website Maintenance

This website was recently moved by my hosting company, Dreamhost, from one webserver to another. This, unfortunately, hosed my database driven (and fairly slow) image gallery. However, the images weren't lost, except for names and descriptions of the photos. So, it's back up and running, and has some special functionality implemented. As well, I was spurred to setup a few cron jobs to automate backing up website content, etc.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

I've recently had a chance to play a little bit of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I remember renting a Nintendo Gamecube back in Dec. 2002 for a weekend to play Metroid Prime non-stop for a holiday weekend. This sequel came out two years later, and I have a chance to play it now (having a Wii, which is backward compatible with the Gamecube). It's been as much fun as the original, and shows the thought and depth that go into some of Nintendo's games. Plus, it's a fun refresher as Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii is coming out soon.

Victrola Coffee

Another coffeeshop I've been wanting to hit up for a while has been Victrola. I'd heard of Victrola from some latte art exposure four or so years back. Today I experienced their cafe and coffee, which was excellent. Stacks of laptops were to been seen, but I think I was the only person actually reading a real book: Richard Swinburne's Coherence of Theism.

Caffe Umbria

My roommate Matt is a coffee fiend/lover. Having been trained under the auspices of the once famous Crooked House, Matt developed a fine sense for espresso. He has since moved to Seattle, and been canvasing the city for years. His favorite coffee shop is Caffe Umbria. And this morning I spent some time at Caffe Umbria enjoying their coffee and the bustle of downtown Seattle; Pioneer Square style. Wonderful coffee, and wonderful ambiance to be had there. Have a look at someone's flickr photos documenting Caffe Umbria.

Twilight Princess

Enjoying the benefits of free time, I've had a chance to finally finish the Twilight Princess video game that I've had for my Nintendo Wii for the last six months. This game is a good showcase of the fun that Nintendo can produce with their wiimote and nunchuk duo. Definately a great game worthy of the Legend of Zelda line.

Washington

My Lasik recovery has been a good experience, and I have landed in Seattle, ready to spend some quality time experiencing the rain forests for the Northwest. Yesterday, I spent half the day at Lake Cle Elum with Melissa, and afterwards headed back towards Seattle, stopping at Olallie State Park to observe some greenery, waterfalls, and people rock climbing. It rains alot at Olallie, so everything is super green and saturated (including some of the climbers).

Public Service Announcement: Homeschooling

The Dangers of Homeschooling revealedIn this stunning documentary, the possible dangers of Homeschooling are revealed by a championship Spelling Bee winner. You might be homeschooled if... your best friend is a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Lasik

This morning I headed down to Hollingshead to get my eyes lasered. My oldest brother, John, and I tagged team it; going in to have our eyes done at the same time. So far, my eyes have been recovering splendidly. Though there is the uncomfort naturally associated with the procedure. And I can already see crisply, as the laser fog begins to clear.

Seattle

I'm planning on moving to Seattle on June 9th. One of my College friends has an extra room, and I'm going to live there for a month or more. But first, I'm finishing work up here at the ISP, and will have a bit of time to pack and to recover from the lasering.

Laser Vision

I am off to have my eyes dilated today. For the reason of getting surveyed for laser eye surgery. Due to my exposure to the harsh krypton sun, my eyes have developed to the point where I effectively need to wear spectacles to make sense of all the blurriness. However, this should soon change for the better.

Vulcan Hot Springs

Vulcan Hot Springs had some work done a few years back, and the main pool has been enlarged to make the pool significantly deeper. A few friends and I attempted to visit Vulcan earlier this spring, but the snow was too great to allow us to travel there. The Spring thaw has since cleared all the snow, and made for some wonderfully muddy roads and hiking. The pool was an excellent temperature, but needed to be drained, as there was a large amount of silt and bugs. We also ventured up to the source to see the field where the hot waters comes nearly boiling out of the rock.

U2 by U2

For my Thirtieth birthday, one of my brothers gave me (among other things) a gift certificate to Barnes and Nobles. After wandering around Hastings, while waiting for an appointment, I found a book to use the certificate on. I proceeded to Barnes and Nobles and bought U2 by U2. It's a large coffee-table book, with disjointed excepts and photos, that proceeds through U2's career chronologically. Much akin (in size and style) to the Beatle's book, The Official Beatle's Anthology.

With A Twist

Reading 4-11-7

I recently picked up the autobiography of President Reagan, An American Life. I've been enjoying that recently, as it's an easy read and insightful of alot of fairly recent American History. I also picked up Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before. It should be a fun read, as Eco tends to develop well thought out plots and interesting storylines. Haven't had much time for reading of late, as I'm staying rather busy. But it is a good busy, and I'll catch up on reading somewhere down the line.

Major Label goes DRM free

Major Recording Label EMI recently announced that it will offer digital rights management (DRM)-free downloads of its entire digital catalog, and added that Apple's iTunes store will be the first to peddle its wares. Though the Beatles' catalog won't be a part of this deal just yet. This is a good move for a major Record Label, because it means that I can purchase music that will be available to play on any platform, without mind bending DRM. Which means that I can get some new music for my RioCar, which doesn't support DRM, as it's linux based and no longer actively supported.

Snively Hot Spring

I recently made a trek to the base of the mountain where Scenic Hot Springs is located. I was going to scout things out, but there was too much snow, and not enough trail to find the hot springs, even with the help of a GPS. The following day, I found several hot springs listed in the Baker, Oregon area, though none turned out to be viable. They were either dried up, or privatized. However, on the way back from Yakima (visiting my wonderful girlfriend), I stopped at Ontario, and made a detour to Snively Hot Springs, near Owyhee Reservoir. It was a fun excursion, as I got to experience a Hot Springs, unlike the previous six I had visited earlier in the day, and the day before. The water, however, was too hot, and needed to be mixed with the cooler water from the Owyhee river. This made for a passable Hot Springs™ experience, but I wouldn't put Snively on my repeat offender list for Hot Springery.

3.0

Today I turn 30.

Uncle Phil

Went to see Phil Keaggy last weekend up in Coeur D'Alene. I drove up from Boise, and it was snowing pretty heavily on the way there. My good friend and fellow Ibex alumni Matt drove over from Seattle to witness the event. The concert was fantastic, as Phil usually is. We had some time to catch up on life's developments, and headed to Spokane. Then I headed back through Yakima, Washington. Which happens to be my new favorite place; for some of the bestest reasons ever.

Drupal 5.1

Drupal 5 has arrived, and it has descended upon this website. All the neato enhancements of Drupaldom should now be making the website spectacular! I've also enhanced the photogallery navigation with custom mangling.

Nintendo Wii

Many years back, I was one of the chosen few who suffered the harsh reality of the Nintendo Power Glove. It was a concept far ahead of its time, and was quite out of place back then. This anachronistic idea garnered frustration and loathing, albeit it was pretty awesome looking in sixth grade. However, with the advent of the Nintendo Wii, the idea has come full circle. The Nintendo Wii is a gaming revolution. It presents the ideas of the power glove, and trumps them fully with an array of today's technologies. All that is needed now is a suite of wonderful Nintendo games to compliment such a fun gaming console. And Nintendo is apparently hard at work bringing the games of the past and future to the Wii.

Windows Vista: Event Horizon

Microsoft recently released their long awaited edition of the Windows operating system, Vista; coming in at least nine different flavors. To coincide with this event there seems to have been some horn blowing in the camp of the Mighty Blue Apple (see Mactopia fanaticism). It's fun to see how people can be so passionate about their computers. It's amusing that I have no idea what brand of hammer I own, or what type of tires my Explorer has. Though perhaps the inlaid hammers of craftsmen are a thing of the past, blended into mass produced and indistinguishable quantities of disposable tools. And in the end, that is what an operating system is: a tool.

Bruneau Hot Springs

Went to Bruneau hot Springs yesterday, it was an excellent trip, seeing several of the area's hotsprings, or lack thereof. Took the explorer four wheeling, and it was good times.

Idaho Hot Springs and GoogleEarth

Several years back I found a list of Idaho Hot Springs from the USGS, or such. A few months ago, I chopped off the bottom of the list (hot springs instead of warm springs) and formatted it for my GPS. In the mean time, I'd tried GoogleEarth when it was released, but did not have a GPS at the time. Since then I've acquired another GPS and signed up for GoogleEarthPlus to be able to import GPS data. If you have GoogleEarth, attached to this story is a file with the majority of Idaho's hotsprings (you can use the file with the free version of GoogleEarth). And here is a page about U.S. geothermal Activity. And here is a website dedicated to Idaho Geothermal activity.

Hot Springs Ahoy!

The second day of January consisted of a trip to the hot springs above Arrowrock reservoir. I stopped at Arrowrock and ran around for a little. The lack of water made it nice to play where there would usually be 60 feet of water. The road past the reservoir is winding, making for slow going. After the reservoir, the first springs is Twin Springs, a commercial outfit. Next is Smiths Cabin Hot Springs, having pools on both sides of the river. After a bridge or two, there is the Loftus hot spring. This is probably the nicest of the lot, with cemented walls, and a gravel bottom and waterfall. Then there is Vaugn Hot Springs, conveniently located on the wrong side of the river. Then there is Around the Bend hot springs and Ninemeyer hot springs. Both of these springs are also on the other side of the river. Then there is Pool Creek, which isn't really a hot springs, but more of a hillside. On the way back, I ran into a herd of Elk!

The Song of Reading

     I recently read through the Song of Roland. It's an early French poem about the knights of Charlemagne, betrayal, loyalty, honor, revenge, and justice. All in a courtly setting of the Eighth century France and Spain.
     I just recieved in the mail today The Existence of God and The Coherence of Theism, by Richard Swinburne. I attended a debate with Swinburne at the 2003 Society of Biblical Literature yearly conference in Atlanta. I really enjoyed Professor Swinburne's application of logic to arguments. Specifically using Baye's theorem for possibility and probability.
     I also picked up the Memoirs of William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman has often been thought of as the first General of Modern warfare. I've heard his Memoirs are a good balance of charisma and fact, so it should be an enjoyable read.