Digital Wilderness

Since I have nothing much to write about, I thought I’d cave to the latest meme making its rounds on Facebook.

25 Random Things About Me:

1. I’m colorblind.
2. I’ve only flown in an airplane 3 times.
3. The second time I flew, I jumped out of the plane.
4. I still remember where I was when UK lost to Duke in the 1992 NCAA tourney.
5. My favorite vacation so far has been a 9 day trip to the Pacific Northwest, specifically Mt. Rainier.
6. My dream vacation is to visit New Zealand, where I want to go zorbing, ziplining, bungee jumping, biking, hiking, diving, etc.
7. One of my favorite road trips is to Gatlinburg in the fall.
8. I’ve been blogging since May 2004 – my 5 year blogging anniversary is coming up.
9. I love my new ESV Study Bible.
10. I love to read, both fiction and non-fiction. I read every night.
11. I’m writing this list at work.
12. My dream home is a hi-tech, “smart home” log cabin with a loft.
13. Starcraft is my favorite PC video game.
14. MarioKart is my favorite console video game.
15. I hate ironing.
16. I have an unhealthy obsession with bread, cheese and bacon.
17. The farthest back I have been able to trace my paternal heritage is the early 1700′s when my ancester immigrated to Virginia from Prussia.
18. My first concert was Carman at Rupp Arena my sophomore year of high school.
19. I wish I had the motivation and creativity to write more. I used to be a good writer but haven’t written to the level and frequency as I used to, so the talent has left me.
20. Growing up, I first wanted to dig up dinosaurs, then I wanted to build robots.
21. My dream now is to be a small business owner; right now, I want to own an internet café and bookstore.
22. I played the alto saxophone for 10 years, from middle school through college.
23. I would love to have dinner with Jim Henson (R.I.P.) and Frank Oz.
24. PERL is my favorite programming language.
25. I was baptized in August 1987 at Latonia Baptist Church.

Seems I’ve been neglecting my blog lately, so I thought I’d write a quick post saying that. I do have a couple posts in the works, but writers block and lack of motivation have hit me. Hopefully I crank one of them out soon.

In the meantime, here are a couple of links to keep you occupied:

• Band From TV – A band made up of television stars, such as Hugh Laurie from House, Greg Grunberg from Alias and Heroes, Bob Guiney from The Bachelor and many more. HT: Paul

• *sigh* What’s the world coming to? Wife Murdered for Facebook Status

  A man murdered his estranged wife after becoming “enraged” when she changed her marital status on Facebook to “single”.

• See The Screwtape Letters on stage in Chicago.

• If you still haven’t read Shane Duffey’s post on The Curse, go do it now!

I hope they didn’t waste too much time and money on this research… I could have told them this!

3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were “well rested” actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb, the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, “evening people” almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You’ll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.

Time for my yearly goals! After the success of achieving last year’s goals, the bar has been set high. Last year’s goals were good – important, applicable to where I was, good for personal growth, stepping stones to future plans, etc. This year, I’ve chosen some goals that also meet that criteria, but will greatly push me and stretch me beyond my comfort zone. Hopefully the ends results will be worth it and reflect the change that results from achieving each of these.

Cooking
This will be a tough one as it’s hard for me to be motivated to cook a “real” meal (i.e. not frozen pizza) when it’s only for me, when I’m hungry and want to eat right then (cereal, anyone?) and when I don’t get home until after 9. Now that my schedule is lighter with more free time and have added motivation (someone I can cook for ), I have more reason to want to find the time to prepare meals. I actually already have a jump on this goal, as I cooked Italian Baked Chicken and Pastini for LC on New Year’s Day. From here, I’ll take baby steps by finding simple recipes for dishes I like (well, more accurately, I should say that LC likes ) and go from there.
Goal for the year: Cook more!

School
As other things take priority in my life, my pursuit of an M.B.A. is getting pushed aside. While I don’t feel I should force things and sacrifice what I feel is more important to take classes, I still need to stay focused or I’ll never finish school.
Goal for the year: Complete 10 credit hours towards my M.B.A.

Charitable Giving/Tithing
I’m very frugal as a general rule, and this applies to my tithing and charitable giving as well. I need to loosen up, quit being such a tightwad and become a cheerful given when I tithe, and go above and beyond that by giving to my favorite charities. God has blessed me with a paycheck. I need to change my perspective to one where he’s giving me 90% rather then me giving him 10% or less.
Goal for the year: Develop habit of tithing at 10% and be giving to charities/others at 5% of my monthly income.

Memorize Scripture
You may remember I had a goal of memorizing 200 verses a couple years ago. While I reached the goal, it didn’t turn out so well in the end. It was overkill, forced and very exhausting. I don’t remember a good chunk of those verses and it really soured me on doing any more memorization. The positive about that goal is that it got me into a consistent, daily quiet time and habit of reading scripture. I need to get back into memorizing scripture, rather than just reading/studying it, though. James is one of my favorite books of the Bible, is very meaningful and applicable to where I currently am, and will be my target.
Goal for the year: Memorize the Biblical book of James.

Creative Ministries
I loved being a part of a creative ministries team (puppets, sketches, interpretive movements, etc.) in college and afterwards, but haven’t done any more with it since then. My passion for it is still there, though, and while I did contact someone at my church, I didn’t follow up when I was told there currently was no creative ministry team.
Goal for the year: Do something with my passion for creative ministries, puppets in particular.

Strengths/Sweet Spot
Related to the above goal about Creative Ministries, I don’t feel like I’m in my sweet spot, where my paycheck meets my passions. I need to change that up and make my job one where I can use my strengths and do what I’m best at to make a difference in the company while at the same time loving what I do. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I need to change jobs, but at least will require that I change my perspective of my current job, turning it from merely something I wake up each more and have to do into work that I look forward to doing.
Goal for the year: Quantify/qualify my strengths and find the sweet spot where these can be applied to my career.