Digital Wilderness

I’m such a blog slacker. I’ve had things I’ve wanted to blog, but either haven’t set aside the time or found the motivation to write up a post. Made some time today to update the ol’ blog.

Vacation has come and gone… I ended up making the last minute decision to not travel to South Carolina. I had planned to head out to Huntington Beach State Park on Wed, camp on the beach for two nights, then head to Congaree National Park and camp there for a night before driving through the Smokey Mountains on the way home on Saturday.
    Several reasons led to the decision to turn the vacation into a “stay-cation.” First, I really wanted to take the canoe trip through Congaree NP, but all spots were filled within 10 minutes of when they started taking reservations. That’s crazy! I was still going to go (I still had a reservation for the Owl Prowl), but on Tuesday, I decided I didn’t feel like driving the 20 hours round trip to the SC coast and back for only a couple days of enjoyment, so that added a strong second reason to forgo the trip. Thirdly, Kristy had a few days off work, so I thought the time would be better spent with her.
    I will admit I was disappointed I wasn’t able to get away for a week long vacation. I really enjoy traveling and seeing new places and I had been planning this trip for months, so the anticipation had been high. Oh, well…I’ll definitely be ready next time! I shouldn’t be too disappointed, though; I spent 4 days at Cuyahoga NP over Memorial Day weekend and have a whitewater rafting trip to WV planned for August. Also, my dad and I finished painting! Feels great to have that off the list!

I’ve been giving a lot of thought, and some action, to what I’m eating lately. It started several months ago, just a random pressing on my mind that I should avoid eating so many processed foods. A month or so later, I caught a few episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, then I watched the movie Food, Inc. Ugh…I can’t believe some of the things that are done to our food. I’m not about to become a hard core rebel with a cause about this, but I am going to try to be smarter and more conscious of what I ingest. How many thousand of years did people survive and thrive on what was grown locally, eating what was in season without adding a bunch of junk to it? Sure, you can argue that their life expectancy was shorter, but their quality of life was better. Now, we’re living to 80, but only because of all the drugs we’re taking to combat the illnesses that have resulted from being so unhealthy. Don’t want to get into a long rant, but I personally think I can do so much better with my diet, and will feel better as a result. I’ve also given some thought to starting my own garden, too. I’m getting some experience with that by helping my men’s small group plant a garden at church. We’re donating the proceeds to Lifeline. Still looking for a good local butcher, and need to make myself go to a farmer’s market (the grocery store is still sooo convenient…) I’ll write more on this later. In theory…

Other odds and ends:

New pictures are up in the gallery, including the Cuyahoga trip, the Butterfly show and a bunch with Kristy.

The trailer for Voyage of the Dawn Treader is out! The book is my favorite of the Chronicles of Narnia series and was one of my childhood favorites, period. Hmm, not too sure about the movie, though. Doesn’t look very true to the book based on the minute of the teaser.

Apparently there are no other problems to work on right now – Jeopardy playing (and winning) computer

80s geeks everywhere drool over this one: Super Mario Brothers Crossover. Play Super Mario Brothers as Mario, Megaman, Link (from Zelda), Samus (Metroid), Simon (Castlevania), or Bill (Contra). Nice!

That’s all for now, but more soon!

Deepest sympathies and condolences go out to my sister-in-law and her family in the unexpected passing of her father this past Sunday evening. Please keep them all in your prayers during this very difficult time.

Dr. Walton “Louis” MOORE
Age 61. Born in Booneville, Mississippi and a graduate of Booneville High School, Louis went onto the University of Mississippi and received degrees from the colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine. He completed his pathology residency at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and preventive medicine residency at the University of South Carolina where he also received a Master’s Degree in Public Health. Dr. Moore has been the medical director of several departments with the state of Tennessee for the past 20 years. Louis was a loving husband, father and son; a brilliant physician with a heart of gold; a man of character and integrity with uncompromising ethics; and a dedicated Christian who quietly lived out his faith. He will be remembered as a cherished friend, a perfect gentleman, and a true blessing to all who knew him. Preceded in death by his father, Luther Moore; his son, David Wesley Moore. Louis is survived by his wife, Mamie Little Moore; twin daughters, Elizabeth Moore Vaught and Jennifer Moore; mother, Louise Floyd Moore; siblings, Randy Moore, Terry Moore and Betty Crotty. The family will receive friends [Tuesday] from 5-7 p.m. in the parlor of Brentwood Baptist Church. Funeral services will be conducted 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 20, 2010 at McMillan Funeral Home in Booneville, MS with visitation from 10 a.m. until time of service. Burial in Dumas Cemetery. AUSTIN FUNERAL & CREMATION SERVICES, (615) 377-0775

J&D, the creators of Bacon Salt and Baconnaise, now bring us…

Mmmvelopes, bacon-flavored envelopes!

And something else I missed is…

BaconPOP, bacon-flavored popcorn!

Bacon, FTW!

Is 2009 really over? I cannot believe how quickly it has passed! It’s been quite a year, with a lousy first half but an truly awesome, action-packed and busy second half.

High/lowlights from the year include:

• Seeing a good friend get married/bachelor party fun
• Much personal and spiritual growth; learning about and experiencing God’s grace and mercy
• Being trained as a challenge course instructor
• Gillispie out/Calipari in as head coach of UK’s basketball team
  (starting off the season with a 13-0 record…so far, and getting UK’s 2000th win)
• Being given the opportunity to serve in a leadership position at my church
• Being diagnosed with diabetes
• Meeting and getting to know a very special girl
• Solo road trip to the Northeast and Acadia NP
• Return trip to Catalyst
• Getting an unexpected promotion

My goals for 2009 were as follows, with my grade for that goal:

Goal for the year: Cook more!
Grade: C+
I have cooked more than in previous years, but not as much as I expected when I set the goal. Baby steps…

Goal for the year: Complete 10 credit hours towards my M.B.A.
Grade: F
I only completed 2 credit hours before putting my pursuit of a M.B.A on hold for various reasons.

Goal for the year: Develop habit of tithing at least 10% and be giving to charities/others at 5% of my monthly income.
Grade: B
I’m tithing at 10%, but haven’t been consistent with other giving.

Goal for the year: Memorize the Biblical book of James.
Grade: F
I got 10 or so verses memorized before becoming unfocused… I did memorize other verses throughout the year, but not as much as in the previous year.

Goal for the year: Do something with my passion for creative ministries, puppets in particular.
Grade: F
There was some talk about getting a team together, and a friend started writing a script, but other priorities took over and there wasn’t enough time left to pursue this.

Goal for the year: Quantify/qualify my strengths and find the sweet spot where these can be applied to my career.
Grade: D
I’ve learned more about my strengths and weaknesses in a job setting thoughout the year, but have yet to fully apply these to my career path.

Not a very good year in terms of reaching my goals, but I still consider the year a success based on the growth I’ve had and lessons I’ve learned. Quite the year overall, with many memorable experiences. 2010 should be just as memorable, if not more so!

This is really cool, and really good.

Side-by-side comparison with the movie:

[Via human3rror.com]

Christmas is fast approaching! Seriously, where has the time gone?!? Stores have had Christmas decorations out for several weeks now, and the sales are starting to hit. From Facebook and Twitter updates, several of you have already begun, if not finished (!!!), your shopping. Being one who is not a fan of shopping in general and specifically during this crazy time of year (when we should be relaxing and spending time with family and friends instead, but that’s a rant for another time), I find myself too often waiting until the last minute to shop. For whatever reason, I’ve been motivated and have gotten a jump on shopping this year. And by shopping, I mean online shopping I’d much rather look for deals online and have everything delivered to my door rather than driving all over town and braving the maddening crowds and traffic. I do enough of that getting to and from work every day…

***We interrupt this post to bring you this commercial***
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I’ve been tempted on several occasions to start putting up Christmas lights, but going to hold off a bit longer. In the meantime, I’ve been cleaning out my basement, desk, etc. Wow, lots of junk! My basement alone needed a good cleaning. I had five computer cases, with only a few parts left in each, that I’m going to find some place to recycle; tons of boxes of many shapes and sizes; model train stuff scattered everywhere, that I would like to work on but haven’t had the time in years; old, beat up furniture; and just about anything else I haven’t been able to throw away, thinking I’d need it one day but years later still haven’t used. Nothing like a good cleaning to give you the feeling of new-ness!

[Well, apparently the Amazon search box won't stay working...oh, well...]

Presenting Lucy and Ricky Ricardo!

(Click on thumbnails for larger view)

Part of our network is down at work, thus giving me a few minutes to actually write a blog post! Can’t believe how long it has been since my last post, and even longer since I’ve written a meaningful post. I’m actually not sure what to write about now, so I guess I’ll just do a recap on the last…two months.

I’ll start with the yucky part of this time. Both Kristy and I were sick mid to late September, though with different things. Kristy was off work almost a week and I missed two days. My sickness started off with flu-like symptoms then turned into a sharp, stabbing pain in the back of my head that led to another medical first for me this year – an MRI. Thankfully, the MRI was negative, and though I never got a diagnosis of what caused it, the pain went away on its own after 3 or 4 days. It was not a pleasant experience, and it was frustrating to have to free time yet not be able to tackle my to-do list. Being sick definitely makes it difficult to manage diabetes, too…

Once again this year, I attended the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta early October. I was really looking forward to it since I was introduced to so many great speakers last year, many that I’ve continued to follow via books, podcasts and Twitter since. This year’s line-up was at least on par with last year’s…but I’ll write more about that in a separate post.

I was blessed enough to be offered a ticket to UK’s Big Blue Madness by my friend Robin. To say I’m extremely pumped about this upcoming college basketball season is an understatement! After a dismal few years, it’s hard to believe how much the program has come so far – and the season hasn’t even started yet! The anticipation is running high for all of Big Blue Nation. BBM was my first “madness” and quite an event. It was obvious from the scrimmage that the team needs a lot of work, but there is more than enough raw talent to take us far this year. I just hope all the egos can be managed, but if anyone can do it, Calipari can. Looking forward to the season!

Apart from being sick and Catalyst, Kristy has been keeping me plenty busy. There’s never a struggle to find things to do when we’re together, and we often have to make an effort to just have some down time. usually we have trouble finding the time to do everything we want to! Over the past two months, we’ve…

…played paintball
…eaten at Montgomery Inn (Kristy’s first experience there)
…gone to a Reds game
…attended Lincoln Days in Hodgenville
…witnessed a wedding of Kristy’s friend in Indianapolis
…watched a high school band contest
…gone to the Ohio Renaissance Festival
…cheered on the UK football team to a win over ULM
…and so much more. We have a lot more in store in the coming months as well, including going to UK’s first exhibition basketball game against Campbellsville, which I’m quite pumped about!

The unveiling of our Halloween costumes happens tonight at the annual McFarland Halloween party. It took us a while to figure out what to dress as, mainly because we put so much pressure on ourselves to find something that would beat the Harmons, the perennial winners. We actually had a pretty great idea, but the implementation of it was complicated and not everyone would “get” it, so we opted for something else. We’re happy with the costumes (Kristy put in a lot of work making my shirt) and they’re much more fun and enjoyable than trying to come up with a winning idea. Pictures will come later… Your hint for now is: Bobalu!

Well, that’s about all I have for now. Hopefully the next post won’t be months away…

Trying to keep my blogging momentum going… Today’s post is all about randomness.

There’s a fun and travel-intensive weekend ahead of me! Friday, Kristy and I are heading up to Indianapolis for my yearly fix of DCI. This year I’m going all out. Rather than heading to a local show, we’re going to the DCI World Championship semifinals! Let’s go Phantom Regiment! (Unfortunately, after winning it all last year, they find themselvs in 9th place at the end of the “regular season” this year… )

Saturday we’ll be heading to Western KY to spend some time with my family. Every year around this time, before school starts, my father’s side of the family converges on my grandparents’ farm, south of Henderson, KY. This year I’ll be bringing a special guest. Kristy will get to meet the entire paternal side of the family…all at once. She graciously accepted the invitation and seems to be up for the challenge of meeting everyone! Yep, she’s a keeper

There are rumors of a Quantum Leap Revival. Yes! That would totally make my day! Quantum Leap is one of my all time favorite shows.

I’ll follow that with an interesting report on a study that concluded Opposite financial habits attract.

Eli Finkel: We found that when looking at spending patterns, spendthrifts and tightwads tend to pair up.

Tess Vigeland : And though singles say they would rather marry someone with spending habits like their own, they often don’t. Finkel says it has a lot to do with trying to address the pain we each experience. Tightwads actually don’t like spending too little money and spenders don’t really like spending too much.

Finkel: On those rare cases where we have a trait about ourselves that we dislike, those might be the cases where we would seek somebody who’s the opposite of us. So, if I’m somebody who spends a great deal of money and experiences some pain about it, I’ll dislike it enough in myself that I may well seek the opposite in a partner.

Vigeland: Of course, if you disagree on finances, the research also shows you may experience “diminished marital well-being.”

The actual study can be found here: Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction: Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Marriage

Considering that the number one cause of problems in marriage is money, and 50% of marriages end in divorce, I’m not sure if this is a good thing…

Here’s an interesting website to which I wanted to bring attention: givinganon.org.
In a nutshell, the site let’s you give anonymously to others.

Giving Anonymously is a non-profit organization facilitating generosity between people. We are a volunteer organization; each of us donates our time without pay to keep Giving Anonymously running.

We began with a few goals in mind: We wanted to relationally connect people through giving, to make it fun, and in the process protect relationships from feelings of obligation. Giving to others in need can be full of mixed motivations and our hope is to facilitate Pure giving.

Anyone who enjoys putting cash under a friends door or in their mailbox will often times not know if their friend actually got the gift and they cannot hear what it meant to them. So, we came up with an idea to have a messaging line where recipients could call after receiving their gift. When a recipient doesn’t know who gave the gift to them they are even more free to express their gratitude and we capture this through voice files that we email to the donor.

And the last bit of randomness for today – I completely missed my 1 year anniversary at Medpace! I started July 28th, 2008 and the past year has been a good journey. I’m not doing much of what I was originally hired to do, having instead stepped into a more specialized role with a different system. I’m thankful for this opportunity and appreciate the challenge of establishing new processes and reworking old processes to streamline the flow of getting the system up and running. The company itself is great. They definitely have employee morale in mind by providing word day activities such as cornhole and pop-a-shot tournaments, ice cream socials and lunches, as well as outside work events such as the Christmas party, paintball, golf outings and more.
It has been a welcome change from my previous employers!

This past weekend I had the privilege of being trained as a low ropes/challenge course instructor for the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio at Camp Stonybrook in Waynesville, Ohio.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting into but I thoroughly enjoyed my two previous ropes course experiences (which were both high and low) – one with Norse Leadership Society at NKU and the other with the college/career class at Latonia Baptist Church back in the day when I attended that church.

The training began bright and early on Saturday. A group of ten volunteers were present at the training, and as has been the case often lately, I was the only guy (other than the trainer). ERi conducted the 2-day session, which consisted of several different areas, including initiatives, spotting techniques, basic operation of the low course elements and processing the experience. We went through the individual elements of the course ourselves first, then learned how to facilitate each, from safety to providing guidance along the way to debriefing afterwords.

Some of the challenge course elements at the camp were: All Aboard, Islands, Spiders Web, Mohawk Walk, Whale Watch, Wild Woosy, Trust Fall and The Wall.
(Examples of these can be seen at http://www.high5adventure.org and http://www.pa.org.)

Some of us stayed overnight at the camp, which was great for me, as I very much needed a night away. It felt good to just hang out and relax and get away from technology and the hustle and bustle for a bit. We did play several rounds of Sequence. I’m happy to say I beat Mindy – once…then she dominated the rest of the night. I did manage to accidentally knock her over during one of the outdoor games, though, so maybe I had that coming…

I think I’m going to enjoy facilitating the Girl Scout troops as they tackle the course. My first session as instructor will be this coming weekend, when I’ll be co-facilitating along with Mindy.