We had special guest speakers for both the Ignited and adult services at church last Wednesday night: former University of Michigan Defensive Tackle Shawn Lazarus and former Ohio State University Defensive Tackle Joel Penton. In the spirit of college football rivalry, we were encouraged to wear the colors of our favorite teams. Not being a big sports fan, my choices were limited to Detroit Red Wings or my Orrville Football shirt from when we all came to see Tom's game against Wooster.

With all of the recent posting of retro catalogs and other novel items from the 1970's, The Usborn Book of the Future really jumped out at me when it showed up on my newsfeeds late last month. First published in 1979, this book offered "A trip in time to the year 2000 and beyond. See the robots, machines and cities of the future, and then travel to the stars."

I've posted photos from our vacation in The Green Bag Gallery

I have completed the upgrade to Drupal 5.1. You may notice that some screens look a little different when you post new entries or enter comments. I tried to keep the site looking as close to the previous theme, but there may be some subtle changes, and even some glitches. Just let me know if you encounter a problem.

So, just taking a few minutes to bang out a "real" blog posting. I've wanted to blog about our train trip to DC and other exciting things, but haven't had time to write a proper blog entry in what seems like ages.

In the meantime, I've continued micro-blogging in a couple of different ways. As always, my links on del.icio.us continue to be a history of interesting stuff I've been reading and silly videos I've watched. I've also joined Twitter, and I'm using that as a true micro-blog. One-liner postings that fly off the fingers with very little thought or composition, just to capture thoughts of the moment.

And I've become one of those creepy old people who've joined facebook.

This entry has been brewing since last fall, when Luanne emailed her report of Vicki and Allen's visit during their train trip, and Luanne had mentioned the band that was playing "the jazz that Vicki and I both love."

I think it's safe to say that I've been primarily a classic rock kinda guy since moving here to the Motor City back in 8th grade. But I have always liked good music of just about any genre, and having played some jazz in my high school days, have a fondness for certain types of jazz as well.

Of course, most of the music I listen to nowadays would be properly labeled Contemporary Christian. Granted, my tendencies there still lie more towards rock sounds like Third Day and Petra (with former Head East singer John Schlitt), while Marissa would prefer the edgier sounds of Stellar Kart or eleventyseven.

Unfortunately for me, I have just enough adult-onset ADD (or more likely ADT that I'm easily distracted when trying to listen to talk or music with lyrics when I'm trying to work. This is especially true when I'm typing, and even more so when I'm programming.

I tagged this page on del.icio.us last week, but haven't had time to blog about it until now. This map of the Eisenhower Interstate System is one of the most interesting maps I've ever seen.

When you disregard the actual distances between cities on the map, the relationships between the different Interstates becomes immediately clear. Thanks to some history bits on the radio, I recently learned about Henry Joy and his relationship to the Interstate 80 transcontinental route between New York and San Francisco.

Fascinating.

via

"Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III"

Oh, man. This is good.

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.

I had it, like, I'm sure so many of us did at the end of RotS. Threepio was wiped, but R2! R2 knew. No wonder why he was such a smug little knowitall. So I thought about it, but Keith Martin has worked it all out. And not only R2's involvement with the rebellion all these years, but Chewbacca's as well. This one's a definite must-read for even the most half-hearted Star Wars fan.

This has got to be the coolest stop motion animation piece I've seen since Mike Jittlov's short, The Wizard of Speed and Time (not to be confused with the feature-length film by the same creator and name.) 'Nuff said...