Titles? We don't need no stinking titles!

It has been a quiet week in Redwood City. I am looking forward to a long weekend down in southern California over the upcoming Labor Day weekend. For those of you not in LA that weekend, you are sure missing out.

Today I instituted a new policy, I will only lock my door from the outside with my keys. I was a little upset to find out when I got to work that I had forgotten my keys, wallet, and phone in my now locked apartment. I had to stop by at lunch to have the apartment manager unlock my door.

It looks like on thursday my Sumo Omni Tangerine will arrive. If I like it I will probably buy a few more to serve as my living room furniture. I will just have to decide what colors to get.

I also noticed the other day that commenting on my blog was restricted to only registered users, I have corrected this.

I also found out over the weekend that there is a diet drink that I really like, I just think that it has been a long time coming.

As I said, quiet week. All work and no play makes Matt a dull boy.

In what color do Elephants Dream?

I just watched Elephants Dream and was very impressed. I think that this movie is cool for many reasons, one being that it was made using only open source tools, notably Blender. The other cool thing is that they offer it in HD, which comes out at 815MB for a movie just shy of 11 minutes. If you don't want to DL that much they have versions ranging down to 99MB, but the HD one is stunning to see if your monitor can display that size (which is 1920X1080). My monitor can only display up to 1600x1200 so it is not the HD aspect ratio.

I found that VideoLan was a good media player to watch it with. In fact I VideoLan is the best media player I have ever used and I think you should try it out.

I really wish I would take the time to learn how to use some of these tools like Blender, but I just never seem to get around to even learning the basics.

If you watch it, please throw out your theory of what it is about, I am a little unsure of what is going on.

You came and you gave without taking.

I almost cannot utter the awsomeness of this. Are you ready for it? Really ready? It looks like Microsoft will be offering European board games over their new live service. I was not that interested in this device before, it had some appeal, but this news might just push it over the top. If I could play Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne with my friends around the country, I just might have to get one of these. When this comes down the pike, look for it.

We don't need no education. A small parable.

I just relized that for the first time in 17 years I am not going to be starting school this fall. It is a little sad, but then life moves on. Reading about every one elses back to school fun does make me miss it more.

Justin Moser this Sunday talked about this house in his neighborhood that was the biggest house around. It started construction, but was not finished. Whomever had started buidling it did not have the funds or something to finish it. It sat unfinished for several years. Then someone else bought it and was able to finish it. He compared this to some spiritual lives, and that the building can be interrupted, but still built on later. One part of the sermon really stuck with me, and I have been crafting this little illustration to let you into how my mind works.

You take some time off to relax and catch up with some old friends. Your friend invites you to stay with him for a few weeks in his new place down by the beach. His new house is beautiful. It has all the modern conveniences and is the lap of luxory. You head out and are enjoying the trip, catching up on old times. However you notice something strange, on the weekend your friend heads off and returns the next day. The next weekend he says he is going away again. Upon inquiring where he is off to you find out that he also has a place in the mountains. Thinking that this would be a nice change of scenery you ask to come along, and he is more then happy for you to come. When the two of you reach the house in the mountains you are startled because it is shell of a house. It was never finished and the weather is wearing it away. When you ask why he spends any time at this wreck your friend replies indignantly that this is his main residence and the other house is just another place. He claims his heart is up here in the mountains, but you question this based on where he spends his time and money to make it nice.

This friend's spiritual life only gets worked on when he gets around to it on the weekends, his real treasures, effort, and time are spent elsewhere. We need to give Christ the best of our time and build our house to him up, so that it is full of the things that we cherish.

Mi Casa

I finally got around to taking some pictures of my new apartment. I had kept it pretty clean, but I finally got around to scrubbing it top to bottom (pretty much) last night. I have to say that a cordless vaccuum is the way to go.

Yea, I got nothing else to say.

Snaggletooth.

Main Entry: snag·gle·tooth
Pronunciation: 'sna-g&l-"tüth
Function: noun
Etymology: English dialect snaggle irregularly shaped tooth + English tooth
: an irregular, broken, or projecting tooth

I did not even guess that it was a word. Today I had a snaggletooth(blurry picture, I was in a hurry) for a few hours. As I was finishing up my breakfeast I felt my top, right, front tooth was missing. This annoyed, but did not suprise me. I broke this tooth about 10 years ago when I went over the handlebars of my bike and face planted into the pavement. If I haden't been wearing a helmet it could have been much worse, as it was I just broke a tooth. I made a dentist appointment and had it fixed up in no time. The dentist recommended that I have this temporary filling replace with a porcelin veneer in the next few months, so I just need to get around to that.

I am gonna head down south this weekend, so I guess I will see what the fuss is about with all the new security measures. No carryons? I hope they speed up the offloading of baggage, because I am used to not checking anything.

Camping and blogging.

This weekend I went camping with my local family, and some of their friends. We were car camping near the beach and had a good time. I will admit that in the future I will know how to pack better, for example camping near the beach gets cold at night. We also got in a hike to the epicenter of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that happened on October 17, 1989. I forgot my camera for the trip, but hopefully I can post some of the pictures taken.

I also just learned that the president of Iran has started his own blog. I find this both humorous and interesting. You can find it at http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/ and make sure to click on the flag at the top right that corresponds to your language (the little half USA flag is english). I haven't read his whole first post, but it seems to be an autobiography (I am saving my autobiography for a six figure book deal, or not). Be sure to vote on his poll.

Fresh Air

I am now riding my new bike to and from work. So far I have only done it twice, but I really like the fresh air and exercise. It is a refreshing change from sitting at my desk all day. I think I am only 2.5 miles or so from work, so riding my bike dosen't even double my time to work. Also I am riding perpendicular to most of the traffice going up and down the peninsula so I feel very safe.

The last few burgers I have cooked on my George Foreman Grill have been these 99% fat free turkey meat. I decided last night that they just don't have much taste and am going back to the 93% fat free real hamburger meat.

I am going camping with my local family this weekend and am looking forward to cooking out. Almost every weekend I have been down in LA we have had a cookout on the beach, so I am getting used to campfire food.

Well, I have to get back to work.

There and back again,

I just spent a very tiring weekend down in LA. There was a pretty large group visiting mostly from Taylor and West Lafayette. I only got a few pictures of the weekend. They are going to be in San Diego for the rest of the week. On Saturday morning the guys and girls split up to take a hike and swim a little. The guys had some fun jumping off a few rock cliffs into the water. One jump was about 30 feet and the other we think was 40 feet. It was the second time I have jumped from such a height. That afternoon we took the metro into LA to see a little of the city. We visited the LA Central Library and the Westin Bonadventure to see the city from the external elevators.

I really enjoyed the weekend, but I am totally beat. I am looking forward to a quiet weekend in Redwood City next weekend.

Tracy meeting.

This Wednesday evening I met with some other AC's out in Tracy California. For me it was two hours there and one hour back. I really don't understand the traffic out. It would be fine with all the cars going 70 and then for no reason (no off-ramp or merging traffic) it would slow to a halt. Then fast once more, then stop. I just don't get it. I should post a picture of the group soon, but it was nice to meet the other centeral California AC's. Oh, yes and Greg and Carla Rassi from Chicago where there with their son Nathan (representing from St. Louis).

My brother and sister-in-law where helpful enough to purchase a bike on sale while I was gone. I will be riding to and from work to hopefully get some more exercise. This will also allow me to tour around town a little easier then on foot.

While in the car I also finished Jupiter by Ben Bova, which is part of the Grand Tour books by the same. I first started these books by reading Moonrise and was instantly hooked. That was way back in high-school if I remember correctly. Since then I have ticked off the books one by one, with about half of them still to go (7 books). The problem is that he keeps writing more of them. They are about the expansion of the human race out into the solar system in the 21st century. I really like this sort of "hard" science fiction. So on the way back from Tracy I started listening to The Rock Rats.