Rocking away at Philly International

  

I'm sitting at the Philadelpha airport with two hours to spare to meet up with my traveling companion... and thinking about the best way to kill time in a airport...

Sit in the rocking chairs provided to look out over the gates as the planes taxi in and out (with no cushions, I opt for the padded bench seats).
Read USA Today from front to back -
Look for an electrical outlet to recharge electronics -
Camp out and people watch people watching other people -
Get a shoe shine -
Eat a overpriced sandwich at a restaurant - on this particular day, slow service and slower food preparation was welcomed - I still gave a decent tip because my waitress was very much pregnant - ten months if that's possible!
Squat in the A, B or C que line for a Southwest flight -
Walk the length of the terminal for exercise -
Take in the community art on the walls -
Admire the advertising for your favorite products -

  

On the last three flights, I get engaged in a conversation about Treo smartphones and end up showing people how to set alarms, play music, view photos and beam address cards - fun stuff !

Friday Flashback "Girl From The North Country"

Thanks to YouTUBE, I'm going to post a music video every Friday... just for kicks.

Here's a live performance of Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell - "Girl From The North Country" which is a great classic from Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan recording and the alternate duet with Johnny Cash on Nashville Skyline.

Well, if you're travelin' in the north country fair,
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline,
Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.



About Joni Mitchell from Wikipedia:
Initially working in Western Canada and Toronto, she became associated with the burgeoning folk music scene of the mid-1960s in New York City. She achieved her greatest fame in the early 1970s and was considered a key part of the Southern Californian folk-rock scene. Throughout the 1970s she expanded her musical horizons to include pop and jazz and became one of the most highly respected singer-songwriters of the late 20th century.

Retrospective appraisals of Joni's work have often commented that her quality and influence render her the "female Bob Dylan", although Mitchell would be the first to criticise such gender-orientated judgements.

Mitchell is also an accomplished artist; she has, through photography or painting, created the artwork for each of her albums, and has described herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance." A blunt critic of the music industry, Mitchell has stopped recording and now focuses mainly on her visual art.

Trivia: Bob Dylan used the lines "Remember me to one who lives there, She once was a true love of mine" taken from the old traditional "Scarborough Fair" which Simon and Garfunkel rendered.

(Note: since the video takes a while to load based on your bandwidth, just hit play, then pause... while the video buffer gets full.)

Joni Mitchell Web Site

Johnny Cash Web Site

Bob Dylan Web Site

All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From LEGOs

Alan Smith writes an daily e-mail devotional, "Thought For the Day". He enjoyed sharing humorous stories received by e-mail with his friends and members of the White House (Tennessee) Church of Christ congregation and felt that people might enjoy reading those bits of humor with a spiritual application and challenge to Christian living.

This came in my mailbox from Alan:

The following essay on "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From LEGOs" was written by Steve Klusmeyer:



"Life might be less complicated for all of us if we each received our own LEGO kit at birth. Yes, I realize there is a choking hazard for children under three. But when you are old enough, you can learn a lot from LEGOs. I have learned that:

~ Size doesn't matter. When stepped on in the dark, a 2X2 LEGO brick causes the same amount of pain as a 2X8 brick.

~ All LEGO men are created equal (1.5625 inches tall). What they become is limited only by imagination.

~ There is strength in numbers. When the bricks stick together, great things can be accomplished.

~ Playtime is important. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you are building, as long as you're having fun.

~ Disaster happens. But the pieces can be put back together again.

~ Every brick has a purpose. Some are made for a specific spot - most can adapt almost anywhere - but every one will fit somewhere.

~ Color doesn't matter. A blue brick will fit in the same space as a red brick.

~ No one is indispensable. If one brick is unavailable, another can take its place.

~ It doesn't always turn out as planned. Sometimes it turns out better. If it doesn't, you can always try again.

I thought about each of these statements as it relates to the church. Some of the statements apply more than others. For example, unity is a biblical concept. When Christians stick together, great things can be accomplished.

And it is an important biblical truth that every Christian has a purpose. As Paul describes it in I Corinthians 12 using the analogy of a human body, some of us are eyes, some are hands, still others are feet, but we all have a purpose and a role.

But while it is technically true that "no one is indispensable", the teaching of scripture is that each one of us is needed and the body suffers greatly if we don't do our part (I Cor. 12:20-22)

The greatest comparison between Legos and Christianity, though, is that we are indeed a building shaped by God's own hand. And every Christian is a part of that building -- not a plastic building block, but a "living stone":

"As you come to him, the living Stone -- rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him -- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (I Peter 2:4-5)

Have a great day!

Alan Smith

Visit Alan's site for more info on subscribing and archives of his devotionals - they are quite good!

Photo Art

I've gone to tech hell and back...

The worse thing to do to entertain yourself and grit your teeth is to try to figure out why Microsoft Office on a Dell laptop won't respond to any commands. So the logical thing to do is to locate the original disks... ok, look underneath the desk; nope not there. OK, go to the garage and it could be the very last box under a stack of eight other boxes... nope, not there either. But I did find a box of Palm software, so that scavenger hunt came in handy.

Whenever I lose my keys, or become perplexed , I just stop and PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens). Einstein once said whenever you get a simple answer to a very complex problem, it is evidence that God just spoke to you. Great theology and absolute truth.

So meanwhile while I'm PUSHing, I'm logging on to the Microsoft Support site which is a vast wasteland sea of words - I'm lost, so I give up - until God tells me to look in a brown cardboard box - Lo and behold, there's my Office reinstall disk and another disk with an upgrade to Windows XP Pro that was part of some Dell documentation. The reinstall of Microsoft Office didn't work as each of the programs returned a fail to respond error. Undaunted, I fire up the Windows XP Pro disk and by 3:54 AM Sunday, the install is complete and Office works like a charm.

But I have to validate the XP upgrade, so at 4:15 am, I'm talking apparently to a Microsoft call center in India to obtain a set of eight 6 digit codes to unlock Windows XP - but it is done and I'm a happy camper. I did strongly consider figuring out a way to get a Mac laptop as I absolutely love my desktop iMacG5; but that's like saying I am sick of spending $100 a month to fix my used car, so I'll buy a new one for $500 a month.

I skipped church, but God and I had some intense fellowship, as I kept thanking Him over and over:

I waited patiently for the Lord
He inclined and heard my cry
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay pulled me out of the miry pit

Psalm 40: 1-8 (also in a song by U2 "40")

Fortunately, I also have some friends that can help bale me out as I know just enough to muck around and fix PC stuff (but not at 3 am). And there is always Google!

Here's two good sources that I found via Google:
For Macs: Mac Connect
For Windows XP Advice & Information: Update XP

My fellow Palm addict and friend Michael Ashby has his own tales of woe:

"I put in my Windows XP CD and as usual I heard the drive spin up. I was closing a few applications before I shut down the PC to reboot and install when all of a sudden, I heard a "PUH" and something hit my leg hard. I looked down and saw the faceplate to the CD-ROM drive next to my leg along with several shards of what was my Windows XP Professional CD. The CD had exploded."
A Strange Thing Happened On The Way To Reformat

More NFL football please!

Another reason why I love Direct TV; not only do they carry the NFL Network, but here's some great news for die hard fans:

"For the first time ever, NFL game broadcasts from the previous weekend will be replayed on NFL Network just days after their live airing.

During the 2006 season, NFL Game Re-Airs will feature four of the top games from each weekend, rebroadcast exclusively on NFL Network the following Tuesday and Wednesday. Any game originally shot in high definition will air on NFL Network in HD.

Two games will be shown each Tuesday and Wednesday night with 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT kickoff times."

Read the rest of the press release.

America's Coolest Churches

Mark Rhoades from Monday Morning Insight links to an article and picture expose' from Life Magazine on what they call America's Coolest Churches.



Mark posts a lot of items to help church leaders each day what is going on in the world and the church community to make church more relevant whether it is innovative ideas, marketing or spiritual topics that resonate with people. But not every post is dry and dull - lots of humor as well! Balance - what a concept.

Some recent posts include: Why Volunteers Quit, Looking for the Perfect Church That Doesn't Exist, What to Do During a Dull Sermon, Debunking the Myths About MegaChurches and Top Ten Reasons Americans Find Themselves in Debt. Check out Monday Morning Insight

Friday Flashback "This Must Be The Place"

Thanks to YouTUBE, I'm going to post a music video every Friday... just for kicks.

Here's a live performance of Shawn Colvin with Strings Attached - "This Must Be The Place" which is a great cover from the Talking Heads album: Speaking in Tongues.

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb - burn with a weak heart
(so I) guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's ok I know nothing's wrong . . nothing



"I used to be able to set aside a few days and just lock myself in my house and not even answer the phone," Colvin says of her songwriting process. "I can't do that anymore. So I went to a little studio, did some vocals, played guitar on the couch and sat around with my notebooks. Prior to that, I had gone to New York a couple of times and just did some powwowing."

Which isn't completely out of character for Colvin, whose ambient folk reflects her wanderlust, detailed by Joni Mitchell-like musings on love, life and loss. Born in Vermillion, South Dakota, she taught herself guitar at the age of ten before moving to London, Ontario, and then Carbondale, Illinois, where she formed the Shawn Colvin Band. After relocating to Austin and retiring briefly from music, Colvin moved to New York in 1983, and garnered a laudable following among the burgeoning neo-folk movement. Rolling Stone / JESSICA ROBERTSON

(Note: since the video takes a while to load based on your bandwidth, just hit play, then pause... while the video buffer gets full.)

Shawn Colvin Web Site

Day 100 of visiting 100 blogs in 100 days...

Day 100 of visiting 100 blogs in 100 days... finally takes me to my last blog!
I was looking for a blog that was clear, concise and compelling. So I've settled on Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki. The subtitle: Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do. (Like visiting 100 blogs in (more than) 100 days.

Guy Kawasaki is a legend in the Apple cult, as he was the Apple Evangelist in the eighties.

"When I saw what a Macintosh could do, the clouds parted and the angels started singing. For four years I evangelized Macintosh to software and hardware developers and led the charge against world-wide domination by IBM."

I saw Guy speak at a PalmSource Devloper Conference a couple of years back and his engaging talk centered around what Silicon Valley venture firms were looking for in terms of companies that were attempting to make a case for their startup business plan. That's when I've learned the importance of keeping PowerPoints down to 12 slides - i.e. be clear, concise and compelling, not only in your pitch, but in your software as well.

Guy has some great postings: my favorites include - The Art of Customer Service, The Art of Branding, How to Be a Demo God and How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion. Check them out -

His posts reflect years as a evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist. So here's a blog that just as good as reading a book or sitting down with a mentor. Enjoy!

Purple Haze?

So why does a purple iris remind me of purple haze?



Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'scuse me while I kiss the sky

I suppose I'm awestruck by the iris' beauty.. and the music of Jimi Hendrix.

Apple Music Event 2001-The First Ever iPod Introduction

Here we see Steve Jobs introducing the very first iPod at a low key event in 2001. The rest is history.

Thanks to Kerry Bailey for the upload. Retrospect is good for the (marketing) soul.