• I Am Legend | Home Alone Mashup

  • Finding stuff, missing stuff

    lost thingsIt seems like every time we move there are a couple items that you find that you think you lost and visa versa. And the one or two things you lose drive you nuts that you’ve lost them.

    For this move the main thing we can’t find is our SD card reader. It’s really not a big deal and it’s only a $5 item to lose, but it’s driving us crazy that we’ve somehow misplaced it. Both Kristen and I know that as soon as we replace it with a new one we’ll find the old one.

    Paul told me yesterday that the main thing he misses from our old house is our couch. When I asked him why he said, “Because I could jump on it. And the new one isn’t comfortable to lay down on.”

    Now that I think about it we’ve not found anything we were missing while in Romeo. It’s more like we keep finding things and thinking “where in the world is this going to go?“

  • Chimps Beat Humans

    If you like geek, you’ll like this.

  • Where are all the Christian single men?

    I was starting to wonder if this was just a Romeo phenomenon. But here’s the deal. For every eligible single Christian man I meet there seem to be 20 eligible women.

    Seriously, Kristen and I talk about this all the time. In Romeo, our church had two bucket loads of intelligent, attractive, active, spiritual, employed, never imprisoned, not desperate, and eligible single women. We would scratch our heads and wonder… what’s going on here? Where are all the dudes? It would seem like a church with that many single women would attract single men but it never seemed to work that way.

    Then we moved to San Diego to discover the same thing! Here’s where I’m going with this. Is it that there are no single men? Or is it that there are single boys who are the age of men? I think the latter.

    Equal numerically

    Having been in youth ministry for a while I can honestly say that it was never disproportionately female in high school. There were always, roughly, the same number of guys as girls. So I know there are Christian men out there.

    And I know that in a church environment, especially a small church environment, men and women who grew up going to the same church look at one another more as siblings than as dateabl. I get that.

    But seriously, where do all of the guys go when they hit 20?

    Put Down the XBox Controller

    This just hit me today. It’s not that there are significantly more Christian single women looking for love. It’s that the guys aren’t looking for love. Think about it… they are there on Sunday mornings… they just aren’t interested in love.

    Here’s my observation, correct me if I’m wrong: A woman is typically looking for a man who will care about her, put her high on the priority list of his life, work hard to buy her nice things, and love to spend time with her. The men I know in that 20-25 year old category… that’s a great description for their video game system. They care about that, the work to buy nice toys, they put game time high on their priority list, and they love to spend time on XBox Live. For some reason guys miss the whole dating things because they long for a life of playing video games and not working… let me tell you guys, this is not a good singles ad.

    SWM addicted to Madden 2009, unemployed and hoping to keep it that way. I shower weekly when my mom reminds me. Looking for knockout super model who loves Jesus and will pay my bills so I can be a pro at Halo 3.

    So here’s a little unsolicited advice to the single men in my life. Pack away the controller. Get a job. Sleep at night. Build your relationship with Jesus. Start thinking about things that aren’t connected to a controller. And you’ll be like super hot to the single women at your church.

    What’s the reward? Well, unlike video games a woman provides lifelong companionship, fulfillment, someone to hold your hand at movies, deep friendship, completeness… and if you are man enough to marry a woman… there are other benefits as well. I’ll let you read Song of Solomon to figure that out.

  • We’re adjusting

    Stoney at the dog beachAs much as our family is still “homesick” we are finding our way around and slowly getting used to life in the new house.

    Yesterday, I left work a little early to help Marko move a couple of things from his house to another YS employees house. It sounds weird, but it reminded me of the types of things I did in Romeo all the time… just friends helping one another.

    After that I got home about 6:15 and could tell everyone was bored out of their skull. Since we only have one car… when daddy goes to work the rest of the family is kind of trapped. Since they don’t know anyone and we’re not in walking distance to stuff anymore… they had just chilled at the house all day.

    So, I proposed taking Stoney to the beach to watch the sunset. I love the beach and I adore the sunsets as the sun fades into the abyss of the Pacific. So we piled into the car and made it to Ocean Beach’s dog beach just in time to see the sunset. Seriously, we only got there with 30 minutes of daylight left.

    Stoney is afraid of the water. I know that’s weird for a Labrador retriever but it’s true. Other than when we were at my mom’s and he jumped in the pool we’ve never seen him swim. I even bought him a kiddie pool for cooling off in Romeo and he would only drink out of it. So taking him to the beach was pretty funny. He loved the sand and he really loved that I could take him off the lead so he could sniff every dog butt in the world. But we couldn’t get him to swim in the ocean.

    ocean beach sunsetWith all the encouragement the most we ever got Stoney to do was get his feet wet. As the waves gently came on shore he would run back to the dry sand and wait for the set to roll away before coming back to Kristen and I.

    We’re thinking that with enough encouragement we can get him to enjoy the water. And since San Diego has 4 dog beaches we are confident this won’t be our last trip to the beach with our trusty dog.

    The best part was… this trip was totally free and everyone had a great time. Megan and Paul got to look for shells and mom and dad were reminded again how much we like living here.

  • YS Podcast #2

    I’m a big fan of this show’s host. He’s handsome and really smart.

    Here’s the official podcast page.

  • My Olympic Rant

    Beijing Olympics

    So the Olympics are over. A little over 2 weeks ago the world watched the fabulous spectacle that was the opening ceremonies. Then for 16 days the nation was captivated while new stars were born and China sold itself to the world as the new mecca.

    At the same time there was a large group of people uncomfortable with the Olympic spectacle. For me, these thoughts ran rampant through my mind as I tried to watch the closing ceremonies:

    – China is not a free nation. No freedom of speech, freedom of press, or freedom of movement. 

    – China is among the worst human rights violators. There is no doubt that thousands of people were rounded up and imprisoned for the games. I don’t think I heard NBC talking about China’s one child policy, did you? False imprisonment? The fact that the United States #1 religion is illegal in China. Did you hear that?

    – China has a labor problem. I couldn’t watch the opening/closing ceremonies without thinking about child labor, slave labor, and human trafficking. 

    – China is not a nation of middle class. There are extreme rich and extreme poor. Watching them drop $40 billion on the games… an injustice.

    NBC OlympicAnd I was disappointed to see NBC be a party to all of this. The story in China is not Michael Phelps or the basketball team, volleyball team, gymnastics success or relay team failure. To see NBC Sports play along and not mention it shows that they are more interested in corporate profits than covering the story. It’s pathetic to me that now, once the games are over, they are talking about how they were censored and how they observed things. 

    The American people needed a chance to see for themselves what is happening. And instead of C-SPAN we got The Disney Channel. 

  • Contest: Name this post

    I don’t have a swanky prize, but since I can’t think of a title for this post I thought I’d ask for you to leave a comment naming this post.

    p.s. If anyone wants to put up a prize, that’d be great! Drop me an email.

  • The Danger of Changes

    change-o-holicWhether it’s a business, a school, or a youth ministry or even a blog there is both fun and danger in change. Some would say that half of the fun of change is the danger.

    Good Catalyst
    Almost all of the change I deal with is neccesitated by the existing way not meeting expectations and/or goals. Somewhere in a meeting the team will decide that a radical change is needed because the existing “thing” just isn’t going to cut it anymore. It’s always a pure thought. It’s always a change for the better. And it’s always a change with the best of intentions.

    The Dark Side of Change

    There are some people lost in every change. For some recipients of the change, your customers or students or youth group kids or blog readers, the change becomes an opportunity to check out.

    In Romeo, a format change to the youth group meant that several students never came back. It wasn’t a judgment of the quality of the program… in the end, our changes just gave them an excuse to not come back.

    At adammclane.com I’ve never recovered all of the RSS subscribers I had when I was on Typepad. I went from 100+ to about 30 and have never gotten back to 100 RSS subscribers.

    Just today a blogger I follow announced he was moving from Blogger to WordPress and I decided this was a good time to stop following him. It’s not that I don’t care for him, it’s simply that I don’t care enough about his blog to both unsubscribe to his content and then go to his new site and re-subscribe.

    On and on this principle continues. A change is made and we accept a certain fallout percentage.

    So here’s the big question: Are those changes worth it?

    In hind site I would have rather kept those 70 subscribers to my blog and those 3-4 families in the youth group than embrace what was changed. Sure, in the process of changing I’ve gained new subscribers and now youth group has several fresh faces… but I’m left wondering if we could have had both if the old way was tweaked and not overhauled.

    No matter what you lead or have the power to change you have to weigh is the change I’m making for the potential of growing exponentially worth the loss of some people who won’t make the transition?

    I can think of many times when the answer to that is a resounding YES. But I can think of a couple where the answer is NO.

    So, fellow change-o-holics: Is change worth it or are there times the biggest risk we can take is to stay the same?

  • Saturday Tunes

    I think things are settling in for us. The house is mostly unpacked with just a few things left to put together and sort out. Yesterday I worked a half day. After work we went to the beach, then dinner at The Corvette Diner in Hillcrest. This morning I’m headed to a test of some content YS is rolling out in Spring 09. Have I said lately I’m the luckiest guy alive? I love my job!

    While I’m off doing all sorts of things today, music is a big part of my day. Here are the next 10 tunes I’m listening to. As always, this shuffle is totally random and ratings included.

    #1 All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band ****

    #2 We Shine by Steve Fee ****

    #3 Sending by Charlie Hall ****

    #4 Bingo by Baby Jamz ****

    #5 Always by Hillsong United ****

    #6 Everything by Lifehouse ****

    #7 The Bridge by Hans Zimmer ****

    #8 Put a Penny in the Slot by Fionn Regan ****

    #9 Tears of the Saints by Leeland ****

    #10 No Matter What It Takes by Jeremy Camp ****

    Not going to lie. This shuffle is lame. I mean, seriously?