Blogging Together

Kristin and I are joinging forces. Wait…What? and Donovanhouse are merging to become … uh … DonovanHouse.  We’ve wanted to share something like this for a while and I finally figured out how to import our respective previous posts into one blog.  It was actually really easy.  I hope to redesign the theme of donovanhouse.com sometime this summer.  We’ll see.

The nature of my posting will stay the same. My thinking is that our readership will benefit from knowing us (Kristin and I) both together.  We are, after all, one flesh.

Anyway – if you link to me here, catch my feed, or just read Wait…What regularly, please change everything over to http://donovanhouse.com.  As soon as someone figures out a way to import wordpress.com comments into a privately hosted wordpress blog, I’ll be deleting this one.

BumpTop

Helping disorganized people stay that way.
This is the craziest/coolest thing I've seen in a while.

After watching this demo I couldn't help but remember the scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise is using fiber-optic gloves to move files around on his screen.

Not having used this software, I can't decide whether I would love it or hate it. I can't help but think I'd always feel like by virtual desktop was just as messy as my real world desktop. On the other hand, it would make me feel a little more connected to the real world – what with working on a computer all day long. I could fling files around with passion and gusto! Or is this the kind of thing that just propells me deeper into a virtual reality, blurring the lines between what is organic and what is an operating system? What do you think of this?

AIR MAX ONE

Nike has recently re-released the Air Max family. I've been shopping for a new pair of running shoes for a while. I was ready to settle for a cheap pair of sneakers when these caught my eye. My dad wore these same shoes when I was a kid. Always a sucker for sentiment, I had to try them on.

I was sharing a bit of my nostalgia with the saleswoman, so she asked a co-worker which year these were originally released. He said, "Eighty-three. Wait – no, ninety-one. They're ninety-ones." I won't get into the details, but I couldn't have been older than eight when I my dad purchased these. Which means they had to have come out before 1988. I wasn't going to contest until I noticed the in-soul of the shoe lists the airmax family and each shoe's respective release year. Mine are from 1987. That's right – I bought'em and I'm lovin'em.

I still didn't contest the year because they defintiely didn't care. However, if you dig this kind of stuff like I do, you can read all about it at nikeid.nike.com. The website lists them at $90, but I got them for $80 at Champs. Don't bother with the Nike outlet stores – I went to two and they didn't have them. Oh yeah – I guess I didn't mention I saw them at Champs about a month ago, decided $90 was too expensive, dreamed about them for a few weeks, looked for a pair of comparable (albeit less expensive) shoes and finally caved when they didn't have the cheapies in my size.  My wife also let me get them as long as I understood I was borrowing against Father's Day.  Thanks Baby!

DropSend

I had to get two really big files to a couple people today. Our FTP has been misbehaving lately, as has our FedEx man. One semi-reliable source witnessed him standing in front of our building yesterday looking for 2929 Carlisle. My witness says he pointed out the GIANT STEEL 2929 on our building, at which point the courier mumbled, "It's after six anyway – I'll just come back tomorrow." Well, I'm on a deadline today and can't risk intermittent servers or incompetent delivery persons.

Enter DropSend. I noticed this link sometime ago as it appears after each of Mr. Oxton's posts. Until today I never had a reason to give it a spin. Here's the lowdown:

1 user
250mb of online storage
Send 5 emails (up to 250mb each) per month
Free.

For right now, this is all I need, but there's plenty plenty more storage if you want to pay for it. Because I generally FTP my larger files, I don't foresee ever needing more than the free account. But if you're interested, check out the specs at http://www.dropsend.com/pricingsignup.php.

I thought about taking a whole bunch of screen shots and providing a little tour. Lucky for you (and me, I guess), they've already posted a tour of the application. I suggest you take it for a spin yourself.

Farting Preacher

Apparently Kristin and I are the last people we know to see this.  I'm posting it here incase any of you are as behind as we are on the youtube surfing.  It's been a while since I've laughed as hard as I did when I watched this. 

Bodies In Motion And At Rest

I've been taking the bus to work lately. Mass transit has afforded me some downtime to read more. I just finished reading Bodies In Motion And At Rest: On Metaphor And Mortality, by Thomas Lynch. Margie Haack recommended the book a year or two ago in her winter edition of Notes From Toad Hall. Nothing quite takes the edge off the day like laughter and tears. To hell with the guy sitting next to you!

A funeral director/poet, Lynch puts forth a wonderously unique perspective on life. As a recovering alcoholic and a recovering catholic, his stories are dolloped with a peculiar irreverance. The following is an exceprt from a short essay with a long title, Notes on "A Note on the Rapture to his True Love." It's an essay on a little writing exercise he developed, the only publishable fruit of which was the aforementioned poem.

As for the TV – we'd only just lately gotten cable in Milford, and I was up nights channel-surfing between infomercials and religious broadcasting, especially Jim and Tammy Bakker, Before the Fall, we might say. I never sent money or touched the TV screen for healing, but to say I was transfixed by the sermons would be an understatement. A word Jim Bakker used over and over was a word I loved but did not understand. Rapture, as the concept by which (either pre-Tribulations or post-Tribulations) the saved among us would disappear, assumed into heaven like the BVM, had never been explained to Catholic children until it was too late to be appreciated. No doubt Jewish children were kept similarly in the dark. The idea that you might be sitting in some five-star eatery, sharing crème brûlée and other intimacies with a woman friend only to have her vanish in the moment and twinkling, leaving only the spoon and the bill to be paid, filled me with the sense of the Glory of God.

Little musings like these make me wonder if Lych is poking fun at himself or me. The tension therein offers one liscence to reflect and even poke fun at those things we take so seriously. Lynch puts it this way:

There is nothing like the sight of a dead human body to assist the living in separating the good days from the bad ones. Of this truth I have some experience. Many’s the day I would awaken in gloom—a darkness left over from a dream or the night’s drinking or a dread of the day I was awakening to. The moments spent before the mirror while tending to my toilet did nothing to lessen the lessons that Time is certainly not on our side, nor does it heal more wounds than it opens. The ever-retreating hairline, the whitening of one’s beard and mustache, the bleeding gums, the basal cell carcinomas, the boils, and blisters and bags under the eyes, the belly gone soft, the withering member, the hemorrhoids and hematomas, the varicosities and local edemas, the puff, the paunch, the wrecked version of one’s former self that presents itself most mornings, are enough to render most sane men suicidal…It was there, in the parlors of the funeral home—my daily stations with the local lately dead—that the darkness would often give way to light.

Dwelling Among the Hedges

A good friend (not pictured) recently shared with me some frustrations he's been experiencing living in his current town. He wants to move back to the city but present circumstances are keeping him and his family where they are. I myself have been fantasizing about buying a house and moving my family out of our apratment complex. Circumstances being what they are and our debt being what it is, it will probably be a couple of years before we buy our first home. Some days I am more at peace with this notion than others.

Occassionally Sometimes on Saturdays I start my morning by reading a passage from Morning & Evening by Charles Spurgeon. He was an artist in the way he drew an entire page of relevant exhortation from some seemingly obscure verse from the Bible. This morning's passage reminded me of my friend who wants to move to the city. Upon further reflection, it eased some of my own discontents. The verse he expounded on was 1 Chronicles 4:23, which reads (in the KJV), "These were the potters, and those that dwealt among plants and hedges: there they dwealt with the king for his work."

The following is an excerpt from Spurgeon's thoughts for the morning:

We, too, may be engaged in the most menial part of the Lord’s work, but it is a great privilege to do anything for "the king"; and therefore we will abide in our calling, hoping that, "although we have lain among the pots, yet shall we be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. (Psalm 68:13)" The text tells us of those who dwelt among plants and hedges, having rough, rustic, hedging and ditching work to do. They may have desired to live in the city, amid its life, society, and refinement, but they kept their appointed places, for they also were doing the king’s work. The place of our habitation is fixed, and we are not to remove from it out of whim and caprice, but seek to serve the Lord in it, by being a blessing to those among whom we reside.
Read the entire passage »

I have been struggling a lot lately with the tension between good stewardship and the pursuit of wealth. Taking care of my family and wanting to be rich are distinctly different ideas. However, the line between them is often blurred in practical life – at least for me it is. It's sometimes difficult to do my best at work "just" to honor God. I get jealous when others receive praise and my effort is ignored. I am more often concerned with losing my job than losing my way. I think this has a lot to do with narrow notions about who my Employer is. Given to shortness of sight, I forget which Home I'm looking forward to.