"A long December and there's reason to believe that this year will be better than the last."
-- Counting Crows

In 2008, I:
- adopted a son
- started using Twitter
- started a new band with Tom
- bought a house
- sold a house
- paid off my car
- said goodbye to David, at least as a co-worker/boss
- didn't get the promotion I applied for, but...
- got a new boss
- started using an iPod Touch
- set up a home media server with one terabyte of storage
- switched to DSL and satellite TV, dumping Comcast
- bought two televisions, one LCD and one plasma (I had never paid for a television before 2008)
- watched all episodes to date of LOST, Battlestar Galactica, and Dexter (currently working on Heroes)
- bought some new music (I heart Weezer)
- bought some old music (and rediscovered the magic that is Brian Setzer)
- bought a couple DVDs (Cloverfield really kinda sucked, but Charlie Bartlett was cool)
- got a sweet Danelectro vibe pedal
- found a great used tube amp
- really got sucked into Facebook
- became an uncle for the fourth time
- found out my cousins-in-law are having a baby
- helped my wife's sister and her husband move
- went to Fenwick Island, DE
- went to Ocean City, NJ
- went to Austin, TX
- moved to Columbia, PA
- helped with renovations at my church
- started a website about worship issues
- played Warfish... a lot
- drank way too much caffeine, particularly in the form of Diet Cherry Vanilla Doctor Pepper
- got a coupon for a free Doctor Pepper
- found a new pizza shop
- installed Linux a couple times, OS X a bunch of times, and Windows way too many times
- played at the Art & Soul Cafe four times (I think)
- hacked two Linksys routers to enable bridge mode

How about you?

Posted in the section Personal | # |

Wow. That was probably the most satisfying sandwich I've ever had.

Or maybe I should say sandwiches.

click for bigger image

Yes, that was my lunch. A gigantic bacon cheeseburger. And the astute gourmet will notice that instead of a single hamburger bun, we've substituted two grilled cheese sandwiches. We made six of these bad boys today, and almost everybody in my department ate one. I opted for onions, peppers, and pickles on mine as well.

I am stuffed. I think I'll just have a salad for supper.

Posted in the section Stupid Stuff | # |

I'm pretty sure I have mild OCD. Nothing severe. I'm not compulsively drawn to light switches or anything like that, but I do have some personality "quirks" that are getting harder to hide as time goes by. My co-workers have been discovering some of my "issues" and showing absolutely no mercy. So I figured, why not take the bull by the horns and show everyone just how deep the rabbit hole goes?

When I eat sausage or hot dogs, I always cut them into an even number of pieces, which are eaten in twos. I save the end pieces for last. No exceptions, unless eating them in a bun.

I chew gum in pairs. You will rarely see me bum of a stick of gum off of someone because I'd feel like a moocher taking two pieces. Exceptions can be made on airplanes and in cases of very bad breath.

If I step on a sidewalk crack or even a seam in a tile floor with one foot, I strive to get the other foot onto a seam or crack of similar depth as soon as possible. The longer it takes, the smaller the second crack or seam needs to be to even out the sensation, although it never goes away entirely on its own. It has a half-life or something.

My favorite pretzels are Herr's Sourdough Nuggets. I eat them in pairs, one on each side of my mouth, in order to keep the saltiness on my tongue relatively balanced. This requires examining the pretzels as I remove them from the bag in order to pair up nuggets of roughly equal saltiness. Exceptions can be made only in two cases: extreme hunger and lack of beverage, in which case pretzels may be consumed one at a time.

I sort crackers by saltiness before eating them. My daughter has not only started doing the same, but she recently actually solicited my input on how well hers were sorted, because independent verification can be valuable. I'm pleased to say that she sorted them well.

As for colorful candies, like M&M's, well, conjure up a picture in your head, and it's probably spot on.

I get these sugar free wafers at Darrenkamps or Stauffers sometimes. To eat them, I remove the top wafer from two of them and then combine the remains to make a double stuff. Bonus points for when I have a box of chocolate flavored wafers and vanilla flavored wafers, which can be combined into a multi-flavor double stuff. Exceptions can be made when there's a troublesome top that doesn't want to come off, in which case a one-point-five stuff will work.

I count syllables. I count them as I speak or think phrases, and I count them when other people speak. I prefer even numbers of syllables that are multiples of three. Six is good. Eighteen is best. I don't know why. Even though they're odd numbers, five and seventeen are okay. Twelve is good, but not eleven. And no, I will not do it for your entertainment, so don't ask. Yes, I'm doing it anyway, but no, not for you.

I've also recently started, when typing titles, to capitalize articles, prepositions, and other words that should not be capitalized according to the rules of proper grammar. It pains me to do so, because I was an English major and my grammar is otherwise relatively flawless, but I simply can't stand how unbalanced the lower case words look.

If you look at my hand when playing Uno, you'll find that my cards are sorted first by color, then by point value. In other cards games, they're sorted by suit then value. I thought everybody did this until we got the version of Uno where you swap hands with each other. I saw some horrifying things.

Maybe this is why I'm drawn to databases and programming, where traits like this actually come in fairly handy. One thing's for sure: I can't help any of it.

Posted in the section Personal | # |

This is Sybil's new best friend:

Posted in the section Music | # |

Hilarious in a really had to be there kind of way...

Posted in the section Work | # |

So, I haven't mentioned it, but my dear friend David has moved onto greener pastures. At the end of October, he left Etown for Boiling Springs High School, where he now teaches Business and Computer Technologies. As sad as I was to see him go, I'm happy for him. I love David like a brother, and I could see that he hadn't been happy at Etown for a long time. He seems much happier since the move, and I'm glad for that.

Of course, that leaves the good ol' Etown technology department without a director. Well, as you might imagine, I've thrown my hat into that ring. I've been at Etown for more than a decade, and right now, we have the strongest tech team we've ever had (slightly less so since David left, but still). My hope is that I'm chosen to lead that team.

Onto musical issues. As you might have guessed from a previous post, I've started a new band: Superficial Charm. So far it's me on vocals and rhythm guitar, Tom on lead guitar, and my beautiful wife on bass. Astute devotees of traditional rock music will notice the lack of drums, but I'm working on that. My buddy Steve was gracious to jump in and drum for us at our first gig last weekend. Not much else to report yet, but when I have more to say about the band, we'll probably set up a new site.

One final note: my friend Brett and I have started up a new site dedicate to connecting and supporting the worship community in the Lancaster County area. We envision a place where worship leaders and others can connect, share ideas, share resources, and share their lives with each other. We're still getting things off the ground, but we have big plans for the future.

(On a side note, through putting up the Lancaster Area Worship Network site, I fell in love with WordPress again. It's simply magnificent software.)

Posted in the section Work | # |

Something new that Tom and I are doing. My lovely wife will of course be playing bass and Tattoo Steve will be sitting in on drums.


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The Art & Soul Cafe meets in the basement of St. Paul's Church in Mountville, PA. It's a laid back, casual environment where artists and musicians gather to make a cool place to hang out. I've played there a couple times and it's always a good time. Come on out. We have cookies.

Posted in the section Music | # |

If you don't play Risk, you might not see that I'm a jerk, but if you do play Risk, it should be very clear. And yes, I try to do this every time I play.


And here's the movie of the game (still in progress as of this writing).

Posted in the section Personal | # |

Just came across this gem from Sam Rowlands on the REALbasic mailing list: 90% of people think software should be free; the other 10% write the software.

So true. So true.

Posted in the section Technology | # |

I heart The Onion:

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA—Kevin Higgins always hated gym class. Like many of his classmates, he questioned the relevance of things like "exercise" and "physical fitness," and wondered if these skills would ever have any real-world applications. Though he endured more than 720 hours of gym over 12 years, the 38-year-old accounting clerk said Monday that he has still never used physical education once in his life.

Read on for a great article. Brilliant. Classic Onion.

Posted in the section Stupid Stuff | # |