Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at January 26th, 2008

There’s apparently a website called “Ship of Fools” which looks at Christianity with a perspective that’s both critical and irreverent at the same time (to my mind this is a good thing).

One of the features is something called “The Mystery Worshiper” in which someone reviews a church. During the summer, someone apparently reviewed Church of the Servant, the church I go to.

In the recent past, they apparently also reviewed Mars Hill Bible Church, a locally prominent congregation.

Posted by Jim at November 10th, 2007

1. Ron Paul: There’s no chance in hell I’ll vote for the guy.
2. Atheism: Not an atheist. Just don’t care.
3. Why Bush is Stupid and Evil: I disagree with his administration on Iraq, torture/waterboarding, and various domestic issues. Do I have to hate him too?
4. Yet More Examples of Why Iraq is a Horrible Mistake: I agree. Why wallow in it?
5. Tasers/Cops are Fascists: There are good cops and bad cops. Good cops don’t make the news.
6. Reasons Why Religion is Stupid: I’m religious. I guess I’m too dumb to understand these articles.
7. Reasons Why the Economy will Tank Soon/Environmental Disasters/Other Scary but Unlikely Events: I’m interested in potential problems, but an awful lot of these articles make it sound as if everyone will die tomorrow. In short, too much hype repels me.

Posted by Jim at January 27th, 2007

It looks like I’ll be moving over to Wordpress as my blogging software in the relatively near future. Those of you who read the blog through RSS feeds probably won’t notice (the feeds will be redirected). Those of you who actually look at the site will probably notice that the design will morph into the default Wordpress template until I find a template I like.

Why the change from MoveableType to Wordpress?

Mostly I’ve been told that Wordpress has less problems with comment spam. Outside of that I’ve been happy with MoveableType.

Posted by Jim at December 28th, 2006

As you may have noticed, I’ve been averaging about a blog post a week over the last couple weeks. That shows what holidays can do. Seeing family and friends takes away time you might use to do really important things.

Just in case you’re not catching my tone over the internet, that last comment was a joke. Ha-ha.

OK. So anyway, I got an email from Ed a few days ago that pointed out that the Star Wars Holiday Special (a piece so awful that Lucas has done his best to destroy all copies) is now available online.

The same blog that broke that news also pointed to a music video that is far, far funnier (not to mention stranger) in my opinion. It’s apparently a video made by a Scandinavian disco musician who attempted to immortalize the Apache tribe in song.

Words cannot describe it.

Posted by Jim at June 28th, 2006

Kristen’s been ordering coffee over the internet lately. From Gevalia. She ordered it because she got a free coffee maker with her first order of coffee. She’s continued to order it and that’s okay. It is good coffee.

An amusing side effect of ordering it over the internet is that they give you the UPS tracking number. Thus, I get frequent updates as to where in the United States the coffee is.

Thus, Kristen comes home for lunch, gets on the computer, checks her email. “Jim, the coffee’s in Tennessee.’ Nine hours later she’s online again, “Jim, the coffee’s in Illinois.”

We will apparently run out of coffee soon. I don’t drink much of it myself, but I’m getting the impression that running out would be a very bad thing.

Posted by Jim at June 26th, 2006

So anyway, today’s my birthday. Not that this is of massive significance, but it is true. My wife and I went out to eat tonight, came home, paid the babysitter, and went about putting kids to bed. While I was giving them a bath, my wife came upstairs (she’d been starting the laundry), telling me that I probably ought to go read Local Area Watch. The author had responded to my post.

That struck me as kind of bizarre since there wasn’t really much to respond to. It was, after all, three lines.

Regular readers of this blog will note that I spend a certain amount of time on some posts and then pretty much toss off others. This was in the latter category.

See, I could have said, “Local Area Watch: A local blog following corruption in local business and politics.” Or, I could have said, “Local Area Watch: A blog about local politics. We need more blogs like it from all sides of the political spectrum.”

What I did say was, “Local Area Watch: …seems to be a blog devoted to reporting on things the author doesn’t like about various organizations and individuals in Grand Rapids.” Though it wasn’t supposed to, it sounds dismissive of the whole enterprise.

Ironically, the blog post in question was supposed to make people aware of local web sites that take on big issues in the community–as opposed to my blog which typically takes on such burning issues as cat drool and poor martial arts techniques found in old movies.

So anyway, I am reminded again that people actually read this thing. I’ll have to edit myself better in the future.

Posted by Jim at June 10th, 2006

Comment spam is pretty much unbearable. I don’t mind deleting the occasional piece but last night I got 67–and that was only during the night.

Previously, I’d set MoveableType’s spam filter to a higher level, but unfortunately, I found that spam appears to be indistinguishable from normal comments. As such, I found all six comments on my entry about 6/6/06 in the “Junk” folder. In response, I lowered my spam threshold a little lower. Thus 67 comments about viagra and hair care. And gay porn. One can’t forget the gay porn.

So anyway, I’m moving the spam threshold back up again. I promise to check the junk folder regularly and if your comment fails to appear, my apologies, it’s not personal.

P.S. I’m open to any configuration suggestions you might have.

Posted by Jim at April 10th, 2006

Wondering what the opening theme to Chips sounded like? Only vaguely remember the other characters that appeared in McDonald’s commercials?

Check out Retrojunk.

Also, The Muppet Show.

Also, Pinky and the Brain.

Last, but not least, Knight Rider.

Posted by Jim at January 31st, 2006

You’ll pardon me if I engage in a bit of navel gazing for the moment. Here are a few actual search strings that led to my blog yesterday…

i have a scream speech (Still… and despite the fact that Howard Dean gave that speech a while ago)

grand rapids prostitutes (No clue how they got me through that)
men pudding wrestling (Eek.)

Posted by Jim at December 25th, 2005

My brother grew up knowing Jeff Bates (Hemos) and Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) of Slashdot.

From what I understand, it may have been Derek that introduced Jeff Bates and indirectly Rob to the idea of modems and computer BBS’s. I was talking with him during Christmas and it turned out that he specifically remembered explaining what a modem was to Jeff Bates.

And why did Derek know? He knew because I’d bought a 300 baud modem for my Commodore 64 with birthday money when I was in high school. And why did I have a Commodore 64? Because I’d been over to Ed’s house a lot, thought his Commodore 64 (with an unbelievably fast 1200 baud modem), was pretty cool and had saved up money from picking blueberries one summer to buy my own.

Strange how tenuous a series of events it is.

Before people come to the conclusion that I’m in tight with Rob and Jeff Bates, I should mention a couple things. First, I wouldn’t know them if I saw them on the street. Second, I didn’t speak with them much even then. I’m pretty sure I dropped Jeff off at his house a couple times and I’m sure I saw their posts on boards that I frequented, but I’m pretty sure I also ignored them because they were seven years younger than I am.

Funny, eh?