Tango and Cre are Moving in January

Good news. We are less than 2 weeks away from closing on the sale of our current home and purchasing our new town home. Now does anyone know a reasonably priced painter and moving service?

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Cold? Try a Blanket this Holiday Season

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

When you're a Browns fan, you need to take joy in the little things, like the Steelers missing the playoffs

When you're a Browns fan, you need to take joy in the little things. Today, that joy is in the knowledge that my putrid but beloved Browns (along with the blessing of an unbelievably cold night) completely wrecked the chances of the Steelers to compete for a playoff spot. In celebration, my father took this picture. Enjoy.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
joel

ps - now my hope is that this fluke win does not net Mangidiot a chance to keep his job. That would be an ironic payback by the Steelernation... and just our luck

I found the Muppets on the Internet today

Today, I found out that Muppet Studios has a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account, and has posted a Youtube video that involves the entire gang singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Apparently nearly 10M other people already knew that, but let me be the 10Mth to the party to share with you if you haven't seen already.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Today's interesting Internet video

Props to Dale Brantner for the link. Be amazed by the death metal monk.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Internet Vendor Appreciation Post

Today at CURE International, I've been thrust into the world of Internet tool vendors. Today, I'm creating accounts on Vimeo as a premium video provider, Wufoo as a survey functionality provider, and comparing Mgive and Mobile Cause as text-to-give providers. In most cases, I'm very pleased.

In the process, I found this great video, enjoy.

Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

Let's hear it for focused companies that provide great, well-defined, well-implemented services on the Internet, eh? Let's hope we're all working for one some day.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

It's Monday and there's Simpson's Quotes on the Internet

Thanks to Matt Shandera for a reminder of the transitive property of Simpsons quotes, when you can use a Simpson's quote in a related topic that does not precisely match the same Simpson's circumstance, yet retains its hilarious quotient.

Thus presented, the Frogurt quote. Enjoy.



Happy Monday.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Rainy Days, The House Where Nobody Lives, and Apple

It's been a rainy day in Central PA, and thanks to the magic of generation 1 U2 iPod and the random feature on my VW Golf stereo, I found Tom Waits' Mule Variations. I normally hate days like this - rainy and gloomy - and I wouldn't normally be so transfixed by an album like this one, but today they just fit together in a way that was just a little bit special in an otherwise very usual day. That's one of the great things about carrying your music library in a wallet-sized device - you get to remember that you have music you forgot you love.

Many props to Bryce Flurie who turned me on to Waits and to Dale Brantner who let me burn the album 5+ years ago.

So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don't trade it for silver
Don't trade it for gold
I have all of life's treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house
It's a palace for sure
Without love...
It ain't nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives

- from "The House Where Nobody Lives", Mule Variations, Tom Waits

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Videos vs. Search and a Low-Tech Stumble Upon

At my new gig at CURE International, I was sitting through a 3-hr initial meeting with a PR firm that specializes (among other things) multi-channel marketing and messaging for non-profits called Masterworks. I shared emails with their director of interactive media, went to his Twitter account, and then to their corporate blog when I ran across this fact posted there.



August 2009
# of searches of Google: 9.4 Billion
# of videos viewed on YouTube: 10 Billion

Yup... that's right. YouTube is delivering more VIDEOS than Google is processing searches. Still think buying YouTube was a mistake by Google?

Sounds like a good time to be in the video software market...

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Another Cleveland Video

At least we're not Detriot...



My favorite line: "Our economy's based on Lebron James!"

High props to Ted Brandt who posted this on my facebook Wall. Cheers dude.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

John Riggins Tells It Like He Sees It

Browns fans, don't we need someone speaking up on behalf of the best interest of the franchise, like Riggins is doing for Washington, and NO that person should not be Jim Brown. Let's please pick someone who can put together a few sentences



Sidenote: an obvious, interesting use of new media...

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

The 2009 Cleveland Browns Really Suck

I have lots of things I can blog about and will in the coming weeks. Today, the subject of the day is the Cleveland Browns.



I have been a Browns fan since 1985, and I've been a student of the game and Browns history ever since. I know about the good years - decades before my birth. I have lived through some very bad years. I have faithfully supported my team through thick and thin. Simply put: the 2009 Cleveland Browns are the very WORST Browns team they have ever fielded. Brady Quinn, DA, Eric Mangini, Wimbley, Mr. Lerner, name your Browns employee. Basically everyone but Shaun Rogers needs to go. I deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this.

Today, the Browns made me watch them loose to the Baltimore Ravens again, and it's insulting to all of us.

Like all businesses, the Browns trouble starts at the top with the leadership in the front office. The Rooney family is a model for great NFL ownership. They hire the right people, support the organization, enforce the right culture - a professional and honorable culture, and they draft so stinkin' well.

Until the city of Cleveland demands a level of commitment from the team equal to OUR commitment to the Browns, we'll always be the bottom feeders. People don't make fun of me for being a Browns fan. They just feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for me too.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

The Replacements

Every once in a while, someone has an idea so good, you have to tell people about it. This is one such occasion.



Last Saturday night was our annual fantasy football live draft, held every year in my living room. Our league commissioner is one of my dear friends since college, Kyle Letner. He works for an A/V company as an engineer and always brings a projector along to show the big board on our massive living room wall. Over the years (as is the case throughout this great land), we have come to love Draft Night. It's reaching high holiday status as one of my top-5 favorite nights of the year.

So at the end of the draft - an evening full of laughter and pain as we made good and bad moves, my wife Cre remarks how she wishes we could do it all over again, but maybe this time with the leftover players....

Thus, The Replacements was born

The premise is simple, for a second league, the members of our first league will redraft. But this time, we're taking all the top players off the board: the Lock Outs (ah la 1987), leaving us to draft the replacements - players who are good, but not stellar. So this Monday night, we'll be drafting again in my living room for our second draft minus...

• The Top 10 QB's


• The Top 25 RB's


• The Top 25 WR's


• The Top 10 TE's


• The Top 10 Kickers


• The Top 10 Defenses

...as rated by ESPN's pre-season fantasy board.

I'll report back on how I did and how it went.

Btw, for those interested, my first fantasy team (Onside Kick League) can we seen here, and my Replacements team can we found here.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

The funniest thing I've read in a long time

I needed a laugh and Jason Yakelis provided the following: http://emailsfromcrazypeople.com/2009/08/15/view-obstruction-part-deux/#more-357

You're gonna want to read this.

Because football is coming soon and we miss it

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

MobileAppDev in Zambia

The Messiah College Mobile Application Development project is on the ground in Zambia for its initial field test. You can follow the project at http://blog.mobileappdev.org



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

BetterThanMarmaduke.com

Cre and I just launched a new website. http://betterthanmarmaduke.com.



From the homepage of the website:

This website is based on one core belief: Marmaduke is the worst comic known to man. This is not meant to insult the author; it is merely a fact that must be addressed. It's time comedy was held to a standard. That's why we're here.

Perhaps Marmaduke has the potential to be funny, perhaps not. Our goal here is to find out. So several times a week, we will post the latest Marmaduke with its given caption. You be the judge. If we're wrong, let us know. Otherwise, suggest an alternative. So, to recap:

• Write a caption that makes Marmaduke funny


• Rate the caption of others


• Redeem the idea that funny is something earned

Enjoy,

cre

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Visit Cleveland!

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

You wouldn't take medical advise from Lucky Strike, so...

As is occasionally my pattern, the following post is overtly religious. If you're not interested, don't read further. Feel forewarned.

This is an advertisement...



...and this is an article.



We can see these two things next to each other in a magazine, and when we read them, our brains naturally understand that the difference between the two: what they're purpose is, what they're meant to communicate, how reliable the content is, etc. So you wouldn't take medical advise from a Lucky Strike ad.

Newsflash. The same is true with the Bible. No. You won't find health food articles there, but you will find very different forms of literature. The 66 books that comprise the Christian Bible (or the 39 that compromise the Hebrew Bible) were each written in very different literary styles because they were meant (originally) to communicate in a very contextual way to the people of that day and even to specific audiences.

So ask yourself why someone would ever think it was logical to blankly, blindly, and uniformly read the Bible and assume that the words hold some ethereal truth that exists outside of their context. Does the Bible contain universal truth? Yes, I believe so, BUT that universal truth is God's character, not the specific instructions given by Paul to the church of Thessalonica or even the specific laws handed down by Moses to the Isrealites in 1400 BC. The Bible can teach many things, but it mostly clearly communicates one thing: the character and actions of God in the course of human history. If you believe God was involved in its writing (and I do), then you can believe that if you understand what was written and why, you can know something about the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and maybe get to know Him better.

In a nutshell, that's why I study the Bible, and why I get very angry when I see others who claim to be speaking for God misusing it, picking and choosing which verses apply to people's lives today, completely missing the point, and ultimately misrepresenting God to the people who (I believe) He cares for. The issue is not which words in this book apply me or even to us today and how but what does this writing teach me about God! If you can seek to understand that, THEN you can start to understand how that word applies to God's intention and interest for life.

As I've done that very thing, I've found that it makes all the difference in the world. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he challenged the 1st century church there to engage their faith in this way:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God."

Happy 4th of July, and thanks to Mel for inspiring me to write this.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Bernie Kosar is bankrupt and an 8-year old Joel's childhood dies a little more

The weekend starts on down note as the AP breaks a story that my childhood hero, Bernie Kosar, has had to file for bankruptcy. This sort of thing happens, but I find it particularly noteworthy that it happens to the best player to wear a Brown's uniform in 30 years. The Browns are cursed.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

2 YEARS

Tomorrow, I will have been married to Cre Carbonaro for 2 years and that is a very good thing.



Cheers - cause I'm so very fortunate,
tango

Thank YOU Fail Blog

Feeling down? You could be this guy.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

What was lost is found

True stories of the Internet and the times we live in.


View Larger Map

Monday morning, I woke up in Cincinnati, Ohio after participating in Gheorghe's wedding. Myself, Cre, the guys, and their respective wives piled into a 15-passenger van and drove for home. Around lunch time, we stopped on Route 70 some 45 minutes short of Wheeling, WV for lunch. Having my fill on gas station food, Cre and I decided to grab a quick bite at Denny's. When we arrived our home that evening, I found that my iPhone was missing. I then took the following steps:

1) Cre looked up all Denny's resturants on Route 70 using her iPhone and found the number for the Denny's we were at
2) I called the Denny's. They had my phone. I called my phone to verify.
3) I logged into Fedex.com and scheduled a pickup at the Denny's for Tuesday at a time when the Manager I had spoken to would be on duty.

Tuesday, I got a call from the Denny's and the Fedex guy. He had my phone and was shipping it. All he needed to confirm was my Fedex account number.

Wednesday afternoon, my iPhone was back in my possession, in need of a full re-charging.

So to recap:
Monday: loose phone in Eastern Ohio
Wednesday: have phone back on my doorstep

Lost iPhone + wife's iPhone + Google Maps + Fedex.com = Returned iPhone

Yeah Interweb.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Gheorghe is married

My dear friend George Frank, the former engineer turned pastor, married the love of his life in Cincinnati, Ohio this weekend. We rented a 15-passenger van and drove 10 adults and 2 kids to frontier of the midwest. It was exhausting... and the best thing I've done with my time in a while



Enjoy.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Tango Discovers Recuts

Mel was good enough to introduce me to recuts on YouTube today. This is too great not to take the 1 min 23 seconds to miss.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Cre Gets Her Masters Degree

If you follow my blog, you will know I am married to one Christina (Cre) Carbonaro (-Worrall). You will also know that we have both been attending a local seminary (Evangelical Theological Seminary). We started the same semester in the same class in 2004. Cre received her MAR in Old Testament Theology this weekend.

From Cre Gets Her Masters

Needless to say, we are all very proud of her. She is however making us call her Master for the remainder of the weekend. I don't mind. I would likely do the same.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

ps - many thanks to her two advisors David Dorsey and Laurie Mellinger for their many investments in her education.

Tango's continuing saga towards a Masters in Religion: Jeremiah 22:20-23

For those interested in my carrying-ons at the graduate school level, I just completed my final paper for my course on the book of Jeremiah. My paper topic considered the identification and interpretation of Jeremiah 22:20-23. The text is a 4-verse section in a 3 chapter portion of the scroll that focuses on messages to the kings of Judah in Jeremiah's day. I'm arguing (unfortunately not definitively) that this section of verses should be linked to the previous section (Jeremiah 22:13-19) for dating and audience - at least in it's written form.

http://www.javabrewery.com/joel/papers/Jeremiah_22_20-23.pdf

Exciting stuff, huh?

Well... I enjoy it.

I ended the paper with the following quote from the previous verses. It's Jeremiah's message to the king of that day, Jehoiakim. His father (Josiah) was a good man, but Jehoiakim was a greedy and selfish leader. It's a good word to all of living in a day of plenty:

Does it make you a king
to have more and more cedar?
Did not your father have food and drink?
He did what was right and just,
so all went well with him.
He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?"
declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 22:15-16

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Dan Heinemeier Hanson on Making Money with Software

A novel concept that I hope to crack myself....

Charging Money for Software???

And because I'm thinking about the Rails guys

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Good software is a beautiful thing

I'm trying to configure Entourage to run with our Exchange server. It totally sucks!

I needed a http debugger tool and found Charles. So far, so good. Good software is a beautiful thing.



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Sometimes, we all need a little more cowbell

"Babies, before we're done here, you all be wearing gold-platted diapers!"



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Musings from another week

A few random comments....

I hate Lost recap Shows

Tonight is one of those Lost recap shows. I hate these things. I've been watching every week. Sitting through full seasons of having nothing to show for it except repeated utterances of "what the f***!" I feel like it's letting all those people who haven't paid their dues with the show to "get on board". As a life long Browns fan, the bandwagoning makes me sick.

Investor Presentations and "Roadmaps"
We just got through an investor presentation here at "the Mzinga". It was a really great experience for me personally as well as the whole team. The more we talk about where we're going and what we've got, the more excited I am about the future.

Mashups

Thanks to Trevor for his forward. I present to you Beer Mappings - a mashup project that charting and blogging on breweries all over the world.

Cheers cause 'm so British,
tango

Social Media at Best Buy

Using social tools at Best Buy to engage employees. It's a great demonstration of one use case that my company, Mzinga, is well-positioned to serve. Thanks to Bill Kratzer for the video...


Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in conversation with Peter Hirshberg at Google Zeitgeist from peter hirshberg on Vimeo.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Twitter, Sergey Brin, and living in a Facebook world

First, I have a confession: I now have a Twitter account. For a long time, I've been a serious hater of the service, believing that the main goal of Twitter is to promote small, self-important people by assisting them in gathering an army of even more pathetic sycophants. I still believe that to be one unfortunate use of the service, but there is also something else happening on Twitter with regards to the dissemination of information. At Mzinga, our support team is using it as a kind of public, archived IM to provide both one-on-one assistance and instant FAQ's. And recent events like the Mumbai terrorist attack lead to some interesting questions about Twitter as a kind of broadcast network. There is a lot of noise on Twitter, but there is also a kind of mechanical turk quality (that's a good thing) to it's information sharing. It could be that marriage of Google and Twitter (rumored as being discussed) could be the basis to crystalize it's true value prop - to society or business or wherever it lands. Anyway, what exactly the "it" is that's it's providing I'm not precisely sure of yet, but I'm there observing.

One of the streams I'm following is TechCrunch - primarily for professional purposes. They have an article on their site about Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. Apparently, he started a blog back in the Fall of '08 but after a couple posts (the second of which he revealed something semi-personal about his medical history), he stopped. The article is all about the event, but it got me thinking about the complexity of living in a world where our professional and personal lives find a collision point on Facebook. When is it no longer ok to be yourself on the Internet? Is that a generational issue or is it a reality of public life?

I personally like to believe that the Generation-Y types (of which I have been informed I am apparently not one) will care less about the humanity (read: fallenness or flaws) of public figures and focus more on their performance in their public or professional facets, but that is still to be proved out. They are afterall (for better or worse) the first generation to face the question of whether or not the President of the United States could still be the President after getting caught receiving oral sex in the oval office. Regardless of what one thinks of the man or the event or the rightness or wrongness of it happening where it did, it strikes me as a fairly significant event in the information age.

Anyway, enjoy the read if you click through...



On a religious note, this topic got me wondering if the wisdom literature of the Old Testament has anything to say about this topic. I don't know yet, but rest assured that if it does, I'll report back.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Shout out to Timmy Morgan

As is occasionally the case, Timmy Morgan's posted a new video, which you can watch here:



and for those who haven't seen it previously, my favorite Morgan video yet...



I was thinking about Timmy's impersonation on Gandolf this week



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Musings from a strange week

The past week+ was easily the strangest of my professional life. It was a week that ended in me being named the VP of Engineering for Mzinga. The accompanying are some of the thoughts that have passed through my head this week:

Know your business
Every year, Sam Adams gets everyone in the company to brew beer. The purpose is simple. They make beer, and everyone who works for that company ought to know their core business and how it's produced. We can't expect everyone at Mzinga to write "Hello World", but I do plan to educate the organization on how we make software and why we do it that way.

No Line on the Horizon
I'm fixated on "Magnificent" and "Breathe" this week. Still loving the album...

Truly Transparent Management
Starting Monday AM, the department head conference call is going to be open to all employees at Mzinga to listen in. It's an interesting and radical idea. I don't know if it's going to work, but I really like that we're going to give it a shot.

To be patah
I was doing my homework this weekend and ran into the Hebrew verb patah in Jeremiah 20:7,10. It seems to be used in the context of people who are gullible for (sometimes) malicious intent. But the writings of the prophets is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where Yahweh is the one who "patahs" (Jeremiah 20:7,10, Ezekiel 14:9, and Hosea 2:14). I'm trying to figure out what that means. More on this later.

Roadmaps are BS
As part of my new job, I need to clearly communicate our technology and product roadmap (with my new colleague Jody P - the VP of Products). That is totally appropriate given our roles. That being said, I have always hated goals and plans that project what you will be doing 18 months down the road. It's an illogical concept, as we all know - especially in technology - that your plans today have very little chance of matching up with the requirements of tomorrow. All you can do is build the sort of platform that allows you to meet those needs when they come along. I know we have that, so I'm happy to engage in the exercise of fortune telling.

Boss
Mel won't stop calling me boss. I'm going to throw something at him soon.

It's all about the team
On a similar note, I'm have been and am very, very fortunate to have the team of true professionals surrounding me in Mechanicsburg and Burlington. When I cam back to KP in 2006, I did so with the intention of demonstrating that the people in the Engineering department were the greatest asset of the organization. They continue to demonstrate that day-in and day-out.

More later, but for now...

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

They waylay only themselves!

Proverbs 1:10-19

10 My son, if sinners entice you,
do not give in to them.

11 If they say, "Come along with us;
let's lie in wait for someone's blood,
let's waylay some harmless soul;

12 let's swallow them alive, like the grave,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;

13 we will get all sorts of valuable things
and fill our houses with plunder;

14 throw in your lot with us,
and we will share a common purse"-

15 my son, do not go along with them,
do not set foot on their paths;

16 for their feet rush into sin,
they are swift to shed blood.

17 How useless to spread a net
in full view of all the birds!

18 These men lie in wait for their own blood;
they waylay only themselves!

19 Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain;
it takes away the lives of those who get it.

Verse 15 is bolded as the clear central point of the symmetrical structure of this wise saying.

Verse 17 appears to be mistranslated. It should be something like "birds only see the seed spread on the ground and are trapped in the net". The point is that the birds, like the gangs, only see what can be gained in their unjust and evil act, instead of the trouble that awaits them in pursuing this path.

Cre and I read this tonight before bed. It is strangely poignant.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

1000 ft below Mexico

Well worth a flip through the photo gallery...



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Another Social Networking Blog Commentary

The good...



The bad...



And the ugly...

No Line on the Horizon

If you follow my Blogging Extravaganza, you know that the new U2 album comes out today. The following is my attempt at chronicling the days events.



6:17AM EST - I awake to a text message from Ben Martin. "Did you watch the gap?" - a reference to Letterman. No but it is waiting for me on my DVR

6:19AM EST - I download the album from iTunes. I appreciate the offer to "complete my album" but I'll take another version of "Get on your Boots" to ensure the album can be listened to as one piece of art

6:20AM EST - First time I hear "No Line on the Horizon". I wake Cre with the sounds. She does not seem as pleased as I might be :)

6:27AM EST - I formulate and enunciate my first parody to the album's title track. I am not at liberty to divulge the lyrics, but being as it is early and I am not too clever, it involves my wife and my dog Ezra. Sidenote: I am realizing more everyday that I am very much like Michael Scott. "Lazy Scranton" is only a few steps from where I live.

6:29AM EST - My iPhone is updated.

7:10AM EST - I get the idea to write this blog post.

7:19AM EST - My iPod is updated.

7:45AM EST - I am heading to work. My updates will be infrequent now, as I have a very full day and my employer (Mzinga) rejected my proposal to make March 3rd an official company holiday.

7:55AM EST - On the ride to work, the first three tracks down. I am very pleased already and can tell it will be a good day.

11:20AM EST - The day is dragging me down (as it can tend to do), but I remember that it is release day and feel better that lunch is coming. People in the office have remarked that I seem in a good mood. I smile knowingly.

12:25PM EST - I respond to an email from Dale in Santo Domingo. He can't download the album, but the weather is good. I am both jealous of him and sad for him. Waiting can indeed be the hardest part (that's what...)

1:02PM EST - Make it through tracks "Unknown Caller", "I'll Go Crazy", and "Get on Your Boots". Let me in the sound indeed.

1:47PM EST - My day is getting even better, as my grad school course schedule for Summer and Fall is published today. Apparently, I will be taking Hebrew this summer!

4:27PM EST - I have told no less than 20 people that today is the release day. (Would that I become so enthusiastic regarding issues that really matter)

6:27PM EST - I get home with no wife and no dog to greet me. I'm going to make dinner. With the choice before me of whether or not to finish the album or restart it and blast my kitchen with sweet Moroccan-influenced rhythms, I restart and "rock out" as much as a bald white man might. I am reminded of good nights on the roof of a Tunisian beach bar with the wind blowing and good tunes in the streets.

8:43PM EST - It is the rare cat these days who genuinely enjoys most everything an artist produces, but I do with U2. Some would call that sheepish weakness to do so. I choose to consider it one of my pure, unadulterated pleasures - free from the judgment and ultra-criticism that plagues and drives the rest of my life. I like Unforgetable Fire. I like Zooropa. I like Pop and use it as my workout album. I will probably grow to really like this album. I'm thankful to enjoy something without the "but".

9:46PM EST - After sitting through a TiVO'ed edition of American Idol (I do like Simon - big surprise there), I see the boys on Letterman and hear "Breathe" for the first time. I then listen to the last few tracks on my laptop. I wonder what it might be to be like loose electricity.

10:10PM EST - Listen to a few tracks again and look up my first lyrics page.

My thoughts (an initital review if one might be so bold to say):

- The first 3 tracks are very good and appropriately innovative
- Track 3 feels like an alter call - a modern "Just as I Am"
- It might be my orientation, but they seem to be getting more overtly spiritual the older they get... and not Joel Olstein "spiritual"... I'm thankful for that
- In general, I like it very much and I have a sense that I will like it even more in the coming days. When I first heard Atomic Bomb, I eventually determined that I loved everything except "Love & Peace". After I heard that song in concert, I decided that was very good as well. It's a good bet to expect similar results here.

10:35PM EST - I consider not publishing this. Against my better judgment, well... you see.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Stupid Smarch Weather

It snowed again today...



On the brighter side, summer comin' is just around the corner.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Another U2-related Post

Only one more until the new album (an album cover) finds its way into my everyday life.

Much thanks to my dear friend Ben Martin for this clip from the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Jeremiah and Social Media

Last night, Cre and I were sitting through the third week of our class on Jeremiah at Evangelical Theological Seminary with our professor, Dave Dorsey. At the break, I was surfing the web and Googled "Jeremiah". The following wikipedia article was on the top on the search results. Read the subsection on "Rabbinic Literature".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah#Rabbinic_literature

A perfect example of why teachers can't let kids use wikipedia as a source :)



...so you know you're getting the best possible information.

Whoa to you Internet indeed.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

New U2 Video

The album comes out in a couple weeks. Needless to say, I am excited.

Get on Your Boots.

Let me in the sound indeed.

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Jackson Pollack

I saw this photo on the Google homepage today and thought fondly back to the first time I saw a Pollack painting. A dear friend of mine who's an artist himself took me to NYC, and I went to "the Met" for the first time. Cre and I went back there over Christmas this year.



It's good to see beautiful things, and good to remember the past.

Also, check out this really engaging website: http://www.jacksonpollock.org

Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango

Porpoise Driven Life

... loving the jab at the lying snake that is commonly known as Joel Olstein (read Jeremiah).

Cheers 'cause I'm so British,
tango

Eric Mangini's Best Move Ever

As we all know now, Eric Mangini is the Browns new head coach. Here's hoping this syncing feeling in my gut is gas. On the upside, watch the Sopranos...



Cheers - cause I'm so British,
tango