Life Thoughts

I forgot to mention in the list of gifts the iPod Shuffle that came the other day. We signed up for a credit card a while ago that offered a free Shuffle if a certain dollar amount was spent. Realizing that we spend more than that, and after checking out the deal to make sure there were no strings attached, we got the card, spent the money, sent in the coupon, and a few weeks later it showed up.

It really is amazing. So small and so light. I decided to just put a mix of music on it that I didn't really care what order it played in, since it's too much of a pain to keep track of what has and hasn't played. The sound quality seems to be great, and it's quite intuitive to use (like many Apple products, the Mac geek in me must add.)

If you're looking for a fairly cheap MP3 player, and you don't need to have a screen, then Shuffle just might be the player for you. Check it out at Apple - iPod Shuffle.

Just thought I'd give a little update on our Christmas weekend this year.

After work on Thursday, we packed up and headed over to Danielle's parents' to spend a couple days with them. We mostly just hung out, played video games, watched movies and ate and ate. On Saturday (Christmas Eve), we opened gifts with Danielle's family, and then we went to her Grandparents' to celebrate Christmas with her mom's side of the family. We had a great dinner there and also had a funny (and confusing) gift exchange.

After the gift exchange, we headed back home to participate in the CNC Christmas Eve service. The service was great, and afterwards we headed to my parents' for our traditional Christmas Eve pizza dinner. After dinner we read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (or something to that effect). If you've never read this book, I suggest you give it a read. It's pretty short, but it will keep you laughing the whole way through, and it will remind you of the true meaning of Christmas in the end.

Once things were done at my parents', we headed to our house (actually my Grandparents' house) and opened our gifts from each other. Danielle got me lots of great nerd books (The Search by John Batelle and two collections of Get Fuzzy comics). She also got me a couple of Google shirts that were great. We also got Scene It Squabble and Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture 2. She also got me a really cool 1 GB USB flash drive. It was pretty much a nerd Christmas all around.

Sunday morning we got up early and opened gifts with my parents. I think they really liked the engraved door knocker we got for them this year. We figured after two years of getting throws, we should try something different.

At 10 we went to the church to practice for the morning service. We had a short service, then went to eat lunch with my parents. After lunch, we came back to Danielle's parents' and had a great dinner with her Dad's side of the family.
Today we're going to go watch King Kong so we can see for ourselves whether or not it's terrible.

I'm most grateful this year for having my family around me. All the Christmas presents in the world could never compare to that fact. God has been very good to our family this year, and He continues to see us through some hard times we're all facing. I'm grateful for His presence in our lives and for the different directions I know He will take us this upcoming year.

I hope that all of your upcoming years are truly blessed by Him, and if you don't know him this Christmas, what better time to start?

For those of you who play XBOX Live (particularly Halo 2), this post might be of some interest. However, if you don't, disregard this post :)

When you sign up for an account on Bungie, you have to create an MSN Passport account. Fair enough. So you create your account, then you can log in to Bungie. After you log in, you can link your MSN Passport account to your XBOX Live gamertag, which is cool. This lets you view all of your stats., friends, etc. When you're logged in to Bungie. The system works pretty flawlessly.

The problem happens when you do something like I did. I cancelled my old Live account, because I really wasn't playing it anymore. A couple of weeks ago I decided to create a new account. I naturally wanted this new gamertag linked to my previous Passport. No can do. I couldn't find a way to do that at all. On Bungie's site, they pretty much tell you you're out of luck if you want to unlink a passport account and a gamertag.

After a lot of work and searching, I finally found a way to solve the problem. I had to delete my old Passport account, recreate the exact same account, and then link that new account to my Live gamertag. Seems like an awful lot of hassle to do something that should really be quite simple.

Such is life when you deal with Microsoft some times. I must admit, I'm not a Microsoft fan, but after using their products for a little over 3 months everyday, they do make some cool stuff. So kudos to them on that point.

I've been listening a lot lately over the Christmas vs. Happy Holidays/Seasons Greetings debate going on in the media in general. I think the whole thing is really dumb. The holiday is Christmas. Not the winter holiday. Not the special time at the end of the year. Not the anything else you want to call it besides Christmas. The name is Christmas. Period.

I've heard people say, "we want to be sensitive to people of other religions/no religion at all." Well, I'm not offended that Jewish people want to call their Holiday Hanukkah. I'm also not offended that Muslims want to call their holiday Ramadan. Go ahead, call your particular holiday you want to celebrate whatever you want to call it. That's fine with me, but don't change the name of mine. Remember that whole freedom of religion thing? I'll call my holiday what I want to call, and you call your holiday what you want to call it, and let's just all get along.

As much as people don't want to admit it, Christianity as we know it is under attack in our country. Maybe not in outright explicit attacks but under attack nonetheless. We are told we have to be more "tolerant", which is actually code for accepting everything under the sun and not saying anything about it for fear of being labeled a hater. And yes, I have actually read and heard of someone labeling a preacher a hater. I believe I read it in Newsweeek magazine this last week. There was a time when I thought this sort of thing was just fantasy, but now it's starting to become a reality. Everyone is free to do what they want to do, but Christians are supposed to accept all sorts of lewdness and alternative lifestyles, and if they don't, they're labeled a bigot. When in reality, they are just standing up for the morals they believe in.

I'm not sure what our world is coming to sometimes, but the direction it's headed in doesn't seem to be the best. Why don't we all just take a moment, or a few, this Christmas to stop and think about what really matters in life. To remember WHO the reason for the season is - Jesus Christ. The Child who came from Heaven so that we could be made whole, connected to God, for eternity. All we have to do is accept the greatest Christmas present ever. Think about it...

So, I've heard of Google AdSense, and I thought, "what better way to earn $$$ towards an XBOX 360." So, I'm gonna try it out and see how it goes. Enjoy!