Feed The Hunger

I helped a couple of times with Youthfront's Feed The Hunger initiative. I am proud of Youthfront for helping students serve the needy by packaging meals. This program has been in place at camp since last year, because today's students are not only interested in having a "fun time", but they want to express their faith in real ways.

When the Haiti earthquake occurred, Youthfront used their experience with this to invite students and families to Youthfront auditorium to package meals for Haiti.

The first time I went, I moved around 40 pound bags of rice and soy for a few hours.





The second time, we came with mom and dad and packaged a bunch of meals. How it works is you bring money to pay for the supplies, which Youthfront already purchased in advance, and you package the meals.









Courtney works for Youthfront and helped several times with registration.

Restaurant Review: Genghis Grill

This is downtown in the new P&L district. It is basically the same thing as all of the other brands of Mongolian grills around town. I wonder if they are all owned by the same people. You get a bowl. Fill it with your choice of meat, veggies, sauces, etc. You can follow some printed guides if you don't know what you want. And you give it to the cook who grills everything. And then they take it to your table. And you still tip a waiter.

My first and only previous experience with a Mongolian grill was a long time ago for a coworker lunch. (I'm writing this for my S1 readers) We had Dan T, Scott W, Rachel, Abby and me. It's interesting - I remember very specific things that were discussed, and where we were sitting, etc. It's kind of crazy to think of how much changed soon after that. Eventually only me and Dan T were left from that group, and we didn't replace any of the other people. A few other people came on (Jim, Brian, Benee), but didn't fill exactly the same roles as the people who left. That means that I took on a lot of the work of three other people! I like how my restaurant reviews allow me to go on tangents.

Best of 2008: Pictures

Best pictures we took in 2008.

Paul and Martha's dog, Shelby



This one of the "STAR team" is one of the first pictures taken with our camera.



Meeting Miles in September


Not sure how Courtney did this one, but it's cool

Best of 2009: Videos

I have documented my favorite videos for the first time in 2009. Now, I've tried to pick out the best. These 3 are the best. It's kind of tough to put them in order.

1. Her Morning Elegance




2. Distraxion





3. Kittens

Movie Review: Murder on the Orient Express

This was not an Oscar winner, but it was recommended by Kenny, Courtney's father.

It doesn't matter whether it's a book or TV show or movie, I can never guess who did it in a murder mystery.

This one is by Agatha Christie, the legendary author from England. She rarely gave permission to make her books into movies, but for whatever reason was positively inclined in this case.

I really enjoyed the movie, not gonna lie. It is stacked with "stars", supposedly, really the only household names were Sean Connery and Ingrid Bergman. And from my movie watching in general, I have also heard of Albert Finney and Anthony Perkins and John Gielgud and Jacqueline Bisset

Book Review: Cosmos

It's been 9 days since a post, I figure I should write one. We were on vacation.
Plus, my life has changed, and I am focused less on "get things done" mode. I feel more freedom to do what I want. Our lives upcoming will probably 90% reacting to needs that have to get done. But for now I still do have some discretion. I am getting very close to taking my SQL Server Administration certification exam, and after that I will feel better!

Anyway, I don't have the time to do this book justice. But we came across Cosmos on sale in the book store, which is at first glance a collections of pictures of outer space. But on second glance, there is a lot of text that accompanies the pictures. On third glance, this text is very scientific and difficult to read. But I tried to read it all.

The book is also like two feet tall, so it was difficult to read...physically.


This book challenged my views of creation. Because due to the way the universe is set up, objects in the universe appear to be really old. And this doesn't match a 6 Earth day creation. Sure, God could make things look old that are really new. But for me a more acceptable answer, is "I don't really know". To me it doesn't matter, and we shouldn't let faith get in the way of honest scientific discovery. Now, I believe scientists are also in the wrong, because they can be closed minded toward Creation. They do not want to admit that science will not have all of the answers.

And that is what I gathered from this book....there have been amazing discoveries, but there are more questions than answers. I am very impressed at the science of outer space. There have been many geniuses in our past that paved the way toward understanding the universe. And now we can send probes out to Pluto, and sending people into space is old news.

The most mind boggling thing is the size of the universe. There are billions of suns like ours. And billions of galaxies. There is no way for me to comprehend it, other than considering it as infinity.

The book has a lot of sweet pictures that I'll show my son or daughter.

PS Hey I've come a long way....for 9th grade science class I wrote that snakes only existed because God cursed a salamander and then it no longer had arms and legs. Shoot. Now, I am willing to venture that a snake is a literary tool to describe the way sin entered the world... There are many questions, and we need to have courage to admit that.

Book Review: Becoming a Dud

This book started out funny and relevant, and toward the middle it was becoming a dud, then it got okay at the end again.

Toward the middle, the authors, who are professional Christian counselors, decide to do a brain dump on everyone about their philosophy of life. And although it existentially had to do with becoming a father, it was a little too deep for what I need right now. I am ready for some practical stuff.

The main premise of the book is that fatherhood is a wild, exciting journey, full of joy and heartbreak. We need to be prepared to be connected with God, and enter into the risk that is inherent with being a dad, not with our own confidence, but that which comes from Him. See what I mean about wanting some practical stuff.

I really want to be there for my child, and get to know him/her. I don't want to lash out at them, but want to understand them. All you parents out there are like ha, ha, good luck understanding a 2 year old. But I'm just talking about a general attitude, one that is not confrontational, but more relational. I need to be prepared that they may like stuff that I care nothing about, and I need to enter into their life and encourage and affirm them. And I will not claim to have it all together, or force my family to think they have it together.

PS If you want a copy of Becoming a Dad, it's $4 at Mardel!

Best of 2009: Movies

Here are the 10 best movies I saw for the first time in 2009.

#1
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)



The only movie we saw in 2009 that was either 1. rented with money, or 2. viewed out of town with someone else. Although I found it to be a very frustrating movie, plot-wise, I can't deny that it is really the greatest movie I saw for the first time in 2009.


#2
Ordinary People (1980)
Pretty much an amazing movie. It is not the type of movie I typically like (family strife, etc), but I really enjoyed it.




#3
Chariots of Fire (1981)

A true story about guys training to sprint in the Olympics and overcoming life obstacles during the process.





#4
Annie Hall (1977)

It's a funny movie, and creative in the way it was written.






#5
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)



Despite being a little dated from the special effects standpoint, Close Encounters is entertaining and interesting.



#6
Gandhi (1982)
Gandhi the movie is educational and inspirational, and even though it is around 3 hours long, it kept my attention the entire time, and doesn't drag.


#7
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

There are some good tunes in Fiddler, and good characters, and a message that makes you think about tolerance and change.


#8
The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Although I didn't care for the acting that much, I guess I still like a good old fashioned action movie.





#9
Bullitt (1968)
A good detective/action/mysterious movie.





#10
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Even though family/courtroom dramas are not my favorite, I can still call this a good work of art.

Restaurant Review: Stone Canyon Pizza

This is in Parkville, MO. What brings us up there, you ask? Two things. Gluten free pizza and Devin's magic.

The gluten free pizza greatly competes with Waldo Pizza in both price and taste. And Devin did a few magic tricks for us.

It was New Years Day, and it was a slow night, so Devin was able to hang out with us a bit.



We also hung out with our Indian friends that day.

Movie Review: Young Frankenstein

A parody of previous Frankenstein movies that I assume were easy to make fun of. I haven't seen the old Frankenstein movies, so I have to take this one by itself.

Several of the characters are funny, and lots of funny things happen. Some stuff is "inappropriate".

Gene Hackman makes an appearance as "Blind man"

Memorable things - I'll take a chance that someone has seen it.

"It's Fron-kon-steen"
"Elevate me. Right here, right now?"
"What hump?"
"Behind ze bookcase."
"Yes! Yes! Say it! He was my BOYFRIEND!"
"You know, I'll never forget my old dad. When these things would happen to him... the things he'd say to me. "
"What knockers"
"Could be worse. How? It could be raining"
"Abby. Abby Who? Abby Normal."
"You haven't even touched your food. There. Now I've touched it. Happy?"
"SEDA-GIVE? "

SQL Server 2008 Administration, by Ross Mistry

This book is more of a reference book than a teaching book, but that didn't keep me from reading it! My company paid for it so that I could study for my certification exam coming up.

SQL Server 2008 has a lot of sweet features.

• Resource Governor. Create limits for the amount of CPU that user connections can use.
• Policy Based Management - set constraints on "Facets", such as names of objects. This would have been useful when I was obsessed about prefixes on tables at my last job!
• High availability options, which were also on SQL Server 2005!
  Clustering - On failure, the server automatically fails over to a different server. The disk space is shared between the two servers, and a virtual server manages the name of the server.
  Mirroring - Each database transaction is also sent to a different server to be recorded to its database as well. A high safety mode can be enabled, where the first database can't commit any additional transactions until the second one has reported back with success
  Log Shipping - similar to Mirroring, except the transactions are sent in chunks (called logs) at scheduled times.
  Replication - a publisher sends updates on objects to subscribers

Some very nice things about the book are the "What's New with SQL Server 2008" at the beginning of every chapter, and the bullet point summary at the end of every chapter.

It will be good to have this book around as a reference.

Movie Review: Invictus (2009)

In a rare occasion, we saw a movie in the theater. The last one we saw was Prince Caspian on June 19, 2008. So if I had SQL open, I could do my datediff function to see the number of days we went between theater visits. But roughly that's about a year and a half.

Haven't missed it that much. The theater was nearly empty, but a perfumed lady sat down two seats away from us. But we got used to the smell or it was just an initial waft.

Anyway, Invictus appealed to us because two of our pastors are from South Africa, and this movie is situated in South Africa. It is about Nelson Mandela and his efforts concerning the rugby team after his election to the Presidency. To the many Black people, the official rugby team was a symbol of apartheid, and wanted to dismantle it. But Mandela convinced them to keep the team around. And they ended up winning against all odds, and both races of South Africans were unusually united around the event. So the point is that Mandela saw something that many others didn't. The movie portrays Mandela as really distracted while doing official duties, because he was so concerned about the rugby team.



Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon plays the captain of the rugby team. I didn't think Damon was great for the role, but they obviously wanted two stars in the movie, so that is ok. It was directed by Clint Eastwood.

I thought it was a nice movie to see, but not a must see.

blogging?

With the new year, I haven't been able to document the 3 movies I've watched, and other things I've been doing. The new year might be a good opportunity to turn my blog into something different. But I don't know what.

Happy Birthday Courtney!

In honor of Courtney's 29th birthday, here are some January/winter pics

Late 2002 (SBU graduation)


Late 2004 (in Israel)


2006


2007




2008



2009

Best of December 2009

Pic of the month: This frosty picture is on our desktop, and it islike we are looking through a window.

Best Movie That I Saw for the First Time: Gandhi

Best Book I Read: TrueFaced

Best online video I watched for the First time: The Jesus Christ Lizard

Happy New Year!

I really enjoyed my New Years weekend. Mostly because we paid someone to take care of a few home renovations . I didn't have them "hanging over my head", figuratively or literally. So we went out and did things that people tell us to "do before you have kids", such as eating out and seeing a movie in the theater.

We saw Invictus. We didn't see a movie in the theater all of 2008. But we are poised to see at least two in 2009, as we are planning to see Avatar in 3D.



We ate at Stone Canyon pizza in Parkville, MO, and saw Devin do some magic there.


And we hung out with my friends from India. Continuing my grandparents legacy of being friends with international students, (but not for that reason, I haven't even talked to them about it - I just wanted to help people in need), I became a partner with ISI (International Students Inc). These guys are the most fun people from India imaginable, it seems. They also bought us a toy for our baby coming up. I will post a picture of all of us.

Non-feature film review: Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart.

I have heard of Bela Fleck, my bro-in-law is a big fan of his jazz/folk band. It's hard to categorize the music, but it's good. So I picked up this DVD at the library.

Bela Fleck, a banjo player, goes to Africa to bring the banjo back to its roots. It is commonly only seen by Americans as a Southern bluegrass instrument. And I admit that is how I've viewed it as well.

This film features many African musicians and native instruments. Also, this will sound obvious, but the music is very non-Western. My ear is not trained to be able to follow the melody or harmony of the songs. But of course Bela Fleck was able to improvise and play great music on top of the traditional tunes.

I think it's pretty interesting overall, and it's educational, and it's not too long.

Here is the web site for the documentary: http://www.throwdownyourheart.com

Movie Review: Terms of Endearment (1983)

This won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1983!

Funny story - I make it my policy to not read anything about the Best Picture winner that I'm about to see. This includes the back cover or anything on the Internet. So the cover shows a picture of two women smiling. I said I was in the mood for a light-hearted movie, and it seemed to fit the description.
And it kind of started out that way. It set the stage by introducing two stubborn women, mother (Shirley MacLaine) and daughter (Debra Winger). Then there is a lot of family angst, with the daughter having children, and then moving away from her mother in Texas to Des Moines, Iowa. The husband (Jeff Daniels!) starts cheating on his wife even when they have 3 kids, and then the wife starts cheating on the husband with a guy who would later be on the TV show Third Rock from the Sun. Meanwhile, the mother is attracted to a wild next door neighbor (Jack Nicholson!) who is a former cosmonaut. The story with the mother and neighbor is really fun, and is the best part of the movie for me. I was smiling quite widely and laughed out loud.

But I never really got into the story of the daughter, maybe not identifying with her very well, so it was not really a tear jerker for me at the end, which everyone else seems to think it should be. And since this was a huge part of the 2.5 hour movie, that is why I felt like I was enduring the movie at some spots.

But overall it's a compelling movie. If you are a fan of these actors that I mentioned, you should see it.

Restaurant Review: Sweet Tomatoes

Sweet Tomatoes is a salad bar restaurant about a mile from my new workplace. So Courtney wanted to go there with me. And we went.

I was not too happy about paying $8+ for a salad bar, because I knew that the higher price was due to all of the breads and glutenous desserts that are made available. However, it was the freshest and tastiest salad I've had. So I would go again.

The clientele was made up of many middle aged women that I imagined were taking a break from Christmas shopping, but also some professionals from the area like myself. It was pretty well decorated - the carpet was a red tomatoes design, which Courtney said must be especially made for the restaurant, since no one else would want carpet with tomatoes on them.

We left a small tip as well since they had a person very actively taking the dishes and trays.

I felt that the salad bar was lacking in the fruit area. The only fruit there was freshly cut pineapple. So I'm not sure I understand that.

Restaurant Review: Macaroni Grill

My company took my department out to lunch, and it was about 20 people. I find it pretty funny that my new company is only slightly bigger than my last one. I love small companies! My company is really a combination of two companies, so if you add them in, and then you add the administrative and management, and you have a total of around 50 employees. My previous company has ranged from 15-35.

Anyway, they took us to Macaroni Grill, which is one of the nicest restaurants I've been to in a while. They brought me a nutritional facts booklet, but the gluten free sheet had no entrees on it. It was really weird. It listed the salad dressings and side salads, and ice cream basically. That is pretty annoying. I actually have a coworker that also doesn't eat wheat, and he recommended the Simple Salmon. It was decent.

I drank about three glasses of lemonade, which was really good. The service was great. The restaurant was packed, but the food still came out decently on time and was warm.

I had previously gone there on my first ever "date", when a girl asked me to WPA (Women Pay All) Dance during my freshman year of high school. That evening was also my first kiss, which was on the cheek as I was dropped off at my house. After a couple years of WPA's I got the courage to ask someone out to Homecoming dance on my junior year.

An interesting side note is that I'm Facebook friends with almost every possible date or love interest I have ever had.

This has been the strangest restaurant review ever, hasn't it?