i'm pretty sure i have the best friends in the world... oh wait.. i know i have the best friends in the world. i still have a full day of my birthday left, and i've already gotten so many messages, emails, cards, and even this video, from danmark:
i laughed *so* hard at that video. it's long.. but FULL OF AWESOME! :-) hah!
i received this message from a friend of mine the other day. please read and reflect... this situation is not ok.
... As you may know, last Friday was the Day of Silence, a day that was created to make people aware that gay individuals have been silenced in our society.
Well, I had a full-time job a supplemental instructor in a local high school, tutoring individuals who needed support in their classes. One day, some students asked me if I am gay, and I informed them that I indeed am gay.
Now, my orientation was no choice of my own, but I am now thankful that for it. I am not ashamed of this.
However, the principal told me that I should not have told anyone because my orientation is no one's business. Normally, that would be the case. However, in a society where my people are publicly persecuted and oppressed, my personal life immediately becomes relevant to the public. For example, how could Martin Luther King's message have had the same power if he couldn't let anyone know that he was black himself? How could Esther plead for her people if she could not tell her husband that she, too, was an Israelite?
Secondly, I wanted to show students by my example that gay people are cool and respectable, and not abnormal, depraved, or predatory, etc. Many of them had never met someone who was gay. I was in a unique place to destroy ignorance.
Unfortunately, the principal fired me because of the truth. My witness at that school was silenced.
Do not feel sorry for me, but pray for my students who wander lost without their mentor, and pray for the man who perjures himself every morning when he affirms his commitment, before God, to the idea of "justice for all."
discrimination like this is never ok. it is this type of behavior that encourages the undeserved violence and hatred towards LGBT individuals in schools, workplaces and in society.
i have used road runner/TWC for many years... and every year i would rather shove sharp objects in my eyes. the customer service for time warner cable has been worse than bad, the service has been slow and choppy, and i have been randomly disconnected, hung up on, and been treated like crap for no reason whatsoever. there was even a week of time where my internet was getting speeds of LESS THAN what i got when i had DIAL UP internet. not only that, but they have been over charging me for months, and they now owe me over $150, since they said they were going to "correct the mistake." (mind you.. that was over six months ago...) i can’t believe that time warner cable is still in business when this is the kind of "service" they provide.
so i am happy to move over to at&t for their highest speed residential DSL option (which is still cheaper than what time warner cable was charging me for their crappy service). i’ve also talked to their tech support and they have always treated me with respect and taken care of any questions/problems i’ve had. last time i checked, this is how a real business takes care of their customers. (i guess time warner missed that memo...)
i’m officially logging off my computers here at home, and disconnecting my internet, and will await for my DSL to be turned on tomorrow. :-)
when people get together for a common, and good purpose, it makes me happy. this is one of those examples. none of us are safe until all of us are safe.
first off, before i get into the "meat" of my blog entry, it's cold. it's really cold! i spent an extended weekend in corpus christi, tx... where the coldest day was 72 degrees. (and my sister kept saying "it's chilly today!" and i wanted to hit her. hah!) i took a bunch of pictures (obviously) and i got some of them online already, i'll add more later. (i would do it now, which is what i usually do.. but then i get distracted by 209847809736567 other things and never finish my blog entry. so i'm going to focus on one thing at a time. hey maybe this herbal "focus formula" really is working. hah!) i'll make sure to blog a link to the pictures.. or even chose some of my favorites and add them here.
for some of my friends in my "everyday life", and twitter, you've heard me say that i was going down to corpus christi to visit my b-mom and siblings. (wow. you can tell i've never had siblings.. since i keep spelling the word "siblings" wrong.. thanks spell check) it was a fun trip. i even met more of my b-family that live down in texas. it was fun having siblings to pick on hang out with. my brothers and my b-mom all assisted in keeping me out too late and losing sleep. it was so much fun, and it was a really great vacation.
but one of the things that i noticed while i was down in texas (ok.. i remember realizing this every time i visited texas... but every time it still shocks me) was the amount of "jesus fish" cars and big mega churches. but then in the same breath.. i notice lots of really BIG cars with only one person in them.... a lack of urgency to recycle, re-using shopping bags, and save gas! at first i was thinking, well, maybe i'm just from a very "weird" area where this is such an important thing... but then i began thinking of comparisons and metaphors. Christians should be the first people to see the urgency of recycling, saving energy and caring for the planet. why? because GOD created this earth and has given us all these beautiful gifts to "take care of" for GOD. so why were there so many "Christians" that would chose to slap GOD in the face and say "no.. we don't want your creation to remain beautiful..."
while i was driving home today... i thought of an analogy. lets say a mother has a young child. and that young child spent hours creating this beautiful work of art with their own hands... paint... crayons... whatever. and they even signed their name on it. and they were so proud of this beautiful artwork. and they ran up to their mother and with a huge beaming smile, hands this artwork to her.... and she rips it up and throws it away.
that's what we are doing to our earth. GOD was so proud of this beautiful artwork.. and we continue to "rip it up and throw it away." we are too busy to separate our recycling. we are too forgetful to remember to bring a shopping bag with us when we go to the store. we want to drive cars that use more gas than they need to (just because they are bigger and faster... even though a smaller car would be fine for just the one or two people that ride in it.. i mean. yes. some people need more room for people or stuff or work etc... but not everyone needs an suv or a truck. i know this may come as a surprise for some people. for example... i can fit my whole drum set and everything else i need in my little car) we leave lights on... we buy "new" stuff even when our "old" stuff still is perfectly useful... etc.
i know i'm not perfect. but i'm really trying to care for the earth. i even brought my little cloth shopping bag into target the other day. the lady at the cash register looked at me crazy when i said "i brought my own bag." i also have just started switching out all my old light bulbs with energy saving florescent bulbs. i recycle more stuff than i throw in the trash. (really! i have twice as many recycling bins than the garbage. and they fill up much faster) and i tend to not buy things that aren't in recyclable packaging. i also try to buy most of my food from the locally owned organic food store... so that i'm not buying foods that have used up gas by being shipped across the country.. or the world. and i always try to buy "fair trade" chocolate.. because people really matter too. (just because we are the richest country in the world, doesn't mean we can step on the hard and honest workers of a "poorer" country.) and it's really not that hard to make these little steps in the right direction. our world has a long way to go... and we all need to keep encouraging each other to continue making positive changes. because each individual (and their actions) matter in this world...
/me gets off soap box.
sorry. that is just one thing that i am passionate about. GOD provided this beautiful earth and beautiful people to live amongst.. and i want more people to be able to enjoy this beautiful gift that GOD has given us.
and lastly.. i voted today. i didn't get a sicker. and that makes me sad.
so now that i've had my chumby for a while now, i'm finally getting the chance to write a review about it, so here goes nothing :-)
first off, let me explain a little bit about the concept of the chumby. the official chumby website explains it as "your personal internet player. there's always something good on." but i didn't really understand what that meant at first either. basically it looks like an oversized hackie sack, with wi-fi, speakers, usb ports, a touch screen and a motion sensor built in. you plug it in, activate it, and let it run flash-based widgets. it's all set up to be open-source in software and hardware... so all in all, you can basically make it into what you want it to be.
so how does it work? well it's pretty simple to set up. you activate it by visiting chumby.com, pairing it up to your account (similar to how you pair up a bluetooth headset to your phone... you only have to do it once and then they can talk to each other) and then setting up channels. a channel is basically a loop of widgets. you can put as many or as few of these widgets in a channel as you want, and you can create as many channels as you want as well. and then you can have this thing on your desk, your night stand, whatever. also built into the chumby is a clock (which automatically gets its time via internet), and alarm clock, and even a music player (just plug your ipod in, and let it play music through it's speakers, while charging your ipod at the same time)
so.. what are my thoughts about my chumby? was it a good use of $175 off my paycheck? i believe so. i really enjoy the idea of this. i've found some really great widgets, heck i even really like it as an alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. :-) (and actually, i've spent more on an alarm clock before, with less features... so for me $175 was a very reasonable price for this technology) i also like being a part of the "early adapters" group, when i can afford it. but some things i noticed so far that need improvement. 1) if you have a lot of songs on your ipod (which i do) it will 'hang' on that because the music player is too heavy for the little processor of the chumby. this fault has been noted on the message boards, and i'm sure they are working on a "lighter" music player to address this.. so i'm not worried. 2) also sometimes the chumby freezes up on a processor intensive widget. which is fine, since the thing isn't meant to be a "processing powerhouse" by any means... but that does point out the limits of the widgets that you can use for the chumby. 3) if you are in a wireless network that requires that you log in via a browser (not one that has a password to join the network, but one that you physically have to open up a browser and log in) you'll run into problems joining that to the network. because there is no real "browser", it doesn't allow you to log into a website. you can easily set it up on most wireless networks though, and then, even when there is a password on the network, you can have it remember your network profiles and log in automatically.
with that all said, i think it's an amazing little device, and a great idea. the construction is great (it's even fallen out of my loft a couple times, and just bounces back... what a little trooper :-) ) and the widgets are way fun. i've found that i really enjoy the traffic widget, weather bug widget, and even a couple games. i also enjoy the flickr widgets (there are a couple of them, from what i've found) as well as the twitter widgets (there's at least two of those as well) so even if you wanted to just use this to display random pictures from your flickr account it's still worth the money! (heck, digital picture frames are gonna cost you $60-250 anyways.. and there you're limited to what's on the card in the frame.) i enjoy the fact that it is very "open" in it's creation, so many people are jumping on board and helping create great widgets and improvements to the chumby. all the widgets and updates are free, so you really can't go wrong by buying now. it's also very easy to learn, and very low maintenance, since it can just go and entertain itself all day :-)
so that's my review on the chumby. thanks to the chumby people for creating a great product, i'm happy with my chumby, who's name is "chumby wumpus", btw. (you know.. like that old game hunt the wumpus, that i used to play on my old texas instrument gaming system... maaan that game scared me. but i digress)
ps. if you want me to send you a card (i'll be sending them mid january, for various reasons) go over here and send me your snail mail address.
pps. if you remember last year i sent out a "mix cd of the year"... i will be doing that again this year. as an added bonus i'll be sending them along with these cards. so if you want a cd, go over here and send me your snail mail address. :-)
