Blog Yellek

I was reading a post over at Steve Gillmor’s Gesture Lab today and I found myself making comparisons between the goings on on the Gillmor Gang and things I remember from primary school. Mike Arrington and Steve are constantly on the edge of leaving. People don’t turn up and don’t say why. Steve wonders at the significance of who didn’t turn up when and whether he will get an e-mail about it. Jason Calacanis is starting his own show and Steve wonders if it will be more popular than his, the insecurity is a mile wide. Hugh Mcleod gets banned for misbehaving.
When the gang do turn up they bicker and I for one don’t enjoy it when they do. I find it so much more listenable where they disagree in an amicable manner rather than acting like spoilt children. I don’t want them to agree, I just want a more pleasant listening experience. I don’t enjoy conflict in my life, however necessary it is, and I don’t want to listen to other’s conflict when I’m trying to be entertained and informed. Don’t get me wrong, the content, when it happens, is top rate and often really funny. I just wish they all would stop acting like little kids sometimes and more like the brilliant insightful creative visionary adults that they show themselves to be in between.

In my daytime income producing activity I get to edit a lot of documents. Most of those documents are based on templates of one form or another. Over time I have developed a list of the things that I hate about various templates and I thought I’d share them here for template designers everywhere.

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Having been tagged by both Ebenezer and Hecta for the one book meme that started here I will give this a go:

1. One book that changed your life:
   The Bible
2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
   Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold because I’m really a hopeless romantic at heart.
3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
   I’m tempted to say something like a survival book appropriate to the area but really if I’m going to be stuck there for a while the Bible is the only thing I’m not going to get tired of, it’s always fresh.
4. One book that made you laugh:
   Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold “It’s like swatting flies with a laser cannon, the aims a little tricky but it sure takes care of the flies”
5. One book that made you cry:
   The Happiest People by John and Elizabeth Sherrill, the bit where the patriarchs welcome his dad into heaven gets me every time.
6. One book that you wish had been written:
   Small group leadership for dummies
7. One book that you wish had never been written:
   The Night’s Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, these are books that I had to get rid of, far too dark and away from God.
8. One book you’re currently reading:
   Getting Things Done by David Allen - This book has the possibility of going in category 1 also
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
   Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul by John Eldridge
10. Now tag five people:
    Bec, Conrad (time to update your blog Conrad ), Mike Cherry, Leslie Ey, Nic Bishop

Over recent times I have been following a couple of sites (Lifehack.org and 43Folders) that talk about all those little productivity tips that make life easier and help you to get things done. As these sites are secular they don’t necessarily talk about all of those things in your Christian life that you never seem to be able to find time for, like praying and reading the Bible. I figure that there are heaps of things that could be contributed in this area so I thought that I’d share a couple of mine.

If you are like me there will be days when the routine just gets messed up which means that your normal time to pray and read your Bible just isn’t there anymore. Normally this happens to me when I’m up late the night before and so sleep in a little longer in the morning. I know for a fact that I’m not likely to “catch up” when I get home in the evening despite my best intentions (especially if I’m tired from being up late) so rather than get into a multi day slack cycle I sometimes need to fit these things in in the middle of my day.

Idea 1: Read on the Bus
I have an old Palm Pilot PDA with Bible software on it. This morning I managed to read all 5 chapters of our church devotions at the bus stop before the bus came. Sure I didn’t have time to write it all down in a journal like I should but reading on the run is certainly better than missing it all together. You don’t necessarily need a PDA to do this, a small pocket Bible would do just as well.

Idea 2: Pray in your Lunchour
I’m someone that likes to pray whilst I walk so if I miss my usual time to pray in the mornings I can go for a walk at lunchtime and do it instead of what I usually do.

These are simple (and obvious) steps but the trick is to have the discipline to step out of your normal routine and use your available time to do the things that are important to you.

What are your hacks for fitting in your prayer and bible reading when you are busy?

Yesterday was a historic day, we actually managed to finish a game of Civilization for the first time, a true epic. Civilization is one of those games that you have to be just a little crazy to play because of the length of time it takes to complete. Three friends (here, here and here) rocked up at my place yesterday at around 10:30 am and we started in on our journey through ancient history. After a road trip to the local shopping centre to get lunch, some pizza, lots of snacks and some really good laughs we finally finished at around 11pm after numerous rounds of taxation and movement and city building and trading, not to mention numerous disasters visited upon our fledgling civilizations at the most inconvenient moments. I’m glad to say that I emerged the victor but I think that I wouldn’t have cared had I come last because it was such a good day (although I didn’t think so this morning at 8:30 when I was running up and down Montefiore Hill for City to Bay training). In future I think that my fellow players will be less likely to let me carve out an empire in Asia Minor in relative peace and stability whilst the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians fight over the rest of the eastern Mediterranean and I don’t think I can count on such a good run with disasters again.

All in all a very enjoyable day and I hope that we can do it again sometime.

At around 4pm yesterday afternoon Annette’s struggles over the past week finally ended and she went to be with Jesus. Although we knew it was coming there is still a sadness that the vibrant loving friend that we all knew isn’t with us any more.

Annette we are going to miss you. We will miss the way you used to put salt on everything. We will miss your lack of a sense of direction. We will miss the way we used to joke with you and stir you all the time. We will miss the times that we sat across a lunch table at the Paradise hotel after church and laughed and laughed whilst we talked about everything and nothing. We will miss playing Brighton Rummy late at night around Manny’s kitchen table.

We will miss you wisdom. We will miss your attitude that never gave up. We will miss your dedication to Christ that infused everything you were. We will miss your love for those around you. We will miss your no nonsense attitude. We will miss the way that you used to push through anything that was getting you down and press on towards the goal. We will miss the fact that despite the fact that your life hadn’t been easy that you were one of the most positive people we knew.

Annette right now you are enjoying the new body that God has given you in heaven and the blessed fellowship with the Father who has welcomed you home. We can only dream of the day that we will join you when we too can rejoice in His wonderful presence when we will all be together again. Until then we can only hear the echo of you that is left behind in the hearts and lives of so many who were touched by who you are and the way that you brought Jesus closer to all of us.

Annette we both rejoice and mourn. Goodbye till we meet again.

Many people I know absolutely hate to have their photo taken, probably because of bad experiences with how photos have turned out in the past. If that is you then you may benefit from 5 Steps To Being More Photogenic over at Digital Camera University, I know I’ll be “clenching my butt cheeks” from now on

There’s a friend of mine lying in a hospital bed not very far from where I’m typing this and by the time you read this it is likely that she will be dead. Not dead in the eternal sense but certainly the body that she has now will be gone. Every hour that goes by I wait for the phone call that will bring the inevitable.

The final chapter started on Friday when I received a phone call from another friend saying that Annette had taken a turn for the worse and was not expected to live more than a day. I hadn’t even known she was in hospital. I knew that Annette had been fighting a second round of cancer after apparently beating leukemia last year but I didn’t know to what stage the disease had progressed.

I immediately left work and walked down to the hospital because I knew that another friend of mine was there by herself having just heard the news with Annette. Sometimes the carers need our support more than the person who is dying. As I arrived at ICU one of Annette’s sons arrived and went in so I could spend some time with my other friend in the waiting room. I’m not one of Annette’s “inner circle” or family but I wanted to be there to support those that I could. After a time several of the pastors from church and another friend came down to see Annette. As Pastor Mark came out he beckoned to me and I was able to go in to say goodbye. Annette was fairly vague from Morphine but we talked about stuff, about heaven and what it would be like mostly as I recall. Annette and I both knew that she was going to a better place. As I left Annette, most likely for the last time, I told her that I would see her in heaven. With Annette you never have to wonder if she will get there, it’s obvious.

Friday night life group was hard in a way. Annette has been a member of the group I lead for about a year now and a number of the people there are close to her. It was a pretty somber mood. There were tears. Some of them were mine even. In other ways the fact that this was only temporary and that we would get to spend eternity with Annette helped is celebrate the person that she was, except she wasn’t gone, yet.

Over the weekend Annette’s condition improved. Those who went in to see her mentioned that she seemed much brighter and wasn’t even using an oxygen mask. My other friend from the hospital was telling me at church on Sunday how much they had laughed together the day before. Knowing Annette that didn’t surprise me.

I know that because of the weekend there are a number of people believing for the miraculous, that Annette could be healed. I know God can do it but somehow I think that maybe her time on earth is at an end and that we will catch up in heaven. Sometimes the gap between faith and denial is a very thin line indeed but so is the gap between realism and doubt. I’ll keep praying.

Today Annette is worse and I think that sometime soon I will hear that she is no longer with us. We are going to miss her.

Just saw an interesting article on the Blog adoption process describing how people adopt the blog culture. An interesting sequence of steps (even if there are 2 step number 4’s).

I’m not sure that most of my family (read “distance friends” from the original post) other than my brother “get” blogging yet but I’m working on them

Why is it so hard to get TV episodes in order for Australian TV networks? Surely they come in video cassettes or some such with little numbers on them? 11 comes after 10 and all that? It’s annoying enough with House which at least has the same characters all the way through but when it comes to NCIS where one of the characters died in an earlier episode but keeps popping up due to the ineptitude of channel 10 to get the tapes in order it is beyond a joke. Can’t they employ even a work experience student that can actually count for goodness sake?