Music...

Sarah bumped into this revealing quiz about music. Fun stuff. It was a copy and paste deal off of myspace.
Here's my results. It's fun to try it out yourself. I LOVE the shuffle thing. Starting on They Might Be Giants, and ending on Miles Davis. It's totally a day in the life of Jim.

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Jim's Collection!

How many songs: 7,068

[Sort by song title]
First song: "A better future" - David Bowie
Last song: "Zoo pie" - Guided by Voices

[Sort by time]
Shortest Song: "Shut up" - Five Iron Frenzy (4s)
Longest Song: "The Edgar Allan Poe audio collection" - Basil Rathbone & Vincent Price (5h31m)

[Sort by album]
First Album: "2" - Black Heart Procession
Last Album: "Youthquake" - Dead or Alive

[Top 5 Most Played Songs...no cheating]
1. "Lost in the supermarket" - The Clash
2. "Magazine" - Pedro the Lion
3. "Sleeping in" - The Postal Service
4. "The fleecing" - Pedro the Lion
5. "God of wonders" - Mac Powell & Caedmon's Call

[First 5 songs that come up on Shuffle]
1. "She's actual size" - They Might Be Giants
2. "White moon" - The White Stripes
3. "Lodging" - Spy Glass Blue
4. "Downtown train" - Tom Waits
5. "Spanish key" - Miles Davis

[Search Collection for the word __________]
1. "Sex"--How many songs come up: 20
2. "Death"--How many songs come up: 22
3. "Love"--How many songs come up: 265
4. "You" how many songs come up: 723

Military

I was over at our friends' house tonight, and he works for the army. He mentioned that there are really good paying civilian jobs at the local army base, Fort Carson. We checked out some jobs together during half-time, and they pay approximately twice what I was making at Starbucks. I will be going to apply in person tomorrow, and see what happens, but if this were to work out, it would be GREAT job security and GREAT money! This might be the answer to our prayers!

Please be praying for a graphics job or something I do well to open up.

Peace!

Job searching...

Well, no jobs yet. Navigators let me know that they already filled the position, and while Cook has freelance available, nothing's come yet.

I've applied at a trillion different places that have promise, and signed up at a government run job finding website. Hopefully those will pay off. I just keep praying that the dream job will fall in our laps. I keep moving, can't get discouraged... This is so weird.

In other news, I've had time to rework the boys' blogs... if you want to, check them out. They're really trying to get their creative writing started. Sarah and I have started cowriting for a debate blog called Thrill Shots. It's hosted by my best friend Ryan, and has some fun and intense debates between some fun and intense people. Check it out on my sidebar.

Birthday!

Today is my mom's birthday. She's 39.

Just kidding. It's the big 50, and we're really excited!

So Mom... Happy Birthday from everybody here on the blog!

:)

The Postal Service

While one of my favorite bands is named "The Postal Service," I could not be more annoyed with the actual postal service here in Colorado Springs. We have had sooooo many problems with our mail taking FOREVER to get here, and FOREVER to get anywhere else, if you want to send us anything, do yourself a favor and send it UPS or FedEx. It's just stupid. We sent a bill payment out on the 6th, and the company still hasn't received it. And Sarah's grandma sent us fudge and cookies for Christmas... we got them last week. She sent the package a few weeks before Christmas. It's absurd.

Alright... enough ranting.

Sarah slept better last night. She's still asleep, and I hope that rest is what's gonna kick this flu. We're both a bit nervous about it's effect on the baby. (You know, I NEVER know whice to use. "Effect" or "Affect"... I think that if it's an action, it's with an e. If it's a past tense thing that's happened, it's an a. In which case, I've just done it wrong.) But we know that no matter what, God is in control, and knows what's going on.

No news about the jobs this morning. I'm sending my resume to that Wide Open West job I mentioned earlier.

Peace.

RSS feed

Hey folks... I forgot to mention this when I made the change, but I'll tell you now. My blog has an RSS feed. For those of you who don't know what that is, you can either find out now, or skip this message.

Real Simple Syndication, allows you to see a website in a truncated, text view, with the most recent stories (news sites or blogs) at the top of the page. If you like what you see, you can click on "read more" to read the entire article. Basically, it gives you a quick way to see what's new, or worth reading on the site of your choice.

For those of you using a pc, or a non-safari browser on the mac, you'll have to use whatever feed you have set up, or find one...

For those of you using Safari, simply go to my regular blog, click on the blue "RSS" up in your browser navigation bar, and the page will swivel to reveal the RSS feed.

Thanks, and enjoy.
Jim

My wife is sick

Late last night, Sarah started showing signs of the flu (Digestive pyrotechniques, as they're known in the business...) and has been sick in bed today. We'd appreciate your prayers as she and the baby fight this off.

There wasn't much I could do today in the line of finding work, with the holiday shutting down some of the prospects I have. I did however, get a promising lead in the graphic design area. A couple from our church both work at Cook Communications, a publishing house here in town, and their business does almost exclusively freelance work. They are actively pursuing getting some business sent my way, and while this doesn't answer the full-time, insurance-wielding job we need, this'll be a way to get money in the bank. (Someone else's of course.) And that will do for now. Exciting to say the least.

Later on, I got a call from an ex-coworker over at the Bucks to say that she has an opening at her other job. It would be sales for the Chicago based cable company Wide Open West. I am considering it. Maybe as a night job to fill in hours.

Anywayz... thats it for now.

Peace.

Country

Real life conversation from 10 minutes ago.

Me: "Hey honey... you seem kind of in a funk... is it ok that I put a country singer on? (Allison Kraus)"

Sarah: "Well, I don't really consider her a country singer."

(pause)

Me: "Because you like her?"

Sarah: "Yes."

Me: "Honey... 'country' isn't an insult. It's a genre."

Me Continued: "You can't just be like 'Is that a country singer?' 'No. She's really good!'"

Sarah: "Why not?"

Me: "I love you."

Fired

Yeah.

I was fired today.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it, but I understand it enough to relate it to you.

During the Christmas holiday week, I made a bad decision. I traded a frapuccino (Glorified milkshake) to an employee of a local Chinese food restaurant for a bowl of Teryaki. I didn't approach him, he came in and offered. While I knew that Starbucks frowns on that sort of thing, I've seen trading done in so many other restaurants over the years, that I thought that at worst, I'd get a slap on the wrist. I was hungry and I let my stomach do the thinking. Bad idea.

A few days later, I got a written repremand. The worst of what I expected. I changed my thinking about the subject and said to myself "Well, if it's wrong for Starbucks, it's wrong for me..." and moved on. Until Tuesday. On Tuesday, I was asked to sit down with my District manager and explain what happened. I did, and I wrote out an explanation of what happened, and how I felt about it, and they sent that in to corporate, where the decision would be made about what to do with me. They then, on orders from corporate, placed me on suspension and told me they'd call me. Today, I got the call to come in for a follow up meeting, which resulted in them telling me that corporate had decided on a no-tolerance policy, and that they're hands were tied. Both guys are great guys, and were kind and offered to be personal references in the future... all the same, it is adding to an insane week of things going wrong.

In the midst of all of this is Kiah, and I am so happy to have the good news of what our baby is. It would've been good either way, but I am happy to be able to call it "he" instead of "it" and "Kiah" instead of "the baby."

I know that much like our crisis of past, this too will work out for our good. God is so faithful. I have an option to go back into graphic design... The Navigators, a xian group out here in the springs is looking for someone with my qualifications. I think that it's been long enough since my last design job, and I think I'm ready to go back. I dropped off my application, resume and portfolio today and hope to hear back soon. Please be praying.

Jim

Tech News, Nature photos

I've had such big news in the baby department lately, that I've overlooked one of the biggest tech advances in the market today. Apple has released new iMacs and MacBook Pros "Formerly known as Powerbooks" that are rockin Intel chips. These weren't due out till June or July, but they're out now. The early benchmarks on them are insane. The iMac is apparently running 2x it's previous speed, and the Powerbook, which never did get the G5, is 4x faster now that it has the Intel Core Duo chip.

Along with the hardware updates, the newest OS update, now 10.4.4 is out with additional updates to the entire iLife & iWork lines, and Chrysler is now getting on board with iPod integration. About time. When Ford beats you to something... you know that you're slow. No offense to Ford, but they are not the innovators. If it weren't for the Mustang, they'd be the Pinto of the car market. Heck, they may still be. I used to love em, but they've disappointed for too long. Buy Japanese! They can make a car. (Somewhere Erina cheers...)

Oh, the nature photos promised. Here's a few shots of the Garden of the Gods. I've been looking into a job at the Navigators headquarters which is at the G.O.G. It'd be nice to see these every day...

More Sarah pictures

Well, I'm just picture crazy today.
Here's a new set of my beautiful wife, and my beautiful son... I couldn't be prouder if I tried.

Enjoy.

Our baby is a super hero.

After closer study, I have determined that based on what our baby looks like now, he will, around the age of 20 transform into the comic book super hero "Ghost Rider."

See my comparison below.

Whoa Baby...

Uh.... yeah... IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!

We just found out today. Sarah and I went to the doctors office, and they did the 20 week sonagram on her to find out how the baby is doing, and to finally let us stop calling it "it."

So here are some of the photos, starting with a leg.













And here's a four pack.

Meaty fluff

Alright. This I gotta say. I am NOT a fan of either Texas or USC, but that game the other night was one of the best games I have ever seen!!! It was incredible! I was proud that the Buckeyes almost beat Texas earlier this year. At the time, I was upset, but by the end of that game the other night I was like "We got beat by those guys a couple weeks ago! Isn't that cool! They scored just like that against OSU a few weeks ago! Wow!" It was pathetic, but you had to have been there. Wow.

In other fluff. My friend Warren Komis has alerted me to the existence of a human flesh substitute. Yes, you heard right. A substitute meat product that tastes like human. Now all of you out there who have been dying for a people burger, but have been held back by those silly laws and morals, can get yourselves out there and get some albeit fake people meat! This is not a joke, and you can order off their website. They have a nice "escape" button if you can't handle it and need to leave faster than you can click your close button... hmmm... no comment. Anyway, here's the link.

In other Warren Komis news... here is a picture of his bike. I am not kidding you. I miss this guy so much. Never a boring day with Warren.

Pedro the Lion is done for now...

Well, I've had a bit of a shock today. My favorite band is calling it quits, but due to the nature of the band, that means very little. Pedro the Lion was formed in 1995 and released their first album in 96. Shortly after that, the lead singer, David Bazan dumped the other dudes and ran off with the name. After 4 additional full length albums and several EPs, David had added several members back to the band. Frank Lenz on drums, who currently plays for almost 5 bands, and more influencially, TW Walsh on guitars and keys. The three bandmates recently released a side project under the band name The Headphones, and also have been the band The Soft Drugs, the main difference with the SD being that TW Walsh sings instead of David. But according to news sources, TW and David are no longer going to be working together even though they remain friends and David is using this split to remove the Pedro the Lion moniker from his musical career. The future looks like this. David is going to continue under his own name, with the Walsh-less "Headphones" as a side project. Walsh is now the Bazan-less "Soft Drugs". Currently, Bazan is joining up with 3 other gentlemen of renown in the indy rock world under the name "The Undertow Orchestra" and will be performing shows starting in late February. Bazan's first solo release (If you don't call the lonely years of PTL solo...) is scheduled in early 2007, and I believe that we can expect a followup to the Headphones album later that year. Needless to say, while the format of the band will change little, the name is gone for now.

As long as the guy doesn't stop doing what he does... I don't care if he changes the name of the band to Betty.