much and earnest

I want to do nothing but read this book, all day.

Stephen Hackett (ForkBombr), a good friend of mine (he was a groomsman in our wedding), a former co-worker (haveastandard.com), my go-to guy for Mac and iPhone questions (at least the ones Google can’t solve), and the fellow who introduced me to Rooney, Johnny Cash, and Death Cab, has been interviewed for Cornfedtech.com. Check out the first installment of the interview (text, audio, and a beard-y picture).

1. Firefox. Goes without saying, I’m sure.
2. Gmail and Google Calendar. I’ve been a Gmail user since October of 2004. The first Gmail message I sent was work-related, to Stephen Hackett.
3. Adblock Plus (for ff3)
4. Dropbox. I currently have a free 2GB account, and plan to upgrade as I approach the limit.
5. foxmarks (assuming all goes well with this program, for which I signed up only recently).

Remember The Milk would be on this list, but I’m already paying for a Pro account. I’m not quite sure about WordPress, NuevaSync, and Google Reader–all of which I use daily, but aren’t quite essential.

I’d drop twitter and facebook in a heartbeat.

1. Two USB 2.0 ports

2. control, option, and command keys are extra-large.

3. F13, F14, and F15 (oh, and F16, F17, F18, and F19)

4. Delete-forward key

Noelle’s grandfather (retired entomologist, Baptist Sunday School teacher, and very congenial fellow) has recently published The Grand Canyon, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (available on Amazon).

He’s written a brief synopsis of the book here, at his new blog (Biblical Evolution).

Congratulations, Granddad!

Update: Part Two of the interview is now available. Here they are again: Part One and Part Two.

Brent Thomas over at Colossians Three Sixteen has just posted Part One of an interview of Don Chaffer, leading man of the best jam band of my youth. Here’s a taste:

At what point did you realize that music was your life’s calling and at what point did you realize that it was actually feasible?

I would say I was in High School. I actually had a kind of a renaissance with poetry at some time between the ninth and tenth grade because I remember in the ninth grade seeing a flier on the wall for a poetry contest and I remember thinking consciously “Poetry’s sort of stupid, I don’t want to do that; like it’s a stack of statements that aren’t particularly sensical,” I think I remember having that sort of attitude about it and then the next year I won. So somewhere in there was a transition between feeling anti-poetry and then writing it. I would say adolescence was pretty rough on me. I’d say the birth was a bit bloody into manhood. Not literally a birth nor literally bloody.

The poetry thing was key, and then I started writing these songs. One of the turn-around things for me as a Christian was this particular youth group ski trip in which I basically surrendered my agnosticism in favor of the knowledge of God and more particularly, God’s knowledge of me. There was just this moment in the mountains and I read Psalm 139 and the line that nabbed me was “You understand my thoughts from afar” because I felt like nobody understood me. And so the thought that someone might know me, the inner workings of my mind, was particularly overwhelming; a source of great, if not also painful joy.

Are you still involved in visual art?

I sketch in church during sermons.

Has fatherhood changed your perspective on your art?

Utterly. Bob Dylan said one time in an interview “Children are the great equalizers.” It just changes absolutely everything about the way you see life. I think I tended to see things a little more darkly before I had the wise eyes of babies and toddlers looking at me. We have two kids now. Especially now; I come home and my one-year old who has just recently begun to say things like “Mommy” and “Bye” comes running and says “Daddy” and holds her arms up and there’s this sort of innocence; not a sort of innocence, an almost shockingly eye-level innocence in these kids. You just can’t look at the world in the same way.

I expressed my hope for it a few months ago. Now he’s done it. My brother-in-law Tyler (whom my wife and I recently made an uncle; pictures; Tyler’s reaction; my father-in-law’s reaction) is back in the blogosphere with Daily Belly Button Lint in Kuwait.

Tyler is teaching a few classes to middle-schoolers over there. Noelle and I enjoy his updates and occasionally brilliant humor (twelve months later, this one still makes me laugh).

He’s quite busy at the moment, but don’t be turned off by the delay between posts. His belly button lint is worth your time.

By the way, I think “belly button lint” is a fantastic description of most of what we do in the blogosphere. Mea culpa!

His name is Jimmy Akin. He’s sharp. He’s a regular blogger here, and he hosts a radio program I sometimes listen to.

…here’s a post on the Man in Black and the great Philosopher: “Johnny Cash, Aristotle, and Eudaimonia.” (We graduate students like to support each other.)

…for my brother-in-law, Tyler. (Here’s his blog: Daily Belly Button Lint in Japan.)

His blog deserves my support not only because he sends me more hits than any other single source on the web, but also because I think he’s a really funny guy (case-in-point).

As he recently announced, Tyler is about to ship out of Japan and into Kuwait. We can’t seem to get him back to the States to see us; Noelle and I even tried getting pregnant! But we can at least expect more belly button lint: Daily Belly Button Lint in Kuwait?

In case you haven’t realized this, yet, I’m on holiday from all things school — including the maintenance of this blog. Noelle and I are visiting family and friends in Memphis, TN, and will return to Lexington around the 4th of July.

Till then, I recommend you read this blog. Or this one. Or how about this blog? This fellow just got hitched; he may have some interesting things to say.

This post is a shameless plug.

Touchstone Magazine’s blog, Mere Comments, has been nominated for the “Best Religion Blog” award at the Blogger’s Choice Awards. You can vote here (free registration required).