Playing Music

I’ve played the guitar some in the past. I guess the main reason I’ve played is because when I’ve listened to really cool guitar music, or watched someone really talented playing, I always think to myself, “I wish I could do that. I bet I could do that. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could do that? Etc. Etc…” This started when I was a teenager. I took some lessons. I hung out with my buddies who also wanted to be cool and play like Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen. I wanted to play like those guys too, but I also wanted to play like Steve Howe and Andres Segovia. Back then and even now, I’m really not driven to practice every day to be that good. I learned at least 5 songs (finger-picking style) over the last couple of years. I must have played some of those songs more than 1,000 times. I carefully and diligently practiced. I played slowly and correctly, carefully increasing my speed without going so fast that I would make mistakes. And after all that practice, I still just don’t ‘have it’. I mean, I don’t just sit down and play the song clean, and beautifully like some people would. Did you ever see the move Amadeus? Remember Antonio Salieri? He loved music, and he could play and write. When he heard Mozart, he could hardly believe his ears. Mozart was the most gifted writer and performer he had ever known. Salieri prayed that God would give him the gift that Mozart had. And when God denied him that gift, he got all mad, and cranky, and eventually committed murder. I have gone through my times where I feel like Salieri praying, “God, how come I can’t play like Rich Severson and Tommy Emmanuel?” Am I the only one who thinks like that?

I’m trying to stop dreaming about being someone I’m not. I’m trying to be content to listen to great music and enjoy it without unnecessary envy. I always seem to fall back into that, “I could do that” thinking. Maybe when I make it to Heaven where I have eternity to practice and masters to personally give me lessons, then maybe I’ll ‘have it’.

The Mountains and the Valley

No, this isn't a deep, insightful blog post about the mountains and valleys of life. It's just little note about how we got to drive from the valley (where we live) to the mountains (where we wished we lived) last weekend.

Here was the view once we got above the fog (yes, it's 'blog fog') -




Then when you turned about 180 degrees the other direction, here's what we saw -



Much nicer view.

We got to stay in a very nice cabin for two days. Tracy worked on a quilt and I formatted the hard drive on my laptop and reinstalled all the necessities. Nick played video games and watched movies. Tracy's mom and dad visited on Saturday. It was a very nice weekend.

Diet and Exercise

About a year-and-a-half ago, I discovered I had high blood pressure. That happened because I signed up for Community Medical Center's 'C-Fit' program. It's a free program they offer all employees. The first thing you do is fill out an online health assessment, then go to the lab where they do a blood draw to get your numbers - total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides and fasting blood sugar. Then you go meet with your Wellness Advocate, who weighs you, measures your waist, your body fat and your blood pressure. Then they get you to set some health-related goals, and off you go with a $75 gift card for joining C-Fit! You can get up to 3 more $75 gift cards throughout the year. In my opinion, it's a very cool program. There have been a few people that signed up and immediately discovered they had a very serious health condition (one cardiology related; one cancer related). They took immediate action and are still around to tell about it. I bet they think it's a cool program too.

Ever since that time, I've become more aware of my health. My eating habits weren't that bad, but they could have been better. I hardly ever got any regular amounts of good exercise. Diet and exercise - where have I heard that before?

I am happy to say that I have made some decent progress. For the first time in my life, I've been exercising 3 to 4 days a week. I 'ride' my elliptical for 30 minutes, then do some stretching and strength training. I've been doing that for 3 months now. I started long before that trying to do regular cardio exercises. It took a while to get to this point. It's hard to imagine that this will be what I do 4 days a week for the rest of my life, but I try to keep telling myself that, so it will happen.

On the diet side, I've been trying to eat better by cutting out bad things like caffeine, sugar, white flour, bad fats and bad carbohydrates. I recently read that if you're trying to loose weight, the most important thing to do, is to keep track of the number of calories you consume every day. I bet that wasn't very easy 5 or 10 years ago, but now of course, we have the Internet and that has changed. Thanks to our friends Scott and Paula, Tracy discovered http://www.sparkpeople.com/.

Tracy signed-up first, and I just started using it 3 days ago. This is a great health and fitness website that makes it super-simple to enter all the things you eat and drink during the day, so you can see exactly how many calories, carbs, fat, protein, sodium, fiber, etc. you're getting from your food. You tell them your height, weight and weather you're trying to loose weight, gain weight or maintain, and they give you recommendations on how many calories, carbs and other nutrients you should have each day. All this - for free!

It's been very interesting to see just how many calories, or sodium or fat is in the food I eat. Did you know a small package of Planters Peanuts has 330 calories!?!? It has actually given me more incentive to eat better, so my numbers will look good that night when I plug in my food for the day.

Speaking of calories - check out this page that shows the 11 worst foods of 2008.



If you're becoming a health-fanatic like me, check out SparkPeople - It's cool!

Computer Memory - the Reverse Inflation King!

Back in 1990 when I was 27, I worked at a computer store - OnLine Connecting Point at the corner of Blackstone and Herndon. The Mac SE was the hot item around that time. You could upgrade the memory to - hold on to your seat - 8 MEGABYTES! Wow! That was amazing. I think it was somewhere around that time that Bill Gates was quoted as saying, "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Even more amazing was the price. Memory prices have always gone up and down. Some time near 1990, a 1 Megabyte SIMM (memory module) cost one Benjamin!



That's right, $100 for 1 megabyte of RAM. Occasionally a Doctor or Lawyer would drop in and upgrade their Mac to 4 Megabytes of RAM - just $400!

Today, I ordered 2 GIGAbytes of RAM for Nick's computer. With tax and shipping, it was $30. That's 13 times less cost for 500 times more memory. This economy problem does have a few advantages.

Windows Mobile 6.1 Upgrade

I upgraded the ROM on my PDAPhone today to Windows Mobile 6.1. Sounds simple enough - huh? Not so much. It's like formatting your hard drive - everything gets wiped! Everything (including a few seemingly insignificant settings) had to be backed-up, or written down so I could get hooked back-up afterwards. I have reinstalled almost all my important applications, it's surprising to think about all the things I do with my phone.

I counted and there are 9 different programs I use on a regular basis. Here's the ones I use the most - Internet Explorer (a 'Mobile' browser), Opera (a full Internet Browser), eWallet (a password 'vault'), Google Maps (which takes advantage of the built-in GPS and includes Street View), Pocket Bible (I always have multiple versions of the Bible with me wherever I go), Windows Media Player (with an 8GB memory card, I've got music)!!

This was supposed to fix a couple of things. The only problem I've experienced is the fact that, occasionally, I have to turn off the data connection and turn it back on again to get Internet Explorer to connect. We'll see if that goes away, or not.

Seven Pounds - The Movie

We saw Seven Pounds today. It was very emotionally moving. If you don't like to cry, then don't see this movie. I give it a thumbs up. Will Smith definitely has a talent for acting. The movie requires you to put a lot of pieces together on your own. Not until the end do you get the final piece that makes the entire picture. I like movies like that. Unlike most movies that somehow reveal where the title for the movie ties in, "Seven Pounds" was never even mentioned. If you didn't already know what was "Seven Pounds", then you'd have to ask someone afterwards. I won't say anything else because I don't want to be a spoiler!

http://www.sevenpounds.com/

Looking Forward to Heaven

It's fun to dream about Heaven and what it will be like. Randy Alcorn always has fantastically intriguing insights which are based on the Bible. I'm sure this is a controversial subject. Check out Randy's latest blog entry where he again gets me excited about Heaven!

http://randyalcorn.blogspot.com/2008/12/snow-on-new-earth-and-new-years.html