More at Halloween

Posted by charity at 11:16 PM | Comments (5)

October 28, 2007

a funny

A new, laugh out loud, interpretation of a Bible verse courtesy of our local YMCA.

Posted by charity at 08:13 PM | Comments (1)

October 16, 2007

new google reader gadget

One of the things I least like about reading blogs via a reader (i.e. bloglines, google reader) is that you miss out on the environment of the blog design. Of course, you could take an extra click or two to get to your blog of choice from your reader, but it's kind of a pain getting there and returning. Thus I was delighted to come across Google reader's new "Next" gadget. You stick it on your Firefox bookmark toolbar and whenever you feel like checking out blogs within their original design, you push the "Next" button and it will take you to the next blog on your reader list with a new post. Check it out!

Posted by charity at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2007

the funnies

While I think the funniest thing that Stephen Colbert has done is his series "Know A District," his recent guest appearance as a NY Times columnist left me laughing out loud.

Andy says that John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are good for America. Amen. Now if only we had cable. :-/

P.S. Thank you NYTimes for letting us poor people read your columnists again.

Posted by charity at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2007

the green schaeffer

I have a hard time understanding the argument of some Christians that God will take care of creation and therefore we don't need to. Even so, this article in the Wall Street Journal does a good job of explaining how wide the spectrum is of where Christians fall on environmental issues. And one of the more interesting aspects of the article is its extensive reference to Francis Schaeffer.

Posted by charity at 12:14 PM | Comments (2)

September 21, 2007

nebraskans in north carolina news

A co-worker passed along an article she found on WRAL's website regarding the famous Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers. She didn't find the report in "breaking news" or "national news," rather it was found under the heading "strange news."

Life in the Nebraska legislature wouldn't be as colorful if it wasn't for Ernie.

Posted by charity at 11:17 AM | Comments (1)

September 19, 2007

it's a good day

David Brooks I missed you!

Posted by charity at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2007

public service announcement

Not that I'll be getting an iPhone anytime soon, but I knew I would never get one if they continue to only be available through AT&T. My first independent cell phone experience was through AT&T. They kept making little mistakes here and there on my bill, which I repeatedly called to correct. Frustrated with these little snafus, I ended my contract as soon as possible. But the icing on the cake came when they charged me a termination fee, even though I had fulfilled my contract. When everything finally got worked out, I had a $20 credit on my account. I called to ask how I would get this $20 since I had canceled my service. The response of the customer service agent was, "It will just go away." Umm, excuse me? My $20 will "just go away?" After telling her that I wasn't letting go of my $20, she finally agreed to send me a check.

All that to say, I wasn't surprised to read about iPhone users' complaints:

In July, Aaron Oxley took his iPhone with him to London, Dubai and Bangkok. Mr. Oxley said in an e-mail message that he was aware that there would be international roaming data charges, so he always made sure he was in an area with free Wi-Fi when he used his iPhone to access the Internet. But when Mr. Oxley’s AT&T bill arrived, the data charges totaled $300.

When Mr. Oxley called AT&T, he was told that even though he was using Wi-Fi, there was still a data transfer charge.

Indeed, according to Mr. Smith, the AT&T representative, iPhone owners are not charged for Wi-Fi connections. Mr. Oxley eventually received a full refund for the $300 roaming data charge.

Posted by charity at 01:47 PM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2007

mac question

As you can see, we got a new laptop! Woohoo! This is the first time I've ever owned a Mac and am learning how to use one -- I gotta say there are some pretty cool stuff about how these things work. Right now I'm playing around with iPhoto. So, my question is how, or if, you can resize your photos in iPhoto. When I say "resize," I want to be able to make it fewer megabytes in order to put photos up on the web. The only way I see how to do it is to export it out of iPhoto to a different size. Is this my only option?

Btw... anyone want to iChat?!

Posted by charity at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)

May 21, 2007

tater tot casserole

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I had ever heard of or eaten tater tot casserole. Her husband has been doing some work in Western Nebraska (Broken Bow of all places) and when he inquired about this menu item the waitress exclaimed, "What!? You've never had tater tot casserole before?" Though he didn't order it at the restaurant, he did pick some up at a grocery store buffet, but unfortunately, choose to ate it cold and didn't care for it too much.

I responded to my friend, yes, indeed, I have heard of AND eaten tater tot casserole. Yum. She was inquiring whether this was just a Broken Bow thing or a Nebraska thing. I think it's safe to say it's a Nebraska thing. :)

Posted by charity at 03:11 PM | Comments (5)

May 07, 2007

graduation

While I won't consider it "officially" official until I have the diploma in my hand (which I believe is mailed today), I went to the Lincoln Journal Star website and my name is listed under the 2007 graduates! The best way to find me among the 2,175 graduates is to Ctrl+F and type in my full name.

My heart skipped a beat when my name wasn't listed under North Carolina. But then I found myself under the "Nebraska - Lincoln" section. What I find somewhat hil-arious is that there are other people in North Carolina who are graduating from UNL this year!

Posted by charity at 09:58 AM | Comments (3)

April 30, 2007

attention Lincoln folks!

Jason's playing in Lincoln this weekend starting at Grace Chapel on Thursday. Check out the schedule here. This is the first time he's played in Nebraska and I've told him Lincoln people are cool. So, you better go! ;-)

Posted by charity at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2007

hemorrhaging money?

Did A or C say the following?

"I was hemorrhaging money. I like spent $7 - $10, two days in a row."

Posted by charity at 11:16 PM | Comments (4)

March 28, 2007

vote!

If you haven't already, vote for Jason H in LiveAudioMag's songwriting contest! Only four more days in the contest and he needs your help in maintaining the lead!

Click here to vote!

Posted by charity at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2007

the teeny house

I've been a fan of Creating the Not So Big House for a long time. So, I found this article on tiny houses quite interesting:

Living tiny, however, does not require deprivation, thanks to modern technology. Gregory Johnson, president of the Small House Society, who lives in a 140-square-foot house in Iowa, noted that people once needed “a stereo system, countless LPs or CDs, photo albums and a small library of books.” Now, everything can take up no more space than a laptop or an iPod.

Posted by charity at 09:59 PM | Comments (2)

March 15, 2007

direct from Shanghai

I tracked my iPod from Shanghai to my office door... now if only I can get it back from Andy!

Posted by charity at 04:16 PM | Comments (4)

February 14, 2007

shout out

to Junkmail. I've always loved his bitter Valentine's Day candy.

Posted by charity at 10:23 AM | Comments (1)

February 09, 2007

a new album

Patty's new one is out! Good stuff.

Posted by charity at 08:56 AM | Comments (5)

January 26, 2007

if we had cable

I might take the time to watch.

Posted by charity at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2007

what's in a name

I was reading an article today on some of the issues surrounding the production and use of ethanol. A board member from the Energy Policy Research Foundation was highly critical of the fuel and was interested to find out what their research said. Though I had never heard the name before, I assumed it was some sort of non-profit research organization. I couldn't find a homepage and realized it was because the Energy Policy Research Foundation had recently changed their name from the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. The name change worked. I was more willing to listen to their criticisms as the "Energy Policy Research Foundation" than the "Petroleum Industry Research Foundation."

Posted by charity at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2007

a challenge to the parties

An interesting idea covered in this month's Atlantic. Sign up today!

Posted by charity at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2007

the fugees

I periodically teared up during this article. It's worth the time.

Posted by charity at 10:32 AM | Comments (3)

January 06, 2007

my master's project is possessed

I thought the reason my Master's project wasn't good enough to be finished, was because of some innate failure in my ability to do graduate work. But this morning I am convinced it's because of forces beyond my control!

I was diligently working on version 5.2 of my project, when suddenly the cursor began flashing 5-10 ellipses (... ... ...) and then it began typing words I didn't write! My hands were completely removed from the keyboard and the following message was sent:

And who only tie out AAA eighteen hours a day and not a thing for the Atlanta ballet One level of the numbers and in the economy meanwhile in new volume Lovette Holland, a non-known how many were no home Cadlaon IEA UNL UNL movement and wall andAnd now in-law, mean

There are only two conclusions I feel can be drawn from this experience. Either my project is posessed or it's a BIG hint that I should buy a new computer.

Posted by charity at 12:22 PM | Comments (3)

December 07, 2006

free song download

You can download 2 Christmas songs from Jason Harrod for FREE from his website. They happen to be my two favorite Christmas songs as well!

Posted by charity at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2006

endorsement?

So, it's not exactly a stunning endorsement, but it coulda been worse:

Before you recoil in horror at the thought of living in Omaha, a city of 414,000 souls, consider that this year Money magazine ranked it seventh of the nation’s 10 best big cities to live in, ahead of New York City, which ranked 10th. O.K., now you may recoil in horror.

Personally, I would have focused on Lincoln. (Wohoo!) But what do you expect from big city folks?

Sweet Home Omaha

Posted by charity at 09:13 AM | Comments (5)

October 14, 2006

pollan @ unc

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, spoke at UNC last week. He focused on the "hunting and gathering" meal from the book and I enjoyed hearing him read and tell more about that experience. I would have preferred to here more about his time on the sustainable farm, but unfortunately the question and answer time turned into people standing on their soap boxes as to how great Carrboro/ Chapel Hill is in creating an alternative food system. I was annoyed and think he was too. It's pretty bad when after 10 minutes he had to interupt one woman and ask if she actually had a question.

Posted by charity at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2006

simple savings

An energy diet for the garden slug. You can do it!

Posted by charity at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2006

vive la France!

Zidane! Zidane! Zidane!

Posted by charity at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)

June 30, 2006

adventures in new music

This could be addictive.

Posted by charity at 03:40 PM | Comments (2)

June 19, 2006

self-cleaning toilets

Andy and I would be first adopters of toilets that don't need cleaning!

Nanotech Toilets Could Clean Themselves

Posted by charity at 10:30 AM | Comments (3)

June 08, 2006

doh

What do you do when you come home from a dinner party and realize that you wore your shirt inside out?

Posted by charity at 10:26 PM | Comments (2)

NC for NU

I saw this license place the other day and it warmed my heart.

Posted by charity at 06:49 PM | Comments (2)

May 14, 2006

365 days

Today Andy and I have been married a year. I'm anticipating that any day now we should have each other figured out.

Continue reading "365 days"

Posted by charity at 11:00 AM | Comments (4)

April 03, 2006

update

Well, as of last Thursday I have turned in the final draft of my project. My client has given the thumbs up and am now waiting for my professor. Please pray that the revisions would be minor and that I can finish before one of my committee members leaves the country for the summer!

Posted by charity at 09:30 AM | Comments (5)

March 18, 2006

don't be fooled

Don't be fooled by a few blogposts that I have actually finished my Master's project. I don't know what happened with the burst of posts, but I had some time and actually blogged. Unfortunately, it's still not finished though it's closer and spent a good chunk of the day working on it.

The upside is that it isn't a matter of more research or waiting for survey results, it's a matter of putting it all together and getting all the information in the document. I keep having fantasies that perhaps if I worked my butt off for 12 hours that I could finish this thing. That this could be the last Saturday to spend at my computer. But no, around hour 3 or 4 my brain starts to revolt and I have to stop. But I keep inching closer, though I have anxieties that it will all be in vain.

So, I'm chugging along, with no time to blog.

The flip side will come soon... I hope.

Posted by charity at 05:09 PM | Comments (3)

January 28, 2006

i know it's dull

I wanted to let my readership know that, yes, I do realize my blog is boring. I have a request for those who check back regularly hoping for updates:

My prime blogging times are being eaten away by working on my final Master's project. The end is in sight, even if the light at the end of the tunnel looks more like a twinkle light bulb rather than a car with its brights on.

The exciting thing is that over the past couple of weeks I've realized that I WILL FINISH!! This saga of a journey has caused me more pain that it should. I will have many thoughts flowing on the subject once I've finished it and can think about something more than renewable enery and land grant universities.

Even though I have other work, friends and activities, the subject consumes my subconscious, and often my conscious, self. My goal is to kick some project ass over the next seven days. If you're the praying kind, please do! My goal is to get a good draft to my professor by the end of next week. Perhaps when I recover, I'll be able to blog real thoughts rather than book excerpts and photographs.

See you on the flip side...

Posted by charity at 03:31 PM | Comments (3)

December 26, 2005

scenes from The Ugly Mug

Hendersonville, NC

Scene 1
"Nobody has the right to kill another person."
"What if they were serial murderers and killing a lot of people?"
"Deprive that person of the ability to kill again."
"What about those families whose child was taken away."
"Deprive that person of the ability to kill again. Killing them won't bring them back."
"Justice needs to be served. These families need closure."
"Can justice be satisfied by taking away their freedom?"
"No it can't. Read the Bible, an eye for an eye."
"Read the New Testament, love your enemies, forgive them."

Scene 2
"There are things that aren't understandable by the human mind."

Scene 3
"Technology is at a point where we have solutions, like LCD, the little lights. Those things use less than half the amount of energy and last ten times as long."
"Yeah, reduces the labor."
"The reason they're using them is not because of those things, but because of the heating and cooling costs. They don't give off heat."

Scene 4
"He's from New Orleans."
"New Orleans?!"
"They're looking for a house here now. His house is built in 1904 and was raised. It flooded the new garage and storage at grade level, but the house the water was just at the third step. The areas flooded were built after 1978, because the people who built before new that you had to expect floods, but then people thought, 'now we have levees and can do whatever we want.'"

Scene 5
"There's nothing that bugs me more than people who won't get their asses out of the left lanes."

Posted by charity at 10:06 AM | Comments (3)

December 15, 2005

we're not in Nebraska anymore

from today's Raleigh News & Observer

Almost a year ago, a half-inch of snow so paralyzed Raleigh that routine commutes turned into 10-hour odysseys and hundreds of school children were stranded in classrooms overnight.

Today, the city will brace for its first "wintry-mix" storm with a new strategy to avoid such chaos and humiliation.

Posted by charity at 04:23 PM | Comments (4)

October 27, 2005

stolen from Haley

I think Andy's the more logical person in our relationship!

Continue reading "stolen from Haley"

Posted by charity at 09:36 AM | Comments (6)

October 24, 2005

mental note: u2 tickets

Next time we go to a U2 concert, make sure to get tickets for the pit! It was a great show from our seats, but it seems we were two of the more animated concert goers in our section. But how can you not jump up and down when they play "Elevation"?

I've got a mix CD playing in my car that has a couple of U2 songs on it and they actually sound kind of dull now. "Beautiful Day" on my car stereo doesn't quite sound the same after we jumped up and down and sang: "after the flood all the colors came out!" with Bono and 10,000 other people. It was pretty sweet. :)

Favorite song(s): Elevation, I Still Haven't Found..., Beautiful Day, Love & Peace, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Where the Streets Have No Name, One... Ok, ok, pretty much they were all my favorite!

Song I forgot I loved: One

Best rockin' song: Love And Peace

Biggest surprise: Bono singing opera

Best song combo: Love And Peace & Sunday Bloody Sunday

CD I need to buy: Boy

Song I like better than I did before: All Because of You

Song I waited for, but wasn't played: Mysterious Ways

Most unexpected event: The drunk girl that fell into the street.

The playlist:

Continue reading "mental note: u2 tickets"

Posted by charity at 09:38 AM | Comments (5)

October 06, 2005

a word on Word

As I'm sitting here working in a MS Word document, I'm thinking that it would be a wonderful addition to their product if Microsoft would include a document within a document feature. Similar to Excel, where you can have multiple worksheets, I would like tabs for Word.

I am currently working on a report with nine parts. My two options are to have them all in one document where I have to endlessly scroll down to get to each part or I can have each part in a separate document having to open, close, maximize and minimize ad nausea. How much more helpful would it be to just be able to click on the separate parts of the document via a tab and then have the option to print just the one part or the whole "book."

If there's already a way to do this and I just don't know about it or if it is available on a newer version of the product, let me know! It would be quite helpful.

And if you're Microsoft, and you use this idea, make sure to pay me a million dollars for it. It'll be worth it, I promise.

Posted by charity at 12:41 PM | Comments (6)

October 01, 2005

lookin' back

The tag from Rebecca...

10 years ago: I was starting my senior year of high school. I remember we went to Chicago in October with my French class to a Monet exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Art, stayed at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, and went to the top of the Sears Tower. Sometime around here Rebecca and I visited Covenant too!

5 years ago: I was starting a week of pre-field orientation with Food for the Hungry and preparing to leave for Kenya and the Philippines.

1 year ago: From the blog archives it looks like I was starting a new job and getting a parking ticket! I was also, no doubt, either talking, or hoping to talk to Andy and looking forward to my first trip to NC.

Yesterday: went to work, came home, took a nap, had dinner with Sandra and Andy, laughed alot, walked to Maple View Farms for ice cream, came home, slept for TEN hours!

5 snacks I enjoy: sandwiches, skinny cows, chips deluxe cookies w/ milk, gimlets, funnel cakes.

5 songs I know all of the words to: Come Thou Fount, All for Jesus ... i know the choruses to a lot of songs!

5 things I'd do with 100 million dollars: start a foundation, pay off a number of people's student loans, start college funds, buy houses in southern France and the Croatian coast, buy a longer couch

5 places I'd run away to: France, Puerto Gallera, Montana, a small island, Alaska

5 things I'd never wear: daisy dukes, pants that look like a skirt, stilletos, a tongue piercing, taffeta.

5 favorite TV shows: Friends, Extreme Makeover Home Edition... and yes, i cry everytime i watch the latter.

5 biggest joys: Andy, fall leaves, food with friends, connecting conversations, God.

5 favorite toys: the internet, art supplies, books, a camera, ...

Posted by charity at 01:29 PM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2005

spelling bee

I just realized that I have no idea how to spell the state of MA. Can you pick the right one?

Massachussettes
Massachussetes
Massachussetts
Massachussets
Massachusettes
Massachusetts
Masachussettes
Masachussetts
Masachusettes
Masachusetes
Masachusets

Continue reading "spelling bee"

Posted by charity at 02:58 PM | Comments (1)

August 28, 2005

insight

"It turns out having a blog is like intellectual bling-bling."

- Steve Cox

Posted by charity at 03:14 PM | Comments (2)

July 25, 2005

netflix

It's the adult version of kids in a candy store.

Posted by charity at 06:09 PM | Comments (1)

June 26, 2005

un-wired

Yesterday morning our wireless provider moved away. She lived two doors down and when I saw her shiny flat screen monitor get carried out, I knew it was her network we had been connecting to this past month. The question is: how long can the Pennocks live without internet access?

Posted by charity at 08:48 AM | Comments (1)