Fun Eddie Still Having Fun

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Well. I lost track of Ed Fries in about 1989, when he was still doing Officey-things at Microsoft, before his move to the games division. He did that for 15 years or so, and then, after he made his pile, or got tired of Xboxes, or whatever it was, he left Microsoft. Now I know what he’s been up to: coding Halo for the Atari 2600. I’m not surprised he’s been involved with games: back in the day, he made his reputation by bringing down the Vax so he could play rogue in single-user mode. (Via DF.)

What Do You Want From Life?

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Like other area ministers, I write an occasional column for the Hi Desert Star. My article “What Do You Want From Life?” appeared there today.

But if you were listening to the right radio stations in the 1970s, you know that’s not just any question. It’s also the title of a song by the Tubes. They suggest several possible answers (“To kidnap an heiress and threaten her with a knife?” or “An Indian guru to show you the inner light?”) before concluding with the unfortunate news:

Well, you can’t have that,
But, if you’re an American Citizen,
you are entitled to…

…followed by several excellent entitlements, including:

A foolproof plan and an airtight alibi
…
A Las Vegas wedding, a Mexican divorce

And so forth. See the whole list at the Tubes’ lyrics site.

Inception

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I had a chance to see an actual in-the-theater movie today, so I went to see Inception. I thought it was pretty good, in a the-dream-is-reality Matrix-y kind of way.

I was kind of shocked to see that movie tickets here cost $12.50. That’s the 4:00 pm showing. If they charge more after 6 pm, I don’t want to know how much it is.

I didn’t buy anything from the concession stand, so the theater didn’t make anything off me there, but they did rent my eyeballs to some commercial-packaging service for the last 20 minutes before showtime. I saw ads for some summer replacement program on TNT and various foods and drugs. Then showtime came, and I got another 10-15 minutes of ads for coming attractions.

I don’t care how bad the economy has gotten, it can’t be a depression. Because in the depression, people could still afford to go to the movies.

I guess part of the reason so much money changed hands was because the movie used a 4K digital projection system. Most of the time, that was fine, but for some shots it looked like it needed to be a 6K or 8K system. The theater was showing a 3D movie in the other room. I don’t know if that’s something you can do with a 4K projector or if they needed separate systems for each. But all that fancy equipment has to get paid for somehow.

Cool Software: PDF Clerk Pro

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Until a couple of hours ago, I’d never heard of PDFClerk Pro. But some website or other (dealmac?) alerted me to a bargain price for it on MacUpdate. I downloaded it, tried it out, and sprang for the $25 price after about 20 minutes’ worth of fiddling.

Why? After all, I’m a Mac fanboi. And one of the many benefits of working on a Mac is that it comes with Preview, which allows you to do 95% of what you might want to do with PDFs: reorder pages, combine pages from multiple files, etc. I use Preview’s PDF-editing features 10-20 times a week, if not more. So why do I need PDF Clerk Pro?
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Reflections on Salary

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My first job out of college paid an annual salary of S. (The actual amount S represents is unimportant.)

For a brief period of time, that was more money than I could imagine. (We didn’t discuss money in my family, but I have reason to believe that my dad supported us–four kids, mom, and himself–on less than that amount.) Two years later, when I moved to Bell Labs, I also “right-sized” my salary to 140% of S. Then S didn’t seem so impressive.

What’s interesting is that my 1984 salary is 70% of what I make now, 26 years later, according to the measuringworth.com web site. (Actually, they provide a bunch of estimates, ranging from 71% to 140%. I picked the lowest one.)

Now, that was in Albuquerque, which is cheaper to live in than Yucca Valley. According to the cost-of-living comparison at Sperling’s BestPlaces, a dollar there buys as much as $1.06 does here.

So my first job out of college paid effectively 75% of my current salary. And I only had one car and three less mouths to feed. But what’s really amazing is that within two years of graduation, I had run up more than 10% of my salary in credit card debt. To be sure, I do have a mortgage today, but (so far!) we’re paying our bills and living within our means.

Pssst! You’re Mortal!

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Supposedly, when a conquering general returned to Rome and was given a triumph to celebrate his victory, a slave would ride with him in the chariot, holding a wreath above his head but whispering in his ear “Remember you are a mortal.” Sometimes I feel that way after a sermon.

A while ago, I went through a period of several weeks where my sermons just didn’t seem to work well. The idea was fine, but I never felt satisfied with my ability to communicate it. And, judging from the faces looking back at me, I think it rubbed off on the congregation. If I communicated much, it seemed to be my vague dissatisfaction with the sermon.

Eventually, my “bad streak” ended. (I say “bad streak” because of my perception of the sermon and its impact, but of course I have very little insight as to how God may have used my words to speak grace to the assembled faithful.)

Finally, after several weeks, I preached a sermon that I liked. More of the faces out there seemed to be following me. Great day.

It was a great day for about 2 minutes, at least. Then this dear saint came up to me after the service to offer a critique of the sermon. She told me she didn’t appreciate it when I’d said Jesus was talking “crazy talk.”

It’s true; I’d said that. I’d been talking about how the things Jesus said didn’t make any sense according to the world’s standards. And the way I said that was that Jesus said a lot of crazy talk.

And I was right. The woman was clearly wrong about Jesus. People who heard him face to face thought he had a demon. They grumbled about his “hard sayings.” They said his disciples were turning the world upside down. If you think everything Jesus said is self-evident and obvious, you either live in a bubble that keeps you isolated from the world — which I doubt — or — more likely — you have completely missed the point.

But that’s not what bugged me about this woman. My real frustration was that I wanted to enjoy my triumph and this woman was whispering in my ear that I was mortal.

Three Things I Like

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The first thing is a song called “Turkish Delight,” by the David Crowder Band. It’s a disco song straight out of the 1970s, and you can find it on the record Music Inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia. But you can’t find it on Amazon. It seems to be available only on the iTunes Store.

The second thing is the movie Shakespeare in Love. Joseph Fiennes stars as Shakespeare, and Gwyneth Paltrow won an Academy Award as the love he was in. (Ahem.) There was enough skin and bawdy talk to merit its R rating, I suppose, but only just barely. I’ve never been a great fan of the Bard, but this movie made me wish I was.

The third thing is the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. I liked it so much, I actually posted my first-ever review of a book on Amazon.com:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Miller’s story about “editing his life.” His sense of humor makes the book delightful to read. (His suggestion to a friend about how to answer the question “What’s a movie with a car chase?” was hysterical.) But the larger point – how to have a life that is a story worth reading – is what makes this book so good. As you read his story, you realize you have the same challenge as he had. I’ve given my copy to a friend, and since I only had one copy, I’ll simply recommend it to everyone else.

New Newsboys CD

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I was pleased to see the Newsboys have got a new CD coming out. It’s called Born Again and (“for a limited time”) it’s a bargain at $6.49. It’s actually a better bargain than that, because buying it now gives you a download of a pre-release EP. So go do that.

I’ve been listening to them since 1994 or ’95. I saw them on their Going Public tour in a huge barn at the State Fairgrounds in Salem, Oregon, when they headlined a show that also featured Audio Adrenaline and Tony Vincent. That was the end of the small time for them, though. The very next year, they hit the big time with Take Me to Your Leader and sold out the Rose Garden in Portland. (I went as a “chaperone” (I guess) with a group of youth from my church, and I remember being disgusted that I was exactly double the age of the kids.)

A glance at the cover of the new CD told me there was news about the Newboys that I didn’t know, so I popped over to Wikipedia and caught up with them. There’s all kinds of things I didn’t know. The most obvious thing is that instead of six Australians they now have 4 people, and they aren’t all Australians. The lead singer, for example, is Michael Tait, formerly of dc Talk. The times are a-changin’.

This Blog Used to Be Somewhere Else

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This blog used to be at messofpottage.com. But this is my hobby/personal blog, and that domain is where I keep my professional stuff–like my professional blog (“mess of pottage”). So this one had to come here.

I know. It’s incredibly rude to move a blog. It basically tells the entire world, “Don’t link me because my links vanish.” But since I didn’t have any readers before, what are the odds that they created any links to my content that has now been moved out from under them? And now, I’ve alienated anyone who might have been thinking about doing it in the future. Problem solved!

However, since I was destroying all my permalinks anyway, I took the opportunity to change them to a more readable format, et viola.