New keyboard

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I’ve been pretty carpal the past few weeks. The Dr. said I should consider going back to my old regime of wrist splints, so I figured I might as well go for the whole ball of wax. But I had gotten rid of my old keyboard back when I was moving. So I bought a new one.

It is the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. It’s as fancy as a keyboard gets (and as expensive) short of moving to wireless/Bluetooth battery-operated.

I haven’t tested out all the cool new features yet on a Mac, but using it just as a dumb keyboard on Linux it works fine. The wrist rest is very nice. The spacing between my two arms seems a bit wide but not too much. The backspace key feels a smidgen too far away, but that’s probably because I’m holding the rest of my hand in the proper place (for a change).

Why is it, I wonder, that MS makes such nice hardware, and such crappy software?

Good grief! Another version?

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Apparently there’s a new version of WordPress out. I suppose I need to upgrade. But I spend 30-60 minutes upgrading WP about once a month, and I think that’s roughly how much time I spend blogging.

(Still, the price is right. And they really did kill off my comment spam.)

Excuses for slacking off

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I’ve been reading a lot (the better to write inspiring sermons, my dear). I always read as much I can to prolong the exegesis phase and avoid working on the sermon. I always read Calvin and Matthew Henry, plus whatever dead-tree commentaries I have for the passage I’m working on.

Beside that, I read Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, about the (mis-)transmission of the Bible (mainly the NT) from Elder Days to the present. I really enjoyed the first half of it, which explains how Scripture came to be corrupted and how scholars try to reconstruct the original. The second half wasn’t as much fun. I often agreed with the author’s evaluation of the “correct” reading, while disliking how he arrived there. It’s difficult enough to attribute motives to someone we know first hand (sometimes, even ourself!). Doing it for some anonymous monk 1500 years ago is ridiculous.

I’ve also been reading Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church and realized that mine doesn’t have one. Or, if it does, they haven’t told me yet.

And lately I’ve been reading Ortberg’s God is Closer Than You Think. It’s pretty good. I’ve never been a Brother Lawrence type, so I can use all the help I can get in this department.

Also I discovered how much more fun Flickr is when you have a program to do your uploads for you. Here’s a picture of my neighborhood:
Yucca Valley from JTNP

Desktop now using Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn” also

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The ibook install went so smoothly that I decided to upgrade my desktop. It’s sure a lot easier than it used to be between versions of Fedora. No CDs to burn, no rebooting (actually one time at the very end, but still), and a reasonably quick too boot: from about 7pm until morning. (It could have been longer, since it would periodically hang on an interactive prompt, and I wasn’t babysitting the install. But there were only a handful of those.)

iBook rising with Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn”

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I haven’t used my iBook during 2007. It’s an 800 MHz G3. Also, I don’t have a copy of 10.4 “Tiger” for it, and between the speed and the increasing degree to which it is isolated from the software I’d like to use, it just isn’t worth the effort. (This is with the exception of 10 minutes about 10 days ago when I convinced myself that the network was working but my Linux machine’s NIC wasn’t working.)

Anyway, this has changed now that the latest version of Ubuntu is out. Its support for the PowerPC architecture is awesome. (It’s much better than a couple of years ago, when I briefly tried Yellow Dog — which may also be better now; I wouldn’t know. I’m not slamming YD, just puffing Ubuntu.) I was most impressed that it just worked. I haven’t done a complete test of power management and other laptop-y functions, but most everything else appears to work out of box. Cool.

To be honest, I’d rather have a new Mac. (Like Tim.) My plan had been to sell the iBook and apply the $300 toward the cost of an iMac. But pending such time as I actually sell this one, I might as well be using it.

New Blogging Tool.

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It’s Thursday, which means I’m procrastinating on my sermon.

Also, even though I ordered my new NIC on — what, Saturday? — it still hasn’t arrived so I don’t have many opportunities to blog. Anyhoo, I’m at work and thinking I might blog during my lunch hours. Especially if I ought to be writing a sermon.

So the way I’m procrastinating (by blogging) is by using Marsedit. It’s pretty slick, and it supports both Markdown and Smartypants, which I use a lot. (In fact, I write my sermons using gvim and then pretty ’em up with these same tools.) I’ve been thinking I should convert my blog to use one of those Markdown plug-ins, but maybe what I should do is use something like this to create HTML from Markdown and not use a plug-in.

Hmm. It doesn’t do a lot. But it doesn’t cost a lot either. I’ll think about it.

Offline for a bit…

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We had a power outage here the other day. Afterward, everything came back up except (it appears) the NIC in my Linux machine. I spent a couple of hours figuring out that it was the only casualty (difficult at first, since it’s the machine from which I do most of my admin). Bummer.

But the good news is that these days an Intel 10/100/1000 Mbps NIC costs 30 bucks. Back when I worked on a 1 Mbps NIC (1986-ish) it cost $595. My employer was trying to build a low-cost version for only $295 but eventually they threw in the towel because they figured they couldn’t make any money at that price.

Anyway, blogging will be even less frequent for a few days until the NIC arrives.

Not blogging enough?

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It’s been busy, what with the usual administrative work at church, plus two funerals and Holy Week. (Four services, three sermons in 8 days.) So I haven’t been blogging, it’s true. But I’m about tired of WordPress upgrades. They are pushing out changes about as often as I add a blog entry. And it’s such a pain in the butt to do the upgrade. It’s never just a file or two. It’s always 6932 lines of changes in 83 files. Sigh.

Called and installed

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As of yesterday, I am not only an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament, not only serving as pastor at a local church, but now, finally, I am installed.

Six months ago, when I began serving, someone from pby. (COM? Nominating Cmte?) told me that I would have a year’s grace period without having to serve on any pby. cmtes. I blew half of it (!) getting this done. But! Now it is done, and I can enjoy the remaining half.