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Sorry I haven't written much.   Kinda been coasting for the last week or so.  We have a big vacation coming up, and I have been spending most of my energy counting down the days until we leave.

I fixed our van.  It has been running rough for the last month or so.  The check engine light has turned on periodically.  Ran down to the local auto parts store and borrowed their code scanner, and it indicated our Oxygen sensor was going bad.  Had to break out my ramps and my sled to get find it, but changing it wasn't much more difficult than swapping out a spark plug.

Nathan went to the parts store with me.   He likes to charm the clerks.  Especially the female ones.  He usually opens up with "I got a scooter for my Birthday"   His birthday was in April.  If you are ever looking for a good present for a 3 year old, a three wheeled scooter has Nathan's strong endorsement.

On a related topic, Nathan's favorite word right now is "Actually".  Big sophisticated word for a 3 year old. 

I have been hooked on "Deadly Catch" on Discovery Channel.   It seems to be all that is on anymore.  It is rather slow, and pretty much all the same, but it still keeps you hooked.   Kinda reminds me of watching the America's cup sailboat races.  Except for bigger waves, More ice, and slightly rougher crew.  Lets call it extremely blue collar America's cup.

I have slept 3 hours out of the last 40.  My sense of humor gets a bit distorted at this stage of sleep deprivation.   Sorry if I am totally goofy.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Junglepop posted an interesting question yesterday in his post:  Missionaries, Those Welfare Christians

He basically compares the scrutiny that we give to folks buying junk food with their food stamps to the scrutiny that missionaries feel when they spend their donated "Salaries" on certain indulgences.

I think that it is likely that if we where to get to know one of the welfare recipients, and take them shopping, they would probably use much better judgment with our money than they do when they are using the Government's money.  The transaction has a lot more meaning when you can see the person who is giving it to you.  It has a lot more meaning when you see their motives in giving it to you.  When a check comes in the mail every week from an anonymizing bureaucracy, that love transaction is lost.  The beneficiary feels entitled, and the provider feels taxed.

I think that missionaries like Joe are quite conscious of their supporters, and try to use their money wisely. (thus the post)   That made me think.  As Christians, aren't we all missionaries here? (John 17:14-18)  Are we treating our provider as an anonymous bureaucracy?  Or are we treating him as our generous friend? 

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It has been a fairly uneventful week.  Nathan (3) is growing up.  Earlier this week he was in our bed at 6 AM, and he started talking in his sleep.  He was pretty loud.  "I need some more money!"  He dosed off for a while.  "Guys,  can I please have some money?" he asked again a few minutes later.  Since he said please, I slipped a quarter into his clinched hand.  Andee and I where chuckling at him.  He seemed to be sound asleep.  "Guys, why you laughing?" he yelled, agitated.  That didn't help his cause much.

 Sunday we went to see the African Children's Choir at a Life Center.  Our kids where pretty restless, and distracting.  The Life Center is a church that we used to attend before our current church was planted.  They recently built a very large and modern facility.  The auditorium is a huge square room with the stage in the corner.  We sat down toward the very front, at the outer edge next to the aisle that is against the wall.  Because the corner of the building has a bit of an addition on it to house the stage, there where two structural columns on the wall, just across the aisle from where we where sitting.  During the 30 minutes we waited for the performance to start, we allowed the kids to play in the aisle.  Nathan, who isn't remotely interested in potty training yet, discovered these two pillars, and pretended that the little cubby was a urinal.  He didn't remove his diaper or anything, just assumed the position. 

Two weeks left before vacation!

I mowed the lawn today.  It was getting pretty bad, but I was much better off than Jess was.

 I got my PlasmaCAM demo DVD in the mail Friday.   I keep trying to show it off to folks, but nobody is nerdy enough to truly enjoy it.  I bet that machine could pay for itself pretty quickly,  If I happen across a few thousand dollars, perhaps I can start my own metal cutting business.

Tomorrow is my last day of BSF for the year.  I am going to try to go all of the way through Philippians and Romans over the summer. 

Well, that is enough gibberish for one night.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 3:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think I am going to put this on my wish list.

PlasmaCAM - The best CNC shape cutting machine w/ torch height control

Being a Nerd makes me pretty hard to shop for.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I have been evangelizing Flickr lately. I love it. I love that it is so searchable, and that it is all RSS enabled so I can subscribe to all photos bearing a certain keyword.

Here is the collection of my latest convert:Flickr: Photos from Gr8Pics8 I am quite impressed!

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

One of the Church signs in town has the following statement on it this week:

 "Sin is selective compassion"

It took me about 5 minutes to figure out what they meant.

I don't support this definition, but I am curious:  Are there some forms of Sin that cannot be labeled as "Selective Compassion"? 

Posted by Josh Reighley at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:27 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Wow, this is pretty darn cool:

via: Robinson House

Posted by Josh Reighley at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well,  if you are not using an RSS feed reader, you will notice the view has changed a bit.   I have been using some hacked together MT 2.3 era templates.  They worked fine from the end user perspective, but whenever I try to hack them, they are totally different than anything else that is out there, so I have had to engineer everything myself.

Tonight I refreshed all of my templates.   I am not thrilled with how it looks, but it will do for now.  I still haven't figured out how to get the cocomment integration working.  I have made the hacks recommended by the cocomment site, but It is not flowing through to the cocomment site when I use the firefox plugin or the bookmarklet.  I think it probably has something to do with the typekey authentication, but I am not sure.  If Cocomment works as well as it seems like it should it will not be long until the someone figures it out.

 I am also having trouble with their firefox plugin interfering with my movable type posting capabilities.   Perhaps it is a conflict between the Ajaxified enhanced editing software I installed a few months ago.  If it works like it says it does, I think it will be well worth the trouble.

Also, I am having quite a bit of trouble with the StyleCatcher plugin for movable type.  It looks like it is going to work fine, but then the stylesheet links don't point to the correct location.  I can correct them, but every time I select a different style, I have to re-edit.  I would guess it is due to me hosting my MT installation on a different domain than my blog.  That is just an initial guess.  Anyway, nothing ever seems to be easy does it?

Posted by Josh Reighley at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This weekend I did not go to our local General Aviation airport for the first time in a long time. Usually I take my kids over there 3 or 4 times a week.  It is cheap fun.

 I also didn't run in Bloomsday.  I never have even though I have lived in Spokane for almost all of my life.   In my defense, I did work at a water station a few times.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 5:17 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

We had a very busy weekend.   I hadn't slept much last week, so Friday I went to bed at 7AM and got up at 4PM.  I took Nathan up to his Grandparents where he spent the night for the first time ever.  It went quite well.   I came home, went to bed at 11PM and got up at 6:30AM.

 Saturday we went to the DNA of Relationships Seminar which was pretty good.  Gary was a bit jet-lagged, so his delivery wasn't perfect, but his content was quite powerful and inspirational.  Greg and Michael where quite entertaining and informative.   Many of the concepts where similar to teaching that I had heard at other seminars, but it is always good to bring those ideas back to the forefront.   Seminar speakers usually have to bring some interesting and humorous stories with them in order to keep the audience interested.  The more of these stories you hear, the more you will be reminded of these concepts by other events in your life.

 The event was at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls Idaho.  Last I heard, they where one of the fastest growing churches in the country.  Their building is scary big.  I know several people who go there, and I  listened to their radio broadcast for a year or so, and I am convinced that they are growing for the right reasons.  They do not avoid the tough topics, or sugar coat anything.  They teach the Gospel in a very straightforward and deliberate manner.   They work very hard at caring for their people and getting people involved in ministry.   I have also attended a baptism there, and they do a very good job of making sure that everyone in the building understands exactly what it represents.  Their attendance has grown from 50 people to over 5000, and They are only 8 years old.

We had dinner with some Friends at the White House Grill.  It was pretty extraordinary food.  Inexpensive as well.   Hope you like Garlic!   Also better have reservations.

Today we started the day going to church.   Liferoads is starting a 4 week series on the heart of David.  I am pretty sure that it is going to be a great study!  We are having a huge neighborhood outreach/church cleanup project next weekend.  The weekend after that the African Children's Choir is coming to Spokane.

This evening we had our Financial Peace class.  I would recommend that everyone take this class or another class like it.  If you try to pick it up on your own, you are likely to get it totally wrong.   Nearly everyone in our culture has it wrong.   We still have a lot of work to do, but at least there is a plan.

Sundays are always pretty tough for me.  I get up at 7 and go to bed at 7 or 8.  Rarely do I get any sleep.  

Posted by Josh Reighley at 2:53 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I am giving CoComment a try.   It seems like a very good idea to me.  Basically it is a system to track all of the comments that you leave all over the Blogsphere..    I got an account, and installed the firefox extension.  We will see how it works.  I have been scouring the net trying to find something to comment on, but alas, most of my favorite blogs have been nearly as quiet as mine lately.

 Once I have found a blog or two to comment on, I may add a section on my sidebar listing my comments on other folks sites.  If I found it interesting enough to comment on, there is a good chance that some of the regulars might take interest in it too.  (All three of you?)  

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Posted by Josh Reighley at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Well,  I have had a bit of a down week.   Not sure what happened, but I just got kinda gloomy..  Nothing really went wrong, but nothing really went right either.   By Saturday, I was really grumpy, and couldn't really put my finger on why.

 Sunday morning during worship, I think I figured it out.  For months, we have been struggling pretty hard financially.  We do crazy things like put five dollars worth of gas in the car at a time.  We  scrounge for stuff to sell to get enough money to go to a resturaunt.  We are not poor by any means.  We have just enough, and nothing more.  Cashflow is very tight.

 Last week, we where not broke for the first time in a very long time.  I had decided in advance to be more disciplined with the money.  In the past, we have always blown our windfall money.  This hasn't been healthy.  I thought things through, and decided not to go take a flying lesson or do anything else that would wet my appetite for money.  I paid some bills, invested in some useful classes for my wife and myself, and bought some groceries.  Overall we behaved ourselves..

 I didn't really pray much all week.  I prayed with the kids when I went to bed.  Those where honest prayers.  But I didn't really break out of the routine at all.  I created a law, stayed in the law, and forgot all about why I was doing what I was doing, and not doing what I was not doing.

I have been robotic..  I programmed the course, and turned myself on..  As I excecuted the program, I failed to notice that I had pulled my plug out of the wall..  While I am still able to follow my course, I am quickly getting tired, lethargic, and apathetic.   I lost my power source! 

Posted by Josh Reighley at 2:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)