That Was Moving Day

I give you "That Was Moving Day."

I would LOVE to sit and make all sorts of excuses about how I didn't take enough pictures, how they are edited poorly, how I forgot my camera was set to "manual focus" instead of "auto focus," so most of them are blurry ... but I'm not going to do that. Here's my very first attempt at anything resembling stop motion video. More importantly, here's what our moving day looked like:

Entertain Me. now.

Sometimes I read blogs and it seems like the writers do absolutely nothing but sit on their computers trying to find interesting things to share. It's a strange culture, this internet. I don't really do that too often, but today I found two videos that I thought were kinda funny. The first is a home-made commercial for the store Trader Joe's. I don't think I've ever been to Trader Joe's, but that doesn't prevent me from finding this really funny and well-written. 

The next is a video of a girl doing voice-over captions to pictures of kittens. most of them are what you'd expect from a 6 year old, but a few are super funny. I laughed.

Today, I also learned that Mr. Rogers (of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) was a huge supporter of making VCR's legal in the U.S., so that people could be more active in the control of their lives. He found it important that people could program their own lives and schedules, and not be programmed by others. I can't help but think of how this has evolved to DVR's and TiVO and U-Verse and all of these technologies. I LOVE that I rarely watch any of my favorite shows when they actually come on. It's so much healthier, and lets the technology serve ME instead of me serving the technology. Mmkay, that's all I have today.

What's that sound?

It's the sound of custom-made ringtones, free of charge, bellowing from the tiny lo-fi speakers of my iPhone. In the words of Don Moen, "God will make a way where there seems to be no way." 

How was it accomplished? I'll tell you. Like I said before, the iTunes ringtone creator only allows you to use songs you buy, and only if those songs are approved by the record labels. Well, a "ringtone" is actually just a short AAC (.m4p) file with a different extension: .m4r. So, what I did was take an mp3 from any album that I've imported, for instance, "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay. I dragged that file into Garage Band and made a nifty little 30 second clip of it with a short fade in and fade out so it's not too abrupt when it plays on my phone. I don't like for ringtones to scare me when they start. After that, I used the "export to iTunes" option on Garage band, which imported the mp3 into iTunes. Then, I set the importing options on iTunes to AAC, which creates an .m4p file. Once it was converted, I dragged the file to my desktop and erased it from the iTunes library. Once on the desktop, I just renamed the file from .m4p to .m4r, and double-clicked it. It opened up and automatically was put into the ringtone folder, which syncs with my phone. Dollar saved. 

Lighter Note

I've spent a few posts on heavy theological stuff. That's important, I think. But, today I will be talking about some things that have recently brought me joy. This, of course, is the fleeting, temporary joy that things of this world bring, not the lasting, incomprehensible joy that comes from the Spirit of God.

1. I like lists, so this will be in list form.

2. Number 3 will be the first item.

3. The Michael Gungor Band- This summer, John Sherrill was pretty excited about one of their songs, called "Ancient Skies." I liked it too, so I checked out the full album. It's really great. I love the creativity and production, you can tell it was really thought out and is very well done. The songs are great, too. I love "Ancient Skies," but also this song, called "Spotless:"

**At this point, I had planned on copying and pasting the lyrics, so you could read them. I'm not lying, this is the first time ever I have not been able to find lyrics online for a particular song. The one link that looks like it will help me is not loading. I will continue to search and type, and hopefully something will pop up. Weird. It's a good song, believe me.

4. I have an iPhone now. I really like it. It continues to become more and more invaluable. Just Sunday, I downloaded an application that is a really simple shopping list, and Bethany and I headed off to H.E.B. It was totally frivolous and a pen and paper would've worked just fine, but how cool was it that I could use my phone for that?

5. I took my computer in the the Mac store today because I screwed something up. They adjusted everything so that my iTunes library is all in one place, on my portable hard drive, and there is no music on my actual computer hard drive. I have 24GB free on my computer now (instead of 500MB like before), and all of my music is in one place. It feels like a new computer. Now all I need is a battery, so I can actually use the computer more than 10ft. from the wall.

6. I quit the band, Max Cat. It's been a long time coming, but I finally just went ahead and did it. October 4th will be my last gig with them.

7. I just stopped and thought about how quitting Max Cat is a pretty big financial blow for me. Then I realized the song that's playing on my iTunes right now is called "God Will Take Care of You." Blatant profundity?

8. I didn't know I knew the word "profundity."

9. I have a new drive towards a pursuit of the knowledge of God. I'm trying to be careful that I'm not just learning facts to have something to argue, but really working towards sharpening my beliefs and growing in my faith. I'm sure I'll post a few of my newest revelations here soon.

10. I'm going to be a dad very soon. This is her:


I automatically think she's the most amazing baby ever conceived. I can't wait to meet her and hold her and raise her. Oh gosh, I have to raise her. God, are you SURE I'm ready for this?

11. I took my car in to a service shop last week for my inspection (two months late), and was not treated like a child. I will be going back for other car work as the need arises.

12. My DVR is glad the olympics are over. I actually had to reboot it because the "record" light was stuck on. Sorry, U-verse. Thanks for doing such a great job, though. P.S. The closing ceremony is still saved on there, if you want to come watch it with me.

13. I am researching a way (and I will find one, I promise) to bypass the "ringtone" function on iTunes. Right now, I can only use ringtones that I make on iTunes. And I can only make ringtones on iTunes from songs I have bought from iTunes. And among the songs I've bought on iTunes, only songs that are approved by the record company to be made into ringtones can be made into ringtones. Then, they charge an extra $.99 for the 30 seconds I use of each song I already own. This is limiting, and needlessly expensive. I don't like to be limited, especially when I'm paying for very high levels of technology. And I don't like to all of a sudden be charged for what I used to do for free. And seriously, why would I pay another $.99 to have 30 seconds of a song I already paid $.99 to have in the first place? I will find a way. I already have an idea, it's just going to take a few extra steps, and THANK YOU to Apple marketing, I'm starting to wonder if it's worth my time to just pay the $.99 to save myself 5 extra minutes. Oh, you are clever, Mr. Jobs.

14. This is the last item in the list. I will talk to you soon.