July 2007 Archives
The Mariner of the Seas departs Port Canaveral this Sunday afternoon for a 7-night cruise through the eastern caribbean. Our itinerary is as follows:
Sun: Depart Port Canaveral, FL
Mon: Cococay, Bahamas
Tue: Cruising
Wed: Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
Thur: Philipsburg, St. Maartin
Fri: Cruising
Sat: Cruising
Sun: Return to Port Canaveral, FL
On Sunday, July 29 we'll be doing the VIP Kennedy Space Center Tour before flying back to Virginia. It is unlikely that I'll blog before July 30. Have a great week everyone.
The Evangelical Outpost has posted a list of 100 Christian Blogs that he has "found to be the most convicting, enlightening, frustrating, illuminating, maddening, stimulating, right-on and/or wrongheaded by Christians expressing a Christian worldview."
I have to ask, who has the time to be influenced by that many blogs?
Despite the fact that I'm not a big fan of the Ontological Argument, I scored as Anselm in this interesting online quiz matching responses to the views of prominant theologians through the ages. Here are the details of my results:
 | You scored as Anselm, Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period.He sees man's primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read 'Cur Deus Homo?'
Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
Check it out and let me know how you score. Since most readers of this blog are of the evangelical tradition, I'm curious if the quiz will produce any variance amongst us.
It has been a week since my last post. I was in Stevenson, WA (in the Gorge) for the 2007 Driving Assessment Conference. The conference was great, as was the setting. Before returning to the Portland airport (PDX), my travel companions and I headed to the world famous Powell's Books in downtown Portland. There were nearly as many books as there were tattoos in the joint.
I now have a week at home and work before heading out for a 7-night Eastern Caribbean Cruise with my wife. I'll do my best to post several times before next Saturday afternoon when we depart.
The new moleskine PDA worked well during the conference. I'll continue to post updates on my progress with the it.
BTW, any comments on the trial new blog name?
After several years of failing to maintain a time management system with digital tools, I decided to return to the medium in which I was last successful. The paper and pen approach with, you guessed it, a Moleskine. Some background is required. I was indoctrinated with the Franklin (before Covey) system in my first job during the mid-1990's. This method used a physical daytimer as it was before most digital implementations (gasp). I was quite diligent in maintaining the daily prioritized task list and writing notes in the daytimer. When I got my first Palm PDA I quickly bought the Franklin software to go along with it. I found that I was using the desktop software much more than the PDA itself (it was such a pain to write things out on the Palm rather than quickly type them with the desktop app). I continued to faithfully use the desktop software until I changed jobs and my employer's IT policy prohibited non-sactioned software installations. What followed was a few years of lax time management and makeshift "to do" lists on post-it notes. The idea of returning to the hardcopy system seemed like a step backward.
Most recently, I've been trying to adopt David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) system on my laptop. There are several free implementations of the GTD system for both Macs and Windows. I was working with an implementation of GTD on DevonThink, but it was a bit clumsy. I tried iGTD, which is an excellent application, but it just never took off for me. Despite my past success with using the computer-based software for time management, I just wasn't clicking with any of the recent applications.
While reveling in the newfound glory of Moleskine notebooks, I stumbled across an implementation of GTD with Moleskines. Partly inspired by Merlin Mann's Hipster PDA, there are a handful of these GTD Moleskine Hacks, as they're called, but I quickly decided to give the hyalineskies GTD System a try. At $10 for the Moleskine Pocket Ruled Notebook, it was worth the investment even if it ultimately fails.
So, here's a picture of my new PDA. I'll keep you posted on how it works out. For you GTD users out there, the tabs are Inbox/Next Actions, Projects, and Lists (including Someday/Maybe).
My wife was approached to complete a survey following our viewing of Transformers this afternoon (great summer action flick, btw). The survey was evidently measuring the impact of the post-slideshow, pre-preview commercials. For example, the anti-drug campaign type commercials commonly aired in theaters out here, or for those of you in LA, the old LA Times commercials shot like an action film. The interesting thing was that Cynthia told the guy she didn't recall the advertised products, but she did remember the church ads (slides) before the commercials. The survey-taker responded, "That's what everyone says." So, perhaps advertising in movie theaters is a strong way for churches to make their presence known.
Here's a brief video (Quicktime required) of our new driving simulator in action. As noted before, the yaw (rotation) movement is a novel feature on a simulator this scale. I didn't have any students available to help me that morning, so I had to shoot it myself.
This video was shot with an iSight and captured with a demo version of iVeZeen.
Much like how Mac owners frequently associate their choice of computers with a superior sense of computing style and discernment, Moleskine (mol-a-skeen'-a) notebook owners often carry a similar air of superiority. With its rigid, bound oilcloth cover and fine Italian acid-free paper pages, the Moleskine communicates a deeper dedication to one's notes.
Not surprisingly, I have joined the ranks of Moleskine users. Mine is a lab notebook, so I use the squared version. In the past, the Mead Composition Quad Rule Notebook, which is much like the PC of notebooks: Functional, but utterly without style or quality, was sufficient. No longer!
Now I just need an iPhone to complete the package of superior thinking tools.
Even if you're not a Mac person, this link showing the history of Apple products is pretty cool.
