Will this be on the final?

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Time is slowly ticking away for the end of the year…and the end of a school semester. Those school days are long gone for me, yet I still remember them. I have quite a few friends who are in college. No doubt they are in the stressed out mode right now….or if they have completed all of their exams, able to live a relatively stress free life until the end of the year.

  • Dead Day – At Lipscomb University once the regular classes were over, we’d have a study day which was always on the Friday before final exams started. Even though it was called a study day, but many people choose not to study. Most of us called it “Dead Day” since nothing was going on at school. If students had jobs, they would just work all day and come back and study.
    On this free day, I can remember going to a 24 hour play…which is kinda a misnomer since the play didn’t actually last 24 hours, but instead was written and performed within 24 hours. The student directors would receive quotes which they would have to work into the dialogue of their play. I went to one of these plays and was impressed at the actual depth of the plot and dialogue of the play written so quickly. And it was funny too.
  • Freshmen Comp Exams – For some reason Freshmen Composition (English) exams were held first thing Saturday morning. I guess they decided to get all of them out of the way. Freshmen Comp was really one of the few classes which most incoming Freshmen took.
  • Exam Scheduling – Exams started on Saturday and lasted until the following Thursday. If you were lucky, most of your exams were scheduled 1 or 2 a day and could be completed within just a few days. Most of the time this was not the case. Some students complained that they had 3 exams on one day (which they could easily change by asking their teacher for an alternate time). I can’t specifically remember having 3 in one day. But I can remember having most of my exams completed by Monday or Tuesday, but having to wait until Thursday afternoon to take one lone exam before going home for the break.
  • After exams were over… we’d pack up and go home. Friends had aquarium fish which they couldn’t take with them over the Christmas holidays. So they just left them and hoped the weekend/vacation feeder capsules would keep them fed until January.
    I can remember not taking home my computer during the holidays. I’d probably rethink that option now, because the computer is such and intricate part of my life these days.
    The dorms were relatively secure. However I wouldn’t leave huge wads of money lying around. One of my friends didn’t trust his RA and decided to put a password protection on his computer during the break.
    Rarely did I stay for graduation. Other than my own, I can remember going to 2 graduation ceremonies at Lipscomb. And only one of those was a December ceremony.

My Friend Matt

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I met Matt at one of the many church camps I go to during the summer. Matt’s parents don’t go to church. Matt’s brother doesn’t go to church. Each Sunday morning Matt consciously makes the decision to go to church with his grandparents (who themselves had not been going to church very long when they first started taking Matt). Matt’s cool like that. While many of his peers are not mature enough to consider if Christianity is indeed their religion, Matt has made Christianity his religion. What would you do if you were the only person in your family who went to church? Would you still go?
Important Milestones in My Webpage Development

  • January 27, 1997: Posted my first webpage on the internet. The subject: Mt. Juliet High School Alumni
  • Feburary 28, 2001: Registered the domain jeffwhittle.com. The site goes online a few days later (Thanks Chuck!)
  • August 24, 2001: First Blogger Post
  • March 2002: Applied the ability to do comments
  • December 7, 2002: Installed Movable Type on my webpage.
  • December 10, 2002: Completely moved over all the coments.

Stats:

  • 396 Journal Entries
  • 113 Comments
  • 1 Author

And no, I didn’t go through there and count all of thost entries. Moveable Type does it for me.

Importing Comments

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I’ve been spending alot of time tonight importing in my comment entries from my Blogger posts. It has to be done manually. I’ve been able to get the comments from March, April and May 2002 in. So that leaves the rest of the year that needs to be imported.
So thanks to everyone who used the comment utility (especially “bob”) for making my job more difficult. (Justing kidding)

Money Burns a Hole in Your Pocket

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So I went to Portland today and kept my promise to take the kids out to eat. For some reason, kids that age tend to spend money like there’s no tomorrow. I never spent that much money when I was their age. Arcade games? Food? Golf driving range? They wanted to do all this after lunch. It was a quest to spend money and they won. Or lost depending on your perspective.
Really I almost forgot to post to this weblog. I’m very tired and just wanted to relax.
I have been trying to talk to several different people about their Central American Mission trip experiences to get a perspective on things. I need to try to think about this. I wish I knew if I was going to get a job anytime soon. It would make the decision process alot easier.

Movable Type: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread!

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Successfully Installed Movable Type on this webpage. It’s a whole lot better than Blogger. Some of the features:

  • You can edit the date stamps of posts. So if you go somewhere and keep a travel log with you, you can post your entries when you get back and they will appear to have the correct dates on them.
  • Titles on each post. So I’ll have to think of a catchy slogan for each entry.
  • Easily Imported from Blogger. MT made a special import utility and gave special instructions on how to do this. Saves alot of time.
  • Multiple Users; Multiple Blogs. This would be GREAT for Newspaper Websites.

I’m glad I took the time to install it. It was well worth the effort.
At times I feel like I have to ask permission for everything. Case in point – this ski trip. I had to pull some strings in order to ask some friends to come with us. I didn’t realized this was a “closed” ski trip. We are in a disturbing trend if we start closing off church activities to outsiders. Will we soon have to ask permission to invite visitors to our church services?
In any case I am going up to Portland tomorrow to share some information about this ski trip. I really guess I should have kept my mouth shut when it came to this trip. There’s always the possiblity that I could wear out my welcome up there. Also folks might find it rude that I’m asking them to pay $100+ dollars for this ski trip – a price that could be reduced drastically by having the ski trip at a different time and not spending the night. I’ve skied for as little as $30 before.

Cullman, Alabama

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Lots of people do stupid things at times. Today I did something which could be considered stupid to some people. I drove to Alabama to buy a rare CD released by a radio station. Cullman, Alabama, to be exact. The CD was some acoustic radio performances by some of my favorite bands. You could only buy them in the greater Birmingham area. Blockbuster carried them. At first I was thinking I was looking for a Blockbuster Music store, but it was the regular ole video store.
Cullman is small town about an hour outside of Birmingham. I thought it was about as big as Lebanon….maybe Cookeville. There’s a shopping center with a Sears and Peebles stores among a few others. There’s not really a town square. The town is large enough to have a 4 lane road through the main part of it. It was my first time to Cullman and most likely my last.
On my way to Bama, I had lunch with a friend of mine near Columbia, TN. He is a minister to a small rural congregation in a small community nearby. We ate lunch at the community’s only restaurant. The hotdog bun was a bit stale, but the price was reasonable.
Afterwards we took some food to a shut in. We stayed for a few minutes. She is an older lady and has lupus which doesn’t let her get out of the house very much. Apparently her daughters don’t take time to make sure she has food, so she relies on church members to get her food. I felt sorry for her since she leads a very lonely life. Made me think that I should put more time visiting shut-ins from my own church.
I am beginning the process to convert this site over to Movable Type. So you might see some changes over the next few days. Hopefully the entire changeover will be seamless.

The Ideal Christmas List

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On the Wonder Years whenever they’d have a flashback, they’d show old home movies of the family. What I never really understood was who was operating the movie camera when both parents were in the shot? I always suspected it might be the older daughter, but even sometimes she is in the shot. Was there some unseen grandmother who operated the movie camera? These unanswered questions have always plagued me.
My family is bugging me to get my Christmas list together. The only problem is that my wants and needs are abstract. I’ve give you some examples.

  • A job. It sounds so simple and straightforward. But it is so difficult. There’s a certain amount of sigma attached to not having a job and looking like a bum. Maybe something will happen sometime.
  • Guaranteed Extra Time when I need it. For example if I need to take off for this mission trip to El Salvador, I should be able to without invoking penalties against me. Same way with church camp in the summer time. But I’ve found you can’t always get what you want.
  • Installation of Moveable Type on my website. This seems like such a bear to take on. I would love to be able to use this program, but I am not exactly sure how to install it.
  • Once Movable Type is installed, somehow convince David Shannon and the other church office workers on how to update the website easily. I’m not holding my breath on that one. It would be so much better if I wouldn’t have to update the church webpage every week. Leave it to the people who actually put together the bulletin.
  • Better singing at church. Not everyone is willing to sing. I wish we could persuade some people to sing more and louder. 550+ people should sound much louder and fuller than what is it.
  • More friends. I know that friendship is something you have to work at. You aren’t just granted friends automatically. At times I feel like a social misfit because of my lack of close friends.
  • Somehow convince those making ski trip decisions to go to North Carolina instead of Paoli. That’ll never happen.

That’s really all I want to for Christmas. I already have enough clothes. Tivo records all the movies that I would want, so don’t buy me any video tapes. Video game systems are over rated. A new stereo would never be used. So like I said. Material things don’t excite me.

“Can We Pray for Snow?”

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Kids are funny. I help teach the 5th and 6th graders at church on Wednesday nights. We usually ask for prayer requests at the beginning of class. Tonight a kid asked that we pray for snow so that they wouldn’t have to go to school tomorrow. And we did. The kid who led the prayer prayed for snow, but at the same time asked that it not be very bad so that no one gets hurt due to the snow.
Hopefully we’ll have snow for this ski trip. I’m left a little bit bewildered due to the conflicting messages I’m receiving about the trip. We’re told in Phil’s bulletin column to “invite your friends,” yet in the handout we are told that only certain people can bring one friend. Now I feel bad for inviting a handful of friends on this trip. Ugh. Why can’t we open this trip up to anyone who wants to come? Why are they limiting adults? I thought church was supposed to be about accepting of others. Ski trips are a great way to introduce people to church going people and to form bounds with them. As far as I’m concerned, if someone pays their money on time and is trustworthy enough to go, then they should be able to go. And enough with these people who go just to hang out in the lodge all day and not ski. Apparently they have 50 bucks to blow on a boring trip to Indiana. I say donate the money to a mission effort and stay home. Just my 2 cents. Not skiing on a ski trip is like not going to Bible class on a retreat.

Invisible Snow

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Supposedly it snowed this morning. But I can’t see anything from where I’m sitting. Is it a case of the emperor’s new clothes? Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures of Clarksville’s snowfall. Looks white. But seemlingly whenever Bill Hall mentions flurries, everyone runs to Kroger and buys a dozen gallons of milk. People, calm down!
I remember one time it snowed early on a Sunday morning. The local TV stations were barraged with calls from every little rural church out there hoping to get their announcement out that their services had been cancelled or postponed. Those Snow Bird reports went on for forever. So now the TV stations just say call your pastor/minister and find out if your services will happen. They don’t accept announcements about church closings anymore. Probably a good idea.
My aunt lives at the bottom of a hill on a Cul-De-Sac just a few blocks from my house. When I was in elementary schoo, every time it would snow significantly, I’d drag my sled through yards in order to get to the hill. I can remember sledding down that hill numerous times….trying to get out of the way when my cousin would yell “car.” Sometimes while sledding I’d loose control of the sled and go off into the ditch into a bunch of bushes. I’d get scraped up, but tried to get back up and go sledding again. We used real sleds. None of this plastic-garbage-lid-looking junk. A real sled with bades.
Sometimes we’d get a really big snow and we’d be able to sled 3 sometims 4 days at a time. But those days are long gone. I haven’t seen a good snow in a while.

Bono’s words; not mine.

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Bono’s words; not mine:

“We’re watching what religion can do. And you know, I think it’s anathema, and see — religion takes ideas. Religion often reduces the size of God. God is so big. It’s a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we’re small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.
I don’t doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God. It’s religion I’m doubting.”
–Bono of U2, on Larry King Live 12/1/02.

More pictures are up from Roy’s birthday party. There’s also a story there somewhere.