In honor of seeing Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D last night, I thought it would be fitting to put in one of my favorite songs from the soundtracks!

John Williams is spectacular. He’s done so much amazing soundtrack work, from Jaws, to the original Star Wars, to Indiana Jones, to Harry Potter, the list goes on and on. I was really excited when I first heard that Williams had been brought back to do the soundtrack for Episode 1, a good 15 years after he closed up shop with Return of the Jedi. One of the really unique things that Williams brought back this time was the use of vocals in his track to depict the epic duel between Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Darth Maul. It captures everything perfectly, and adds a sense of intensity and grandeur (not delusional 8^D) to the scenes.

Sit back, wave around that lightsaber, and Enjoy!

Being a parent has some really gray areas at times. Such as strangers…

I grew up in a small town. So much so that I invited my 6th grade teacher to my wedding (yes, I kept in touch with her, and her husband who was my high school counselor, after a mere year in school). Living in a small town like that granted you a lot of freedoms. When I was 12 or so, I would ride my bike about 2.5 miles by myself, or with a friend, to the local baseball card shop to get some new packs or trade some singles. The donut store was right next door, so we’d get a donut and play a few video games. I met a lot of new people this way, mainly older folks, and had a few interesting conversations. If you said “Hi” to somebody in the parking lot, sometimes you could wind up chatting with them for a while. It was just the way things were. Sure there were strangers that you had to stay away from, but often enough they were the ones that matched the stereotype of having shifty eyes, talked to you weird, and generally gave off a bad vibe.

Nowadays, things are drastically different. I live in a different small town, and overall people are quite friendly. However, we make sure our twin girls (both 5) stay away from everybody, except for the proper authorities, like teachers at their school, policemen, and firemen, etc. We live next to a trailhead, so there are a wide variety of people that will walk by any given morning, some with dogs, some without. They all look quite friendly, and we’ve talked to a few and allow the girls to say hi to them. But by in large, we have to tell our girls to stay away from the fence when people walk by. We just don’t know who is going to take them away.

It’s sad. They really want to meet new people. I really want them to meet new people. There’s a wealth of wisdom and experience out there that I simply don’t have, and meeting new people and hearing their stories is wonderful. But what do you do?! I try to get down there when new people are coming by to say hello and help introduce myself and the girls, but I can’t always make it down there. So I tell them to stay away. Don’t talk to strangers. Stay away because our world has become loaded with lots of dangerous people who want to harm you. Stay away from potentially amazing stores about places you or daddy have never been to before. Maybe they’re just too young still. Maybe people are just that more untrustworthy.

[:: sigh ::] What do you do?

Last week you may remember my article from last week outlining the cloud tools I use to make my life easier hopping around from Mac to PC to Android all on the road. I have one more to add to the mix, which I stumbled upon only a few weeks ago: Trello.

Quite simply, and I think they mentioned this in a podcast or on their blog, Trello helps you organize a “list of lists”. That’s it. Really. However, the power and the flexibility of these lists applies to SO many different things.

Let’s say we’re organizing a LAN party. In Trello, we have a “board” called a LAN Party. There’s several aspects that need to be handled for the LAN party: inviting guests, getting food, schedule planning, computer setup. Each one of items is called a “List”. On the list we have various activities that need to be done, such as planning activities, setting up sofware, etc. All of these items are called “cards” in Trello.  Just like that, we have a full Trello board. Want to see it?! Here you go!

Better yet, you can make board public to share with everybody, or private to share with friends. Here, check out my board and do what you need to!

https://trello.com/board/lan-party/4f344e4db7f238d04300b554

From here, Trello gets even more simple, you can simply drag a card to and from various lists. You can assign cards to certain people to work on, and their name (and avatar) will show up on the card. You can use labels and due dates as well in order to provide visualization of important items. You can even add a checklist to a card, which is quite helpful.

Oh yeah, and my Personal Kanban board? Done.

https://trello.com/board/personal-kanban-sample/4f35473e6468d63459011e7b

To help keep things “mobile” across my various platforms, Trello is optimized for mobile devices as well, with no installation necessary. There’s also an iPhone app out for it as well, if you want to go for that. Now my “work list” can go wherever I need it to! Trello is also 100% free. There is talk about having some premium features added later. But for me, having a free personal Kanban tool that I can setup multiple boards with is perfect!

I think the thing that is so impressive about Trello is how quick and simple it is to get up and running. At the same time it is very feature rich and powerful. I signed up for an account (by uisng my Google account, saving an extra step) and had my project boards up and running in less than 5 minutes. Then as I’ve been working with Trello more, I find more and more wonderful features, such as moving a card to a completely different board, which happens when a ticket is created and should be with something else. I’m sure I’m going to discover a whole heap of other features as well.

So go meet Trello! You won’t be disappointed at all!

Managing “web sites”, especially through IIS, can be an interesting trip down through the ranks of computers and politics.

As a developer, the typical lifecycle for a new website goes something like this.

1. Create Virtual Directory in IIS with proper settings
2. Copy files up to virtual directory.
3. Run Site.
4. Make changes to files locally.
5. Push changes up to site.
6. Make changes to virtual directory settings as needed.
7. Repeat 4-6 as needed.

This all seems pretty straightforward, except for the fact that in most circumstances, the site configuration and file uploads are handled by a server administrator. They are responsible for what files stay on their server and what interacts with it. Some server admins don’t mind developers tossing files around and doing a few minor configuration changes. Others mind a LOT, and require a ticket or an e-mail in order to push things up.

The problem arises when changes need to be done rapidly, and the server admin is swamped. Generally speaking file migrations become a low priority, so you can be stuck waiting for a while, for a pretty simply process. At other times it’s due to some of the expertise needed to run IIS. I’ve had a few configuration changes I’ve needed (such as application pools or .Net versions within the application), and when e-mailing the admin about it, the response has been that they don’t know what I was talking about, and I walked them through the process.

What to do?! I asked this question a while back in ServerFault, and I think the response is still in the middle. How do you handle it?

Mine doesn't look quite like this, but the taste is drooltastic!

I modified this recipe slightly from it’s original, but it was so amazing I should have made a double batch. The recipe is extremely simple, and the way the flavors all blend together at the end will make you coming back for more.

Ingredients:

• 1 Large Onion
• 1/2 c Grape Seed Oil (or olive oil)
• 3 heaping tsp course grainy mustard (or deli mustard)
• 1 tsp dried sage
• Ground Pepper
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 lemon
• 10 pieces Raw Chicken Tenders/Strips

Directions

1. Cut the onion into eighths and put it in a freezer bag, or dish to marinade.
2. Add the oil, mustard, dried sage, a healthy dash of pepper to the marinade.
3. Cut the lemon in half, and squeeze the juice into the marinade. Then cut the lemon into eighths and toss them in to the marinade.
4. Add the chicken and mix everything together well. Let the chicken soak for a minimum of 30 minutes, but going overnight really adds to the flavor.
5. When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. If the chicken has been marinating for a couple of hours, let the chicken come to room temperature before baking.
6. In a 9×13 casserole dish, add the entire ingredients of the marinade and chicken. Take the sausage and frame it around the edge of the casserole dish.
7. Cover the baking dish with foil.
8. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Half way through you will want to turn the sausage over for even cooking.
9. Take the casserole dish out of the oven and open one end of the foil to help it cool, but don’t let all of the steam escape.
10. Try not to eat it all at once.

What I love about this recipe is the slight tanginess of the mustard and lemon combined with the very earthy taste of the sage and pepper. The Worcestershire sauce adds a richness to everything. The fat from the sausage soaks into everything, and the onions take on almost a buttery like taste. I typically cut the sausage into smaller circles, and mix it all together on my plate, making sure to get a taste of everything in one bite. Using the chicken tenders saves a bit of prep time, and makes for some perfect serving portions. Again, you just may have to double this recipe, it fed 5 of us, all wanting more. Oh, just keep an eye out for the lemons, they’ll look a lot like the onion after the baking, but they still don’t taste that great. 8^D

Enjoy and let me know if you try it out! I think I’m going to make some more…. and it is breakfast time as I’m writing this!

I’ve been at my new job for a little more than 6 months now. With my various projects and clients, you can call me Mac toting, dual booting, .Net slinging, PHP wrangling, MVC hacking, Ruby learning, Android packing, Kindle browsing, iPhone testing, amateur blogging kind of geek. Whew! With all that said, I need a way to easily keep dibs on my files, music, pictures, and other miscellaneous things without having to install a million different programs. I also want to have a consistent set of programs between my Mac, PC, and Android so that I don’t have to “move” my data from one program to the other. Here are five free (no credit card necessary!) tools I’ve found that has helped me master my cloud life.

1. File Sharing: SugarSync

SugarSync is my new digital best friend. Like DropBox, or even iCloud, SugarSync is an online file storage service. After you install SugarSync, you have a folder called the “Magic Briefcase” where any file you drop in there is automatically synchronized up to your account in the cloud (their server). From there, anywhere you have SugarSync installed, your files will be available to you. So if I’m doing some work on my PC partition and need those files on my Mac partition, I simply copy them over to my Magic Briefcase, and when I reboot their right there for me. It’s magic!

But even better than this is the way you can easily share a file or a folder with others. For example, I have a “blog files” folder that I use for my various coding and song of the week posts. I simply copy the file into that folder, right click on it, and select the “Get Public Link” option and I can now share the file with anybody I want through the link. The user doesn’t even need to have a copy of SugarSync installed. You can also share entire folders with users. We had a family gathering during the summer, and lots of pictures were taken by two or three of us. While I was down there, I went ahead and created a new folder in my magic briefcase, and then selected the option to share the entire folder with certain users. I put in their e-mail addresses and that was it. Some of the family simply logged in and downloaded pictures, a couple of them setup their own SugarSync account, which tied into the folder, so they could upload their pictures to share as well. All very quick and easy!

The mobile client is great as well. There is both an Android and iPhone version of the app, and I believe the iPhone app has special iPad optimizations as well. In addition to providing access to the files in your cloud account, SugarSync goes one step further by auto creating a photo viewing app for any photos in your cloud, and it will automatically stream down any music files you have as well. You don’t have to worry if your photos or music are scattered, as long as they are somewhere within you cloud account, SugarSync will find it and make it available to you. The mobile versions of the app also have an “auto-sync” feature to use with your camera. Everytime you take a picture, SugarSync can automatically put it into your cloud for retrieval elsewhere. At first I was a little leery about this feature, but now I’ve really come to enjoy it. I like to take a lot of “on the fly” pictures of family and random events for my other blog, and having a backup of these images in full resolution is great. Every so often I simply go in and remove all the bad photos.

SugarSync really is fabulous. I HIGHLY recommend it. You also get 5GB for free, and you can get an additional 500MB if you get others to sign up, or use my reference link. Seriously, give it a try! You won’t be disappointed.

2. Note Taking: Evernote

I wasn’t sure I’d ever have  a need for a digital notebook. For the longest time I simply had a sticky note program that ran on my desktop and everything was fabulous. Then one day I was taking some notes for stuff to do at home, and realized I forgot to e-mail myself those notes before I left for the day. After that, I started giving Evernote a whirl. At first it was just a few small things: a shopping list, a convenient code snippet, or maybe a deck idea for L5R.

But once I started using notebooks within Evernote, things started to explode. I have a notebook for my “Geek Tricks”, those SQL snippets that I might need when using my Mac partition in MySQL or on my Windows partition in SQL Server. I have a work notebook. I have a general notebook for life stuff. I even have a “scraps” notebook which is what I use in place of “stickies” and periodically get flushed out. I also recently discovered that you can encrypt portions of text (instead of the entire note) with a password. This makes Evernote a very handy tool for saving passwords and logins and still preventing people from access it.

Evernote is continuing to do bigger and better things with itself, while still staying true to its original idea. For instance, they recently bought the web annotation program Skitch, and is embedding into its application. What this means is that within Evernote you can take a screenshot of a website, do your own markup to it to highlight a section or move things around. And then save that note for future use, or sharing with others. I honestly haven’t begun to scratch the surface on what Evernote can do for the advanced note taker, but even for my simple needs it does wonders.

Another thing to mention is that their mobile app exists for Android and iPhone and is also very powerful.  It will let you take “snapshot notes” using you camera. The app is also very well laid out with easy access to your notes, either though notebook, tag, or even just browsing them all. You can edit your notes through the mobile app, and they’ll be waiting for you on your computer when you get home. If you use the note sharing feature, you also have a quick and easy way to synchronize the shopping list with anybody you need.

Evernote focuses on doing one thing (organizing your notes) and does it VERY well. With its availability on all major platforms, it’s the perfect tool for keeping those important notes.

3. Music: Spotify / Songbird

While my music collection used to be large rather large (in my opinion), my budget has kept me from buying a lot of new music over the past few years. In addition, I’ve turned to a few online music stations, such as Digitally Imported and Soma.fm to fill a lot of needs. However, some of my favorite artists are still pumping out new albums, and I’d love to give a listen to them, before actually going and buying them. Sure I could go online and do the download route, but I’ve decided to drop that habit a while back.

Enter Spotify. They are an online music service that gives you access to a HUGE library of music for free. Even some of the more “eclectic” needs (Dr. Demento) are available online. They are continuing to add more albums each day. What is REALLY nice is that when you search for an artist or album, you can also see similar artists to the one you like. From here you can get an adhoc “radio station” based on the artist in question. This a lot of what Pandora does for you. With Spotify you can get the best of both worlds. You can get a specific album, build your own custom playlists, or just simply kick up a radio station with similar interests. Spotify fill will also find the music you have saved on your computer and add it to the library. That way you have one place to listen to your music while working at home.

Spotify also integrates tightly with Facebook. You’ll find that once you start listening to music, it’ll start posting to Facebook about what you’re listening to. They can even click the wall post to listen to the song as well. Your Facebook friends that have Spotify installed will also show up in a list within the Spotify app. You can see what playlists they’ve generated and maybe find some new music to enjoy. I’ve been the giver and the receiver of this kind of sharing. Depending on how you feel about it, Spotify might be TOO integrated with Facebook. While the initial registration was via e-mail, now you must register with your Facebook account to begin with. In addition, you have to take an extra step if you want your music listening experience to be “private” from sharing on Facebook. This hasn’t been a big concern for me, but I know for others it is.

The free version of Spotify gives you unlimited access to your music. There are occasional commercials and ad banners that show up in the application, but I have mine minimized most of the time, so I don’t see them. It’s really no different for me than listening to the radio. The free version does not offer mobile access to the online collection. That’s where the paid plans come in. I don’t really miss that, since I can listen to my purchased music on my Android (see #4), but the offline synchronization feature is nice. Spotify will also allow you to download your purchased music and listen to it through their mobile app, but the Wifi synchronization was a little tedious for me and I like other options (see #4).

All in all Spotify provides a great way to get a nearly limitless source of music. The quality is good, and you’ll discover some new music along the way!

It may seem odd to consider an offline music program a “cloud tool” but hey, I like music. When I’m on the drive, I have a few CDs in the car, but I also want to be able to listen to some of my classics. Even more pertinent is during Christmas time. I love Christmas music, and being able have a nice shuffle of it anytime, anywhere, just adds to the festivity. Originally I had iTunes on my iPod Touch, and there was the built in music player for my Android, but I had to jump back and forth between programs and have different management tools to make it all work. I even tried the Spotify app, but the local synchronization over Wifi took a long time. On top of that, I wasn’t able to easily pull out a genre or an album to listen to, since the search was essentially one big filter.

Then I stumbled upon Songbird. I should say I re-stumbled upon Songbird. Songbird is a great free audio player that has lots of plugins and extensions. I’m only using Songbird with a “vanilla” install, but it easily allows me to find specific genre’s in my music, create mixes, and even store play lists for the streaming sites I listen to. I can view the artist info, and even have a handy mini player that sits up at the top of the screen. I can also plug in my Android and sync my entire library over in a short amount of time.

But most importantly, Songbird runs on PC and Mac, which gives me a consistent look at feel, and a consistent manner in playing my music. If I had enough space, I could put all my music into SugarSync and not even have to worry about which partition (Mac or PC) I was running on. The best part is that there is an Android app as well, which has the same look and feel as the desktop version. One thing I really like is that when my phone is locked and I press the power button, the typical unlock screen is replaced with a Songbird one, that allows me to quickly pause or go to the next song, showing the cover art. If I drag down on the cover art, I get full access to the phone again.

While it may seem odd, having Songbird has really made my offline music experience a lot easier. Sometimes it’s those simple things, like access across multiple platforms, that make all the difference.

4. Blog / News Reading: Feedly

Last up is blog and news reading. I may be considered a little old school, but I still find that RSS feeds are THE way to keep dibs on news and blogs from my friends. Sure there’s the Twitter and Facebook streams, but if you miss it, then you’re out of luck. Not to mention the large collection of sources I read from. Sure I can’t get to all of them everyday, but not all of them post every day, so that balances things out. Everything from News, to Theology, to L5R CCG Updates, to Podcasts, to my friends blogs are all in my RSS stream, keeping me up to date. The general consensus is that feed readers are on the decline, as well as RSS in general, but with the plethora of blogs that spring up every day, I really don’t think it’s going anywhere. I think it is just the manner in which people want to read them is causing the challenge.

Feedly provides a wonderful magazine style interface for reading you blogs. At first I was rather opposed to this approach, since I was more of a “timeline” style reader and always wanted the latest and greatest. However, my time is more limited these days, and with less time to sit down and read blogs, the magazine interface does a great job and hilighting the top posts (based on sharing and other factors) at the top of the page. It then gives me a brief rundown on the top articles in each category. The really nice thing is that each blog category can be customized into one of seven styles, so my LOL cats get a lovely “tile” layout, which the massive aggregate of geek articles and links is just in a simple list format. Feedly uses Google Reader as its data source. This means you’re going to need a Google Reader account in order to use Feedly. However, Google Reader is free, it’s well established, so you won’t be losing your feeds anytime soon.

Feedly provides numerous ways to share posts through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. Feedly will also show your latest updates from your Facebook and Twitter streams on your “main” page, and Feedly even does some intelligent polling in Twitter based on the topic of your feeds. Feedly also allows you to tag some articles as a “read later” type article, so you don’t have to go back through the archives later on.

What I REALLY love though is the mobile apps they provide. In the past I was stuck not being able to catch up on news as soon as I was away from my computer. Now, with Feedly’s mobile app (Android, iPhone, iPad, Tablet) I can catch up on stuff on the go. They do a great job and translating the reading experience to a smaller screen, and everything synchronizes back up to Google reader so I don’t have to go back and mark stuff read again.

If you’re not an RSS subscriber for your blogs, give it a whirl, pick up a Google account (which can be useful for a lot of other things as well) and let Feedly start working for you. Check out the “Explore” option within Feedly to find new content. Then read it on your mobile device. You won’t be disappointed.

5. Books: Kindle App

My wife owns a kindle, and I use it on occasion and love the experience. Digital books, in general, I think are a great thing. I’ve been increasing my collection of programming reference guide type books, that is great to have on the run when I need to look up a quick CSS code or need to figure out how to program that Ruby language (still just starting that book). But the fact that I can carry them all around on a USB key (or better yet the cloud) is a huge lifesaver. This goes beyond reference material. The honors program that I graduated from offers a summer trip to Oxford, England. During that time, they do a lot of sight seeing, but also do a lot of intense reading and discussion of the classics. I don’t know the exact numbers, but for the first couple of years the students were required to bring about a dozen books with them for these discussions. That’s practically a suitcase on their own. Now as part of the tuition cost, you are given a Kindle, with all of the books loaded on it. No need to pack an extra suitcase! Plus, if that quote from Shakespeare is starting to remind you of a quote from Plato, then you can easily hop over to the other book and do a quick search.

Amazon was smart. While they had their Kindle device, what they really kept in mind was the Amazon store and experience. To do, they created the Kindle App, and made it available on every platform imaginable. If you already have an iPad, great! Just download the Kindle app and get your books that way. Get it for your Android phone as well. Books can travel with you anywhere now, and are available with the click on a button. What’s even nicer about the Kindle App is a thing they call “WhisperSync”. Here’s how it works. Right now I’m slowly working through GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. It’s a great read, but it’s a heavy read, and I’m a slow reader already, in general. So I’ll steal my wife’s Kindle for an evening and get through a chapter or two. The following day, I’m stuck at the DMV for an hour waiting for my number to be called. In the meantime, I fire up the Kindle App for the Android, and I have access online to the “archive” of books we’ve purchased. Even better, the progress I’ve made in each book is stored in the archive as well. So when I start it up on my Android, it asks me if I want to pick up where I left off. Very seamless and amazing.

In addition to the online access and synchronization, most books you purchase for the Kindle App can be loaned out to other friends. You can take notes in your books, and even share them with others on line. With all of this, the digital book experience is very nice indeed. Plus with it’s built in cloud, the books go wherever you need them to. The Kindle App will also allow you to import ePub and other book formats, so now all those programming books I talked about are available to use as well. I think my paper book days are numbered. I will admit that I have a very nice copy of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit that would beg to differ. 8^D

If you want a book with you anytime, anywhere, you can’t go wrong with the Kindle App. You don’t even need the Kindle device itself to enjoy the great features of having a digital library at your fingertips and is synchronized between all the copies of your app.

Upgrades and Advice

I should mention that most of these apps work off the “freemium” model. They offer you a base set of features for free, and if you want to pay some money, you get some premium benefits. For instance, you can get a lot more storage through SugarSync if you pay a monthly fee. The same goes for Evernote. Spotify allows you to save your favorite music from their service offline onto your mobile device, as well as removing the ads, for a monthly fee. For me, I haven’t had any need for the premium services yet, and I get by just fine. Most likely you will to.

One word of advice. There are no guarantees that your data is safe in the cloud. Some people think this is the biggest drawback of the cloud, having some sense of security with it. If for some random reason, a huge EMP pulse knocks out all of Amazon’s servers, all my books are gone, since the data resides on their machines. That said, most cloud apps (to their credit) keep a copy of the files on your machine, as well as in the cloud. That way if one source fails, the other can get you back up to speed. Just remember to always make a backup of your stuff, and life will be good.

* Bonus App *

Who says we can throw in some extras from time to time?! Shortly after writing this article, I had a chance to really get used to another tool that handles all of my Personal Kanban and other “project” needs. It’s called Trello. It’s fabulous! Go check it out or read my article for more info.

Conclusion

These five apps have made my life a lot easier when transitioning between the various “modes” of work and life. I don’t have to worry about which partition I saved that note on, or if I took that nice picture with my webcam or my phone, because it’s available to me no matter where I go. None of these apps have cost me a penny either, which makes it doubly sweet. You may notice that I don’t have anything listed here for keeping my e-mail and social media type stuff listed, and unfortunately I haven’t found one that really gets the job done. Who knows, maybe I can help change that.

Have you found any cloud apps that help you out that I’m missing? I’m always trying out new stuff and I’d love to hear about it!

This week it’s a song and video! If you haven’t, go watch some episodes of Phineas and Ferb on Netflix. These kids are clever AND funny!

I’ll save all the reasons I love this show for another post. Just watch this. The song is funny, creative, and oddly enough well put together and very fitting with the genre of music. 8^D

S to the I to the M to the P!!!!

When I was a kid, even into my early teens, the world was relatively small to me. Sure my grandparents went on a trip to a foreign country nearly every year, and in school we learned about the various countries, but they still seemed abstract to me.

Soon after that the Internet arrived in my home. Well I guess I should say “diet Internet” because back then you used your phone line to dial into a service and even then, you had to do some additional configuration to get onto the Internet proper. But that’s another story. The one thing our local BBS did was dial into a system called the “Chatlink”. Consider it one huge party line. Various channels from various parts of the US (and I believe a few external, but prices were high then) and from your local computer, you could join in on a given network.

This was a lot of fun. Chat was rather light, sometimes serious, and people had their own personalities out in the Chatlink. Being a desert rat, I had a couple of macros setup to give out cacti to people, which all it really entailed was a fancy colorful text show up in the chat that says:

Tubanator sends you a cactus.

Nothing fancy, but hey, I times were different. I’ll explain later.

One night, I was over in the Minnesota chat link, channel 555. This was one of my favorites. A good group of folks, and people from more than just Minnesota showed up. We’d talk about our day, cool ideas, and generally shoot the breeze. It was November, and I’ll never forget what somebody says next in the chat:

Well, its’ time for me to go plug in the car and go to bed.

What?! Plug in a car?! Why would you do a thing like that?! This was far before electric cars were considered common place. For folks in Minnesota and other climates were the temperatures can easily drop far below zero in the winter, you needed to keep your engine block somewhat warm over the night, otherwise it wouldn’t start in the morning. Some folks would go drive the car around the block a few times to give the engine one last warm up before heading to bed. Other folks would literally attach a device to their engine that ran off electricity and kept the engine warm overnight. They’d literally “plug the car in” before going to bed.

I don’t know why, but then all of the sudden the world got HUGE. Here was a group of folks that lived a bit differently than me. I had no concept of how cold that could be, but in hearing the explanation and imagining myself having to do such a task, it blew my mind. For some reason, all the “theoretical” or “abstract” knowledge I had became tangible to me in some way. I realized then that there was a whole lot more of the world out there to be discovered and to experience. It was a very exciting and humbling experience.

I realize that this experience was a little odd, especially seeing all the slide shows from various countries that my grandfather made, but hey, I was only 13 or 14 at the time, that was the thing that triggered my senses to want to see and explore the world, and culture, around me. I would have this experienced reinforced later on through a couple of trips around the country to see family, a missions trip or two down to Mexico in high school, and a couple of trips to France during the summer in my college years.

But that one night on the Chatlink did it for me. What about you? When did the world become HUGE to you? If not? Why not? I want to know.

Mommy and her Kindergarten Girls

They truly never cease to amaze me. Here’s the back story. For a while now we’ve had some issues with the girls’ cleaning their bedroom. We’ve tried working with them to clean their room, we’ve tried taking away a few things. Even denied them dessert one time. Nothing seemed to work. Then one day the vacuum monster came to town.

The vacuum monster only comes at night, after kids have gone to bed. He can’t climb around or anything like that, but he comes into the bedrooms of children while they sleep and if he finds any lose toys around, he sucks them up and takes them away to his house, gone for good. So far the vacuum monster has been “fed” by our children only twice.  We have had to intervene on the girls’ behalves a couple of times for the vacuum monster, but only for special nights where we’ve gone to Nana and Papa’s or they were truly sick.

To some extent, this has worked out quite nicely. Rylee could care less all in all about the vacuum monster, but this is serious business to Haylee. Every night about 15 minutes before we start the final bed time routine, she asks, somewhat timidly, “Is the vacuum monster coming tonight?” For which we tell her yes he is, and she get’s a slightly alarmed look on her face. This happens even when she has cleaned up her stuff earlier that day. So she runs off to the bedroom, does some final tidy work, and we tell her that things look good, the vacuum monster won’t be coming by. For you see, the vacuum monster can smell the toys on the floor. If he pokes his head in, and doesn’t smell any toys on the floor, he simply moves on to the next child’s house. Sidenote: Haylee has actually woken up a couple of times in the middle of the night asking if the vacuum monster is coming, just to make sure things are okay with her toys.

Flash forward to last night.  The girls have been fighting off some bronchitis, so they are feeling rather miserable. They had a late dinner and were starting to crash. About now Haylee asks about the vacuum monster. Taking a slightly different angle tonight, I say, “No, the vacuum monster is sick tonight, he won’t be coming by. Jen chimes in and says, “Yes, he’s so sick he’s sneezing toys out of his nose!” We get a slight smile and giggle at the picture forming in the girls heads of what this might look like.

Without missing a beat, Rylee then asks, “Can we make a card for the vacuum monster so that he gets better?” Haylee says nothing, but has this look of “Yeah, what she said.”

Right then and there my heart stops and melts. Here’s this great, albeit mythical, monster that threatens (and has succeeded on a couple of occasions) to take away their toys. This monster has enough sway that Haylee has to be sure things are clean every night. And yet, at the first sign of the monster being sick, they want to take care of it.

You gotta love it.

This week we have another phenominal dance/house set from a guy I’ve been following for a little while now, DJ Josiah “Fingaz” Freebourne!

This set comes thanks to Tastyfresh, where DJ Josiah was played the Cornerstone festival this past year. It took a while to get the mix posted online, but man was it worth it! The way Josiah puts the mixes together, continues to keep the high energy flowing it hard to top. Plus DJ Josiah keeps a message to honor God in all of his mixes.

Enjoy and try NOT to dance while listening to this mix! I failed after about 3 minutes into it. 8^D