Lake Neuron

I am taking my Flip Video camera on the Costa Rica trip so that, for the first time, I can bring back video.

My Flip holds up to 60 minutes of video. I have gone back and forth on whether or not to bring my beat-up, second-hand notebook computer on the trip, so that if I want or need to, I can download video from the Flip to create more space. I really don’t know how much raw video I will want to bring back. When it comes to video editing, the more raw video you have, the more options it gives you for assembling the final product. But I don’t know if it’s worth lugging the laptop along — and if so, whether I want to pack it in the middle of my clothes or take it in my backpack. I’ve never taken it on a plane trip before.

Without clicking the links — which of these is an actual TV show or serious proposal for a TV show?

• “Hurl!”, a game show in which contestants are fed chowder and strapped into a centrifuge, and the winner is the last contestant to vomit.
• “J-stache,” a cartoon about the moustache of John Oates from Hall & Oates. The moustache is voiced by Dave Attell.
• Coverage of the Rock-Paper-Scissors championship tournament on Fox Sports Net.

Time’s up. Which one is real?

All three of them.

Hat tip to TV Squad for two of the ideas.

Well, Monday afternoon, not too long before I was supposed to leave work, I felt a crown on one of my lower left molars wiggle a little, and then pop off. My dentist, Jay Davis — who’s also a good friend of mine from church — has his office within two blocks of the newspaper, and so I stopped by and they glued the crown back on.

Today, a few minutes after leaving work, I was nibbling on a piece of (soft!) cheese when I felt the same crown pop right off. Again, I ran by and Jay glued it back on — using what he said was a different adhesive this time, and trimmed it a little to make sure the tooth above wasn’t putting undue pressure on it.

I’m just happy it came off here and not during my trip to Costa Rica ….

“CBS News Sunday Morning” did a profile of that radio show I’m always yammering about:

My pastor, who will be on vacation the next two Sundays, asked me to give my sermon from Annual Conference next week.

This means that I and my father will be preaching at First UMC on consecutive Sundays — but he will be in Louisville, Ky., next week while I’m preaching, and I will be in Costa Rica when he’s preaching.

My parents are traveling to Louisville next weekend for my mother’s 50-year high school reunion, and they’re really looking forward to it. As one of the activities, class members will watch the racing at Churchill Downs from “millionaire’s row,” which should be fun.

Here’s a link to my video of the Moon Pie festival (I can’t embed it because of the way the AP video player is set up).

Here’s a link to my photo gallery.

I have been a long-time subscriber to the Wittenburg Door, and I was a long-time contributor until a few years ago, when I just sort of drifted away. I still may write for them again one of these days, if they’ll have me, but I haven’t been doing so lately, and I have nothing on the table.

Anyway, all that is neither here nor there. I got an mass e-mail today from Robert Darden about someone, who has been one of the key players for the magazine ever since it was transferred to the Trinity Foundation. I don’t think that Bob would mind me quoting from it:

Harry Guetzlaff, The Door’s wonderful managing editor, who I have worked with on a daily basis since Trinity began publishing the magazine, is apparently in his final weeks. He has Stage 4 lung cancer and the most recent MRI found new masses on his brain and spine. He is in great pain and only lucid for a short period each day.

I dealt with Bob more often than I dealt with Harry, but I did deal some with Harry, and he was unfailingly kind, cheerful and upbeat.

The magazine’s staff is so small and Harry was so central to it that the print version of the magazine has been running behind schedule and its future may even be in question. But that’s secondary. Please take a moment to pray for Harry.

Here’s a link to the online edition of the Tennessee Conference Review, with a report about my sermon at Annual Conference. (Tom Nankervis, who edits the review, asked me for a copy of the sermon in advance, because he knew he’d be working to get his post-conference issue together in a hurry.)

A few weeks ago, while waiting for my boxed set of “The Prisoner” to arrive, I posted a YouTube clip of the opening credits. But I found a better clip. The earlier clip was of the extended opening credits from the very first episode. The new clip is both shorter and longer.

You see, except for that first episode, and a few other episodes with weird formatting, “The Prisoner” had two different credit sequences. There was one sequence which showcased Patrick McGoohan’s name and the title of the series, and it ends with McGoohan’s character being gassed.

The second credit sequence, which I think (but am not sure) aired after the first commercial break, introduced the title and guest cast for that week’s episode. This is the part of the credits which featured the dialogue between Number Six and Number Two. The dialogue would be the same each week, but the voice of Number Two would change, because there was a different one almost every week. Most weeks, you would catch a glimpse of Number Two during the credits, except for one episode where there was a dramatic reason to keep Number Two’s identity a secret.

This YouTube clip shows you the whole thing, both credit sequences, from “The Chimes of Big Ben.” This episode featured Leo McKern as Number Two; he appeared in this episode but then returned for the last two episodes in the series, making him the most-frequently-appearing Number Two. You may remember Mr. McKern better from his years as “Rumpole of the Bailey.”

Well, the reason you didn’t hear much out of me last night is that I spent hours — literally — setting up my new smartphone. Here is the capsule version:

• Because I don’t have MS Office, I don’t have MS Outlook. And Windows Mobile devices are set up to synch with Outlook. Luckily, I had found a way to use the freeware program FinchSync to synch with the Mozilla Thunderbird address book and the Mozilla Sunbird calendar. I had to install and set up Sunbird, install and set up FinchSync on both the phone and my computer, and clean out my long-unused Thunderbird address book (I now channel all of my personal e-mail accounts through GMail and work with them online) so that I could import up-to-date addresses from Palm Desktop.
• I got FinchSync running, but I had some other minor problem with the phone and went to the AT&T web site to try to find the answer. The very first thing I should have checked after bringing the phone home was for a firmware upgrade. There was, in fact, a firmware upgrade, which also included an upgrade of Windows Mobile from version 5 to version 6. So I did that, which was time-consuming and which erased every modification I’d made to the handset up to that point.
• I re-installed FinchSync and the GMail Java applet, both of which had been deleted by the firmware upgrade. When I went to re-sync the phone, I discovered that the new version of Windows Mobile on the phone wanted a new version of ActiveSync on my PC, so I had to find, download and set that up.
• The export of address data from Palm Desktop into Thunderbird went relatively well, but there’s a “display name” category in Thunderbird for which there was no equivalent in Palm — and that’s the category that shows up first when the contacts appear on the phone. So I had to go in and manually create a “display name” for each of my 150 or so contacts. I also had to manually enter my upcoming calendar items into Sunbird (which I really like, BTW).
• There was also the normal stuff like warranty registration and just figuring out how to use the thing. It took me a good 15-20 minutes just to try to figure out how to change the ringer volume.

It sounds like a lot of trouble, and it was, but it was also sort of fun — and I think I’m going to be very happy with the Blackjack.

We had an ice cream social at church tonight as a kickoff for our Vacation Bible School:

Well, I answered my own question online and I have ordered my new Blackjack. Yes, I know there’s a more-advanced Blackjack II, but with the mission trip coming up I didn’t want to spend the $199 out-of-pocket cost, even though $100 of it would have been rebated eventually. The original Blackjack was free with a two-year contract extension.

They promise delivery in two business days, so I’m assuming the phone will get shipped Monday and I’ll have it Wednesday at the latest.

Between now and then, I’m going to go through the contacts on my Palm and weed out ones that I’m not sure are still accurate or where there’s little chance I’ll ever need the information again.

I’ve already downloaded the instruction manual so I can see what all it can do!

UPDATE: AT&T is now showing that the phone has been shipped, even though today is Saturday. Woo hoo!

Well, I just got back from the ER.

Ha, ha! I have fooled you, regular readers. While the above statement is, technically, true, it implies a level of crisis which is not, in this case, accurate. I’m fine.

On July 12, the patients from Bedford County Medical Center will be transferred to a sparkling new facility which will be called Heritage Medical Center. Tomorrow, there will be a community open house at the new hospital; tonight there was a VIP reception followed by tours. So I was in the ER, and the operating room, and ICU, and what have you — but as a tourist, not a patient or concerned well-wisher.

I have to say, the new hospital looks very nice, and there are a lot of well-thought aspects to the design.

If anyone reading this uses a Blackjack smartphone (not the Blackjack II), answer me this: is there a way to synch the phone (calendar, contacts, etc.) with one’s computer using a cable? Because I don’t want to pay for a $30 / month data plan. I have a $5.99 / month data plan on my current phone, which I use mostly to check GMail using its mobile app.

It has been, for reasons I obviously can’t go into, an extremely stressful and unpleasant week at work. So it was a strange time for me to have such a remarkable high point in the middle of it.

As you may recall, I am a United Methodist layspeaker, a non-ordained church member who is available to preach, for example when a church pastor is on vacation or when there are not enough ordained pastors to fill the available pulpits. The Tennessee Annual Conference, the business meeting and worship gathering for Methodists from throughout Middle Tennessee, traditionally recognizes layspeakers and layleaders during one of its evening worship services. But this year, for the first time ever, it was decided to have a layspeaker preach that night.

Earlier this year, 23 different layspeakers submitted sermons, which had to tie in with the conference theme, “Beyond The Walls: Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.” A short list of four was chosen to deliver their sermons to the selection committee, and I was given the great honor of being the first layspeaker, as far as anyone can recall, ever to preach during an evening worship service at the Tennessee Conference.
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