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it’s arrived & i’ve become a 12 year old boy

this weekend i went with pam, jessica, rebecca, and alan to the national youth workers’ convention in dallas, texas and you’ll never guess what arrived while i was gone … my apple powerbook.

when i got back last night it was waiting for me at the door. actually it was just a box but i’m sure i could hear the powerbook calling to me from inside the box saying, “robert, open this box that is imprisoning me and let me out to play.” well, it is one of my missions in life to bring joy to little wayward computers and therefore i opened the little fellow up and let him out into the fresh air.

so now i have entered the world of “mac-i-ness”. i’m sure my life will never be the same.

on a side note i have a confession to make. i actually like yu-gi-oh.

for those of you who have not been introduced to the world of yu-gi-oh i’ll tell you a little about it. yu-gi-oh is a japanese anime trading card game and cartoon television show. it’s basically a japanese soap opera drawn as a cartoon. the show is composed of odd looking characters that fight other odd looking characters by using cards that have even more odd looking characters on them. it’s a show full of odd characters. everything that happens is overly dramatic and charged with emotion. it’s a show that elementary students should love and my sons fit into that category and thus love the show. for the past year and a half my boys have watched the television show and played the card game against me. in the past i have watched the show and played the game in an attempt to be a good day. the problem is that i now find myself actually enjoying the television show. today i sat down to watch the show with adam and noah and actually told noah to be quiet so i could hear what was happening. this can not be good. something has to be wrong with me.

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wednesday – october 6th apple update

i’m about to go to bed so here’s what fedex.com says about my apple powerbook.

october 6, 2004 – 2:52 pm – in transit – anchorage, ak – departed location
october 6, 2004 – 12:40 pm – in transit – anchorage, ak

the estimated delivery date is still the 25th so apparently they are having to ship the powerbook across the frozen tundra via dog sled.

i’m going to be at the “national youth workers’ convention” for the next several days so i might not be able to update the blog for a little while.

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tuesday – october 5th apple update

i’m about to go to bed and i figured i would post the last fedex.com tracking statement of today. it is:

october 5, 2004 11:30 pm – at local fedex facility – shanghai cn

thus the first day of the 20 day journey that my apple powerbook has to travel in order to get to me. good night little powerbook floating in the sea on a really slow ship.

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finally – but still waiting

i received an email form apple.com this morning saying that the powerbook has finally been shipped. of course, i was extremely excited. since the laptop is being shipped by fedex i went to their website and entered the tracking number to see when it should be here (thinking it would be around wednesday or thursday). here’s what it said:

oct 5, 2004 2:52 pm – picked up – shanghai cn (china – i guess) – future delivery requested
oct 5, 2004 2:52 pm – left origin – shanghai cn
oct 5, 2004 11:32 am – package data transmitted to fedex; package not in fedex possession

that would all be well in good if it wasn’t for an additional comment that is made right above the table i just posted. the statement is this:

estimated delivery oct 25, 2004 10:30 am

it would appear that my powerbook has been shipped form china (cn) and apparently shipping it by air is too fast for apple so they decided that they would put it on a slow moving ship for freight purposes. at least that’s the only way i can explain why it would take 20 days for the powerbook to make it to baton rouge.

i have to say that i’m a little surprised that apple has stuff made in china. maybe i’m just naive but that seems very un-apple like. yet, even if they were going to have things made in china it shouldn’t take 20 days to ship it. if this is fedex’s normal time frame for shipping things then i’m going to use other companies for shipping items.

the truly sad thing is that i paid $18 extra for “expedited shipping”. this was supposed to have knocked the shipping time down to about 2 days. i would hate to know how long normal shipping would take.

btw, for your viewing entertainment here’s the fedex “castaway commercial” that the above photo is from.

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today i had hero put down

as the title above says – i had to take hero, my 8 year old mutt, to the vet today to have him put down.

this morning noah cried out in pain and pam and i went to find out what was up. we were told that hero had bitten noah. hero had jumped on the table and taken some of noah’s food (something hero never does – he will take food that has been left but never tries to take food from you). when noah reached for the food hero bite him, actually breaking the skin. i went to get hero and punish him by putting him in our bathroom by himself – dogs are pack animals and therefore hate solitary confinement. when i reached to get hero he bared his teeth, raised his hackles, and lunged for me. after lunging he growled at me and stayed like that for a second or two. up until the past year this would not have happened.

hero has been becoming more and more aggressive over the past year to two years. he has bitten me once and has bared his teeth at me or someone else a few times when he didn’t like something. this is just not normal for him. he has always been the sweetest dog. but over the past two years that sweetness has changed ever so slightly. our vet had even noticed this and mentioned that it may get worse as hero got older. our vet said that as shepherds reach the end of their lives (life expectancy is 10 to 11 years) shepherds get “grumpy” and it shows up in aggression. today that aggression showed up and i’m wasn’t sure that i could trust hero anymore.

i talked to our vet and he recommended putting hero down. i really didn’t want to but i’m not sure that i could live with myself if someone was hurt by hero. so i took him to the vet and said goodbye. i love that dog. he has been a very good dog albeit a dog that liked to run around the neighborhood. i’ve enjoyed most all of the time we have had with him. i just couldn’t chance someone getting hurt.

it’s basically been a lousy day.

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casey strikes out

i am by no means the babe ruth of youth ministry or the hank aaron of youth messages and i in no way ever want to indicate that i think i’m even close. i mess and screw up a great deal. i don’t understand enough to be in control of much of anything. i was reminded of this today.

you see the past 4 weeks of lessons have gone great. the four messages i did for the view have gone tremendous. the sunday school lessons that i have done during this four week time frame have been great. even the chapels, church sermons, and various other “extra” speaking opportunities have been quite good. i’ve had youth and adults telling me this and i personally have had a sense that these messages were really connecting and challenging the people with whom i was talking. i was beginning to “believe my own press” and think that i am actually a good speaker on my own. my GOD likes to keep me from such thoughts and to keep me from thinking it HE let my pride catch up with me. today’s sunday school lesson bombed badly. worst than just bomding it was about my favorite passage of scripture (which should have been a “gimme”) and it stunk.

this morning’s sunday school lesson flopped misserably. it was aweful and everyone there, including myself, knew it. i was brought back to earth in a big, loud, crash. if you heard an incredibly large “thud” this morning that was the sound of my lesson hitting the ground as it crashed and burned. i’m sure the crash could be heard for thousands of miles.

i hate it when GOD keeps me humble.

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shark tale

okay the last entry was wrong – i actually did do something today that i want to post about.

this afternoon i went with my family to see the movie shark tale. i love going to movies with my family but that’s not what i want to talk about in this post. no i want to talk about the fact that the movie was just mediocre. this is a movie that was produced by the same people who brought us shrek and shrek 2 and it has a cast full of top quality actors. yet that doesn’t necessarily equal success and this fact was proven by this movie. it wasn’t a terrible movie but it just wasn’t great. i was expecting “great” and i’m disappointed because what i was given was merely “mediocre.” i guess you can’t hit a homer run every time you get up to bat.

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and waiting some more

i don’t have anything really to post about today but i figured i would let you know that i’m still waiting for the apple powerbook. of course, apple doesn’t work on saturdays and thus there was no real hope that it would be shipped today. still i could pretend that it would be shipped today. but it wasn’t shipped today so i figured that i would report to you that it wasn’t shipped today. basically, to summarize the powerbook is still not here because it hasn’t been shipped yet.

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i’ve been linked!

kevin, a friend of mine, has linked to an entry in my blog today and that’s wonderful.

now people have listed the blog on their links before and i appreciate it when they do. it’s great that anyone would think that someone else might want to read this stuff (either because they like what they read or they think it is so stupid that they find humor in it’s idiocy) and therefore post a link to it. this actually confuses me because i would think that most people, including the homeless, would have better things to do than to waste 15 minutes or so a day reading my blog. still i do appreciate my little audience (basically my parents and a guy in belarus who doesn’t really understand english – hi mom! hi dad! hi boris!).

yet, that’s not what i’m talking about here. kevin, posted a link in his blog to a specific entry that i had made previously in my blog.

this is tremendous!

the reason it is so great is that by posting a link to a specific entry within my blog kevin is saying that i have made a point! I HAVE MADE A POINT! now it might not be a good point, in fact, kevin could have posted the link to my blog for the sole reason of disagreeing with what i had said. yet nonetheless, by posting a link to a specific entry on my blog the linker has said that i have made a statement worthy of responding to. agreement or disagreement doesn’t really matter. all that matters is that my statement was worth responding to. think of all the things you hear throughout your day that you consider unworthy of your attention. there are alot of those things. we ignore a great deal of what we hear. yet at least one statement that i made on september 24th was worth responding back to and that’s good to know.

of course, now i have to try and live up to this new standard. now i have to write something else worth linking to directly. i’m not really sure i can handle all that pressure. oh, the weight is bearing in on my soul. it’s simply too much responsibility. i don’t think i can bear it. why did you do this to me kevin? why did you throw this heavy load on my shoulders? curse you kevin. curse you and your link! aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh!

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youth parents are me

i am beginning to reach a new and frightening stage in my life as a parent and as a minister. i’m about to be the parent of a teen – well actually a 6th grader because he won’t be thirteen for 2 ½ more years. still teen aged or not my oldest son will be moving into the 6th grade this summer and thus into the youth ministry. this scares me to death. i’m terrified just by the simple things that are already happening. i had forgotten how moody i was when i went through puberty. i had forgotten that i would cry, pout, get angry, laugh, and shout over things that aren’t really that important. now i get to watch it happen in my oldest son. in fact, it’s already happening.

intellectually i understand what’s happening and i know that there isn’t much i can do about it other than be understanding. yet emotionally i want to take care of all this for him and make everything alright. of course, i don’t have the ability to do this, but i would if i could. i’m not even experiencing some of the pre-teen

and teen issues that some parents are and it’s still bad. adam and i still have a great relationship with adam. he still talks to me and wants me around. i’m not going through anything really rough yet, except for a few new emotions. how am i ever going to make it through adam actually being a teen when i’m having such difficulty with him being a pre-teen.

as a minister a benefit has come out of this because i have new found emphaty and respect for the parents of teens. i understand some of the fear now and having to wonder which child i will see today – will it be the joyful child that takes everything in stride or will it be the child that thinks the world is out to get him? that helps me as a minister but it does absolutely nothing for me as a parent. really, as a youth minister how do i minister to the parent of a teen when that parent is me?