The books I read in 2011 and how I read them

If you're into reading it's always interesting to see what other people are reading.  Goodreads is a great website for this. I joined it last year (it's free) and I really like it. It's in the links to the left of this post if you want to check it out.

I set a goal to read 30 books in 2011. I didn't reach that goal, I never do. I did read 25 books (mostly because I was on sabbatical for a good chunk of time). Below are the books I read, a brief blurb about them, and on what medium I read them(Kindle app for iPad or iPhone, Paper copy, iBooks app). I'm including how I read them because so many people are discovering the joys of reading on a digital device.  I like it so much I don't even consider buying books made of paper anymore. These are the 25 books I read. You can buy all of them at amazon.com or on the ibookstore on your iDevice. 

I've included links to all of them to their goodreads pages, you can get a link to Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, etc from there.

1. Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong by Baseball Prospectus - this is a series of essays by super baseball statisticians that prove that many of the statistics baseball fans rely on are very flawed, and how many of the adages and strategies that baseball people believe in do more to lose games than win them. If you like baseball this is fascinating, regardless if you're a stat junky or not. Read it on the Kindle app for my iPhone, yes the whole thing on my phone! This is what helped me become a digital reader.

Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong

2. Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God - by Francis Chan  - this book is great! Very challenging, and will spur you on to examine and change your life and how you think about your life. In a good way. Don't be afraid, read it. You'll be glad you did. Found it for $5 at a used bookstore, so read it in paper.

Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

3. Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder - a friend of mine who is a screenwriter turned me on to this book as a way to understand movies, and storytelling. Since I'm essentially a professional storyteller I read it and really enjoyed it.  Started it on the Kindle app for my phone, finished it on the Kindle app for  iPad, thank God, it was formatted terribly on the iPhone, and looked much better on the iPad. This is the only book that I have ever had formatting problems with.

Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

4. The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists by Ravi Zacharias  - the author takes on some of the arguements of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins in this very short book. I love Ravi, and really enjoy his speaking and writing. I'd love to see him and Dawkins actually debate face to face. Read the paper version from a used bookstore.

The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists

5. Identity Theft: Reclaiming your Freedom in Christ by Ken White - The author is a friend of mine and a fellow Young Life staffer. I really enjoyed his book. He did a fantastic job. I read it on iBooks for my iPad.

Identity Theft: Reclaiming Your Freedom in Christ

6. Infinitely More by Alex Krutov - Alex was abondoned by his mother in a dumpster in the winter in Russia when he was 3 days old!  This is basically his autobiography, it's amazing. My friend Kit Sublett publisehd this book (as wll as Identity Theft by Ken White) and I've been promoting it all year, because it's a great story that needs to be shared. I've met Alex and his ministry to orphans in Russia is phenomenal. Read on iBooks for iPhone.

Infinitely More

7. Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - his newest book (Love Wins) caused a bit of a controversy this past spring, so I thought I would check out the book that made him famous before I read that one.  I never got to Love Wins, but I really enjoyed this book. There wasn't too much revolutionary thinking in it, but he does subscribe to some great ideas about how to live out the Christian faith in modern times. Borrowed the paper copy from a freind.

Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

8. Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will - by Kevin DeYoung - One of my favorite books of the year. Very short. Very to the point. He expressed very clearly what I believe about "finding God's will for your life". Everyone under the age of 40 should read this!!!!!!!!!!!  I read it on the iPad and iPhone.

Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

9. Torches of Joy by John Dekker - Jon Dekker's son is a christian horror author who lives in Austin. Weird. Long before his son was a writer though, Jon Dekker and his wife were missionaries in New Guinea and have an amazing story!  These are amazing people and their lives of faith are a testimony to how awesome God is.  Their story is incredibly ecxiting, filled with danger and turmoil, but with incredibly rewards. Read the book, I bought it a few years ago before I went digital.

Torches of Joy

10. Which Real Jesus?: Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, adn te arly American Roots of the Current Debate by Steve Bateman  - The title is a bit intimidating. A friend of mine gave me this book and it sat on my "to read" pile for over a year. I didn't think I would like it until I read the first chapter, then I was hooked and I really enjoyed it. He does a fantastic job of comparing the debate about the nature and existence of God and Jesus in Jonathan Edwards and Ben Franklin's era to the debate about the same topic in our own time. It's amazing to see that people are essentially still debating the same topics 300 years later regarding Jesus. His research was impressive and enlightening, and he does a great job of creating a list of Founding Fathers who were serious Christians and which were more on the Deisitic end of the spectrum. Highly recommended.  I read it on paper.

Which "Real" Jesus?: Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, and the Early American Roots of the Current Debate

11. The Book of Harold, the Illegitmate Son of God by Owen Egerton - Owen is one of my very good friends from college. He and I agree on very little, which is highly entertaining. He is a very gifted writer. This is the first novel I read last year, and I had a very strong emotional reaction to it. Mostly because I knew the author. It's a very interesting book that will make you think, and evoke an emotional response. Would also make for some good discussions.  I read it on the Kindle app for my iPad.

The Book of Harold, the Illegitimate Son of God

12. A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer - I've read almost all of his novels. I needed something fun and relatively mindless to read over the summer. His stories are always really enjoyable but at this point in his career he has become totally formulaic.  It's a good formula, but after reading 10 or more of his novels, the act is kinda wearing thin. Any big time offer like Archer is making so much money cranking out books, that they probably don't care if it's formulaic any more, because the money is obscene. If you want to read a great, fun Jeffrey Archer book from his early days, check out Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. If you have never read any of his books, you'll enjoy this one thoroughly. I read it on the Kindle app for iPhone and iPad.

A Prisoner of Birth

13. The Classic: How Everett Case and His Tournament Brought Big Time Basketball to the South by Bethany Bradsher - Bethany is another friend of mine who writes books. This is a fascinating story that you probably know nothing about unless you are over 50 or from North Carolina. If you like basketball or good regional history, you'll love this!

The Classic: How Everett Case and His Tournament Brought Big-Time Basketball to the South 

14. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - I'm an Apple zealout, so I had to read this book. I blew through it. It's fascinating stuff and you get all sides of Steve Jobs, the good and the bad. Of course I read this on my iPhone and iPad wih the Kindle app.

Steve Jobs

15. Wired by Douglas Richards - This is a high tech thriller with a little bit of philosophy and quasi religion thrown in. It's entertaining. You'll read it in less than 48 hours, it's fast-paced to say the least. The reason I bought it is because it's only available digitally and the price fluctuates wildly. Basically the author sells it for super cheap (I bought if for 79 cents!) until it gets in the top 10 books on the Kindle store, then he raises the price to $2.99, sells a ton of copies at that price until it falls out of the top 10, and then starts the whole thing again. Pretty cool way to make a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Obviously I read it on my iPhone and iPad Kindle app.

Wired

16. - 18. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - This Young Adult Trilogy is all the rage, and there is a movie coming out in a few months. I read them for a couple of reasons: 1. to get my book count up before the end of the year, they're short and fast 2. Because I try to keep up with what the young people are reading so I can be relevant (I drew the line at Twilight though, won't go there). 3. I like to read the book before I see the movie.  They are exciting, and the movie should be fun. Read on the Kindle app for iPhone and iPad. Strangely they weren't available on the iBookstore.

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)

Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

19. Why Men Hate Going To Church by David Murrow - I read it in one day. Couldnt' put it down. Spot on. Amazing, I loved it!!!!!!! Everybody should read this book immediately. Seriously, this dude nails so much about why guys aren't terribly comfortable or excited about church. He also provides good, doable solutions! Read it on iBooks for iPad. Got if for free from www.booksneeze.com  

Why Men Hate Going to Church

20. Heaven if for Real by Todd Burpo - Huge bestseller, really short, totally crazy, a great read that will make you think about Heaven and will also get you really excited to go there. I loved it. Read it on my iPhone Kindle App. Yep, the whole book on the phone.

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

21. Scream Free Marriage by Hal Edward Runkel  Another one of my college roommates who turned into an author. Hal is very successful, and this book is his followup to ScreamFree Parenting. I loved this book, and Jessica (my wife) can attest to its effectiveness. Get it. Read it. Live it. Read it on the Kindle for iPad.

ScreamFree Marriage

22. A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin - this is the 4th book in the Song of Fire and Ice Series. HBO made this series into a very successful TV show (Game of Thrones). The first 3 books were amazing, some of the best fantasy ever. The story was derailed quite a bit in the 4th book, but little did I know how bad it would get, read below. Read on iPad/iPhone Kindle app.

A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)

23. A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin - book five in the series.  It took him 5+ years to write this book, and it basically sucked.  The 4th book dragged, this one came to a screaching halt, and took 1,000+ pages to do so. I'll keep reading the series, but this dude needs and editor, badly. Read it on the iPad and iPhone.

A Dance With Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)

24. The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ by Lee Strobel - this was my favorite book of the year. Lee investigates common arguements that are raised by people on the web all the time, who quote "scholars" for their proof. He dives in deep with experts in each field, and it's very enlightening. I learned a ton about the New Testament and the study of ancient documents. If you're into apologetics, or have questions about who Jesus really was, this is a great book for you! Read it on Kindle for iPad.

The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ

25. Wholehearted by Roger Wernette - Roger is an old friend of mine. A very funny guy, and a very gifted communicator, both in speech and in the written word. This book was a great encouragement for me in my walk with Christ, and I've given it to about 30 people this year. Read it on iBooks for iPad. I believe it was the first book I read on the iPad.

Wholehearted

How to always have the newest iPhone

I love finding deals, and sharing them with others.

Here is a gift for you iPhone junkies.  This is how to always have the newest, freshest iPhone availalbe, without wasting a bunch of money. In fact, it will barely cost you any extra money at all. Of course, just by owning an iPhone you are paying a wireless company a ridiculous amount of money.

1. Check your availability for upgrade.  Check it often.  Get all OCD about it.  Here's why: you will be eligible for a phone upgrade well before your 2 year contract is over.  The cell phone compaines (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint) want you to remain a perpetual customer, so they will offer you an upgrade before your contract is up. When you excercise the option to upgrade your phone, it extends your contract for another 2 years.

2. Buy the new iPhone as soon as it comes out.  Be an early adopter. I know you don't need the newest iPhone, but buying it immediately will payoff for you in just a few days. Here is how. This of course assumes you are getting it at the discounted price, because you were eligible for an early upgrade. If you aren't eligible, keep checking, because they don't tell you you're eligible right away. Let's say you go top of the line, and get the biggest and best iPhone, with the subsidized price, you'll spend $300.

3. Once you get the new iPhone and activate it, your old iPhone is now contract free! This means you can sell it to someone as an "unlockable" iPhone.  This is a big deal. A new, non contract iPhone costs about what it costs to actually make an iPhone. A lot.  $600+, depending on which country you live in.  So if you have a relatively new (less than 2 years old) iPhone in good shape for sale, you can get $300-$400 for it.  That's roughly the same amount you spent in step 2 to get a brand new subsidized phone.  BAM! You just upgraded your phone for $100 or less.  

4. If you sell it on ebay or craigslist, be careful and make sure you know what you're doing so you don't get screwed over. 

I've done this numerous times, and have several friends who have as well. That's how you keep with the latest and greatest without spending irresponibly.

Running totals for 2011

It was a great year of running for me.  I ran over 600 miles. Probably not the most I've run in a given year, but it was the first time I tracked it with my new Garmin watch.  I didn't get it until half way through January, so there is a couple of weeks data missing.  Also, there were a few runs that I didn't have the watch, so I probably ran over 650 miles in 2011. Average pace for the year was 8:46. It would have been a little lower, but I used the watch during a hike we did with my daughters (6 and 4 years old) that was extemely slow.

Book Review: Why Men Hate Going To Church

Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is awesome. This dude nails it, and he had the data to prove his points. I would encourage every Christian to read this book, and then begin to act on the truths and the hard realities contained within. This book isn't sexist, or misogynistic. It is true, funny, and well researched. The author was able to put words to many of the things that had been rumbling around in my head for years.

It sounds like it might be a negative book, but actually it's very upbeat, humorous and positive. He points out many problems with the church but he's careful to provide positive observations as well as upbeat, reasonable, doable solutions.

Literally, every pastor in America (and Europe) should read this.

View all my reviews

Apple, TV, Cable and the future

The one major mainstream technical industry that Apple hasn’t turned on its head yet is television.  Before his death Steve Jobs was expressed his frustration with the gatekeepers of the television networks (aka, the content providers). These guys, the networks and the cable companies, have had a stranglehold on the industry and don’t want to see Apple steal their business like Apple did with the record labels. Therefore they’ve been loathe to deal with Apple. The second big problem is that these same people, cable companies, control most of the bandwidth for broadband consumer internet services in the U.S..  So if anyone starts to threaten their stranglehold on programming (Netflix) then they can throttle the internet traffic to that specific service. Just ask Netflix how this is going for them.

Before he passed away Steve Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he had finally cracked the TV issue. So now, the predictions of a true Apple TV are coming fast and furious. What most people think is that Apple has come up with a new simple way to make a TV work. Something like Siri for your TV. I’m sure this is true to some degree, but really, how complicated is a TV.  You point and click a remote, most people are already pretty good at this.  Will Apple improve on it, of course, that’s what they do.

The real problem with TV is this….cable. Or satellite, depending on who you are.  Anyone who has some sort of pay TV service is paying for a couple of hundred channels that they don’t want.  The thing about TV that needs to change is the system of delivery.  The whole idea of a television channel is antiquated and unnecessary. No one cares (except TV execs) what channel a show appears on. Consumers are only interested in the actual program, movie, game show, whatever, not the people who broadcast it. Do you really care who publishes the books you enjoy? No, you just buy the book. You probably don’t even know who published your favorite book, you’re just glad they did. I know this is true for me.

So what will Apple do?  I have no idea, but here is my prediction, which may be WAY OFF, but it’s fun to speculate.

Apple will cut a deal with a major Cable subscription service (Comcast, ATT Uverse, Time Warner). Apple will pay this cable company some ridiculous sum per user to get all the bandwidth they want.  Then Apple will charge the consumer slightly more than that rate to pick and choose what shows they want to watch. As much of it as they want. When and where they want to watch it, all seamlessly organized and presented through Apple products.  

The chosen cable company will continue to pay the content producers (TV networks) the same amount they pay them now, so they remain happy. Now users don’t have to browse through 600 channels, memorize what network the tv shows they like come on, or pay for crap they don’t want (Home Shopping Network).  They can watch the shows they want to and everybody still gets paid.

I’m sure there are massive flaws in this plan. I’m not an expert when it comes to these industries, but I think this is in the same ballpark as what may happen in the future, because no one in the TV game right now is going to let Apple take over their industry, and this method will allow all the current players to make money.  Apple doesn’t need to make money on the service, because they make money selling you the hardware you use to consume all the content.  The iTunes store didn’t make much money in the beginning either, but Apple sold a few hundred million iPods and became the most valuable company on earth

Thoughts?

10 "Bad" 80's Movies You Probably Haven't Seen....but should.

I don't actually know the average age of my readers, but I assume that many of you were not part of the movie watching public in the 1980's.  For those of you that were, you will enjoy this as a bit of nostalgia.

All of these movies were relatively dissapointing at the box office, but are very entertaining.  Most of them were on HBO round the clock in the 80's and early 90's.  Some are considered to be not very good, but don't trust "them", these are movies you'll enjoy watching.

1. Big Trouble in Little China

This movie is incredibly awesome.  John Carpenter directed and Kurt Russell owns this movie as the ridiculously over self-confident Jack Burton. There are so many quotable lines in this movie it's ridiculous. In the commentary on my DVD Kurt Russell says that whenever he gets on an elevator with random dudes, they always make a reference to this movie. It is one of my life goals to ride an elevator with Kurt Russell to do just that.

2. Tremors

Another intentionally "bad" movie. This is probably Kevin Bacon's defining role and what catapulted him into the stratosphere of megastardom and having his own trivia game named after him.  This movie is about giant worms, but don't let that scare you off.  The worms are just an excuse to bring amazing characters together and let them do what they do best, be amazing characters. Michael Gross (of Family Ties fame) and Reba McIntire (of bad country music fame) are hilarious in smaller supporting roles.  Also, you'll be saying "Hey there Old Fred" alot after watching this movie. One last thing, Tremors and Big Trouble in Little China share one cast member. Below is the one of the best scenes in the movie....

3. Spies Like Us

Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd, as 2 decoy spies in this theatrical bomb.  This is probably one of the last times that Chevy Chase was funny, but man, when he was on, he could deliver a great line better than anyone. Akroyd is perfect using faux technical jargon, and his wife, Donna Dixon, plays Chevy's love interest. This scene is from early in the film. It isn't my favorite scene, but it is pretty indicative of the humor.

4. Three O'Clock High

There is almost no way you have seen this movie, no matter how old you are.  It's about a high school fight that is meant to take place at 3 o'clock, and the tension that builds as that hour approaches. Casey Siemaszko plays the lead, you may remember him from Young Guns. Also, be sure to catch the voice of Lisa Simpson. The first 10 minutes are in this link. The clocking ticking off and on throughout the movie really helps build the tension. 

5. Midnight Madness

1980. Virtually still the 70's.  Michael J. Fox's first role.  A wacky story about several teams of kids who are on a giant city wide scavenger hunt. This is the definitive scavenger hunt movie. Also an 80's cable classic.  Fun movie, with a cameo by Paul Ruebens (aka Pee Wee Herman). Michael J. Fox shows up about 3:00 in this clip.

6. Can't Buy Me Love

This is the quintessential 80's movie.  It encapsulates all the rest of the classic 80's movies (Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink) into one film.  The trailer below explains the plot. Which is the classic nerd becomes cool 80's story. The nerd is played by none other than McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) from Grey's Anatomy. Also, Seth Green plays Dempsey's overly mature younger brother.

7. Inner Space

Dennis Quaid is a test pilot who gets shrunk down to microscopic size and accidentally injected into the body of Martin Short. Hilarity and adventure ensue. Also, young Meg Ryan is in this movie too.

8. The Best of Times

Robin Williams plays a guy who dropped the winning touchdown pass in the big game in high school. He has spent his entire life being the "guy who dropped the ball", so he arranges to have the game played again 20 years later.  Kurt Russell plays his best friend and the famous quarterback who threw the pass. Great freaking movie!

9. All The Right Moves

Another high school football movie. This one starring Tom Cruise. It was on every afternoon in February in 1985.

10. Mr. Mom

This one wasn't a theatrical bomb, but it has fallen off the radar. Michael Keaton doesn't even have a career anymore, but that dude was a beast in the 80's and this is him in the perfect role (long before he played Batman). He gets laid off from a Detroit auto-company and in order to pay the bills his wife (Teri Garr) goes back to the corporate world, leaving him at home with the three kids. We get to watch him spiral down into the hysterical abyss of a stay at home dad, and then rise again, in a great training montage parody. 

There you have it. 10 movies you should watch if you have insomnia, get your wisdom teeth out, are trapped in a room with Netflix or you have no purpose in life.

Our adoption and God's Provision

So here is the long awaited followup to our announcement about adopting our third daughter from China.  We have indeed, decided to call her Ava, so barring any last minute changes of heart, that will be her name.

What follows is the story of how God has provided for all of our needs. I hope it encourages and amazes you.

International adoptions are expensive. Actually, all adoptions are expensive. I can’t personally speak to the specific expenses for any other kind of adoption. All we know is that for an American family to adopt from China through our agency, the cost comes out to roughly $22,000. This includes the travel costs for 2 people.  Since this amount is nearly half of our families annual income, just entertaining the idea of adopting is a matter of faith, or lunacy. Sometimes those two things are relatively similar.

When we started praying about it in the summer of 2010 we knew that the expense would be a big challenge.  Last Christmas we decided to definitely pursue adopting another girl from China. Soon after we made this decision we received some extra income that we weren’t counting on, that made paying for the first $11,000 in expenses totally doable!  That was awesome.

So in January of 2011 we (mostly Jessica) started doing paperwork, filling out forms, organizing all of our official documents, and all the rest of the stuff you have to do to adopt. By August, it was all finished and sent away, we were approved, and the whole process was...in process. 

By this point we had paid out roughly $11,000 in expenses.  We were in Colorado on a family vacation, and Jessica reminded me that we would have start paying for the rest of the expenses pretty soon (sometime in the next year) now that the paperwork was done. She was concerned about how we were going to come up with $11,000.  We had already talked about and looked into various options for ways to raise that amount, via an online fundraiser. Jessica was feeling burdened about the work to raise the money by certain deadlines. I was relatively laid back about it (I know, this sounds like a lie, but it’s true). I figured we have lots of friends and acquaintances that would be happy to donate to something like this, and we could get 100 people to give a 100 dollars, or some catchy idea like that. After discussing this for a day or two, we prayed about it.

It wasn’t a desperate prayer, or an urgent prayer, or even a very specific prayer.  It was simply a prayer acknowledging that we needed help, and we were open to any kind of solution God would provide. Including a solution we hadn’t considered.

The next day Jessica received an email from one of the staff at our church, Cindi Lomax, asking if we knew anyone who was adopting from China and might need help with the expenses.  Now, at this point, Cindi did not know we were adopting again. The only people who knew were our closest friends and our family. We kept it a secret for 8 months!!!!  Therefore, it was totally random that Cindi happened to send us that email. Yeah, random, totally, wink, wink.

Jessica responded to her immediately, letting her in on the secret that we were, in fact, adopting from China again. She had no way of knowing that we had just prayed about our expenses in the past 24 hours.

We exchanged a few emails with Cindi, where she was a bit cryptic. She was trying to figure out what the Lord was up to. She asked us to send her an email, sharing “our heart” in the adoption process.  After that she asked us to send a list of our remaining expenses, which totaled roughly $11,000.

Cindi responded, telling us that there was a family at our church that felt that God was specifically telling them to help someone bring a child home from China.  Our church has quite a few adoptive families, and a clear vision for helping families who want to adopt.

However, at the time, our church had an emphasis on adopting from Columbia. So, it was odd for Cindi to hear a family say that they felt like the Lord was clearly telling them to help someone adopt from China.

A little while later she informed us that the family who was looking to help someone bring a girl home from China would help us, and that they would cover ALL the remaining adoption expenses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had not dreamed or imagined that someone would be willing to be so generous, or that this would be the method by which God provided.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.  Ephesians 3:20-21

Hunger Games Review

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you're looking for some intellectually stimulating fiction, look elsewhere. However, if you want a fun, quick read then you'll enjoy this book. You'll have to suspend your critical thinking skills, because there are all kinds of huge leaps in logic you'll have to make to not go crazy pointing out all the absurdities in the setting and the convenient plot devices that pop out all the time. But if you, like me, don't have a problem checking your brain at the door, then get ready for a fun ride.

View all my reviews

We have another daughter....almost!

We are very pleased to announce that we have been matched with a one year old girl in China!

Her name is  Ding Si Xiu - and she was born in Septermber of 2010.  She has a cleft lip and a cleft palate. The lip has already been repaired, and we will do what is necessary to repair the palate in the next few years when we bring her back to the USA!

We think we will name her Ava SiXiu Bonesteel, but that isn't in stone yet, more like wet cement.

As best we know, we will be travelling to China to bring her home sometime in March, but that could change as well.  

Pictures seen here
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We are thrilled to be matched with this little girl and our whole family is anxious and excited to travel to China and bring her home to be a part of our growing family!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers, love, encouraging words and support!

There is more to this story, and in the next few days I plan on writing it up so you can hear about God's work in our lives and his provision for bringing Ava to our family. 

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Steve Jobs, some thoughts

With the passing of Steve Jobs yesterday, he is going to be in the news quite a bit over the next week. A lot of people who don’t know that much about Mr. Jobs are going to be inundated with new information. I’m not one of those people, because I’m an Apple nerd and I devoured all the books, videos, and articles about Steve Jobs a long time ago. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I’m such an avid fan of Apple.  What follows are some random thoughts, quotes, links I wanted to get down while this is fresh. It's not terribly cohesive, and there may be some grammatical errors, get over it.

 Apple's Resurgence

In the year 2000 my father in law was a big PC user. He is a very successful businessman, and certainly no dummy. However, he bet me that Apple would be out of business by 2010. I laughed at him, and with as much confidence as I have ever had about anything I bet him a steak dinner that he would be wrong.  At that time, Apple wasn’t anything like the juggernaut that it is no. In fact, there were monthly articles on the web and in tech magazines about how Apple was on the verge of dying.  So how could I be so confident?  Is it because I am a gifted business analyst? No way. Did I have insider information? Nope.  It’s because I had been following Apple pretty closely since the “internet” became mainstream at the end of the 90’s. In following Apple I had listened to Steve Jobs vision and his philosophy about business, design, and life in general, and I knew that everything he believed was true and would ultimately win out. 

If you want to delve into the culture of Apple and how the company came back from the dead and created the most innovative, fun, world changing stuff, then I’d recommend watching the old documentary Triumph of the Nerds on youtube.  Link here.  I’d also recommend the book, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.

I would read these before the authorized biography of Jobs is released on Oct. 24.

 Jobs forced Apple to do things differently, and to live by the principle that Apple didn’t have to be like every other tech company. This was summed up best by the first ad they ran when he returned to Apple in 1997, after having been ousted from the company ten years before.

If you want to be truly great you have to be willing to stand out, to think differently than everyone else.  To say no to some things, even though they may be really good ideas. Jobs said it like this….

 “The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient.

 “But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.

“And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.     BusinessWeek, Oct. 12, 2004

More than Money 

If you think that this is just about business and money  you’d be wrong. There is more to Apple than just a great business that makes money. In fact, it could be argued that that was merely a side product of the real goal, to change the world and do something with your life that matters. Steve said it like this… “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful... that’s what matters to me.” The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993

Long before the iPad, iPhone, and iPod was the Macintosh computer.  The Mac changed everything. People who are not super nerdy, or who are younger than 35 years old don’t remember what computing was like before the Mac.  Before the Mac monitors were black screens with green or slightly orange text on them, and you had to know a computer language to get virtually anything done on a computer.  The Mac introduced the idea of a “virtual desktop” with folders and files to the world.  The whole idea of how you use a computer is directly traceable to the guys at Apple (lead by Steve Jobs) recognizing that this is what computers needed to become mainstream. Windows is just a cheap, poorly done knockoff of the Macintosh, circa 1984.

When I came on Young Life staff in 1994 we had a computer in our office that 3 of us shared.  It was a Compaq Presario and it ran Windows 3.1.  I had never owned a computer personally. However I had used my friends Mac in college to write some papers.  After using the Windows machine for a few months it was time for me to buy a computer.  I bought a Mac, and began to use it at home.  After about a week of using both machines I was an Apple snob. My snobbery was not based in a higher view of myself, but it was the supreme confidence that what I had at home (a Mac) was so much better and well thought out than the Windows machine.  I was willing to bet the farm on it’s ultimate victory in the computing world.  FYI, Apple is by far the most valuable technology company in the world, and depending on the day, they are the most valuable company in the world. They undulate back and forth between number one and two with ExxonMobil.

The reason is because Apple computers just work, you don’t have to be a tech geek to use an Apple, or to keep your Mac running.  People often think I’m a technical person because I talk about computers so much. I’m not, I’m an Apple user. The reason I use a Mac is so I don’t have to be a tech geek to keep my computer working. I can focus on what I actually want my life to be about. Two of their past slogans “It just works” and “The computer for the rest of us” illustrate the vision that Jobs and Co. had regarding the future of technology. They wanted to create beautiful, elegant, tools that were a joy to use, so that you could do whatever it is you do faster, easier, and you would enjoy doing it.

What Really Matters

Steve Jobs came to realize that while the things that he and his coworkers accomplished at Apple were amazing, and helped people in their everyday lives, they were ultimately not as important as he might once have thought.  He put it this way….

“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.

“I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Tech- nology is not changing it much — if at all.

“These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with oth- er parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that.

“But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” Wired, February 1996

From My Perspective 

I'll end with this.  Serving Jesus is the ultimate experession of many of the things that Steve Jobs believed. Doing things that outlast you, that last forever, is ultimately the most important thing in life. Doing things with excellence and beauty are important. It isn't enough to make a product. It isn't enough to just do a job. It needs to be done with care, with passion, and with much thought.  The reason we have different fonts on our computers is because Steve Jobs took a class about caligraphy while he was in school at Reed College (by the way, he never graduated). He thought it was important that the computer have some artistic elegance. He thought it would make a difference. He thought it was important.

The scriptures say it like this....

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters..." Colossians 3:23.

Jesus said it like this....

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Matthew 6:19-20

I don't think Jobs was a follower of Jesus, but he certainly stumbled upon many ideas that matched up with Jesus very own teachings.

Below is a great article about Jobs, that has a different angle.  It also gives some insight into what the guy was like as a person, not just a corporate leader.

http://allthingsd.com/20111005/the-steve-jobs-i-knew/

Big Announcement from the Bonesteel family

We are very excited and anxious to announce that we will be......

adopting another daughter from China!!!!

We have been working on the paperwork for the past 9 months, and we are officially logged in with the Chinese government agency that handles international adoptions. It’s been extremely difficult to keep this a secret, and some people in our family have been telling everyone they know (Zoe & Alex).

 Therefore, we decided to finally go public with this exciting news!

 Here are some answers to some questions we expect to receive….

1. Are you getting another girl?  Yes

2. When will you get her?  We don’t know. At least 6 months from now, probably longer, maybe a lot longer. We have no way of estimating or knowing until we get matched with a child.  However, once we do, we will be sure to broadcast it all over the web!

3. How old will she be?  We don’t know exactly, but definitely younger than our youngest daughter Alexandra (Alex turned 4 in June).

4. Will you guys go to China to get her?  Yes, eventually, and we are taking Zoe and Alex with us!

5. What will you name her?  We don’t know yet, but we are taking all of your hilarious suggestions in the comments.

Obviously we are very excited about this next stage in our family’s journey and we would covet your prayers for the whole process.  We are excited that the Lord lead us to  adoption and we can’t wait to meet our newest little one.

Hope

Hope is dangerous.

Hope is a wonderful thing. Hope gives some a way to visualize their dreams. Hope has started revolutions, raised nations from destruction, allowed athletes and armies to overcome insurmountable deficits. Hope has given some the will to live, when they were long overdue for death. Hope has helped untold thousands overcome what others thought was impossible. Hope is the breath of survival. Hope opens the door to the impossible. Hope is dangerous.

Hope also opens the door to disappointment. When we hope for something, really place our emotions into this thing we are hoping will come to pass we open the door to be crushed. Is there anything more shattering to our psyche than to have our hope snuffed. Hope breeds excitement, excitement breeds expectations, and expectations breed more hope. Hope can snowball like that, the more hope we have the more hope we get. Unfortunately the more hope we have, the deeper the disappointment if hope does not win out. To hope is to risk. To risk is to possibly suffer pain. The more hope, the more risk, potentially the more pain. How many times can we hope and fail before we give up all hope?

So what are we to do?

Snuff out all hope to avoid potential pain? The life without hope is the life of no passion, no dream, no....hope. Without hope there is no future to look forward to. Without hope all that matters is what has already happened and what is happening right now.

Some might choose the life of no hope, and thus face no risk. Real life chooses to hope, to risk, and to reap the disappointment or the joy from that risk. Hope in the Bible is coupled with faith and love. Faith and hope are very close cousins. But love seems more distant until you realize that love is what allows us to continue when hope is lost.

The Amazing Sand Dunes

The Great Sand Dunes are in Colorado, not too far from the town of Alamosa. It is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.  Surrounded by mountains, from this vantage point it looks like we are in a massive desert, or on the set of a Star Wars film. Those black dots behind us are people!  I want to go back early in the morning in the early summer and climb these jokers. Click on the picture to see a much bigger version.

Here is some video:

How not to waste your life...

Television.

Here’s the deal, most of everything that is on TV is total garbage, so don’t waste your time watching it at all. However, I realize that there are numerous shows that people are really invested in because they’ve spent time watching them for years. In this plan you’ll still be able to watch your favorite shows, and you’ll save yourself a ton of time.  Three letters are here to save your life:

DVR, formerly known as VCR.

 Either way you can save a ton of time by using these genius inventions.  Here is how you will get a big chunk of your life back and never miss your favorite show.

1. Never watch any of your favorite shows live. Whether it be Lost, Idol, SYTYCD, 24, The Office, Jersey Shore, etc.

 2. Watch them later in the evening and zip through the commercials in fast forward. You’ll save a ridiculous amount of time. 

 Let’s say you watch 2 shows religiously. They are both one hour dramas. A one hour drama actually only has 44 minutes of content, sometimes only 42, but we’ll be conservative here and say 44. If you watch the whole show live, you just spent 60 minutes watching a 44 minute show. If you do that twice a week (Lost and Heroes) then you just spent 120 minutes watching 88 minutes worth of television. If you could cut those commercials out, you would save 32 minutes a week.  Extrapolate that out for a 20 episode season, and bam you just saved yourself over 10 hours! Ten hours of your life that you just got back. You could run 2 marathons in that time, or take a serious road trip, or watch 5 movies,  or read a whole book, or write a whole bunch of blogs, or do something that involved someone else, you know, socializing.

Also the time you would have been watching TV in “prime time” can be spent hanging out with other people and investing yourself in your friends, family, or anyone else.

Now imagine if you watched 4 one hour shows. You just got 21 hours back!  That’s a whole day. 

So there you go, learn to use your DVR and you’ll live longer. Over 30 years, you’d get back a whole month. Who wouldn’t want an extra month of life?

College, the best years of your life?

This was written with the college aged reader in mind. I originally wrote it in 2005, but it's relevant as many of my friends head off to college.

 You, like me, have probably heard the phrase, "College is the best time of your life".  I want to run an idea by you.  Here it is.....If college is really the best years of your life, then you have a pretty crappy life.  Let me explain what I mean. 

If you are in college from the ages 18-22, then you still have 60+ years to live. If the next 60+ years don't compare to 4 or 5 years you spent in college, didn't your life peak kinda early?  Isn't everything after college kind of a let down?  If you get the idea that college is the best time of your life from older people who look back and think that, I would suggest that those older people are suffering from a mid-life crisis of some sort, and at the very least they are the type of person you may not want to emulate. 

I am not saying that college shouldn't be great.  It should. It should be the best years of your life..... so far.  Just as high school was hopefully better than junior high. But why settle for peaking at the age of 22?  Why not make your 20's even better than college? Why not make your 30's better than your 20's and so on. I've been in my 30's for almost 9 years now and I have to say, they are pretty awesome. I had an incredible college experience. I loved all of it except for the tests and overly long papers.  I made great friends that I still talk to and hang out with. I'm still in close contact with my 16 best college guy friends. We get together for a weekend every year. We hang out, share whats going on, and pray for one another, and basically stay up all night and laugh, just like when we were in college. My prayer for you as a college student is that you will make friends like that in school. Friends who will be with you for the rest of your life. Friends who will stand up to you when you are wrong. Friends who will stand by you when you are hurt, and friends who will point you to the one thing that is more important than anything else...... Christ.  

Which kind of person are you? (not a personality test)

 What’s it all about?  What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of my existence? Why am I here?  Does it even matter if I’m here?  These are some of the questions that haunt us as we consider what we should do with our lives.  We want to make our lives count. We want to be important, we want to be significant. Ultimately we want to live a life that matters. We want to know what life is really all about so that our lives will not be an insignificant waste of time. In order to answer the question, “What is life all about?”, we have to figure out what kind of person we are.  What we believe about the universe we live in. So what kind of person are you?

    In the summer of 2002 I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s film Signs.  It was advertised as “the scariest movie you will ever see”. I am not someone who sees many scary movies, but I went to see this movie anyway because I enjoyed Mr. Shyamalan’s previous films immensely. After seeing the film I realized it wasn’t about all the things that were advertised.  Yes, there were frightening and tense moments in the movie, but those were just a backdrop for the question that Mr. Shyamalan was asking the audience - “What kind of person are you?”   

     The story that allows this question to  be raised involves aliens coming to earth.  Sounds weird, I know, but its effective. In the film Mel Gibson plays Graham, a minister who has lost his faith as a result of  a tragic accident where his wife was killed in a car crash.  The critical point in the story is a conversation between Mel Gibson’s character and his ex-baseball player younger brother, Merrill, played by Juaquin Phoenix.

    As they sit in the dark and stare at the TV and see alien ships hovering over different cities on TV they are gripped by curiosity and fear. 

  I encourage you to watch the rest of the movie, because it addresses this question further.  We have to ask ourselves the same question.  Which kind of person am I?  Is everything we experience just a product of random chance.  A product of a series of chemical reactions that cause certain people to do and say certain things that affect other people and ultimately us as well.  Or is there more to life than just randomness. Is there a purpose? Is there a reason that we are here? What kind of universe do you believe in, a universe that exists by accident, or something that was designed?

    This is a topic that is hotly debated in our culture today. The debate has taken on lots of names; “culture war” , “Creation v. Evolution” , “Science v. God”. The purpose of this blog is not to debate the scientific details in each of these arguments. You probably did not open this webpage in order to read about scientific theories.  However, I do feel the need to take a few moments to cover the topic in a broad way.

    Obviously this topic can and will be debated until the end of time.  It is very difficult for one side to convince the other side that they are right, and impossible to prove.  Usually the debate degenerates into a debate over the age of the earth, or how the universe was formed. While those are interesting topics, I don’t intend to spend much time on them here.  There are many great resources available that cover this topic. 

But before we move on, here are a few things to consider.  Firstly, our universe is ordered.  There is not much debate to the fact that our planets move in an orderly way, or that the entire universe is very predictable.  We know when comets will pass by thousands of years before they do. We have laws of the physical world that we trust implicitly. Thousands of us board giant metal tubes and fly at fantastic speeds 20,000 feet above the ground with not much thought because we trust the laws of the universe to keep an airplane safely in the air. Human beings themselves are immensely complicated.  The human brain is an amazing organ.  We understand exponentially more about it now than we did just 20 years ago, but scientists still claim that we don’t understand much about the brain as a whole. 

    If we don’t understand our own bodies completely, perhaps we also have much to learn about the universe and how it functions and where it came from.  We do know a few things about the universe whether we are scientifically minded or not.  As I mentioned earlier we know that the universe is ordered, that it works, planets are not hurtling randomly through space smashing into other planets.  The universe is not chaotic.  If the universe is not chaotic, then it might even be designed.

     Let me illustrate it this way:  Say you had a watch, and you took this watch apart, all of the pieces, gears, springs and other things that make a watch tick were disassembled and put into a small box.  Now shake that box up for 5 minutes.  When you open the box, what would you find?  A watch? Of course not, you would find a bunch of watch pieces all jumbled together in a box! What if you shook that box for an hour?  When you opened it you would still find a box of parts, not a whole working watch. If you shook it for a year, or 10 years, or a million years, or for all eternity you would never open it up to find a functioning watch.  Why not? Because a watch is complicated and it takes an intelligent mind to make those parts work together.  It takes someone who understands the mechanics of how a watch works.  It took someone who could craft the different parts of a watch to put them together and assign them tasks to tell time. Now if we agree that something like a watch could not put itself together, how much more true would that be about the human eye?  Or the human brain? Or the universe itself? 

    We don’t expect computers, or cars, or nice meals, or any of our modern toys to make themselves. Everything in our experience leads us to believe that complicated functioning systems have intelligent designers behind them. Why not the universe?  Well, the reason we doubt that there is a creator of the universe is because we can’t see him or her or it.  At the same time we don’t see gravity, but we do see its effects, and therefore we believe in gravity. We can see that there is an ordered universe, that we can trust the laws of physics, motion and gravity. We trust that they exist even though we can only see evidence of their existence. Perhaps we need to trust that something greater than us (for the sake of language, I’ll refer to this something as God) exists and is responsible for our existence even though we can only see evidence of this entity’s (God’s) existence. 

As we learn more and more about the beginning of our universe and how it came into being it helps us to understand our own existence even better, but it still can’t possibly answer the question as to where the original matter that formed the universe came from or why it exists at all. Was there ever just nothing? Was there a time when nothing existed?  If so, did time exist? If time didn’t exist, then what did? My head just exploded. So maybe there is something (God) that caused the universe to come into being several billion years ago. So what?

U2 Tour 2009

My U2 concert review from 2009. They just recently finished this tour, so I thought it would make sense to repost my review from my old site.

 Here it is, the review that no one was waiting for.

 U2, Dallas & Norman

I’m reviewing both of these shows together, because they were very much identical. The only difference in the setlist, was the addition of In A Little While and Unknown Caller in Norman.

Let’s start with a little insight into my recent U2 fandom. It was fading. Call it age, call it having 2 kids, call it busyness with work, call it a lackluster album, whatever the reason, my U2 obsession has faded.  Buying tickets at multiple shows was probably just a learned response to the tickets being offered. A few weeks before the shows I even thought to myself, “what am I doing going to these shows?”.  Buy, I’m still cheap, and I paid for the tickets, and I decided to go ahead and go to both shows anyway. Would it be worth it?  Keep reading.

The shows were very similar, but one way they were different was the venue. The Dallas show was in the new Jerrydome, which is unfreakingbelievably massive.  Lots of reports about bad sound in the venue, but from 10 feet away from Bono, I didn’t notice.  But the roof was closed, and in comparing that to the Norman show, being outside on a cool, crisp evening totally owned being inside Jerry’s new playpen. I was really stoked to see the show outside in the weather after being in the Jerrydome.

 I stood in exactly the same place at the 2 different shows. Which is to say 10-15 feet from the stage, between where Bono stands and where Edge stands, so that I’d get the full effect of both of their antics.

 I attended the Dallas show with my long time friend Nick Massad, his wife Monica, and 2 of their friends, who were great.  The Norman show was, me, Jessica, and Dan U2 Fox.

 Opening acts was the other main difference. I had never listened to Muse before the Dallas show, but I liked them immediately, which is weird for me. Thus I would give them an A+.

 In Norman, the Black Eyed Peas opened which was totally different from Muse, but they were good and fun, even though I’m not really a fan.

Once the opening acts were finished, you have the usual hour or so wait for U2. The way U2 introduced their set was great. Space Oddity began playing loudly and the crowd went crazy. Everyone singing along loudly and you could feel the energy ramp way, way, way up!

Lights down, smoke machines on, spotlights swinging, here comes U2, first song….

Breathe - I’m not a fan of this song, and I don’t think it is a great show starter, but I was happy that it was first, since then it was out of the way. It just doesn’t open a show very well. Elevation, Vertigo, neither of which are great songs either, are much better openers. So were MoFo and Zoo Station.

Get On Your Boots - I really don’t like this song, it just sucks. It is a little better live, but still, this will be the only tour that they ever play this song on, because it is utterly forgettable.

Magnificent - now we’re talking!  A new song I like, and that is pretty much a blatant worship song, at least form my perspective. At both shows I watched Bono pretty closely (and we were very close) and he seems to go into his spiritual, introspective, forget the crowd is there mode during this song.  Which was really interesting, because from my biased viewpoint this continued into the next song…

Mysterious Ways - this is at this point an old war horse, they have played it at pretty much every show for 18 years. However at the 2 shows I went to there was no belly dancer, or chicks on stage, or anything else remotely dance clubish. Rather it seemed to me that more than ever this song was about the Holy Spirit, especially during the end when Bono went into the “oooh, the spirit moves me, ooh the spirit takes me, the spirit moves in mysterious ways” lines at the end. So at this point, I’m at church, but better.

Beautiful Day - Here comes the sun/God Only Knows - more spiritual stuff in this song, so the service, errr I mean concert, continues.  In Dallas he tacked on Here Comes The Sun, but in Norman it was God Only Knows (Beach Boys), this was a new twist for me, and it was awesome, and yes I think it was meant to be sung to God, because the next song was…

 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For , and this was the highlight for me, when the band stopped playing and the crowd took over, that was the absolute best part of the show. Amazing. So great, to hear 70,000 people singing a song that means so much to so many in their walk with Christ was just really mind blowing. I shot both videos in this post on my iPhone by the way. They look great for a phone.

Stuck In A Moment - I’ve never much cared for this song, Bono and Edge did it without Larry and Adam, so that was a nice change, but if they never played this song again, I wouldn’t miss it.

No Line On The Horizon - Bono actually said “we even have songs we can’t play yet” before they played this one. It wasn’t really clean, but I like this song, so it was fun for me. I’m really glad they played it, and I hope it gets better, because it’s a very good song.

Elevation - not my favorite, but a great song to be in the inner circle for. 

In A Little While - this one was only done in Norman, they dedicated it to the astronauts at the space station, it was ho hum, because it’s a song that I have never liked, still don’t.

Unknown Caller - This is the tune from the new album that I really wanted to hear live!  They didn’t play it in Dallas, and I was disappointed. So when they cranked it up in Norman I was super stoked.  It’s freaking great live!  They show the words on the giant screens, so it’s like a karaoke prayer meeting!  I was emotionally moved by the song, it speaks to me at my core about being still and listening to God. This thing is loaded with scripture references. Jer. 33:3, 2 Cor. 5:17, Is. 53:6, Is. 46:10 and from what I’ve read the final 1:30 of the song is taken from a hymn called “My Savior’s Love”, so this kept the whole spiritual experience going from me. Heck I even teared up a little bit during this song, which was appropriate because the next song makes me tear up every single time.

Until the End of the World - good God I love this song so much. It’s my 2nd favorite U2 song now, trailing only With or Without You. The whole conversation between Judas and Jesus is just genius.  The more I’ve thought about Judas the past 20 years, the more I like this song. I really relate to Judas and his desire to force Jesus into proclaiming himself king. It’s totally something I would have done. Make God do what you want Him to do, I could definitely see myself  in this, so it makes Judas that much more of a sympathetic character, and more importantly it makes Jesus that much greater. What must Jesus have been feeling towards Judas? How frustrating, how sad, how horrible to watch your friend make the worst choice, yet still Jesus said he “would wait, until the end of the world”. Even at the end Jesus loved him.  Best. U2. Lyric. Ever.

The Unforgettable Fire - get out your XXXL throwback jersey for this one. It always reminds me of driving back and forth to Austin in college, because I listened to the album on nearly every trip.  Great to hear it.

City of Blinding Lights - at both of the shows he brought a 10-13 year old boy on the stage, different kids in each city. He walked the kid around the catwalk during the song, and really seemed to look into both of their faces and long for his youth during the tune. Bono can emote when necessary.

Vertigo - great live song, crowd went nuts.

I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (remix) - I’m not a big fan of the remix, but the crowds seem to like it.

Sunday Bloody Sunday - old school, but with a  new twist. Showing pictures of students in Iran, so it makes this song relevant again.  Not the best version though, that will always be the version on the Rattle and Hum DVD. This song starts the political portion of the set, which I usually dread because Bono gets to preachy. So I was pleasantly surprised when the Bonologue was short and very upbeat and positive. He even compliment GW Bush for the US work in Africa, and in Dallas he name checked Eugene Peterson (The Message translation) and Peb Jackson (former fundraiser with Young Life)!

MLK - great to hear, short intro for….

Walk On - I’m not a huge fan of this tune, but it seems to be the new One, so it’s probably going to be in every show forever.

Encore 

One - always great!

Amazing Grace - you don’t get much more overtly Christian than this!!!!!!!

Where the Streets Have No Name - they will never do a show without this song. It is a guaranteed crowd exciter. Yet another song with a heavy spiritual twist.

Ultraviolet - surprise! A song they haven’t played since the first Clinton administration!  Awesome, especially with Bono’s laser jacket and funky trapeze/microphone!

With or Without You - my favorite U2 song, but for the love of all that is good and true, please stop playing this song live!!!!!  Bono has been singing this song like he was a lounge singer for at least 4 tours, and it just sucks, it pulls all the life and passion out of the song. 

Moment of Surrender - last song, I interpret this one to be the moment one come’s to Christ, I’ve read some other thoughts too, but I like this interpretation best. It’s not 40, but I was singing all the way home in my head.

In Summary:

The Norman show is probably my 2nd favorite U2 show ever to attend. It was that freaking good, the Dallas show would be right behind it. This tour was much more of a spiritual experience than I had anticipated, and I think that was intentional on U2’s part.

 

Reading has changed forever!

I have loved books for a long time.  Ever since I was a child. I read the Chronicles of Narnia in third grade, all seven books. Ever since that time I’ve loved reading books.  Recently, everything has changed. Here is how...

Technology.

This past year I read 4 600 page novels...... on my phone.  

Yes, on my phone, and it was pretty enjoyable.  I used the Kindle application for my iPhone and/or the iBooks application. Both apps are great ways to read.

I liked it so much I downloaded the Kindle app for my laptop, and started reading on my computer too. The Kindle  and iBook apps both know where you left off so if you stop reading on one device (the phone for example) and then pick back up on  another device (the laptop) it knows where you left off. Pretty slick.  

I declared at this point that I was willing to accept ebooks as the future of reading. Then some thing else happened....

I got an iPad 2.

At that point I declared.....

I will not purchase paper books any more, ever!  (unless there isn’t an ebook option).

Seriously, I like reading ebooks that much. It’s so convenient. I am currently carrying over 30 books....on my phone, which fits nicely in my pocket.  I can read almost anything, anywhere! It’s awesome.

However, with the iPad you get the size and layout of a book, but you can still carry THOUSANDS of books with you wherever you are.

You can highlight passages, take notes, copy text, leave bookmarks, everything you can do with a regular book, but more, and better. Plus, now you don’t have to keep buying book shelves to hold all of the books.

If you haven’t tried reading on an iPhone, iPad, Kindle, etc. Give it a go, and you’ll see why Amazon just announced that they have started selling more ebooks than paper books. 

The world of reading is changing and it is awesome!

10 Most Overrated Movies

Here are 10 movies I find to be unbelievably overrated, in no particular order....

1. Avatar - it really isn't that good at all. Amazing effects, but totally lame and predictable story mixed with bland acting.

2. The English Patient - nominated for a billion (literally) Oscars, and it won Best Picture. However, this movie is so boring it's insane.  The Seinfeld episode about this movie is total vindication of my beliefs on it. This is when I first realized that the Academy Awards are a joke.

3. Office Space - its just not that funny for me, although my friends who have worked in an office "cube farm" say that it's because I have never worked in such an environment.

4. The Godfather 2 - this is a good movie, but I've seen several "professional" lists that have it ranked as "the best movie ever!".  It's not even the best movie in its own trilogy. I prefer The Godfather. In fact, my favorite scene in The Godfather 2 is the flashback to the first one that happens at the end.

5. Chinatown - I watched it, and afterwards I thought. "That was weird, and freaky, what's the hoopla all about?"

6. Forrest Gump - I really like this movie, but some people used to (and still do) worship it. It's fun, it's funny, it's sad, it's smart (for its time) but I can't watch it anymore. I've seen it twice, and it's not good enough to earn another rewatch, ever.

7. Chocolat - This movie was nominated for Best Picture! It's terrible, boring, predictable, and its theme would have been edgy in 1955, not in 2005 (or whenever it came out). I hate this movie!

8.  Independence Day - I know that no one thinks this thing is award winning, but there are lots of people who like this movie. It's unwatchable.  The only reason it made a bajillion dollars is because when it opened it had the trailer for the rerelease of Star Wars (the new and impoved versions of the originals). Those trailers were awesome as you can see if you click this. Those special editions are in many ways an abomination, but the trailers were awesome geekery.

9. Kramer v. Kramer - another best picture winner.  The 70's were brutal at times.

10. Bugsy -  Another movie that was nominated for a ridiculous amount of awards, but was just boring and terrible. I saw this when I was in college, and walked out of the theatre after it was over and almost asked for my money back. It was that bad. When it got nominated for best picture I was shocked into incoherence for 3 days.

That's my list, off the top of my head. I'm sure I missed some, so feel free to add anything I missed in the comments. Or feel free to eviscerate me for my poor taste and lack of culture.  Either way, I want to see how the comments work on this new website, so make a comment.