God's Control

this week i started reading rick warren's "the purpose driven life". i'm not much of a reader. so for me to read a book or at least start to read a book i must have a reason. my main reason for buying the book is that i've heard a lot of people talk about the book which has sparked my curious side. another reason i bought the book is because it is a self improvement book, and that is about all i am willing to read. finally i bought the book to read because it only cost me $3.25. if it cost me more than $5.00 i wouldn't have bought it.

i'm not far enough into the book to give it a review. i've only read the first two chapters, but the second chapter has bothered me a bit. rick states in chapter two that God has planned everyday of our lives from birth to death. personally i have a hard time accepting this belief. i believe that he brings us into this world as well as takes us away. i also believe that God has the power to plan everyday of my life, but i don't believe he does. maybe it is because i need it to make sense in my head. i feel that if i believe that God plans every day of our lives the system breaks down.

what do i mean by this. well, i've been taught that God gave me free will. this means that i have the ability to make choices. this means i have a certain amount of control over events in my life. this means that i choose whether to believe that Jesus, son of God, came to earth to be sacrificed for the forgiveness of my sins. this means that i and everyone else makes a choice that either leads to our salvation or condemnation. when i'm told that God plans everyday of our existance. it makes it sound like we are all pieces in a game of life. it makes it sound as if God chooses who goes to heaven and who doesn't. it isn't God's choice whether i go to heaven or not. it is my choice because of the gift that God has given me. the gift of free will. maybe i'm reading the chapter wrong? maybe i need to read it again? maybe i need to finish the book before i start going on and on about this?

Line Rider

yesterday while watching yahoo's the "9". i learned of a website with a really addicting interactive flash game called Line Rider. i reccommend taking it for a test drive. some people have even saved their's and posted it to youtube, which you must watch to get a real idea of what can be done with the game. i'm going to post one of them below, but there are more where it came from.

My 26th Bday

my 26th birthday went quite well. i treated myself to panda express chinese food for lunch. i attended the opening of the gaylord texan's glass cactus as a press photographer. this means that when security told me i couldn't bring my camera into the building i got to politely say "i'm a press photographer", it was sweet. i had a lot of fun taking photos and listening to the two live bands play. i might have gone to the glass cactus by myself, but i made sure that i wasn't a wall flower for too long. i made friends with security and with a table of women in their late 30's and early 40's. what can i say? it was the only table i saw without a man sitting at it. so i pulled up a chair and started socializing. i'll post a few cool photos on my photo blog over the next week. feel free to take a gander by clicking the link on the right side of page below my profile pic.

26 Years

sometime close to 3:26 in the afternoon 26 years ago i was born. according to my friend jason it was a saturday. jason would know because he has memorized the perpetual calendar. so if you tell you that you were born on september 20, 1980 he will respond back with no hesitation at all that you were born on a saturday, crazy huh?

anyway, my 25th year outside of my mom's womb was a good one. i've felt very blessed by God. the past 12 months has really felt like a year of growth for me, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. i've grown closer to God, i've matured, i've expanded my social network, and i've become healthier person both physically and mentally. what really excites me is that even though i've felt this positive growth & improvement, it is only the start of it. i really look forward to becoming the person i will be a year from now. this next year is going to be a year of explosive change.

Walking In The Rain

sometimes i feel that men don't grow up. they just grow old. take yesterday for example. around 2pm the rain started to pour down heavily at my apartment. not a lot of thunder or lightning, just rain. so i decide to put on a pair of shorts, a shirt, and sandals and go for a walk, in the rain. it made me think of the song "singing in the rain", but instead of singing in the rain i whistled in the rain. while i was whistling in the rain several cars passed me, and i'm sure the people in them thought i was crazy. who in there right mind would go walking in the rain? i think for me it is a kind of rebellion. as a kid i wasn't allowed to go out in the rain and jump in puddles of water. my mom always told me, "you'll catch a cold". now i live under my own roof and make my own rules. if you've never gone for a walk in the rain i recommend giving it a try. it is quite refreshing to say the least. just make sure it isn't too cold outside.

My Internet Content Filter At Work

shortly after i started working at my new job a new server was installed. along with the server came an outside company that filters what types of content can be viewed through our ip address. a few times now the filter has wrongfully blocked my view of particular web pages for all the wrong reasons. one time i was blocked from looking at an ovation acoustic guitar because the filter thought it contained pornography! the name that ovation gave that line of guitars was celebrity and the guitar i was trying to checkout was black. so i was blocked for trying to access a site that had the words black celebrity in it. this has happened on a couple of other sites too. they had nothing to do with porn, but because of a couple of key words i get blocked. another time i wanted to send a semi-long text message to a friend and decided to do it through sprints website, but the filter blocked me. evidently it won't let me use any chat services or sms text services. so i ended up wasting more company time because i had to type it out on my phone, and i'm not the best at it to say the least.

i just remembered another one. i hardly play the lotto, but i played it once back in may and i tried to look up the winning numbers online. turns out that the texas lotto site was blocked because it had to do with gambling. really, i could understand if it was a poker site or something, but the texas lotto? so i spent about 15 minutes finding a site that would show me the numbers without being blocked. finally, i, like millions of others in the united states, use myspace. i like to check for new messages a couple of times a day. usually when i first get to work and then again in the afternoon. i've been doing this at work since april, but today i was blocked from accessing myspace because it was related to dating & relationships. several times i've been blocked from reading news articles on yahoo because they had do to with relationships. sometimes the stuff that gets blocked by the filter baffles me. the irony to the whole thing is that a couple of weeks ago i did an image search for pictures of car wash signs and ended up with multiple results of women washing cars topless. so the filter lets me open pictures of topless women, but not an acoustic guitar.

Problem Solved...With $205.17

okay, so....all week i tried to fix my bikes suspension with my country-fied ingenuity. in the end my design worked, but i couldn't get the j-b weld to hold. thus, today i broke down and took my bike to the bike shop to be fixed. my new suspension will cost $130, installation $10, and to make it all work i need to spend $50 converting my steerer from a threaded design to a non-threaded design. thursday i will be able to pick up my bike in working order for $205.17 which is half the price of my bike brand new. at least when i get my bike back i will be able to ride it again.

A Great Weekend With And A Problem To Solve

this past weekend i drove to my hometown to play in a charity golf tournament and spend time with my family and friends. i tell you it was good times. my friend dj, who now lives in waco, adam who still lives in burkburnett, and i, who live in lewisville all got to play golf, pool, ping-pong, poker, and trail ride together. with us all living a few hours apart and having lives to live and schedules to keep. we don't all three get together as much as we would like. i don't think all three of us have been together since christmas? when you've been best friends for 19 years, 9 months can seem like a long time.

right before the three of us went trail riding i discovered that the front suspension of my bike was broken. what broke was a plastic piece inside of the suspension that holds the spring and the tubing together. luckily i was still able to go trail riding even though it was broken. i just had to make sure that i didn't catch too much air. if i did my front suspension and front wheel would fall of my bike, causing me to crash to the ground rather hard. i'm happy to report i did not crash my bike.

over the last couple of days i've spent a lot of time online and at three different bike shops trying to find replacements for the broken pieces inside my suspension. what i've found is that my suspension is what the industry considers "entry level", and in turn they do not sell repair or rebuild kits for such a suspension. they tell you that you need to buy a new one. in most instances buying a new "entry level" part for anything should be rather inexpensive, right? well, not in the cycling world. in the cycling world "entry level" suspension runs $130 to $150.

with all the research i've done i've found that what the industry calls a decent suspension cost around $250 to $500, and the high end stuff goes all the way up to $2700! i recall spending $350ish dollars on my bike when i bought it about 4 years ago. so it is hard for me to swallow someone trying to sell me a $250 bike part. what kills me the most about it all is that the broken parts in my suspension, if they were sold retail, couldn't cost more than $20 to $30. with me not wanting to spend $130 on a set of "entry level" suspension forks i've decided to attempt to fix the suspension myself with 2 large headless bolts, 2 small headless bolts, 6 nuts, 8 washers, and some j-b weld. with a total cost that probably won't exceed $15. if i succeed my solution will be genius. if i fail i'm out $15 bucks and a couple hours of my life which i can chalk up to experience.

The Weekend Of New People

this past weekend was a weekend of new people. it all started on saturday at my friend emily's birthday party. i met emily a couple months ago when she started coming to my church. since she came to my group of friends i hadn't met any of her friends until saturday. i only knew 2 of the 20 or more other people there. one was emily and the other was my brother who i brought with me. monday i went to my friend kirstin's house for her birthday cookout. once again i knew no one but the birthday girl. so i got to meet about 15 more new people there. after the cookout i met up with a new friend named bryan, who i met through an ex-girlfriend's sister. we met at a bar in addison for drinks, and we unexpectedly ended up hanging out with 3 marines, 4 girls that they picked up in the bar and a guy that was a friend of 2 of the girls. all in all i must have met 40 new people this weekend. which was awesome because i love meeting new people.

i also have to give a shout out to my friends that i've know for a few years now. i had great time hanging out with them on sunday night. meeting new people is always good stuff, but the people you have the best times with are the ones who have been around a while.