TheLostChinese.org

I want to change the world.  I want to reach out to people that normally wouldn’t be reached.  I want to make a difference in peoples’ lives.  These are all things I’ve decided tonight.

I figured the best place to start would be this website.  I had some ads on it before, but I don’t want to promote all of those things.  I also don’t want there to be a chance that something can’t be read..

I’m a liar, a thief, and an adulterer.  I’ve screwed up in life more times and I can count.  I’ve screwed up so bad a couple of times that I may never see the end to the consequences.  Despite all of this, I’m forgiven.

Among my friends, I know I have a few good, Christian friends.  Theres also the few I’m not sure about, a couple that could care less, and one that’s used logic to disprove everything about Christianity to himself.   When I sit down to think about it, religion is the one thing we never really talk about it.  In fact the closest we get is by mocking the awful productions on the “Inspiration” channel.

It’s something that I really should do.  I’ve found first hand, time and time again, that it’s far easier to be pulled down from atop a pedestal than to lift someone up on to it.  I’m beginning to understand what I’m supposed to do, but doing it is a completely different story.

Being pulled behind a bike on a skateboard is apparently more challenging than previously thought. I did it fine, but others had issues. Overall, a good night.

Too bad not enough people showed up for Capture the flag.. but we found stuff to do. We messed around with skateboards and bikes… found an unlocked door to a business… chatted with a friendly police officer. We ended up biking and running past his car to see how fast we could get on his radar. Eddie got 13 mph on the bike, Craig got 18 on the bike, and somehow Craig also got 20 mph sprinting…

So I sat down this morning, expecting to make headway into Pash’s book, Junebug, and what do I find? The copy I got off of Amazon’s Kindle store only has one chapter in it! LAME! But other than that, It’s been a pleasant experience so far… especially considering it’s a fairly girly book.

So I want an iPad. Thanks to Project Gutenburg (Gutenburg.org), I already have over 75 eBooks already in iTunes waiting for it.  But since iTunes will not allow you to actually read epub books, I also use Calibre (Calibre-ebook.com) to manage and read them until I get my iPad.

Anyways, as awesome as it may be, the iPad has received some criticism from people who have said “it’s just a huge ipod touch”.  And a huge iPod Touch it is.  Yes, Apple has added the new A4 processor to the iPad, but when you look inside of it, it’s clear that the main computing components are about the size of – well – an iPod Touch.  There are also two HUGE batteries, which are the secrets to the 10 hours of active use battery life. (Picture courtesy of iFixit.com)

I still haven’t found anywhere to play with one, but the iPad is definitely on my shopping list, especially since I’ve really enjoyed eBooks lately.

So I went camping last weekend with Ethan and Samantha.  It was pretty cool even though the campsite we wanted to stay at was closed.  We ended up staying at Davidson River Campground.  As it turns out, the metal ring for fires actually makes it about a billion times harder to start a fire.  The first night we were there, we tried to use the ring and found ourselves with no flame.  The next morning, I moved it out of the way and had a great fire going in about 10 minutes.

While we were up there, we climbed Mt. Pisgah to a fire tower.  We thought there would be some kind of security on it, but in actuality, there was just a sign that said something along the lines of “You can climb the tower if you want, but the forestry department is not responsible for anything that may happen.” We were going to climb it, but it was old and rickety…not to mention that we were at the top of a mountain with the wind blowing, so we decided to just go up to the first landing and take pictures.

We also saw a couple water falls while we were up there, which were cool, too.  I kind of wish we had gotten to go on the trails Ethan had planned on, but the Blue Ridge Parkway was blocked off and we couldn’t get to the trail heads.

Sunday morning, we woke up in time to leave by 4:50am, in time to get to church on time

Is trick out cars all day.  And stuff like that.

It’d be great to find a job doing custom car mods.  Or even in-venue audio stuff.  I’ve pretty much decided that A/V is what I really want to do.  It’s pretty much the only thing I can do day after day after day and not get sick and tired of it.  I don’t even mind waking up early if it means I’m going to go get ready for a gig.

I said that thing about cars, though, because I really want to get something like a Camaro and trick it all out.  New exhaust, new paint, tinted windows, underbody lights, a few engine mods, and most importantly: a new sound system.  Theres all this stuff in my head that would just make it a kick-ass car and I want to do it… I just need to find the day job to finance it.

So the other day, my friend Byron and I drove 15 miles to the middle of no where to get a set of RockBand drums. You know, the game controller. Well, there was a Walmart out in the middle of no where that actually had them in stock. So we drove to get them. We had planned to spend $29.95 for a set.

When we actually got there, they were on clearance since RockBand 2 was just coming out!  At $9.95 each, we got two sets.

Once we got back, we soon discovered that his computer was no where near fast enough to handle the software at any decent rate.  At church, we found some computers to cannibalize and ended up with a Dell Inspiron 4500 with a 2.4 GHz Processor and 1GB of RAM.  After we got everything set up, it turned out to work really well

I’ll insert the how-to link here when I get done writing it up.

So that’s what Wes and I went to on Saturday night.  We got there a little late and ended up sitting in the balcony.  All in all it was pretty good.  Parts of it were a bit corny… like their renditions of It Don’t Mean A Thing and When the Saints Go Marching.

The only real criticism I have is that the chorus was very square.  One might say they don’t mean a thing cause they ain’t go that swing.

Dick Goodwin and his band did a great job and were a true treat to listen to.  It was definitely worth what we paid to get in and then some… Even though we missed the beignets and coffee.

So last night was interesting to say the least.

In order to ride motorcycles, Wes is going to have to know when to shift.  After realizing this, we decided it would probably be a good idea to learn how to drive a car that has a manual transmission.  A very bumpy ride entailed.

First I had him go through the gears a few times with the engine off, just to get a feel of where they are. After that, I told him to put it in first gear and go without using using the accelerator.  To my surprise he did quite well.  It was only once he started using the gas pedal and starting on hills that he made the truck buck and kick like a bull.  He soon declared driving like that was barbaric, impossible, and required to much finesse.  Still, after an hour or so of driving around the Saxe Gotha parking lot, he seemed to figure it out pretty good.

I think he’s more or less got the hang of it down. Needless to say, we will be practicing for the few nights at least, but he’s got the basic process down pretty well.  I just hope he remembers how to do it tonight so I don’t have to re-teach him.