Fremde, etranger, stranger.
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante,
Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay.

This is my new web presence. All future content will be here in some fashion. Not much to see, but bookmark this page and hold on!!

Trying to decide on a "look". That look may well indeed be UGLY until I figure out some things.

Thanks to Jeff and Pat this thing may one day look good. That'll be a while yet, though. Getting a grasp on CSS and widgets (however light). Real blog posts to come soon!

Technorati Profile

Yeah or neah?

Made some changes to the old blog to make it easier to find stuff. Each post will now have a category and a link to that category and any sub categories at the end of the post. I also cleaned up the sidebars a bit and tried to remove any redundancy.

This a test of the quick post feature.

If you'll look above you'll see some tabs. Each one of those links to an affiliated blog/website of the one.

Spiritual Tramp - This one, natch.
D\I - Dev\Irregulars is a techie group blog. Look there for the latest in gadgets, software, open source weirdness, you name it.
Gallery - My pictures (login required).
Debate - A space for debating. You want to debate a topic with me? This is the place for it. Look for an abortion debate there soon I hope.
About - This will be the usual info that fills an "About" pages: likes, dislikes, measurements, why I do this blog thing, etc.

HT to pinakidion for the tabbed navigation help.

New Rocky Mountain Political and Religious Rides up.

Also I posted my response to Sid. Finally.

So I've been bitten by the Blogtalk Radio bug and will be taking a stab at hosting my own show. It's initially scheduled for Saturday mornings at 8:00 am EST. My first show will be this Saturday.

What's the format?

Glad you asked. It will largely be "life stuff", but I also want to get the word out about cool podsafe music. That's something that's harder to do in a text blog. I'm keeping it short. It's scheduled for a fifteen minute segment at the mo' but it might go over that. Given my gift for gab I can't imagine it will go under.

Can I call in?

Again glad you asked. If you're up that early and care to call (apologies to my buds in earlier time zones) the number is (646) 478-4936. It's a live show and while I don't anticipate callers at that hour I won't turn you away. If you've been listening to The Ride you know it's a pretty cool concept/format/webtool that allows bloggers to do a podcast of sorts.

So can I listen to an archived version?

Boy you're good with the questions. The feed is here and you can use whatever podcatcher you want to download it. I hope it will be dl worthy. This is an experiment so we'll see.

Any more questions?

New pictures under the gallery!

Also I'm playing with a tumblr blog aka tumblelog. It's a place to dump my links and play with mobile blogging/cell phone snaps.

You'll find links to both up top, in addition to a link to my Blogtalk Radio host page.

Well, we've arrived at Friday again and not a whole lot of substance on the ol' bloggy-blog.

There is some action at my tumblelog.

I am going to be participating in the Rocky Mountain Ride shows so that should be interesting. I'm sure we'll talk about the Republican "debate" a bit and who knows what all. The religious show will continue to find its way. We'll be talking about simple churches aka house churches at some point in the near future, hopefully with a special guest. Maybe a bit about the religious right with the passing of Mr. Falwell.

So go outside, enjoy the beautiful weather, and please call in to one of our lovely podcasts!!!

Mingle2 - How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

87%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Phoenix Singles from Mingle²

MCF posted this and I love me some lists, so here you go.

I get a fair number of hits here (something like 1500/month here lately) and I'm going to try pushing some of that traffic over to my group techie blog Technical Stew. Go give that a look and show us some commenting love!!! Also check out our podcast @ 2200 EST tonight. You can listen online live and even call in.

Call in info:
Dial: (724) 444-7444
Enter: 40610 # (Talkcast ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN

Today is the first anniversary of this here site. My first post was a simple welcome and that spirit of welcome and openness is still here. I hope that you've enjoyed this site as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

I started this whole business on blogger.com here with this pithy post:

First Shot

Here's my first blog.
I found my new favorite website. www.thinkgeek.com
I really need more sleep.
I hate moving.
That is all.

and it's been downhill (uphill?) ever since.

Thanks to all of you for reading this and I hope your resultant therapy bills aren't too high.

I put a couple of Amazon Widgets on the left sidebar, one a cloud of products that pulls its contents from my posts and two a search function. I get a sliver of whatever anyone buys using those links so feel free to use them! If it gets too intrusive or annoying awaaaay they go.

By way of encouraging this blogs religious tendencies (a dangerous thing at best) Casey has blessed me with the Mathetes award. According to the blog Management By God who originated it, mathetes "is the Greek word for disciple, and the role of the disciple (per the Great Commission) it to make more disciples. I'd like to take the opportunity to award five other bloggers with this award and badge for acting in the role of a disciple of Christ. These five all share the message in their own creative ways, and I admire them all for what they do."

I'm honored and as the way things usually work, I am to pass this on to five other bloggers whom I feel are deserving. These folks should pass the love on as they see fit.

RC at Strange Culture for his deep looks at faith and media.
Pink aka Bear at Pinakidion a long time friend and certifiable certified man of God.
Dan at Cerulean Sanctum who consistently brings the knowledge.
Steve at Theological Musings who consistently raises the level of discussion to higher heights.
And the Thinklings as a group, their being no more welcoming, touching, and most importantly gospel oriented group blog in the god-blogosphere.

So there you have it. If you're a person of faith or an honest seeker, or heck even an "opponent" you could do little better than to check these folks out. Careful though, you might learn something.

So I'm tweaking as you can see and I need some help from my gurus. I want to push the right-most column over so that there's no white space on the right of it. I'd also like the plue to run the length of the page in each outside column. Also any other MT suggestions anyone has would be coveted. (Cue suggestion to switch to WP...)

Having now assisted in raising five of them I can now verify that hens in fact have no teeth. So when I say that I will be scarcer than them I know whereof I speak. Work is busy with a barbaric YAWPING B!!!! Neither blog is likely to see a post from me. I really want to add to my Democrat post in addition to the other inanities I post here. It will happen. Not this week perhaps, but in the words of the current governator of CAHL-EE-FORNYA, "AH'LL BEE BAHK!!".

It occured to me when I tagged those 12 folks yesterday that a few of them may not be on the ol' blogroll. So I have taken small pains to fix that. All of the blogs over there are worth reading, though one or two may currently be on hiatus. To those that are I say, come back to the blog-o-verse soon. I figure if you're reading this then you're starved for good content and odds are you're not getting it here so I'll point you where you can get some. Keep in mind the usual warnings apply. The views espoused on these blogs may not and in most cases do not necessarily line up with yours truly and some may contain adult languages and'or adult situations (whatever those are), but most of them are as "mature" as I am (heh) and all are smarter in various areas and are work safe ninety-nine point nine percent of the time (George likes his Cheesecake). Though if you're at work then what the heck are you doing reading blogs. Go write those TPS reports!!

This is dead on accurate even to the picture of what I'll look like in 20 years.

What Kind of Evangelical Are You created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Evangelical Presbyterian You're an Evangelical Presbyterian, probably a member of a PCA church. Sound theology and reverent worship are important to you, but so are outreach and ministry to the community. You are likely to be from the deep South, and perhaps at one time you were Southern Baptist. Evangelical Presbyterian 85% Moderate Evangelical 75% Baptist 60% Reformed Baptist 55% Conservative Evangelical 55% High Church Nomad 55% Presby - Old School 50% Fightin' Fundy 50%

ht to Bob and Casey.

Woohoo!!!

The Blog Readability Test. What level of education is required to understand your blog?

Fast Payday Loans

ht to Casey

I am soooo going to start posting back over at Technical Stew again!! I abandoned ship when things got bizzay. Apologies to Pat and Dan.

Anyway posted a brief thing on VoodooPad.

Over at Middle Zone Musings bloggers are being invited to share the posts from 2007 that they learned the most from. I posted my "best of". Comment here, there, or EVERYWHERE!!!

The message board is open for business. Go ahead and sign up. This is largely for the online RPG I'm going to do, but I hope to use it for other things.

I've started posting again more over Technical Stew so pretty much all of my tech posts will be over there. If you're interested in helping out this is sort of a group project. Drop me a line.

Over there on that left sidebar thing I added a few new blogs that I should have added aeons ago. I read them all regularly (I know, I read too many blogs).

Since there are no good political blogs out there, Pat decided to start one that appeals to our sensibilities. Spitball Politics is what we're calling it for now. It's got a bit of whimsy to it. Check it out. We're both DINOs in the sense that we aren't your typical liberal mouth foamers. Pat is a former right wing nutcase. I'm just a recovering slacker.

Thanks to Pat, Typekey is now working. I use it here as an option and on Spitball as the only option currently for authenticating commentors.

The Cage pt 4 is up!

Soooo, I feel the need to update the ol' bloggy-blog but don't have one solid thought. Thus you get the following.

- "Auditioned" for a part in The Metamor City Podcast. I had a couple of chapters recorded for a podcast novel of my own and sent him those.

- I will start posting said novel by this weekend and will do so weekly. Sunday seems to be a good day. Watch this space for updates.

- Speaking of updates there are none on my wifes condition. The wait, while not fatal, is certainly maddening. Keep praying.

- MCF has posted his second tier brackets and I made it. I'm going up against the Unseen Blogger an ultraconservative Catholic with whom I agree with rarely, but who generally makes interesting posts.

- I am officially addicted to Twitter. You should join. It doesn't hurt and doesn't change your personality... much.

- I love Jango

- You should really be reading Spitball Politics. It will make you smarter, better looking, and quite possibly liberal.

- Go buy Infected. It will make you cringe and laugh. Possibly at the same time.

That is all.

Rockin' the two column based on some seemingly good advice from pros. I'll be tweaking it a bit, keeping the same basic look. Let me know what you think.

I'd like to do something really profound here, this being my five hundredth and all, but I don't feel quite up to it. I thought about linking to some of my most commented on posts, but there was no easy way I could find to do that.

As it was the five hundredth was almost an Archangel podcast and that would have been fitting since it has become the biggest raison d'etre for this here site. I couldn't get the audio edited last night though so that didn't happen. Yeah, yeah I should have built a buffer. My apologies to those of you who are waiting on Episode 11, it should pop up tonight.

As it is I need to engage in a little writing as therapy. I know I should be writing interesting posts about spiritual stuff, since that's supposedly what this site is about, but frankly I started blogging as a way to spew my emotions and along the way picked up some readers. Thanks for reading. For some reason it's comforting to know that even crap like this isn't going into the ether unignored. I have folks that read this that I consider friends, some I consider brothers. For you and you know who you are, thanks in advance for the prayers and kind thoughts. If you know me at all you know I'm prone to bouts like this.

So why am I blue? Well, I suppose the primary reason is I'm freakin' tired. I was up at 4:30 this morning sending my wife to the mountains for three days. I'll miss her (reason two), especially when it comes to the more mundane things like putting a meal on the table (which she does so well) or helping brush the Rochelings' teethses, so there's that too. Where she's going is to a home schooling training session. She'll be tutoring our homeschool groups' kids in grammar starting in the fall. This will pay actual money, though not a lot, and I don't mind telling you that she's a bit nervous, in spite of the fact that she is hands down one of the best teachers I know. Still, nervous is not a bad thing.

There are a host of other reasons, including a sense of being overwhelmed both by things I want to do and things I don't want to do. The less details there the better so forgive me my crypticality (yeah I made that word up, go poetic license go!)

Still I've got good things going on. We're moving (eventually, living amongst boxes is reason three) to a much larger house in the same great neighborhood. Folks are listening to my podcast. I'm having a blast in an online RPG. My spiritual life is about the same as ever, but I am being challenged at church when it comes to thinking about how I can be involved in the community when it comes to matters of social justice. So while it is not "all good", I really should be counting it all joy.

So I end this entry, actually one in spirit with the reason I started blogging, a little better off than I was before I started it. Seems appropriate enough to me.

I was a victim of Drive-By-Shooting Sunday by the Men With Pens. It was all voluntary though. James and Harry are some sharp free lance writers who also happen to run a great play by post RPG I'm in, Escaping Reality.

They gave me some pointers on how to make this here blog mo' betta. For the most part it strikes me as great advice. I shall no doubt be taking it, since I did ask. I don't know how to feel about some of it, like trimming down my blogroll. I do need to do some maintenance, but I read all of these on a regulr basis. Maybe I'll move them to a links page? Let me know what you think of any of their advice. You read this so your opinions count and if I can take their tough love I can take yours.

If you'd like to have someone really take a hard look at your site, sign up. If you need someone to write something for you, hire them. If you want good writing advice read their stuff.