Garden State

Saw a good movie tonight, called Garden State, with Zack Braff and Natalie Portman in it. It's really just a movie about life, about how screwed up most people are in some way or another, and how sometimes instead of trying to be "happy" it's better to be "okay." Highly recommended movie.

Blue Like... Rock?

I started reading a book called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller today. The book was sent to us by a friend who read it and noticed it was all about Portland. It's kind of a strange book, more a collection of memoirs than anything, but memoirs relevant to life, God, love, purpose, etc. It's interesting, in his second chapter Don talks about how people are almost always motivated by selfish reasons, from the criminal to the pastor.

Do I think you should sell all your possessions and live as some sort of homeless nomad? No, I believe that command was for that individual because Jesus knew his heart and knew that was what kept him separated from God. But I do believe we need to think about why we have possessions and what purpose they serve. If your wealth isn't for God, then what purpose does it serve?

I listen a lot to alternative and rock bands, groups like Linkin Park, Staind, Puddle of Mudd, etc, because I feel like they have so much raw emotion in them about the world we live in. In the introduction to his book, Don talks about not liking Jazz until he stood outside watching a guy play the saxophone for 15 minutes straight without opening his eyes. The idea is you can't truely love something until you see someone else love it first. I wonder at that, since I listen to rock all the time, but not so much because the music is pleasing. It's more because the music is mad. Do I have to see someone raving mad playing rock before I like it?

First Post

It seems you can't avoid blogs these days, so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! This is my opportunity to ramble on about life, strife, and wife, as well as link to pictures, web sites, etc, that I think are cool.

If all goes well, I should publish here a couple times a week, and might even get Jess to contribute :-)

I'll start by promoting FireFox, as I intend to do periodically. If you haven't tried it yet (instead of Internet Explorer), give it a spin.

This week has been hard on us. I've been pursuing a permanent position at Intel and had four (yes *four*) different interviews for one position this week. It's a bit stressful. In addition, Jess and I have been "exploring" different possibilities in transportation, since the single car thing is getting a little old. Portland has some of the best public transportation in the nation, and all of it seems to bypass our poor little apartment (unless you're trying to go downtown, in which case it's really easy).

On a more positive note, we've been exploring a church in SE Portland called Imago Dei, and for the first time since leaving Illinois we think we've found a church that excites us! We'll see what happens...

I've been experimenting with some more "advanced" features of The Gimp, an Open Source image editor similar to Photoshop, so I thought I'd share one of my experiments. The picture to the right is one Jess took at Washington Park in Portland, with some layer magic by The Gimp.