Steve posted a link to this on his blog this week… and I checked it out… and laughed. And a few times have visited the site again… it’s hilarious! Very, VERY strange. But, you have to laugh after a while… 🙂
(or, click the photo to view just the flash movie, resizeable to fit your whole screen) 🙂
A couple weeks ago, we were arranging to spend a kidless evening with some friends of ours, and they ended up offering to take us out for a special dinner. They know that’s rare for us, and wanted to treat us to that. That was super generous. We had it planned for a while, so we had time to really look forward to it.
Well, as the day approached, they also learned that we are in a really tough spot financially. Business has been slower than ever, and we’re trying to figure out what to do with all of the bills that remain at a steady pace, despite the decreased pace of our income. They offered to just have us over for dinner, and make a donation to our overdue bills fund! That was super-duper generous! But I figured, the night out with them would be special for Jen (and hopefully them, too!) and whatever they might be able to give us wouldn’t cover the bills we owe anyway… so… we stuck to our original plan.
Well lemme tell you… it was a fun night!
We went to the Outback Steakhouse, and we got… you guessed it… STEAK! Lots of it! It was a fantastic meal! Great time with our friends. Super fun. But we weren’t done!! They treated us to dessert at Champps, a sports bar/restaurant that has an ENORMOUS ice cream cake/pie dessert. The Mile High Ice Cream Pie, or something like that. So we finished off that tower of frozen greatness (well, mostly I did…) and that was all just fantastic. We love hanging out with these friends, and they were just being super-dee-duper generous… it was so crazy and cool.
THEN…
They topped off the night by saying they would still like to help us out with some money! Seriously. That was SuperCaliFragiGenerous!! I mean… not only did they treat us to one of the biggest eating-out feasts we have ever had (maybe THE biggest!), but then they gave us a check!?? They don’t have a ton of money either… they are also paying down debt. Amazing.
It was so cool, I made up the word SuperCaliFragiGenerous for it. 🙂 (Well, mostly made up…)
So thanks to you, generous friends. Your kindness and generosity made for a super fun memory, and will certainly help us in paying our bills. Muchas gracias!
Yes that’s right… it’s officially here. The Buffalo Bills 2007 season begins tonight. The first official game, although technically “pre” season. They will play the New Orleans Saints on their home turf… on national TV! That means YOU can see it. It will be on CBS at 8pm EDT. I hope you’ll stop by and watch a bit. There are some exciting new players on this team.
We’ll be watching Marshawn Lynch, who will get a good number of carries/touches. We’ll be watching Paul Posluszny, our 2nd round pick, rookie LB. We’ll be watching DT John McCargo, coming off a bad foot injury. We’ll be watching new O-linemen Langston Walker and Derrick Dockery. We’ll be watching Trent Edwards… rookie QB battling for the back-up job. Should get a good bit of playing time.
But mostly we’re just happy to be watching!
The BILLS ARE BACK!
Go Bills!!!
I believe I have mentioned this here before, but with today’s (latest) chapter/episode, I felt it was worth repeating. I am working on creating an audio version of my book, “There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church“, and have been publishing a chapter at a time via a podcast available at gregshead.net/church as well as iTunes.
Today’s chapter is called “Quantifiable“. It was fun to re-think the stuff I put in that chapter. God’s ways are so not ours… we tend to focus on visible, tangible – quantifiable – results, but that is not how his Kingdom works. He can take 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish and feed over 5000 people and end up with 12 baskets of leftovers. Numbers are pretty much irrelevant in his Kingdom.
So, each chapter/episode is about nine or ten minutes long (including the intro/outro) and it’s a cool, different way to re-think some of the stuff you’ve read here (long ago), and just stuff that – at least to me – seems relevant to everyday life with Jesus.
Just thought I’d remind you. Have a listen if you’d like. 🙂
This was my fortune cookie message last night. Seems appropriate at the moment. Business is slow, but relationships are deep and growing deeper. And I got to spend most of three days with my lovely wife without any interruptions from children 8 and under. 🙂
There is still a whole 24 hours of quiet to come. I really can’t believe it. The onslaught of this silence was so quick, so unexpected. It’s eerie… unwanted. Disturbing. And yet… glorious. 😉
The kids are at Grandma & Grandpa’s! They have been since Tuesday evening. The will be until tomorrow, probably around lunch time!!! Holy cow! Do you know how crazy that is??? My mother-in-law is a fantastic lover of children – and subsequently, of us!
In the interrim, we have gone out to dinner twice on a couple cash gifts given to us by each of our fathers. Nothing too fancy, but just a nice bonus to this strange yet wonderful quietness. We’re going out one more time tonight, at our friends’ request and treat. (That one has been planned for a while now.)
It has been wonderful for Jen, for sure, and I’ve enjoyed it as well. Some for me, but mostly I have enjoyed having a happier, less burdened wife. That’s been nice. 🙂
So, I miss my kids a lot. Can’t wait to see them tomorrow. But, thankful that we have parents who are so willing to take them – not just so we get a break, but because they love having them around, and to themselves. I don’t think a lot of people have that. It’s a very nice gift, to be sure. 🙂
Right now I must run a few errands… and JEN is coming with me! Sweet!
If you’d like to see all this great stuff for yourself, you can watch the entire presentation online! Just click the image above.
As was predicted, Apple announced a new iMac yesterday. And they are beautiful! You can tell from the photos, but in person they are even better. We took a trip to the Apple Store last night to see the new Macs, and it was worth it!
They are a bit leaner (slimmer), and they have lots more power (feautring a new Core 2 Extreme processor in the top of the line model) … and they just look fantastic.
Enough about looks. What do you get with this new iMac?
Here’s a quick overview of the new machines:
Yes, that last point is actually a valid point. Lately it seems every time Apple has a special event, they are announcing something that won’t ship for months! (Remember AppleTV and the iPhone??) So, this was nice to be able to see and play with right away.
First thing I noticed was the new look. It is stunning. That glossy glass display does make it look very nice. Jen didn’t care for the functionality of it though. In the store with lots of flourescent lights, it was quite reflective. But to my eyes, it still looked very nice.
It’s also super fast! When I tried to import photos into iPhoto to play with its new features, it was nearly instantaneous. Incredible. Everything opened very fast, and the new skimming feature worked transparently in either photos of videos. Fantastically fast machines.
Then there were the new features. Not enough time to play with them with more folks wanting to play with the one display model, but what I saw, I liked. The new Events feature in iPhoto (and iMovie, I believe) does make it easier to sort/find photos. I would have liked to see it work with a much larger library. But, with what I did have, it seemed like it will be a great tool for organizing our photos and movies. iMovie looks totally different, and to be honest, at first glance was a bit overwhelming. Perhaps it would not take long to learn the new features (supposed to be able to make a great movie in 20 minutes). I did not have enough time to play with it, though.
Actually, one of my favorite new features announced at the special event yesterday is the upgrade to .Mac. Along with the “Back To My Mac” feature that will be part of Leopard once it comes out in October, they announced a new way to use .Mac, and some capacity increases.
First, subscribers will get 10GB of storage, and 100GB of monthly bandwidth (versus 1GB and 10GB currently, respectively). That is a decent upgrade. Greater space was needed for one of the main new features announced yesterday as part of the iLife ’08 upgrade, the .Mac Web Gallery. This is a superbly formatted, one-click way to publish photos and now videos as well. (Note… iMovie also offers an easy one-click publish option to YouTube as well! That’s great!) .Mac Web Gallery is even better than sending stuff to iWeb, which is what you would do in iLife ’06, from iPhoto. Check out this working model of a .Mac Web Gallery.
iWeb also got the enhancements I was hoping for. Now you can embed code (like YouTube videos, GoogleMaps, etc) into your iWeb/.Mac pages. iWeb has also been upgraded so that the features that used to only work with a .Mac address will now work with your own personal domain. (Like GregsApples.com!) 🙂
Apple also announced a speed increase for the Mac Mini, a new application for its iWork suite called Numbers, and some other fun stuff. But I’m tired of writing about all this stuff! 🙂 The best thing to do is FIRST, visit my GregsApples.com blog, then click the links I have provided there to some GREAT content at Apple’s website.
Some really great new stuff, and as I’ve said before… there has never been a better time to get a Mac!
When I was looking at the configurations available of the new iMacs at the Apple Store online, I think I got a little carried away. I wanted to research what options were available to people, and well… I got to dreaming.
“What if money were no issue… what would my (current) ideal Apple order look like…..”
Well, I told a friend I could easily drop $100K at the Apple store, but it turns out I was wrong. Here’s most of the list of what I would get for our family if spending limits were set free:
And all of that added up to just over $63,000! Not bad!!!
🙂
And don’t forget, we could sell all of our current equipment and put that towards the $63K… so, that would make it a bit cheaper.
🙂
Of course, in our current financial state, this will never happen. But hey, you never know… If I had a million dollars… 😉
I found this article yesterday, (which includes the video above) about an upcoming release of another virtualization option for the Mac. This software will allow you to run Windows apps as separate windows on your Mac, with icons in the dock… just like they were native Mac apps! Sweet! I think you still need to buy/install Windows, but sounds like the UI is much better.
(Articles on yesterday’s Apple announcements are forthcoming. Some have been posted at GregsApples.com, but I am currently writing a newsletter, and will detail my hands-on experience with the new iMac here at GregsHead.net later today. Stay tuned…)
