jason – Page 24 – These Dirty Colors

Whoa, man!

By jason | March 2, 2006

Here is a pretty sick story about a man who “became” a woman. He paid some doctor to remove certain items and …um… rewire some things (I’m guessing here. I really don’t care to know the nitty gritty details). He then filed some paperwork with the government to legally change his gender from male to female. So he’s a woman now, right? I don’t think so. If you were to take a look at his DNA, you would still find that pesky Y chromosome, which makes him a male. If I were to have a trunk surgically attached to my face and make my ears large and flappy, I’d be no closer to being an elephant than this man is to being a woman. Physical appearance and legal documents don’t make us anything at all in this regard. All this surgery has done is make him one unattractive woman.

Curious George

By jason | February 24, 2006

Tonight, Angela and I took Andrew to his first movie in a theater. Unless I’m mistaken, it was also the first movie we’ve let him sit and watch start to finish uninterrupted (though Finding Nemo may have taken that honor). At any rate, it was a pretty big deal. We were a bit hesitant, as “children’s movies” tend to frighten us. From the “not really for children but that didn’t stop half of America” movies like Shrek, to the the “tamer” children’s films like The Incredibles, the content is often, we feel, inappropriate for children, certainly for our 2 1/2 year old. We just don’t understand why we have to have bodily noises and not so veiled “OK” profanities (Shrek’s “talking ass”) in a kid’s movie.

It is with that trepidation that we began to think about Curious George, a character that he loves. We usually read at least one book a day, and George is often the bed time story of choice for Andrew. We read a number of reviews of the movie, however, that gave us pause: the audience is led to accept the theory of evolution ; the characters intentionally tell a lie; and a smattering of other concerns. We also read a review, though, that said Hollywood somehow managed to make a kid’s show devoid of toilet humor (which is all too often with movies not just a slang term) and that every parent should run to let their children see this great family film. We decided we’d take him and see if he would love the film as much as we thought he would. We were not disappointed.

This movie was awesome. Possibly one of the best cartoons I’ve seen in years. Andrew, of course, loved seeing George on the big screen, and the dialog was funny without being crass. The only exception is when Ted (the name they gave The Man with the Yellow Hat, most likely, to make the dialog easier) is driving down the highway in very crazy traffic and yells back at an apparently angry driver something to the tune “it’s not even physically possible to do that to myself.” While I wish they had left that out, it’s certainly better than a cartoon using the word “ass” “legitimately.” The story was good, and the antics had me at times, almost literally falling out of my seat. I’m not sure why I found it so funny when Ted stared directly into the sun (the sure absurdity of it, I’m sure), but it sure did kill me.

We walked away from this movie 100% glad we took Andrew to see it. The “lie” was, in our estimation, a gross over-exaggeration (they thought about deceiving people to save their museum but did not actually do it), and, aside from Ted’s discussion of prehistoric “man,” the evolution concern seemed a bit over-blown as well. If asked, I think would unequivocally suggest this movie to parents of young children. I even hope they make another. 🙂

On a side note, anyone reading this who does not have his or own child may not understand this, but the feeling I got seeing the absolute excitement and joy and Andrew’s face when he first saw George on the screen is one of the greatest feelings ever. Completely indescribable, but extremely cool. I’m extremely grateful God has blessed in such a way as to allow little indulgences like that. My family and I have much to be thankful for.

Holy Drastic Diastema, Batman!

By jason | February 20, 2006

There’s a good chance that anyone who happens to read this knows that I’m getting braces. If not, let me get you caught up. My teeth have always been really crowded and crooked, and, over time, I’d gotten used to it. I just accepted it and moved on happily with life. Last fall, my dentist suggested I get braces to fix the crowding, as that crowding was likely to cause problems later in life. “Pay for it now, or pay for it later.” We opted to pay for it now. With such severe crowding, however, my orthodontist felt it best to create more room by palatal expansion (tooth removal was deemed unacceptable).

So, to faciliate this palatal expansion, I had a “minor” surgery called a LeForte I Osteotomy, in which they make an incision in my gums along my upper jaw (almost ear to ear), cut the bone connecting my upper jaw to my skull (though it’s still attached along the nasal septum and at two points in the back), then, using an osteotome, or a “fancy word for a chisel”, and a mallet, hammer away at the osteotomy (?) along the roof of my mouth. The expansion is then accomplished by an expansion appliance cemented to my teeth, spanning the roof of my mouth, one crank per night, resulting in the aforementioned diastema. Which brings me back to my point.

After a week and a half of expansion, I have a HUGE diastema. The oral surgeon told me that I’d have no problem winning a watermelon seed spitting contest once the expansion was complete. Right now, it looks like I’ll have no problem winning a watermelon spitting contest. 😛 Once the braces go on, that space will be filled by moving my teeth around toward the front, but, right now, I don’t know if I look more like Madonna or Mike Tyson. 😛

Some have suggested another alternative.

How I spent the better part of an hour

By jason | February 14, 2006

At work, I’m trying to learn how to use Acegi Security, a security framework for Java web applications. I was using this tutorial, which was written for version 0.8.3, whereas I had installed 1.0.0RC2. Here’s the process I went through to update the code to use the newest version of Acegi Security:

start container
watch it crash
kill container
fix config
start container
watch it crash
dig through docs to see what I missed
make fix
restart container
watch it crash
repeat ad nauseum

But it’s working now, and that makes me happy. 🙂

Potty Training

By jason | February 14, 2006

Right now, we’re trying to potty train Andrew. I had him on the toilet and Angela went off to get his jammies. While she was gone, I cupped my hand at the side of my mouth, got all excited and whispered, “Can you go to the bathroom before Mother gets back?”

Andrew cups his at the side of his mouth, leans toward me, and whispers “No.”

I think it’s all here

By jason | February 10, 2006

Well, I think I have everything copied over from my old new blog to my new new blog, and hopefully I won’t have to do all of that again. I didn’t copy everything, as, honestly, some of that stuff is either no longer really relevant, or just doesn’t interest me much anymore (blogs concering the ’04 presidential election, for example, didn’t fare well in the entry transfer).

I hope there’s something of interest up already, and I hope to be better about updating this thing. We’ll see.

First Century Emails

By jason | February 10, 2006

Chris is a friend of mine from church. For good or ill, our senses of humor run along the same lines in many ways. What you’ll see below is an email exchange he and I had in regard to a ticket to our church’s annual Men’s Dinner, written in lofty language and following the pattern we see in the Pauline epistles. It’s good stuff. I’ve added a few links to help explain some of the “inside” humor. Enjoy! 🙂

The Righteous Reverend Jason Lee,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

I have heard, through Senator Hobbs, that you are on the mend from surgery. I pray that God’s healing will come swiftly to your body.

I wanted to ask if you had any interest in attending the Men’s Dinner this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. I have purchased a couple of tables for the purpose of recruiting single men, and I have been mostly successful. However, I have a few tickets remaining.

Would you be interesting in coming? I’m even offering a $1 discount from the regular $10 rate, and I promise the quality of fellowship will be sensational or I’ll give you your money back!

Let me know if you’d like to come,

Chris

Greetings brother. Your fellow bond servant in Christ salutes you. I am humbled that you have taken an interest in the well being of your lowly brother, and cherish the inquiry. I am, indeed, faring well, as God has been kind to hold me in His strong right hand and work a healing upon my form. Many thanks be to our Heavenly Father for His innumerable mercies. Amen.

Brother, I am more than happy to avail myself of one of your remaining tickets to the Men’s Dinner this Thursday evening. I look forward to our repast with much anticipation, and fully expect that the fellowship and breaking of bread to be a boon to body, mind, and spirit. Thank you for your generous offer. I shall recompense you this evening, should you be able to join us for the teaching of our Father’s Word. Should you be unable to join us, I shall be sure to bring adequate funds for you Thursday evening.

Dear brother in Christ, I must now close this brief missive and attend to the work in which our Lord has placed me. May the Father shower you with mercies this day as you labor and travel. Hold fast to the Faith. Greet the brothers with a holy karip. Amen.

—
Jason

An excellent pontification you penned in your response, dear brother! Your amanuensis represents you well.

I am filled with exceeding great joy that you have accepted my offer and that you will be gracing us with your presence tomorrow evening.

Alas, I do regret that I will miss the gathering of believers to heed the apostles’ teaching this evening. But I will be ministering unto the commoners who come in mass to witness the battle being displayed by the Hornets and the Sonics in the great coliseum known as the Ford Center.

I praise God for the opportunity of fellowship we will share Thursday evening. May all our fellow saints who come be edified and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ receive much glory.

I will look diligently for your presence tomorrow evening. I know you don’t see the large letters I write for I have been graciously allowed to key my response.

The Lord bless you and give you perfect peace!

Hello

By jason | February 6, 2006

Well, I think this is where I’ll stick my blog for now. Self-hosting isn’t a real good option as I don’t want to pay for another domain, and a sub-domain of an exisiting one reveals too much personal information. I didn’t like some of the other blog sites I’ve looked at, but this one seems to be OK. I’ll try to copy over any content that might be of interest, as well as making this look a little better. The colors are blah, that title is pretty dumb. Once I get over this surgery, hopefully I’ll have time…

Another Reason to Use Mozilla/Firefox

By jason | October 20, 2005

If you’ve ever talked to me about web development, you know I’m a hard core Mozilla/Firefox fanboy. Mozilla and Firefox are faster, safer, and more standards-compliant for starters. Something else I really like about the browsers that has really been climbing the scale for me is useability. From the features builtin to the browsers to the plethora of extensions available, the browsers just can’t be beat (for the curious, I run FireFox). One such feature is the keyword functionality in bookmarks (I don’t know if other browsers have it. I haven’t looked, and really don’t care if they do : ). For example, I’m a pretty big Linux Today fan. Of course, I have the site bookmarked, but I hate switching back and forth between the mouse and the keyboard, so I add the keyword "lt" to the bookmark, and I can noew go to the site completely from the keyboard: I press CTRL-L to switch to the location bar, then type "lt," hit enter, and voila! Linux Today is loaded. While I think that’s a pretty snazzy feature, it gets even cooler. My phone at Hobby Lobby had caller ID on it, which was handy when trying to avoid salesman that kept pestering me. Sometimes, though, a number would come up that I didn’t know, so I’d want to look it up and see who it is before I answered. The problem is, of course, time. It takes too long to go to the site, type in the number, click the button, etc. With Mozilla/FireFox, my aversion to taking unwanted phone calls gets easier. From using the reverse lookup site, I know what the URL for a lookup looks like, so I can take that URL, replace the number I used with "%s" and use that as the bookmark. Now, in my location bar, i can type "phone 123-555-1234" and the browser inserts the number I typed where the "%s" is and loads that page, giving me quick and easy access to the reverse phone lookup.

I will admit that this use of the feature is pretty juvenile, but that doesn’t detract from the utility of it. Since discovering this feature of the browser, I’ve created several more of these types of bookmarks, all of which get used rather frequently. The point of this rambling article is two-fold. The first is to make Mozilla/FireFox users aware of the feature (and perhaps give those still holding on to IE yet another reason to switch). The second is to give you the list of the bookmarks that I’ve created and found helpful. So, without further ado, I present to you my Keyboard Shortcuts Bookmarks.

Shortcut	Description	URL
acroynm	Look up an acronym at AcronymFinder.com	Right click and copy
define	Google Definitions	Right click and copy
groups	Search for a phrase at Google Groups	Right click and copy
local	Find a specific business or type of business using Google Local (be sure to change the URL to use your city)	Right click and copy
dict	Look up a word’s defintion at One Look Online Dictionary	Right click and copy
phone	The afforementioned Reverse Phone Directory Lookup Phone Number	Right click and copy
wiki	Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia	Right click and copy
yp	Find a business’ phone number in the Yellow Pages	Right click and copy

These are some of the bookmarks I have set up that I though might help someone. If you have some good ones or find some to add, please leave a comment and tell us what it is so we can all share. Have fun!

What are we doing about it?

By jason | September 21, 2005

Brian’s a good friend of mine. He and I are a lot a like in many ways. Both politically and theologically, we’re very similar, with only what I consider to be minor differences of opinions. One area in which we are in lock-step agreement is our opposition to the scourge of abortion. We both find it to be a repugnant and repulsive destruction of human life. As such, our conversations often drift to that topic. This morning was such an occasion. Brian related to me a conversation he had with a former college professor, and challenged me with a question with which this professor challenged him: What are we doing about it?

That’s an exceedingly interesting question. As Brian and I discussed, as Christians, we seem to be placing our hopes in Supreme Court justices, lawyers, and/or activists. Our hope is that someday, we’ll have enough justices on that bench to overturn Roe, and that a brave lawyer will step forward to push a case all the way through to the Supreme Court. Someday, someone will step up to the plate and make something happen. That’s all well and good, but the question still stands: What are we doing about it?

More often that not, we prefer to sit back and let someone else do the work. Whether it’s evangelism, discipleship, discipline, or protecting the unborn, most of us are not comfortable with getting our hands dirty. The reasons for that are many, and, in this context, completely irrelevant. Regardless of reason, we as the body of Christ will continue to marginalized and ineffective as long as we’re sitting on the sidelines. If we want the world to take notice and to realize that our Faith does have something authentic to offer the modern world, we actually have to do something.

On a practical level, in this context, what does that mean? Do we picket abortion clinics? Do we write letters to politicians? Do we volunteer at pregnancy centers? Do we adopt "unwanted" children? I don’t know. Those are all fine suggestions, and there are likely many more (though I staunchly oppose opposition that involves firearms, thank you very much, Mr. Rudolph). The answer to that question, though, will vary from person to person, so each Christian should carefully think about that question: What are you doing? What does God want you to do? It’s time that we quit sitting on our hands and waiting for someone else to do something, and get involved ourselves, whether the issue is abortion, gambling, or something else entirely. Being a change agent for Christ is not someone else’s responsibility. It’s ours. It’s yours. Now, what are you going to do about it?