…I have a morning to myself with time to read, reflect, and maybe even write, but do I have any ideas? Nope.
So, of the items I read this morning here are some that I found the most interesting:
Phoenix Story – My friend, Chris Booth, shares about his unusual encounter with a profound spiritual impact.
Should we repeal anti-gouging laws? – This is from Greg Mankiw’s blog and it has several links to follow. I read the three principal links and found that the case against anti-gouging laws stronger than the case supporting them. (Of course, I am already pre-disposed to think that way because of my belief in capitalism as a superior system of governing economic activity.)
The Petraeus story…I don’t know what to think about that. Walter Russell Meade had an interesting post on our countries divergent views on sex. I’m not sure that I drew any conclusions from his post except to shake my head at the world in which we live.
[Uncensored update! Sweet, I have an hour more than I thought thanks to the clocks in the room that I’m in not having been reset from last weeks time change! Which makes me ponder, do we really need daylight savings time? And if we were to get rid of it, which would I rather have…the regular time or the “saved” time?]
Oh…now I have an idea…I’ll start a new post and see if I can get it finished before I have to get on with my day.
…that is a lame question (with apologies to Shakespeare).
So, I don’t blog much anymore. There are mostly practical reasons for not blogging. Chief among them is that I use my phone for internet and composing a well-thought, well-written blog post is very time consuming on the phone and time is something I don’t have much of to spare.
There are a few topics about which I am passionate and in which I would like to engage the culture around me. Unfortunately, two of the topics are the very things we are told not to talk about in mixed company: politics and religion. Well, for the three or so people who read this blog maybe there isn’t much mixed company to speak of and they certainly have the choice not to continue reading something if they so choose.
The other element to blogging (or clogging as my phone’s auto correct would suggest) is it would be far more meaningful if I shared my thoughts in person. You know, face to face, like they used to do in an age gone by. In fact both topics, but especially the religious topic, would benefit from a gentle but thought provoking discussion with people in a give and take exchange of a face to face encounter.
However, I am not given to gentleness in discussions on these two topics. It’s not because I don’t want to be gentle, but because my nature threatens to take over and I run the risk of getting too fired up. And while my spirit heats up inside me, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain calm and keep my thoughts in order. I know that practice would be the way to fix this problem, but my opportunities to practice are limited and very few and far between.
So, what’s a guy to do? Probably finish this post, publish it, think about writing the next one, and get around to writing again in about three months. (Update: and then check for grammatical errors and fix them before anyone else reads it.)
Until next time, I hope you’re day is relevant and meaningful.
I vaguely remember visiting Valley Forge as a kid. I’m willing to admit that the visit was less than inspiring for me at the time. It certainly would have made a more lasting impression if the visit had been in the dead of winter, with no shoes, meager rations, and nothing but a canvas separating me from the harsh winter weather. What men have endured in the pursuit and defense of freedom is nothing short of amazing and astounding.
I, for one, am grateful for their service, blessed to enjoy that freedom, and proud to be an American.
Here are some pictures of the musicians in today’s parade. Of course, it figures that I wouldn’t capture Rutland High School because my daughter chose that moment to use the bathroom.
Editor’s note: this blog post was created about 2 and a half years ago as an experiment in blogging using Microsoft Word. After re-reading it, I thought one or two of my three readers might find my inane ramblings to myself amusing. The table is completely fabricated (I think). If not, sorry I wasted your time. -MW
I am trying to find the most efficient way of writing a blog post. If it helps to use Microsoft Word with its automatic spell checker then that would be of some use to me. I fancy myself an accurate speller but I often mistype words without realizing that I’ve spelled them incorrectly. I would also like to be able to format my posts a little more to my liking.
One of the things about blogs is the format. When I try and read some of the posts made by “experienced” bloggers, I often find myself confused and spending more time trying to read what they’ve written then actually processing the content of what they’ve written.
Of course, a small problem would be that I might not be able to imbed videos and other things as easily as from the web site. Adding categories doesn’t seem to work…or does it?
We’ll see.
Clicking on “Home Page” on the tool bar opens up Internet Explorer and brings me to my site.
Now let’s see if we can save over existing post documents. But before I do that, let me add some links, pictures, and maybe embed a video.
So far this seems to be working out just fine. I have to make sure that the posts are a no wider than a 4-5 inches. The photos/images especially. I had to shrink the graphic or it wouldn’t fit on the page and the web site made no adjustments to the image.
Embedding a video…
So far it all seems to be working just fine.
I don’t plan on actually posting this to my web site, but I’ll keep it for future reference in case there is anything I forget about.
It does, but some of the image quality isn’t very good. I wonder if that could be improved or if it’s even worth improving?
I have no idea what to do with a table. It seems like it could be an effective communication tool if I knew what I was doing with it. I wonder if there is a table for dummies book. I suppose it might help if I knew some of the basic principles of statistics and data, etc. Hmmm…
Same thing with tables. The column on my blog is only five and a half inches wide. Keep it in that width and we’re golden (like the pond).
This could be cool, but I wonder how the reformatting to fit the 5.5 inch column on my blog page will affect it. Well, the graphics again are pretty blah and unimpressive. How would I fix that? Can I save the image as a jpeg? Or is it doomed to be a blocky, ugly image?
Now, about saving and storing these posts on my computer.
I just discovered that I can actually open posts from the blog site. That is very cool. That means if I ever needed to edit them, I could do it from Word as long as I have access to the web. Ah, accessing the web.
Bullets
Time to go to rehearsal
We’ll be rehearsing Ginestera next.
I play the tambourine
And a couple of suspended cymbal rolls.
Sweet.
Numbered lists
This is number one
Followed by number two
And Three
Four comes next
Followed by five
With an occasional a
B
And C
We’ll wrap it up with six.
Ahh…Wordpress changes the bullet formatting to fit to its own format program. Bummer. Lists and outlines are useful but not if they don’t act like lists and outlines.
We’ll check this Heading
After I hit enter it goes back to “normal” text.
Heading 2
More Normal.
Heading 3
More normal stuff
Heading 4
More normal stuff. Hmm…heading is not so much different from normal text.
Heading 5
Has its advatanges because it’s italicized.
Heading 6
Is smaller than the normal text. I’ve noticed that some of the colors of the headings are different then the normal text.
Emphasis!
Strong
Quote. I’m quoting. Yea!
How about some text color changes and highlighting?
The cycle [of appeasement and war] will play out as in the past, because, in this age of enlightenment, affluence, and leisure, we just cannot accept that human nature remains the same and thus predictable. It remains too depressing to concede that for a few evil opportunists good will is seen not as magnanimity to be appreciated, but as weakness to be tested. And who but a dunce would believe that continual military preparedness is far cheaper — and more humane — than the perpetual “peace dividend” and lowering of our defenses?
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law’s of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
God…I put God first because that is where God is supposed to be in my life. Does that mean that is an accurate reflection of my daily life? Probably not. In fact, I hope hosting this blog site will encourage me to keep God first in my life. I’m not sure what I’ll have to say and much of it may be for my own sake (although you’re welcome to comment).
Family…after God, nothing could possibly come next except my family. I consider my wife, Meredith, to be united with me in one flesh. I consider my children, Malcolm and Maura, to be a blessing from God and I take the responsibilty to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord very seriously. I believe that the most important form of “government” is the family and I expect to export the lessons we learn as a family to our culture.
Politics…well, this seems like a reasonable third category to me. After all, politics is the way we interact with other people. After God and family comes everyone else! That, and I enjoy a good political discussion (especially the written discussion because my oral skills are not that great).
Whatever else suits my fancy…this seems self explanatory, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t limit myself to just three topics.
There you have it. My blog. I hope to make this as engaging for the reader as much as I hope to make this a useful tool for expressing myself.
This could be cool, but I wonder how the reformatting to fit the 5.5 inch column on my blog page will affect it. Well, the graphics again are pretty blah and unimpressive. How would I fix that? Can I save the image as a jpeg? Or is it doomed to be a blocky, ugly image?
Marc Whitman's Blog 