WP7 on HTC HD7

It already seems like a week, but it has been only a day that I've been in possession of my new phone. I really like this device, as much as I hoped I would and I am even a bit surprised at how much I enjoy it.

I'm sure you've read the various online reviews if you had any interest in WP7 and I won't go into too much detail but I will offer my experience with the phone as compared to other review[er]s.

I chose this particular model because of the size of the screen. It is large at 4.3 inches diagonal. It's a[n] SLED screen, older technology and I feared it would appear dim and lack color but I have been pleased with how bright it is and the colors on screen. Not nearly as bad as some reviewers led me to believe. The blues are blue, the reds are red and streamed video looks great. The viewing angle is good as well, despite what you might have read elsewhere.

As you can imagine, the phone itself is large and while I have no problem handling it, someone with a smaller hand might.

I'm not a big photographer but a 5 mega-pixel camera was nice to have as well. The camera does have some issues which might be resolved in a future firmware update (it's not an operating system issue, but hardware). As many reviews mention, it washes out photos with its dual flash, can be difficult to focus, etc.

My phone came with the basics. A USB wall charger, a separate USB chord and ear buds. I also bought a screen protector pack, but have not yet used any of them. The ear buds were broken (sound only came from one side).

So much for the basic hardware.

Windows Phone 7, the new MS phone operating system, is quite nice to work with. MS rushed it out the door to have phones ready by Christmas and some aspects of the OS are missing, but MS promised them in a future (January?, February?) update.

All screens work on the basic premise that you are looking through a horizontally scrolling portal at a larger page. Once you reach a portion of an application you want, you can then scroll vertically as well. Not ALL apps available to the phone work this way, but the better ones do follow this basic design principle (as laid out by Microsoft). At first you might think that is a lot of scrolling and hunting but as you scroll the pages jump a page at a time (smoothly) and the swiping motion is natural and not uncomfortable. The OS responds very well to the touch and the amount of pressure or swiping to get reactions feels "just right."

The front page is sort of like an application unto itself. It contains your "favorite" applications and one quick swipe to the left (or tap the arrow icon) brings the FULL list of applications to bear. Any application that supports it will have useful information display on the favorites screen. These are called "live tiles." Again, the application you place there has to support live tile updates to provide information, but many of the ones you would want to do that, do (mail, zune, people, photographs, messaging, etc.)

One complaint I've heard and have already dismissed is the status bar at the top. It hides. In fact you only see it if you swipe down from the top or if the phone needs to get your attention (for example of the battery is very low). I like this, I don't need to see that information all of the time... but some people might.

So far I've already spent far too much money on applications. They range in price from FREE, to $0.99 to $14.99 with most apps costing $1.99 or $2.99. The "Marketplace" (Microsoft's "App Store") has a lot of useful applications in it, but is still very sparse compared to what's available for the iPhone. For example, I really wanted "Star Walk" but it just is not available. I am hoping the developer will port it to WP7.

So what are the apps I have and how are they?

The apps that come WITH WP7 are quite useful. MS Office, Mail, IE, etc. The usual suspects, plus the People and Photo hubs, stuff like that. Hubs, btw, group similar data in one place. For example, my people hub has my Windows Live and Facebook data all in one place, including access to photos, threads of discussion, etc. The Pictures hub is similar but just focuses on photographs. Beyond that I also downloaded 3 Bibles, a news app, 2 weather apps (with live tile updating on the home screen), a couple of games (frogger, need for speed), some other weird apps like "Congress" which tracks the goins on of your own senators and reps and provides you multiple ways to communicate with them, silly apps like "days to christmas", the official Facebook app, Twitter app, last.fm, maps, a level, unit translators, picasa, a piano, a periodic table, remember the milk, youtube, etc. Oh, and it came with Netflix as well, and some other video and radio apps (it has a built-in FM reciever, did I mention that?)

Are the apps any good? Mail works very well, I have my Windows Live and GMail accounts in it, and so far it has been flawless. IE is surprisingly fast and renders fairly well, I've noticed some bad handling of the latest CSS 2.0 specs, but not bad over all, and the zooming is super-smooth. Netflix works well, but you are best off using WiFi with it, not 3G (same goes for the other video streaming apps). Zune is fantastic. I absolutely love it. It could not import all of my iTunes songs, only the non-DRM ones, but I purchased a zune pass to see how that goes. That gets you free music access for a month at a time and allows you to keep 11 songs per month as tho' you had purchased them outright. You can also simply purchase songs (and video, like TV shows) outright as well if you want, and the Zune store is actually pretty darn cheap.

The Bible apps I got, one was free, two cost money. One that cost money added abilities to tag scripture with your own notes and stuff like that, but otherwise they all had pretty intuitive interfaces, one required a web connection to download scripture.

I have the Weather Channel and Weather Bug apps. I use Weather Bug as it is less buggy and provides TONS of data including maps and local webcam images.

Maps simply locates you and slaps a map under you... nothing too spectacular there, but I believe it uses Bing maps which is pretty good.

The calendar app is simple, not much to talk about. Google calendar integrates with it.

The "Need for Speed" game is fun and uses the phone's motion sensors to turn your phone into a steering wheel with specific, but simple touch motions for brakes, turbo speeds, etc. Frogger is a pain as it always was, in my opinion. It's nearly impossible to get a frog into the left-most slot. Drives me nuts.

MS Office is nice, allowing you to read and write all sorts of MS documents (doc, excel, one-note, etc.) but I prefer using remember the milk or calendar for tasks. I also downloaded Adobe PDF, already came in handy when someone sent me a PDF doc in mail.

I also like AP Mobile (news feed)... it is nicely laid out (I think) and easy to navigate and contains a ton of data.

I grabbed EBook Reader... but haven't used it yet. I did do a search and found "Ethan Frome" on it. But I probably won't read that story.

The most expensive app I purchased was Geocaching... the official app for geocaching.com. I love how slick it is!

The Pocket Piano is pretty cool too. Anabelle likes it. Slacker radio is nice, but Zune has similar features so it seems redundant.

Twitter is twitter and the Facebook app is a complete Facebook app on the phone. Perhaps a little TOO much, and redundant as Facebook support is built into the People hub. Twitter will be built into it in the first update as well, so I hear.

YouTube is... YouTube. It's the mobile version (the interface) and nothing to write home about, but it works. By the way, I already added Facebook and other links to my Windows Live account so some of the information I am getting is duplicated and I need to decide how to handle that, perhaps remove it from Windows Live, not sure. I'll see how much it bothers me over time.

And that is it for now. All in all my first day with WP7 running on my HTC HD7 has been a lot of fun. I would heartily recommend this phone and operating system to anyone looking for a new smart phone. It's really good, and it will only be getting better.

Pre-review of WP7 on HTC HD7

While I had been thinking I would wait for the next generation iPad to appear I changed my mind and decided to take the dive into the smart phone pool now.

I've used and absolutely love Sandi's iPhone 4. It's a fantastic little device that I really cannot stoop to calling a "phone." It does just about anything and everything. But I have to be different and since I have become enamoured with Windows 7 I decided to take an alternate path. I purchased my HD7 running Windows Phone 7 OS and am waiting for it to arrive.

Anxious to know if I made the right decision (oh, I read a lot of reviews and opinion pieces on the web) I visited the T-Mobile store in town today to try out an HD7. The phone in stock was dead (battery that is) so he had to remove it from the security lock and plug it into an outlet at the side of the store. After a minute the phone would start and it booted into the familiar (well, at least familiar in the sense that I have seen pictures of it all over the internet) start screen. I grabbed the phone from him and started playing.

The interface was smooth. It flowed nicely and I could navigate it with some confidence (it is pretty basic, fairly intuitive). I didn't get much time with it, but I played with the on-screen keyboard and fired up an application or two and found the whole experience satisfying.

More to come when my phone arrives.

IE 9 (vs Chromium)

With the second release of IE 9 BETA I decided to make it my primary web browser. IE 9 offers good performance, low memory usage, HTML5 compatibility and hardware acceleration.

But how does it really stack up? My previous primary browser was Chromium 9 with hardware acceleration turned on. Chromium is the "beta" version of Chrome (and Chrome in general has been my primary browser for a few years now, since it came out).

IE 9 really is fast, compared to all previous IE versions, and it does actually render very nicely. IE (and Firefox for that matter) does tend to apply antialiasing a little too thickly and sometimes text can appear fuzzy, whereas in Chrome it is always crisp. But other than that it looks great; pages format well, fonts render well, etc.

IE comes with a new Javascript engine that touts it's speed and while it IS quick, I've found a few problems with it that cause me to, on occasion revert to Chrome/Chromium for a moment. I wouldn't make a big deal about it but, truthfully, Chromium feels "finished" in comparison. But that is probably because the Javascript engine in Chromium is actually quite mature.

Other than those few, minor quibbles, IE has performed quite well and does not feel like its ancestors in any way. It works with MOST online applications and it feels pretty snappy. I will continue to use it and perhaps in a release or two review it, maybe compare it to Chrome.

Panic and relief

I was reading an article about a game (Bioshock Infinite) when I noticed my arm... it had white hairs in it. I freaked out and ran to Sandi "Oh no! My arm hairs are turning white!" She pitied me but then straightened me out: Those aren't your hairs. Those are Cookie's hairs.

Whew! I had been playing with my dog and her hairs were all mixed in with mine.

Ha ha. The joke is on me.

So a month ago I started having problems with my [old] PC. It was overheating, specifically the graphics card. The NVidia 470 had performed flawlessly up to that point and all of a sudden, at IDLE it was running at 79 C.

I was baffled, I tried cleaning it out; I took it apart and reseated the heat sink (scraped off the old paste and applied arctic silver), etc. Nothing worked. When I played games it got up to 100 C!!

So I decided, alright, I'll install MSI Afterburner and apply a custom fan plan (basically the thing was whistling along at about 60% to 70% to keep the temps at a reasonable value). This has been a great machine and has served me well, so I wiped it clean and reinstalled Windows 7 planning to give it to my son... and wouldn't you know it: The card was idling at 41 C. It had to be some kind of driver issue? I don't know. But now the machine is running great. I am updating Windows... perhaps if it starts overheating again I can roll back the updates to determine what caused the problem.

Anyway, Isaac is getting a smoking machine. Here are the relevant specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
8 GB RAM @ 1066
NVidia 470

I think Anabelle will get the Aluminum iMac and I'll maybe sell her G5 iMac on Craigslist or something.

Apple support gets worse by the year.

For some reason, iTunes things the address I am entering for my credit card is not valid.

It hasn't changed for 5 years. My credit card information (number, etc.) has not changed for as long.

So I call Apple only to find out they NO LONGER OFFER PHONE SUPPORT FOR ACCOUNT ISSUES.

This is all very disappointing. Anyway, I submitted my email to them via the provided form and hope to hear back from them within the stated 48 hours.

Can't we all just get along?

I've been in a sort of on-going conversation in (of all places) a tech forum about the disrespect paid to Americans (or anyone).

It started with a post about the FM radio chip issue (if you are not aware, a couple organizations are lobbying to have legislation passed to have FM chips put in cell phones - sort of). The editor (one of a few, and a European one) tends toward the dramatic and in this case had to slam "Americans" for being panic-prone. But not in such kind words.

I protested in response and it began like this:

Why do non-Americans find it necessary to comment (and not generally favorably) on purely American issues? (Surely you don't believe this issue will somehow affect Europe?)

Yeah I know, our government has its nose in everyone's business (which I don't agree with and vote against accordingly during elections). So that makes it O.K. to make glib comments about Americans in general?

(I vote Libertarian, btw, and fully buy into Teddy Roosevelt's "walk softly and carry a big stick" idea. Our focus needs to be internal, not external).

The responses I got back (mostly from people from the Netherlands for some reason) were along the lines of "because Americans are always commenting unfavorably about Europeans!"

Really? There have been no (zero) posts by the American editors with inserted slander against any European country or person. None. Yet this is not the first time such posts have come from the European sector. I pointed this out. The response was "that's because your media never reports on European affairs and ours (European media) is constantly shoving American issues in our faces and paint Americans as "ignorant hicks."

Lovely. Really. So that means you should carry that tradition on by barraging Americans with insults at every opportunity?

I then proceeded to point out that the PEOPLE here are no different from the PEOPLE there. Sure there are some cultural differences but we all get up, brush our teeth, kiss our kids, go to work, come home and eat, hang with our families then go to bed. In other words we are all human, no one better than the next.

What I don't get is where these people are coming from. A new generation in Europe? I worked with Europeans (specifically Irish, French and German) for several years while at DEC. They were wonderful (the people I worked with). One even invited us to stay at his house if we ever planned on vacationing in France. So what is changing? Why the hate? Why do they despise a group of people... can they not separate our gov't from us? I don't know. I guess I don't really care except that it causes me to lose respect for THEM if they cannot see through all the rhetoric in the news and from politicians and roll individuals up into their opinions based on such tripe.

Just a poem I wrote awhile back...

Dusty

I put on my sin, a dirty old coat
Comfortable, well-worn skin;
Everything is spotty today,
The world through scratched lenses
Moves in and out of focus.

That hard drive head crash wail
Assails my ears and
Discernment rails my fear
Toward the inevitable
Clear thought:

I am desert dusty,
Wrinkle-filled,
Crusty, lusty, musty -
Unwashed and unwashable
But for the bathing
Sin scathing light
Of truth.

We sure are lucky!

Remember my last post? Watching another pop-science program. In one 5 minute segment the word "lucky" came up half of a dozen times. We sure are lucky our Earth is in the right spot in the solar system to support life! We sure are lucky the Earth as a moderate magnetic field that shields us from dangerous radiation! We sure are lucky conditions were right over a billion years ago to allow for the formation of complex, organic (carbon based) molecules! We sure are lucky those molecules somehow recombined to form a complex, self-replicating machine! We sure are lucky those complex, self-replicating machines could run other machinery to generate protein covers, organelles that produce a variety of proteins and chemicals enabling cellular reproduction, etc.

We sure are lucky!

It made me smile

Was watching a new series on National Geographic channel, "The Known Universe" I think it was called. I am please to say that I have been pleasantly surprised twice in the past few months, once by an article in Scientific American and now an episode of this series.

I fully expected the same pop-science rhetoric from this program, especially because the scientists ON the program were the same ones I've seen on other programs that glorify theories as tho' they are writ.

No. When this program ended I found myself smiling. Why? Simple. This episode dealt with the creation of the universe. While all the usual theories were covered, the show ended with one of the scientists saying this (paraphrase): We can never know how the universe was created. There is no scientist who can grasp any more than a small part of the current theories being put forth.

And there it was. The truth. We can never know - we can only guess based on observation and mathematical formulae trying to describe (and tie together) the effects of the forces we can see and feel.

-- begin rant --

I am not anti-science. I know it seems like I "pick on science" from time to time but that isn't the case. I pick on the idea that in our culture today science (and technology) is portrayed as the solution to all our problems, past, present and future. Scientific theory is taught unabashedly as fact in our schools, and portrayed in the media in the same light, when in FACT many of the theories taught are simply worth little more than guesswork. The origin of the universe? What I was taught 30 years ago is completely different now.

In a way that's O.K. Much science is about putting forward an idea that supports what we can observe. When we can observe more, what we put forth naturally changes. Science is a process, a method of understanding the world around us. But it seems as tho' kids aren't taught this today.

-- end rant --

You know, I really want my own children to be free-thinkers. I want them to be able to find truth for themselves. I don't want them weighted any which way, but instead be balanced. Sometimes I fear that they don't have a chance to be that way, since I weigh them down with my own concepts and feelings on both science and faith. I want them to understand that they have choices to make in life, and that they should be discerning and honest in how they go about making them - both to themselves and to anyone else their decisions might affect.

It's late, I am tired and rambling. Good night!

Does religion cause wars?

I believe a lot of people feel that since there is terrorism generated by muslims, and that something called "The Crusades" occurred centuries ago that religion is the cause of war. Some feel that if religion was abolished that we would be better off, fewer conflicts, etc.

I think that people who believe this are optimistic and have a very good outlook on humanity.

No. If religion was abolished, that is, if no one believed in the supernatural, everything was science, we would simply find something else to fight about; some other reason to invade someone else's soil. In fact, wars are NOT fought over religious beliefs, but religion IS used to control the masses. This is unfortunate. A small group of people who wield respect and authority use it to manipulate people eager to be led when in reality, the reason for aggression is quite simple:

I want something you have.

Sometimes the things "you have" are necessities, sometimes they are not. Water, food, oil, land, power... these are reasons to fight. There are no other.

Crusades were about power over the common folk. Extermination of Knights Templar was about money AND power (what's the difference, right?) as the Templars were basically the foreign exchange bankers of their time.

Terrorism isn't about religion. It is about anger, it is about individuals who feel repressed by society. It's about people who use those feelings to manipulate and control... for a sense of power over something/someone.

Don't be fooled. Just as lobbyists manipulate our politicians with money and FUD, leaders of terrorist organizations do the same to people who are willing to follow them. They use words like "JIHAD" to weakly cover their motives.

I'd love to be as optimistic about humanity as some people are... but it comes down to something we never shake from childhood: gimmee gimmee gimmee, I want I want I want, mine mine mine.

Oh, and I am in no way claiming that I am exempt from this.

That's all. Sorry for the rant.

...And Back Again...

I'm not as adventurous as I'd like to think.

Sure, I just installed Meego onto my netbook, and that's fine. But my foray back into the world of FOSS has come to an end.

I was ready to give up Netflix. I was ready to listen to my DRM-stripped music library. I was ready to never play the top game titles ever again. It wasn't enough.

I got linux up and running, quite well actually. I was able to build and run my code, get my mail, browse the internet, even installed Hulu desktop to make up for Netflix. But after a week of using Linux I decided I wanted a more standard gnome appearance. I moved my task bar to the top, and went to add a new panel... that's where it went wrong. I clicked on add new panel and my UI hung. "Huh," I thought. So I tried switching to console mode, it did not work. "Huh," I thought again. I rebooted. All was well until the time came for XServer to start. It didn't. Now I wasn't saying "huh," but instead I was mumbling under my breath. After several tries I gave up. This was damn peculiar behavior for linux in my opinion. I merely used standard gnome configuration options. How can that cause the entire UI to lock up and never start again?!

I could have booted into command line mode and poked around. I could have actually tried several other install/restore options to fix the problem. But the point is I should not have to do that.

It irked me completely. So much so I wiped the system, re-installed Windows 7 and have been trying to restore my disks all week long. That's another story.

From Windows to Linux

I took the plunge this afternoon. I double-copied most of my data to two disks, so they would be accessible from both (I did this because linux was having a little trouble with one of the Windows "dymnamic disks").

Once the data was copied I began the installation. I quickly encountered the large FAT-32 volume bug and had to disconnect all external drives. Once unplugged the installation went smoothly.

I decided to go with XFS as my file system and formatted 2 of my 3 large disks making the first a system disk, the second my /home disk. The third disk contents are being copied as I write and will become my /Work disk soon. I also have a 4th disk, smaller, FAT-32 formatted and I use that to store a lot of "junk."

I have managed to get Chrome installed, my email accounts plugged in, my chat accounts plugged in, etc. I did manage to get the Cisco AnyConnect client installed and to the point where it appears to work, but I had trouble with my work connection. I'll have to reboot and check that out later. The process of getting the Cisco client involves installing 32 bit libraries and copying firefox libraries into the Cisco client's lib folder.

Since work is my priority, I'll be focusing on that tonight. I need to get the connection squared away, then I need to rig ssh+svn so I can access our code. I also need to get a few extra apps installed, like the official version of Sun Java, altho' I might try to get JBOSS running with the OpenJDK version. We shall see. I also want to get JDeveloper and the Oracle client libraries installed if possible.

Once all the work stuff is squared away, I can focus on getting Wine installed and work on getting several of my games going. I was excited to read that Torchlight works very well under Wine and the Steam client should fare as well as the store-bought CD-ROM version of the game.

As I mentioned before, I will meet some limitations. I won't be able to watch my Netflix instant queue from my computer. I also had to export my iTunes music to non-DRM format. I wanted to wait to do the same for my video library, but I got antsy while waiting on the conversion company to help me out with an issue. So what I will have to do is copy my video library to my son's computer and run the software there. It will take a couple of days to complete. Perhaps I can get this started before we leave for vacation, then clean up when we get back.

From Windows 7 to Linux - Part 1

I've decided to give linux another shot. Windows 7 is solid, but I like the principles behind FOSS and similar ideas and want to support them.

There are pros and cons inherent in this decision. The pros are that there is a vast pool of free software to make use of, a modern high performance operating system and a large user base that is willing to share and help out when you encounter problems (for the most part). The cons take some swallowing.

I will not be able to view netflix movies online. I will not be able to play a large number of my games, and I can no longer make use of iTunes to purchase and manage my music. (Most people would not consider that to be a con). I also generate my tax documents with software that will not run on linux. I'll worry about that next April. Other cons include shaky graphics drivers and a willingness to get under the hood from time to time to make modifications to the OS. No problem, I like doing that.

The first step to moving to linux, which I have already begun, is to preserve my music and movies in such a way that I might continue to enjoy them. To do this I need to back my DRM-laden media up to non-DRM media. I am doing this with legally purchased software, and while I might be walking a thin line of legality, my thinking is that this is my music, my TV shows that I purchased and I'll be damned if someone is going to say "no you can't watch them anymore" because of the operating system I have chosen to use.

Once this process is completed I can begin copying files I wish to keep from one disk to another (backups of a sort) so that I can wipe at least two of my 3 disks for the purpose of creating my system and user disks in linux. After that, another copy so I can reformat (and alter my mount table) my third drive for my work files.

I have several shared drives that are formatted in FAT32... they can stay that way for now. Linux does fine with FAT32.

After that is all the tweaking and configuring that will need to happen so that I can work effectively and also play some of my games on Steam.

So to summarize:

1. back up important data and media (in progress)
2. initial install
3. restore data
4. tweak install
5. restore some semblance of a gaming environment

Once step three is complete, I'll post more about steps 1-3.

Just a blurb - Our sites are now "more available."

While I enjoyed hand crafting my own website in an obscure language, running it on my own machine didn't work very well. MOST people could never see my site, some could, but for some reason coming into the COX network even on port 3000 was fraught with issues.

So now I moved our sites to GoDaddy and I quickly refashioned my site in PHP. It's hacked together but it works.

www.sandrajessop.com
www.mikesjunkyard.com

On Aquariums

For nearly as long as I can remember I've had an active aquarium.

My first aquarium was a metal framed, slate bottomed 5 gallon unit that a friend and neighbor, David Lee, gave to me. My first fish were angels and sword tails. Eventually I discovered the fish that really embroiled me into the world of the fresh water tropical fish hobbyist: The Oscar.

It was wrong, of course, but my first oscar was a baby that I tossed into that 5 gallon aquarium. It grew rapidly and I had to give it away. For my birthday, my dad bought me a 29 gallon aquarium and took me to a pet store in another town with the promise that he would pay for something like $20 of fish. Wow! I bought another Oscar. Not any oscar, THE oscar. He was a red oscar and he was brilliant! He took food from my fingers, was stick trained (when I held up a green stick (glass scraper) he would immediately go to the bottom of the tank, submissively. When I worked in the tank he would simply watch me, but when my brother or father placed their hands in the tank he would attack them. Seriously.

I loved that fish.

Trying to find tank mates was difficult. Had to be other, tough cichlids that were too big to swallow, but not big enough to cause Oskee any grief. One day I brought home a Jack Dempsey. It was about 3 or 4 inches long. Oskee was 8 inches long. I thought I had met the necessary criteria for a tank mate but I was very wrong.

Over night Oskee attempted to eat the Jack. Unfortunately the Jack was far too large to swallow, and his fins lodge themselves in Oskee's throat. Oskee eventually died. I was so upset my parents kept me out of school that day; I made a little grave for him and held a funeral in our back yard.

I haven't been quite so attached to any fish since Oskee, but I do still enjoy them and still find them fascinating.

My most recent large, oddball fish was an Osphronemus goramy named "G". Got him at about 2 or 3 inches and raised him up to about 10 inches or so. He was full of character and all the neighborhood kids thought he was cool because he tried to bite their fingers through the glass. But O. goramy gets BIG. I gave him to a friend who had a more suitable tank and now "G" is happily growing in his new environment (last I saw him I would guess he is about 14 inches long and growing).

My current project is to maintain a (more or less) community aquarium where the fish live together peacefully. That's a hard one for me, as I prefer big, burly, aggressive fish. Still, the little ones have pretty colors and are fun to look at and there is less drama and trauma associated with fish that aren't always fighting.

Still, the old urges slip in and I dropped a couple of baby sunfish into the tank. It's hard to say how that will progress - but sunnies can be terrors. For now, however, all the tetras and other fish are much larger than the baby sunnies.

On a side note, we had to move our crayfish (we caught a baby up at White Horse Lake last July) who had grown to 4 inches in length and had begun hunting and eating the fish. We placed him in Isaac's tank with a full grown male firemouth cichlid. The crayfish can't get him, he fights back. :) So at the moment there is a stalemate. If necessary the crayfish will get his own tank.

Anyway, I cannot foresee a time when I do not have an aquarium.

Song Lyrics in the age of the Internet

When I was a kid we didn't have the internet. We didn't have computers for that matter. One of the things that I love about the internet and modern music players is that they can download and display song lyrics as the song is playing.

Back up 30+ years. I used to listen to my radio (WRKO) at night and every once in awhile I'd hear a song I liked. To help me remember it I'd record it on a tape recorder, then play it over and over again, writing down the lyrics a verse at a time! If the sound quality was bad (and it was usually, recording a song on an AM station being played on a cheap radio) it could take time to figure it out.

Fast forward to the present. There is a song from the late 70's that I like entitled "No Time To Lose" written and played by the Tarney-Spencer band. Found the song on YouTube recently and enjoyed listening to it. I googled the lyrics and found that *gasp* there were only two versions out there and both were bad. Both were missing words, had the wrong words in certain sections, etc. So... I reverted to the olden days and began playing it over and over again on YouTube until I was satisfied that I had them down correctly, or at least 95% correct. I may be missing the word "and" at the beginning of one of the verses. Here you go... in all its glory:

Tarney-Spencer Band... No time to lose...

Every day I walk in shadows
I know not what it is I'm heading for
As the evening light is dying
A gentle heart lies near me sighing
You feel the same
Will you ever change
You can never understand
We can only be like water
Rolling on to find our way
Just get on with the game
With the game, what a game

No time to lose, no time to lose
No time to lose, no time to lose
Go with the flow, never let go
No time to lose...

There ain't no way to see forever
It's only day to day I'm living for
Like a wheel you keep me turning
It's your love inside me burning
The question's plain,
Will your love remain?
You can never understand
We can only be like water
Rolling on to find our way
Just get on with the game
With the game, you know the game

No time to lose, no time to lose
No time to lose, no time to lose
Go with the flow, never let go
No time to lose...

You can never understand
We can only be like water
Rolling on to find our way
Just get on with the game
With the game...

No time to lose, no time to lose
No time to lose, no time to lose
Go with the flow, never let go
No time to lose...

No time to lose, no time to lose
No time to lose, no time to lose...

Better off in a bubble?

There is a lot of hate and hurt in this world. People seem to enjoy attacking other people's beliefs, life styles, education, lack of education, choice of clothing, choice of reading materials, hair styles, make up, etc.

Sometimes I think it is just best to believe what you believe, and live your life according to how you think it should be lived and let it go at that. If there is something good in that, it will be seen. In the end, good is good and nothing can change that.

I, like everyone else, can have some strong opinions but I think that perhaps from now on I will follow Jame's advice (and my favorite quote): be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

Of course if I am asked for my opinion, that might be a different matter.

Sown among thorns...

I don't know about you but the world really has its fingers in me. I absolutely must have my time to play games, go off-roading/geo-caching, etc. I strive for the latest software or hardware technology, at least to what I can afford. I enjoy my hobbies.

Now, there is nothing wrong with those things, but are they what is most important? Are they what I should focus on?

When the commonly reviled Jehovahs Witnesses come to my door I don't say "not now," or "thanks but no thanks," because I see in them a willingness to do the Lord's work that I often lack. Instead I talk with them for awhile, offer them drinks, etc. There are a few who are regulars now that come by to talk and we enjoy our talks. Sometimes they leave me with research to do, sometimes I leave them with some research. It's nice.

But they always remind me how wrong my life is and how unwilling I am to adjust and adapt to what the Lord has in store for me.

From Mark 4 (NET Bible - Parable of the Sower explanation):

4:18 Others are the ones sown among thorns: They are those who hear the word, 4:19 but worldly cares, the seductiveness of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it produces nothing.