Two great online Bible resources...

The Children's Minister at my church (also my men's Bible study leader on Wednesday mornings) hipped me to two great resources online for Bible study...

The first is Bible Gateway. The title bar describes Bible Gateway as "A searchable online Bible in over 35 languages and 50 versions." Need I say more?! You can search by passage, topic, or keyword, and specify which translation and language you want to see. This is great for comparative studies, as anyone who studies the Bible knows that different translations can have different wording which can contribute to discussion and deeper study. Bible Gateway also has different reading plans for you to try to get yourself on a committed and consistent study of the Word.

The next is Blue Letter Bible. Their mission statement is as follows:

"Our mission is to facilitate in-depth study of God's Word through an on-line interactive reference library continuously updated from the teachings and commentaries of selected pastors and teachers who hold to the conservative, historical Christian faith."

Now this one does not have as many translations as Bible Gateway (for example, NASB is there, but not NIV), but it definitely makes up for this in other areas. Beside each verse you look at, there are blue letter links (hence the name of the site I suppose...LOL) to a variety of study tools.

• Treasury of Scripture Knowledge cross-references of related scripture
  
• Concordance and Hebrew/Greek Lexicon showing original Greek or Hebrew words and meaning
  
• List Audio, Study Tools, Commentaries regarding the verse
  
• Hymns, Images, Maps related to the verse
• Version/Translations to compare the scripture across different translations
• Dictionary Aids

As you can tell, there is a wealth of information on this website. Also of note are selected audio and video sermons streamable through Real Player. I was particularly pleased to find Kent Hovind's video series on Creation versus Evolution available to watch. The video is kind of small, but hey, it's free! I mean, the first video of the series (of which there are seven) is almost 2 hours long! This is a great video series, and one which I used as an adjunct to a Sunday school series I taught to teenagers on Creation versus Evolution. For those out there interested and with whom I have chatted about this subject (and you know who you are...LOL) I would highly recommend them, as Mr. Hovind does a MUCH better job of explaining the position than I ever could!

So anyway, I just though these definitely warranted a blog entry. I have included the links permanently placed in my "Distractions" section in the sidebar. Hope you find them as informative and enjoyable as I am.

Some aesthetic changes...wanna help?

So as any of you who frequent the place (that'd be about three of you I think, LOL...) will notice, changed the look a bit. I had gotten to where I was not happy with the graphics of the old design, so tried to go with something a little less STARK than what I had before. Still, it doesn't have that "inviting" feel to it. It doesn't make you feel all relaxed when you walk in, ya know? LOL

Anybody got any ideas what to do to make it look better? I would love to have a subtle, faded image of a couch behind the header graphic, but two things have prevented this so far:

1) I haven't found a good pic yet, and
2) I suck at Paintshop image manipulation.

I don't know. There just needs to be...more...ya know?

Any ideas people? Comment here or, well, you know where to find me....

Connor's first date!

I would love for Kelly to be able to type this (because she was there), but she is busier than I am, so I know she'd never have time to do this. Connor, our 9 (soon to be 10) year old just had his first date. He had been telling us about the Valentine's dance at school for 3rd through 5th grade. he has also been telling us about a new girl in his class after he went back after Christmas break, named Mackenzie. He asked her to be his date for the dance and she said yes! Connor wore jeans (since it was right after school), but Kelly got him a nice white shirt and little red tie. He also bought Mackenzie a little wrist corsage for the dance too. Her grandmother ended up making her a little red dress for the dance, and as you can see in the pictures, they were definitely the cutest kids there! Connor did his best "freestylin'" dancing, including his interpretation of the Robot and break dancing...LOL I had to be in Atlanta for a seminar so I didn't get to go, but Kelly took lots of pictures! I include one here, but if you want to see a bunch more, check out the Flickr badge in the sidebar...


Nine and already a ladies' man. I am scared of his teenage years...LOL

Beasts at Large!

Hey ya'll...

I was just rummaging through some old pics and stuff and found this old Windows Movie maker video I put together of the boys. This was done back in 2003, which would have made them about 7, 4, and 2 or so... or something like that. LOL...

Thought ya'll would get a kick out of it!

Beasts at Large! (6.7 mb wmv)

Things that test my frustration management skills...

No particular order, but whatever...

Culprit #1.

This issue with Microsoft and the Xbox 360. First of all, I am mad enough as it is that it went defective to begin with. Anger gets bumped up a notch due to the widespread nature of the problems. Look at the forums. Look at our own XBLF group. The percentages are higher than Microsoft's touted "3-5%". Now, just on the day that I send mine off to the Texas manufacturing facility (yesterday), Modiac points out a problem that seems to be running rampant. People who, with their original 360's were able to connect to Xbox Live flawlessly, now cannot connect to Xbox Live AT ALL with their replacement units. Microsoft Xbox Tech Support is completely stumped by this, by their own admission. People have had to return their 360's TWO and THREE times, and still do not yet have a working unit. So, in my infinite ability to expect the worst in my life with stuff like this (I have anti-irish luck evidently), I fully expect mine to not work correctly as well. It may be due to certain production runs or the facility itself (Texas), but in any case, my anger will only further heighten if I have the same problem when I get my unit back! I try my best to keep clean language, but this one is pushing the envelope for me...

One saving grace...

My EBGames product replacement policy.

Regardless of what happens with Microsoft I will be returning the refurbished unit for a new retail copy as soon as it is available regularly is my local store. I'm not going to deal with Microsoft's crap anymore. I'll pay the $30 every time with EBGames. Less stress and I will be assured a NEW unit. It just makes me so angry that I should have to be doing this in the first place!

Offender #2.

Software vendors who change layout of software to increasing complexity and decreasing user friendliness. Kelly and I had pretty much figured out our patient management and electronic billing software, and she had gotten so good that if she submitted our Medicaid billing on Friday morning, we got an electronic funds transfer into our business checking account on Monday. Well, we recently had to install the
latest update to our software, and things went haywire! First, we nearly lost all of our data for the week prior to the install! Now that does not sound like a lot, but when you are seeing patients 50-60 hours per week, and every single slot for the next five weeks is full, and you are scheduling, on average, 3-6 new patients PER DAY, and your electronic billing is tied to your schedule, a one week old backup means loss if a LOT of data. Luckily I was able to salvage the data after about an hour of blood, sweat, and tears. Second, they have moved data entry information necessary for each patient into , shall we say, less than intuitive places. Whereas a patient's diagnoses were entered into the, get this, DIAGNOSIS tab in the older version, a diagnosis tab is nonexistent in the new version, and patient diagnoses are entered into the DEFAULTS tab. Yeah. That makes sense. Third, information that was not needed in the old version electronic billing is now required. The only way to fix it is to contact every referring physician on record to get their Physician ID number, or remove the referring physician's name completely from the patient's information. Easy solution, but now there is no way to track patient referrals per physician. To further complicate the matter, not all referring people are physicians, and therefore do not have a Physician ID. Yet if you put them in the patient's record, electronic billing will not go through, as the system expects a Physician ID since someone has been named in the referring agent text box on the billing. All clear as freaking mud, right?

Sheesh.

There are more, but I,m tired of typing. LOL...

On a good note, I am digging my truck, man!

Go Seahawks!

My new truck, baby!

Well, all the calls and paperwork and signatures and such later, I finally got my new truck to replace the demolished old faithful RAV4. Meet my 2006 Nissan Frontier LE Crew Cab.


It's a sweet but powerful piece of machinery and metal. The Rockford Fosgate, 380-watt 6-disc MP3 CD changer system, complete with 10 speakers (including subwoofers), only sweetened the deal. Kind of softened the blow of having to pick up the $400/month car payment. I do have to tell you, Mr. Domino Delivery Guy's insurance, Progressive, did me right. It actually went pretty fast, and I ended up with over $3,000.00 more in the settlement than I expected! Anyway, I included a little Flickr badge in the sidebar to let you see a few more pics.