Especially after an extra-long weekend, I need the reminder:
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
- Teddy Roosevelt
With the passing of Thanksgiving, it’s now time to begin decorating the house for Christmas. I’m only mostly joking with the reference in the title. I do love Christmas decorations. I’m no Clark Griswold, but it’s more because I can’t justify the budget than that I think he’s nuts. I love a tastefully decorated house only a little more than I love a crazy, over-the-top, covered-in-lights type house.
Strike that. I think it’s actually so bad that I’m not sure I can tell the difference between tasteful and over-the-top.
It’s a good thing I married well, or my neighbors might be getting ready to experience this:
It’s a good day to be thankful. Unless, you know, you’re a turkey. In which case, not such a great day. I’m spending the day surrounded by my family, enjoying the grace God delivers to us through each other.
I don’t claim to have it all figured out. I don’t understand the why behind it. But I am grateful for the ways God has chosen to bless me: a wife who loves me, some of the sweetest kids around, in-laws that are fun to be with, a comfortable house (that as I write this smells like Turkey), and more goodness and abundance than I can possibly detail.
Of course, I also get two Thanksgivings every year, so I guess you could say I’m doubly blessed. Happy thanksgiving everyone!
Man, we’ve been all over the map with music. Between web radio, then Pandora (give us information about music you like and we’ll build you custom radio stations) and then Spotify (any song… dare ya), there’s been almost no limit to the music I can call up at any given time.
Lately, I’ve found myself returning to the albums I care enough about to buy. iTunes (and now Google Music) has been getting more use than Spotify. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with spotify, I don’t think; it’s still great when I want to listen to songs that I’ve never had occasion to purchase. But, there’s something about the albums that I have purchased that makes them seem to stick with me more.
Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s tangibility (no, probably not… it’s not like I’m grabbing a cd and putting it in. Let’s not be crazy). I’m not sure why. But, for whatever reason, the transient joy of Pandora and Spotify have been rapidly eaten up in the realization that it’s work to put together pandora stations and spotify playlists just to recreate the albums that I own.
And maybe that’s it… I’m back to the stuff I own because I’m lazy. Heh. Go figure.
My little boy has been working his way through Dinosaur Train of late. (When I explained that we couldn’t go to a dinosaur zoo, because they were extinct, he was pretty heart broken.) I don’t pay a lot of attention once a show passes my initial “yeah, that’s not utter crap” test.
This morning, I thought I heard a dinosaur say eh. So, I stopped and paid attention. I found out that dinosaur train wasn’t just foisting standard dinosaur theory stuff on my boy, it was also doing a little Canadian indoctrination for me. Gotta love it!
With tongue in cheek and much thanks to my recent writing soundtrack, SNL – the 1990s:
I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.
- Stuart Smalley (played by Al Franken, who is now a senator)
My seven-month-old daughter, Grace, has decided to join me pretty early in the morning these past couple of days. Mornings have usually been the domain of her older brother and I. We have a pretty settled routine.
Grace is all about following her whims. As I write this, her joy over finding her ring stacker has switched to anger at it. And anger at her toes for not going easily in her mouth. But joy will come back again any moment. She’ll spot a stacking cup or a ring or something else she likes to play with, and all the frustration of the toes and ring stacker will be forgotten.
Obviously, I’m assigning import to her actions that she can’t. But, as I’ve watched her, I’ve been reminded of how my passions tend to run. I chase after whim. I do not set myself hard after any one thing. When obtaining the ring stacker becomes hard, I get frustrated. But it’s really just transitional frustration as I switch my hopes to something else.
I’ve always had great admiration for people who pursue a goal relentlessly. They are not subject to whim. And that’s not because their hearts don’t try, it’s because they’ve overcome the tendency to distraction.
I need to be more like that.
And one day, I will. Right after I try this new thing called…
dvice.com photo
I’ve got a place in my heart for watching how and when technology finally makes it over the border from the US to Canada. So, the launch of the Kindle Fire has been on my radar for a while. They’re not offering it in Canada yet, and they haven’t announced a date, but the Globe and Mail did a great job the other day of breaking down what the issues would be even if you could get a Kindle Fire in the Great White North today.
You can read the article at the link above, but I’ll give you the gist: the issue is content. While Amazon has streaming video rights in the USA that are starting to rival Netflix’s, the same can’t be said for the land of snow. The Globe writer makes the connection to Pandora’s struggles to get into the Canadian market. Apparently content licensing in Canada is just expensive.
So, if you’re ready to buy a tablet and you live in Canada, which one should you get? You’re in tablet limbo, honestly. You’ve got three main choices:
- The iPad 2. It’s the “best” option in terms of function and finish. It feels like a complete product. It’s great. It’s way expensive.
- Android based tablets. These range from the Galaxy Tab from Samsung to the Acer Iconia to the HTC Flyer and many more. Frankly, these are still better suited for a tech nerd like me than for the general population. Many of the apps available are just phone apps running a little bigger (and uglier). Where Apple has “helped” (encouraged… forced?) developers to optimize for the iPad, the Android market isn’t as far along in the tablet revolution. If you don’t like playing with setting and trying to make things work, this is probably not a great option, but it may be the most cost-effective one.
- Forthcoming Windows tablets. Now, I’m no huge microsoft fan, but we’re getting ready to see what Microsoft and its hardware partners can bring to the tablet world. I’m pretty sure it’s going to end up being the same mish-mash of options that exist on the Android side of things. But, if they can streamline things a little bit, they may make themselves the default number two option in Canada, at least until the Kindle Fire finally launches.
There you go, a quick tablet lesson.
Yep, totally typed that. Didn’t catch it for the first minute it was in front of me.
Some writer I am!
And it’s a good thing, too. My son is currently in love with a show called “All About Big Red Fire Engines” and I’ve never seen anything with such poor production quality in my life. They clearly did it all in one take. The kids who are visiting the fire station have the most insanely fake looking smiles plastered on their faces. Luke doesn’t notice. He’s far to interested in the fire engines to care about the production values applied to the video.
His tastes will probably change. He’ll laugh at cheesy things like this in the future. If we do a really good job, he’ll care about things like the quality of the visuals the filmmakers put together, the way the story is told, and the truths the story reflects. Right now, though, FIRE ENGINES!
Of course, this has happened in some ways for all of us. We’re all in process in some way. I grew up despising spicy food. In college, I started to like spicy food. Now, I love spicy food… well, some spicy food. When I was 10, coffee was awful. By the time I was 13, it was the best ever.
There’s hope for me yet on things like John Steinbeck (I’ve started Grapes of Wrath four times without ever making it more than half way), red wine, and bollywood films. Okay, maybe not bollywood films. I don’t know if I can come around on the ridiculous dance scenes. And that’s okay, too.
