Let me just say this . . . Birthing Bloo beta 2 has been an adventure. It’s such a huge change from the previous versions of Bloo. And I keep thinking of things to add, finding things to fix, and wondering when I am going to tie a bow on this and be done with this version!

Soon.

In the meantime, check out the bloggers in my Bloogroll. They’ve got some good stuff to say . . .

I’ve been working so hard on the 2nd beta release of Bloo that I haven’t made time to post anything for awhile.

But you can still find new content here, every day. How’s that, you say? Well, click on the “Bloogroll Posts” link in my navbar. The bloggers on my bloogroll are a lot more prolific than I am! Good stuff there.

I’ll be back soon . . .

Sorry for my absence – I’ve been working like a galley slave on the next version of Bloo. It’s got some cool stuff in it. Of course, it’s mainly cool only to me. But cool ne’ertheless.

There’s a possibility that I might release this new version over the next four days*, which, by the way, I have off from work. Weekends are cool. So is Martin Luther King day. So is PTO, which I’m taking on Tuesday. So is the fact that the Wikipedia article I just linked to is the first one I’ve ever written. I wonder if they’ll keep it out there?

Hopefully I’ll get back to posting soon. In the meantime, check out one of my other blogs, Thinklings. It’s enjoying a mini rennaisance these days, partly because nearly a month ago I stabilized it by [crass commercial] converting it to Bloo from WordPress. For some reason, it was running like a dog in molasses under WP, and crashing lots. It’s better now [/crass commercial], but thinklings is hopping more these days mainly because Bird is back! Man I’ve missed that guy.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

* Provided a miracle happens. There is a lot left to do on this one . . .

I have a blog!

There's a good reason why I haven't posted in a week.

And I'll let you know as soon as I think of it.

In the meantime:

Here's a picture of a monkey [hat tip, my post on Thinklings **]

(this is a Buffy-headed Marmoset)

** and how pathetic is it that I'm cross-posting this?

Very. . .

Sorry for the lack of posting the last few days. It's been a very busy week.

Some randomness for my three readers . . .

I’ve added Lone Prarie Art Works to the bloogroll. Julie has a great post on being invisible [hat tip and a complimentary carton of Amdro to the the Gazette]

The gestalt happened in the aisle with the pasta and sauces. I was trying to decide which pasta sauce to select, always and irritatingly the slow and deliberate shopper. As I stood there, deciding and weighing possible selections’ pros and cons, two college guys walked into the aisle and stopped behind me, talking.

“Here, hold the basket.”

“It’s your stuff.”

“No, hold it. I don’t want to be seen holding it if some hot chick were around.”

If some hot chick were around.

I appreciated the moment as only a rather mousy, life-long wallflower can. In case a hot chick were around, the toilet paper in the shopping basket would be detriment. However, if some decrepit 32-year-old were around, it would be fine. Though I’ve never thought of myself as hot, I did assume I existed. Not that I want to exist for everyone — who needs that burden? — but it just struck me as oddly funny, that I didn’t happen to exist at that moment for that category. It was the answer, I suppose, to the question I think we all wonder secretly: what do I look like or seem like to other people? My friend’s father had it right when he said that we’d probably all be offended if we realized how little other people were thinking of us, particularly since the driving force for stupidity in humanity is the concern over what others will think.

All this, in front of Newman’s Own Tomato and Garlic sauce.

Ever been invisible?

She takes great photos as well as writing some great blog.

Jared continues to write eloquently on the scandal of grace, here tackling the parable known as the parable of the prodigal son:

It gets tricky here, because I think the vast majority of us never put ourselves in the place of the older brother. He’s always someone else. Somebody, to be sure, probably somebody we know. But not us. We are either the repentant prodigal or the grace-giving father, but we dang well know the resentful brother is that fundamentalist at work or that TV preacher we can’t stand or some relative who ruins every family reunion. There’s millions of them out there — but none of them is us. Right?

The truth, however, and this is when the scandal gets most scandalous, is that we are the older brother more often than not. Here’s the litmus test: Ever angry about somebody not getting what you think they deserve? Ever resent that someone seems to have it easier than you? Ever think someone asking for forgiveness got it too easily? Are you constantly seeing lots of people as messed up, screwed up, or wrong, but don’t worry too much about if you are?

Do you point the finger a lot? It doesn’t matter why, and you may be calling someone a legalist or thinking you’re calling them the older brother, but I got news for you — it’s you. (It’s me too!)

Bob quotes from Frederick Buechner:

“We are fools for Christ’s sake,” Paul says in the first letter to the Corinthians. God is foolish, too, Paul says. God is foolish to choose for his holy work in the world the kind of lamebrains and misfits and nitpickers and odd ducks and stuffed shirts and egomaniacs and milquetoasts and closet sensualists as are vividly represented by us all.

God is foolish to send us out to speak hope to a world that slogs along heart-deep in the conviction that things can only get worse. . . . He is foolish to have us speak of loving our enemies when we have a hard enough time loving our friends. . . . God is foolish to have us proclaim eternal life to a world that is half in love with death. . . . God is foolish to send us out on a journey for which there are no maps, and to aim us in the direction of a goal we can never know until we get there. Such is the foolishness of god. And yet, and yet, Paul says, “the foolishness of God is wiser than man.”

Well said.

The blogosphere has lost some of its pizazz lately, don’t you think? In a way, I think that’s a good thing. And – don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot of great writing going on out there.

I don’t trackback like I should. Too lazy. And I don’t check links back to me very often. I’m becoming a blog-hermit.

In case you’re wondering why the Bloogroll Posts feature sometimes splatters portions of posts everywhere on the screen, it’s because of unclosed tags (or overly-closed tags) in the posts I’m bringing in off the bloogroll. Yeah, it’s on the list to fix – will be in the beta release.

Happy Birthday Andrew! I love you. And I can’t believe you’re seventeen.

And, finally, yes, I’m working hard on the first beta release of Bloo. I’m doing a huge refactoring of the code.

I must be crazy.

Oh yeah . . . I have a blog!

Note to my three readers: I’m still around. I just have very few mental cycles to devote to blogging.

Hope to rev back up in the next few days!

I have been so busy reading the Bloogroll posts on this blog that I forgot I’m supposed to be writing posts too.

Oh well, inspiration will come soon, I hope. In the meantime, you can read my review of Lady in the Water here.

In addition, Bloo version 9 is done, finally. I’ll be posting the release notes on the Bloo Development Blog soon. The next release of this thing will be Beta. I’m giddy.

Have a great day!

Sorry for the lack of posting these last few days. But my three readers should not despair: Life has been good and busy, that’s all.

Our church is getting ready for our White Christmas/Christmas Cafe event this weekend. I am playing bass in the Cafe Band, so I’m practicing quite a bit (and a lot of it is jazz! Yikes!), and we’ve been rehearsing late into the night recently. This year my son Andrew is also playing electric guitar on a Christmas Cafe song – O Holy Night – with the high school worship band. I think that’s pretty cool.

My wife and our other three are also busy. It’s Christmas for crying out loud! Of course we’re running in fifteen different directions! 🙂

I’ve been working on Bloo version 0.18 – it is a Major Step Forward*! I’m getting close to public domain release – probably by version 0.20, I think. I’m definitely feeling the wind in my hair on this one.

And now, some tasty links my three readers might enjoy:

Jared has written a review of the new Narnia movie.

Dan posts some advice for how churches should accomodate us introverts

Jen has a cold. Get well, Jen!

Jared is taking another break to finish his third (!) novel. I, on the other hand, am still stalled on my first. Chapter six, you are the bane of my existence! [Bill shakes his fist at chapter six]. I really, really want to get to chapter eight because it’s really good (well, I think so at least); it has this nifty scene with Daniel and Toni in a Mexican restaurant that I wrote a couple of years ago. Yeah, it’s been that long. Lots of things have intruded.

Charlie at Another Think has some interesting things to say about .

And, finally, Woohoo! BlestWithSons won!.

Have a great night, everyone.

* Major Step Forward = lots of changes in areas of the blog plumbing that you can’t see and won’t notice. But trust me, they are cool!