The Contender

This has been a pretty cool trip. I've met a lot of people, and got to hand out with Pastor Bennett as well. MattRat and I have hung out a lot on this trip. Our rental car is a Chevy Malibu, and we've tweaked the sound system to compete with the local "gangstas". Last night, we all went over to chill with Casey's family. His mom (Miss Connie) made some Crawfish Et'toufe. So, for the first time in my life, I had crawfish. It really wasn't that bad. They prepared it well, so it wasn't fishy tasting at all. After dinner, we headed over to Scott Hornsby's house... which is where The Contender comes into the picture. You see, Bro. Hornsby is a former boxer... so he was quite into the show. Since I don't have cable, I haven't been able to keep up with the show too well. But I do like it. Back to Bro. Hornsby... he just built a brand new church building that costed 2.3 million dollars, and didn't even have a church. He built the building in faith, and now they're running about 600 members. The building is fine too. They have a Starbucks INSIDE their church... how cool is that?! I want a Starbucks in the church building that we don't have yet.

Sittin' at CCs...

Yo! I'm chillin' at a coffee shoppe in Baton Rouge, LA called CCs. Our staff is down here for a few days for an ARC conference. It's been pretty cool... I've seen Pastor Rick Bezet and Pastor Bennett Smith (that was a surprise!). It was around 95 degrees today and the humidity was cuh-razy! The conference is at Healing Place Church. Definitely a cool church. They've only been around for about 12 years; and are doing real well. They have one of the best graphic teams that I've seen a church have. Evidently, there was a HUGE storm that rolled through Northwest Arkansas last night. Sabrina was really freaked out. She told me that there was like 80mph wind gusts.

Star Wars: Episode III

I'm going to the 1:30pm showing of Star Wars: Episode III today. I think this is the first time I've ever been to an "opening day" showing. We're getting to the theater at 12:45pm to hopefully get a good seat. I think that this will probably be the best one (aside from the originals). Let's hope. From the footage that i saw on the video game... it looks like it should be good. For your viewing pleasure... Anakin Dynamite

Still awake.

In order to cure my "sleeping until 11:00AM"... I thought I would try staying up all night and all the following day. I figure if I stayed up (which I've done), and continued on as normal on Tuesday (today)... I would be so tired, that I would go to bed earlier, and maybe wake up and a decent time on Wednesday. Thus, my experiment continues. It's 6:38AM now, and I'm a little sleepy... but doing pretty good. I have to say, it's been a long time since I've seen this hour of the morning (not including Sundays). I was planning on going for a hike after our staff meeting today... but I don't think I'll be doing that now. I have to take Kafka to the "groomers" at 9AM; then I have a staff meeting at 10AM; then have to pick Kafka up at 1PM. I should probably eat something in there somewhere. I'm working on re-designing Faded Me's website. It's not going to change too much, since they really like the layout of it. Just a change in colors more or less. It will have a bit of a different feel to it.

I support...

Although I cannot grow one... I support it.

Summertime Blog.

It's getting warm now. 80s & 90s down here in Arkansas. So I decided to dedicate my blog to "summertime". Thanks to Ken at AV Club for the background image of my new header. You're doing some great work. I think I may have found a group of people to play some paintball with. Yay! We might play this weekend.

Bob Ross can't touch me.

This Saturday, Sabrina and I painted our kitchen and our hallway. Sabrina says that I'm a sloppy painter... maybe so, but it got done. I will say that it looks better. The walls were very dirty. I had a meeting yesterday with another church in Rogers that had gotten the Keypoint mailer and was interested in getting our input in starting a church. This church is a very traditional church that is launching a "less traditional" service on Sunday nights. It going to be held in a different section of the church building, so they are viewing it basically as a church plant. So anyway, Casey talked to them about me doing all the design work for Keypoint... so they wanted to talk to me. Well, this pastor is really into something called "Emerging Worship"... evidently it's some kind of hybrid of traditionalism and contemporary styles of doing church. If you want to research it... go for it. I may be doing their logo and they want to do a mailer... so that could be some cashflow for me. Although I want to help them plant the best church I can... at the same time I just want to keep this business oriented. I'm just the designer. I can't handle brainstorming ANOTHER church plant. I rented Star Wars III: Return of the Sith for PS2. I would have to say it's impossible to beat without cheating. Oh yes, I cheated.

The "Big Disk".

I finally talked Casey into letting me buy an external hard drive. Why do I need an external hard drive, you ask? Backing up. If my computer goes down, Keypoint Church is screwed for that week.... at least as far as video goes. So yeah... now I have a 400GB external, three-interface, hard drive. It has USB, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800. For most, you might think 400GB is overkill... well, not for me. My iMac G5 has 250GB, and I was down to around 80GB --- and we're only 12 weeks into building this church! So 400GB is good for me. I would have bought a terrabyte... but they're still a little expensive. I went with the LaCie brand, because they seem to work really well with Macs and last a long time. So now, my total hard drive space is: 650GB

"Awesome." - Josh (after opening his new 400GB External Hard Drive)

Another Monday.

This past weekend was an interesting one. Friday night, our staff (Casey, MattRat, Carlos, Kenny, and myself) had a hangout night together. It really wasn't all that exciting. We went down to UofA (University of Arkansas) to this event where one of Casey's friends from HPC was speaking. After seeing that dude, we headed to the local Embassy Suites Hotel... a really nice 4-star hotel. Having experienced this hotel... I would've rather just stayed home. No wireless internet service in the room. Pathetic coffee. No History Channel or Discovery Channel. I mean, seriously... what the crap are we paying for?! I thought about going down to the sauna... but after Carlos told us that he used to pee on the rocks when he was a kid; I decided against it. So anyway, MattRat and I, being the late-night (early morning) people that we are... we stayed up until 3AM watching some freaky movie. He went to sleep. I decided that I wanted to talk to Sabrina... so I called her three or four times in a row, waking her up of course. I finally got her on the phone... and we talked for about an hour and a half. It seems that we have the best conversations when we are on the phone at ridiculous hours of the night. That morning, our staff had some "talk time" over breakfast... and that was good. In other news... I bought a Moleskine. And I've been reading a book. It's called "God's Armour Bearer" by Terry Nance. What's happening to me?!