This post is mostly for family members and friends: if you’re looking for our baby registry, unfortunately Babies ‘R Us doesn’t have a function to directly link to the registry. So here’s what you need to do to find it:
Our son is due to arrive on or around August 29th. 🙂
Until the truth comes out about Concrete Equities, this is about the hardest that the news media can be on them, but it should be more than enough to give potential investors significant pause. If you’re an investor with Concrete Equities and you don’t know what’s going on, you need to read this discussion thread. If you need to contact in touch with the person on point for your property, please email me and I’ll connect you.
He doesn’t take himself too seriously. I dig that. Life is too short to be a prima-donna musician.
If you happen to be a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed I haven’t been updating it as much lately. Part of the reason is that I’ve jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and am doing the 140-character micro-blogging thing. If you look to the right of this message you’ll see a Twitter box that has all of my recent tweets. If you want to know what’s up with me, you can check out what’s inside that box. Or if you’re a Twitter user, feel free to follow me. I follow a small number of people and read everything they post, so I’m a bit different than the average Twitter user – that means I might not follow you back. It’s nothing personal. There are some Twitter to WordPress plug-ins, but I’m not sure if I want to “spam” my Web site with digests of my tweets, so for now, they’ll remain collected in the side-bar widget.
Paul Brandt (Wikipedia) is a country artist, and for many, many years I really disliked country. I probably even said that I hated country music when I was in my 20’s. Sometime in my early 30’s, I started to enjoy some country music. One of the key artists to re-shape my feelings about country music was Paul Brandt. I really liked his music because it wasn’t the twangy “My dog got run over by a truck” stuff I thought of as being typically country. The first album I bought by Paul Brandt was This Time Around, his 2004 release. I liked it, and picked up a few more of his albums – and I discovered a song that blew me away, completely and totally: When You Call My Name.
To quote from this song, “the way that it moves me, it’s simply amazing”. Just like “World’s Apart” by Jars of Clay, this song impacted me in a big way when I first heard it, and it still does today. First, it’s live – the whole album it’s from, Small Town and Big Dreams, is live. Live music has a…realness that studio music can often lack. It’s raw, it’s pure, and it’s real (assuming there aren’t a rack of pitch-correctors back-stage). Paul Brandt’s voice is powerful, pure, and very real. I’ve heard him sing live (sadly, not this song), and his voice really does sound that good. Next, layer on some great playing/singing by the band, especially the background vocalists – one of which I think is his wife, Elizabeth. There’s also a male background vocalist that adds some great texture to the song. There are wonderful harmonies layered everywhere in this song – it’s amazing to sing along with – and some phenomenal mandolin and bass playing.
For me, the real power though is in the words. Music is poetry put to melody, and like all poetry, the interpretation is often left up to the reader or listener. When I close my eyes and listen to this song, I hear the cry of the created to the Creator. I hear the ache of a spirit, once broken, made whole. I hear the gasp of amazement from a soul who hears his name spoken from the lips of Eternity. I hear the tears of joy falling on a face of someone who’s been forgiven, head tilted upward toward Pure Love. When You call my name.
[you can listen to the entire song here]
Give me a moment
To try and explain it
And how it has changed
The man that I am
Life has a way
When you try to arrange it
Of makin’ a fool
Of the best laid plans
Guess what I’m tryin’ to say
Is you took me by surprise
One word is all that it takes
And forever’s on my mind
It happens every time
I hear the sweetest sound
My world stops turnin’ round
Like I’m on Holy Ground
When you call my name
It sets the sky on fire
Burning with my desire
Stronger deeper higher
When you call my name
The way that it moves me
It’s simply amazing
Yeah somehow it seems
Much bigger than words
When you call my name
Angels start singing
The most beautiful sound
That I’ve ever heard
And it starts all over again
This feeling deep inside
A blessed chain of events
A heaven sent desire
It happens every time
I hear the sweetest sound
My world stops turnin’ round
Like I’m on Holy Ground
When you call my name
It sets the sky on fire
Burning with my desire
Stronger deeper higher
When you call my name
When you call my name
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh
When you call my name
Ooooooooohhhh
It happens every time
I hear the sweetest sound
My world stops turnin’ round
Like I’m on Holy Ground
When you call my name
It sets the sky on fire
Burning with my desire
Stronger deeper higher
When you call my name
I hear the sweetest sound
My world stops turnin round
Like I’m on Holy Ground
(call my name)
When you call my name
It sets the sky on fire
Burning with my desire
Stronger deeper higher
When you call my name
Last night I had one of the most unpleasent dining experience in my entire life, and I’m creating this entry solely for the sake of someone Googling the name of the restaurant (Il Centro in Calgary, Alberta) and perhaps finding this blog entry. I won’t go into the boring details, but the short version is that the pizza is really tasty, but the restaurant staff is awful.
The one female waitress that was working last night was incredibly rude and gave us terrible service throughout our visit. The food was excellent – we tried the Calamari and three different types of pizza – but I’d never step foot back in that place again. It was insufferably hot even though it was cool outside, and we were completely ignored until I caught the waitress and asked if we could order – and she looked at me like I was a stranger on the street accosting her. My advice? If you’re interested in tasting the food at Il Centro in Calgary, order take out. Their pizza is great, but it’s not worth the awful dining experience required to get it.
I saw this video over on Engadget and thought it was worth posting – it’s just too funny. First, it amazes me that journalists wouldn’t put their phones in vibrate mode out of simple courtesy. Secondly, to have it happen over and over again, without the other journalists in the room taking that as a sign to check their own phone is almost incomprehensible. And that guy at the end…I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something that rude happen on TV recently. It’s no wonder the Press Secretary rarely lasts for more than two years – talk about a tough job.
As I watch the season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, I thought it might be fun to make some point-form notes about what I think about the show and the people on the show (without getting mean…well, too mean). And, spoiler alert, you don’t want to look at this post if you haven’t watched the finale yet. Unfortunately I managed to ruin the surprise of who won for myself earlier today, but I’m still interested in how it all plays out. Here goes:
UPDATE: I forgot to mention perhaps the most important thing about watching this show…that video editors can put things together to tell whatever story they want. Something to keep in mind when you watch any reality TV show – what you’re seeing is an edited version of what actually happened, often with heavy bias from the editor toward maximizing the drama of the scene.
So…the new Star Trek movie. What to say…what to say. By now most of the hardcore Trek fans will have seen it and will have their own opinions about it. Myself, I really enjoyed it. What’s worth saying to all the non-hardcore fans is that this movie is unique amongst all the previous Star Trek movies in that it’s not a springboard from a TV show. Yes, the characters are the same, but the actors are not, and as such the movie is quite approachable and stands on its own as a solid action movie. There are many nods to the characters created by Gene Roddenberry, and certainly Trek fans who know the lore inside and out will find much to enjoy here, but unlike basically every other Star Trek movie, you don’t need to have a deep knowledge of Trek to enjoy what’s put in front of you. On one hand, I’m sad to see the old Trek fade away – I thought that Star Trek: Enterprise was killed off too soon, and I was hoping for one more Star Trek: The Next Generation movie. On the other hand, this is an exciting re-imagining of the Star Trek universe that breathes life into the wheezing carcass of a franchise that had all but sputtered out, at least in the minds of the general public. Whether or not this evolves into a series of movies that would make Gene Roddenberry proud has yet to be seen, but at the very least this new crew is bringing Star Trek to a new generation of movie-goers. Live long and prosper!
I thought this video was too funny not to share – and anyone that has a brother will know exactly what I’m talking about.