Ed Buford - Just Another Geek

Remembering Bobby Fischer

I was sad to hear that Bobby Fischer died yesterday (Jan 17th 2008). He was one of my childhood heroes. I remember watching the televised event of his match with Boris Spassky in 1972, he was simply amazing. It's strange to think I've outlived most of my heroes......

Pix and Clips

Here are some pix and clips I've taken from the past few days: 

Three church leaders arrested in China.

In China three women were arrested for gathering together in an “unofficial church”. The punishment for this can often be up to three years in a prison camp.
It’s good to live in a country were we can still worship without government intervention. You can read more about this here:

Leadership Summit

Yes it’s been awhile since my last post, but until now my blog has been all about Geek stuff and I just haven’t posted stuff outside the geek world. So this post and future posts will change up the way I use this blog. ‘nough said.

Today is was the second day of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

Granger Community Church is a satellite site for the Leadership Summit and since I’m staff I got the privilege to sit through it. There are always great speakers at the Summit and I’m always challenged by the content.

So far I’ve been challenged by Andy Stanley who reminded me that my family has to be first in my life and that God will take care of everything else.

Bono reminded me that it’s my job to feed the poor and Nicole C. Mullen brought tears to my eyes as she sang I know my redeemer lives.

What a wonderful event!

49 in dog years, 150 in dot com startup years

Google Turns seven today.

I remember using Google from nearly the beginning. I’ve watched it grow from caching half a million web pages to nearly nine billion. Google has been my personal research assistant and has helped me earn a living for many years now. Google has managed to keep a clean straightforward interface without sidebars popups or any other stupid stuff that the rest of the search engines have fallen into. I appreciate the way they have set out to be the best search engine and have done it without accosting me when I come to their site.

Happy Birthday Google and thanks for seven fun years.

Late Night TV

I rebroke my already broken foot, so I find myself on the couch watching TV. Now I know there are many times I wish I could just hang out and watch TV; but I don’t like being forced to do anything… or nothing as the case may be. So here I am on the couch flipping through the channels at 1:00am and I happen upon a documentary of this guy who was tired of body piercing and tattoos (of which he had many) and was going for something new. New in this case consisted of getting shot… no I’m not kidding. He paid this “Artist” $500 bucks to put a round in his shoulder. I was revolted but I just couldn’t seem to turn away; so in disbelief I watched on.

The “Artist” is a guy in this clean looking garage with a large Craftsman Toolbox (full of guns as it turns out). He talks to this “customer” (if you will) about where he’ll place the bullet and what kind of gun he’ll use. After they decide on .38 special, then they decide to go for a hollow point round to help make a larger exit wound.

He positions the “customer” in an old barber chair, gives him eye and ear protection and tells him he’ll shoot him at the count of three. The “customer” agrees and “Artist” counts one and then fires (which I think is a brilliant idea). Then the put him in an awaiting ambulance and pays the driver.

The “Artist” returns to the camera laughing, and tries to stop laughing in front of the camera and talks about his “Art” and that someday his “Art” will be accepted.

I wish I had words to express how sad watching this made me feel. I could not help feel that this one young man represented a greater sector of our society who feel they need to express themselves in such drastic ways. It’s really sad because the hole they think they are filling up can’t be filled with stuff, tattoos, piercings, or bullets.  There is a God size hole in each of us and we can’t fill it with anything but God or we’ll never be satisfied.