What an amazing gift God has blessed us with. Our family in the Philippines now has land. According to Mimi there is a huge mango tree on the property. We are really excited and can't wait to go again in the next couple of years.
From time to time I will make sure to do a movie review. One of the best Jesus movies I've ever watched is entitled the "Gospel of John." It is word for word the book of John. So inspiring, I've watched this movie over and over again. Get out and support the Visual Bible International group by purchasing this movie at Best Buy.
It's amazing how much goes into digital recording. I've been playing around with creating an original Christmas song. The timing on the keyboard tracks has to be perfect otherwise the drum parts can get thrown off. I'm having a lot of fun. The technology is amazing, I'm using Magix Music Maker deluxe and a Lexicon Alpha for the instrument inputs. I couldn't believe the effects you can add to your guitar parts. I played a little riff and used some of the 3D audio tools and the quality sounded like something out of the studio. I bought my Yamaha keyboard at Best Buy which has 500+ realistic pads.
It's been over 2 months since my last cup of coffee. It's amazing how the mind can wire itself to become so dependent on it. I was spending an upward of $6 a day. When I felt the slightest bit tired I would make a coffee run. I started to realize that my spending was out of control and health wise I didn't need all the caffeine. I noticed that within 2-3 hours, I would find myself tired again after purchasing a 16oz latte.There is no substitute for water. I noticed that my energy levels pick up when I stay hydrated.
When traveling to the Philippines last August, it really struck me how independant we are as a Americans. Mimi's 3 sisters and brother all live together in the same home. I couldn't even begin to image how difficult it would be if they all lived in their own separate households. Working and living together makes a lot of sense. Just think how well off families in American would be if they adopted a similiar lifestyle. Most rents have skyrocketed to 800-1500 per month. Let's pretend that we took Mimi's now lives in the US. The same size house here would cost them roughly $1200/month. If they all contributed to the rent they would end up paying $240 each. It's unreal as americans that we can afford to live on our own. Gas price are almost $4 a gallon, the dollar dropping in value, and house prices are way overvalued in my opinion. Living the communal lifestyle makes a lot of sense. Think of what families could achieve as a team. That $250,000 would be easy to afford.
In the Philippines I really had quite the revelation. Going from Island to island we sailed on a small canoe-like boat called a pump boat. Unlike a canoe, you sit on top of it instead of inside of it. You are so close to the water you can touch it. As we were returning from the island, the waves started to pick up as the dark clouds stood in horizon. There were times when the waves really started to shaking things up. At that time, the realization that my life could be taken at any time set in. It goes to shows how much God really is in control and we're not. At that same moment, I remember looking at the beach on the other side and having faith that God will see me through. Something I just thought of tonight is Peter had a similar experience when Jesus greeted Him on the water. It was faith that saw them through.
After 3 days of waiting for a response from the incesoft message board, I was able to get the answer I was looking. I was finally able to get my sample MSN Messenger robot to say hello. Met my new little creation. Pretty soon you will be able to talk with him. WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I TALKING ABOUT? We'll for the longest time now I've always been curious about creating a program you can interact with, similiar to AI (artificial intelligence) but without the 50 year overhead that goes along with building a system like that. I have always thought it would be wonderful to have a christian chat program you can interact with that could encapsulate an encouraging spirit. To my amazement I came across a new contest Microsoft is putting out called, Invasion of the Robots Contest. This contest offers you 3 software development kits that you can chose from that allow you to make chat robots directly in MSN. I was so excited when I saw it! This is something I've wanted to do forever and they are even giving away prizes for the best robot! Now that the chat environment is working on my computer, I am going to start developing my dream robot. For more info on chat robots download MSN Messenger and click on the Robot tab. I will update this blog with my progress.
I'm back from Palm Springs. What an awesome experience. God is doing great things there. The population is continually increasing over the last few years. I visited Champion Center www.championlifechurch.com . What a great church! I really love the area down there. The weather was so beautiful. I was really suprised to see snow peaked mountains in Southern California! It would be a dream moving down there. We will see where God leads us. The only thing that would be a challenge are the 120 degree summer months.
An interesting thing happened to us on Sunday. We took the busline to Tacoma this weekend which is about an hour and half away. We were so confused on how to get to my brother's house so we had him pick us up. We stayed the night in Tacoma and woke up early the next morning to catch a bus. The weird thing is we had no idea how to get back to Olympia. We totally felt stranded as the morning breeze started to kick in. Here I am in my shorts, it's Sunday and not one bus in sight. What was amazing is that I told Mimi, "We'll lets walk down aways and see if we can find more bus info." As we were walking we saw this guy standing at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere. I went up to him and asked him how to get downtown to Tacoma. He asked me, "Hey where are you going?" I told him, "Olympia." He said to my amazement, "That is where I am going!" What are the chances that someone on a Sunday morning at 8:00 would be going to the same destination 1 hour 30 minutes away. He was great, he actually showed us all of the routes and got us home. He was definately a God sent as we had no clue where to go.
Life has been so good, some new opprotunities have been surfacing. My dream has always been starting a web business and being able to hire and help people. We will see what happens. Anyways God is good. Till next time.
