Well, I was out of the house for almost the entire day yesterday, and I didn’t have my friend’s CLIÉ to write from, so I was in between a rock and a hard place as far as making a blog entry was concerned. Hopefully two entries today will make up for it.

Yesterday was the day after Thanksgiving. For American consumers, that’s a holiday in and of itself, because it means one thing: bargains! Or at least we think it means bargains. Neither Steph nor I had previously gone shopping on the Shoppingest Day of the Year, so we decided to give it a shot and see what it was all about.

The first thing we learned is that if you can take public transportation to get there, do it. Getting to the mall took us at least two or three times longer than it would on any other normal day. Off-ramps from the highway were backed up at least half a mile into the highway itself. We went a roundabout way in hopes of saving time, and we might have saved a little, but not much. Once we got to the actual mall, the parking lots were blocked off here and there with orange cones, police were directing traffic, and it was chaos. They should have had a gigantic glowing neon sign that hung over the entire mall that said, “No parking here. Forget about it,” so everyone knew what they were getting into before they arrived. We parked a couple blocks away in a residential area (not a unique idea, judging by the number of cars parked in the otherwise-quiet neighborhood) and walked in.

Inside the mall it was equally as chaotic as it was outside. Everywhere you went, you were surrounded by the sound of people walking and talking and laughing. The sound of bags crinkling against other bags. The sound of cash registers. Honestly though, it wasn’t all that noticeable until you exited the mall again. Walking back to the car along a busy street (a busy street) I actually remarked, “Wow, it’s quiet out here.” That made me realize how loud it had been in the mall.

We got some good bargains at The Gap, and I got Steph’s gift for Christmas, so all went well in that regard. It seemed that nearly every store had a special deal going on, but I’m not sure the deal was exclusive to that particular day. I think most stores had deals that went at least to the 1st of December, so I’m not sure that there really was an advantage of going there on that particular day. But it was an experience.

Warning: I’m about to sound a lot like Kevin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 🙂

I think that the consumerism of America poses some problems. My dad and I were talking last week, and he mentioned a passage in Revelations 18 that reminds me all too much of America. The verses after the ones I’m quoting are also interesting, but they are another discussion altogether. Revelations 18:1 – 3 say this:

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted:
“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Honestly, if that’s not America, I don’t know what is. We are the only nation on Earth that could so effectively spend an entire day being thankful for what we have, and counting our blessings, and then go out the very next day and spend huge amounts of money because we simply don’t have enough. And I’m a part of that. And so are you.

Here’s where it becomes a sticky wicket. I’m often tempted to tell people not to celebrate Christmas. Not the people who believe it Christ. Obviously Christmas is nothing of not the celebration of the birth of Jesus. But the people who would answer “What is Christmas?” with something like, “It’s a time when we can get together and be thankful for our friends and family, and remember that it’s important to love one another.” I’m sorry, but that is not at all what Christmas is about. If you want a holiday for that, make a Thanksgiving II and be done with it. But don’t taint and water down my savior’s birthday.

PS> We’re keeping the Christmas tree. Those things are so cool!

I’m writing this entry wirelessly on a Sony CLIÉ. That’s enough to be thankful for right there, even if it’s not mine. Honestly, I’m trying not to sound trite here, but God has blessed me more than I could ever deserve. I have an amazing, beautiful wife (try not to agree too vociferously), I love my job, I’ve got a bunch of creative opportunities coming my way, and when you count the forgiveness of Christ in that list, I’m ridiculously “lucky.”

I also want all of you to know how thankful I am to count you as my friends. I think of you guys all the time, and I miss you all every day. I’m thankful that I have such great friends and family to come home to over Christmas. I’m looking forward to seeing you all in less than a month!

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a dog park, it’s basically a big, fenced-in area where dog owners can take their little buddies to romp and play outside and off leash without worrying that their dog will be unwelcome. (Dogs Gone Wild!)

There’s a dog park near our house that Steph and I have been going to recently. The folks that built it were actually considerate enough to create two separate fenced-in areas: one for big dogs, and one for little dogs. I can tell that Henson yearns to go cause disturbances in the big dog area, but there’s no way we’re bringing him in there.

The interesting thing we’ve noticed as we watch Henson (“The Grandmaster”) walk around (Note: he does not run) is that he actually prefers to keep to himself. He doesn’t do the thing that many other dogs do where they buzz alongside each other and clash and roll and yip and circle. He certainly has his moments where he smells another dog, but that’s about it. He prefers to walk along by himself, smelling the ground and watching other dogs from a safe distance while looking longingly at the German Shepherds, Rottweilers, and American Bulldogs on the other side of the fence. I’m certain he’s thinking something like, “When I get over there, I will rule them all!” If another small dog comes up to him, he’ll allow it to smell him briefly, and then he’ll turn and bare his teeth and try to chase it away.

When Steph saw that, she said, “Dang it! My dog behaves like a home-schooled kid!” I’m not totally sure I understand what that means, but I’ve got a few guesses.

I’ve said in past entries that I’m becoming much more serious about web design, as you may recall. I think the Net is going to have a second wave of prosperity in the near future (beginning in the next one to three years probably), and I think that wave will be due to the increasing popularity of using standards (CSS, XHTML, etc.) to create powerful, beautiful websites without messy, overly-verbose code. As long as the browsers of the world can keep up, which in every case but Internet Explorer’s I think they can, we’ll have a lot of happy authors and a lot of happy viewers/readers/users out there.

But enough about my ivory-tower idealism. Steph heard that there was an opportunity to create a website for the Cupertino Education Association, and she told me about it. We then thought about the fact that Steph has a good amount of knowledge of the inner-workings of the CEA, a newfound love of webpage authoring, and an advanced sense of aesthetics. We realized that when those skills are combined, nay, welded to my knowledge of PHP, MySQL, CSS, and webpage layout, a gargantuan machine of a webmaster emerges, resplendent in the glory of its own untapped potential. Within its furious roar the zen of the web lays, unmolested.

So we made a webpage and showed it to them. They really liked it so they’re paying us to make the site. It’s not a huge sum of money, mind you. But I guess this makes us professional website authors now. So that’s pretty cool. I just wanted to share that fact with you all so you could wave your tiny flags and throw streamers and confetti, or something.

I’ll show it to you when it’s ready. It’s not yet ready.

The Geek Factory

Today as I was leaving my house, I saw a really beautiful cherry-red antique roadster pass by. It was the kind where they lift the flaps on either side of the engine, and you can see it glistening in all its perfectly-polished chrome glory. And a couple seconds later, an orange one following behind it. And a couple seconds later, a yellow one. And then I noticed they all had “funeral” stickers in their front windshields. Then I saw a bright purple one. I didn’t have time to wait any longer to see how many more there were, but the fact that they were driving in the order of the colors of the rainbow is pretty fricking cool. Dang, I wish I had my camera with me.

The burning question that remains in my mind is Who died? Honestly, who has friends with color-coded antique hot-rods that love them so much that they drive them in order for your funeral procession? Or, more specifically, who has a close friend or relative who would arrange that for their relative/friend’s funeral? I would love to know who that guy/gal was.