04.21.06
Posted in culture, blogvention, life at 3:29 pm by Brandon
This entry isn’t intended to have a theme, per se. Just some thoughts that’ve been rolling around as I’ve attended the Festival of Faith and Writing.
The first session I went to was a session on New Media. I was extremely disappointed in this session. Basically, a bunch of hip young morons and new media folks from Zondervan sat around and told us how to use blogs and websites to market our writing. I felt like I needed a shower to wash off the Zondervan schmooze fest that I sat through. It turns out that I’m really turned off by the idea of writing being so commercial, surprise, surprise. In the end, I think that I came to the belief that Zondervan is, corporately, the anti-christ. Or, at very least that the Zondervan logo might just be the mark of the beast.
Craig Gross, the triple-x church guy was there, too. It seems he’s got two new books out that talk about porn. He kept wagging his mouth about “his ministry.” Now, I’m fine with the triple-x church anti-porn message. I may be a bad Christian, but I’m no friend of porn.
What really turned me off, though, was the idea that Craig shared that when you have a website that generates content, and you want to be an author of print media, too, you need to hold some content back from your website. Sorry Craig, but what you’ve described can in no way be considered a ministry any longer. What you’re talking about is running a for-profit business–you’re now not trying to help people with a porn problem. Now the goal is to use people with a porn problem to generate income. The fact that this gets lauded as “holy” is fucked up.
The fact that Zondervan uses this tactic to make money from all sorts of people is doubly fucked up.
I have, alternatively, seen some other really cool authors. For example, humorists Tom Mullen and Phil Gulley, were a hoot to listen to. I bought two of Phil’s books, and one of Tom’s books. I’ll let you know how they are, but I’d strongly recommend you check them out. Phil has a series called the “Harmony Novels” which are about his experience as a Quaker pastor in midwest America. My wife is currently reading one of the books and chortling as I write this…it must be good.
The blogvention event happened last night. A few of us gathered and chatted at a local bar. I met Meg from Bridget Jones Goes To Seminary in real life. I knew I’d like Meg, and it turned out that I wasn’t wrong. My friend Kate from Evangelical Expatriate and her husband Nate (who, like my wife, is a self-proclaimed luddite) was there, too. Our good friends Kari and James were there, as were new friends Rob and Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma from Culture is not Optional. It was a pretty low-key setting for the blogvention festivities, but we had a nice time nonetheless. We chatted about life, etc.
Today in the mail I got a package with the book The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren. I got an email a few days ago from a publicist for McLaren who asked if I’d be willing to do a book review on the blog, here. I thought, “Heck, if I can weasel a free book out of the situation, why not?” So I’ll be working on that.
I ran across two fascinating blogs recently. They speak for themselves. They are Sh-Out the chronicle of a pastor’s wife whose husband recently came out of the closet, and The Accidental Christian, a related chronicle of the pastor and husband of 20 years who revealed to his wife that he was, in fact, gay. Friends, honesty like you find on those blogs is rare in these here parts. Don’t take it for granted!
Finally, not to make a huge deal out of this, but I’m thinking of not blogging here anymore. I’m not looking for a crapload of comments that say either, “It’s about damn time you quit” or “No, don’t stop.” I’m just getting to the point where I’m a little tired of getting into fights about things, receiving unrequested criticism, etc. I doubt my ability to quit blogging cold turkey; I’ll probably be around. I just won’t be blogging here anymore. When will this happen? I don’t know. Probably sometime after I finish the McLaren review, and one other project to be named in the future. I’m sure more announcements about this will follow.
Thanks for listening!
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04.17.06
Posted in grad school at 11:24 am by Brandon
Note: For the uninitiated, SPSS is a statistical analysis program that allows users to crunch statistical data. It has been particularly developed for the social sciences, thus the name Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.
Dear SPSS creators,
You are truly dispicable people.
You know full well that a lowly graduate student needs the service you provide. Sure, there are other statistical options. SAS, R, or other statistical options. But SPSS is the only option with a user friendly interface. And, frankly, you know damn well that I haven’t the time to learn another fucking computer language just to figure out if the mean of scores in Group A is statistically different from that of Group B.
Sure, I could calculate the independent samples t-test or one-way analysis of variance by hand, but you know I don’t want to–it’d be a monumental waste of time. God knows, I’ve got a million other things I’d rather be wasting my time on, like beer or Tetris. And, even if I did calculate those simple statistics by hand, they’re of little practical use. You all know as well as I that a 3 x 2 factorial design requires more than a simple one-way analysis of variance. You have me in your back pocket and you know it. Beyond the ANOVAs, you’re also pretty sure I’d never take on the task of running a regression analysis by hand. Once again, you have me. You have a monopoly on the market of statistical software packages and you seem to love to wag your dominance in my down-trodden face.
You knew damn well when you sold me the “student” version of your software package (for $89.95) just a year ago, that I’d be back, needing better functionality. Seriously, a maximum of 50 variables. I shit studies with more than 50 variables.
Then a year later, you have the gall to charge me another $206.84 (including tax) so that I can get the full version of SPSS at the GradPack price. Of course, that full version expires in 4 years–so you know I’ll be back for more.
I loathe you so much that I almost–just for a minute–wished that I was a qualitative researcher (gasp). I now shudder at the thought of what you’ve made me consider.
Dear SPSS developers, I beg it of you that you would take pity on the graduate student. Please, stop raping us at the bookstore. You know that if we get hooked on you as Graduate Students, we’ll keep coming back as faculty members. We really don’t care if you’re sticking it to our department–charging $600 software licenses and such. But, why mistreat us poor graduate students. You do realize that you force us to make inethical decisions about the sharing of your software, right? Why not just make it cheap for us to obtain legal copies of your statistical packages, and then pass the costs on to departmental software registration?
If you continue to persist in this uncouth behavior I will be forced to learn the “R” statistical programming language and calculate my statistics using their FREE non-commercial software package.
Signed,
Brandon
Tags: Grad School, SPSS
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04.13.06
Posted in politics, life at 8:48 am by Brandon
So, does anybody think this has anything to do with this?
Turns out, it’s not just us liberals President Bush has the capacity to piss off.
In other news, sorry my blog sucks lately. Hopefully I can do something about that soon.
Tags: Blogging, Bush Support
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04.01.06
Posted in life, beer at 11:26 am by Brandon
You Are Guinness
|
You know beer well, and you’ll only drink the best beers in the world.
Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them.
When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don’t know well.
But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.
|
Tags: Beer Snob
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03.23.06
Posted in blogvention, life at 2:27 pm by Brandon
It seems as if there’s a noticeable pause around the blogosphere. Here’s what I mean:
- Micah and Kristen are busy with such inconsequential things as raising their firstborn.
- Zalm is off planting churches or some manner of craziness.
- Steve has been moving into a new house.
- Ninjanun is, of course, trying to quit the internet.
- Meg continues to ponder one “god damned bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.”
- Dorsey is busy
trying to win losing an ebay auction for a holy corn chip.
- Steve’s busy working on a dissertation.
And me, I’m doing my damndest not to flunk out of grad school. So far this semester, I’ve proven marginally successful.
I also haven’t forgotten that in about one month blogvention will be upon us. I’m hoping some of you will come. In a few days I’m going to try to get out an official invitation on the ole’ blog, something with a more official RSVP option. (I know some of you have given me a wishy washy sort of “yeah, I might be coming” but now I’m going to have to start getting a more official headcount of how many blogventioneers we’ll be having. Like I said, keep an eye out for my blogvention invitations which will be forthcoming.
Tags: Busyness, Blogvention
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03.22.06
Posted in fun at 9:21 am by Brandon
This was pretty good.
Tags: Ebay Items
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03.16.06
Posted in life at 6:50 pm by Brandon
Well, after yesterday’s self-revelation, and in good form with my desire to teach at the college level, I’ve prepared a little pop quiz for y’all. After all, it’s only fair if I bear my soul that I should be able to test you on how well you all know me afterward, right?
So, how well do you know Brandon?
And, no fair searching this blog for answers to any of the questions.
On a side note, I love all these little quizzes the internets has to offer–they’re so incredibly addictive.
Oh, and a hat tip to Ninjanun for this quiz idea.
Addendum: I think it’s only fair to note that you’d have to have been reading here for an almost awkward amount of time in order to score well on this quiz, so I’m not offended if you don’t do well. And, in fact, even if you read ALL of my posts since the inception of this blog VERY closely, you’d still only find answers to about 6 or 7 of those ten questions. In fact, I’d speculate that there’s no one on the planet that could answer all of those questions correctly (by knowlege rather than by chance) other than me–not even my wife.
Tags: Stupid Egomaniacal Quizzes
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02.28.06
Posted in life at 9:18 pm by Brandon
This just goes to show that the news isn’t ALL bad.
[Note: Have Kleenex handy.]
Tags: News
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02.26.06
Posted in life at 2:45 pm by Brandon
It would seem (based on my calculations) that 61 percent of you use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to visit this site. Now, I’m not trying to wish any ill will on people for using but Microsoft Internet Explorer. In fact, if you want to keep visiting this site, using Internet Explorer to do your browsing dirty work, I can honestly say I don’t care a bit. I’ll think no less of you.
However, if you were curious about why about 30 percent of my current browsing public has switched to Firefox, (and another 9 or so percent browses on a different platform altogether) here’s what I think might be going on.
First, this blog is not designed to be seen in Internet Explorer (IE). I have given no thought to the way the design appears in IE and I don’t really ever plan on taking the time to do it. If things get messed up in IE, so be it.
Second, IE let a whole host of spyware sorts of programs run amok on your computer, thus slowing down your performance and increasing the likelihood of a system crash. Since I started using Firefox about 2 years ago, I haven’t had a single piece of spyware get onto my computer. I’ve heard of IE users who can rack up over 100 spyware programs on their machines in less than 3 months.
Third, for what I use it for, Firefox offers greater functionality and add ons than are available through the Microsoft browser. For example, I make use of the Web Developers Toolbar from Firefox that allows me to be able to see layout features, alter stylesheets, and view source code for other sites (among many other things.)
If you care about system performance, browsing speed, fewer popups, and less spyware, Firefox might be for you. And, here’s the best part: It’s free. That’s right you don’t have to pay for it.
All it takes is about 10 minutes of your time to download and install the program. You’ll be glad you did.
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02.25.06
Posted in life, fun at 4:10 pm by Brandon
| What Your Underwear Says About You |
You tend to buy new underwear instead of doing laundry.
You’re not afraid to lay around resting your hand in your pants. |
Tags: Underware Prophesy
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