I finished reading:

"Across the River and into the Trees" written by Ernest Hemingway. 308 Pages.

21st book for 2011, 6288 pages at an average of 299 pages per book.

-Richard

Well, obviously, last MST3K night didn't go off as planned because of the short notice and the tornadoes. (Actually, Weekend of the Tornadoes sounds like great bad-movie fodder.) So we've rescheduled for Saturday, June 18, at 7 PM. The poll listed below is still open, so vote early and vote often!

MST3K Episode Synopses

It's that time again -- for MST3K on April 16!

I've allowed the ones that got votes (but not enough to win) to be entered back into the running. Go to this survey and let me know which movie you'd like to see!

The Unearthly

A mad scientist is obsessed with finding "the 17th gland" that is, apparently, the source of eternal youth. His research subjects are people without families seeking a cure for depression; they tend to become zombies. This is a very short movie, so it's accompanied by two moralizing shorts that are entertaining in themselves ("Posture Pals" and "Appreciating Our Parents").

Teenagers from Outer Space

Aliens with a zest for killing and torture plan to colonize Earth as a place to farm their enormous lobsters (excuse me -- "gargons"). Suspiciously-sensitive Derek runs away and falls in with some Earthlings. Truly cheesy '50s sci-fi at its best, including waving lobsters in front of the camera people can run away from them.

This Island Earth

This was the MST3K movie released to theaters, and as such has often served as a more gentle introduction to the series. Scientists who receive a strange package and assemble its contents successfully are taken to another planet, where nuclear war has devastated society. But in spite of that, not much happens, and it doesn't change the characters in any discernible way.

"Manos": The Hands of Fate

This is consistently ranked very highly on fan sites. A family on a car trip deep in the sticks of Texas takes refuge at a "lodge" that turns out to be the secret headquarters of a deadly cult. Contains a short ("Hired!", part 2) in which a sales manager gets career advice from his handkerchief-wearing dad.

The Giant Gila Monster

I had to include a great big monster movie this time. A thirty-foot lizard is loose in the woods near some rowdy, dancin', hot-roddin', rockin'-and-rollin' teens. It knocks over a lot of stuff that resemble models of stuff.

Time of the Apes

Japan saw our successful Planet of the Apes movie and apparently decided that they wanted one, too. Instead of Charleton Heston, though, they have a female scientist and two kids. And instead of making a movie, they stitched together two episodes of a TV show and released it as a movie.

When "Sword Drills" Get Literal

I love me some fantasy and sci-fi. I really do. Which brought me to this. It piques my curiosity, that's for sure. If you want to speak in a relevant way to the culture, you need to understand what unites them, including their stories.

The question Sunday during Community Time was:
"Have you ever thought you understood a problem or issue you were facing only to discover that it was were facing only to discover that it was something different or bigger than expected."

It's my life at work as a software programmers, I experience this on at least a weekly basics. I have been doing this work for decades, when there is a problem I immediately look for something in my experience that is similar. Normally I find something even if I have to force the current situation to fit. I do not want to discount experience, but many times especially in a world as fast changing as high tech, experience sends me down the wrong track. I jump to the wrong conclusion, spent hours looking in the wrong place, maybe along the way blame other programmers or the users for the problem. Then I realize what I am doing is not working, stop and go back the the basics of troubleshooting a problem. Then normally I am able to solve the problem.


Unfortunately the same thing applies many times in my walk Christian. I start thinking about all the situations, that I have experience in my Christian life. Start jumping to the wrong conclusion about what God wants me to do about the current situation. When in fact as Fred said quoting Micah.


This is what the LORD requires from
you:
to do what is right,
to love mercy,
and to live humbly with your God.
- Micah 6:6-8

As a sort of follow up to this morning's conversation I want add a quote that follows along with what Matt was saying.

"A Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam - he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts."

Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis

Just for Rusty....

I haven't found a Church we're happy with yet...but...the local Rugby Club is less than 10 minutes from my house :) They are however, no where near as good as Raleigh.....









-Richard