Here are some of the pictures I took while in Myrtle Beach last weekend. Some are pretty good. Some, not so much. We had a wonderful time, and are seriously considering going back at the end of this summer. That’s how much fun we had. 🙂
We went to Myrtle Beach, SC, last weekend and had a wonderful time. I have lots of pictures that I’ll be posting to Flickr very soon. I just got back from getting my waterproof, single-use camera developed, and there are a few shots in there that might show up, too.
In the meantime, here’s a complete and total summation of our entire trip. I shot this video within about an hour of our arrival, and the whole vacation was one great moment after another.
Tonight, whilst reading my lesson for Sunday School, I came across a quote that I really like. I normally don’t get much out of quotes, since generally they are out of context, don’t stand alone very well and can be easily misused because of that. This one, however, is complete all by itself. And it’s quite deep. It was spoken/written by one of three men: Alexander Chalmers, Allan K. Chalmers or Joseph Addison. Whoever said it, here it is:
The three grand essentials of happiness are: Something to do, someone [something] to love, and something to hope for.
I really like that. The quote as I read it in my book had “something to love” instead of “someone to love,” but either one works. If you try to center your life on those three tenets, it seems to me, your life will eventually approach happiness.
Using that as a benchmark, my life is overflowing with happiness. And it is.
Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I was not happy about that particular number approaching, but now that it’s over, I feel great. My friend Steve Benfield emailed me early yesterday with the subject, “Welcome To Old…” which got the day off to a humorous start. I got tons of well-wishes from friends, many of whom I haven’t actually seen in several years. I had a demanding Tae Kwon Do class last night, and then I came home to a meal of tacos, lovingly prepared by my wonderful son, Thomas. He also baked me a cake, with chocolate frosting. Yum!
I have it pretty good. 🙂
As you can probably tell, I haven’t been motivated to write anything in well over a month. I don’t know why, but that’s what’s happened. I didn’t finish my Lenten project, though I am still occasionally working on it. I did just earn my orange belt in Tae Kwon Do, so that’s cool. And I’m going to be 40 on Tuesday, which is not cool, but it’s sort of unavoidable. I had a lovely birthday dinner with my entire family on Saturday night at Stoney River, which is the most-bestest steakhouse in the world. I loves me some garlic mashed potatoes.
I have an idea for a post about direct vs. indirect quotations in the Greek NT text, but I haven’t fully scoped it out yet. Maybe it will be coming soon. Maybe not.
I’m doing a lot more playing around with Scala, though I am still a lightweight. Sometimes when I’m reading other people’s Scala code, I feel very uneasy about my skills. Scala is beautiful and elegant, but sometimes the terseness of it make it a little overwhelming.
I’m testing out Mercurial for version control. I also tried Git, but based on what I’ve read, and what I’ve experienced, I think Mercurial is the better choice, at least right now. Git is the new, sexy thing, but Mercurial is better established, and the tooling is far better than for Git. Git is gaining ground, but I’m going to stick with Hg for now. I just bought “Mercurial: The Definitive Guide” from O’Reilly, and I’m reading it now. My VP has started asking questions about DVCS and should we switch from SVN and such, so this experiment will be useful shortly.
I’m playing a lot of backgammon. I taught my mother-in-law to play a few weeks ago, and my mother last night. Both picked it up quickly. I’m reading “The Backgammon Book” by Jacoby and Crawford, and trying to commit all the charts and probabilities to memory and get some real strategy going. My game is improving, but I’m still easily beatable.
Oh, and I”ve lost 22 pounds since February 28. Yay, me!
So, there you have it. All two of you now know why there hasn’t been anything new here for a while.
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