Monthly Archives: May 2006

Weekend Update: Newark Election, M:I:III, Top of the Rock, and Wearing Thai Food

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Election Day in Newark is tomorrow. Cory Booker “will doubtless win the mayorship”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/nyregion/08newark.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, a prize he has sought for at least five years, but the big question is whether he will be able to install enough of his team in the city council to be able to stabilize crime, resolve the looming fiscal crisis, and continue the city revitalization that has ever-so-slowly been coming to hopeful Newarkers. More coverage on the “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info blog.

Friday night was crash night: Sarah and I dragged ourselves out of NYC and into a movie theater in Elizabeth to see Mission: Impossible 3. It was everything we had hoped: fun, fast-paced, and mentally undemanding. “Highly recommended”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mission_impossible_3/.

Saturday was gorgeous, though I spent most of it in a laundromat. Afterward was the much anticipated “unusual date”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/04/11/brag-moment/ at “Top of the Rock”:http://www.topoftherocknyc.com/ODTStatic/site.htm. I had briefly considered something at NJPAC this month, but didn’t want to repeat another performance venue. It was fun, with some “breathtaking views”:http://flickr.com/photos/tags/topoftherock/interesting/ of New York City and New Jersey. If you go, though, skip the “Rock Center Cafe”:http://www.rapatina.com/rockCenterCafe/ — the food, service and view were all underwhelming.

Sunday at the Village Church, where ??Sam Andreades?? showed off his apologetics chops (link forthcoming). Got Thai food with Darin and his son while Sarah and Krissy drove out to yet-another-baby-shower in the suburbs. “Owen celebrated our rare guys-only get together”:http://www.peznet.net/mig/index.php?currDir=./Owen_Sept_to_Dec_05&pageType=image&image=6.jpg by covering himself and everything within a three-foot radius of him in sticky white rice. Worked a bit on tweaking the sermon downloads page (“example”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/01/the-redefinition-of-simon-peter/) for the Village Church to make it more user-friendly and include links for bulletins.

On the Radar: Web Calendars, Lip-Syncing and Love (oh, my)

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* “Boil the ocean”:http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=%22boil+the+ocean%22&btnG=Search, an egregious consulting term used to limit the scope of a project: “we’re not looking to boil the ocean with this.” Fast Company took “a shrewd look”:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/88/debunk.html at the phrase, and Bob Congdon digs up its “earliest use”:http://www.bobcongdon.net/blog/2004/06/boil-ocean.html.
* “Moleskine Bible”:http://www.esv.org/blog/2006/04/journaling.bible.coming (“via Tim”:http://www.challies.com/sideblog/archives/001828.php). Very forward-thinking book design on the part of the Standard Bible Society. Bibles used to be beautifully constructed books that were admired, but rarely touched. That’s beginning to change as people want to — literally — interweave the story of their lives with the Scripture.
* YouTube: “Two Chinese Boys”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbdpTCJgnwc (“via Slate”:http://www.slate.com/id/2140697/). Be sucked into the vortex of incomparable splendor that is YouTube.
* ??Fortune Magazine??: “The Great Escape”:http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/03/20/8371767/. Forty million American employees toil in soulless cubicles. How did they get there — and can business ever break out of the box? Probably not.
* ??Crain’s Chicago Business??: “The new face of technology”:http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?article_id=25714&bt=37Signals&arc=n&searchType=all (“via Jason”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/crains_chicago_business_cover_story.php). Start-up! Start-up! Start-up! ;-)
* ??Kathy Sierra??: “The myth of keeping up”:http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/the_myth_of_kee.html. You can’t keep up. There is no way. And trying to keep up will probably just make you dumber.You can never be current on everything you think you should be. Good to know I’m in good company.
* ??Michael Idov?? for ??Slate??: “Bitter Brew”:http://www.slate.com/id/2132576/. You know that charming little cafe on New York’s Lower East Side that just closed after a mere six months in business — where coffee was served on silver trays with a glass of water and a little chocolate cookie? The one that, as you calmly and correctly observed, was doomed from its inception because it was too precious and too offbeat? The one you still kind of fell for, the way one falls for a tubercular maiden? Yeah, that one was mine. Pragmatic advice for anyone who handles money. Worth listening to…twice.
* ??Sam Andreades??: “The Redefinition of Simon Peter”:www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/01/the-redefinition-of-simon-peter/. Are you really free from how others look at you? I don’t just mean saying ‘I don’t care what other people think of me’–there are plenty of people in New York saying that. … Are you really free of carrying the responsibility of your reputation with others?
* Apple: “Get a Mac”:http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/?ilife_medium (“via Dan”:http://hivelogic.com/links/133). Quietly brilliant new “switcher” ads by Apple. Is it me, or does PC look a little like Mr. Gates? :)
* ??John Gruber??: “Good Journalism”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/good_journalism. One can only hope that Apple will one day handle security issues as well as Microsoft does now. Wow, you can _taste_ the bitterness in this article.
* ??Evan Ratliff??: “Now for a Quick Lesson in International Relations”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/fashion/sundaystyles/30love.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin (“via Angela”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/04/modern-love.html). Feeling suddenly like a shy 10-year-old in the playground, I pretended not to understand. But he walked off, and there was nothing to do but follow. I was already uneasy in Dhaka, unable to blend in or communicate, and now self-consciousness was joined by a simultaneous thrill and fear that I was walking into some vortex of cultural misunderstanding.
* ??Angela Wu??: “Religious map of America”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/05/religious-map-of-america.html. Like, if you grew up going to church all your life and everybody else you knew did, too, you might fervently believe lots of things… (bonus: “cows”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/05/beating-dead-cow.html)
* The Village Church just might be getting “a new calendar”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/events/ based on the open-source “WebCalendar”:http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php?topic=About. WebCalendar has been okay to work with, but not trivial to integrate with the site — due in part because it’s “ugly as a dog”:http://www.k5n.us/webcal-screenshots/wcss-month.png out of the box. Still, it will export an iCal feed, so if you’ve got 30 Boxes or Google Calendar, you can “subscribe”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/events/publish.php?user=public.
* ??Fast Company??: ” Varnished History”:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/pr.html. The documentary itself won’t be featured in any film classes — but in the tawdry realm of corporate propaganda, there has been worse.
* ??InterVarsity??: “Ministry Exchange Overview”:http://www.intervarsity.org/mx/item/3674/. IV constructs a massive content management system to share ministry materials, providng features as web-2.0 savvy as tagging and RSS feeds. Well done–this is worth watching for a while.
* ??Ken Walker??: “The Debate Over Newark, Part II”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/05/04/the-debate-over-newark-part-ii/. Have you heard? We’re getting a new mayor in Newark after 20 years of the same administration. The candidates recently debated — here’s how it went.

Weekend Update: Jen’s Recital, Lunch with TVC’s Übercüte Couple

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Drove 1 hour and 20 minutes to the Mazda dealer to pick up a sideview mirror, which was broken and later glued back on to the car. Vehicle abuse is one of the charms of our town. I need to find a new parts dealer.

Went to an excellent Master’s Degree recital by “Jenny Jobb”:http://www.myspace.com/jennyjobb at Juliard. It rocked–and I was even more impressed because flute is not my favorite instrument. Jen’s music was ecclectic and fascinating. Thanks for the invite. :)

Church on Sunday began with Darin & Sam’s Marriage and Dating class. Sam taught on the “asymmetry” of roles in marriage relationships. Judy Fujimura helpfully pointed out that both men and women both have to make the decision to lay their lives down for each other, even if the actual implementation looks different.

Speaking of the d-word, we were highly honored to spend lunch with the most “übercüte couple”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=287 at the Village Church. We talked shop about Newark (which is _so_ “up-and-coming”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/10/15/newark-unveiled-as-a-force-in-the-art-world/), the m-word, visiting Europe, “new apartments”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=300, and “widgets”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/04/28/on-the-radar/. Then we consumed the best “cream puffs we’ve ever had”:http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http://www.muginohousa.com/creampuffs.html&e=9797.

Finished the weekend watching “Sullivan’s Travels”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=ourstory-20%26link_code=xm2%26camp=2025%26creative=165953%26path=http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%253fASIN=B00005JH9C%2526tag=ourstory-20%2526lcode=xm2%2526cID=2025%2526ccmID=165953%2526location=/o/ASIN/B00005JH9C%25253FSubscriptionId=0EMV44A9A5YT1RVDGZ82. Very good, though we’re not sure why we put it on the Netflix queue in the first place.