what i did today

I’ve got three blogworthy things for today and blogging three posts sounds like a formidable task right now so I’m going to go for one long post.  This is what I get for not blogging for three days.

Hang on tight.

Free Dinner

First, let’s talk about Valentine’s Day.  Happy belated vday.  Scott and I went out Friday night since I had to work Saturday as well as go to the Vday youth fundraiser dinner.  We went to Longhorn Steakhouse.  It was very busy and we had to sit right across from the bar.  The bar was full and two guys were standing behind the chairs and almost directly beside our table.  They apologized a few times and the one younger guy even struck up a conversation with me about our iPhones.  Then he apologized to Scott for talking to his girlfriend.

Two seats finally came available at the bar but Scott, always with his DUI radar on, kept his eye on him.  The one larger guy was getting belligerent with the bartender and Scott was getting ready to tell someone it was obvious he shouldn’t be driving as drunk as he was.  Just then, the manager came over to smooth over the issue with the bartender and mentioned about him driving, telling him he was slurring his words pretty bad(ly).  Scott stopped the manager and told him he was a highway patrolman and he didn’t need to drive.  The manager said he had offered him a taxi and might have mentioned calling the police.

Next thing I knew the guys were walking out with the manager and Scott followed him. He’s nosy like that.  Scott and the manager came back in and Scott said the guy supposedly lived close by and wanted to walk but Scott said he was either leaving in a taxi or a police car.  The guy backed down and let them call a taxi.

Our meal came soon after and when we finished, were very happy when the waitress said our meal was taken care of.  A win for everyone involved…even those who could have been involved and weren’t.  Thank an officer today.  And those poor wives who get left alone at the table on Valentine’s Day.  Oh, I joke.

Beth Moore Esther study

If you’ve read here for a while you might know I’m a big fan of Beth Moore Bible studies.  I was very excited to know our church started one on Sunday nights.  The first session was tonight and for those interested, here’s a little rundown of the first session…

She gave an overview of the Book itself and focused specifically on the fact that the name of God is not mentioned once in the book.  She said it was almost as if God was telling the story through the writer.  She said God does work through miracles but is also there even when it doesn’t seem like He is.  The book of Esther will be a message of hope and gives perspective on God’s providence; that God is at work in the big things and in the trivial.  He works in us so we will act according to His purpose.

The thing that hit me hard tonight is that we could NOT do His will.  Both phrases “seek to know the will of God” and “fulfill the word of God” both give the conclusion that it’s possible to not know His will and also to not fulfull it.  While I’ve thought about that many times, something about tonight made it strike a chord.  What am I missing??  And it doesn’t just scare me, it makes me sad to know that God went through the trouble of creating me uniquely with a special purpose and I could quite possible completely flake on Him.  Gives new meaning to the phrase Epic Fail!

She also talked about the simple fact that Esther is about a woman.  The tagline of the series is “It’s tough being a woman”. She interviewed 400 women and asked 3 of the toughest things about being a woman.  My favorite funny one was “wearing panties and then bearing the pressure of pretending I’m not.”  LOL

So that was a very random recap but trust me when I say it is good and if you’ve ever gone through Beth Moore and liked it, you will for sure like this one.

TV for Mac

Wow this is a random post.

But I’m super-duper excited about my new tech toy.  Today I bought Pinnacle’s TV for Mac HD Mini Stick.  The goal of it is watch and record TV on my Mac.  (They also have a PC product)  You have two options.

Option #1 is to plug the antenna they give you into the mini Stick which basically looks like a thumb drive.  It sends a Digital Air signal.  You basically have an antenna you sit near a window and the cord runs to your laptop.  And yes, it looks super-duper geeky.

Option #2 is to use the plug they give you, plug it into your cable connection in your wall and then run that into the mini Stick.  If you only have one cable connection and you’re keeping your TV, you’ll have to buy a splitter so it can go to your TV and to your laptop. This does not work with encrypted cable or satellite signals…aka DirecTV.

So…I had to go with Option #1.

Once you have the right connections, just run the installation CD and voila, a screen comes up and it’s playing TV!  Mine came up with about 30 channels which is basically just your main channels + duplicates for HD/weather channels.  So I have ABC, CBS, Fox in High Def and then CW, PBS, TBN, MNT, IND.  Which really, that’s all I watch anymore.

THEN you create an account with TitanTV.com and you schedule it to record just like a DVR.  If you upgrade to EyeTV instead of EyeTV lite that it comes with you can easily export the recorded files to a mpg for example.  If you really want to stick with EyeTV lite and you know what you’re doing, you can unpackage the EyeTV file and rip out the mpg file yourself.  Not for the technically challenged though.

The cool thing is this is only $77 with no recurring fees.  The quality of the picture is excellent, especially the HD channels.  Wow.  The only issue I see is geeky hardware and possibly lack of hard drive space in the near future.  Just depends how you use it though.