Random Commands

I could survive for 1 minute, 41 seconds

from her and him

Are ya bored yet?

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. — James 1:5 (HCSB)

How many times have I tried to find wisdom without asking God. This self-help book, this seminar, this special on TV, this episode of Oprah (well not many times that last one) Truth be told on the wisdom front, I too often trust my intuition rather than specifically asking God — to my shame.

Last night SS commentary talked about discipline (Hebrews 13ish IIRC) and how God disciplines those he loves. The commentary compared how we discipline (often poorly, selfishly, and pridefully) to God’s discipline (which is awesome, unselfish and beneficial to us). Our reaction to discipline is much like our kids, we don’t like it, but when we’ve learned our lesson we’re cherish their loving correction.

I think its like that with asking for wisdom (and this verse isn’t asking for wealth, prosperity, good feelings, which given the ongoing trials, discipline growth put to rest any ‘name it — claim it’ notions). In being a good disciplinarian, God wants us to ask Him for wisdom. But he won’t nag us, complain or belittle us if we act like a teenager and seek that elsewhere. He’ll wait for us to fall, fail and flounder then graciously help us up, dust us off, and remind us that He’s always here to help.

Do we disappoint him when we fail?

Seeking wisdom elsewhere is a childish thing (also called teenage rebellion), as we mature we should put away childish things, and seek the source of wisdom, and heed it.

Peace.

So we got Danny and Brenna off to their 4 day camp, then back home with Lauren and MJ.  Lauren went over to a friend’s house and so MJ, Angie and I were playing on  our computers.  Angie decided we’d sneak out to see Kung Fu Panda with MJ.  But we got a late start and couldn’t make the movie show time.

The next show would start after we’d have to pick up Lauren, so we worked out some logistics, then decided to go to Cosco to fill our larder.  After grabbing some frozen stuff to put in our freezer in the garage, we figured had a bit of time to do some window shopping.

Wait, need to esplain, no it is too much, will summ up: Our current HDTV has lost one of the color channels.  Unless we like watching smurfs or leprhchans (blue of green) watching our TV had become a little frustrating.  Especially, if like Angie loves to do, you’re watching a home design show and they decribe a vibrant yellow that looks like a muddy green.  So yesterday it was sorta like the TV commercial where the wife says, yeah, we need a new TV, and the guy grabs his keys.

We went to Conn’s, mostly because we have good credit history with them (about to pay off three kitchen appliances we bought in ’05) and started looking.  Our current TV is a 28″ HDTV CRT, and so we started out at around 30″ and just kept going up.  We liked a 46″ LCD, and so asked the salesman to run a credit check.  While he was doing that we wandered to the rear of the store and found some absolutely lovely DLPs.  The price for DLPs is much less than an LCD, the cost is a bit more space (can’t wall mount) and a DLP does have a bulb that will wear out.  So while we were watching the pretty pictures, and wondering around the small furniture section, the sales guy comes back and says, you can pretty much get what you want (he ran the high end of the LCDs we were looking at).  I respond with, “That’s a bit scary.”  We talked with him a bit about the DLPs, then it was time to get Lauren, and try to make the show.

Only we waited to long, by the time we got Lauren and headed back to the freeway, the clock had again ticked past and we’d get to the theater too late.  So back home to do research and discuss some options.  We use our living room to host a weekly American Idol party when that’s in season, and so that was part of the discussion.  We talked viewing angles, and flexibility of rearranging, and sizes, and by the end of the time, we’d pretty much agreed on a moderate sized LCD in the middle of our price range.

We set off to Pei Wei to eat, then back to Conn’s to make the buying decision.  We got back to the store, and start to look and narrow down.  The one I liked from my research was a bit about our agreed upon price point, and so we hemmed and hawed, and wound up back in the back with the DLPs, and a nice console that met Angie’s standards.  The console ended up being out of stock, and then looked at the DLPs a bit more closer, the one we liked was a 60″, but next to it, the same model and features was a 65″ a hundred less.  We bit, then added an upscaling DVD player (not ready for Blu-Ray yet) and some cables, and we’re out the door.

We had to drive to almost Irving to pick up the behemoth after dropping off the kids, to clear out the van.  The box filled up the back of the van (with the seats folded), and setup was a breeze.  We obviously need to do some rearranging, and maybe buy different furniture for it.

Once we placed it in the room, we realized how absolutely ginormous this thing is… Turning it on, was surreal, crisp vibrant colors, deep fine features in 1080i from the Verizon FiOS tuner.  MJ, just wanted to play a game, so he hooked up his SpongeBob game contoller and got lovely 16bit quality pixelated video that he played avidly.  Still have to test the Wii and hookup the upconverting DVD.

As you can see from the picture, about 4 of our old screens would fit in the screen size of the new one.  We’re a bit overwhelmed, but I think we can adapt.   (link to the TV at amazon)

Happy Anniversary, 15 Years of Love…

Originally uploaded by jstueve

My bride wrote about our courting on her blog. She got it right, but let me add some stuff from my perspective (and because if I don’t she’ll cream me).

The first ‘date/meeting’ was at Marakesh (a Morracan restaurant) in Mission Valley, which is a good 20 minute drive from Pacific Beach where I shared an apartment when I wasn’t on the ship. Also PB (as it is affectionately known) was about a 20 minute drive to work in the morning, and muster in the Navy is usually 7:00 AM, which means park by at least 6:00 AM, walk down the pier to the ship, scramble up ten stories of ladders (they don’t put passenger elevators on those things) get dressed, then back down to get the POD (Plan of the Day) from the XO (Executive Officer) at Officer’s Call before greeting my Division for muster. So yeah, I had to leave a bit earlier than I’d have liked. But I fell in love with her that night. Look at that picture over there, her eyes and smile still captivate me, can you blame me?

And I do remember who lost that Superbowl the next day, in those days tradition was the Buffalo Bills would shred the AFC then pitifully lose the Superbowl against the NFC Champion, often it was the Cowboys that had the privileged, but I believe that year the Redskins had the honor.

It is also of note, apart from cruises, trips or business and family we haven’t spent a night apart since that first weekend. There have been up times and down times, times of uproarious laughter and deepest tears. But through it all, my bride has stuck by me, and I’ve tried my best to pamper her in the way a Princess should.

You see, back in the dark days before the internet, we had ‘handles’ on that 32-line BBS. Mine was pretty plain, being the senior Ensign (kinda like being the oldest Freshman) I had the honorary title of ‘Bull Ensign’ so I chose ‘Bull’ as my handle. Angie changed hers about as much as she changes her Facebook photo, but usually it was some concoction of ‘Princess’. We went to a few of the San Diego Connection parties, their Halloween bash was a celebration of Geekiness, and another party we had to leave early because … well… it WAS California, and we’re talking about a lot of geeky singles. I think there was a CSI episode loosely based on a SDC party.

Now we’ve decided to start playing softball in the fall on the co-ed team. Which also brings back some memories of our courting days. I used to play for the ship’s softball team, and drug Angie along to watch, and she met a few of the other girlfriends and wives. One night, I made an error (I know SHOCKING, right?) at second base, and was getting mad at myself, and one of the wives yelled out, ‘Shake it off, Bull!’ but in a really strong Jersey accent. So when you come to a softball game this fall, and I mess up, you’ll probably hear Angie yell that.

Oh… San Diego memories. We can talk about shopping for rings in Horton Plaza. Proposing again for the second time, correctly this time, outside of Sea Port village. Living in her mom’s apartment in the IB (Imperial Beach, home of John from Cincinnati), moving into our cramped studio apartment on G-Street across the street from Sea Port Village, the same weekend we drove to San Leandro to deliver her Mom’s stuff.

Its been quite a ride, baby. Can’t wait for the following 35 years.

Joss Whedon is AWESOME…

You have this weekend to watch the awesomeness that is…

Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrbile
Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer

And yes, it is a Super Villian Musical.. with singing and everything.

Where is Jon’s wonderful, insightful posts…

Go ask my beautiful wife.

My god! What have I done!?

Also what do 3, 3 and 9 have in common.

Cinco de Mayo means birthday in the Stueve household. Danny turned 9 (9?!?!??!? yep, nine!) So we went to our increasingly traditional birthday dinner joint, Pei Wei, which given the traditional holiday atmosphere in the southwest on this day was surprisingly empty when we hit the joint shortly after 5PM.

Quick dinner, and back home to open presents, drum machine and lego blocks what else does a 9 year old need. So an hour or so of drum sounds and 30 minutes of putting together Indy Jones lego set, and then it was time for me to take 3 of our kids to the after dark pediatrician.

Yeah, you heard right, 3. The non-birthday Stueve’s staged a mini-revolt and wanted a medical review. After we stormed the waiting room, and then gave the nurses a chance to practice triage techniques, we holed up in an exam room to await the doc. In our case it was a nurse practitioner, and after two swabs and a positive ear infection, we grabbed our three scripts for antibiotics and headed for the pharmacy. Yep, we hit the bacterial trifecta: MJ – strep (win), Brenna – ear infection (place), and Lauren – uncategorized infection (show) (aka pre-strep).

So Jonny will take tomorrow off and sleep all day with three sick kids, and the birthday boy gets to go to school by hissef. I wonder if he’ll mind walking?

A disturbing trend in trying to market new shows on the local television networks. The past couple of Wednesdays its been hard to miss. Usually the promotion starts in the news hour, with promises of special events later in the evening. Last night it was on FOX, but it had nothing to do with American Idol. Then after the news hour, they devote large amounts of coverage to this ‘event’ and even breathlessly break to commercial promising new bigger revelations … after the break … The problem is — hardly do the revelations really reveal anything new, careful watchers will not be surprised by the revelations, in some cases they may have already turned off the show, that is how predictable its become.

I can handle all that, I’m a saavy watcher of television, and I understand with the writer’s strike there is a lack of quality programming. But falling back to this reality genre is such a predictable ruse, and its got my 11 year old daughter, totally captivated by the drama, unable to sleep as the ideas these shows (and there is no escaping them they are on all the local networks) germinate in her mind.

Its not even good television, like Lost or The Office. Just the predictable dreck that the networks always start previewing in the spring. Maybe we should just do something else. Anything would be better than this… screen shots after the fold.
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My guess is the six includes Jack, Hurley and Kate. As to the other 3, I haven’t the foggiest, but I’m going to go with Michael (just because I saw Harold Perrineau’s name in the credits, and if Desmond can’t navigate away from the island, I doubt Mike and Walt will be able to as well), Juliet and Desmond (because they have people to come back to).  Mike was in the casket.

Lost dead pool candidates:

• Rose
• Bernard
• Claire (and baby)
• Walt
• Christian Shepherd
• Benjamin Linus
• Sawyer (he put his foot in it with his “I’m always surviving” schtick.