Stan Taylor

My wife Katie is a former United Methodist minister. She served a parish for 2.5 years in the late 90s before deciding parish ministry was not for her. It’s a long story, but this post isn’t about her experience in ministry; it’s about mine.
Even now, almost ten years later, I’m still coming to grips with how totally unprepared I was to be the preacher’s wife. The biggest problem was that I had no idea that many parishoners hold the minister (and her family) to a different (higher?) standard from other people.

This is Samuel’s early Christmas gift. Her name is Penny, she’s half-chihuahua, half-terrorist, and about six weeks old.

I got a 4GB iPod Nano earlier this week (thanks, Uncle Jim!), and I have to say, I understand the success of iPods/iTunes: Apple simply got a lot right. Just as with their computers, Apple took advantage of being able to control the entire experience: music management with iTunes, the seamlessly integrated iTunes Music Store, and of course the iPod hardware and software.
I’m a big geek, so I’m not fazed by occasional complexities and difficulties of hardware and software, but I can see the Apple appeal: it just works with fewer problems. I guess that’s worth the higher price point for many people.

I dreamt last night that I was explaining different types of taxation (flat tax, progressive taxation) to a group of ten-year-olds. I was able to explain it clearly, the kids understood, and they engaged in intelligent discussion about it. When I recounted my dream to Katie this morning, she replied that it was an odd coincidence: taxation is this week’s subject in the freshman studies course she’s teaching. Though, she added, sometimes it feels like she’s trying to teach this stuff to ten-year-olds.

So, my coworker from Professional Services walks over to my desk with his laptop and our company’s application running (names changed to protect data integrity).
Coworker, pointing to laptop screen: “Where did all this [blah blah] data come from?”
I answer: I entered it into our application from that spreadsheet you sent me about [blah blah] data configuration.
Coworker: What spreadsheet?
Me, typing furiously, then pointing to my laptop screen: the spreadsheet attached to the intranet wiki page about [blah blah] data configuration.
Coworker: Where did that spreadsheet come from? I didn’t send you that.
Me, typing spreadsheet filename into Google Desktop Search, results showing an email from Coworker with said spreadsheet attached: Ah, but indeed you did.
Coworker: I’ll be darned.
Score one for Google Desktop Search.

The latest trend to sweep blogdom, it seems, is to tell how you got ‘into computers’. So, I thought I would add my story.

I just completed the unabridged audio edition of Plainsong by Kent Haruf. I have to say, this was one of the very best audio books I’ve listened to. I particularly liked the portrayal of the main characters. Two of the characters, for instance, hardly speak or express any emotion, yet the author makes them deep and very believable.
The novel recounts a few months in the lives of some residents of a small farming town on the high plains in Colorado. I recognized in the characters aspects of my Kansas relatives and people I know from my youth in rural Texas. Haruf does an excellent job of portraying these characters.

An AP Story, via USA Today:

Sparrow knocks over 23,000 dominoes before being shot
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A sparrow knocked over 23,000 dominoes in the Netherlands, nearly ruining a world record attempt before it was shot to death Monday, the state news agency reported.
The unfortunate bird flew through an open window at an exposition center in the northern city of Leeuwarden where employees of television company Endemol NV have worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes on Friday night.
Only a system of 750 built-in gaps in the chain prevented the bird from knocking most or all of the dominoes over ahead of schedule, “Domino Day” organizers were quoted as saying by the NOS news agency.
The bird was shot by an exterminator with an air rifle while cowering in a corner.
The organizers are out to break their own record of 3,992,397 dominoes set last year with a record of 4,321,000.

The screenshot below (click on the image for a larger version) is from a Microsoft Small Business article titled 8 e-mail mistakes that make you look bad. I think they should add mistake #9: Failing to proofread.

I recently discovered this utility called MapMyRun. It uses Google maps to allow you to map out a run. Pretty cool. Here’s this morning’s run