the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks

I "love" this "blog."

what do you do with insomnia?

Redecorate your blog!

There are still some tweaks to be done, but everything you have come to love and expect from patrickandlydia.com should still be up and running. The one thing I can't quite get working with this template is the tag that says who posted... it only appears if you click on the post title and link to the full post at this point.

I am aware of some anomalies, like the facebook text not displaying, but I'll get those worked out over the next few days.

Also, you'll notice that the address is now "blog.patrickandlydia.com." Don't fret... patrickandlydia.com and www.patrickandlydia.com both work to get you here.

worship blogs

So one of the things I'm doing today at work is looking for blogs written by worship leaders. Here's what I've found...

• They're all at churches that are named something like "Generic Church of the Agape." Nobody has a denomination in their name.
• Some don't blog about worship much.
• And some do.
• Lots play video games, some of which they won at church.
• Some have deep thoughts, and actually solicit feedback.
• Some share lots of set lists.
  
• They all have cute babies.

i finally get RSS readers

I used to not "get" RSS readers... I mean, why not just click on the page you're interested in. That is, until Google Reader.

The thing that made it all make sense is the "Mark as Read" button. Now, instead of going to each blog in succession, looking to see what's new, I just look for unread stories in the left column of links. Saves time and effort. Love it.

informal blog posting poll for our eight readers

If you're a Gerry House fan, you get the significance.

If you have a blog, do you post while you're away on a trip, or does putting up a post while you're gone feel like you're hanging a sign outside the house that says, "burgle me!"??

why we're slow posters

Some of our more regular readers (hi Mom!) may have noticed that the velocity of our postings have slowed down over the past few months. This can be attributed to several things:

1. In my new job, I have a lot more 7:30-4:30 focused content than I did in my previous one. In my previous job, there were more extended times of "hit button, wait for results" and "send email, wait for response." Now, there are a lot more "give response to someone who sent email" and "put out fire." I think I've said it before that the old job was more about pushing bits and responding to people. The new job is all about people, and very little about pushing bits. All that to say, there's less waiting time to think and compose posts.

2. Lydia's not behind a desk 8/5 anymore. Although I bet she's still online 40 hours a week, like me, she doesn't always have the occasion to think and compose. Her online time is more purpose-driven: answer these emails, find this smocking plate, research this purchase, etc.

3. Things are going great for us. I love my job, Lydia loves her part-time job, we love our family, we love the friends we have, we love our neighborhood... there just isn't a lot out of the ordinary that we want to post about.

4. Things are in progress. A good example would be the car post before this one. For various reasons (some potentially legal,) we wanted to tell the WHOLE story before posting. There are some other things (not as huge as the car) that we want to post about, but aren't ready for posting yet.

5. Things are private. There are some things that we wish we could post about to ask for prayers - things affecting people we know... but for one reason or another, would not be appropriate to talk about. Suffice it to say that there's probably a thread of need like this behind every blog that you read and every face that you pass, and we're called to pray for each other. Thanks in advance for the prayers you lift.

fixed!

Someone behind the scenes at Blogger seems to have pulled a trigger or removed an extra space or something. We're back to normal publishing!

Actually, it seems like it's better than normal publishing. When I hit the "publish" button, it's almost instantaneous. No more waiting for 25%... 35%... 45%...

i blog, therefore i am (on the internet)

So it's been a while since I've posted... and with good reason. It's December. Lots to do, lots of work to do. However, I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things.

Blogger has updated our blog to the beta version, so now we can add cool tags. All of our future posts can be categorized with labels now, so that if you want to see all of our posts topically (like "family" or "apple" or "useless,") you can just click on a link at the bottom of the post. Of course this won't have any effect on previous posts... just new ones, like this one, appropriately tagged "useless."