ChetOS.net

We just got back from Move (CIY) yesterday.  We went to Anderson, IN, making stops in Atlanda and Louisville on the way there, and Cincinatti and Alpharetta on the way back.  It was amazing.  The topic was Exodus and we went through most of the book.

The biggest thing for me is the realization that our life is the accumulation of "crossings".  We take dozens of small ones a day, and occasionally a large one.  God can trust us with large ones when we are faithful in the small ones.  Joseph is a good example of someone who took those crossings repeatedly.

There is way too much to talk about in a blog post.  The spiritual highlights are complicated.

One of the struggles was that nearly everyone got sick at some point.  We decided that there were three distinct sicknesses going around, some people got one, two, or three of them.  Personally, I got the sinus infection.  Luckily, it didn't hit me until Friday.  Unluckily, I spent most of the three-day trip home sick.

Some of the non-CIY stuff ("auxiliary events", I call them):

We went to King's Island on Friday.  It had a lot of cool rollercoasters.  It also had a 315ft tower which drops you.  I have to say, it was terrifying.  It just seemed to keep going up and up and up.  Just when you thought it would stop climbing, it would just keep going.  There are two other very high things in the park: Delierium (137ft swing) and a 275ft Effil Tower replica, and this thing absolutely dwarved them.

We used our extended rec time to volunteer at the Boys 'n Girls Club in Muncie, IN.  I got to play a little "street ball" with like 20 fourth and fifth graders.  No fouls, no out of bounds.  I am not going to lie, as Kyle Funk would say, it was pretty awesome.

We went to a satellite of North Point Community Church (Browns Bridge edition).  This instance of the church had around 500 people (this is a rough estimate).  One thing that was really neat is that, while we are praying before the sermon, they lowered a projection screen that is the width of the stage, and when you look up you are seeing a video feed from the motherchurch.  The stage there is set up the same way, so it really looks like someone is standing there.  It rocked my face off.

We also found a river in northern Georgia on Sunday and spent a few hours there.  It had mini-waterfalls that you could actually slide down.  I find that if the waterfalls are too small, then they are really just slippery rocks, and if they are too high, you fall to your death.  Truth bomb.

All the kids did very well.  They took the lessons seriously and we didn't have any disciplinary issues.

Out of the four locations that I have been to for CIY/MOVE, this was my least favorite.  No inspiring mountains, and oddly enough the weather was exactly like Florida, hot and humid.  It was like 96° out there, just too hot.  Also, the food was ho-hum, and the facility was spread out.  And, our room was on the fourth floor.  There were no elevators, so we had to schlep ourselves up and down several times a day.  The girls were on the third floor (different building) and had to do the same thing.  Oh yeah, and communal showers.

One other thing, there were only about 500 people at this event, yet it seemed like it packed (except the auditorium, which was practically empty).  Full capacity for the week was over 2,000.  I cannot imagine the nightmare the cafeteria would have been had the event been at full capacity.

I am not complaining, just wanted to get the facts out.

I have had a Twitter account for a while now.  I signed up because it is a possible way of communicating with gadgets, like my Arduino (pronounced: Are D'wii Know).

Anyway, I wrote a program a little while ago called the Random Twitter.  At varying intervals, it generates a random sentence and posts it.  Check out the posts: http://www.twitter.com/chetos82/.  Sometimes they are totally nonsensical.  Other times they are very insightful.  One recent example is, "A picture is mechanically alerting me of the bad linen."  Wow, I learn something new every day.

My random number generator isn't doing so well, but it puts the word "linen" in a lot.  Perhaps it is cold.

Amanda and I went to Savannah for our sixth anniversary.  We stayed at an inexpensive hotel which turned out to be very nice.  They even served contentnial breakfast (a nice one with eggs and sausage).

On Friday night, we didn't want to start roaming, so we went and saw Terminator Salvation.  An excellent movie.

It rained most of the three days we were there, starting around 10:30 and stopping around 4:00.  We did manage to do some sightseeing when the rain let up.  On Saturday, after driving though the city while it rained for a few hours, we went to the Davenport House, which is just a nice example of Federal architecture.  We spent over two hours in the Bonaventure Cemetery, and actually got locked in after hours.  Luckily a guy came by and let us out (apparently they lock the gate to keep people from coming in, but we thought we were in trouble).

On Sunday, the rain started even earlier, but we decided to keep on moving though to Tybee Island, and it wasn't raining there.  So, we spent a few hours at Fort Pulaski.  This fort is more interesting than Castillo de San Marcos.  It even has a small system of underground hallways and storage (it isn't really underground, they just piled mounds of dirt on it).

We love lighthouses, so after the fort, we went to Tybee Island Lighthouse.  It is 154 feet tall, and has 179 steps.  It also provides a great view of the Savannah River and Atlantic Ocean.  It isn't as tall as Ponce de Leon lighthouse (at 175 feet) or Anastasia Island lighthouse (at 165 feet), but it is close enough.  We saw a huge cargo ship enter the ocean.

That night, we ate the most expensive dinner we had ever had.  It was at the "17 hundred 90", which is a very fancy restaurant in the basement of an old house.

Monday morning we beat the rain and walked River Street (a bunch of tourist shops right on the riverfront).  We left just as the rain started coming down.

This was our first vacation together outside Florida (we went to Texas before, but that was to visit family).

I just read that Nintendo is going to release a new version of Metroid for the Wii.  This makes me so happy because I am a huge fan of Metroid.  The reason we bought the Wii for for Metroid and Zelda (Amanda loves Zelda).

I read about a year ago that Nintendo was going to discontinue the Metroid franchise (for a while at least), which was disappointing.  Hopefully this Metroid will be the best yet.