Posts from — June 2001

i have a gripe today. it’s not really a self-centered, complaining gripe, though. it’s more like a public service gripe. the basic summary of the gripe is this: “buy from half.com, not amazon.com”.

yesterday i ordered two books from amazon.com. “the shape of sola scriptura” for 17 dollars and “the grand demonstration: a biblical study of the so-called problem of evil” for $7.95. and i got free shipping because of amazon.com’s new dealy thing where if you buy two items from books, cds, videos or dvds, you get free shipping. that brought my total to $24.95. “hotdog!”, i thought, “i’m getting a good deal!” sure.

today i got an email from freedrive, with a few ads in it. one of them was for half.com, and it included a coupon for $5 off a purchase of ten dollars or more. that sounded like a good deal, so i went to see what they had. i saw that they had books, so i searched for the two i ordered yesterday, and indeed they had them instock. the first for $15.25 and the second for $3.49! now, the way half.com is set up you have to pay shipping on each item. that’s $2.25 each. so the total came to $23.24. cheaper than amazon.com, but let’s not forget that $5 off…. $18.24 now. that’s almost six bucks difference.

i went to cancel my amazon.com order, but – to their credit – the order had already “entered the shipping process”, so i couldn’t cancel it. and to return it would require me to pay the shipping, which would make it all UNworthwhile. so i’m stuck paying more than i should have, and i feel like that girl in the big lot commercial.

but you don’t have to. check out half.com, and enter “SUNSHINE” as your coupon code to get $5 off a $10 (or more) order. i guess it’ll work for you. you can also use “MUSIC44″ to get $10 off a $50 purchase.

p.s. – i just found bebo’s “big blue sky” album for ten bucks. that’s only five dollars!

hi everybody.

for those concerned, i’m feeling a lot better. actually, i never really felt that bad. i felt itchy, but that’s about the worst it got, and it wasn’t even that bad. so i was stuck inside all week and didn’t even feel sick. oh well. for those not concerned, poopoo on you.

i found something pretty cool this week, though. if any of you are familiar with r.c. sproul and/or ligonier ministries, this might interest you. some of sproul’s speeches/sermons are available as mp3s, for purchase. the selection isn’t the greatest right now, but i assume it’ll get better. and it’s definitely enough to get a collection started. it appears that they’re all in 30 minute segments, usually three or six parts per series. you’d have to buy the cd/tape version all together, but the mp3s are available individually.
for example, the series “Chosen By God” is six 30 minute messages. the compact discs are $19 and the tapes are $14. the mp3s are a dollar each, for a total of six bucks.

i definitely plan on getting some of these things. (and then burning them onto audio cds.) save 13 dollars plus no shipping costs! i must say it sounds like a deal to me.

you’ll have to look through the titles available to see if any of ‘em interest you. i’ve got my eye on three or four of ‘em.

here’s the link: http://www.renewing.org/ligonier/mp3s.html

i’m turning 26 in about a week. you’d expect some nice cards from family and friends, some bearing nice gifts. some emails from online friends, maybe, and a few mentions in friendly blogs. this is all normal. what is not normal is getting the chicken pox.

i have the chicken pox.

don’t even ask me where i got it from, because i can’t even begin to guess. it’s so odd getting a childhood disease when you’re on the verge of oldmanhood. anyhow. i’ll be home all week, probably. which actually means i’ll be online less. boo hoo. maybe i’ll get my book inventory done, or transfer my church notes from wrangled notebooks to a nice online outline.

kind hearts may feel free to send me a get-well gift. =)

ok… so this is a funny story.

i’m applying for a new job, which is in Lynchburg. It is a state position, so i am required to fill out a state application to send in with any other things i send, like my resume and a cover letter.

i downloaded an electronic version of the state application in MS Word format yesterday, so it’d look neat and everything when i printed it out. well, the closing date for this job is friday, and i just put my application packet in the mail today. i emailed the human resources office to let them know that i want to be considered for the position. i offered to email them my application packet. they said that would be a good idea to insure that i am considered. no problem. but here’s the funny part…

yesterday, as i was filling out the state application, i got a little bored and looked at the properties. in the author section, there was a question mark. i changed it to read “some bureaucrat”. well, i forgot to change it back before i sent the electronic version! ha!
i hope they either don’t look at the properties, or have a sense of humor.

today is a special day. i felt my baby move! it wasn’t too much, and if megan hadn’t been telling me that the little one was moving, i would have thought it was just her breathing or something. but no, it was baby kicking around, doing somersaults and stuff. it’s exciting. i figure in another month or so i’ll really be feeling the action, and maybe even seeing it from the outside.

the one thought that i can’t shake after feeling that baby in there, is that there are people that insist it isn’t a person, that that baby isn’t alive. i suppose we’ll accept anything when we don’t want the alternative.

oh… my birthday is coming up… wanna get me something?

(it’s worth a shot, right?)

a great section of an interview with bebo. from family christian store’s site.

Don’t pursue righteousness because of sin. Pursue righteousness because of grace. If I truly understood grace, it would drive me to want to be righteous. There have been a few moments in my life where I have felt grace on a very visceral gut level and really understood what grace was in a moment where I’d just screwed up but I felt fully forgiven. I didn’t beat myself up. All I wanted to do in that moment was to never be in that moment again. All I wanted to do was pursue righteousness with everything that I had. When you really understand or believe what grace is, it makes us want to be righteous. But if we’re ever living in response to sin, then sin is winning. If we’re ever living like, “Oh crap, I screwed up again. I can’t do that again” then we’re trying to be righteous in response to evil rather than trying to be righteous in response to good. That’s what the big thing for me has been. It becomes less of an action-reaction thing and more of a “This is what I am and that’s what I’m going to do”.

read the whole thing