Sam Harrelson

Via Gia Trapani’s Scribbling.net 

My first semester of teaching Intro to the Old Testament (Religion 101) at Gardner-Webb University is almost over.

Wow.

What an experience.  I can’t tell you how quickly the semester has flown by and how much we still have left to do.  There’s one week of full classes yet and I’m just getting to Hezekiah and Josiah!  Yikes!

So, I’ve got to squeeze in the Exile and the post-Exilic periods in the span of a week.  Double YIKES!

I wish we didn’t have schedules and class meeting times, especially in a college environment.  It would make much more sense (in my Asperger’s clouded mind) to allow students to select their own schedules in a given week and select certain teachers or subjects they wanted to pursue in a much more fluid and non-constrained manner as our current rigid class system.  Pipe dreams.

After teaching 8th grade for two years, this has been a semester of wonder, enjoyment, frustration, bewilderment and learning.  I just hope my students have learned as much as I have and have grown to find a little bit of interest, or at least appreciation, for the Hebrew Bible.

I am a complete Lost geek.

I can’t believe I just read through this entire thread with the same excitement as I have when reading a great book…

http://www.thetailsection.com/lost-news/lost-the-great-jacob-debate.php

So, I took the plunge and decided to try OpenDNS.

I’m impressed.

It seems to really speed things up, especially in Firefox.  Plus, the shortcuts are awesome… I’m already using my toolbar less!

Anna and I are more than proud, happy and excited to announce that we’ve got a baby on the way!

The due date (which you can follow by the awesome widget above) is around October 10, 2007. My dad’s birthday is October 5 and Schaefer (my beloved firstborn son and dog in the pic over on your right) has his birthday on October 12, so it looks like the baby will fall somewhere between those two.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a father. I can’t wait to toss the baseball, watch the Cubs, discuss Star Wars, camp out, cook breakfast, get ready for the prom, paddle a canoe, talk about justice and Gandhi, laugh, cry, hug, smile, and dream with this child.

My whole life has been a build up to this point.

I’m so excited.

Here are some pics…

Whoever you are and who ever you’ll be, I love you so much.

Whatever you do with your life and whoever you end up being, just please remember this…

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

Be good, my baby. Change the world, and always (ALWAYS!) serve others. You are special, you are incredible and you are my life. Thank you for being you.

Say what you want about social media and social networks, but I think this is just one small example of how organic and non-induced marketing can seriously improve a brand, campaign or even offer.

This week, General Motors unveiled the new concept for the Buick Riviera model at the Shanghai Auto Show. Designed at the GM Pan Asia Technical Center, the car is yet another stylish Buick designed by GM’s China design team.  The Riveria is an older brand, and as the son of a car dealer, I’ve seen my share of ugly Riveria’s.

So, I was excited to see the new concept.

However, I found out about it on Digg.  The story (with hi-res pics) about the new concept for the Riveria was dugg yesterday and is now pushing 300 diggs and is on the front page.  While not signficant in terms of Detroit budget numbers, having that many diggs and being on the front page for an extended amount of time causes a ripple in the pond of influence.  Soon, these young tech geeks (like myself) who watch Digg will tell their young friends about the car and so on and so on.  It’s effective and you can’t buy or induce that sort of beneficial marketing.

The problem is that many large (and small) companies think they can find ways to game Digg or StumbleUpon.  Sure, you can get an offer on the front page, but the traffic is going to be junk.

Make your marketing human and stop trying to fit square pegs into round holes!

I downloaded and quickly installed Ubuntu’s new version, Feisty Fawn, last night.

I even skinned it to look like OSX…

I’ve used 6.06 and 6.10 since last summer, but Feisty (7.04) is by far and away the best Linux distro out there for my needs. Comparing Feisty to my Windows Vista laptop and my Mac OSX machine, it is my favorite because of cost, ease of use and customability. Plus, it’s darn fast and seems to be very stable no matter what I throw at it.

Here’s a few of the nice things I’ve noticed about 7.04 compared to 6.10…

1. My “Motion Eye” built-in webcam works flawlessly on a Sony Vaio VGN-FE770G laptop with Feisty. I’ve never had great success in getting it (or any webcam) to work with either 6.06 or 6.10. So, this was a nice suprise and a HUGE bonus.

2. The boot time for Feisty seems to be quicker than 6.10. Maybe it’s just me or my machine, but it seems faster on the load.

3. NVidia support!

4. Sound seems to be much better in Feisty than in 6.10. After heavy use in 6.10, I would start to get a lag or echo in sound. Not the case with Feisty so far.

5. My Logitech VXRevolution mouse worked right away with no fuss in Feisty.

6. Skype works wonderfully in Feisty. It took a little manipulation to get it right in 6.10.

7. My Logitech laptop USB headphones work right when I plug them in. No fooling with the command line… which is fun, but can be tedious when I’m trying to do something quickly.

So, my first impressions are all very good ones. I use this Ubuntu laptop as my main machine for both personal and work related items. SO, I’m hoping this is the Ubuntu release that finally convinces me that I don’t need a Vista or OSX box to communicate properly with the outside world…

Suck.

The older I get, the more I realize that humor (“good” sarcastic humor) shows more of an understanding of a subject than just recitation or memorization of facts.  If I had time, I’d love to do some research into the human humor response and see what the evolutionary treadmill has to say about the development in the human animal.

Now I’m trying to think of a way to tie-in humor to the classes that I teach… hmmm…

Working and studying in a college environment everyday, I can’t tell you how profoundly shocked and sad I am at today’s shootings at Virginia Tech.

Colleges and universities, of all places, should be places where young and old people alike can study, learn, walk, live and inquire without feeling the least bit threatened.

My thoughts and prayers are with the students, staff, faculty, families and loved ones who suffered so much today and will continue to do so for a long time.