Google Maps took us all up and around some back roads that said something to the effect of “15mph curves, 4200ft elevation, next 16 miles.” Got to see loads of forest and the Looking Glass Falls as we carefully blew by, but I think we’ll go back a different way, thank you very much.

Suffice to say the wedding rehearsal went well, the lasagna and walnut pound cake was awesome, and after we bought a new cooler and 44 lbs of ice in which to put all the leftovers, it fell out of the car onto Mom’s toe. Yeah, the very same one in the “boot”. Not good.

But she put ice on it, and the rest of us all had a good time in the hotel pool until we all got overwhelmed and/or coughy and/or asthmatic from the chlorine and steam.

Apparently, a 4-inch-ish piece of concrete struck the windshield of their van while they were traveling to Ohio for my brother’s wedding on Saturday. The glass cut my mom’s arms all up, and the projectile inconveniently struck her in the toe, which is bruised and jammed now.

So if you see her this weekend, that’s why she has a big boot on her foot.

• have a daily “quiet time”
• have certain dress standards
• speak in tongues
• don’t go to movies
• have been baptized
• don’t drink alcohol
• don’t listen to rock music
• never miss a church service

… then you’re doing it wrong.

P.S. I used to think some of these things.

Update: Some people have also had trouble with these:

• don’t eat meat that has been sacrificed to an idol
• don’t eat with Gentiles
• am circumcised
• was baptized by Paul
• was baptized by Peter
• was baptized by Apollos

• From Charlie Boyd I learned not to let anyone tell me I need to do anything special or extra to merit God’s favor or attention. Working overtime to “keep all the rules” is not only unnecessary, but dangerous. (See the entire book of Galatians.)

• From Brian Onken I learned that God doesn’t need my help to accomplish His purposes. I’m welcome to come along for the ride (and even help out), but God will get done what He wants to get done, with or without me. (Calvin wasn’t all wrong.)

• From Tim Keller I learned that it’s okay to believe that Science just might have the answers, and to speculate that Genesis 1 just might be more poetry than narrative.

• From Jon Hand I learned that all truth is God’s truth. If something exhibits love, beauty or truth, God can be found therein, regardless if it is labeled Sacred or Secular. And I learned it’s okay to ask the big questions, the REALLY big ones, questions that might earn me funny looks in most churches.

I also learned from Jon and others that I didn’t have to be a Conservative to be a Christian. It’s okay to disagree with the evangelical world’s consensus on social issues like poverty, war, and homosexuality.

Deconstructing and rebuilding one’s faith is a normal, even necessary part of spirituality. Never stop asking yourself why you believe what you believe, and don’t be afraid to change it if necessary.

So. I think I’ve become more Emergent than anything else these days, with a dash of the Reformation thrown in for good measure. In the next few months, Jennifer and I hope to find a community here in Ann Arbor in which to continue our spiritual conversation.

Tim’s previous Mac, an iBook G4, had an unpleasant habit of exhibiting display anomalies and freezing about 5 minutes after booting, and the conclusion Steve and I came to was that the fan had stopped spinning (confirmed by iStat Pro, very quickly before it froze again).

Unsure of whether the fan or the logic board was the problem, I decided to fix up the old PowerBook for Tim instead of repairing the iBook just now. I also got my first experience putting thermal paste on a heat sink. Kinda weird.

After the PowerBook was all back together, I had to figure a way to get Tim’s data off the iBook—difficult, since it wouldn’t run for more than 5 minutes at a time. I would have to at least remove the hard drive from the iBook (a host upon which to be decided later).

I had no idea how hard it was to get a hard drive out of an iBook. NOT USER SERVICEABLE. I had to take a million screws out, and remove both sides of the case (front and back). Much more difficult than a PowerBook (and, I assume, a pre-unibody MacBook Pro).

Once the hard drive was out (and the various innards of the iBook spread all over the kitchen table), my first idea was to just stick it in my MacBook temporarily, since it’s INSANELY easy to swap the hard drive in a MacBook. Turns out Ultra ATA drives don’t work in a Serial ATA MacBook.

The second idea (after verifying it on EveryMac.com) was to put the drive in my old Power Mac G4. For some reason that didn’t work, even though it’s also Ultra ATA. Different spacing on the pins or something (puzzling). By this point Tim and Dani were fidgeting about, wanting to get on the road, since they had a 3-hour drive to Mt. Vernon.

I explored various other solutions, such as booting the iBook with exposed logic board and hoping the improved air circulation kept it going sans fans long enough to copy stuff off. I also suggested to myself that I could connect various computers (and/or external hard drives) together in FireWire Target Disk Mode, but only the Power Mac had enough FireWire ports to handle it, and all my FireWire cables were in the closet in the bedroom, in front of which Drew was sleeping, on a cot (since Company had taken over his room for the weekend).

Also briefly reflected upon the fact that either a) a working FireWire hub, or b) one of these would have solved everything.

Anyway, the final solution (which worked) was to throw the drive in Jennifer’s PowerBook for a bit while SuperDuper copied everything perfectly over to the new computer, impressing Tim.

Frank Bettger, the author, was originally a major league baseball player, but after an early retirement due to injury, got into the insurance business. After failing miserably for some time, he eventually built himself up into a huge success.

Here’s what I’ve learned from each chapter so far:

1. Be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm, even if forced, will engender attention and trust in others.

2. Keep records of your time and activities. Check back after a while and self-evaluate. What were the most valuable things you did? What can you cut?

3. If you are bridled by fear or lack self-confidence, enroll in a public speaking course (esp. one in which you must speak at every meeting). Or start a discussion/speech group, à la Ben Franklin’s Junto.

4. Plan your week’s schedule ahead of time, and then stick to it as much as possible.

5. Find out what people want, and help them get it. Not just when selling something, but in all of life. (See Mark 10:44)

(More to come as I read further.)

I’m going to try and implement each of these things. You might read about it here.

Sometimes I would go so far as to try to vaguely plan tomorrow. “Mom, are we going to the grocery store tomorrow?” Yes. “What time?” Um .. I don’t know yet.

It proved difficult to prepare on paper for a predictably bland future, and no-one was much help in coming up with things to for me to do. Except, you know, like chores and junk. Bo-ring.

When I was a teenager and got my first job, I followed my dad in graduating to a checkbook-sized DayTimer, with my initials etched in a little brass plate on the leather front. I mostly used it to keep a log of the hours I worked, which did not exactly justify the $50/year or whatever it was for calendar inserts. (And, honestly, I was always rather frustrated at actually having to write things down on every page. Where was the copy-and-paste?) So I gave up and kept my hours in VoodooPad (which was new at the time), and my erstwhile to-do list in a text file.

Meanwhile, I became an adult, and here-and-there acquired some responsibilities.

Fast-forward a few years. I’d been a fan of Merlin Mann (who has since thrown off his mantle of Productivity Prophet) for a bit, and he was now talking about something called GTD. What was that? He kept talking about these index cards, and this David Allen fellow, and it sounded to this kid like the organizational Magic Bullet.

But I could never wrap my head around it. I bought the book, but (quite ironically) never got around to actually reading it. I watched as people fawned over Things, OmniFocus, KinklessGTD, TaskPaper, etc., and wondered how somebody could actually use one of these things without a secondary Personal Productivity System, just to teach them how to use the first one.

That-was-then. This-is-now.

I may have mentioned I’ve recently become an adult. Turns out those predictable days of schoolwork and leisure only last so long; before I noticed them waving and walking away, my job(s), family, responsibilities, and some other things that I Shouldn’t Have To Deal With In A Civilized Society were jumping up and down in front of me and saying HEY WHAT ABOUT MEEE DON’T FORGET! and, frankly, whipping me into a constant state of mild panic.

Occasionally I would think, “Boy, I wish I could write all this stuff down somewhere so I don’t forget any of it.”

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Today I discovered — what I think — is the One True GTD App. At least it is for me: The Hit List, currently in “Public Preview”, soon to be published by Potion Factory (wonderful name!).

It’s like a glorified legal tablet. But it’s also like iTunes. And it has Tabbed Browsing. And /tagging, and @contexts, and a system-wide, QuickSilver-like task creator (with hot-key), so that when something hits your brain, you can type it in quickly and get back to real work.

I love the user interface. It’s colorful and easy-to-use, and makes julienne fries. It just makes sense .. but what’s more, it gets out of my way and lets me work with my to-do list just the way I’d expect it to.

According to the developer, it will be $69.95 upon final release ($49.95 pre-order). I’ll be taking some time to see if The Hit List fits into my workflow, but so far it looks like I’ll be buying a copy very shortly.

Sometime during the evening, the conversation turned to movies.

In my experiences with modern Christianity, there are two main schools of thought on movies and media. The first is that almost every secular media item has at least some sprinkling of “objectionable elements”, which, when counted, contribute to the measurement of whether a Good Christian ought not to see or consume it. (This brings up other issues with which I will deal later). “Whoever is not with me is against me,” (Luke 11:23) is sometimes quoted, but I’m not sure if the context bears applying it here. Especially since Luke 9:49-50, where Jesus is telling his followers not to stop unofficial helpers from doing His work, saying “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you,” seems like a better fit to me.

The second is one by which I have more recently been stirred, and plays off the idea that all truth is God’s truth. Media communicates. Movies tell stories of life, death, redemption, love, loss, rebuilding. The characters aren’t perfect. Most of the characters in God’s story weren’t perfect, either. But He used their lives to illustrate parts of His character and plan. You can find aspects and illustrations of the Gospel in just about anything.

I almost posed the question to Jon tonight, but decided to write about it instead: how does one communicate that second, more inclusive idea to someone who is committed to the first, exclusive one (as I was brought up to believe)?

Feel free to discuss in the comments.