the one about the crazy preacher...

I'm taking a preaching class now and they recorded my last sermon. So if you're feeling brave enough, you can watch it too. It's on Luke 12:4-12 and it's about 15 minutes long. I talk about bears.


Posted by neal on Apr 4, 2007 at 08:42 AM | Comments (1)

  Goin' Back

We're going back to Budapest! Thanks to a school vacation for me, a good boss for Danielle, and a bunch of cool people in Budapest that we like, we're taking a trip. We'll be in Budapest from May 4-May 14. If you're in America, come with us. If you're in Budapest, don't leave. See you soon Magyarorsag.

Posted by neal on Mar 26, 2007 at 06:00 PM | Comments (4)

  Shock it back to life

I have a cordless drill. It's one of my favorite tools. I've had it for about 8 years now and after all that time, the Ni-Cad battery packs were pretty much shot. There was so little juice left in the batteries that the drill was more of a noise maker than a drill. One of the batteries was worse than the other and it wouldn't even turn a screw when it had a full change.

Then I came across a hint on Instructables.com for reviving dead nicad batteries. So I tried it. I didn't have anything to lose since the batteries were already shot. Plus, it had the added bonus that it might explode. I like it when things explode. The hint suggests using a welder. Sadly, I don't have one. But a car battery also has a fair amount of current, and I do have one of those. So I got my jumper cables, popped the hood of my trusty little Hyundai, and attached a drill battery-pack to the car battery for a few seconds.

The result: now the battery packs for my drill give full power for about an hour of work! They seem like they're almost as good as new. It's amazing. This makes me want to hook all sorts of other things up to jumper cables.

Posted by neal on Mar 12, 2007 at 12:15 PM | Comments (1)

  One impressive sentence

I was doing research for a paper on Islamic Eschatology when I came across a spectacular sentences I wanted to share.

"The Divine Incommensurability being mirrored in the Pen, - Its existential self-determination - the latter could not contain within the limits of its determination the incommensurability of the Divine Interdetermination, and translated the latter into differentiated mode; the Ink is thus the reflection of the All-Possibility - a reflection which, as such, could correspond only to the possibility of manifestation - and will be transmuted by the Pen into indefinitely diverse existential possibilities."

Not bad eh? I want to learn how to use that many big words in one sentence. And to make it better, the author of this gem is Frithjof Schuon; which could be one of the greatest names of all time too. Next to Martin Buber.

And speaking of research, I just found a very handy web site for all y'all that have to write bibliographies. I'm bad at typing, so the specific formatting of MLA or Turabian always takes me a long time to get right. Enter Ottobib. Just type in the ISBN number of your book and get a bibliographic entry in the format of your choice. Today this is website is running a close second to leftover turkey sandwiches in the things-that-make-me-happy list.

Posted by neal on Nov 25, 2006 at 11:48 PM | Comments (1)

  In "The Zone"


Danielle, Liza, Byron and I went to Maine this Saturday. Maine is only about 1 hour away, but it feels like a very different place. One of the differences is the ubiquity of lobsters. As we were driving along the coast, we decided to have some fun, so we stopped into the Fun-O-Rama in York Beach and found possibly the best arcade game on the world. "The Lobster Zone". It's that claw-toy-grabby thing, but with a tank of live lobsters! I'm still giddy about it.

Posted by neal on Sep 25, 2006 at 11:52 AM | Comments (3)