christopher’s lives (v5.3)

first, a big thanks to those i’ve already gotten games with, it was a blast every time!
now, time to start bugging the rest of you :)

the weather is finally agreeable and, in my experience, this place is not without decent playing spots…
here is a site that has allegedly all the new mexico courses: nmdgc.org (new mexico disc golf courses dot org)… and here is a little thing i put together on windows live local, showing the abq courses: well, all but roosevelt :P… you might also have a look at pdga.com’s new mexico course page…
vista hills on rockaway is the obvious quick-game choice, centrally located for most people i know, just a couple minutes from the church… a really simple 9-hole course that can easily be played in under an hour…

i’m able, ready, and more than willing after work (4:30, 5-ish) on mondays, thursdays, and fridays… i’m always up for grabbing a quick round at rockaway (the earlier the better on mondays or else the third hole has to be skipped because of the soccer kids) and, if time permits, ladera would be great… i’d love to play the baca, but when is a huge question mark… (weekends are not exactly ideal…)
just gimme’ a call me on my cell - 328.1406

i have enough discs for two people… if you want to buy, it has been too long, i don’t know where to go except online or try ‘head shops (ya’ know, where you used to buy incense, pipes, and tie-dye)… over at Big 5 sporting goods on coors near paseo, i bumped into a very small, basic selection of drivers and putters (no mid-ranges) for $10 a piece, but, maybe some local players will read this and post a comment letting us know where to go for the good stuff… i’m looking your direction, matthew bohnsack :)

and, for that matter, anyone interested in getting a game can hit the comments and make it known… never played? no problem, i play like i’ve never played, so, it’s all good… just a nice way to waste a bit of time after work and maybe get hardcore on the weekends or something…
it’s free and it’s fun, so, let’s get out there…

.

UPDATE - April 9
forget what i said about weekends not being ideal… we have had a couple great saturdays out at Ladera and it looks like i/we will be doing it every saturday, hopefully getting there about 10am, 11am, somewhere in there and counting on spending 3 hours or so to play the 18 holes… yesterday, i was on the course EIGHT hours, so, i think the window of opportunity is pretty much all day if anyone else wants to join me/us…

Lifehacker just posted about PayPal starting a service for this:
PayPal via your cell phone - Lifehacker
and a commenter gives credit where credit is due, noting that TextPayMe.com was doing it first…

this is a trend i am really excited about… a logical step in technology… i never have cash on me anymore, just plastic, and there are so many times cash would come in handy, but, not enough of them to bother with carrying cash at all times… this would solve the whole thing…

i titled this entry “exchanging money via cell phones is coming” rather than “is here” because i doubt anyone i know, nor the majority of the population, is signed up for either service, so, let me be a voice shouting to everyone i know that reads my blog, encouraging you to sign up for one service or the other… at this point, pretty much EVERYONE has more than one reason to have a paypal account, and most people could find a reason or two to have text messaging…

so, please… do it…
and if you do, i promise no more excuses next time it comes to splitting the bill at starbucks :P

if you have been too busy playing with google earth to explore windows live local’s “bird’s eye” views, here’s a very cool way to get acquainted with it…

Bird’s Eye Tourist

From the site:

First Google brought us Google Local and Google Earth. Then Microsoft followed suit with Windows Live Local, featuring stunning new imagery. Bird’s Eye images provide a high-resolution, low-angle aerial view of a small area.

This website is the definitive guide and repository for the coolest Windows Live Local locations.

with a blog format and links divided into locations (where i found the sandia peak tramway) and categories (DO NOT miss “our favorites“), this is a very cool site…

at the moment the front page includes “the bat cave from the old TV show Batman“, “the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park, CA”, “numerous hovercraft at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia, “The Simpsons mural at Fox Studios”, and “the fake McDonalds”…

oh, and they also have a list of all the cities covered by windows live local…  very cool - even microsoft doesn’t offer that anywhere, as far as i know…

this is one to keep an eye on…  (btw, they DO have an rss feed!)

ok, firstly, the pics from february are up…
i did sort of a rush job, so, some should have been touched up, and i chose the wrong skin color scheme, so, it isn’t pretty, but, meh, at least they’re finally online…
anyway, no autostitch pics from feb (march has a few to look forward to, though), but, there are a few webcam shots… also, this set finally has some pics of “Truman“, my new computer, so, everyone can see what i’ve been describing…
enjoy…

ok, next, since i get a lot of comments/questions about it, i would like to publicly let everyone know that my webcam sucks (hey, it was $15, you get watcha pay for)… it freezes up quite a bit, so, yes, when you view my webcam image, it might not be live… the program that uploads the images does just fine, so, it will have a current timestamp, but, it doesn’t realize the cam has frozen, so, it just keeps uploading the last image the cam provided before it froze…
the way it usually works is that after a few hours, the cam just freezes… so, while i’m at work, or when i am out for the day, at some point or another, the cam stops giving new images, and i don’t fix it until i get home…
BUT FOR THAT MATTER, keep in mind that, when i have it off, i have it set to just leave up the last image it took… i like that better than something that says “cam currently offline”… but, you can tell by the timestamp when i’ve done that…
anyway, maybe i’ll buy a new cam soon… buuuuuuut, the cam software i use is a bit of a resource hog, so, sometimes i shut it down intentionally when i have several progs open at once… if anyone wants to recommend a lightweight cam app that has ftp, feel free to hit that comment link below and lemme’ know…

and speaking of new progs, i am now playing around with SCWebCam and am lovin’ it…
it does something a little different… it takes a snapshot of my monitors and uploads them… soooo, when you look at my sidebar over there, you will see a new image below the webcam thumb and that is a live shot of my computer monitors… click on it and i have a full page set up for it like my webcam page, with the chatterbox and everything… plus, the two pages are also now cross-linked to each other…
since i am running two monitors and am letting the image be at 80% of actual size, it is pretty large… it may be a problem for those on dial-up… but, i have it auto-refreshing once a minute, so, that will hopefully be enough time for it to download completely…
(oh, and, in case someone might point it out, yes, SCWebCam also provides webcam features, BUT, it doesn’t have a feature or two i love on ConquerCam, like the dynamic caption that i can change in seconds from a button in the system tray (it’s the blue text at the top of the webcam image)…)

anyway, that’s it for now… oh, except that i was graciously donated a scanner by manuel, so, perhaps i will start uploading scans of photos from the old days…
we’ll see…

as promised, a brief intro to the subject for scott… if i don’t stop myself at this, i’ll end up writing twenty pages on the subject…

firstly, you wanted info on calvinism, here is wikipedia’s excellent (and thorough) entry…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
it also has its own links to their stuff about arminianism…

btw, the thing i always quote goes like this…
a predestinarian sees a “freewill’er” trip and fall and mockingly says to him “what did you do that for?”…
a freewill’er sees a predestinarian trip and fall and mockingly says “i bet you’re glad that one’s over”…

another variation would be a predestinarian tripping and falling and saying to himself “i’m glad that one’s over” and, when the freewill’er trips and falls, he says to himself “now, what did i do that for?”

i don’t tell it as a funny, ha-ha, laugh-at-it joke (nor a literal allegation of either side), it is just a great illustration of how both of the extremes are ridiculous…

most people i know (who have thought it through) would typically go along with what is sometimes referred to as “class election”… that god chose the elect and we choose whether or not to be part of the elect…
i didn’t find an easy one-stop link for this yet…
but, the easiest summary is that we know what god’s elect has in store, the bible is full of promises of their destiny… we can choose to be part of that group or not… god is casting parts in a play and we can choose to play out that part or not… and we have the script, so, we know what is going to happen to the character…
of course, we don’t know our own individual destinies so specifically, but, again, the bible is replete with promises…