He Wins

Jo took advantage of an insignificant, short distraction during supper to relocate his green beans from his tray to below the table. This act of defiance prompted his father to stick his face within about a foot of Jo's face and give him a stern look. As Jo noticed him, his face broke into a big smile, he laughed out loud, and leaned forward, immitating his father. Realizing that his son had won that round, the father retreated to a normal sitting position to consider his options,which prompted his daughter to comment,

La: "Look! Jo scared Papi away!"

A Tale of Two Cities: Georgetown, KY and Toluca, Mexico

What, exactly, is an American car? A car branded by a company with headquarters in the U.S.? A car manufactured by people in the U.S? A car manufactured by people in Canada or the U.S.?

(Georgetown, KY is where Toyota manufactures the Camry. Toluca, Mexico is where Chrysler manufactures PT Cruisers, among others.)

BTW, as for my thoughts on Fiat taking a 35% stake in Chrysler: that's like Dollar General taking a stake in The GAP. Not what you want if you like The GAP.

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

One of the most challenging things as a Christian is how to express love, which we are clearly called to do, without endorsing what the Bible is clear is against the will of God. Far too often, we err on the side of condemning the sin, making others feel like we are rejecting them, rather than expressing love. Philip Yancey has some tremendous thoughts in "What's so Amazing About Grace?" (though some of what he says will be hard to digest for some).

Pastor Rick Warren took a stand against homosexual marriage recently. As a result, there was a demonstration headed for his church. Saddleback answered this way: serve the demonstrators water and donuts.

Supposedly, another person will be as impressed by one bad impression as by twelve good ones. If that is true, then if we want to get Jesus' message across acurately, we have a lot of water and donuts to serve. Or would we rather get a different message across?

Prayer on Being Made Redundant

The Church of England has published a well-put prayer for those who have been laid off. Hope none of you has occasion to pray it - maybe the only time I'll ever say, "I hope you don't pray (this prayer)."

Food Likes and Dislikes

My wife made a very nice dessert today, with the ingredients including among them

• Raspberries
• Chocolate
• Whipped Cream
• Cookies

You'd think our kids would be ecstatic. Turns out, my son decided he was too tired to bother. My daughters refused the treat, preferring instead ... sour grapes. Hmmm.

Red Light Relief Coming

Oklahoma City will lead the nation technologically - and it'll mean faster commutes! Apparently, there are Wi-Fi boxes on a bunch of traffic lights already to supply Internet access to who-knows-whom. They'll hook the traffic lights into that so that they can coordinate them so you don't hit one red light after another. We'll see how well it works, but it's certainly nice they're trying (can't believe there's no one else doing this yet).

Source: Koco TV

Christmas is When All Your Chocolate is Gone

We bought Advent calendars for the girls. They have little doors you can open each day of December until the 24th, and behind the door is a piece of chocolate. They are wildly popular with them. Tonight, La was counting the days remaining that they would still have chocolate. I suddenly realized that we had also been teaching them that December 24th is when baby Jesus comes. I can see them reasoning: we're getting chocolate every day until baby Jesus comes. What then? Is baby Jesus eating the chocolate? Worse yet, Ly answered Ch's question, "when is Christmas?" with,

"Christmas is when all your chocolate is gone."

I'm sure they're looking forward to baby Jesus' arrival now.

About That Mall...

As was obvious to anyone who uses the Council exit on I-40, construction on the outlet mall hasn't exactly started. I found a news item from NewsOK that says it is supposed to happen in the Spring, with opening now targeted for Summer 2010. I'd say, we can be cautiously optimistic...

An Old French Philosopher...

My best friend gave me a birthday card once that read,

An old French philosopher once said, 'Getting old hasn't hurt anyone yet.'

You'd open the card, and inside it continued,

Those French! Always so fast with the cheese and the wine. I think it hurts them in the philosophy department.

Well, today I was offered something (through an e-mail list I'm on) labeled an "Old German Proverb." I had never heard it, but I decided it has an important message:

Love sees the need, not the cause.

Hear! Hear! They're Fixing I-44 in Tulsa

The government is moving on fixing the most problematic stretch of I-44 in Tulsa. They're also widening it to 6 lanes. Hoooraay!

Koco 5 News Release

Light of the World

A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
Father James Keller

You are the light of the world.
Matthew 5:14

Marvels of the Information Age

Wow! I bought something on the Internet (a "code library" for software development) in the course of some work I did a few years ago, and today I was going to buy an update. Just perchance, I realized that I had bought that code from a Romanian company using a German reseller. If your web site looks good enough, nobody cares where you are, and who you partner with.

It's not that I mind doing business with Romania, or Germany. I was just amazed that the presentation in this case was so slick that I never even considered whether this was like any of the other companies I do business with (usually from the U.S.). I reviewed the web site content, downloaded the sample and tried it, and since it was what I wanted, I bought it without so much as asking who was selling it to me. They were giving me the goods, they had a place to put the credit card number, voila!

I like things that way. God created us to live for His glory. In the course of our lives, we work to be able to supply for our needs, to worship God, to love others (probably not in that order). If someone else is going to sell me the product of their efforts, I don't care where God placed that person - whether in Romania, Venezuela, or down the street. May God's blessings be on the people in Romania that wrote the code I bought, and their partners in Germany.