Miscellaneous comments that somewhat resemble a blog, but its not a blog, because I'm not ready to commit to that.
2/21/12
Free Tv! Does anyone want a 32" tube tv? It works pretty well, I just don't need it anymore. It may also be useful as a bunker buster. If you need something to drop from an airplane, with the mass and density to penetrate Iranian underground bunkers, give me a call. I did a quick mental calculation as I tried to hoist it across my living room, and I concluded that this baby should have what it takes. I'm not saying we should bomb Iran, but if you are going to do it anyway, my tv is available.
2/12/12
Did you see Eric Metaxes at the National Prayer Breakfast a few weeks ago? There is video here, starting at about 35 minutes in: Link
I loved it, you should watch it. I'm nominating it for best presentation of the gospel seen on C-Span3.
Eric Metaxes is the author of Bonheoffer: Paster, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and some other good books.
2/3/12
Please do me a favor. Stop putting up profile pictures on websites like Facebook that show multiple people. Please consider how your discrimination against the poor people like me makes us feel. If I pull out my phone and select a contact to call by selecting your picture, which got automically downloaded from Facebook, I won't know which person in the picture I'm calling. Even if you actually want me to call your spouse, or your relative instead, do it the right way and just log into their account when they aren't looking and change their profile picture to a picture of you. It isn't that hard and it will take the element of chance out of it.
One exception. Babies.
It's ok to put a picture of a babie with you in your profile picture. I wasn't going to call your baby anyway. Babies never check their voicemail.
1/26/12
Last Saturday Laura's grandma Charlotte Schaap passed away peacefully, and today Laura is in Chicago to honor her with a day of remembering. She inspired us with her strength and faith in God by holding on long enough to meet her new great-granddaughter at Christmas, and declaring that God had been good to her and that she was ready for this. She will be missed.
12/03/11
I've now won the Rainbow Foods scratch game 4 times, total winnings: $1. Mostly I just win more tickets.
By the way, I wanted to share with you this funny and appropriate summary of Tim Tebow:
"a balanced blend of Johnny Unitas's moxie and guile with St. Francis of Assisi's piety and throwing motion."
Has anyone tried the scratch to win game at Rainbow foods recently? You have to scratch the right 3 symbols off out of 9 to win. I had 7 cards to scratch, and I won! I got lucky, because 2 of my cards had the same winning pattern. I think I win a dollar, but mostly I'm happy because I don't think I've ever won a scratch game before.
I got to go to Camp Ripley recently to try out the obstacle course and weapons simulator which was an excellent time, and I got some videos to prove it. Anyone that has been to Camp Nathanel might find it interesting as I did that the army obstacle course has a log hopping event very similar to Camp Nathanael's.
Since summer is over, I thought I'd present my favorite pictures and 1 video from summer 2011 for consideration. By coincidence, they all involve water sports.
You can make multiple computers behave just like having multiple monitors on the same computer, with moving your mouse from one monitor to the next, and keyboard entry, and copy and paste! I just installed it on my work desktop and laptop that sits nearby, and it is so cool it makes me giggle.
8/7/11
I think it would be worth a minute of your time to watch this video of a bird flying. Try to guess what kind of bird it is: Video Link
I came across this in some automation news stuff I read because of my job and I had never seen anything like this. It's really impressive to me how it moves. It's even better than the pengiuns they made a few years ago.
7/31/11
One hour ago I was putting some old electronics in a cabinet because Laura had found some old stuff while we were doing some cleaning. I looked in the cabinet and thought to myself "hmmm, there are a couple of spare keyboards in here, maybe I should just throw away the one that's on the computer and take out a spare, that one is old, dirty and it can't last forever anyway."
That keyboard just broke. It just stopped responding as I was using the computer. I am now typing to you on the spare keyboard.
Does this mean I have the spriritual gift of Prophecy?
7/23/11
What does the Holy Spirit look like? Kind of Blue. At least according to the kid who says he went to heaven, as told in the book "Heaven is for Real". I read it recently, and I have to say I think he probably did see some supernatural visions of his dead relatives and Jesus. I've read some people have theological objections to how he described Heaven, but that doesn't really bother me. There's no reason Jesus couldn't give a little kid who is near death during surgery some visions of the spiritual realm that he would understand as Heaven, even if it doesn't look exactly like what we'll actually see ourselves. If you are a person that doubts the existence of a spriritual world at all, this kid's knowledge of his dead sister, grandfather, and knowledge of where his dad was praying during the surgery might make you think twice.
I also decided that they must be a good normal family, and not a bunch of opportunistic liars because I saw an interview of the family that ended by showing them playing Settlers of Catan.
6/21/11
Everything has been made right, I am myself again. I have full control of my email account and Google Voice phone number again. That may be all any of us ever really have full control over come to think of it. The good news is Google returned my account to me within of 36 hours of me putting out an APB on it, and Paypal is refunding my $767...
6/20/11
If you've ever had that "gee I think maybe my password isn't strong enough and I haven't changed it in a long time" feeling, trust the feeling. I tried to changed my password Friday night, but got interrupted and didn't finish. By Sunday afternoon, my intuition had been proven right and my Gmail account is no longer mine. So don't bother emailing me there right now, some hacker has changed the password and the reset email address and phone number so I cannot log in. This also means I don't have access to my Google Voice phone number at the moment. I still have my old phone number, and Facebook if anyone needs to contact me that way. I'm hoping to get my Google account back, I filled out the "my account has been pilfered" form. Come on Google, go get him. Maybe I'll try calling my Google voice number and see if a hacker answers...
5/28/11
A Mom tells her adult son that he should believe in Jesus, so he prays "God if you're there, please let my Mom win a million dollars." The next day she goes to a charity auction and wins a million dollar ticket? Yeah, I thought this 2 minute interview was worth watching.
2gb microSD cards, brand new, Sandisk. Your phone might find one a tasty snack. I have 5 to get rid of.
5/2/11
Obama killed Osama? I have a lot of questions. Such as:
1. This was part of the filiming of the new '24' movie right?
2. Why did we kill him instead of letting him grow old and moldy in jail in some place he would really hate, like a God-forsaken wasteland, like say Hollywood?
3. Why did we go to such trouble to bury him according to islamic traditions? Is there a problem with making the statement, "if you want the funeral you always wanted, don't kill thousands of people?"
4. Who planned the date? There is something poetic about killing the guy who planned an attack on "911" on "mayday" another distress signal. They say it would have happened Saturday if not for bad weather, so there is either someone in Military meterology with a flair for the dramatic, or God wanted it this way.
4/21/11
Have you ever procrastinated doing a simple chore, and kept putting it off, and then finally doing it over 4 years later? It feels really good to finally get it done. I think it had been about that long for changing my guitar strings. I kept telling myself that when I got around to it, I was going to do a little test, to record what the guitar sounded like before, and then record it with the new strings, and compare to see how much difference it made. I was hoping that I wouldn't notice any siginificant difference so I could justify my laziness and then continue not changing the strings very often. I am going on the record to say that I was wrong. I can hear a difference. Maybe not a gigantic difference, but definitely noticeable. I apologize to everyone who has heard my guitar for not doing this sooner.
2/20/11
We went to Boston by the way, I had to go to some training, so we flew Laura out when the training was over and had a fun weekend wandering around the place. We saw some cool places where history happened. I don't go to places that old very often. We took a few pictures if you want to see them. To anyone wondering if Chris D. is actually out working at the fort out there, I can confirm that we had a solid sighting of the man, although I didn't get a picture of him, so you'll have to believe me. I also want to give this message to everyone in Boston: "take it easy, malls are not that cool, and it's ok to eat at home sometimes." Boston Pictures
2/9/11
Here is what I want to know, can anyone guess where I took these pictures this week?
Happy New Year! There was a couple things I thought about putting up to share a few months ago, and then forgot about. Here is one of them, a video of my first snowboarding experience of this year back in December. It features me falling a good number of times, right in front of the camera, and my coworker laughing at me. Link to Video on Vimeo
10/1/10
Bittersweet, and relaxing. The last sail of 2010 is in the books. You can experience it here: Link to Video on Vimeo Pretty weak wind, but who am I to complain about a 70 degree September 30th in Minnesota?
9/17/10
It's a bit weird when you're having that dream where you are being chased up a ladder by the Borg and they're reaching out trying to grab your ankles, and you suddenly wake up to find a cat walking around on your feet.
Also, I think it really is odd that my dream about the Vikings game was so close, considering I (along with most sports fans) would have the expected the scores to be in the 30's again, and the final score was 14 to 9, with 2 missed and 1 blocked field goals.
9/8/10
I had a nightmare last night. It was painful. I dreamt that I was watching the Vikings miss a last second field goal to lose 10 to 9 to the Saints. Is this God warning me not to get my hopes up? Let's hope not.
9/5/10
I've met some people who seem to really like and trust Sojourners, the magazine and organization of Jim Wallis. I need to ask them a question. Have you heard about this: Jim Wallis vs. the truth and does it make you really uncomfortable with Sojourners? Even though he apologized for denying it at first, the fact that he did accept a lot of money from George Soros and he claims to have forgotten about it makes me really skeptical about this guy's motives. Also the way the evidence seemed to disappear is also fishy.
8/13/10
To everyone that we called last night to try and coerce you to go sailing with us: Be glad you said no and were spared from danger. We went anyway, and even though there were some dark clouds to the west when we set out from the dock, I said "oh the wind is coming from the other direction, it will blow those clouds away, it isn't supposed to storm until later." Ignoring the fact that the only other boats on the lake were in the process of leaving. we got out to the middle of the lake when I started thinking "hmmm those clouds seem to be getting closer actually, and oh look, it's starting to rain, and there's lightning". I learned an invaluable lesson in what happens when one weather front runs into a more powerful one. It only sprinkled a little bit, but it looked bad so we hurried back to the dock, and then took a leisurely light jog to the car as the wind started to get nasty. We felt rather supernaturally protected though because the downpour waited to start until 1 second after we got in the car and shut the doors. It's a good thing that someone's in control and has mercy on foolish sailors.
7/25/10
Have you ever been trapped at Bethel University?
No, I don't mean trapped by heaping mounds of debt and coursework, I mean actually physically trapped. Last weekend we went to our church groups "Unite" conference, 2 days of joint church services at Bethel. Saturday night right after we finished we were sharing refreshments in the lobby area when they told us we had to go down into the lower level hallways because of the tornado warnings in the area. Feeling comfortable with but not quite ready for death, most of us complied. Then later they told us that a tree had fallen across the main entrance, and the other entrance had been closed because a car ran into it in the last week. We were trapped. I don't know how long we were down there, maybe an hour or more, but I have to say, for all of the familes and children and and tired people down there sitting around in crowded hallways it was surprisingly pleasant. I can't think of a better group of people to be trapped with. Also, the weekend's teaching was good and motivational to.
7/9/10
What is wrong with Lake Michigan? Why did it seem reasonably warm last August, and bone-shatteringly cold this July? But we still had a good weekend with family in beautiful Manitowoc, WI. Did you know they have a fully restored WWII US Submarine that served in the Pacific open for tours at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum? That was fascinating to check out.
Did you also know that you can rent jet ski's right here close to home? We've thought about trying this out for awhile, but we finally took a vacation day at home and went and got one for an hour on Lake Minnetonka. They're not the fastest jet skis in the world but still a lot of fun. We wished we had more time, and that it was cheaper. I think we need to open a competing business to try to bring the price down a little. Can I get any business partners?
5/11/10
Have you played Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun and what are you doing Saturday?
I found out a couple weeks ago that 2009 was the 10th anniversary of the release of one of my all time favorite multiplayer computer games, Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun. To celebrate the anniversary, the producers released it for free downloading. This is amazing, because now I could easily download copies onto our 4 computers and have a 2 on 2 gaming center all ready to go. So, even if you have not played the game but are willing to try it, let me know if you would be interested sometime. My wife is also on women's bible study retreat this Saturday, so I don't have plans...
5/7/10
Anyone want to go to the Jason Lewis Tax Cut Rally tomorrow?
A little last minute, I know, but I'm planning on going. Maybe I'll see you there?
I think it's supposed be heartwarming. It arrived awhile ago in a Saint Louis Park calendar that tried to glorify the community. It seems to me like it also accidentally hints at the real truth, that no community on earth will ever be anything close to perfect. Am I just cynical, is it the mullet, what is it that makes me think this might be an illustration of the wrong kind of "valuing" youth? Somebody tell me.
3/23/10
What if I told you that an unlimited pass to Welch Village for next winter could be bought for $99 before April 1?
Welch is one of the best hills in the area in my opinion, and no ski hill that I know of has offered a season pass for close to this price. Afton is close to $400. You could just about make this worth it if you go twice. Laura and I are giving this some serious thought, but it would be nice to have some friends who would join us. There's not much time left so if you might be interested in spending some quality time at Welch next winter please let me know.
3/10/10
What do engineers do, you ask? Well in certain isolated and awesome cases they help rock bands make unbelievable music videos. See below.
One new life experience added to my portfolio: working a corner for an ice race
I went to go watch a friend race with the IIRA, and got to man a corner with a radio, fire extinguisher and colored flags to wave at the drivers. It was a blast, those guys really know how to drive. One of the racers even gave me a ride around the track, which was so much fun I giggled uncontrollably, and I got to take a few laps in my car too just for fun. The work was pretty easy, I didn't have to wave my flags much or use the fire extinguisher. Only 3-4 cars (and 1 spectator truck) needed to get towed out of snowbanks, and 1 car rolled over.
Anyone up for Skiing/snowboarding on Saturday the 20th? I have a couple friends that want to go to Hyland Hills. The last time I went out it was pouring rain all day, and the time before that the day ended with a trip to the ER, so I'm really looking forward to this...
12/30/09
Skiing/snowboarding on Saturday anyone?
It will be cold, but somebody's got to do it.
12/13/09
Skiing/snowboarding next Sunday anyone?
I have a birthday coming up soon, and my favorite way to celebrate is to use it to trick people into going snowboarding with me, so seriously, even if I haven't talked to you in awhile, you should come. Dec. 20. Let me know.
Oh, and how about this nice little summary of American parenting: comic
12/12/09
I forgot to respond to a question I was asked about what we thought of the movie Precious, so I figured I'd say something, and I might as well rank all of the movies I saw in theaters this year, it won't take that long.
1. District 9 - gory, violent, amazingly good. I don't know how you could beat a movie like this
2. Precious - disturbing, depressing, and fantastic at making you understand what it's like to lose the birth lottery and be born into the wrong family, I was glad I saw it.
3. Star Trek - flashy, entertaining, not memorable
There was only 3 or 4 movies in theaters this year right? I think so.
11/26/09
For the aid of my interested darling relatives, if I were going to go shopping for myself, this is what I would buy.
11/24/09
If anyone wants to see the movie Precious, we're going tomorrow night, let us know. People say it's really good.
11/15/09
This is a little late but we do have pictures of Laura's first backpacking trip, to Lutsen back in September. We hiked from Moose Mountain to Oberg Mountain, and camped one night in the middle. It's a cool hike. I thought it was fun, but I don't know if there will be a second backpacking trip for Laura or not.
10/31/09
I should clarify something, yes Jon, David Bazan's music is generally depressing. Especially since his latest album has been called something like a break-up letter to God. I don't know all that much about him, and I don't understand his confusion about God, but I've always found his music interesting and I still do.
10/28/09
Free Song!
Hey you, you should download David Bazan's Bless this Mess from his website.
Has anybody tried Bank of the Sierra's Rewards Checking account, or similar accounts? For 4.5 % interest, I was thinking of giving it a try. After I'm done earning frequent flyer mile bonuses for the 1st 3 months of my new American Express card.
Also, has anyone read Glenn Beck's Common Sense? I thought it was an interesting book, not fantastic, or as funny as I had hoped, but good. It makes a convincing case for abandoning both the republican and democrat parties, it might be time.
10/14/09
Who would have thought?
1. If you tell Qwest that you are leaving them for Comcast internet they suddenly offer you 4-5Mbit DSL for $30/month for a year!
2. Grape stems can slip through your garbage disposal like houdini, completely intact, which causes a bit of a bottleneck when your pipes try to make a right angle turn farther down.
8/23/09
We gave Door County WI a chance, and went to go check it out for our first time. We were glad we did, we were impressed. I don't know of anywhere else that's a gas tank away that has that much cool shoreline, clear decently warm water, big waves, boat rentals, rocky bluffs, sandy beaches, and it wasn't very crowded either. It's also very focused on preserving their considerable history, a lot of things still look like they did in the 1800's, or at least decades ago. Very absent of tall hotels and chain restaurants or chain anything. Yet there are some great restaurants and hotels with their own unique flavor.
If you're going to plan a Door county vacation of your very own, I'd have to give the following things a hearty 4 stars:
The Ashbrooke in Egg Harbor - very nice hotel and it's 2 doors down from a great breakfast at the Village Cafe
Peninsula State Park - for the views
Newport State Park - cool hiking along the shore, relatively secluded
Whitefish Dunes State Park - big sandy beach, we played in some big waves for a long time, the closest thing to the ocean beach experience
Sailing with saildoorcounty.com
Sister Bay Boat Rental - they let you rent a jet ski and take it wherever you want, in our 2 hours we made it all the way out to the tip of the peninsula, where there were some giant waves
Peninsula Players Theater - really cool theater and surrounding garden on the lake, where else can you watch the sunset over the water before you walk in to your seats?
I'd probably have to give 3 stars to these:
Door county Trolley Tour scenic tour and ghost tour Tandem Kayak tour with kayakdoorcounty.com
8/6/09
Wow, thanks everyone for your interest and comments. I may have to add some kind of response at some point, but not now. I'm going on vacation tomorrow, and I'm going to try and not think about any of this for the most part. I was thinking about a question today that is only partly related though. Does anybody know a Christian who went into politics (like getting elected) and provided such a great example of Christ's love to the people they met that many people came to know Jesus? If not, is the moral of this story that getting involved in politics will make you more enemies than friends, and that this will diminish your ability to do the more eternal things? Just so you know I tend to lean towards being interested in politics, ( though I don't think I'd ever get elected to anything) I was just wondering where it would get me.
By the way, sorry about the links in my last post, sometimes I forget that things I write on jeremy.groeneweg.googlepages.com will not show up on Facebook as well as it does here.
8/5/09
Laura and I went to Adam and Lorena's discussion group this week. We talked about government healthcare. It was interesting, but it would have been much more interesting with more viewpoints. Even after going to the meeting, I still haven't come across anyone (politicians don't count as people) who is willing to admit thinking universal healthcare is a good idea. Aside from the obvious emotional response that "everyone having great healthcare would be wonderful", who can explain how the government's plan is at all practical or ethical? Someone was forwarding these links around before our group meeting:
Excuse me? How are these at all helpful to anyone? Of course everyone wants healthcare, and of course God wants us to help our neighbors, but these provide no information on how the government could make anything better.
Everyone I've talked to so far seems to agree that the best plan is to get the government restrictions out of health care and let capitalism work. So maybe our time would be better spent discussing what we should do about it. The thing I'm not sure on is how much effort should we put into fighting government on things like this. Even if the government does continue to destroy the economy that wouldn't stop us from loving God and encouraging people to get to know Him. Plenty of people have come to God in depressions and chaotic times, maybe that's just what we need. I don't really want society to completely fall apart I don't think, but I think the argument could be made. Anyway, those were my thoughts of last night.
6/7/09
"Marriage Counseling by Ace Hardware"
So Laura and I had a serious diagreement recently that we just couldn't come to any kind of compromise on. We used to keep the dishwashing sponge like this:
But it seemed to me that sometimes the sponge wasn't soapy enough so I started putting the sponge upside-down like this so that soap would always be running down into the sponge, and it would keep things soapy for efficient dish washing.
Laura declared this to be "gross" because food bits could stick to the sponge, and then mold, rot and fester in the red holder on the sponge, which we would then wash our dishes with.
After a deeply emotional argument ended in a bloodless draw, it seemed peace would be lost forever. That's when Ace Hardware came to the rescue and saved our marriage. $10 in parts and a bit of glueing, and suddenly both parties were satiated. I'd like to see your marriage counselor beat that price.
And this is me trying out our friend Nick's hand made kayak he just finished on Lake Nokomis tonight, $300 in parts, 100 hours of labor, and a beautiful Kayak appears. I was impressed with it.
I don't think I've ever gone bike riding in shorts 1 week after snowboarding. Minnesota is special place. Here is a picture of me standing on Medicine Lake in shorts and short sleeves, and sunglasses, in about 55 degree weather. The amazing part to me (no I'm not Jesus) is that there is still plenty of ice to support all of the ice fishermen in the background, including a bunch of trucks. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/bIt8filTmEVSDE7cFr26lg?feat=directlink
Laura and I have decided to go on a mission type trip with our church in April, you can read about it in the letter we are sending out to a few people. If you would like to get one of these letters yourself let me know. Jeremy_and_ Laura_Mission_letter.pdf
For people interested in the messages from the annual Faithwalkers conference our group of churches puts on, I made a version of them that have their volumes better matched, and louder, better for listening to. You should be able to download it from here: http://www.filedropper.com/faithwalkers2009 It's a big file.
3/9/09
So how long do you think Wayne's been skiing? Wayne flying off a jump at Powder Ridge About a week or so. This was his second time out. Unbelievable, what a natural.
3/3/09
Ok, I bought snowboard bindings, thank you craigslist. Now, who wants to go snowboarding this weekend? Laura is out of town.
2/12/09
They're killing dogs in Iraq. Killing lots of them. Here is an excerpt from a CNN article about it:
"The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SCPA) International calls the methods used by the Baghdad culling program inhumane."
Question is, is that a critique or a compliment? Of course it's inhumane, that's exactly what inhumane means, treating something as if it is not human. Inhumane is exactly how the dogs are and should be treated. Pat on the back for the SCPA using the perfect word I guess? The packs of dogs were attacking kids on their way to school. Not killing them would also be inhumane, to the kids.
Sidenote, does anyone want to sell me some snowboard bindings? I destroyed mine.
2/8/09
My friend Jon Schmidt showed me this video, you should watch it. I've never tried it, but it might be the coolest recreational activity in the world. Wingsuit base jumping
Now what everyone should do is write to their congressmen (and president) and recommend they try it. Ideally before they pass this ridiculus "stimulus" bill. Tell them of course it's safe, they're wearing parachutes. Then maybe we can replace them with people who care about this country more than they care about grabbing more power.
Children 18:3, just your average Minnesotan homeschooled christian siblings? Actually no, these guys really rock too. This might be my favorite new band find of the year. Check them out.
12/6/08
I found this really interesting, it's an American's account of being at the Taj Mahal during the recent terrorist attacks, and how he survived thanks to the actions of the employees. Heroes at the Taj
Also, if anyone want to go snowboarding tomorrow or some other time soon, let me know. Also, if anyone owns a Silcon Dust HDhomerun, I'd be interested to hear what you think of it.
11/27/08
For the family: It is that time of year again, so if you are looking for gift ideas, here is this year's list of suggestions
11/16/08
If you haven't seen me recently, it might be because I've been on work trips almost every week for the last 2 months, the most I've ever traveled in my life. The good news is that I don't have any more work trips planned right now. I figured I would write an update of what I've been doing recently in between trips.
Hammer Time, the Ultimate Frisbee Team I joined after their 0-3 start ended up winning 6 straight games to make it to the championship game of the B bracket of the MNultimate.org fall league. I had never played in a league before this, and I also had never made it to the final game of any type of playoff, in any sport. It was a lot of fun, and we ended up losing to South High Squall B 12 to 9, a team that John and Dan Schmidt play for, two guys I'm proud to know from working at Camp Nathanael. John actually wasn't there, because he as at the national tournament in Florida at the time. It didn't help our team that our team captain Jon Dordal left the game to go to the ER in the first couple minutes, bleeding like a fountain from the front teeth he knocked loose running into someone's hip.
Have you ever read "The making of the Atomic Bomb"? Thanks to Chris Rognrud loaning it to me for several months, I finally finished it. It's a tough read in length and physics depth, but it is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. I love it.
Did you know there is a new Settlers of Catan game out? After trying it last night, I would call Traders and Barbarians definitely worth playing. The new variations really add to the fun.
At work this week my co-worker showed me this video of a computer vision system playing guitar hero put together by a company that does similar work to what we do. We were talking about making a competing robot to play Rock Band, all instruments, but I doubt we'll get around to it.
I had no idea that there was a YMCA camp on the north side of Lake Independence, even though I've sailed on it a lot. I found out while doing the high ropes course for Wayne's birthday. It was a hoot, and they also have a sledding hill I would like to try this winter...
10/25/08
In case anyone is interested, we now have pictures available of our trip to California last week. I was doing a couple days of work in Lodi, CA, and Laura got to come with! We had time to see plenty of things, Yosemite Valley, Sequoia Groves, a spa, San Francisco, piles of Sea Lions, an Audi R8 on the highway, a forest fire and more. The forest fire was controlled, but it was still cool to drive next to one.Pictures
10/22/08
So there is a Men In Black organization! I thought so. This was my favorite excerpt from the recently released UK government UFO files, the quote from a pilot after he was ordered to try and shoot down a UFO back in the 1950's:"He said he was led to a man in civilian clothes, who "advised me that this would be considered highly classified and that I should not discuss it with anybody not even my commander." "He disappeared without so much as a goodbye and that was that, as far as I was concerned," the pilot said, according to the account." The Article
Also, here is something I'd be curious to hear if people find useful or not. I learned some Open Office (not Excel, because Excel is not free) spreadsheet programming to come up with a cool budgeting tool with buttons to automate things, here is a link to a screenshot sample of what it could look like, send me an email if you're interested in getting a copy or have thoughts about it. Some of my family members like it enough to use it so I thought maybe someone else would too. Spreadsheet (click the download button to see it full size)
9/16/08
Do I deserve a suite like this all to my self on a work trip? No, but I'll stay here for a couple nights without complaining. Pictures Video
8/23/08
Well that was a good time. Laura and I had the pleasure of being at Jon Schmidt's marriage of Emily Graham on Mt Lemmon near Tucson, AZ, a wonderful event for everybody. We'd never been to Tucson before, but it's hard not to like the parts that we saw, the mountain top area where we had the wedding and the resort the Schmidt's got us a room at. Aside from from hanging out with college friends and a few relatives, the coolest part of the trip for me was seeing the Hoover Dam. They are building a new bridge to bypass it, so in the future it will not be possible to drive across it, but we got to. Due to being in the area, having an anniversary, a couple nights of free stay at the Golden Nugget, and having never been to Las Vegas, we decided to see what it is all about. Overall, it's a degrading, depressing celebration of what's wrong with mankind, but it does have some cool things to see. We saw a Penn & Teller magic show, and Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere, both really fun shows. We also got a kick out of the Golden Nugget's shark-filled aquarium in the middle of the pool, and the thrill rides on top of the stratoshpere. The ride where you slide down a metal track going off the edge of the top of the tower and abruptly stop at the last minute is probably the hardest ride I've been on to trust and let go of the harness. Pictures Video
8/8/2008
Correction: when my friend Jason asked me last weekend about why I thought Barack obama was an idiot for his objections to offshore oil drilling, I said it was because it should be obvious that increasing our supply of oil will bring oil prices back down. My mistake, Obama is not a complete idiot, he does know something about getting elected: pay attention to polls. With polls now showing that most Americans now support increasing our oil drilling in America, Obama chose that same weekend to annouce that he now supports some offshore oil drilling under the right circumstances. He still has way too many socialist and bad economics policies for me to vote for him, (like wanting to raise taxes on the oil companies) but I wanted to set the record straight. I do know that Mccain has changed his mind on oil drilling too, but at least it was long before now.
Something I find screwed up, insane, and disgustingly laughable: Pro Wrestling
In other news, I want to go sailing today, badly. Anyone want to go?
7/13/08
I put up some 4th of July pictures of sailing with my family and hanging out in Stillwater with some friends for the fireworks. Definitely above average fireworks, with Civil War era cannons firing into the river and everything.
Later that weekend Chris let Laura and I try out his uncle's Sea Doo RXT 215 jet ski, that is unbelievable. Supercharged for 215 hp, I've never felt anything accelerate like that. If Laura tells you that I threw her off and then ran her over with the jet ski, that's only partially true. But it is really hard to stay on that thing. Some friends have noticed that I now have a Facebook profile, once again. I decided that it's here to stay and I can't kill it, so I'll have to at least sign up if I want to see pictures and things by friends that don't post things anywhere else.
This weekend, not only did I get to go to Valleyfair, but my boss taught me how to ride dirt bike! I love it, and I was surprised how difficult, and tiring it was. We went out to a private track in the country where I could be repeatedly passed and out-jumped by David and his 2 sons.
Oh, and after seeing wall-E last night, that might be the greatest romance movie ever made.
7/1/08
So June is over then? Time does cruise when you're having fun. We spent an exciting weekend at Winfield Lake in MI with Laura's family: Pictures Jet Skiing Video 1 Jet Skiing Video 2
We also made a 2nd attempt at canoeing Minnehaha Creek, this time doing the last 2/3, and making it to the falls finally! Pictures
On a separate note, here are some funny pictures, can you find the misspelling in two of them, and the Justin in the other? The Aveda graduation program is so horrifically and beautifully stereotypical you have to take a look. I was lucky to have an ex-coworker attend the ceremony for her friend, and bring back a program.
6/16/08
Canoeing Minnehaha Creek is even more fun than I had hoped, I can report after making our first attempt a few weeks ago. Plenty of cool yards and houses to look at, a decent amount of natural looking areas, and enough water, rocks and current to keep things interesting. Especially at the dams in Edina. Check out a few pictures and a video of Nick hitting some raging rapids here. We made it from Lake Minnetonka to the Lake Harriet area, 6 miles short of the full 22, we hope to try again in a few weeks, let me know if you're interested in joining us.
In other news, let me know if you know any young engineers looking for jobs in Industrial Automation, my small company is actually hiring, this doesn't happen too often.
5/26/08
Well the Rock Band party on Saturday was a smash hit I thought, and I got over 7 hours of Ultimate Frisbee in, so it was a good Memorial Day weekend. We had a weird windstorm hit our Condo Sunday afternoon, it lasted about 5 minutes or less, and it seemed to only hit our complex. We had a bunch of big trees get blown over, part of our fence flew off, and a tree completely buried a car in the parking lot with people inside, but they were ok I think once they crawled out the windows. pictures of the weekend
5/17/08
If you are a friend of Laura or I, and you don't have plans next Saturday night, give us a call. Also, if you want to see Prince Caspian tonight with us, do the same. Or if you are interested in canoeing Minnehaha Creek. Other than these things, we will spend the rest of our summer going to weddings. Almost. We are in a span of 5 weddings in 7 months, with one of us standing up in 3 of them. I just posted some pictures of the first two. I am really excited about the prospect of getting to go visit Arizona in August for the wedding of Jon and Emi.
4/26/08
Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed. That's the name of a movie in theaters right now. It's a documentary by Ben Stein (the actor) about the response to scientists who write or say positive things about Intelligent Design, (which is basically the idea that nature seems to have a design to it that couldn't have just happened by chance). I haven't personally verified if scientists are being fired and blackmailed for giving consideration to the idea, but it sounds like it's really happening, and that's frightening. You'd expect better from science, after the enlightenment and all, for not taking a fair approach to the evidence. I'd encourage people to see the movie, it is probably something that everybody should know about at least.
4/12/08
What a week. I flew with 3 co-workers to Syracuse, NY on Monday for 3 days of training for work. That alone would have made it an interesting week but it got really strange when Northwest overbooked our flight and told us that they only had a seat for 1 of us when we got to the gate Thursday afternoon. I now understand why checking in online in advance is worth the time. We sent the guy with kids home to be with his family, leaving Tony, Sarah and I to find a new way home. There wasn't 1 flight out of Syracuse going towards home the rest of the day that we could fit on (it's a small airport) or even in the morning. Tony, the only one of us who had been to New York City before came up with the idea that maybe we could take a taxi to New York City and get a flight home from there. Sure enough there were seats available on a direct flight out of La Guardia airport in NYC at 6:15AM Friday. The girls running the Northwest desk weren't sure if they were allowed to give us vouchers for an $800 4-hour cab ride to NYC along with our free food and plane ticket vouchers but they didn't know what else to do with us, so off we went.
I've never been on a 4+ hour taxi cab ride, and like you'd expect it's a little strange to be on a road trip with some guy you've never met. Luckily our cab driver was pretty cool, and told us lots of stories and information in his heavy New York City accent about the cities and landmarks of New york and Pennsylvania that we drove through. Sidenote: I had no idea that Scranton, Pennsylvania actually exists but we drove through it. We got to the airport around midnight, to find that most of the airport was closed. Security didn't open until 4:30AM so we couldn't get to our gate, or to any carpeted areas to sleep on. So we had 5+ hours to kill, and nothing to do, so even though we were tired we found a cab driver to drive us around a bit. We figured we might as well see a bit of the City while we're there. So I got to see New York City for the first time, in the middle of the night. We drove past landmarks like Central Park, Times Square and Grand Central Station, it was kind of surreal to be fighting to stay awake while seeing famous things I never planned on getting to see in person anytime soon. Eventually it was morning, and I slept through our whole flight home. I was out before the plane had closed it's door. I wasn't even awake to see the passenger sit down next to me. Tony was sitting behind me and tried to wake me up by poking my arm when he had a bloody nose at the beginning of the flight but I never felt a thing. So I got home about 10AM Friday morning, after a rather unique 28 hour long day. Here are some pictures from the trip, I should have a bunch more on Monday.
3/28/08
Does this picture look like ideal paintball weather to you? Actually after trying it last weekend, I can't think of better weather for paintball. It was the first time Special Forces Paintball in Buffalo, MN had been open yet this year, so the snow was all fresh and untouched, and knee deep in places. The place gave us all white camouflage so we could dive into the snow and hide, and being able to slide into cover and see snow fly up when people are shooting at you is a nice touch. I also like being able to fire without having leaves and branches in the way. Special Forces Paintball is definitely worth checking out, I'd like to try their amphibious beach invasion in the summer.
Did you hear about the bank robbery and high speed car chase that ended with the suspect being shot right at 494 and 55 this morning? It happened about an hour before my surgery, right across the street. As I was sitting in my surgery chair I had a perfect view from 6 floors up of the 20 or so police cars and 10 or so civilian cars that were in the roped off area along 55 as things were being cleaned up. I even got to see an ambulance helicopter land right on highway 55! Eventually the nurse and doctor stopped watching the commotion with me and actually got around to pulling my teeth, although they apologized for knocking me out because I was going to miss the rest. I have a little video of me being driven home afterward, I'm under the effects of drugs still, and have my mouth stuffed full of gauze, so it's kind of funny. Much thanks to my generous friend Ben for the transportation.
3/21/08
Ever wondered what it's like to go snowboarding this time of year, when the temperature is around 40 degrees? Don't try it, let me just describe it to you, and save you the time. It's slow. Instead of the snow providing that beautiful low friction surface for you to glide upon, soggy snow is like riding on double-stick tape. You can get up a little speed on the steepest parts of the black diamond runs, but as soon as the run levels out a little bit the only way to get anywhere is to ride in a narrow packed down path that develops because to blaze a trail in the fresh snow just doesn't work. As soon as you leave the path that everybody else rides your board just stops. And when it's steep enough to get moving fast if you hit a stickier spot it jerks you back like driving with a driver's ed student. I'm not sure if this was because I had just tried waxing my snowboard for the first time the night before or not, but my board picked up a layer of dirt on the bottom that was pretty hard to scrub off afterward. My attempt was at Powder Ridge in Kimball, MN this last Tuesday. The temperature hadn't dropped lower than 35 degrees by the time we gave up, maybe sometime in the middle of the night it would have gotten icy and fast, but it didn't seem worth staying and waiting for. So learn your lesson and get your snowboarding in before late March.
3/15/08
Good news, Faces.com is back up, bring back hundreds of my pictures as well! I haven't decided yet if I'm going to switch back entirely or not. Picasa doesn't have a nice context menu upload program, but there are some good things about it, like the slide show view, and easy video uploading with the pictures. In other news, Laura is a much better snowboarder now! Our last trip to Powder Ridge was a big step forward. Too bad winter is ending just when she's getting good, but there's always next year.
2/29/08
My Grandmother Ann Groeneweg passed away last Tuesday night. She had had Alzheimers issues for the last few years, so she'll be much better off with God. This earth is no place for humans anyway.
Laura and I recently got back from our first real vacation. We had gotten talked into a vacation package deal for going to a expensive cooking pot sales presentation last summer. We stayed 2 nights at the Ramada Plaza in Fort Lauderdale, FL, then got a 2 night cruise on the Regal Empress (a 1950's era ship, relatively small but well preserved) to the Bahamas for a day to play in Nassau. I can't describe how cool their Atlantis resort is, so you'd better look at our pictures. Where else can you go on a waterslide through a shark tank? We also got 2 nights at the Ramada 1000 in Orlando, FL. This was a nice hotel, I recommend it, especially if you want to go to Universal Studios, it is only a few miles away. I finally got to go on the Jurassic Park ride at Universal, they shut it down for a storm just before we could go on it on our honeymoon. I did like the ride, but real dinosaurs would be better. I think my favorite ride at Universal may be the Mummy ride. The pictures and videos are all here I would have put up pictures sooner, but I found out this week that Faces.com, my favorite pictures hosting and uploading service has been shut down. This is dissapointing, but I'll get by. All links to these pictures on my website are now broken, but hopefully I'll fix that eventually.
Happy birthday to Laura, was the theme of our biggest party yet at the condo last weekend. Adam got some good pictures, check them out here.
Here's another interesting note, I wrote on this website last summer how happy I was to get a late paycheck from Walmart from 5+ years ago. I take it back, because I realized this month that the 63 cents I received was hardly worth having to enter another W2 form on my taxes. Anybody ever seen a W2 for a total wages of 1 dollar before?
1/19/08
If you haven't seen me recently, it might be because I can't seem to keep myself out of Michigan. I've flown there for work in 2 consecutive weeks now, and I will likely be going back for awhile the week after this one. The trips have gone well, but I still like being home more than I do being in Michigan. Laura on the other hand has gotten to see friends recently, such as at the wedding of Marcus and Amy in Washington a few weeks ago. Here is some video of their reception entertainment if anyone has any interest in it.
12/15/07
Jeremy drinks? What?
Many people who know me know I have never drank any alcoholic beverages. This is due to many reasons, such as seeing painful effects it can have on a life, and also not having a very good reason TO drink any. That changed last night. At my first company christmas party, I was presented with what I consider the best reason to partake of an alchoholic beverage I have yet come across. This document explains it pretty well. A wine that is over 5 times older than I am (1885) is not something a person comes across every day. My boss has the wine master at Lord Fletchers on Lake Minnetonka look for an excellent wine for our company party every year, but this may have been his best find yet. I am told it was the only bottle available in the U.S., if you would like to try it go to Lord Fletchers, we didn't need to finish it. It only takes a drop to fill your head with a taste you won't likely experience again. So I can't say I don't drink anymore, but I can say I don't drink anything bottled in the last century.
12/13/07
Does anybody want a free desk? we have an old desk at work, nobody wants it. It's not pretty, but it's stout. Also, if anyone heard the news that I might be in Michigan most of December, that is now scheduled for the first week of January instead.
12/09/07
My Dordt College friend Jason Wyenberg and some Dordt students met me at Mount Kato for some snowboarding on Saturday, it was a real good time. I've never been there before, I'd say it's better than Powder Ridge and Trollhaugen, but not up to the level of Afton or Welch Village. I took a video of me following Jason down their board park run, watching Jason take some jumps and a box.
Thanks to our friend Ben, we had the soon to be released video game Rock Band at our condo last week. Wow. It will have a steep price tag, considering it comes with 2 guitar controllers, a drum set and a microphone, but I was dumbfounded by how much fun it was, and we already own guitar hero. It's pretty much just like jamming with a 4-piece band, only easier and with volume control. I recommend giving it a try, hopefully one of your rich friends will buy it.
News I never pictured myself writing: I am planning on getting rid of my VW Scirocco. If you have any interest in taking it off my hands, let me know. I will explain the whole story soon.
Also: My friend Adam told me that Radiohead is selling their new album at whatever price you want, I have no idea why. You can name your own price and download it October 10 supposedly. I'm doing it. Click here to order your copy.
10/06/07
If you have ever bought a cheap RCA selector switch from Hong Kong off Ebay, and plugged it in to find it has all kinds of weird interefence problems because all of the connections go through the same circuit board and switch, then you might know how I felt when I did exactly this. Not content with this situation, I ripped out the circuit board, pulled out it's signal connections, and connected them to 9 separate switches. Now I have a custom made switch box to select video and audio between my computer, Playstation, and DVD player. Click here for pictures.
9/13/07
I have posted pictures to my Faces.com albums of our trip to Yellowstone the day of the Pasma's wedding back in June. I especially recommend the picture of me posing with a large friendly moose. It was a great trip, I'm grateful I was invited to come out and stay in lovely Bozeman, MT for the wedding, and I am very sorry we did not show up for the ceremony. I also posted some pictures from our wedding and honeymoon, and a recent rock climbing expedition to Taylors Falls.
8/27/07
It really happened! Laura and I are married. Thank you to everyone who came. Many people know I've never liked weddings much, and Laura and I were not expecting me to like this one either. Whether it was having so many great people there, the entertainment, the speeches or the cake, I somehow really, genuinely enjoyed my wedding. I am enjoying all of the pictures I have already seen posted on the internet from our friends, and I would love to see more, please let us know if you have pictures or video to share. If you don't receive a thank you card for awhile, it's because Laura and I have been showered with more gifts than we have time to open and enjoy right now, but we'll get to them.
8/8/07
Hey, if anyone reads this and is willing to help move Laura into our new place this Saturday, let me know. It would be a big help.
8/7/07
Sorry to everyone who expected me to write something on my website this summer, it has been busy. The good news is that the wedding is now only 11 days away. I hope to see many friends there, and I hope its fun for all of you. I have been asked by a few people to see what the condo that Laura and I bought looks like, so I finally took pictures tonight. Click here to see them. The boxes all over the place are because my friend and roomate for a 2nd short stint Adam is getting ready to move out, I've decided to trade him for Laura. I tried also getting Kevin Garnett back for the Timberwolves in the deal, but I couldn't swing it.
6/3/07
I got a check from Walmart today. It came with a letter explaining that over the last 5 years, Walmart had incorrectly calculated the pay for some of its employees. I worked for Sams Club (part of the Walmart company) 5-7 years ago, during high school, and they are telling me that I was underpaid. The letter went on to explain that they are giving me the pay that I was entitled to, along WITH INTEREST to make up for their mistake. Never let it be said that Walmart isn't fair. The grand total of my check came to 65 cents. Thanks Walmart.
5/5/07
I haven't put much on my website recently, I've been busy. Among other things, I was busy buying a condo! Laura and I now have secured a condo in Saint Louis Park to live in. If you know any women interested in living in a nice St. Louis Park apartment from August to December, let me know, we are looking for someone to take Laura's room.
3/25/07
Free music update: Two songs I really enjoy can be downloaded for free! Coheed and Cambria's Blood Red Summer is available here on Last.FM's free download list. A fun remix of Rock the Casbah by the Clash, (a very popular song among people with ears) is available here.
3/22/07
Happy Birthday Website!
As of two days ago, (scroll down to the bottom and check if you want) I have been maintaining my website in it's current form for 1 year. It wasn't too hard. Other things I have done consistently for over a year include: -Driven my Scirocco (almost 5 years!) -Been addicted to Pepperjack Cheese (2+ years) -Had nasal congestion (23+ years)
3/17/07
Did my little brother get a lot taller? Or is that just a Lotus he's standing next to. I want a Lotus.
3/11/07
What I do for a living.
My friend Amanda recently asked me what I did at my job, and if I liked it. That made me think that a lot of people don't know what I do at my job, and a few of them might care. So I'll try to tell you. I like my job, for several reasons, such as the $50 fillet mignon dinner I got last week when my boss wanted us to take a guy our company works with out for supper to entertain him. Many business people "wine and dine" their contacts but not all of them use 1910 Madeira wine. My boss also doesn't hesitate to break out the check book to get us top of the line tools (such as great computers) to do our jobs well.
Now for the actual work. One of the best parts of my job is that I get to play with cutting edge industrial technology to figure out how to use it for people. The project I'm currently working on is like this. A customer of ours wants something to verify that the right color of lids and containers are being put together on the different flavors of food product they are manufacturing. So in order for us to provide them with a working demo of what we can do, I get to put together a demonstration. I use a really cool (and expensive) color camera sensor and teach it to tell the difference between different colors as it's looking at the containers and lids. Then I hook up a switch and some lights and the sensor to a PLC (small industrial computer) and program it to monitor the switch, so that when the switch is turned, the PLC sends electrical pulses to the sensor to tell it which color it should be looking for, and turn on a green light when it sees the right color, and a red light when it sees the wrong color.
3/10/07
Engineers This illustration about engineers was emailed to me recently:
An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him andsaid, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess". He bent over,picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again andsaid, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I willstay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket,smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "Ifyou kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and doANYTHING you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it andput it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter?I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a weekand do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "LookI'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog,now that's cool."
Now don't think that just because I'm an engineer, (see proof below:) and an engineer that is getting married, that this story's credibility is ruined. It simply means that Laura is far above the average young woman.
3/3/07
I have a some good news to share with the world:
-My car has a new clutch and is running fine!
-There are a bunch classic computer games legally available for free here.
- MediaCoder - a free and amazing program for converting audio/video files between formats, this is amazing for me, who has lots of mpg videos recorded off of television that would be half as large of files now that I can convert them to Xvid files. It's not perfect yet though, it's still under development.
2/25/07
Here it is: August 18. Keep it open. If you are reading this, you are probably going to be invited to an elaborate ploy to get piles of gifts that we'll call a wedding.
2/17/07
My car needs a new clutch and transmission, maybe an axle or two, feel free to tell me if you think I should junk my 1983 Scirocco finally. I will consider your comments and likely ignore them.
Congratulations to Jordan, on creating his first website, an important step in any young man's development.
1/22/07
My sister and brother in law gave Laura and I this card yesterday. Funny thing is, they had good reason to. You see, Laura and I are now officially engaged! And no, we don't know when we can get married yet.
1/1/07
Happy New year! I enjoyed my holiday season, because many people gave me gifts, like their time and desire to hang out with me, and many fun games, like Puerto Rico, Carcassone, Seafarers, Killer Bunnies, and Bohnanza.
Bluetooth adaptors are amazing. One of my favorite gifts is a USB Bluetooth adaptor, which when combined with a free program from Nokia, lets me transfer contact information, pictures and video to and from my cell phone with my computer wirelessly. This is a lot of fun. It's a lot faster to enter contact information with a computer keyboard.
I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my miscellaneous photo album, and some of a huge gingerbread house, and some of Chris and Jason's apartment, which has been elaborately converted to a castle, complete with surrounding jungle and nearby peasant village. It is real impressive. If you have hung out with me recently, there might be a picture of you on the internet now.
12/18/06
I got a job! I will start Jan. 4 as an Electrical Engineer at Sensors Inc. in Maple Plain, MN. It is a small company of about 6 that does sensor solutions for manufacturing companies, (like sensors that control how full bags of cereal are for General Mills for example). If you hadn't heard, Laura also has found a good job and she starts Jan. 1 or 2. What beautiful timing, and what a happy Christmas it will be. Thank you to God. In related good news, Mandi, Laura's new roomate also got a job today at 20.21, the fancy restaraunt at the Walker Art Center!
12/06/06
Is anyone willing to help Laura move into her new apartment on Dec. 15 or 16? Let me know, we'd appreciate it.
If you haven't used Last.FM you don't know what you're missing. It is the coolest music discovering, listening, discussing and sharing website on the internet. It can keep track of what music you listen to on your computer, show you people who have similar tastes and what they are listening to, and give you free internet radio stations based on your tastes, someone elses tastes, specific styles and more. I think it's even better than Pandora.
11/29/06
I am proud to report that the 32" LCD TV that I bought on Black Friday has paid off, I sold it for $700, $200 more than I paid after it was listed on Craigslist for a few hours. This makes an excellent Thanksgiving weekend of hanging out with Dordt friends even better.
11/20/06
Nov. 14, which left us six days ago, was my two year anniversary of being a Gmail user. This is longer than anyone I know has been using Gmail, I think I'm proud of that. I didn't get any cards for my anniversary though. That's ok, I'm not usually big on anniversaries anyway, but this one really meant something to me.
To anyone who wondered how my job interview went today, the answer would be, "like clockwork". It went well, and I will probably get a second interview, or at least that's what the staffing company that set up the interview and talked to the hiring company afterward told me. This company gave me a Wonderlic intelligence test. This is the test that pro football players have to take before they get drafted. Because of this, I agreed to take the test, in the hopes that it might improve my 40 yard dash times. I have seen a lot of things in interviews, but never this before. I don't know my score, but I was told I scored "very well".
11/09/06
Here is my review of Scirocco axles popping loose from Scirocco transmissions at 60mph: "0 out of 5 stars" I'm ok, but my car needs a little work.
11/05/06
Thanks to my sister for showing me this music video of Here it goes again by Ok Go. Its the coolest, most creatively choreographed music video I've seen in a long time.
11/04/06
I'm going to stay with this habit I have of trying to tell people where to get some good free (and legal) music, because maybe you might appreciate it. Today I'm recommending a download of Goodnight, Goodnight by Hot Hot Heat. I like this song.
11/01/06
My weekend in Iowa was a good time, I got to see the apartment my friend Jon just moved into, it is in a victorian mansion built in 1895 and he has a room in a turret! Jon, Chris and Jason and I also did some geocaching, which means searching for things like small boxes containing objects and logbooks at coordinates posted on geocaching.com using a GPS unit. While we were driving around geocaching, we spotted a treehouse, which was connected to 3 other tree houses with a bridge, and zip lines! We stopped in to talk to the creator/user, but he wasn't very friendly, and wouldn't let us use any of it. Of course, we took pictures of everything, and they're on my pictures page. On Monday, I found something beautiful at Northwestern bookstore, the Bleach best of CD with dvd video footage of their last show and other bonus features on sale for $6.99! If you like Bleach, you'll want to check this out. Their last show was in 2004, after a 9 year career, and RelientK, the OC Supertones, and a shocking reunion of Seven Day Jesus(!) came to Nashville to open for Bleach and say goodbye. This was a milestone in Christian music. If you want to come over and watch the DVD let me know.
10/27/06
Who wants some good free music? How about free music with some thought provoking lyrics from a talented Christian songwriter? Derek Webb is giving out his album Mockingbird for free here.
You should also probably download a new song from Weird Al Yankovic, titled Don't Download this Song. You might think that it is unethical to download a song that's title instructs you not to do so, but I say that it's fine as long as you learn from your experience and don't do it again.
In unrelated news, Laura and I are going down to Dordt this weekend!
10/19/06
It is good to appreciate poetry. Today I received emails from my friends Chris and Jason (yes they are twins, and roomates) that demonstrated just what a deep appreciation they have of poetry. I in turn appreciated their appreciation so much that I wanted to share this with you, dear reader.
I emailed Chris and Jason because I wanted to visit them at Dordt College. One hour later I got this reply from Chris:
But of course, our facilities would be more than suited to your sleepishneeds. Remember,
If Sleepy Jon's won't take you Inn, Consider Cozy Christoph's den. You need not e'en 'Inquire Within,' For we'll be open after ten!
~Cozy Christoph
One Hour after that I got this reply from Jason:
And if, of course, you wish to stay In Jason's 'bode, which you just may Then fear not, weary travelling friend For Chris and Jay's meet at the end And though you'll have to pass the time With Chris, the ugly, wretched mime Good Jason will be there as well To save you from the depths of hell That company with Chris provides To him whose presence then abides
With Chris. Wretched Chris. The Ugly, Filthy One named Chris. Oh Chris. Poor Chris.
10/17/06
I made something fun and useful and wanted to show it off, so please comply and take a look at my AAA battery replacer!
10/12/06
Google just never stops. I found out today that they added some new features. Two weeks ago when I was searching for a photo hosting service to switch to, I thought it was strange that Google wasn't leading the way in this area, since they tend to have the best to offer of everything short of prime rib. Well Google finally fixed that by releasing a new version of Picasa that makes uploading pictures (of any resolution) into web photo albums beautifully easy. Their storage limit is 250 MB total, less than Faces.com's 500MB/month, but Picasa is easier to use and better in most ways. I still like some of what Faces.com can do, but I might have to make a place in my life for both.
Google also released an online Document and Spreadsheet program that makes Microsoft Office unnecessary for most people. It's impressive.
10/3/06
I had a good time on Sunday watching Justin run the Twin Cities Marathon with much speed. I put up some pictures on my Pictures page. My picture page changed today, I added some things. The Faces.com desktop uploader program makes me very happy. It has to be the fastest way to publish photos on the internet ever invented. Many good things happened on Sunday, such as the Twins winning the division, go Twins. A bad thing happened too though, a man in the marathon passed away of a heart attack during the race. Say a prayer for his family.
9/28/06
If you happen to have been at the wedding of Paul and Beth Terpstra, you might appreciate the video I just added here. If you weren't, you probably aren't.
Right when I was proclaiming my love of photobucket, they stopped allowing hi-resolution pictures, (their limit appears to now be 800 x 600). This not acceptable to me so I tried several picture hosting websites, such as flickr, snapfish, and fotki, and eventually I found Faces.com, which I have chosen as my favorite. They let you host 500mb of uploads per month of as big of pictures as you want for free, which is the best service I have yet seen. Faces is a pretty cool site, it's what myspace would be like if it were good.
As an example of what Faces.com can do, here are some pictures I put up. They are the results of my brother Jordan's learning experience about what happens if you hit a spray can of foam insulator with a hammer. The spray was about 10 feet high and lasted about 20 seconds.
They now offer a program that lets you drag and drop pictures into an upload program for putting pictures on the internet really quickly. The upload program is part of the Flock web browser. You might ask, this is so fast and easy and free, why doesn't everyone do this? That's a good question. I hereby declare that friends that take pictures at group gatherings that their friends might want copies of, and have internet access, and don't put the pictures on the internet, deserve fleas behind their ears.
* - added on 9/21 - disregard this post, photobucket and I have split up. Creative differences.
9/11/06
Have you ever seen a turtle whose shell is about the size of a quarter?
Now you have. This creature was found by my fellow beach supervisor on the beach at Camp Nathanael during it's open house. There are more pictures on my photobucket account here.
9/8/06
I just added a video to my Miscellaneous page that is a must see. I don't think bottle rockets have ever been put to better use.
For everyone who knows what Camp Nathanael is, you should come to the open house this Saturday.
I watched my little brother play football tonight in his first team scrimmage, it was quite fun. I plan to get some video of later games and share it with the world.
9/2/06
Have you ever heard of a Hydrofoil Water Scooter ? Then you probably didn't know it was possible for a person to propel themselves across the surface of water at 17mph simply by hopping. Watch the video.
8/28/06
To everyone I told I would never do it... I lied. Tonight I officially ordered a cell phone. My younger sister and parents are doing a family plan through a company discount and they talked me into joining. I am signed up for two years. I am still trying to understand what this is going to be like.
8/21/06
Tonight I visited my local dentist and subjected my teeth to a cleaning. I thought this was definitely an experience that my friends would want me to share with them, so here are some pictures taken by my personal photographer, me.
8/07/06
Every once in awhile somebody does something amazingly generous, selfless, and kind, yet they don't get on CNN for it. Instead they get here. This time. This is a video clip of one such unsung hero. My friend Wayne not only came to watch my softball game tonight to cheer us on, but when we were short a player, he laid down his unfinished, tasty supper and took up his cleats and glove and ran out to play third base. Not only did he play third base, but he played it well, and got on base all 4 times he batted. What a guy. This video shows Wayne scoring another run for Edinbrook Church. (the batter is me). Wayne is the flash of color and kindness that flies across your screen towards home plate like a Calvinist missile. We still lost 13-8. Not Wayne's fault.
8/04/06
My friend Matt sent me a link to this news report on a way to power cars and all kind of things using water. Apparently some guy figured out a process for breaking down water into a flammable gas, originally for use in cutting and welding metal. He also created a water-gas hybrid car. It uses electricity from the alternator to break down the water, and then mixes the hydrogen gas in with the gasoline to increase his gas mileage by 50%. This could be pretty big news.
7/31/06
I just made a change to my list of favorite things! I have a new favorite Disc Golf Course, Bryant Lake Regional Park in Eden Prairie, MN. Adam and I played it on Saturday, and enjoyed it so much we played it twice. Their beach also proved quite adequate for swimming.
7/17/06
Have you ever wondered how fast you would have to go to keep up with the sun, as it travels across the earth, so you could watch a sunset for a week straight for example, or go back to yesterday's daylight? I did some calculations today, as I figure it, you would have to travel about 1000 mph to do this at the equator. But at the latitude of Minnesota for example, you would only have to travel about 624 mph. This is somewhat possible, the world land speed record was set at 723 mph in 1997. At the northern tip of Greenland, you would only have to travel about 70mph!
7/16/06
I had a good time this weekend hanging out with Laura, old friends, and new friends from church. I got to see the Twins beat the Indians 5 to 2. I put some pictures from Saturday and Sunday up here.
7/12/06
I am somehow rather proud of my softball team's consistent futility this season. So proud that I want to share the league standings with the world. We are Edinbrook Church, the one at the bottom. Hey, maybe that could catch on as a church motto. I don't think we have come within 10 runs of tying anyone either.
7/10/06
Does anyone have 24 Season Two? I am missing episodes 5 and 14 from my collection. Laura and I recently watched the first four episodes, so I would be very grateful to anyone who could let me borrow episode 5.
The more I use google video, the more I love it. I have now added videos to my sailing picture page, my backpacking picture page, as well as videos of my high school rock band Downtown in concert, a clip from the Koerner wedding reception that Laura performed in and a video of my brother's amazing motorized lego castle on the Miscellaneous page. Google's video format that the videos download in seems amazingly efficient. I uploaded a 284 megabyte .AVI file and google turned it into a 41 megabyte google video file that looks just as good. For 140 MB 640x480 .AVI file, windows movie maker's 2.1 Mbps .WMV conversion reduced the file size to 27% of the original. Google's .gvp format reduced the file size to 12%, (17MB instead of 40MB). What's even more exciting is that I am going to go see the movie Cars with Laura now.
7/5/06
Laura and I drove to Michigan to see spend some time with her family at a lake last weekend. I put a few pictures of it here.
6/27/06
New additions: a video of a game of Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights on the Miscellaneous page, and I added BoliGego Codec Manager to my list of favorite software when it succesfully fixed the problems my brother and I were having with trying to play mpeg-2 videos on our computers.
6/19/06
I have made some changes to my website, including adding some exciting items in a Miscellaneous page. I hope you like it.
6/16/06
My website has moved to a new location, if you are reading this, you already know that it is at (deleted when that website went down in 2008, oops) I intend to use this address permanently to forward people to wherever I am currently hosting my website as long as (deleted) is in business, or until I decide to pay for a domain name like jeremygroeneweg.com. The good part of this change is that I'll soon have Comcast cable internet instead of Earthlink DSL. The DSL was fine, but cable is faster. Also, if anyone is interested in seeing Comedy Sports in Uptown Friday night at 10:30, Laura and I and some other friends will be attending. Please join us. It's $10.
6/12/06
Notable thing I learned today: Bassett Creek Park in St Louis Park, MN has a pretty cool disc golf course. I played with Adam, his roomate and Laura today. That's right, Laura now lives in Minnesota. I think that's really grand of her.
5/24/06
Useful piece of information: free air for inflating your car's tires is getting rarer, but after checking 4 gas stations today, I found free air at Fleet Farm in Brooklyn Park, by the vacuums behind the car wash. I also found a new website that I enjoy, Wayfaring.com , it lets you create a personalized Google map with bookmarks wherever you put them.
5/22/06
Since everybody is talking about the Da Vinci Code, I finally read it last weekend. After reading it, I'm actually surprised that such a big deal has been made of it, it's not really all that believable, and anyway it's not by any means the first book to claim that the divinity of Jesus is a hoax, its just the most popular.
The most surprising thing about the book to me, is how much is clearly false. The book is full of rumors, legends and myths that Dan Brown did not invent, he just wove them together nicely and made them sound possible as part of a huge cover up. The book obviously makes claims that contradict our faith, such as that the gospels were chosen and embellished to make Jesus sound divine, and the accurate writings about Jesus were destroyed. But what really surprised me is that Dan Brown can claim so much of the book is true when so much of it is obvious myth. I'll give a couple of examples:
1) He claims his descriptions of architecture are fact, such as that the number of panes of glass in the Louvre Museum's entrance pyramid is 666, the number of the beast, when really it is closer to 673. 2) He claims that his descriptions of artwork are fact, such as thatJohn in Da Vinci's Last Supper painting is really a woman, which veryfew experts believe for a number of reasons, including the fact thatthe person is in male clothing, and that John was the youngestdisciple, so many paintings from that period showed him with ayouthful, effeminate face and long hair. 3) He claims that information about a secret society called the Prioryof Sion was proven by the discovery of a collection of papers in 1975called Le Dossiers Secrets in France. These papers were indeed found,and proven to be forgery, part of an elaborate hoax.
There are other holes too, such as the claim that the Golden Ratio ofmathmatics, 1.618, appears in nature exactly, in places such as theratio of bees to drones in beehives, but this is also myth, the realnumbers vary wildly.
Anyway, my point is that the book is obviously full of myth and rumor,some of which contradict the beliefs of Christianity, some are just obscure facts, and I'm confused about why Dan Brown bothers to claim they're true.
5/20/06
Here is a strange coincidence I thought of awhile ago, relating to the Da Vinci Code, which seems appropriate to mention the weekend of the movie's opening. The Da Vinci Code, (and other similar works) claim that Mary Magdalene fled to France with a baby of which Jesus was the father. The story (which is false, by the way) is that the descendants of Jesus married into a line of French kings called the Merovingians. The coincidence is that the Merovingian is the name of a character in the Matrix Reloaded, a powerful Frenchman whose wife is played by Monica Belucci, who happened to play Mary Magdalene in the movie The Passion. Weird, eh?
5/15/06
Now that school is over I can put some time into finding superb new programs for my computer. So I found Rainlendar. It puts a real neat transparent calendar and notes onto your desktop wallpaper. I added it to my list of favorite things.
5/10/06
Here is a memorable quote from the blog of a U.S. soldier in Iraq commenting on a video released by Osama Bin Lauden:
"To me, it sounds like they know they are losing in Iraq, and have completely lost in Afghanistan, and they are trying to cover the fact that they are really getting their butts whipped. They aren't just getting their butts whipped, but they are getting their pants pulled to their ankles, hung upside down on the swingset, and we are buying candybars, pop and comic books with their lunch money." madeucegunners.blogspot.com/
5/7/06
This weekend I went to Dordt College for the graduation of my girlfriend Laura and many other friends of ours. It was great to be there to see everyone again. I took some pictures and a video clip from the ceremony showing Laura and Jon Schmidt seizing their diplomas and Chris Wyenberg reading A Tale of Two Cities. Pictures and Video I also got to talk to my good friend Josh Super this weekend, and at one point he showed me a video that some kids in his youth group made of them nailing a snowman with a car at 70 mph. Its worth seeing. Snowman Video
4/18/06
I once thought that 800 visitors was an astonishing number of visitors to receive in one day, and that no website of mine would never surpass that number. I was utterly wrong. Last Friday alone the snowfort pictures received 19,628 visitors. If any part of my site quits working, assume that my bandwidth limits have been exceeded again due to thousands of people loving our snow fort. There's not much I can do about that. * - added on 5/07/06 - I am proud to report that last week a Google search for 'snowfort' returned my own website as the third search result.
4/11/06
As of right now, my snow fort and other pictures are working again, if they don't load tell your browser to refresh. I just figured out why my bandwidth limit was exceeded on googlepages, check out the picture below. Looks like my site jumped from 7 visitors a day to 800 overnight when the world discovered the snowfort pictures . I'm glad it is being appreciated.
4/10/06
Well, once again it looks like things that look too good to be true usually are. Many pictures on my website are not working right now because I exceded my bandwidth limit on googlepages. High bandwidth free webhosting is still a distant dream I guess. Maybe I'll resort to paying for hosting sometime.
4/4/06
I encourage everyone who sees this to check out my pictures section, because I just posted pictures of the defining moment of my college career. The snowfort.
4/3/06
There was a tragic accident in our kitchen this evening, and Ferdinand, the smallest member of our small household perished in a mousetrap. It appeared that the mousetrap had been set and left exactly where we usually fed Ferdinand. A full homicide investigation is expected. Picture Video
4/1/06
Recently I read the news stories about Abdul Rahman, the Afghan christian that was shipped out to Italy because of international pressure so the Muslims wouldn't kill him for apostasy (converting from Islam). I started wondering if Islam really called for death in these situations, or if those in Afghanistan were just getting carried away. One of the websites I found very informative was www.answering-islam.org An especially interesting article is called Top ten reasons why sharia(Islamic law) is bad for all societies. I will list the top ten here:
10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped. 9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives. 8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge—physical eye for physical eye. 7. Islam commands that a male and female thief must have a hand cut off. 6. Islam commands that highway robbers should be crucified or mutilated. 5. Islam commands that homosexuals must be executed. 4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death. 3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non-Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself. 2. Islam orders apostates to be killed. 1. Islam commands offensive and aggressive and unjust jihad.
It seems pretty clear to me that Islam is in direct contradiction to freedom and human rights. I then conclude that a dedicated Muslim that kills Abdul Rahman does have a reason to claim that he is doing the will of Allah. I would be interested to know what those that call themselves peaceful, moderate Muslims say about the Abdul Rahman situation. * - added on 4/10/06 - My good friend Jon reminded me that I neglected to mention that Islam does advocate kindness and peace in places. This is true. As with most religions, there is much debate about how to properly interpret and apply the teachings of Islam. The peaceful Muslims do have scripture they can use to justify their positions, the frightening part is that so do the violent Muslims.
3/23/06
Here is a question. If you haven't checked out Google's new personal web page service, do so here.It has a button for uploading pictures. The funny thing is, it is possible to use this button to upload any kind of file you want. Which means that you now have 100 mb of web space for hosting videos, music, whatever you want, for free, although the file size appears to be limited to about 1MB for pictures. This is undoubtedly excellent news for everyone. The question is, did Google allow this on purpose? If they intended to allow all kinds of file hosting, why aren't they advertising this? Is Google really inept enough to not realize this loophole?
3/21/06
Everyone who likes good rock music and wants 22 free songs from Tooth and Nail Records should clickhere. I think this expires June 1, 2006.
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