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Playing catchup
Wow, been a while since I blogged. Well, here is a roundup.
Journey feedback
I find it funny of all the things I have talked about on this blog you know politics, religion, the things mom told you to never discuss at parties; that the biggest response I would get back is over my review of the new Journey album. I mean there are passionate people on both the Steve Perry side and the Arnel Pineda side. I respect both sides and they both make great points. Of course no one can replace Steve Perry and Arnel isn’t trying to but going forward with Steve not interested in being in the picture, Journey is set up nicely with a new frontman and with new material.
Foster care process
A couple of weeks ago we had a representative from DHS come to our home for a home inspection. The house passed of course and she went down a checklist and we have almost everything in place. We just had to get a crib, stroller, and car seat incase an infant is placed with us. We have sense obtained said items thanks to a donation from some church friends whose children have outgrown them. Behold!
Atlanta Eucharistic Congress and Catholic New Media Celebration
The third weekend of June we went to Atlanta for the Atlanta Archdiocese Eucharistic Congress on Saturday and the Catholic New Media Celebration on Sunday.
We had a great time at both, at the EC we watched Steve Ray’s talk about the Eucharist and his conversion story (Steve is a fellow convert from the Baptist faith like myself). We then had a closing Mass at the EC, I loved the Mass but the music I found not so much a POV shared by many others too. Sunday was an awesome time, Kristen got to look into the world of blogging and podcasting. Although she does co-host Tupelo Catholic with me the concept of blogging is a foreign one for her so to see folks like Mark Shea, Jeff Miller, Lisa Hendey, and Amy Welborn among others was a treat for her. I helped manage the podcast demonstration booth outside of the conference room so I didn’t get to sit in on the talks but we had a great time teaching folks looking to get into podcasting.
My birthday!
The following Saturday was my birthday, my folks treated Kristen and I to Old Venice Pizza Co. which is a new eatery in town. The food was quite good despite not being served for the first 5-10 mins due to a shift change. Kristen and I gave them a second chance later in the week and were pleased with the service. This year I got 2 Best Buy gift cards which I used to get a bigger SDHC card for my digital camera (moved up from 512MB to 4GB) and the Nike+ kit for my iPod nano so I can track my walks now. I also got an adapter kit for it so I can use it with my New Balance shoes. My personal opinion New Balance are the best walking/running shoes around.
July 4th family celebration
Kristen’s folks were in town last week and we all got together at my folks for the 4th where we had burgers and hot dogs off the grill. Joining us were my 95 year old grandmother (mom’s mom) and my brother with his new girlfriend Leah and her son Joel. Leah is very sweet and I think my brother has met the love of his life I am very happy for the both of them. Joel was shy at first but he warmed up to the crowd in no time and is a great kid. I could easily imagine being an uncle to him one day.
Plurk, Ping.FM, and Last.FM
Three new social networking sites to tell you about. First is Plurk, Plurk is a lot like Twitter but on a timeline left to right scroll page. In addition people can reply to your posts and appears under your posts whereas with Twitter you have to put the ‘@’ and the user you want to reply to, to me this is like shouting across a crowded party room at somebody. Plurk has the better concept here, also you can embed photos and YouTube videos within your post and don’t have to view them on another page as Twitter does. Finally it is Smilie friendly, it has smilies built in and you can also drop in the GIF link to a smilie from a smilie site and it will show up.
Second is Ping.FM, what is cool about this app is it will allow you to crosspost to Twitter, Plurk, Facebook status, Brightkite, Jaiku, Pownce, and many others. Think of it as a one stop shop for your micro blogging. BTW you have to have a code to sign up but if you’re reading this day I post it the code is “dreamofping” Both Plurk and Ping.FM also have mobile phone friendly pages too. So check it out it is very cool!
Third is Last.FM, think of this as sharing your music interest with others. There is a downloadable player that can sync with iTunes and share info back to Last.FM to see what music you listen to most. There are even groups you can form with your friends too. Warning, this is a major productivity killer. I have spent 3-4 hours each night the last 3 nights playing with it. So if you are a workaholic stay away, then again maybe you could use it. 
Ok that is all I can think of for now. I just extended TupeloGeek for another year with my hosting company so there will be much more blogging in the future. I’m hoping the new iPhone 2.0 software will have a program that allows me to blog from my iPhone when I’m not around an internet connection. We will soon see. Later!
Originally published at Tupelo Geek. You can comment here or there.
