After a long hiatus, I finally got a chance to recreate with my cousins and some other friends.

After a chaotic dinner at The Dirty Bird (our affectionate term for Red Robin) we've descended on Dave & Buster's at Desert Ridge. Now we end up watching Thomas and Luke massacre game after game in the Billiards room.

Please let this game end so we can play something else!

Having a bit of an afternoon with friends family. While chilling on the water in Bremerton we were treated to an aircraft carrier cruising into port.

What an amazing evening this is shaping up to be. Just no kayaking for me.

The sun is shining and I'm sitting in the grass with my shoes off. The breeze is blowing off the water and I can smell the salt. My headset is keeping my thoughts clear and peaceful.

As I watch the boats putter around the sound, my friends splash in the water and sprawl in the sun.

There are times it hits me like a ton of bricks how less than exceedingly grateful I can be for the outrageous production of frolicking and playfulness that is my life. Simply acknowledging how richly I've been blessed seems trivially insufficient at times like these.

Taking advantage of the weather and it being Friday afternoon, I went with my friend for a walking adventure downtown.

The goal was furniture. We failed.

It was due in no small part to his loathing of stores and shopping. Basically, it was one store, one desk, and peace out.

My friends are amazing. Now I get a great walk back across town on the waterfront. Gorgeous day, lovely sun.

Charmed.

Heading out to ballard with my friends to see The Young Dubliners at The Tractor.

We are definitely having summer here in the Emerald City and the evenings are just spectacular.

As we drive across the bridge I'm reminded of days past and other events. I haven't been seeing very many shows but with new living arrangements, I'm working on getting out more.

Now if I could just get Josh to ask this waitress out tonight.

The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously frustrating. All I want is to get my media, on my television, playing the sound through my stereo. This should be a no brainer, right?

Well it turns out that once again I must be just an outlying data point in the world of consumer electronics. What a frustrating adventure this is turning out to be. I've tried lots of different combinations with mixed bag of success and no clear winners. To start with here's a quick run-down of my basic requirements.

• My media is on two big hard-drives:
  • 1TB external hard-drives
  • accessible via USB
  • willing to share them over the net with an always on pc, but prefer to just plug them in
• My media is very big and mixed:
  • about 100K songs, from 10K artists, all in MP3, with cover art and ratings embedded in the tags (about 600 GBs)
  • about 10k high-quality pictures (about 100GB)
  • about 3K videos, mostly DIVX and XVID, organized in folders by type, series, season, etc. (about 400 GB)
• I need to navigate music by playlists, artists, and genre. I've listed them in the order of importance to me. Playlists need to be 'smart' so they'll respect the ratings, genre, etc. that have been painstakingly maintained. For example, a playlist would be 'Songs in Genre = Folk, Subgenre = Acoustic, Rating > 3'
• Displaying cover art from the file is a must. Displaying other tag attributes is a nice-to-have.
• Displaying a picture slide-show while playing songs is a must.
  • Being able to choose a specific directory is a nice-to-have.
  • Being able to pick a set of specific directories is a nice-to-have.
  • Assigning a set of directories to a playlist is a nice-to-have.
• Being able to navigate videos by type, show, season is important.
• Output via HDMI or DVI is important.
• I have no interest in using a tv tuner, scheduling recordings or any of that other TV nonsense. So not having it in my way is a good thing.
• Being able to edit ratings on screen is important.
• Being able to create playlists on the fly is important.
• Being able to shuffle by playlist, album, artist is important.
• Media will get added routinely, so being able to monitor the folders on the drives is important.
• Start-up time for spinning up music and videos is important.
• Being able to navigate the very large amount of media quickly and by different attributes is important.
• Being able to access this media from more than one television is important.
• Being able to do all this without a dedicated, always-on pc, is only a nice-to-have.
• Being able to get all this with commercial off-the-shelf stuff is important. I don’t crack boxes, and most soft-mods are off the table too.

When it comes to home electronics, I'm no slouch. I've been trying a whole host of devices and combinations. For example the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD and the Helios X5000 Network Media Player are two examples I've tried. They both really suck. Not only are they slow and can't do half of what I need, they are expensive and crashed often.

I do have a Windows Media Center pc (from Windows Vista Ultimate) which is a pretty good interface. And we have two Xbox 360's. There are multiple ways to connect these bad boys, but the really obvious one (as a Media Extender) doesn't seem to work out of the box. Being pretty good at figuring this crap out, if I can't get it to work after a couple long sessions of fiddling, it's just not meant to be (for me). Tips anyone?

One option I'm considering is the Apple TV. The interface is one of the slickest I've ever seen and the speed appears acceptable. But it won't play my videos without jumping through mod hoops and I'm not a fan of that. Unless someone has an alternative?

So now you know my predicament. What else should I try? Ideas? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

This weekend I had the great pleasure of catching the Solstice parade in Fremont. True to form it was chaos and mayhem in spectacular glory.

My favorite float in the parade was the monkeys jumping on the bed. What a riot!

It was really invigorating to be able to see people just out having a fun frolick without pretense or pomposity. They just were letting down their guard for one day of festivities.

For example, in this picture, one of my good friends was indulging in her love of two favorite things: underwear and tie-die. What a ludicrously lovely scene.

The weather cooperated, and so did most of the people. If you've never partaken, I highly recommend you pull the pickle from your backside and show up next year. I surely will.

What can I say? Thanks to the magic that is The Loft on a Thursday evening, this is the current state of my mind.

Well, I was able to pull it together long enough to kick off the team on a MOSS presentation. This one won't just be fun, it'll be a learning experience. Sharepoint workflows and single sign-on anyone?

Tonight will be a barbeque to unwind and hopefully recreate. If you're in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by. We've got a gourmet chef, top-notch musical talent, and some certified hotties.

So what am I most thankful for right now? Taking everyone on a great ride last night and knowing we're all still on it.

I've been doing some new types of work lately. It's good to mix it up at work from time to time.

The sad part is how even when I feel I'm doing okay, I quickly realize how much better I should be doing at my respective functions.

The good news is that I generally have the flexibility to change up my priorities as needed. Being able to switch focus and shift tasks around is a huge advantage when it comes to multi-tasking effectively.

For now, I'm taking advantage of a delay before a meeting to update you all on my fascinating life. Yep, even when my feet are up, I can't seem to stop working.

My brother came up to the Northwest to help me move. So I am buying him dinner at Applebee's in return. It's not really a fair trade. But I'm kind of a jerk like that.

Actually he'll probably be drunk before we leave so that's going to make up for it.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of chaos and mayhem in my life. As it begins slowly to subside back into the dull roar that is my everyday existence I find myself called to remember my fundamentals.

Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
-- 2 Timothy 3:10-17

When it comes right down to it, being a good Servant requires daily exercise in the fundamentals, just like being a good athlete or stock broker. If you forget the fundamentals, if you don't master the fundamentals, if you don't exercise them consistently, you won't be able to perform when it matters. You'll fail under pressure, you'll choke when complexity increases.

The truth is aspiring to Servanthood is asking for persecution. Just like being the best on the basketball court means you have to expect the strongest defense and the most aggressive players to take you head on. When you are striving for excellence, always be prepared for the attack. It may be a subtle wedge in your life, or a full-on havoc-wreaking hailstorm but it will come. We aren't just promised it will happen, persecution is almost a mark of the true believer. Just like with the Great Temptation, if you want the hunger to stop, if you want freedom from the thirst, you only have to turn away.

A study of this passage in the original language brought about an interesting perspective for me. Paul tells Timothy to "continue in the things you have learned". Which in English would imply a movement or direction. To proceed in the direction you have started. But in reality it means to "stay", to "remain". This really spun my head because of how frequently we talk about the Walk. About how we are growing in Christ or living out our beliefs. But here we are called to "abide", to "rest", to simply "stay".

The world is revolving and in constant movement and change. Only in Him is there permanence, stability, an unchanging absolute. If you are clinging to the Rock, holding fast to the One immovable and everlasting, then you really will stay. Cling tight, and don't be moved. Once you have your grip, continue to hold on. This is very different from the world which always says go forward, keep moving, you need to advance.

How do we continue? What are we called to continue in? In the things we have learned. Our knowledge of Him, our faith. That which we have known from His Word. Which brings us once again, to living by the Word. To being steeped in it daily. To guiding our thoughts by it and leading our hearts from it. These are things that won't happen if it isn't in our minds. If we haven't made it a part of our day, embedded in our life.

Along with the promise of persecution, and the call to continue in what we have learned, is another promise. A realistic, and impactful promise. It is that knowledge of the Word will be profitable. That it will equip the man of God for every good work.

For me that is a promise most practical. If there is one thing I strive for it is to be equipped for doing the good works. I'm a servant; good works is what I do. If I'm going to be successful, I certainly need to keep myself ready and able. I need to ensure I have the resources (mental, emotional, intellectual and otherwise) to serve when the opportunity arises. Being saturated with His Word I am given a promise that I will be given what I need when I need it. And not just enough to meet the need, but to be profitable. To benefit and profit from its use.

Sure, it isn't always easy to find time for the deep dives in the Word that so refresh me, but the rewards are clearly outlined for when I do. And when I am continuing in Him and the storms pick up, it drives me ever closer in spite of my shortcomings.