Jodes and I just finished watching season 1 of “One tree hill” which I think got some air time on aus tv but didn’t go the distance. Jodie loves it (don’t tell her I said that I can understand the ratings!).

The one redeeming and kinda head-spinning feature of the whole show is that the lead character looks almost identical to Andrew Errington (from college, for those from the real world)

Chad Michael-Murray as “Lukas Scott”:

Andrew Errington as “Chad Michael-Murray look-alike”: (sorry I don’t keep high qual photos of him!)

So I wouldn’t recommend that you watch the entire season…to save you the trouble, here’s what happens:

Andrew Errington’s father, Dan was a Basketball star. He knocked up AE’s mom then abandoned them. Dan had another son, Nathan. Nathan and AE are highschool aged, Nathan is the star of the school team while AE shoots hoops in the park with his home boys. That is until he is spotted by the coach (Whitey) and given a chance on the team. AE is a natural, becomes the star and drives Nathan and his Dad to jealous rage.

AE takes an interest in Nathan’s gf, Paten (blonde cheerleader). This is the start of his many girl troubles. he has 3 on the go at his peak.

In a vengeful scheme, Nathan dumps blondie to woo’s AE female best friend, Haley “tutor girl” to get back at him, which works pretty well.

AE dates Paten’s best friend, Brooke (brunette cheerleader whose strength is not conversation). Blondie and AE almost get it on and Brooke finds out. Brook hates blondie for most of the series then makes up in the last episode. great.

AE and Nathan become friends. Nathan and Haley “tutor girl” get married.

AE’s mum, Karen has been lifelong friends with Dan’s brother Keith (Dan knocked her up). Keith likes Karen, but Karen “loves him but is not in love with him”. Late in the season Keith proposes to Karen but is shot down. Keith Leaves town. AE sees Keith as a father figure. AE feels like he has turned to the dark side because of his fame (see tripple dating above, + pregnacy scare etc) and decides to leave with Keith to “find himself”. How teenaged girl of him.

Nathan’s parents are messed up. They both have had affairs, work too much, and bully Nathan. They end up filing for divorce and the last scene of the season is Dan about to sign the divorce papers then suffering a heart attack. His wife finds him clutching his chest. He tells her “You’d better hope I die”.

And that’s it in a nutshell. I was surprised at the amount of domestic violence against the men in the show.

I started a bit of IT casual/consulting work today…great to be doing stuff I love (sitting at a computer fixing things) and being paid for it! And of course very thankful for God for his constant provision.

The place is kinda cool too… they mix up radioactive recipes for hospitals and doctors doing radiotherapy. The room I’ve been working in is just down the hall from the lab. Close enough to hear the constant click of the Geiger counter.

Not glowing… yet.

I’ve just about perfected this. Takes just 3 mins to cook…tasting good, but still needs some tweaking.

‘Chocolate Mug Cake’

Hinted at in the last post…

I was faced with a problem last night. I hadn’t started reading the book, it was 270 pages long and the exam is tomorrow. I could have gone with summaries and notes, but I kinda wanted to read it but just hadn’t gotten around to it.

Enter speed reading: I’ve been reading a bit about it (link 1, link 2) and thought I’d give it a shot. It’s the bomb!! I got through the book in two sittings… last night and this morning taking about 4 hours total, and (I think) I got some good retention. We’ll find out tomorrow

I recommend you give it a try if you find yourself having to get through large blocks of reading.

The things that worked bast for me was

• Comfortable chair
• Good light
• Stopping sub-vocalisation (click the links above)
• using a piece of paper to track my reading down the page
• Taking a break every now and then to think back over what I’d read

Anyone got other reading tips?

photo via::fffffound.com

It’s a really great book and am glad I read it! This is the set text for Mission Foundations at college. It paints a sweeping picture of God’s saving activity across the stages of salvation history but also gives a good level of detail at each.

The section on intertestamental Jewish missionary endeavour made convincing use of the historical data (they argue that there was not organised, systematic evangelisation by 2nd temple Jews) and the investigation of what each gospel writer contributes individually to a theology of mission was great. For me the gold was the language of inclusion/ingathering. The OT presents Israel as under a general mandate to include (which happens in a few cases – ruth, rahab etc) but with Jesus death and resurrection a new eschatalogical age of ingathering has begun. The key is to realise that this is exactly what Isaiah’s ’servant’ would do (cf. Is 56 esp v8).

Another bonus, the book has an excellent synthesis/conclusion chapter which gives you the whole book in a few short pages.

So #4 on the list is done!

Apparently there are around 2 trillion ways to thread laces through the average pair of shoes according to this guy. It seems a little high, but I can’t be bothered doing the maths to check it. Anyway, his collection of alternate shoe tying patterns is interesting! check it.

How do you tie your shoes? Do you use any of the bizzaro alternates?

I’m tempted to try the checkerboard:

I have excessively long laces on my current pair of shoes so it might just put the huge dangling ends to good use…

#61 on the list was completed in unimpressive style for Adelaide. At least it was fun hanging out with Dave Miers and Rowena! Adelaide FC went down 3-0…

I have to admit that I didn’t know what the team colours were befor the game, but it became pretty clear when I saw the overwhelming sea of Adelaide supporters in their red get-ups:

Thanks for getting me up to the coast Dave, had a great time!! I’ll be back sometime for that pizza place too. very nice… so full of meat and cheesy goodness!

I came across this: Googlism

complete with 9 proofs of Google’s existence as a God…

Proof 2:

Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent). Google is virtually everywhere on earth at the same time. Billions of indexed WebPages hosted from every corner of the earth. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, one will eventually be able to access Google from anywhere on earth, truly making Her an omnipresent entity.

via::buzzfeed.com

Google detects flu trends!

I wonder if they could also accurately predict the end of the world 2 weeks in advance? …perhaps based on how many users searched for “barack obama antichrist”? (here’s what I found, in case you’re wondering)

Anyone know of good ways to get rid of pigeons?? there is a shanty-town house behind us (i think it is abandoned) and it is infested with pigeons! which sucks because our clothes line is right over the fence from it. yeah. connect the dots.

So judging by this picture shooting oversized thumbtacks at them isn’t going to work