Photos: Laurel Mill

After we went hiking at Medoc, we stopped by two geocache locations on the way home. One was the very pretty Laurel Mill. Ann found the cache while I took pictures.

Photos: Medoc Mountain State Park

Yesterday we went hiking and geocaching at Medoc Mountain State Park, about an hour NE of Wake Forest. This park wasn't nearly as picturesque as some of the ones we hiked in the Piedmont, like Stone Mountain, Pilot Mountain, or Hanging Rock, but it was cool because we went geocaching. Ann found 4 geocaches for us to try, two in the park and two on the way home. We actually found all four of them, which is much better than the first time we went geocaching and came home 0 for 2. I've posted the pictures of us hiking and exploring the geocaches in Medoc.

Book: Bruce Ray's "Withhold Not Correction"

"Withhold Not Correction" is a good book on biblical correction in the home. The first part provides a solid theological foundation for biblical correction, and the second part details several principles on implemention. I recommend this book in conjunction with Michael Pearl's "To Train Up A Child" for children from birth to around age 8.

Videos: Preaching Isaiah 38:1-8

On Dec 30, 2007, I got an opportunity to preach at Enterprise Baptist Church near Lake Gaston NC. I preached on Hezekiah's healing from Is 38, and you can find the videos in the "My Sermons" section on my preaching page. The videos are hosted on YouTube.

iMac Software

The new iMac came with a bunch of great software, notably the iLife suite of tools. I really like iLife, but there's still lots of other things I'd like to do, and my goal is get everything I can for free. In other words: open source. Here's a list of what I'm using now:

Audio - SlimServer (for my SqueezeBox)
Bible - MacSword (simple but gives me the ESV, ISV, and NET)
Compression - Stuffit, YemuZip
Games - Argonaut, Goban, FreeCiv
FTP - CyberDuck
Office - NeoOffice (OpenOffice ported to the Mac, works surprisingly well; hopefully I never have to buy MS Office)
Pictures - Image Tricks
Programming - TextWrangler
Video - Flip4Mac, Handbrake (great tool for ripping videos), Miro (let's you watch TV on your computer), VLC (plays every kind of video, esp. those that QuickTime won't play)
Web - Firefox, Flickr Uploadr

Photos: The new iMac

I've uploaded three new pictures of the iMac to Flickr.

More Memory for the iMac

The iMac I bought a couple weeks back came standard with 1 GB of RAM.  I could get Apple to upgrade it, but they want $150 for an additional 2 GB.  I bought the same memory from Crucial, and it cost less than half of that.  And it took only 5 minutes or so to put in.

Commentary on James: Chapter 5

I'm continuing my work on converting my studies in the book of James into a mini-commenary.  Chapter 5 is now complete, and you can find the PDF file in the NT section.

Commentary on James: Chapter 4

I'm continuing my work on converting my studies in the book of James into a mini-commenary.  Chapter 4 is now complete, and you can find the PDF file in the NT section.

Book of the Year

My preaching professor, Dr. Heisler, wrote a book on the influence of the Holy Spirit on preaching, and his book won CT's book of the year. Not bad for his first book.

Testing From the iMac

Ok, I got the new iMac today.  I'm trying to post to my blog from a Dashboard Widget.  This is merely a test.

Photos: Disney World

We've not had a family vacation since starting seminary 3.5 years ago, so we decided to have one now that I've graduated and before I re-enter the work force.  We went to Disney World for 5 days.  We had a blast being together as a family, riding the rides, and seeing the shows.  The kids didn't really know what they were getting into, but they loved it quickly.  Both became avid coaster riders in a hurry.  Because I have so many pictures, I created a separate Flickr account, which you can find here.  Enjoy.

Commentary on James

While I was an intern at Calvary, I taught an ABF class (Sunday School) on the book of James.  I am in the process of converting that material in another mini-commentary, similar to the one I'm working on for Ephesians.  I have the first complete chapter, which is oddly enough chapter 3.  Don't ask, it's just easier to do these out of order.  In any case, you can find my work on chapter 3 on my NT page.  Let me know in the comments what you think about it, how I could improve it.

Photos: Jacen's birthday

Tomorrow Jacen is 9.  Wow.  We celebrated his birthday as a family this morning, letting Jacen open his gifts a day early.  He got Bionicles (Lego robots), XBox 360 marketplace points (to buy online games), a book on building with Legos, and a CD of Narnia-based music.

Photos: Christmas Presents

We spent Christmas day at my father's house.  Here are a few of the photos we took while opening presents.