Thursday was family day. We drove south of Raleigh to Yates Mill, a restored corn mill. They have done a superb job turning it into a state park, where you can see the mill, walk around the mill pond, hike through the park, and explore their small museum. We had a picnic on the grounds, and there were boatloads of butterflies to photograph.
We also swung by nearby Lake Wheeler and found a couple geocaches.
10 minute mail
There are a lot of annoying web sites. I'm referring to those sites who have some great service to offer you, but they require you to give them an email address first. Well, certainly I'm not going to give them my real email address; hello spam city! In the past I've used a gmail account for these things, but now I've found 10 minute mail. You go to their site, and they give you an email address good for 10 minutes. You sign up for the service at some website, check the email at 10 minute mail for the link, then you forget about the email. Cool. I don't know how 10 minute mail's gonna make any money, but I'll use them while they last.
Windows or Mac? Yes!
I have a Mac. Specifically, I have a 20 inch aluminum iMac running OS X Leopard. I love my Mac, but there are two really good pieces of software that I've been missing. One is Microsoft Word; I think I've got that one fixed. The other is good Bible software. I love Libronix. I use it every day for Bible study. I tried MacSword, but, well, it's pretty lame. Yes, I know Logos is working on Libronix for Mac, but they've been doing that for what, 4 years? I need something now. So I installed Parallels Desktop for Mac. It allows me to run Windows on my Mac, as if it were an application. So now I run Libronix on my Mac! Not the perfect solution (installation was a bear!), but it works pretty well. And it's darn cool.
It's a small (coffee) world
I like Caribou Coffee, more than Starbucks even. We recently bought a bag of Ethiopian coffee beans called Yirgacheffe. Good stuff. Sorta dark, with a strong hint of blueberries. The other night we had a couple from our church over for dinner. Turns out that Yirgacheffe is the name of an Ethiopian village, and this couple had lived in a nearby village. It's a small world.
Bats in your...basketball?
Monday morning I took the kids with me to the SEBTS gym where I play a bit of basketball with some guys. While there, they found a couple baby bats in the gym. They were alive, but weren't old enough to really fly. The kids had a great time picking them up (using an extra shirt), tossing them into the air to watch them fly, and seeing them scamper up the brick walls. Eventually they turned them loose outside.
Book: Isaac Backus
I just finished reading the biography of Isaac Backus by William McLoughlin. Isaac was a preacher in New England in the 1700's. He went from the established Puritan church to the Separatist church to the Baptist church. It was a very interesting read, part biography, part Baptist history, part Revolutionary War history. I was most intrigued to hear how so many of the issues of his day (antinomianism, pastors in sin, lack of church discipline, etc.) are still issues today. It seems human nature doesn't change much. I recommend this book.
Office 2008 for Mac coming
I have tried to like NeoOffice, really I have. You see my 3 most-used programs are my email client, a web browser, and a word processor. I write documents all the time. So when I got the iMac, I needed to get a good word processor. I've used MS Word for years, but trying to keep things free, I tried NeoOffice, a Mac-specific version of OpenOffice. It works, sorta. But it's slow and clunky and some stuff (like footnotes) doesn't work when I transfer files back and forth to a PC with Word. It's just frustrating to use. I even tried the newest OpenOffice beta, which has a native Mac interface. No different.
I thought about buying Office 2008 for Mac, but it's $130. Then someone pointed me to the software portal at the company I work for, The MITRE Corporation. Turns out they have an agreement with Microsoft that users can install Office on their home computers if they buy an extra copy of the media. So for $21 I have a copy of Office 2008 for Mac coming. Schweet! Thanks, MITRE!
I thought about buying Office 2008 for Mac, but it's $130. Then someone pointed me to the software portal at the company I work for, The MITRE Corporation. Turns out they have an agreement with Microsoft that users can install Office on their home computers if they buy an extra copy of the media. So for $21 I have a copy of Office 2008 for Mac coming. Schweet! Thanks, MITRE!
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