Al Anderson [re~born]

I want to make soap and candles.

Karen and I have opened a new online store called Simple Blessing . It is nice and all but we really need some new photos and stuff to make people feel good.

One comment that we have gotten is that there is just not enough stuff in there. Well stuff costs money so I was thinking about making stuff to add to the store that people will like. I was thinking about soap.

As far as I can tell the basic formula is water, lye, and lard in that order and everything else is the scent, suds, skin care goodness.

What makes a great soap? Suds? fabulous scents? or that cocoa butter and other oils that the dermatologists are so crazy about.

I really want to make a cool soap that can get it done in the shower.

The other thing is candles, people seem to like to decorate with candles and will put them anywhere. the formula for candles is a little easier wick, wax, and fire in that order and like the soap the rest is color and scent.

I like the candles that I have gotten from the Bullfrog Light Company but I think I could probably make a passible candle and have a corner on the market for my candles.

What kind of soap and candles do you like? [1]

Three Days and Counting

Less than three days if you go to the hours.

Wedding music has been my challenge the last week. Two weeks ago we decided that there was a song that we sang at our Cursillo weekend. The song was important to us and with the number of songs available on iTunes, how hard could it be?

Turns out that there are not very many recordings of “The Servant Song”. Nothing on iTunes, Amazon turned up few hits. So, I ended up on Gracenote. If you do not know what they do then you might not have been watching closely when you insert a CD in your computer. Gracenote runs CDDB and fills in the track names for the CD when you play it on your computer.

Gracenote gave me a list of every CD that had a track called “The Servant Song” on it. I started tracking down these albums and got to a Maranatha music accompaniment disc, a Promise Keepers disc from 1994. I got the PK disc on the way but I was not full of hope for this recording.

In a Google vs. the world effort I entered the lyrics, the title in quotes, and other searches. I found a camp called the Pilgrim Lodge in Maine. I nquired with them for their collection of camp songs. I was worried about the quality but they had an email address and they sent me a copy of the song to use in the wedding so that I can order the album and not swaet getting it overnight. It sounds beautiful, I still have to put in my order for it but it is amazing and I am looking forward to getting the disc and hearing the rest of it.

The wedding is saved! [3]

The Capture of 'Buffy'

Buffy, is a dog. She is a miniature poodle and some days seems to barely get around.

This is an act. In reality Buffy is a daring mastermind in a poodle’s body. The canine decrepitude is an act to lure unspecting people to cater to her needs. If the truth is known and the cunning of this dog is revealed Carlos the Jackal will be changing his nickname to Carlos “the Poodle”.

To really understand the severity of the situation you need to know this, Buffy belongs to my future in-laws (wedding in 18 days). Karen kept Buffy in our yard once before and she escaped and was gone for three days to be found on a busy two lane road, Old Canton by the Madison Airport for people familiar with the area.

This is the story of Buffy’s capture:

Have you ever chased a lost pet?

If life is about change, I have life in abundance.

I have been very busy and not posting much to the website. But it takes a lot of time to be blessed the way that I have so far this year.

First, I am in love!
Second, I am engaged!
Third, she is, too!

So I have been going around with a stupid grin on my face… stupid in love.

Here is the thing about being this much in love. You take really lousy pictures. I mean Karen looks great but I look like I have a disorder. I am so happy that I cannot smile like a normal person.

Love isn't pretty, especially in pictures. [12]

The Import was Successful

The articles from Movable type were imported into Text Pattern using a script from a user called Ramanan. He actually based it on a script for moving B2 to TXP.

It moved the categories too so that will take some time to work out but the articles, categories, and comments were all moved. Now I have a lot of articles without comments and that shortens the page so that the textile help is not necessary sot that too will need to be worked out.

I am glad that they were salvaged.

Comments

Christmas Eve

All of the shopping that will be done has been done. Everything has been wrapped, mostly. Momma Bear is running back and forth straightening the cave. She brought up a point in her frenzy. Most of the frenzy is what we do to ourselves, if we could just step back from trying to do everything we might be able to appreciate Christmas.

Christmas is attacked for its religious significance and it seems that some people would like to see the holiday be a mad dash for stuff, stuffing, and charity. So, the holiday is reduced to end of year appeals for charitable donations, Christmas sales, egg nog, and overeating.

Where are the songs, the worship, and the fellowship?

Lost in the hustle and bustle.

Can you have Christmas without the Frenzy?

Lawrence of Arabia

I saw Lawrence of Arabia on Turner Classic Movies today. I forgot how good this movie really was or maybe I never knew. The fully restored version of the movie is really nice, hard to believe how old the film is and how clean this version is.

The human story in this movie is compelling and really well told. The story of a hero and the measure of a man. While T.A. Lawrence is not always an ideal hero he is human and noble at the same time. We can learn a lot from that.

Have you seen any great movies lately? [1]

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Well, you would think that this would have developed in the Southeast United States. Doctors in Scotland fear for the arteries of locals that follow up their fish and chips with a deep-fried Mars bar.

I tried to fry a pickle once but I had seen that done before. The batter kept slipping off of mine.

What is the weirdest thing you ever fried? [5]

Restart the Engines

One of the nice things about starting over on a website is being able to pick and choose the old stuff to bring over.

One thing that is comming over is the CSS layout. This page is absolutely designed by stylesheets. There are minor concessions in each page to make the layout work. First, the layout requires a containing div and a div for the header. Aslo, the footer has to be inside the containing div to stick to the bottom and the content has to be kept longer than the left-side navigation.

I will translate the resume to the new look, not that I am looking anymore but people tend to use the CV to get to know me so it is useful to maintain.

I am liking textpattern very much. It has been eaisier to deal with than other systems, plus it just does its work and gets out of the way.

I will move over the Ouchita trail pictures and the Okatoma River pictures and I have two sets of Jamaica Mission pictures now.

The Amazon store documentation gets a lot of hits but it is not really that useful anymore since they updated their API.

So I will expand the church and religion coverage here, add some Communication industry articles, web design articles, pictures, my take on the days news, and the personal log.

I have a few sites that I am working on, mostly for the church. I will post some links to them also.

Comments are changing in this one. After a couple of weeks the comments will close on each article. I am a little tired of being the vehicle of choice to boost google page ranks for cheap drugs so that will keep the number of comment boxes that I have to patrol to a minimum without cutting the feature off all together.

Comment [2]

Welcome Back

I have been offline for a while but I am sure that I have a good excuse. Still in school, Working full time, dating a wonderful person. I am really doing better than I deserve so it is time to share some of it with you.

First of all, my faith has never been stronger and I think that it will just get better from here. I am on the Board of Directors at Grace House, I do the lights at my church, I am active in the singles ministry. It is really starting to fire on all cylinders.

I am seeing a wonderful person and I think that she is a living doll.

Work is going well. It is giving me a chance to really stretch my skills, especially with CSS and dynamic HTML. We really can make the page do exactly what we want these days but the pages have to be constructed very differently than we have done them before. This page is laid out with pure stylesheet layout technology. I will have to write a little something about how it works. At least it is getting easier to read.

I am headed into my last few classes at MC and I will actually have to write the Convocation paper, present it, and take the oral and comprehensive exams. pray for me, I will need it.

2005 looks like the year that all of these things come to a climax,I wonder what I would have done differently at the begining of the year if I had known how the year would end?

What would you have done differently this year if you knew where you would end up?