In the meantime

I'm not much for gifts but I've received some cool stuff that I really dig this year. I'm blessed to have good friends with good taste. Warm, joyful feelings for me.

Odd day. Slammed at work for a few hours, then left with everyone for our boss' Christmas party - tapas in Tribeca. Good food/drink, and then we all took off. Walked south through the lower end of Tribeca - still feels weird down there. Home by 4ish, surfed/read/SOF'd for a few hours. The flights are all full tomorrow thanks to weather today pushing a lot of people back. So it looks like I have to settle for the evening flight, which will put me in LATE tomorrow night. So there's no real urgency to pack tonight. So I'll do it in an hour tomorrow morning. Que sera sera.

Its Thursday. We link.

More than you ever wanted to know about the 12 days of Christmas. You may have heard some of the history/legend/whatever you decide to call it behind this song, but I'll bet you can't accurately name half of them before looking.

Ever wondered what the computer thinks before it beats you down in chess? Wonder no more.

Burn an hour perusing Sam's collection of cool video clips. And for those of you stuck in the city for the holiday, maybe check out what's going on at the park, or help a hungry person, or take a tour (click on the tour schedule link for more).

And speaking of volunteering, the rapidly growing youth group I work with is in need of more leaders to help, well, lead kids. Go here, and come check us out sometime. Working with the youth group is my reason for still being in NYC today, its meant that much to me.

I've been dabbling with RSS feeds lately, one online one in particular being Bloglines. The nice thing about an online one is that you can log onto it from any connected puter. But the thing I don't like about RSS in general is that it takes away from the experience of a given page in the first place. And I like to experience the pages that I go to on a regular basis. I suspect I'll end up using RSS to just review sites that I like to keep up from time to time but am not a regular reader of.

Thanks to some crafty maneuvering and some considerate friends, I now officially have gmail invites coming out of my ears. If you're still using hotmail, or yahoo, or whatever, you don't know what you're missing. Email me (via my profile) if you'd like one.

And finally, NYPress had a good feature last week that pointed out the gross shortcomings of the conservative right when it comes to environmental protection. I've always been a bit of a greeny on this issue, so I found the article interesting. I believe the church, in large part, rarely esteems its calling to be good stewards of this earth as fully as it should. It is curiously understandable - the Christian's natural focus is on the completed work and the hope secure of a new heaven and new earth, but nowhere in our wonderful promised gifts lies an excuse to shirk our temporal, God-given duties. We should be respecting and caring for this world in the light of what it truly is: His creation, not ours.