An Excellent Weekend

What's this picture about? Well, it has nothing to do with this post, but I found it online sometime last week and thought I'd share it. The caption that came with it called it "Heaven's Hammer." Seemed like a good name to me. I have always been fascinated by severe weather. Tornadoes are just plain cool-looking, and I love to watch thunderstorms. (I'm sure that the tornadoes aren't nearly as cool when they are barreling down upon you or your property.)

Sorry I have been away for a few days. I took a little trip up to Apex, NC to visit my friend DP and to do some work on the website. While there isn't a whole lot of tangible evidence of work done, I did pick up some good tools to use in my development, and I was able to have some very profitable conversations with DP about the use of PHP.

I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but I have begun to learn PHP, and have not found the tutorials as helpful as the ones for HTML or CSS. I suppose there is only so much that you can convey in a tutorial. The hard thing is understanding how to apply some of the elements of what I am learning. DP gave me a really good flow diagram to help me to get a handle on how the various pieces fit together. He even gave me some rudimentary code to use. In addition to that he helped me to understand better the environment in which everything is going together.

The main forward progress this weekend was that I began to build the data collection forms for the website. It had been a while since I worked with forms, so I had a little bit of catching up to do. It is good practice. That's part of the reason I don't want to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. It gives me the practice that I need to learn to use HTML more instinctively.

Friday night DP, his wife KP and I had a great time talking about various things that the Lord has been teaching us lately. We reflected on the warning post that I made a couple of days ago and discussed what sort of response we should make to the warning it contained. I have had a couple of interesting discussions surrounding that post. We also watched and talked about a speech given by an expert in the physiology of the human brain who had a stroke. She described her experience from a clinical and experiential perspective. It was an interesting speech.

Saturday for lunch we dined at Char-Grill (spoken of in hushed and reverent tones around NC's Triangle.) We came back home and I worked for the better part of the afternoon. Then we got some snacks ready and watched UCLA and UNC get creamed in their semi-final games in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. It was painful to watch two teams get pummeled so.

I really hate basketball. I don't like games where the rules are not consistently applied. Everyone fouls in basketball, and the referees seem to only call it on a whim. I can't tell you how many times (especially in the Carolina game) I saw someone being brutalized in the paint with no call only to turn around and see someone get a foul for a hand check. My OCD tendencies just cannot tolerate that kind of inconsistency. I feel the same about the holding rule in football. 10 yards is too severe a penalty for holding. It happens on every play from scrimmage, but only gets called in the most flagrant cases or on plays with big gains. 5 yards is plenty for that. But I digress.

This morning I went with KP and the fam (DP had to work) to their church: CrossWay Community Church. It is a great little church. I thoroughly enjoyed the Sunday School (I usually don't get into Sunday School) and really enjoyed the worship. KH led a very talented team of musicians in a worship set that flowed well and seemed to come from a pure and passionate heart in pursuit of Christ. If you are in the Triangle area and looking for a church, this, I believe, would be a great one to visit. I know I plan to go there again next time I'm in the area.

I returned home to my parents' home this evening to celebrate my brother-in-law's 35th birthday. Mom made lasagna, salad, green beans, and bread. It was wonderful. But the piece de resistance was the Italian Cream cake that she made for dessert. (Actually, my nephew made most of the cake.) That's his favorite, and it's definitely in my top 5.

So there you go. My weekend in a nutshell. OK, it is a pretty big nut, but it was a good weekend. Much thanks to DP, KP, CP, and AP for their hospitality. It was very greatly appreciated. Also thanks to the folks at CrossWay for their hospitality today. It was a special treat to get to meet KH, DH, and TC over there today. I hope to see you all again soon!