Yesterday afternoon at about 4:30 I posted my review of John Elredge’s book Epic at Amazon. The review showed up a couple of hours later, and already has had 9 people vote on whether or not my review was helpful. At this point the voting is 2 for and 5 against. That is pretty typical for reviews that don’t gush and “ooh and aw” over books. Wild at Heart, for example, which I only posted there last week, is faring a bit better at 8 for and 10 against. Basically any book I review positively tends to attract helpful votes and ones I review negatively get negative votes. Of course my review of The Purpose Driven Life still takes the cake with only 36 positive votes out of 175 cast. Now I don’t really care how many negative votes I get, but am hoping sooner or later to get into the top 1000 reviewers list at Amazon, so need some more positive votes. You know what to do!
There are now 99 registered members of the forums. Maybe I’ll do something special for the 100th person to register. Or maybe 100 isn’t a significant enough number and I should hold off for 1000.
I have been doing some good writing and researching this week and hope to have lots of good things to post over the weekend and next week. I hope to have some things to say about where babies go when they die – taking a look at the age of accountability and so on.
The other day I picked up a book called The God of Yes. The only reason I got it was that it was a doorcrasher at the local Christian bookstore and set me back all of $2.50 (and that’s in Canadian currency too)! The book has some good things and some bad things to say, but has one overwhelming problem: the author’s sense of humor. He seems to feel the need to toss in some sarcastic, annoying comment on almost every page of the book. It seems nearly every page has a sentence that ends with a bracket, then some sarcastic and supposedly funny comment and then an end to the bracket. Time and time again. The author has a very sarcastic and immature sense of humor and it is almost a show-stopper for me. I’m generally the first to enjoy some humor, but this goes way too far. I had to quit reading yesterday for a while just because I couldn’t take anymore.
Speaking of books, I set a goal earlier this year and decided I was going to try to read 50 books in 2004. I am only including Christian books in my list, but by my reckoning I think I’m up to 24. Since the year is well past the halfway mark I have some catching up to do. I won’t be broken-hearted if I don’t reach 50, but it is a goal I’d like to meet. I’ll be sure to look for a couple of short ones I can read in an evening or two.
Currently on my reading list are: The God of Yes by David Edwards (I’ll finish it tonight), Who’s Driving The Purpose Driven Church by James Sundquist (I’ll also finish it tonight), Putting the Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton (about halfway through but my wife keeps nabbing it) and Knowing God by J.I. Packer (a classic I have never read). I’m also re-reading The Purpose Driven Church just for kicks.
For the past two weeks I have been working almost exclusively with Macromedia Flash. While there are some great things you can do with Flash, it annoys me to no end. However, as time goes on I am getting better with it and expect to have a pretty funky site ready for a client by this time next week. The main issue I have is that I don’t know enough to really troubleshoot my problems, so when I get stuck I get really stuck.
That’s it for now. Have a great weekend. For those who drop by over the weekend, I’ll see you tomorrow! For the rest of you, enjoy your weekends and we’ll catch up on Monday!
