My iPhone is still my most reliable workstation

My work laptop (a Dell for now) gets about 1 hour of battery life and runs Windows 8.

My iPad lasts for days but doesn’t have 3G, making it a close second place.

My iPhone lasts all day on a single charge, has a persistent (and FAST) data connection, and is as big as a pack of cards. It’s still the best work device I have.

Home Screen February

the continuous quest for sanity through technology

I frequently reset my iPhone and iPad home screen layouts in effort to clean up and pursue something more like minimalism. The key is letting my technology be less and less something I just check when I’m bored, and more and more a tool that has a clearly defined purpose. The key for me has been defining that purpose and then using it for that purpose and not merely mindless entertainment. Apps that are "stock" iOS and do a good enough job stay on the home screen. Apps that do something iOS doesn’t (like Poster for blogging, Day One) get a place. The home screen is for daily-use apps only, with a small handful of games and occasional use apps on the second page.

shut up is my favorite browser extension

Comments are IMO one of the worst things about the internet. If more people wrote their own content instead of latching onto someone else’s to troll or promote their own ideas,the web would be a happier place. Enter Shut Up, an extension I’ve been using on safari for a couple of years now. I couldn’t live without this thing shielding me from the inevitable donkey show that is the comment section of most websites.

http://stevenf.com/shutup-css/

Home screen 1/24/13

Trying out Launch Center Pro, it looks like it could really help me with the things I do most frequently on my iPhone. I’m trying Drafts for the same purpose. This is the first time I’ve had a folder on my home screen since my iPhone 4, so we will see how long that lasts.

get routines to help you rest.

Sabbath is more than just a day to pretend to care about holiness. Yes, it’s a day set aside for believers to worship God by resting and celebrating. But it’s also a rhythm, a way of orienting your life toward God through regular, routine rest. Rest doesn’t simply mean sleeping, though often times that’s all we need more than anything. Rest means ceasing to labor; as Doug Wilson put it, “doesn’t mean we work 6 days and on the 7th, we work these other three jobs. [paraphrase mine.]“

Here’s 2 things I try to do throughout my day and after to build in rhythms of rest, submission, and obedience:

  1. Take breaks at work, but take real ones. That doesn’t mean taking a “break” to respond to emails. Read a book. Pray. Take a 15-minute walk around your campus. Do something that isn’t “doing something.” You don’t need to always be “productive;” I know my desire to always be “getting things done” stems from my not believing the gospel and needing to justify or validate myself. I don’t. You don’t.  
  2. Change out of your work clothes. When I worked for the Apple Store (5 years!), it was always so easy to just keep that blue shirt on until bedtime. After all, I was just going to be right back there tomorrow, what’s the point of changing into another outfit? Keeping your work clothes on after work tells you things, even if you don’t mean to tell yourself things. Changing out of your work clothes into comfy clothes or casual clothes for the last few hours of your day can help orient your life away from striving, stress, and working to justify yourself. It re-orients you on what is now at hand: your family, your friends, your roommates, your hobbies, your beer, your books. It’s less a fashion choice and more a statement of who and what gets the priority when you’re not working. It’s a way of orienting yourself toward rest. Your work clothes remind you of and keep you oriented on work. So change out of them. Orient yourself on rest.

The lies we tell our Facebook profiles.

I’m lying if I say I’m staying on Facebook for anyone else but me.

The argument that I “need” Facebook so that my Grandmom can see pictures of my life in Colorado, or to keep in touch with “old friends” is so much horse excrement that I’m starting to discern that worn-stable smell all over me.

Getting pictures to Grandmom used to mean developing them and putting them in an envelope, or in more recent times sending them as an email attachment. Now, I’m being “helpful” by putting up a random smattering of pics on Facebook and then gently reminding my grandmother where she can find them when she feels like it. So, to review:

  • Keeping my Grandmom updated on my life and doing something that makes her happy is worth as much effort as it takes to click “upload,” and then assume she will go looking for them if she wants them. Have you ever told your Grandmom to piss off and stop bothering you? If this is how you “keep in touch,” then yes. Yes you have. It’s okay. So have I.
  • If you’re one of the “old friends” I’m “keeping in touch” with, then congratulations. Or relationship means just enough for me to confirm you as an acquaintance in the world’s number 1 database of acquaintances, but at this point you should probably go ahead and cross “ever hearing from Sean again” off of your bucket list. You’re worth two clicks to me, but not a phone call, an email, or even a cup of coffee. I might “like” the photo of your newborn baby, but tell that baby not to hold their breath on ever meeting me. Because I’m a bad person, and I use social networks as a substitute for the kind of relationships that require intimacy, regularity, and effort.

I’m no longer in the Whicker & Pine

This isn’t one of those “behind the music” specials about self-destruction or “creative differences.” Ultimately I felt like I had limited “bandwidth” for things in my life beyond being a husband, having a full time job and being a deacon at our local church. It wasn’t right to waste the time of the other guys in the band who had to put up with a disinterested guitar player. I wish those guys the best and can’t wait to see where they go from here.

Merry Happy!

There’s tons of signage and knick-knacks available in the bookstore near my work which display messages about Jesus Christ being “the best Christmas present of all.” I’m probably being cynical, but I think this is a terrible message to teach, well, anybody. This is one of those times when, instead of asking, “how do we replace the shallow, generic messages of this season with the rich truths of the gospel?”, the question is posed, “how do we make a ‘Christian’ message resemble as closely as possible the shallow, generic messages of the world’s Christmas?”

In short, it’s borrowing from the world’s playbook when we need not, and ought not.