Virtual Worship

I stumbled upon the website of the First Baptist Church of Chattanooga Tennessee. I visited a couple of other sites but they seemed to be simple chat rooms with places for both members and the church to post ideas. The First Baptist Church seems like it has had more effort put into making the website than the other ones i visited. It is fairly easy to navigate and serves what I believe the purpose of an online place of worship should be. It provides enough information and I guess religious guidance to catch oneself up on the services of the week if one missed the actual service or just wants to revisit. As far as a replacement for going to an actual service, there is no replacing the real thing. The benefit for this really lies in the video’s that are posted of all the services. If I were not physically able to attend service, I suppose I could still find some sort of comfort and salvation by watching the videos. I believe that this site encourages people that might not otherwise attend a service to think about attending one. By no means is this some sort of society changing website. This is just an outlet where members of this congregation can keep up to date with the latest news and discussions surrounding their church. As far as methods go, this site is similar to the Virtual Church as it offers some sort of guidance but is not seen as a replacement for attending service unless it is a complete necessity. I see it as a spare tire to be used if you find yourself with a flat whilst on the road to salvation. I feel that Jacobs would see it the same way, that this site is better than nothing and can still get you along.


http://www.fbce8.com/index.html

Blogging

     So as I look back through my blogs, I am coming to an amazing realization that my writing style has well, stayed pretty much the same. I do not believe that I have made any sort of huge change in how I write. It may have taken me a few posts to realize it, but the class blog assignments are much more relaxed than any other assignments I have done in the past. I suppose that I have relaxed my grammar slightly and now I may be letting ideas flow a little more freely, and I think that this is a good thing. As far as the colloquialisms that accompany most blogs, not class blogs necessarily, but blogs in general, I am making a conscious effort to avoid them. I feel that even this is a fairly relaxed setting formal grammar rules should still apply. I want to have confidence in anything and everything that I am going to put on the internet that could potentially be traced back to me at a later time. Even on facebook, I try to keep things appearing professional, regardless of the media. I have always been told to only let things be seen that you would be comfortable with the world seeing and I intend to keep living by that rule. To me, blogs are just another way to express feelings or opinions on or about a subject and should be treated similarly to any other assignment. My theory is if you always present yourself in a respectable manner, you will not have trouble presenting yourself when it is important to be respectable.  

Peer Editing

With the start of peer editing, I thought we were going to end up doing more of the same kind of editing that I did in high school. I was wrong; we were supposed to be doing a fresh style of editing where we would comment only on content and not focus on things that can easily be changed at the end. I will say that we did focus more on content than I had in the past, but I don’t know if I set my expectations too high or what exactly my problem was but everything did not play out as I thought it would. I guess I had assumed that I would be able to make some profound comments about my peers essays and vice versa, but it just is not so. Please do not misunderstand me, everybody had very helpful things to say and tips to give, but it was just not as mind blowing as I had anticipated. Anyways, that being said, I do like the fact that we are not even really allowed to comment or correct grammatical issues. This definitely helps the writer focus on what he/she really needs to change content wise. Also, from the editing point of view, it makes it a challenge to find good points to make about the paper without the easy out of circling all of the issues and fixing the misspelled words. I am not sure how much I have learned at this point, but I feel that as the year goes on, editing will become more and more helpful from both perspectives.  

Technology and Evolution

             Oh technology, you are the future of our species, constantly improving, and I hate you. I don’t hate all technology and I realize that technology makes my life so much more convenient every day but I wish some things had never been invented or at least released to the public.

 Portable GPS is one of my least favorite things available for consumer use. It helps people get where they need to go when they do not know their way. I understand the trouble it saves some people but I honestly believe that it creates bigger problems than the ones it solves. GPS can be very useful if trying to find your way in a strange city but should not be used to find your way to the grocery store. I know people who do not know how to navigate their own neighborhood because they have become dependent on the device to get them to even the easiest locations to find. People have started to lose the ability to successfully navigate the world that they live in and rely solely on technology. I believe that someone should at least be able to find their way home no matter where they are. I still use paper maps if I do not know where I am going.

Smart phones are one of the worst inventions of all time. No more are the days of sitting around with your friends and arguing about mundane facts. Somebody always has to be the dick that pulls out their iphone and ends all the fun. Also people have become attached to their phones wherever they are. With people texting, tweeting, facebooking, and searching the internet on their phones, the roads are terrifying. I have a flip phone and have used GPS once, with disastrous results. I hate when I find myself texting and prefer talking on the phone.

With all the convenience of technology today I honestly believe people have gotten lazier. The more technology does, the less we have to do, the less we have to use our brains, and the less we know about the world. I really am not trying to say anything against people who use this technology but I think it is something to think about. I would hate to see the world get to a point where we start to lose capabilities. If you have ever seen the movie Idiocracy, you know what I am talking about. It is a bit extreme, but brings up a valid point.

(Just to be clear, this is just how my mind works. I do not take this seriously. I am not a nut.)

The Reincarnation of Nine Mile Island

            I am not sure how to begin, my band, Nine Mile Island, started freshman year of high school. We were just a random group of friends, not great friends or anything, but the kind of people that you only hang out with at school. We started out with a few covers and a really terrible original or two, and it was pretty much just an excuse to goof off and hang out with some people. We quickly became great friends, adding others to the band along the way just to keep all of us included in some way when we would shows. The addition of a “manager,” a fellow who does blacksmithing and occasionally played the tambourine and a serious guitarist joined our group, the first because he wanted to be included backstage and the other because we needed a second guitarist who could play solos.

This is when we started to get serious, or at least form a semi-legitimate band. We actually started writing songs, but most practices only lasted about half an hour, after that we would all go down to the river to swim. Somehow, people seemed to like our songs and we actually amassed a following. Ranging from middle school girls to grandmothers and grandfathers, we had a strange audience at shows. We then started to write more songs and get better gigs.

Being too young to play at bars, we were forced to play birthday parties, festivals, and small venues that allow underage shows. Many times we struggled to sell tickets and got little in return, but we were playing for larger and larger crowds that actually liked our music. Eventually, it got boring and difficult playing in the same places repeatedly and trying to sell tickets to your friends who had seen you perform again and again. Due to our growing popularity, we were offered a shot at playing one of the biggest venues in Richmond called The National.

Going up on the same stage that artists like the Smashing Pumpkins and Paul Simon was a huge deal for us and we busted ass trying to sell tickets to that show. It was one of the most incredible times of my life and one of my fondest memories. We ended up doing it a second time later on and gained access to the newly refurbished headliner’s suite. This night was hands down the coolest night of my life, and Snoop Dogg playing the night after us. Since then, we have recorded and lost some of the excitement that we once had. Everybody had gone to a different school and the band was seeming to come to an end until today, three of us agreed to start writing songs again and for the first time in a very long time I have been truly excited to start playing music again and getting back to the energy level that we once had. 

http://www.reverbnation.com/ninemileisland

Mixing Pot

     I have an odd mixture of influences that somehow combine to make up a vocabulary and sound that helps me communicate with others. I have lived in King William County, a rural area about an hour northeast of Richmond, Virginia since I was four years old. My town is not very diverse; it is pretty much black and white. On the other hand I attended a college prep school in Richmond and received a better education than the schools in my area offer. I have also spent summers in Massachusetts since I was a little kid. From living in Virginia one almost automatically uses words like “y’all” but living where I live I use picked up words like “ain’t”, “jank”, “thang”, “loo” (look), “mai” (man), and “dat”. I would get odd looks from teachers when I used these words in school and have to consciously make an effort to drop these words from my vocabulary when trying to make a good impression. At work, where I live, I would be asked to “put it simpler” and not use such big words. In order to add to the confusion, I would sometimes respond in French, or if my boss started spitting out his mountain gibberish just to let him know that nobody could understand his mumbles. Every time I go to Massachusetts people poke fun at the way I talk. I say y’all and they say you guys. But going there has changed the way I talk, like any foreign region they have a different accent and use different words. Over the years I have picked up common words from there such as “Deeze”, “wicked”, and “mass”. For example: These doughnuts are wicked deeze, but there are mass people here, lets bail. I do not necessarily have pride in the way I talk. I change the way I speak to appear more respectable, but only when I deem necessary. I prefer to talk in my normal way, but I realize there are times when it is just not appropriate. 

Apples to Cabbage

    When one thinks of literacy one might think of one’s ability to read, write, and comprehend material efficiently. Generally this is how I think of it but only in an academic setting. I believe that there are different forms of literacy but schools only have the capabilities to test ones ability to read, write, and comprehend. For instance, at every job I have worked there is a different kind of lingo associated with it, for two summers I worked as a dockhand at a marina. Putting boats in and out of the water and maneuvering them around required cooperation and good communication. We handled customer’s million dollar boats with forklifts specially designed for lifting and moving boats from their multi story bunk racks down into the water and back. Using a mixture of hand signals and shouts we quickly lifted, lowered, launched, maneuvered, docked, and washed hundreds of boats a day without incident. This type of skill neither be taught nor tested in school. It is not particularly difficult but not everyone can do it. There are many kinds of things like this one out there in the real world that school does not and can not teach you how to do. The key it seems is to be able to combine both skills, but I can only speculate as I have not yet entered my profession. The employment opportunities that I have had thus far have only required the communication and none of the polish that one learns in school. I have not had to write for any job so far and given the choice between the hands on approach or the polished school approach I would rather have the hands on practical skills. There are plenty of people out there that are educated and unintelligent. And then people who do not need an education to be intelligent. Natural common sense is much more highly regarded for me than any knowledge picked up in a text book.