What's on my mind?

Robbie asked what's on my mind, so here it is: classes.

This is a pretty busy semester. I am taking several classes with significant (in quantity) outside readings. Fortunately I really like the classes, and the readings are interesting, but this does not affect the about of time this consumes.

One of these classes is Introduction to Music Ministry. Right now we are reading "Music Through the Eyes of Faith" by Harold Best. This is a very interesting book, and the discussion that this provokes is very interesting and applicable.

Another one of these classes is Christian Worship. This is a class about the history, and different types of Christian worship. This class is also very interesting. It at least six visits to other denominations and styles of worship. That should prove to be very eye opening.

Although this semester is busy, I think that it will be a very good one.

So Robbie, that is what's on my mind.

Skiing

Two weeks a go Jeremy and I went skiing. It was really really really fun. Unfortunately, that was a while ago, so that's not exactly what's on my mind now, but I would be doing an injustice if I didn't mention it. So here are just a few pictures:

This is after the ski lift ran over my pole, breaking it in half.

This is me on the snowmobile. Lots of fun!

This Past Week

This past week has been fairly boring. Both my mom and Robbie went back to school this week. This left me home alone all day. The only significant thing I did all week was go to Malibu Grand Prix. On Tuesdays they have all the go carts you want for $20. So Robbie, my dad, and I raced go carts for over five hours. That was a lot of fun, but it made us pretty sore after that.

So the rest of the week I basically sat at home. Thanks to CNN.com Live I got to watch live coverage of the Mark Jensen trial all day. Mark Jensen is accused of poisoning his wife with antifreeze in 1998. Its pretty interesting. This past week was the first week of what is expected to be an eight week trial.

On Thursday we took my car to Auto Service Center for a check-up. While there they fixed the front passenger door's power lock, so it works now. They also replaced the coolant reservoir so that my dashboard isn't constantly warning me of low coolant. They also replaced the front brake pads, and rear brake cylinders.

Today I went down to visit Marty in Griffin. It was pretty nice to see him, and to go to a service at his church. I haven't been down there for a service in a few year.

So that's been my week!

GA Aquarium/World of Coke/CNN

On Wednesday Jeremy came to Atlanta to visit Kenny and me. On Thursday we went to the Georgia Aquarium. That was a lot of fun, I had been before though. On Friday we went to the World of Coke. I had also been there before. But this time, in the tasting area, Kenny and I were asked to go behind the counter and play a game where a kid had to name the coke flavors. After that he had us help pour espresso for the taste testing. That was actually pretty fun. After that we went to the CNN Center. I really like the CNN Center. Unfortunately, Kenny had to get back, so we didn't have time to take the tour. I've done that before too, but I really like it. Here are a few pictures to prove we really did do everything I just said:

(Left to Right) Kenny, Jeremy and Me at the GA Aquarium.

Me with some Jellyfish

Jeremy and Me with the Coke Bear at The World of Coke

Me helping John Pemberton mix his new invention

Me in front of the CNN Center

The CNN Center food court

The CNN Center

I also got this slick CNN mug while we were at the CNN Center

On Saturday we also went to the DeKalb Farmer's Market

The Importance of Diction

I found this on UAB Choirs blog:



Here are the actual words - but don't look until you've watched it without them at least once and tried to make sense of it!

1. Blessed city, heavenly Salem,
vision dear of peace and love,
who of living stones art builded
in the height of heaven above,
and, with angel hosts encircled,
as a bride dost earthward move;

2. from celestial realms descending,
bridal glory round thee shed,
meet for him whose love espoused thee,
to thy Lord shalt thou be led;
all thy streets and all thy bulwarks
of pure gold are fashioned.

Gmail

Some of you may recall over 1 1/2 years ago when I reviewed the then new Yahoo! Mail Beta (now out of beta). In that post I praised Yahoo! Mail, and bashed Gmail. In the last year and a half, both of these services have changed somewhat. But more importantly, what I value in an email service has changed. Gmail offers for free what I pay 20$/year for Yahoo. Gmail offers free POP3and IMAP support. I can get all of my email (Yahoo! and Samford) coming into Gmail. Of course, I could already do that with Yahoo!, but the web interface is much better with Gmail. Gmail is much faster to load, it is more reliable, and it is more innovative. Where Yahoo! Mail is basically a traditional desktop application in your web browser, Gmail uses an interface that does not hog system resources, and is still just as fast and intuitive.

As some of you may know, I save every email. I have been doing this since June 2004. In that time I have accumulated over 20,000 emails. Because of this, I did not want to switch email services, knowing that all of my emails would be somewhere else. But because Gmail introduced IMAP, I now have to ability to upload all of my existing email onto Gmail.

So how is Gmail better? It is better in three ways: labels, archiving mail, and premium services for free.

Labels allow you to label an email, without moving them from you inbox or else where. Because I keep all of my email, my inbox was flooded. Why did I never create folders in other email applications? Because not every email could be categorized. With folders, I would have to have a few specific folders (i.e. newsletters, facebook emails, work related, etc.) and then on big miscellaneous folder of emails that could not be categorized. However, with Gmail, I can apply labels to the emails that need one, and archive all of my mail (which is my second point). Archiving mail takes it out of the inbox, but does not delete it. It is still searchable, and viewable in the "All Mail" view. This keeps my inbox clear, but still doesn't force me to categorize every email that comes in.

The last big reason why Gmail is better is because they offer premium services for free. As I've said, Gmail offers both POP3 and IMAP. They also offer free mail forwarding. Although Yahoo! Mail offers more storage (unlimited), Gmail's nearly 6gb is plenty for me.

I've said several times that Gmail's interface is both innovative and intuitive. I'll explain some of these aspects. When viewing an email, a reply box is below the email, allowing you to reply to the email very easily. If you click "Forward" then the reply box instantly changes, so that you can forward the email right from there. And Gmail offers filters, which can automatically apply labels, skip the inbox, delete the email, or forward the email (you could use this to forward it to you cell phone, thus alerting you when a specific email arrives). Also, Gmail offers seamless integration of AIM. This allows you to be online through Gmail. You can send and receive messages, and put up away messages.

Because of the numerous aforementioned reasons, I have decided to switch to Gmail.

My Semester Thus Far

Well, its been almost exactly three months since my last post. I will summarize my semester so far.

First of all, here is my class schedule:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday

8:00-8:50 Form and Analysis
9:15-10:20 Theatre Appreciation (Mon and Wed; Friday is trumpet lesson)
10:30-11:35 Music History
11:40-12:15 Piano Lesson with Dr. Sanders (Wednesday only)
1:00-2:05 A Cappella Choir
2:15-3:20 Handbells

Tuesday, Thursday

9:00-9:50 Diction
3:15-5:00 Marching Band

Also this semester I have started a new internship at Shades Crest Baptist Church. I get to work with Tim Mann there. My responsibilities there are to direct a beginner's children handchimes choir, sing in the adult choir, and play in the orchestra. I have to be there about 12 hours a week. Usually I go in on Tuesdays between diction and marching band for a few hours to total 12 hours a week. Usually when I do what ever Tim needs me to do. The last few weeks I've been working on cataloging the handbell music.

Also with this intership Tim gives me the oportunity to be totally responsible for teaching, and conducting one anthem per semester with the adult choir. This semester I'm doing Come to the Water arranged by Jack Schrader (from this link you can listen to the piece). We started this piece about three weeks ago, and the choir is doing very good on it. This will be the anthem on November 4th.

That's basically my whole semester in a nutshell.