the tindog coffeehouse

This is not meant to be political blog, although with the political season heating up, I’m sure there will be some more political posts in the future. But I did want to put my $0.02 in regarding the recent discussions of the faiths of presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.

The question comes down to this: (1) to what extent should a candidate’s personal beliefs and convictions be considered by voters when they are deciding whom to vote for, and (2) to what extent will that candidate’s personal beliefs and convictions shape how that candidate will govern should they win?

Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections in part as a reaction to Bill Clinton’s liberal policies–policies driven by a liberal ideology–but the “Republican Revolution” backfired two years later when voters chose to overlook “traditional family values” in favor of economic policy when they reelected Clinton to the White House.

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Let me first preface this by saying I don’t have a Facebook profile, nor do I have a MySpace page, nor am I on Twitter. Or any other social network for that matter. I understand the idea behind them and see the potential value in them for some people, but for me personally, no.

Recently there’s been a lot of controversy floating around about Facebook’s Beacon system. Essentially, it works like this. You have a Facebook account and shop online at a company who is participating in the Beacon system, such as Overstock.com or eBay. Regardless of whether you’re logged into Facebook at the time, if you buy something from one of these companies, all of your Facebook friends are automatically notified of what you bought. Huh? Yeah.

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Our 4-year-old daughter Erin is 110% personality, a perfect blend of sweetness and sass. She’ll give a you look–a quick glance out of the corner of her eye with a huge smile–that just melts your heart. Or she’ll say something that to her is no big deal, but to us is one of those “priceless” moments you want to remember forever.

She likes to say the blessing before dinner and usually rattles off the standard “God is great, God is good” prayer, and last night was no exception. But then she ended it with, “God, I love you. I love you because you make the best mommies and daddies in the whole world.” Well, of course Christy and I just looked at each other and almost burst into tears!

Then later we were watching one of those animated “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” shows from the 70s, and it was all about how the baby Santa was raised by elves to grow up to be Santa Claus. Erin looks up at me and says, “There’s a song in Mommy’s car about the baby Santa!” I was confused for a moment until I realized she was right. The song, of course, is the old Eartha Kitt song “Santa Baby.”

OK, so I’m a computer guy. My first computer was an Acros 386 running Windows 3.0. It was a high school graduation gift, and I loved that machine. Good times.

Computers have obviously come a long way since then and so have operating systems. Remember Windows ME? (Sorry to bring back painful memories.) It used to be that Windows was so unstable you had to restart the computer every so often just to get the stupid thing working again. Today, XP and Vista are much more stable and reliable, but sometimes a clean boot is necessary just to clear out the memory and start over fresh.

Well, that’s kinda how I’ve felt lately, like I need to be rebooted. Just start over fresh, clear out the cobwebs. Hence the blog. No, nobody needs or cares about another random blog. I don’t expect anyone to read this. So, if you are reading this, then you probably need to find a more productive hobby.

So how to reboot? Well, I need to exercise more to start. Still thinking about how I can start adding some exercise into my day. More on that later. I also need to eat less and eat healthier. Those are no-brainers. I need to be praying daily and spending time in the Word. That’s not hard to do so much as I just get lazy about it. And finally, I need to stop dwelling on my circumstances. I need to focus my attention on others, get more involved in church, stop sittin’ around feeling sorry for myself.

I guess that’s a good place to start. Or restart.