the tindog coffeehouse

Hi and welcome to the newly relaunched blog! Which just happens to look exactly like it did a couple of days ago. Except that it’s now on a different server.

I decided to move to a new web hosting company after my old one kept going down. Every day. Multiple times a day. Now granted, I don’t get a lot of traffic here, and most likely no one but me noticed the outages, but it really ticked me off. I mean, if I’m gonna pay for a service, I kinda expect it to work. That’s not too much to ask is it?

So everything’s been moved over, and as far as I can tell, it seems to be working fine. There may be a few kinks that still need to be ironed out, but I think we’re good for the most part. The new host seems to be a lot faster, too, which is nice.

It’s hard to believe I’ve had this blog for almost four years. And actually, I’ve had the domain since 1998. The first iteration of tindog.com was a really bad personal home page built with FrontPage 98. How bad was it? Well, the fact that it was built with FrontPage should give you a clue. And I think I used Comic Sans for the font. And there might’ve been a picture of Mao Tse-Tung on it (for some unknown reason).

Continue reading…

I spent this past weekend stuck in a hotel room in suburban Milwaukee. Exciting, right? I know, you’re jealous. But trust me, it wasn’t as interesting as it sounds. For one, it was raining and snowing (yes, snowing!) the whole time I was there. Second, it was Milwaukee. Unless you just have an unnatural fondness for Miller Lite or Laverne and Shirley, there’s really no reason to ever go there. I did, however, discover cheese curds, which I’m told are amazing, but to me they just tasted like, well, cheese. Which we have in Texas. Except we call it queso and dip our tortilla chips in it.

Anyway, I had gone up there to move one of our offices, which had to be done over a weekend. I finished up by mid-afternoon on Saturday, but my flight home didn’t leave till Sunday afternoon. So what do you do for 24 hours in suburban Milwaukee while it’s raining and snowing? You sit around in your hotel room trying to figure out how in the world you took such a wrong turn in life. That, and watch movies.

Continue reading…

The last four months have just been weird. Ever since I broke my leg in July, things have been off-kilter. Including this blog, I guess. I haven’t been as regular with my blog posts as I’d like to be, but I’m totally fine with that. I don’t need to post something every day or even every week. If you’re really that concerned about my day-to-day happenings, you can follow me on Twitter. Or marry me. Except I’m already married, so that’s probably not an option for most people.

Anyway, I didn’t really have anything in particular to blog about, so I thought I’d throw a bunch of random things into one big post and let you pick out the stuff you’re mildly interested in.

Continue reading…

My 12th-grade English teacher would kill me if she read this blog. As is the case throughout most of the blogosphere, the style of writing here is extremely informal. So if you’ve read any of my posts, you’ve probably noticed I often start sentences with the word “so”, a common practice in conversational English but technically incorrect since it’s used as a conjunction.

So who should we denounce for this scandalous practice? According to the New York Times, it’s all Silicon Valley’s fault:

Continue reading…

Yes, I know I’m a week late in saying it, but Happy New Year. Now can I start out the year with a little honesty? I mean, we’re friends, right?  Here goes…

I’m a failure.

At least according to the world. I’m not rich, I’m not famous. Heck, I’m not even “Internet famous”. And I probably won’t ever be. I don’t have thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, and chances are, no one is even reading this blog post. I have a steady but mostly unfulfilling job that consumes the best hours, days, and years of my life but nothing that even closely resembles a social life outside of that.

Donald Miller talks in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years about viewing life in terms of telling a story, with a narrative arc that includes overcoming obstacles in order to get what you (the protagonist) want. He writes on his blog:

Continue reading…

I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine
I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine
I know what I want if you know what I mean
I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine

– Derek Webb, “The Spirit Vs. The Kickdrum”

A lot happens between Chapters 5 and 6 of the Gospel of John. By the time we get to John 6:1, Jesus has attracted a huge following. At least 5000, and that was likely just counting adult males. Including women and children, that number could’ve been 10 or 15,000.

Jesus took the time to feed them all, and He didn’t just give them each a small ration of fish and bread. They had so much food, they couldn’t eat all of it, leaving twelve basketfuls of leftovers.

But that wasn’t enough for them.

Continue reading…