Archive for life
August 22, 2007 at 11:14 am · Filed under life
My wife Donna wrote the following.
Grace, it is an amazing thing. This is a story of God’s amazing Grace and how He is constantly trying to redeem the world (even me).
Below is a letter to my husband based on a really stupid fight and overreaction. I said some mean and hurtful things before this started and neither of us was talking to the other when I left the house to go for my evening run.
I left the house really angry with you last night when I went to run. I wasn’t so much angry with you for eating my dinner, but how I perceived you brushing it off like I should just get over it because it was an accident. This might have been a legitimate reaction, but for whatever reason, last night I felt it was really self-serving of you. I kind of took it as how you approach all things, act and apologize later. I don’t like that attitude and I didn’t want to forgive your apology.
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August 8, 2007 at 10:34 am · Filed under life
In my July 12 post about Lawrence Wallack’s article Retelling the American Story, I wrote about the terms WITT (we’re in this together) and YOYO (you’re on your own). In order for the collective decisions of the US to be guided by WITT values, Wallack says we “need more stories that articulate the values of shared responsibility, obligation to the local and global community, civic participation, and an appropriate helping-hand for government”. I came across one such story this morning and shared it on my shared items page, but wanted to call more attention to it because of its positive message and tie-in to the earlier post.
Minneapolis shows why it’s rated No. 1 in volunteerism
Woven throughout the reflections offered over the past week during church services, rallies, and by onlookers on the riverbanks, has been the metaphor of rebuilding “human bridges.”"We need bridges between people,” says Kathy Hintz, explaining why she came out for a prayer vigil held Sunday night. “We have to trust each other because other people made these cars and these bridges. It’s pretty amazing that anything works as well as it does. And if you can’t trust each other, you can’t have a community.”
August 2, 2007 at 10:10 pm · Filed under life, technology
Statistics courses are probably my least favorite courses. I prefer simple statistics like batting average in baseball, winning percentage in any sport, unique ahelms.com visitors, etc. In high school I was really irritated that I was batting 7th or 8th and asked to bunt a lot on an American Legion team for which I was one of the better hitters. I had mentioned to the coach once or twice that I should move up in the order but he brushed me off. So I asked him if I could borrow the scorebook after a game one night. The next day I handed him my hand-calculated batting averages, slugging percentages, on-base percentages and other various and sundry statistics that supported my case. I was second on the team in average and one of the top three in most offensive categories. What do you know, that night I moved into the 3rd spot and batted either 2nd, 3rd or 5th the rest of the season.
ahelms.com Statistics
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August 2, 2007 at 2:46 pm · Filed under life, soccer, technology
I created a Google calendar for my brother’s high school’s soccer schedule. If you use Google Calendar, you can simply click the below button to add the boys’ varsity soccer schedule of McDonogh School to it. You can also download it in XML, ICAL or HTML format so you can import it into your preferred app.
| XML | ICAL | HTML
The calendar ID is: mon88sl1au5t9d69r4n9kf2ut4@group.calendar.google.com
August 1, 2007 at 12:35 am · Filed under life
The following post was written by my youngest brother Jared. He is a rising high school junior who plays soccer and tennis and aspires to be a professional comedic writer.
Last Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending the New York Yankees at the Baltimore Orioles baseball game. Always a big to-do here in Baltimore, the Yankee games are some of the few that fill Camden Yards, largely due to the thousands of Yankee fans that turn out. My parents wearing their Orange, and myself in a Yankee hat, I sat down not really caring who won, as long as my favorite player Alex Rodriguez had a good night. With 2 innings left to be played from a previous game, play started soon after we got to our seats. Immediately cheers of “Lets Go Yankees” battled with cheers of “Let’s Go O’s” or Baltimore fans simply yelling “Sucks” after “Yankees.”
As Baltimore fans yelled at Yankee fans “how about that” after about every out or hit, I wondered ‘do the concession stands really have enough alcohol to keep these idiots yelling all game? And if they run out, what will happen?’ So, as the real game started up at around 8 O’ Clock, the stands had filled, pretty close to half O’s half Yank fans, though in my section everyone had some red on their shirts from the nosebleeds caused by the low pressure in the upper {atmosphere} deck (PV = nRT, thanks Mistah Shang!). Read the rest of this entry »
July 26, 2007 at 5:31 pm · Filed under life, technology
Faithful visitors to the site may have noticed the appearance and then disappearance of posts that displayed tasty recipes. Donna and I were trying to figure out the best way to organize a catalog of recipes on the site. We decided to go with a new blog, http://recipes.ahelms.com. You can also get to it via the blogroll on the first sidebar.
I also opened the site for others to create new http://<your_blog>.ahelms.com blogs. Use the ‘New Blog’ link on the bottom of the far-right sidebar in the Meta section if you’re so inclined.
Finally, the kitties have been amusing us with their crazy personalities so we caught some of their silliness and posted it on the slickr page.
July 22, 2007 at 12:01 am · Filed under life, soccer
My friend Andy’s brother, Father Matt Buening, was interviewed by Baltimore radio station WBAL about a four-day pilgrimage he is leading which will include a stop in Cooperstown for Cal Ripken Jr’s induction into the Hall of Fame. If you grew up near Baltimore in the 1980s and 1990s you pretty much have to love Ripken. He is the reason I always wanted to play short stop and why I still do when I play softball. Even before the consecutive games streak, we loved Ripken for his passion for his profession and his work ethic. He had several stellar offensive years, especially MVP years 1983 and 1991, but I admired him for his defensive attributes. At 6’4″ and not the fleetest feet, he relied on his knowledge and intellect to play exceptional defense.
Like Ripken, David Beckham is a team-first, hard-working, world class athlete. His debut for the LA Galaxy tonight was a Hollywood spectacle, but it should not take away from the wonderful attributes Beckham exhibits and consistently espouses. If you know anything about Beckham you know he is passionate about his family and football. His approach to the game is true and his determinedness is inspirational. After signing with the LA Galaxy, Beckham’s manager at Real Madrid said he would never play for Madrid again. Just a few months later the Beckham-led los galácticos were celebrating their first La Liga title since 2002/2003 and Capello said he wished Beckham could stay for another two or three years. After the 2002 World Cup Beckham resigned his England captaincy. England hired a new manager, Steve McLaren, and one of McLaren’s first acts was to call Beckham and tell him that he was a “casualty” of the coaching change. Twelve months later Beckham was back in the squad, leading England to a tie with Brazil and then wins in Euro qualifiers. The list goes on and on. What is so admirable about Beckham is that he has remained humble and has never even hinted an “I told you so”. He takes nothing for granted.
Beckham’s move to LA has been sharing the headlines with Michael Vick’s federal indictment related to his involvement in a dogfighting ring. This after Vick was detained in an airport earlier this off-season for allegedly trying to smuggle marijuana in the bottom of a water bottle. Last year, in the midst of his 2004-signed 10-year $130 million contract, Vick got negative press for going to a free STD clinic under the assumed name Ron Mexico. Perhaps worst of all, he has recently resorted to referring to himself in the third-person. I am hoping that Vick’s story takes a redemptive turn. He would do well to follow the examples of athletes like Beckham, Ripken, or other NFL players like Donovan McNabb and Peyton Manning.
July 12, 2007 at 6:28 pm · Filed under life, technology
Lawrence Wallack is dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University and so called “father of media advocacy”. He wrote an interesting article called Retelling the American Story.
The theme of the article reminds me of an article incorrectly attributed to George Carlin that was forwarded to me awhile back called The Paradox of Our Time. The article was actually written by Dr Moorhead, former pastor of Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Washington. You have probably seen it. Here is one part:
“The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.”
From Wallack’s article:
“Yet despite such incredible advances, we still face collective challenges that won’t yield just to technology. The economy has rarely been better, but we have 45 million people without health insurance, the gap between rich and poor as a measure of inequality is growing and is alarmingly wide, global warming has gone from theory to reality, and we’re in a perpetual struggle to find adequate funding for education. No amount of computing power will figure these things out for us.
These are the social and human inequalities that flow from how we organize our society, and that, in turn, is based on the values that guide our collective decisions.”
The article goes on to talk about telling stories to communicate deeper meaning, specifically two kinds of competing stories: Yoyo (you’re on your own) stories and Witt (we’re in this together) stories. Read the rest of this entry »
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