"There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president."
- Kurt Vonnegut
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Your car needs a power-up
We’ve all gotten used to the12-volt “cigarette lighter” power ports in our cars. If you’ve seen a car built before 1995, you may even have seen one with an actual cigarette lighter, instead of just the little cap over the top. They’re still in our cars because we’ve come to need them to charge our cel phones, iPods, GPS devices, radar/laser detectors, portable DVD players, and all the electronics we tote around with us these days. Most new cars have more than one; our van has three, two in the front, and one in the back.
I’ve noticed that a lot of cars are also packing built-in power inverters and standard household power plugs, so you don’t have to use the 12-volt plugs, or a separate inverter. That’s pretty handy. I hope that gains in popularity.
But my beef (for today) is with the form factor of the 12-volt plugs. Since fewer and fewer of us are smoking in cars these days, can we come up with a different kind of plug, less bulky and cumbersome than the old kinds? Why not use the EmPower ports, the ones found on some airplanes these days? The adapter kits are already out there for portable devices, so it’s just a matter of auto makers starting to make the change.
I guess I’m just bugged by the bulkiness of the ports. If they were half the size, you could put twice the number of them into the dashboards and consoles of most cars. Considering that I’ve occasionally had to shuffle around with plugs, when my wife needs to charge her phone at the same time that I’ve got my GPS unit and iPod cradle plugged in. Yes, I know I can get a splitter, but that just adds to the jumble of cables in the front of the car.
Does this make sense to anyone else? Are there technical hurdles to work through, in addition to the long-term logistical work of changing something the American (and probably world-wide) car-buying public has gotten used to?
I’ve noticed that a lot of cars are also packing built-in power inverters and standard household power plugs, so you don’t have to use the 12-volt plugs, or a separate inverter. That’s pretty handy. I hope that gains in popularity.
But my beef (for today) is with the form factor of the 12-volt plugs. Since fewer and fewer of us are smoking in cars these days, can we come up with a different kind of plug, less bulky and cumbersome than the old kinds? Why not use the EmPower ports, the ones found on some airplanes these days? The adapter kits are already out there for portable devices, so it’s just a matter of auto makers starting to make the change.
I guess I’m just bugged by the bulkiness of the ports. If they were half the size, you could put twice the number of them into the dashboards and consoles of most cars. Considering that I’ve occasionally had to shuffle around with plugs, when my wife needs to charge her phone at the same time that I’ve got my GPS unit and iPod cradle plugged in. Yes, I know I can get a splitter, but that just adds to the jumble of cables in the front of the car.
Does this make sense to anyone else? Are there technical hurdles to work through, in addition to the long-term logistical work of changing something the American (and probably world-wide) car-buying public has gotten used to?
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Hard things
One of the things about being involved with leading worship at church is that you get asked, at times, to sing at the funerals of people you don't know. I don't know if you consider it a good thing, or a bad thing, but it's starting to feel more comfortable in my "good" column. Mike Cope once mentioned that it's an honor to be invited into the "sacred places" in peoples' lives: hospital bedsides, weddings, prayer vigils, and funerals. I'm learning to understand the wisdom in that.
Monday evening, I sang with some other folks from church at the funeral for the mother of a young lady from our church. I was given the job of finding some songs to sing, which is often quite difficult for funerals. It's easier when the family has requests, but in this case, they left it up to us to choose the songs. I went through the list of songs that our praise team knows best, and finally settled on two: Hortaio Spafford's "It Is Well With My Soul," and Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name." They both spoke to me of the faith that we need to get us through hard times, like the death of a loved one.
We all have hard times in our lives. Sometimes they're momentary, but generally the real hard times last far longer than we think we can manage. These "hard things" in our lives turn into "firm places" -- stepping stones, if you will. They are the things on which we can track our walk through life, and indicators of the growth of our faith. In a lot of ways, our lives would be more difficult if we didn't go through the problems. We usually think it's the opposite: "If my problems would just go away, life would be easier." That's a silly idea. The troubles in our life help us learn to navigate trouble.
I have had a tendency to think very negatively of moments in my life that I made mistakes, or embarrassed myself. I'm starting to rework that thinking, and learning to live with less regret over those moments, and with more thankfulness for having learned a thing or two along the way.
Monday evening, I sang with some other folks from church at the funeral for the mother of a young lady from our church. I was given the job of finding some songs to sing, which is often quite difficult for funerals. It's easier when the family has requests, but in this case, they left it up to us to choose the songs. I went through the list of songs that our praise team knows best, and finally settled on two: Hortaio Spafford's "It Is Well With My Soul," and Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name." They both spoke to me of the faith that we need to get us through hard times, like the death of a loved one.
We all have hard times in our lives. Sometimes they're momentary, but generally the real hard times last far longer than we think we can manage. These "hard things" in our lives turn into "firm places" -- stepping stones, if you will. They are the things on which we can track our walk through life, and indicators of the growth of our faith. In a lot of ways, our lives would be more difficult if we didn't go through the problems. We usually think it's the opposite: "If my problems would just go away, life would be easier." That's a silly idea. The troubles in our life help us learn to navigate trouble.
I have had a tendency to think very negatively of moments in my life that I made mistakes, or embarrassed myself. I'm starting to rework that thinking, and learning to live with less regret over those moments, and with more thankfulness for having learned a thing or two along the way.
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