The official shoe of Renaissance Road

Here it is, the R2 Special Edition, Double Outer, Canvas High Chuck Taylor. We're just so cool and edgy, Converse heard about us and wanted to pay us a tribute.

Ok, maybe not.... I just stumbled across Converse's website where you can design your own Chucks (as well as other Cons). Don't know that I'd ever really do it, but it's a kinda fun toy to play with. Have fun!

Reflections

I've got a surprise for all of you in R2 land tonight...   we've got a little something special whipped up for this coming Sunday.  We call it "Reflections".  I won't tell you what it is, but I can assure you it's not to be missed.  It's not like anything you've seen before at R2 (and certainly something I've never seen or heard of at another church).  

Anyway, to celebrate, I'm going to give you a sneak peek at the logo we created for it.  It's a smidge cliche, but we wanted something simpler that a lot of the things we've been doing recently.  It's pretty "stripped down" (although not as stripped down as Jace was last sunday) while still being a little elegant.

Hope you enjoy, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Terry Tate

Terry Tate loves, no...  demands, direct answers. 

Thanks

Thanks to all for the birthday wishes.  It's times like this I truely feel blessed to be surrounded by such a great network of people that I love and that love me back.  I thank God for all of you.

Related note, I think this is going to be a really special year.

"I hate to tell ya this, but......"

You ever notice when someone starts a sentence like this, it's usually something that they can't wait to tell you?

Infamous

This is "Infamous", the show my friend Pharaba produces.  Until it gets picked up by a TV network there are mini episodes being posted to youtube every week.  It's the story of two struggling actors trying to make their big break in LA.  The rub is, until they make it, they have to have a day job.  In these guys' case, that day job is being contract killers.   

OK, BIG disclaimer time here, boys and girls...   This show's violent, a little sexist, and the language is rough to say the very least.  If it were a movie, it's easily "R".  That being said, it's smart and really genuinely hilarious.  Think Entourage meets The Professional with a lot of Lethal Weapon thrown in for good measure.  Anyway, enough talk, here it is.  You've been warned, but you can thank me later.

SEC ref says

NOT IN MY HOUSE!!!   What can I say??  Very Nice.

Congrats Samauri

Mike Singletary, former linebacker for the Chicago Bears and more importantly, one of my favorite football players when I was growing up, was named the new head coach of the San Francisco 49ers tonight.  Widely regarded as one of the "good guys" in the NFL, he's an ordained minister and USO Supporter.   Here's a great video he shot for Willow Creek church on leadership.  

Opera

I'm a little behind the times on this one, but I just downloaded Opera today.   It's a free, open-source web-browser that advertises itself as the fastest available.  I don't know about that, but I do know I like it better than IE, Firefox and certainly Safari.  It's even got a mobile version for the iPhone that I will oneday own.  The coolest thing is "Speed Dial" which is a welcome screen that shows you current views of your 9 (or so) favorite sites so you can go directly to them.  Pretty awesome indeedy.

"Beyond" Preview

Tomorrow starts R2's new sermon series, "Beyond" which is all about dreams.  Here's a sneak peak at the cover of the worship guide which uses the imagry of the open door, something we're using throughout the materials for this series.

Be sure to check it out in the morning and be sure to bring someone.

Subway for breakfast

I'm pretty sure there's no egg in the "egg" but tasty nonetheless.

For Future Reference: R2's "Digital Assets"

I just finished organizing all of R2's "digital assets" on a new external hard drive.  By digital assets I mean all the images, videos, music, etc we've either created, assembled or bought to enhance the R2 worship experience.  These things may end up being shown on the screens, printed as signs or worship guides or even end up as t-shirts (shameless plug time: visit the R2Online Merch Table ).  No doubt there are churches out there with servers full of this kind of stuff, but since we're just getting started our assets take up a measly 22.4 GB.  It'll be interesting one day in the future to look back and remember our humble beginnings.

Along those same lines, here's a rundown of the equipment we use to make the Sunday Worship Experiences happen:

To run the screens and the cafe monitor (21", running on the same feed as the main screens), edit video and a few other things we're using a MacBook 3.1 with 2.2 Core Duo Processor and 2GB of RAM.   The software we use is ProPresenter 3 to run screens and sound, Photoshop Elements 4 to create images, iMovie and Final Cut Express to create images, and a little help from Live Type.  I'm sure there's better applications out there, but right now with our budget and skill set, we're making due with these.

Most of our content is assembled/created on my personal Dell desktop running Windows XP with a 3.sGHZ Core Duo processor with 4 GB RAM.  On it I'm running Photoshop Elements 5 (in which I create slide shows with the Organizer function).  Again, I'm sure one day not too far down the road I'll look back and laugh at how unsophisticated and cheesy all the things I'm doing now are, but for the time being, I'm going to enjoy learning on the fly.

It may save your life

but it's so bad it takes away your will to live.

M-Stand

I must own this.

It's frustrating

It's really frustrating when you're on hold with your freight company trying to find out why your "Next Day by Noon" shipment will be 4 days late and their music-on-hold advertisement is saying, "Have a package in Paris on Tuesday? Have it in Pittsburgh by Wednesday".

Needless to say, Denton, NC isn't Pittsburgh.

My spiffy new blog

So I've decided to join the Blog-o-shere. Not sure entirely why now - it's an idea I've been toying with for a while. I don't really have a point to get across, but just wanted an outlet to share with anyone who happened to stumble across my little corner of the 'net. I'll likely primarily talk about the things I'm most passionate about; things like my family and friends, photography, the quirky things that entertain me, the minute things that irritate me, and mostly, the work I do with R2 - the newest church in the Triad.

I don't promise anything terribly insightful around here, and it may only be marginally entertaining, but hey - I'll give it a shot. I'll try to post regularly: maybe hourly, maybe daily, but at least weekly. I'm a long way from my English major days, so please ignore my horrendous spelling, plentiful typos, and erratic syntax. Fell free to comment on anything you like - I look forward to hearing from you.

'til the next installment..... -M