Twenty

I know in my head that Ten is almost 20 years old now. I have been talking about it all year. I've even written about it already. But something about this trailer brought it a little too close to home, made me realize that it's not just that it was two decades ago that we first heard this music. It's that the whole thing happened in another time, during an altogether different cultural era.

The on-the-shoulder video cameras. The ironic sport coats. The unironic crowd surfing. Flannel pants and Doc Martens. The grainy footage of boxy sedans traversing a highway with no billboards. And perhaps most of all, Eddie Vedder's signature scream, which I have heard hundreds of times in the past twenty years but which for some reason I heard in this video as if for the first time. (It gave me chills this "first" time too.)

Gen X friends, I sat and watched, agape at the realization that was dawning on me: the world is not ours anymore. Our kids and our friends' kids will look at this footage, should we be foolish enough to show it to them, and they will scoff. They will scoff the same way we did when the Time-Life Sounds of the '70s infomercial would come on TV and our parents would stop flicking channels, lingering for a few moments to watch with unhinged eyes as Mick Jagger or Robert Plant (or, God forbid, whoever sang for ABBA) strutted across the stage ridiculously. They sighed and we snorted into our hands as we looked sideways at each other and it puts a lump in my throat to know that we are most assuredly not laughing anymore.

Soon, if not already, those kids of ours will be freshmen in high school, and they will discover whatever music will speak to them the way grunge spoke to us, and we will pray that it is their era's Pearl Jam, and not Color Me Badd. And after they crawl into bed (why do they have to stay up so late?), we will pull out our dusty DVD copy of Pearl Jam Twenty and hope they will stay asleep and spare us the ignominy of being discovered in the dark wearing our Doc Martens with our plaid pajama pants.

The world is not ours anymore. It is theirs. How did it slip so easily from our grasp?

Recently loved iPhone apps

Momento
Stunning design and a clean, intuitive interface (I mean seriously, look at those screenshots on their site) highlight this logbook/journal app, a shining example of the quality of work being done on iPhone applications. I purchased this app after reading an inspiring blog post about keeping a logbook. I have never been great at keeping a journal, and I realized that it was partly because I set the bar too high for content and partly because I don't like carrying extra junk around with me. Momento solves both problems: by simply asking me to record "moments," and by existing on my phone.

It also has the bells and whistles you'd expect from a journaling app. You can set it to import your Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/etc. feeds automatically; you can add tags for people, places, events, and things; you can add photos and star ratings; you can search and export. And did I mention how great it looks? But it's not just eye candy; it is great design in the purest sense of the word: form AND function. It's a joy to use.

Camera+
I've recently become re-enamored with Camera+ after not really using it much for a while. If you only buy one photo app, this is the one to get. Aptly named, it extends the functionality of the native camera application, adding a composition grid, stability controls, timer, and separate controls for focus and white balance. It also boasts the best stable of filters available for the price. A bargain at 99 cents.

(Also? If Camera+ hadn't been temporarily banned from the App Store when Instagram was released, I don't think you'd even know what Instagram was. And for pure social photo sharing on the iPhone, I think Path is the most beautiful option out there. I wish more people used it.)

GroupMe
Group texting encased in a nice interface. Once you form a group (easily done by choosing from among your contacts or manually entering numbers), anything anyone sends is seen by everyone in the group. The group gets a dedicated number so anyone with a texting plan can participate, but people with the app, which is also available for Android and Blackberry, can choose to receive push notifications instead of SMS and can see the conversation thread. Messages always show the name of the person who set them. Perfect for groups of people on the go who need to stay in touch.

How old do you feel?

George W. Bush was sworn into office 10 years ago.

Coldplay's first album was released 11 years ago.

The Matrix hit theaters 12 years ago.

The Department of Justice filed its antitrust case against Microsoft 13 years ago.

Mother Teresa died 14 years ago. Also a princess died.

Kobe Bryant was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, 12 picks after Allen Iverson and one pick after Vitaly Potapenko, 15 years ago.

Bill Watterson stopped drawing Calvin and Hobbes 16 years ago.

Brazil defeated Italy in the FIFA World Cup 17 years ago.

Cheers was cancelled 18 years ago.

Wayne's World was released 19 years ago.

Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana's Nevermind, and U2's Achtung Baby were all released within four weeks of each other. Twenty years ago.

iPads, NASCAR, and Arrogance

Of all the criticisms tech pundits hurl at people who enjoy Apple products, the laziest and most insulting is that nobody with a brain would buy this stuff if it weren't for Apple's brilliant marketing. This is lazy for the same reason it is insulting: it makes no effort to understand the product's appeal to the people who buy it. The latest example comes from Katherine Noyes in PC World, who explains the iPad's success this way:

Purely marketing, I believe. Apple is nothing if not master of the glitzy sales pitch, and there's never been better proof of that than the iPad's current success… It's a fancy new toy, and--in the case of the iPad--one from Apple, at that. Never underestimate consumers' desire to impress each other with the latest and greatest gadget, especially if they're Apple fans.

Classic. Noyes is aware that Apple sold 15 million iPads in nine months, but because she doesn't personally see the appeal, she constructs a reality in which millions of hard-working people will part with $500, $600, even up to $800 simply because of a slick 30-second TV ad. That's a bold claim. To put it extremely charitably.

Listen, I don't understand NASCAR: I really don't get it on any level. I don't know why people care. I even give my NASCAR friends a hard time about it. "Drive fast, turn left, repeat" and all that. But what I don't do is suggest that the only reason they like it is because some Don Draper type in a Nashville office put a spell on them that makes them want to spend five hours sitting on the couch making "vroom vroom" noises every Sunday.

You know what I did instead? I asked my friend Tim, the biggest NASCAR fan I know, to tell me a little bit about what he sees when he watches a race. It turns out there's a lot more to it than I would have guessed: strategy, technique, engineering, and more. I still don't really care to watch it myself (and yes, I still make the "drive fast turn left" joke occasionally), but I learned a little something about NASCAR. And more importantly, I learned a little something about culture and about my friend Tim.

And not to turn this into a sermon, but this actually does contain a lesson that we could all stand to learn. It's a lesson about humility. There's something in all of us that wants to assume that anyone who sees things differently than we do must be under some kind of spell: that Apple fans are all unwitting victims of Steve Jobs's marketing acumen, that your buddy's girlfriend doesn't really love him and is playing him for a fool, or that people who believe in a particular doctrine have surrendered their minds (and souls) to nefarious religious propaganda.

And it's not just lazy and insulting to think about people this way. It's also deeply arrogant. It comes from an assumption that you are always right about everything. This is quite unlikely, you know. It leads to arguments and bitterness in your relationships, frustration in the workplace, and alienation from God. So the next time you find a person or group of people who disagree with you, try to understand why they think they're right instead of coming up with some explanation for why they're wrong. But be careful, because you might end up changing your mind.

Or worse, buying an iPad.

The worst kind of blog post

No one wants to read a blog post that begins with "Wow, it's been a really long time since I wrote anything here!" But it has been. Eight months, to be exact. And the truth is, everything in the world that matters most to me has changed quite a lot since then. Most notably, my wife Tracey has been carrying a new baby for that length of time. And so in a week or two (please not three or four), my life will be even more markedly different.

I don't know why I'm writing this, other than that I'm tired of not writing. And I don't really anticipate that I'll be able to do it with any more regularity over the next year than I did over the past year.

I guess I'll leave you with an old favorite of mine, a list of Ten Second Thoughts.

1. Cannonball Adderly was great. I don't think he gets enough appreciation from jazz lovers.

2. It's much better to do a small thing than to do nothing at all.

3. Internet commenters make me genuinely sad.

4. I'm still not sure I've grasped the idea that I can't do everything I want to do, that my options are finite. But I'm getting closer.

5. I'm looking forward to a nice cup of coffee in the morning.

My farewell address to Jason and his family

After church today, we held a big celebration for my longtime friend and colleague, Jason Condon, who has accepted a position as the Associate Superintendent and Director of Church Planting for the East Coast Conference of our denomination. These are the remarks I made as we concluded the event, along with the photos from my presentation slides.

* * * * * * * * * *

My story with Jason goes back more than 17 years, when I was a 15-year old high school student in southern Maine. My dad, who was on the church committee conducting a search for a new youth pastor, came home and said to me, “Scott, I think you’re going to like the guy we hired tonight. He has a full beard and hair down to the middle of his back.” Oh, and do I ever wish I had a photograph of that haircut to show you.

Oh wait! I do.



Spectacular mullet and all, Jason became my youth pastor during two of my most formative years. It was under his ministry that I learned that everyone had a vital role to play in the life of the church community: I learned about service. It was also during his ministry that I first sensed a calling to a pastoral ministry of my own.

So when Jason let us know during my senior year that he was moving to Rochester to pursue something that I had never heard of called “church planting,” I was pretty disappointed. I guess I let myself go a little bit.



But I pulled out of that funk in time to apply to colleges. I soon narrowed it down to two colleges: a New England university where I would accept a scholarship in saxophone performance, or a small Christian college in Rochester, where I would pursue a degree in Christian ministry.

Of course my friends at the youth group gave me a hard time and said I chose Rochester because I was “following” Jason there. This was really annoying to me, because I had not chosen Roberts Wesleyan so I could go be close to Jason. But when I look back on it, I was following him, in a way. I was not following him to a city, but I was following the example he had set of listening to a calling and acting accordingly.

Toward the end of my college career, I began volunteering as a worship leader in the church that Jason had started a couple years earlier, New Vision Community Church. Around the same time, I began to entertain the notion of working at a church plant of my own, this one in Las Vegas. And so not long after my graduation from college, I “followed” Jason again—and this time it was much clearer that the following was one of vocation and faithful obedience rather than geography.

Well, you’ve heard my stories about how Las Vegas worked out. I won’t repeat them now, except to say that in the summer of 2001—almost exactly nine years ago, which I can barely believe—I moved back to Rochester with Tracey, disenchanted with church and intent on getting the heck out of pastoral ministry.

But by this time, Jason was on to new and different things, serving at a ministry that was starting to look dangerously like a church, albeit a church unlike any I had ever been a part of. And before I knew it, I was working alongside him for the third time in my life. Most of you know that this time, it has stuck for nearly a decade, as that ministry eventually ended up here at Artisan Church.

So I’ve known Jason for an awful long time. And it hasn’t just been church-related. We’ve played together…



(And here I would draw your attention away from my C3PO posture and plaid-on-plaid ensemble, and toward Jason’s neon green tank top and 21st century mullet.)

And we’ve raised our families right next door to each other.



This is me with Jaron, before Bryn was even an idea, and before Abel was even a biological possibility. Over the years, there have been hundreds of moments like this one, with one of us holding the other’s kid, or better yet, with the kids all playing together. My family and Jason’s family? We’ve really and truly lived life together for almost this entire millennium. (I mean, it’s only 2010, but still.)

Lisa was the one we called when Abel had been crying for three hours straight and we didn’t know what to do—was he broken? Jason was the one I called when I needed advice on refrigerator repair. And I was the one who Bryn came to at age 2 when she desperately, and I mean desperately needed a diaper change at 10 in the morning and her whole household was still asleep.

So you can see that when Jason and his family move to Connecticut, I will be losing a lot more than a colleague.

And yet, I believe this is absolutely the right role for Jason. It’s a job that fits him so well. One thing that we’ve definitely noticed over the years is that even as we’ve worked so closely, we have developed ministry styles and approaches that are quite distinct. And as Jason moves into a new position that fits his unique calling and personality perfectly, I adjust my role here in a way that fits me perfectly. So I guess you could say that as Jason and I part ways as pastors, I’ll keep on following his example: service and obedience to my calling. So from me and my family, and on behalf of our whole congregation, I say to all four of you: Jason, Lisa, Jaron, and Bryn, thank you, and we love you.

* * * * * * * * * *

(Oh, and congrats on the new job.)

The good and bad of the iPhone 4 bumper

When Apple released the iPhone 4, they also released a proprietary case for the phone. They call it a bumper. It is basically a stiff band of plastic and rubber that form-fits around the edge of the phone. It's priced (for now, anyway) at $29. I bought one. Here are my thoughts after one day:

The Good:

It's about as unobtrusive as any iPhone case could possibly be. Doesn't affect pocketability, unlike just about every other case I've ever used or seen.

If you buy it in black, it's mostly invisible.

The button caps they built into it are really nice: the volume up/down and sleep buttons feel and work exactly like the actual buttons on the iPhone. (But see below for warnings about the vibrate toggle button and the dock connector.)

The case is very likely to protect the glass (front AND back now, mind you) on drops. I'm skittish about this since I broke the glass screen on my iPhone 3G—granted, it was on the 50th drop or so, but still.

It will definitely protect the metal edges, which are also the antennae, from scratches.

It allegedly alleviates the reception problem that some users experience when bridging the gap in the frame/antenna. I can't test this easily because I hardly ever see the problem, but the science of it makes perfect sense.

The material of the case makes it grippy against both leather and fabric, so it's safe(r) to set the phone on the arm of your couch. (Previous iPhones were spectacular on leather and "oh crap no!" on fabric. The iPhone 4, naked, is iffy even on leather.)

The Bad:

Unlike the other buttons, the vibrate/toggle button is accessed through a hole in the case. I don't know any way around this, but it's buried so deep in there that you have to get your finger at nearly 90° to the phone in order to flick the button. It's impossible to turn silent mode on or off without taking it out of your pocket. Since I want to do this about ten times a day, I find it nearly a deal breaker.

Whereas the iPhone 4 itself is pretty much impervious to dust, the case will catch dust and hair and stuff. Cleaned out easily enough by removing it and giving it the old "Blades of Steel" treatment, but a bit annoying.

The 30-pin dock connector (a.k.a. "where you plug it in at the bottom") is accessed through a recessed hole in the case. Works flawlessly with Apple's cables, but the Belkin charge cable that I use in my car doesn't fit through the hole, so I'll have to bring an Apple cable along with me. Other third-party accessories may present more or less of this same problem.

Even with its minimalism, this case does change the look and feel of the iPhone 4. When I take it off to clean out the dust, I always think to myself, Oh man this thing looks so cool without that case, and it feels better in the hand too. So far, I've contained my vanity and put the bumper back on after a few minutes.

The Overall Rating:

Somewhere between "Recommended" and "I'm Going to Return It." If you have serious reception issues, it's definitely worth the money. If you are on the fence about a case at all, or if you need a case but can tolerate a bulkier solution, it's probably not. I'm sort of in the middle, so I'll keep it for now.