Apophenia describes where all of our behavior might end up. I see her statements as a reflection on the future of mass society. Now I know some people that are on the bleeding edge. They have their cel phone with IM, email, personal website, blog, membership in 10 Social Networks, regular phone, snail mail – many ways of making contact. As that bleeding edge becomes more of an everyday reality for people the social norms of courtesy are completely changing. Respecting your desire to disconnect from the Matrix should be akin to wishing you a good vacation. Go and decompress! Let’s be friends by not being connected. I won’t call that cel phone attached to your hip, I won’t read into your electronic silence. I will turn off my persistence gene. And if you decide to get together with me when you are on communications respite, well then I know that’s the ultimate sign of respect. When you come back I expect you to be tan and ready to hyper-connect 😉

Friday we spent a glorious evening at Chuck E Cheese. It’s the first time I’ve been there since I worked there at the tender age of 16. Come to find out, they “improved” the shows fom the old animatronic days. Bummer. I have fond memories of these characters. At least the guy in the Chuck E suit didn’t have his head fall off and freak out my kids. I’ve got a whole new perspective on that fateful incident that ended my Chuck E career.

Jesus Stories– After being profoundly affected by The Passion of the Christ, I decided to begin my journey down the path of Jesus movies. I watched Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ last night. It was a really weird experience. I recognized the elements in it that were controversial in 1988 when it was released, but I also found myself using it to fill in the holes in the story within Mel’s Passion. See the Last Temptation spends a lot more time on Christ’s life, breezes through the suffering parts that Gibson focused on, and then takes us down a hallucinatory path of Christ actually not dying on the cross, but instead marrying and having kids. In the beginning I was so irritated at William Defoe and Harvey Keitel with their cheesy English-speaking dialog, that I nearly gave up. But, suddenly I became so riveted in the film-making and the internal battle going on in Jesus’s mind, I completely forgave them. In the end, both movies are honestly great films. My quest continues to see more depictions of Christ’s life in film. I’ll have to spread out my viewings though ’cause it is the SAME story. The next ones to see:

The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Gospel According to St. Matthew

We took a week-long vacation to San Diego for some much needed decompression after the stress of leaving my job. Here’s a few things we did:

-Got up at 3:45 AM and took a limo to that airport. (Tricia was very excited).
-Dealt with a Mason explosion of the worst kind on the plane to Phoenix. The rookie parents didn’t pack extra kid clothes in carry-on so the world’s best flight attendant rescued our bags from the plane’s cargo hold to get us some clothes.
-Stepped into 65 degree and sunny weather, rented our car and headed straight for the beach.
-Mason loved the ocean and the sand. So much so he HAD to roll around in it.
-Anna had her first bikini experience.

–Legoland is an amazing amusement park with some of the most incredible lego sculptures and little kid rides.
-The San Diego Zoo is enormous with the highlights being a toss up between the Pandas and the Polar bears (yeah, in San Diego)
–Sea World is equally amazing with its dolphins and whales.
-The trolley tour is a great way to get to all the touristy stuff in a hurry.
–Gringos has some HUGE margaritas, and yummy food.

Check out our pictures.

I had no idea how William Shatner became the spokesperson for Priceline until I saw this 1978 Rendition of Rocketman in spoken word. WOW!

Ahh the blissful ease of use of iTunes. It has graced the desktop of my Windows XP machine at home. Once installed, I simply turned on sharing on my OSX box, then bing! up popped my entire library of songs that are on my Mac, available for playback on my PC. I’m SO HAPPY! Let’s forget the negative press from the Windows community. Apple has made networking and ease of use a reality in my household. Sometime maybe I’ll bite off poking a hole into my firewall so I can listen to my MacTunes at work.

Tricia hosted a Creative Memories Party last night. She put it on for her best friend who is a consultant. And now, guess what? My wifey is now a Creative Memories consultant. Congratulations on the new endeavor!

Scrap-booking strikes me as very retro-chic. Because I spend my time tinkering with my cranky Mac trying to get iMovie and iPhoto to spit out splendid documentation of our travels and of Mason growing up. I spend hours trying to get the DVD burner to work, or that transition to time just right. Whereas a scrapbook rarely acts up. As a matter of fact I got so much satisfaction with having my Mac produce a professional looking book of photos to give for Christmas that it is clear. Looking at photos in a physical book will always be a big hit. As long as the time is spent choosing the photos wisely, and properly annotating them with other thoughts and memorabilia. So while Tricia spends her time making and selling really nice photo albums, I’ll spend my time goofing around with the easiest way to document our lives digitally.

In a way, this blog could become my scrapbook, as Rachelle’s has become hers. I’d really like this to seamlessly link into my photo albums on oPhoto, and videos that I digitize in iMovie. I’d like to easily compile a scrapbook, and a DVD all pulling journal content from my blog. So please, Apple. Add another iApp. iBlog.

Hey cool, I always wondered what this stupid method of capitalizing words that I’m using for my titles is called. NerdCaps or BiCapitalized. NerdCaps is almost as cool as using a dot in your logo. “tmp.worldwide”

We spent the past weekend soaking up the sun and sniffing the racing fuel at the Sprint Vintage Grand Prix in Mansfield, OH. Tricia, Mason and I met up with my parents and grandparents to watch my Dad race his ’71 MG Midget race car.

We watched everything from Corvettes to Formula 1 cars race. It was awesome seeing behind the scenes of the race as Dad and Mom hooked us up with Crew passes. It’s just as much fun seeing these guys tinker with their cars as it is to see them zoom around the track. We all helped Dad prep the car, get onto the starting grid, and hit the track. We were all glued to his every turn, gasped at his every spin out, and cheered at every pass. In racing years, he’s just a Sophomore, but he truly held his own against some excellent competitors. Congratulations Dad! Go Speed Racer Go!!!!

Dad takes a turn into the “carousel”. That’s a fancy nickname for a “big round turn”, but the racing guys need something more clever to bullshit about over beers.

Perfect weather for a Saturday drive. Zoom Zoom!

We’re teaching the boy early. You should have seen him change the engine! He is gifted.

Mason busy timing Grandpa’s Enduro race. Enduro = 1 hour race. Mason = fired from his timing gig.

Some of the Ziprrrz Racing Team – From left: Zip, Grandpa Zip, Tricia Zip, Baby Zip II (behind the pink tag on Tricia Zip), Baby Zip (Mason), Mom Zip, Grandma Zip, and Zip Sr.

I can finally edit my website at home again. I haven’t been able to FTP to my ISP over DSL for over a year. All it took was a guy at Catalog.com telling me to increase my packet settings in my router, then calling Linksys to find out where that undocumented feature was, and voila! I can upload crap to my website from home again. This means I don’t have to email anything to my work email and upload from there anymore. Ahhhhh the simple pleasures of working out a nagging technical error. I don’t want to drop kick my computer anymore…today.