I'll take a break from the technical posts for a moment.  Friday night, I helped out with a youth lock-in up at the church.  It was just like old times (except no spitting ice down the stairs).

The youth group at our church is decidedly smaller than at our church in Austin.  But, it makes sense because the actual church is much smaller than our church in Austin.  There were about 8 guys there (the girls were elsewhere).  We pretty much played video games all night.  We had 2 Wii's, a PS2, an XBox and an XBox360.  We also played some (outdoor) capture the flag.  It was a variant that I hadn't played before in Texas, and I didn't really understand it.

The highlight of the night was linking the xbox and the 360 and playing some 4 vs. 4 Halo 2.  I don't like to brag, but I did pretty well.  Mainly it was fun because they were trash-talking pretty bad about how they were going to beat me.  One game in particular (4v4 Team Slayer on Beaver Creek) I lead my team to victory with 35 kills and only 3 deaths.

It was cool to connect with the guys in that way. They are having a "ski day" on Wednesday, and I'm bummed that I have to work.  The whole concept of a day trip for snow skiing is completely foreign and bizarre to me.

Well, we had the Turkey Bowl this weekend, an annual flag football game between the juniors and seniors in our church youth group.  Since I teach the 11th grade Sunday School, I was the junior coach. We ended up losing, though through no fault of poor playing.  A good time was had by everyone.

In my role as coach, I felt the need to look more official, so I used my XBox headset to accomplish that.  Check out the whole photoset.

I've talked about church bulletin humor before. Today, I experienced it first hand. Our church publishes the Wednesday night meal menu in the bulletin. I suppose this is so families can plan around it. I don't think anyone is going to have the church dinner this Wednesday. It read:

Menu: Poopyseed Chicken over rice, vegetable, rolls & dessert.

It was all I could do to keep from falling out of the pew laughing.

Our church is doing a new pictorial directory this year, and last night was our night to go up and get our pictures taken.  I usually dread those events because they want to take alot of pictures and then pressure you into buying them.  This, however, was the best experience I have ever had.  We filled out a paper that let us define what we were interested in, and the photographer used that to determine what kind of pictures to take.  I indicated we weren't interested in any, so he took a total of 6 pictures.  We picked one for the directory, and we were done.  Our appointment was at 9:00pm.  We got there a little early, and were back in the car at 9:05.

Here's a non-technical post.

This weekend, I drove a van to Dallas for the Youth Evangelism Conference.  It was really fun.  I hadn't planned on going, but so many kids signed up that they needed some extra drivers.  In short, it was a blast.

Among the highlights were:

• Audio Adrenaline - The last time I saw Audio A in concert, I had much more appropriate, shoulder-length hair to rock with.  It was a fantastic show.
• Kirk Cameron (link to a pretty impressive flash site that I just stumbled across) - He had an incredible amount of insight.  Much more than I expected.  He ended up being a very impressive speaker.
• Red Cloud (link to the only google hit with pictures) - He and his skinny white assistant (who looked an awful lot like Screech from “Saved by the Bell“) did some “freestyle“ rap which was pretty entertaining.  After a few songs, he had the crowd approach the stage and pull things out of their pockets.  He then made up a rap about all the things.  It would have been more impressive if it wasn't so easy to anticipate what was in people's pockets.  He became a favorite of mine just because it was fun to imitate him.
• Grits - I had only heard of them because of a cameo on the first Out Of Eden album I got at the above mentioned previously attended AudioA concert.  It was a fun concert, but that's not really the style of music I'm into much anymore.
• The van ride to and from - We had an absolute blast on the way and back. Lots of Homestar Runner references and impersonations and walkie-talkie fun.  It really took me back.  My parents got on one of the overpasses in Belton and waved as we drove past.  They are crazy.
• Stephen Baldwin (link to a related article) - He was a very sincere goofball.  He definitely has a heart for youth.

There's so much more to write about this, but if I don't stop, I'll never finish this entry. Again, it was fun.