This morning I realized that, whatever the cause, it’s an instant cue for me to seek God. It’s great! I wish more mornings began with me desperately needing and seeking the Lord. I asked him to make it happen more often, although I wouldn’t mind if he kept the desire around but found a way to make it happen without me feeling like death in the morning.

Holy crap.

It’ll be in March. I’m assuming most Michiganders won’t come but will send their best, so if you are one, no worries about not being able to afford a plane ticket and hotel stay and stuff. We understand. However, I will be sending out invitations to some Michiganders just in case some of them are crazy enough to come down.

So, we’ll be getting married some time in March… probably the 21st, but we’re not 100% sure. More information soon.

If you have any tips, tricks, connections on how to get married in Gainesville without spending a million dollars… especially if it’s still with a classy wedding and a bojillion people… I’d love your help.

Also, I plan to take full advantage of every offer for help, so don’t make it unless you mean it.

Finally, the engagement story (because you know you were going to ask):

A few years ago, when we were dating the first time, I created a meal for her (Chicken and Broccoli with a cream sauce over spaghetti) that she absolutely loved, and has been asking for since. So, I cooked that meal for her and served it along with some de-alcoholized wine (didn’t want our senses to be at all impaired for this special moment). She showed up to my house and the food was set out and a mix tape I made her a few years ago for Valentine’s Day was playing.

After the meal, I told her I was taking her somewhere for dessert, so we got in the car and drove over to a park/playground behind her old dorm (Beaty). I had her sit down at a picnic table and close her eyse, and I told her I was setting out dessert. I did set out dessert, but the dessert bag also had the ring box in it. I kneeled down and opened the box, and then told her to look at me. She said, “Wait, where are you? My eyes are closed!” She found me eventually, and I told her to open her eyes. After she took a second to take in the scene, I asked her to marry me.

There was lots of crying and “I love you”’s, but I think at some point she said “yes,” and I know that eventually she let me actually put the ring on her finger. Then we called people until both of our phones died; I freaked out because we hadn’t called everyone, and then we just gave up and put it on Facebook and prayed no one would get too upset.

That’s it! I’ll keep you updated here.

Sermon last week from my church about “One Accord”—I talked to my leadership team about this two weeks ago, but Mike is a much better speaker than I am.

It’s a little over an hour, so if you don’t have time, that’s cool, but I definitely suggest you read it—especially if you’re into politics.

(sorry, but this widget was killing people’s browsers. If you want to see it, go to listen.grooveshark.com and search for mstauffer… then go to my playlists.)

Ebook Web site on DSL Reports.com

Complaintwire.com folks reported on it here and here.

From what I can tell, the only thing to do is report it to my bank and have them do a “charge-back”–which apparently puts a negative tick on the scammers’ merchant account, which will hopefully eventually be shut down with enough charge-backs. Maybe. I think that’s what I read.

Most people say to cancel the account, but I really don’t want to deal with that.. we’ll see.

By the time the next day itself (Thursday) was over, I had 107 emails in my inbox of people writing on my Facebook wall wishing me a happy birthday. Tereva cooked me dinner, and Karima photographed while I opened my present of a my new little friend named Jafar. You can ask about Jafar if you’d like.

Then, InterVarsity was a Community Night… and what I didn’t know is that a part of that was celebrating my birthday. Cake, a pie, cards, everyone singing to me… whoo boy, it was awesome.

My whole family called me individually, and my grandparents called and sang to me (a huge family tradition that is one of the things we look forward to most on birthdays). I was loved on, lavished with attention, and generally treated like a king.

This is the way to do a birthday. I felt bad once or twice for being so self-centered, but I had to push that down, because I wasn’t asking people to focus on me, and some times I just need to enjoy it when other people are being good to me.

And we discovered the real significance of turning 24: There are 24 candles in a pack of candles from the store. WOW!

Essentially, I’m really excited about my birthday for the first time in a while–mainly because a few of my friends, most specifically Tereva, have been really talking it up and I’m getting all caught up in the excitement. She already gave me a gift–mini A&W root beers. But as to that list–its purpose, gift-wise, is to help people who want to give a gift and don’t know what to give. What do I really want? To see you, or hang out with you, or talk to you, or whatever. If you give gifts, then give what you want. If you make cards, do that. I’ve never been one to tell people “just give money to ______”, because I think gift-giving is a wonderful interaction between people, and by telling someone what to give me, I’m making it more about me and less about us.

I was out of town this weekend. Three-day-long area team meeting in Daytona Beach, half-day-long friends’ conference in Ybor, one-day-long Sonburst Practice in Ybor, and one-day-long hanging out with grandparents in Seminole. It was great.

My mom is visiting Florida in two weeks, and I’ll be out of town. This is killing me. I need to get this worked out. She may come to Sonburst for a day. That could be awesome, actually. Hm. Interesting.

I might make a list of the songs that mention being 24. I definitely have Switchfoot’s 24…

Web sites

• Tumblr: Like a blog, but smaller. Rather than having to generate content, it allows you to quickly and easily repost others’ content.
• Twitter: Like Facebook’s status updates, but infinitely more powerful. Called microblogging, many people use it for a) social networking b) status updates c) tumblr-like linkposting d) interfacing with many webapps
• Socialthing!: Combines all (or hopefully one day, all) of your status update/social networking sites into one so you don’t have to read your Facebook news feed, Twitter updates, etc. all on separate sites
• GrooveShark: Listen to any song in their library for free, legally; buy it for the same price as iTunes but with no DRM; local Gainesville company run by very cool people
• Songza: Listen to any song in their (large and more comprehensive than GrooveShark’s) index of songs available online; not sure if it’s actually legal at all
• Caloriecount: Track a lot of stuff here. This helped me get control of my caloric intake and helps me monitor my weight.
• Evernote: Track everything–receipts, business cards, notes, pictures, anything. It’s free, and it connects to a program on your computer that makes it easier to track these things. Archive your important information so you can have quick, easily searchable access to it anywhere.
• Remember the Milk: Amazing to-do list manager. Interfaces with twitter, your desktop, Gmail, and more.
• Wesabe and Mint: Money manager sites–like Quicken, but online and free. Wesabe’s way more powerful; Mint is way easier to use. I still haven’t decided.
• Lifehacker: The source for these web sites and many more

Programs (for Mac)

• Mailplane: Gmail turned into its own program. It interacts and interfaces with the rest of the OS in ways that no web site ever could.
• Fluid: The ability to turn any web site into its own program (called an SSB, or Site-Specific Browser). I now have specific programs for GrooveShark Lite, Socialthing!, Remember the Milk, and more.
• Cyberduck: Free FTP, SFTP, Amazon A3, etc..
• Adium: Awesome free chat.
• KeePassX: Free platform-independant (meaning it works for you PC people, too) password manager.
• NewsFire: I don’t know if it can compete with NetNewsWire, but I got it when it was free and NetNewsWire wasn’t… generic RSS reader.
• Evernote: The program interface to the aforementioned web site.
• EDIT: Skitch: A quick screencap/webcam capture app with easy annotation and instant access to free web hosting.

These things I use all the stinking time. There are others I’m still experimenting with… in response to my last post (which was not supposed to be about asking for presents–I just wanted to talk about gift-list programs), I’m testing a gift-list web site called Boxedup.

Also, there’s the hot new web site I heard about called spendlessgivemore. Hm. That sounds really interesting.