12/04/2014 Update: This post is as close to needing a retraction as possible. I could’ve sworn that in episode 9 (before the Thanksgiving hiatus of the show) that Sarah Koenig said that episode 10 was the last episode. Coupling that with the fact that I’d just looked at the Serial website while working on this post and thinking that the episode section of the site had listed 10 episodes with a blurred image for unaired episodes all along and I was sure that the show was coming to a close with what felt like a biased story at the 90% mark. Knowing now that Serial will continue into episode 11 (and beyond?) refashions this post into a snapshot of the thoughts I had at the time with said expectations of the show ending at episode 10, albeit a misconstrued piece of writing at best. Please accept my apologies for the mistake.
I stumbled across The Midwest Indies on Spotify in one of my many discovery sessions. These usually start with a song from “my” library grabbing my attention. I’ll pull the artist up and start clicking through to related artists and sampling a few of each artist’s top tracks to see if anything stands out. Sometimes I find something new and compelling and start listening to one of the artist’s albums in it’s entirety. Such is the case with Truman.
About 5 weeks ago I moved to Chicago to start a new job and start planning out my family’s future when Courtney and Riley move here. I’ll be seeing my family for the first time in 6 weeks when I head back to Memphis for Thanksgiving this week. On the outset 6 weeks seemed manageable but it’s grown more difficult with every passing week. For the first few weeks I spent my evenings finishing The Wire one episode per night. Then I was tasked with getting my MCSA and started reading Mastering Windows Server 2012 R2 which lead me to start finding music to listen to while I was studying. All of this lead me to get back to one of my favorite past times, music discovery. Music can be so many things and is the background for much of our lives. Whether it’s to pass the time, to concentrate, to get energized, to get by or to heal; music is there.
I’ve recently been studying for my MCSA and have found that I need quality instrumental music to keep focused without distraction. I’ve started listening to a lot of Jazz which has been great but I think I’ve just found my new study music.
It was nearly 7 years ago that I was getting ready to start working at the local Apple Store here in Memphis. I’d moved here 3 months earlier to help my uncle and his family build their new home in Mississippi. He’d called me on a Monday with the offer to pay me while I oversaw the contractors who were working on multiple aspects of the house and to perform a variation of work getting the house constructed. I loaded my car in Canton, OH and was in Memphis on Friday. Digging trenches, sanding and painting what seemed like an endless amount of walls and installing pillars to hold the porch overhang that wrapped most of the house were only a few of the tasks that come to mind while I was working on the house. My uncle is a firefighter in a surrounding suburb of Memphis and has weeks where he couldn’t be there to oversee the construction process. Our goal was to get the house into livable conditions to house our tradition of Thanksgiving at their house. Once we’d rounded into October and were where we needed to be, it was time for me to figure out what I was doing next. I applied at Apple, got called in for a group interview and was in core training by the end of the month. It was at Apple that I first met some of my longest friends in Memphis such as Stephen Hackett. I also met Courtney within 3 weeks of working at Apple. She was part of the batch of new hires right after me. Over the next two and a half years I moved through nearly ever role within Apple Retail with the exception of management, began my relationship with Courtney and asked her to marry me.
I’ve attended High Point Church for roughly five years now. I spent two years searching for my church home before I started attending at High Point. A year ago I started serving as a Producer when High Point Collierville opened. The reason I waited nearly 4 years to get plugged in serving is because I’ve seen what it can do to you as a church goer. You pull back the curtain as you become more plugged into a church. You see behind the production and find out what the operations of the church look like. Often, there are politics and bureaucracy that can stop you cold and make you question where God is in all of it. It breaks your heart. This has happened to me in the past and it takes years to shake.
Are you planning to buy an iPhone from Craigslist or eBay? Here are a few ways to find out if that iPhone was stolen before you buy it. All you need is the serial number or IMEI number of the iPhone. The seller should be willing to provide this to you if you contact them.
Chris Walla has always been intriguing to me. He and Ben Gibbard have always been hard for me to deconstruct because they’re such complex guys[1] with immense talent (as are Jason McGerr and Nick Harmer). When I read that Chris Walla was leaving Death Cab for Cutie a part of me died. Death Cab for Cutie is my absolute favorite band. Their music has been there throughout so many milestone moments and is woven into so many seasons of my life. It encapsulates the odd arrangement of my first year of college while still being a senior in high school. Their music is one of the few common interests my wife and I fell in love over. It carried me through some of my loneliest and saddest times and kept me going. The music video for Title and Registration was the visualization for one of my most memorable moments teaching a sermon. So naturally having a fourth of the band leave feels like the end of an era.
I’ve written about my own disdain for the Course Code logo in the past. I recently had an idea for a new logo that would be simple to execute on my own and would match my outlook for this site right now. What I came up with is above and is simple. My goal wasn’t to come up with anything super clever or even well designed. The periodic logo I’ve created is an homage to my favorite television show that’s yet to be made, Breaking Bad. The fonts are simple, Helvetica Bold, Arial and Cooper BT Medium. The atomic number in the upper left hand corner is the year I started Course Code. The electron configuration in the upper right hand corner represents this being the 8th iteration of my personal website[1]. The element symbol Co is Cobalt on the periodic table but that’s all the further the element is involved in the logo. I’ve used Co2 which references the Conway Group which is a mathematical group of automorphisms[2]. Using a skewed measure I’ve stretched to pull math and science together into the logo for Course Code. This is important to me with both fields serving as the primary reference subjects in my day-to-day work and what I tend to write about.
The Apple Store may not be best place to purchase the iPhone if you’re looking for top dollar on your trade-in of an older iPhone or if you want to talk with your carrier about your plan before making a purchase. If you’re looking for the best chance to get an iPhone 6 (especially the iPhone 6 Plus) on launch day then the Apple Store is your best bet as they’re likely to get the bulk of the inventory. Apple is adding convenience to the buying process by adding a new reservation system in tandem with the iPhone 6 launch tomorrow.