Archive for March, 2010

Mar 26 2010

Ben Hur and The Devaluing Of Jesus

Published by John under Divinity & Humanity. Popularity: 12%

As a child, I thought the movie Ben Hur was a story about how rockin’ cool it would be to row in a Roman ship, then become an awesome gladiator, and be able to kill people by running them over in a chariot!

Sure, there were boring parts to the movie where people talked to each other about weird political stuff, but mostly it was about throwing spears, riding horses, and killing people.

It’s a somewhat different movie when you watch it as an adult.

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Mar 20 2010

Today is the Spring Equinox

Published by anne under Divinity & Humanity. Popularity: 2%

A post from my friend Anne Key:

Today is the Spring Equinox, and we are at the height of the season, at Mid-Spring. The first half of Spring, from the beginning of February until today, has been a time of clearing out the dry leaves and twigs from last year and preparing the ground for this year’s sprouts. And now comes the surge of the robust and relentless energy of growth. Continue Reading »

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Mar 15 2010

Why pay for visual voicemail? Google gives it to you for free

Published by John under Easy Listening. Popularity: 14%

This is one of those posts that I could write up on mettadore.com, because it seems techy, but that’s precisely the reason I’m writing it up here, because it’s not. This is something better suited to the general public, so here.

Jess and I recently got cell phones. After some initial difficulties with service we went with Verizon. Immediately after starting service, I noticed that Verizon was charging $4/month for a service they call “visual voicemail.”

For those who don’t know, visual voicemail is a “special service” where they record the voicemail, transcribe it into text, and store it in an email-like account that you can read, or play back, at will– without the need to call into your voicemail.

Hrm… sounds like the free service called Google Voice to me.

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Mar 14 2010

I don’t jaywalk, because I’m an Indian

Published by John under Anthropology. Popularity: 3%

Every once in a while, I’m lucky enough to be reminded about the beautiful variety in life. The differences of opinion that set you off-center, shake you out of routine, and cause you to pause to look around and see. I had one of those moments yesterday, while reading a blog post of a friend.

So, since this is somewhat based on that, you should take a moment, head over to MorganPDX.com and read “I jaywalk because I’m Jewish.” Go ahead, it’s short, well-written, and will only take five minutes.

I’ll wait.

Back? Good. Now the reason I love this post is because it’s a perfect illustration to me of why people will never get along– even while it’s a perfect illustration of why they should. What am I talking about? Subtle, but it showed me that two people can have such similar goals, similar ideals, similar feelings on a subject, and can still arrive at completely opposing outcomes.

Talk about wild! Continue Reading »

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Mar 09 2010

First steps to phone insanity: Irish Flute Ringtones

Published by John under Easy Listening. Popularity: 5%

Recently, Jessica and I took the plunge into Cell Phone land. After years of working without them, it was becoming evident that my business work was suffering a bit. Also, since we don’t have long distance on our house phone, Jessica wasn’t talking with her family as much as she wanted. So, after a grudging decision, we jumped in.

Jess didn’t want a smart phone. Just a regular phone without a bunch of bells and whistles. Me? Because I’m such a geek, I jumped straight into the Android Open Source operating system world with a Motorola Cliq.

Mostly, it’s because I do a lot of things that warrant a certain amount of information accessibility. But it’s also because I just like to play with computers, and the smart phones of today are more powerful computers than I was programming on 15 years ago. Amazing.

Still, the most fun I’ve had with it so far is not really techy at all. It’s something that phones have had for a long time: Custom ringtones.

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John Metta

Greetings! I’m John Metta, writer, hydrologist, programmer, and a digger of all things tech nestled snugly in the Columbia River Gorge (i.e. Heaven). This blog started as a test bed for programming social media apps, but eventually became something that, for whatever reason, people actually read. In fact, people read it so much that I had to create a whole other blog called Mettaprogramming for the geeky stuff I write. Feel free to email me at or contact me on Twitter @mettadore.

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