Posting daily at 1pm central about all kinds of things. One day it's dating, the next it's TV commercials. I hope you're entertained. Professional photos on SmugMug – https://benwilder.smugmug.com
I’m not the first to point this out. How backwards is it that former president Donald Trump has been banned from Twitter indefinitely while a known terrorist group has a Twitter account and tweets about their takeover of an entire country? Does any of this make sense?
Those who say we’re living in a clown world are 100% right. It’s a circus out there and just like an actual circus, we are walking the high wire without a net. Sadly, our president is the ringleader and reminds me more of Bozo the Clown every day.
God, please forgive us for our trespasses against You and turn your compassion towards us! We cannot and will not make it without You.
As some of you know from previous posts (like this one written in lots of frustration!), my experience with Comcast/Xfinity had been good for a handful of years, but then on a random day a few months ago, the home internet connection became very unreliable. And by “very,” I mean I would trust Tonya Harding in a piñata factory more than a Comcast internet connection.
Something had to be done so I called and, after telling them about my disappointment, cancelled Comcast Xfinity, which made the woman on the phone sad. But she wasn’t too sad to still ask if I was interested in Xfinity mobile.
Then I went loco!! Oops, I mean – local. I drove to a Verizon store and signed up for a 4G LTE Jetpack!
This will help me have internet/wifi whenever I travel (more on that later) and my immediate needs for internet at home.
It’s been a week since switching to the cool little Jetpack…
…so now I’ll give you 2 things I love about it, and 2 things I don’t love.
LOVE
1. Reliable internet. Compared to what I was working with before, it’s such a relief to be connected consistently!
2. Mobility. I can bring this little piece of equipment anywhere and have WIFI.
DON’T LOVE
1. Sometimes when I power it on, it will say “no sim card detected.” No sim card means no internet. Boo.
2. Data limits. Although I have unlimited data, once I reach a certain # of GBs, it will slow down. I may have another post about how things go once I reach that magic number.
All in all, I’m very happy that I switched from once-reliable-but-then-completely-annoying Comcast to more-reliable-and-mobile Verizon. It’s going to be really nice to connect when I want and not have to wait for the WIFI to magically connect again. To this day, I couldn’t figure out why or when the Comcast WIFI was going to connect, so on any given day I had internet for maybe a few hours per day. What is this, 1995?
A week ago today the legendary college football coach Bobby Bowden passed away. My connection to him is that he was coaching at Florida State University at the same time I was a student there, 1997-2001. Another interesting fact, up to that point in my life, he had coached FSU for all the years I had been alive.
I’ll try not to get into the unceremoniously way he was basically forced to leave the university, and how FSU, since then, has done enough to lose my support… I rather talk about what happened just yesterday, 6 days after his passing. You see, when I had heard that he died, I was sad, of course. But it was yesterday during his memorial in Tallahassee, Florida that it really sank in. I didn’t know him. I don’t think I had ever even said one word to him. The experiences I had with Bobby Bowden were just observing him as he coached, and a few events where he spoke or preached. But it was in those moments that I, just like so many others, grew to not just respect him, but to really admire and be inspired by him.
As a man, he was full of charisma, humor, and kindness. As a Christian, he was honest, encouraging, and real. These qualities are why so many people loved him. It wasn’t about the wins, although those were nice. It was his personable nature that drew so many people to him. He may be a coaching icon because of what he did with FSU on the football field, but he’s a legend for how he made people feel.
Since the memorial yesterday, I’ve felt a certain sadness that I didn’t feel earlier in the week. It’s like it finally registered in my brain that I’m living in a Bobby Bowden-less world. There was comfort knowing that, even though he wasn’t on the field coaching anymore, he was around. Going all the way back to the 80s when I was very young I learned from my parents to love FSU and FSU football. It was (at least in part) because of Bobby, although I didn’t know that at the time. I go back to the word “comfort.” It’s like a sense of safety, I think. Like a kid with a security blanket, or someone who holds a special trinket in their pocket that reassures them everything is going to be OK. Just knowing Bobby was around was a sort of security blanket that, even as crazy as the world gets, everything is going to be OK. Another thought I had during the memorial is this: how many coaches will have a celebration like this? His influence on and off the field reached past rivalry lines, through families, and all across the country. I can’t think of any other coach that will be celebrated as much as Bobby Bowden. There might be coaches with more championship wins, more regular season wins (not yet, though!), more players that go on to play in the NFL, but the fondness people feel for Coach Bowden, I just don’t think that has been or will be matched, maybe ever. I mean, even Tim Tebow who played for rival university of florida, tweeted this:
And another rival from Florida, the University of Miami tweeted this:
And one of my FSU intramural football rivals Chris Farrington, whose team won the intramural championship under verrrrrrryyyy suspicious calls from the referees, said this:
How many other coaches in the history of coaching, whether past or presently coaching, would warrant such respect from not just their own school, but rivals? I can’t even think of ONE. Plus, that whole intramural thing? It’s still under heavy protest!!
But to be serious again for a second, the silver lining to this huge loss is that it was his faith in God that guided Bobby every day of his life. And all of us, we can have that same faith, too. I can’t tell you how many times all I could do was pray to God for help (because I’d tried to fix whatever it was on my own and usually just made it worse) and what’s really great and amazing and almost hard to explain, He helped! So even though Bobby is gone, there is a higher comfort, a more sure security that can be found in God and in His Son, Jesus. I’m thankful for that and I’m thankful for Bobby Bowden!
I’ll conclude with a couple of photos from the local newspaper back in the late 90s/early 2000s. The first is when he became the winningest coach in college football history. The second is me and a few of my college friends when we painted our chests for a home game against our rivals, the gators.
how hot is the ‘E’ guy, though, right??
I love a lot of what was said at the memorial yesterday, so I’ll end with a quote from one speaker, “Rest well, Coach.”
It seemed as if they were mostly stuck on cars of the person who wanted everyone else to acknowledge (and maybe even approve) of his or her own beliefs, and for whatever differences they had to be “OK”.
The idea, as I understood it, was basically the same as the question made popular in the 1990s.
“Can’t we all just get along?”
With the political climate as it is in the U.S. currently, I think a lot of those stickers got peeled off! I would imagine those stickers belonged to folks who leaned toward the liberal side of politics, and now they are fine with NOT getting along. I would even venture to say there is some annoyance (if not outright hatred) for a few of the religions depicted in the letters of ‘coexist.’
Agree to disagree. That used to be thing. Just like the bumper stickers, it was meant as a way to say, “Hey, we might not see eye to eye but you be you and I’ll be me and we can still be friends.” We could still be civil. Now, though, politics are more like…
In a related thought, I just started reading “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis and gosh, I wish I had read it sooner! So far in the book, he’s basically just established that mankind knows there is a standard of right and wrong. More than animals or any other creation on earth, humans can behave against the “Law of Nature,” unlike a rock that naturally always falls to the ground because of gravity. There is a way man ought to be, then the way man is. Sometimes, maybe oftentimes, those two things aren’t the same.
Applying to politics what I’ve read so far, I would say everyone on any part of the political spectrum believes in right and wrong. Otherwise, why would a person feel so strongly in one thing or another? The conflict comes from what is believed to be right and what is believed to be wrong. Hopefully this country I love doesn’t crumble because of this growing conflict between liberals and conservatives. It seems key to step back and admit there is a standard of right and wrong, and we each need to find out who established it, and what it is. It’s about truth.
One problem emerged when the phrase “live your truth” became a popular mantra. It sounds all well and good, but there is a problem the very minute two people with conflicting ‘truths’ meet. Not even to mention there is a third element that should be factored in. Besides the fact that each person thinks they’re right and if they’re not willing to agree to disagree, then the problem escalates, there is the problem of actual truth. You say the sky is blue, I say it’s red. Then there’s the actual fact, the real truth.
So much for coexisting, right?
How have you been doing in this sensitive time? Have you lost friends? Have you ended relationships with someone who doesn’t believe the same things you do? Chime in below!
I had to use my computer camera recently to make a quick video. On the Mac, there’s a “Photo Booth” app that makes it really easy to record. It may not be the best quality but it usually serves the purpose in the moment. I opened up the app, and got this…
Do you see what I see? Notice that the app can’t open the camera because…
CAMERA IS IN USE??? Ummmm, creepy much? I quickly shut the computer down and tried explaining away the weirdness. I’m sure there was nothing weird going on, like someone hacking into my camera, but… what if? Can you imagine? Of course, if anyone hacks my camera they will be bored in like, 10 seconds, but it’s still disturbing to think someone might have been using MY camera on MY computer in MY home.
Have you had an experience like this? What did you do? Chime in by commenting below, and thanks for stopping by!
Out of the Wilderness 