What is Twitter? Why would I do it?

I know many of you are tech-savvy and already know about Twitter. Some of you use it and love it . But if you don’t know, check out this website. It is a discussion from an NPR show where the guest does a much better job explaining it than I could. It’s about 5 minutes long, but a very easy listen.

If you’re interested enough to sign up, follow me at http://twitter.com/matthewtennison/ once you are signed up!

Side note: Have you ever tried to explain Twitter to someone? How have you done it? Did they “get it”?

Technorati Tags: Twitter

Biking

I like to ride my bike around town. Unfortunately that’s not a year-round activity in Michigan. Though I can say that as a kid I would ride my bike occasionally in the winter. That was fun when you hit ice!

I was trying to figure out recently why I like bike riding so much. A few things came to mind:

• Health benefits – Ok, this one is obvious, but it should be included.
• No barriers between you and the world. When you’re in a car, you have metal and glass separating you from everything else. It encapsulates you. When you’re on a bike, you contain the bike in a sense between your legs. That leaves the rest of your body closer to, well, everything else.
• Freedom – you can access more places on a bike than you can in a car. I’ve found sidewalks and paths in the middle of the city I never knew about.
• Photography – I’m not a professional photographer or anything, but I do like taking pictures on occasion. There have been many time where I’ll see something driving along, and not be able to capture it because I couldn’t get to the camera, or I couldn’t stop the car. But if you’re on a bike, it’s much easier to safely stop somewhere and get all the pictures you want!

I think it also slows me down, and creates opportunity to clear my head and even have some conversation with my wife and kids. It is a choice I make to step away from all of the screens in my house (TV, Computer, PDA (still working on turning the cell phone off)) and take in some of the natural beauty of the world.

Anyone else have a love of biking or walking or running?Technorati Tags: bicycling

It’s been forever…

…or at least it feels like it. In fact, it’s been so long that my preferred blogging tool, Scribefire, has updated two or three times since I last used it. I like some of the new features, but if you’re not into Firefox and Scribefire you probably don’t care And if you do use them….well, you probably already know about them.

Work continues to be a struggle for me, but I continue to make it through. I’ve been with this company for almost three years now, and I rarely take vacation (partially as a security measure) so I decided to take some. Last weekend I took two extra days off and went to my in-laws’ cabin in Northern Michigan. We had a GREAT time, and I was able to relax and reset myself. We didn’t have many plans, so we could take our time and just rest. We ended up going rafting one day, and kayaking the next, which was a LOT of fun! I’d love to get some kayaks for us, but they’re expensive! Even Brooke is able to paddle her own all by herself, and I was surprised! I mean, she’s 6 years old! Yikes!

We’re still fighting debt, and we’re down to our last non-mortgage debt. We’ve lost a little steam lately because it’s summer, and there are so many things to do. Kinda makes us wish we had more money to do more fun things. But then again, that’s why we’re getting out of debt. We’ve got to remember how much more fun we could have if we didn’t have a $200 car payment! We’re hopeful we’ll be out by the end of summer, but that is fast approaching, and I think we might not hit it. We really need to engage the debt snowball more, and start using the money we’ve freed up from other debts to attack the car.

When we were in Cadillac this weekend, we decided we wanted to go to a church up there. Not having any personal recommendations, we cracked open the phone book and found a page and a half of listings for churches! The bummer part is that our fellowship doesn’t have a gathering up there, so we kinda had to guess based on names. We really just wanted a church that was Bible-based and sound. We ended up choosing Independent Bible Church. I couldn’t find anything out about them on the web except their service times, but we tried them anyway.

When we got there, everyone was very friendly, and wanted to introduce themselves. That was very welcoming. the church reminded us exactly the churches we grew up in. Traditional brown brick building, conservative service, pews, hymns, the whole deal. But it also seemed like the speaker (not sure if he was an Elder or Deacon or just a member, but the Pastor was on vacation) wanted to help them be more relevant. he used a laptop with a projector, and had a nice slideshow for song lyrics, and even a PowerPoint to go along with his study.

The problem was, it was like putting a video arcade in a nursing home. Something just doesn’t fit. I think they may be on the right path, but the reality is that a large part of the congregation was older, and probably likes to worship the same way they’ve worshiped for many years. is there anything wrong with that? No. Is there anything wrong with wanting to change to be more relevant to the community and a new generation? If it’s led by God, then no. The point is that those two groups just may not be the best to have in the same service. There is nothing wrong with having a traditional service and a contemporary service. In fact, in many ways it’s better. The form of worship is of much less importance than the object of worship and the quality of teaching.

As far as the teaching goes – it was solidly grounded in the Bible. It was a good message, and the teacher went verse by verse through one passage. While it wasn’t particularly invigorating, it was sound, and we could appreciate that. It goes to show how God can change your heart when you can listen to a less-than-invigorating teacher and not fall asleep .

All-in-all, we miss our church, and look forward to being back there this week. We especially miss the people there. The ones who know us and support us and have invested their time with us. It’s like a sweet aroma.

Life, Twitter, Glasses.

Well, I still have a job. I thank the Lord, and I also wonder why I’m still where I am.

In a way, I was thinking that God was using this reorganization to move me, because I wouldn’t move otherwise. I have complete faith that He works all things together for good, but I just don’t see how. I don’t know why I’m still where I am. I do know I’m here for a reason. I also know I’m looking at other job opportunities.

A couple of good things have come from the whole experience. It’s made me question if this is really what I should be doing. My wonderful wife bought me a book I’ve been wanting for my birthday. 48 Days to the Work You Love is a book by Dan Miller, and highly recommended by Dave Ramsey. I figure that Dave has really good financial advice, so his recommend on career advice may hold water .  The book asks lots of good questions, and asks me to look at what I like to do, and if what I’m doing fits that.

There is a lot more to blog about on that subject, and I’m considering airing out the answers to many of those questions on my own blog like Mindy. Could be fun

In other news, I’ve been Twittering a lot lately. In fact, I blame that in part for my short-term disappearance from blogging. Ultimately though, Twitter is not a replacement for my blog, as fun as it may be. Why do I Twitter? Well, it’s kind of like a chat room where no one expects you to respond instantly, and you can invite anyone to join your chat room that you want to. What you end up with is a place where you can find out a lot of interesting thoughts from people very easily. Of course, it’s good to contribute too, so others can learn little tidbits about you too.

If you follow my Twitter Feed or follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I recently broke my unbreakable glasses. Yeaa, you know the kind that are so flexible that you can bend them around your finger? Those are the ones that snapped in half two weeks ago. Fortunately I was fitted for contacts last year and I have some left over, even though I don’t wear them. So I’ve been wearing them for a couple weeks now until I order another pair of glasses. They work pretty well, and after I got used to looking in the mirror and not seeing glasses on my face, it was ok .

The only disadvantage to the contacts is that they don’t work quite as well as glasses. I have a slight astigmatism that the contacts can’t correct. End result is that my vision is slightly fuzzier when I wear my contacts. The phenomenon that occurs is that I’ve been feeling fuzzy lately. Not fuzzy like a Muppet, but lacking in clarity. everyday actions have felt cloudy. Anyone else ever had this happen? Fuzzy vision = Fuzzy mental state? I’m adjusting after two weeks of contacts, but still feel it once in a while. It kind of makes me wonder, as I have before, did God make me nearsighted for a reason? Maybe I’m supposed to pay attention to small, close-up details.

Anywho, that’s what’s fit to print Talk to you later.