My Favorite Twila Paris Songs

Here's the link to my Twila Paris iMix on iTunes.
Looks like they only list the songs which can be purchased on iTunes.












Here's the complete (unordered) list via screenshot of iTunes. Click to enlarge it.

"It's All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life."

How Denise and Alan Jackson's marriage was saved!

Here's the interview on CNN.com: Click here to read it.

Nice quote from the intro to the interview:

A revelation came one day when a friend told her she wouldn't pray for Alan Jackson to come back, but instead, would pray for Denise Jackson to become the woman that God intended her to be. From that day on, Denise Jackson began to reassess the role God played in her life -- and, instead of focusing on how to repair her relationship with her husband, put her efforts into rebuilding her relationship with God. In the end, she says, becoming closer to God helped her become closer to her husband -- and save her marriage.

Jackson writes about her journey in the new book "It's All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life." And while her husband is on the cover of the book and included a CD of two songs, after the first few chapters, it becomes clear that the country singer is not the ultimate focus of her book.

Alan Jackson is a country music singer.

Favorite Steve Green Songs

I've been loading all my music in iTunes lately so I can finally really put away the CD's into the garage. There are a few where I have the box, but not the CD. *sigh*

Anyways, the exercise has allowed me to continue to re-discover old favorites. I shared earlier about my Contemporary Christian Music Greatest Hits. Here are my favorite Steve Green songs...

Of course, you could be my friend on SimplifyMedia and you could stream them for free to check them out!

Stay tuned- my favorite Twila Paris and Amy Grant songs are coming soon!

Shoot! Dead Digital Camera. AGAIN.

Aw man. The lens isn't retracting back into the body. When it's turned on, the motor whirs but nothing happens. Worse yet, the LCD is completely black even in Setup and Playback modes.

All three of my digital cameras have died on me...

1. Sony DSC-F505V
Bought: 2000, Summer
Died: 2003, Spring
This was my first camera. No really. I never was really into picture taking, but I got this b/c I wanted to take lots of pictures w/ my new g/f. I thought the big honking rotating lens was pretty cool.

BTW, that g/f was G and we got engaged that summer and married a year later!


2. Sony DSC-F717
Bought: 2003, Spring
Died: 2007, Spring
We'd just had our 1st baby, M, and the F505V wasn't functioning properly. Sometimes the LCD would freeze up, or the pictures were all messed up. We had to get a new camera as we were just missing too many shots of Baby M.

The F717 is still my favorite camera of the three. Great resolution at the time and it shot pretty fast. I didn't mind that it was big. Actually I thought it was an asset as it had a big battery. After taking lots of shots, even with flash, the battery would last. With smaller cameras which had tiny batteries, when the battery drained down, the autofocus would become sooooooo sloooooooow.

We hadn't used this for a while b/c G used the Canon Elph b/c of it's portability. Earlier this year, when I fired this baby up, the LCD screen displayed a jumble of stuff. I'm holding out hope this can be recovered, but it's not looking good.

3. Canon PowerShot SD500 DIGITAL ELPH
Bought: 2005, December
Dead: 2007, August

We got this camera b/c the F717 was too bulky for G to lug around in the diaper bag. By now we had 2 boys- a 3 and a 1 y.o. So this was G's Christmas present that year.

Great thing was the portability and the 7 Megapixels. Plus it used SD cards and not expensive MemoryStick. But the small battery drained fast, hence the autofocus speed faded. Overall, this camera was in fact harder to shoot with. It was just too slow.

So... now what? I want a Nikon DSLR, but don't want to spend the money right now. My dad just got the D40, which he really likes. Maybe I'll borrow his old Sony compact camera... hope that one doesn't bite the dust on me too.

Lenovo ThinkPad T61: Spec'n it out

Can't believe the T42 is more than three years old and is out of the extended warranty already. It's still a toddler! Little G, my youngest son, isn't even 3 until December!

And so it's time to spec out a new laptop... (boo hoo hoo, crocodile tears)

One of the reasons I liked the T42 (14.1" LCD) was b/c it was so darn thin at just a tad over 1". The T-series seem to be getting ever so slightly thicker w/ each new line.

I fancied the 15.4" T61, but Lenovo support informed me that that measures in at 1.4" thick! How can Apple have 15" and 17" MacBook Pros that are just 1" thick?

The T61 only came w/ widescreen LCD's until just a few days ago, but the standard aspect ratio cost more. Since HDTV LCD's are 16:9 aspect ratio, it's cheaper for them to manufacture laptop LCD's to the same ratio.

From a Lenovo blog, they personally preferred the integrated graphics over the discrete nVidia as it gives well over one hour extra battery life for business use. But I want to drive the ThinkPad at it's highest resolution (1440 horiz. on the T42), and drive an external 24" LCD monitor at high res as well: Dual head display in extended desktop mode. More screen real estate = better work efficiency. Lenovo customer support said the integrated graphics only runs 1280- not good enough.

So here's the configuration I'm looking at:

• ThinkPad T61 with nVIDIA Graphics - 1 Year Depot Warranty
• Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz 800MHz 4MBL2)
• Operating System: Genuine Windows XP Professional
• *No Vista for us yet. Lenovo dude said Micro$oft will disallow XP pre-loads sometime next year.
  
• Display type: 14.1 WXGA TFT, w/ Camera
• *Wonder if the camera is like the one on the Apple laptops?
  
• System graphics: NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M (128MB)
• Total memory: 3 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
  
• Pointing device: UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader
• Hard drive: 160GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
• *The largest 7200RPM HD is 100Gb? I say more space wins.
• *Apple offers a 160GB 7200RPM HD. C'mon Lenovo, bring it!
  
• Optical device: DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim
• *A Blu-Ray disc drive would be awesome... later.
  
• Wireless card: Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
• Bluetooth: Integrated Bluetooth PAN
• Battery: 6 cell Li-Ion Battery
• 3 year depot 9x5 Next Business Day
• Extra Battery: ThinkPad Advanced Ultrabay Battery

$1990.10 (per web-site)

Any suggestions?

Not that it matters since IT only lets us get Lenovo or Dell laptops, but a similar MacBook Pro is only $2573.00. It has the same CPU as above, only 2Gb of RAM, a 160GB 7200RPM HD, and the 15" screen, and AppleCare.