Take action at http://americancensorship.org/.

Key facts:

• SOPA will kill the internet as we know it.
• Any user on a site that can make a comment has the power to shut your site down — just by linking to another site.
• SOPA is shoot first and ask questions later. No judicial process. Your site is just off the air.
• SOPA only hurts the lawful — not the law breakers.
• SOPA restricts freedom and liberty — and is therefore un-American.
• SOPA is the same kind of censorship employed by China and Iran… and our state department speaks out against them for it.
• SOPA goes against the 1st amendment to the constitution — and your right to free speech.

So I wrote an article called “Carrying SuperRachel: How I care for my Chronically Ill Wife.”

I hope that it is helpful to some other husbands / caregivers out there. Chronic pain sucks, but there are things you can do to help minimize the emotional pain and alleviate some of the logistic problems.

Click here for Part 1 – Carrying Super Rachel – The Logistics of When Your Wife Is Chronically Ill

Click here for Part 2 – How a Husband Can Encourage a Chronically Ill Wife: The Spiritual and Emotional Stuff

Grace & Peace,

-Matt

If you or someone you love is living with Dysautonomia like Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, in the Dallas / Fort Worth area (or anywhere else too), check out the Texas Association for Dysautonomia Awareness.

TADA is a group of people who have or care for someone who has dysautonomia. We are a support group for each other while we also try to raise awareness and fund research. There are a lot of things we’re trying to do, but a good place to go for more info about TADA is the TADA web-site or facebook page. You can get connected and interact with TADA on the facebook page.

We also have monthly meetings the third Thursday of Every month at 6:30pm at Methodist Richardson Medical Center: 403 W. Campbell Rd. Medical Plaza 1 Richardson, TX 75080.

I haven’t read it, but I totally recommend it. The book of Job has been instrumental in Rachel’s spiritual development through the years and I’ve always loved the book of Job as well.

Get the ebook here (pdf).

And so I embarked upon my own note taking journey. I’ve used paper notes, daily OpenOffice.org documents (now LibreOffice), Tomboy notes, Microsoft OneNote, BasKet Note Pads, Evernote, and many others. Here are my thoughts / conclusions.

LibreOffice / OpenOffice:

Cost: Free

Pro’s:

• Price
• Cross Platform: Mac, Win, Linux
• Lots of formatting options

Con’s:

• High memory footprint
• Importing other files
• Note management is 100% manual
• No search functionality, except through OS (Mac: Spotlight w/ Neolight plugin, but I haven’t tried it)
• No mobile app
• GTD is a pain, but doable.

Screenshots:

I used OpenOffice for a couple years at work. I don’t have enough memory on my computer to keep it running all the time anymore. Now I just have a paper notebook on my desk. While I can’t write as quick as I type, I can write down pertinent info while I’m on the phone and it works well enough.

Tomboy:

Cost: Free

Pro’s:

• Price
• Cross Platform: Mac, Win, Linux
• Simple, intuitive
• Just typing a file URL links to the file. Ex: ~/somefile typed in the notes becomes clickable.
• WikiSyntax is nice
• Several plugins I really like
• Integrated note management & search
• GTD is easy

Con’s:

• Not enough formatting options
• No images, drawings (deal-breaker)
• No mobile app for iOS.
• Android mobile app is read-only

Screenshots:

I loved Tomboy when I was using it. It sync’ed across all my computers using the internal sync capability and my Dropbox (create an account and get 2Gigs Free! And if you do, I get 250MB more free). The sync did mess up sometimes and I’d lose some info, but all-in-all, it was pretty good. I LOVED the search and the multiple notebooks. I decided to move on

Microsoft OneNote:

Cost: $79

Pro’s:

• Free-form notes
• Drawing
• Can paste just about anything
• Templates
• GTD is doable, but painful since it’s not mobile or cross-platform

Con’s:

• Not cross platform – Windows only (deal-breaker).
• No mobile app.

Screenshots:

• That laptop doesn’t work anymore, sorry. Power on the motherboard died… bought Dell Mini 9 to replace it.

OneNote came with a laptop I purchased a few years ago. It was neat, but it didn’t really fit my workflow. If you’re Windows-centric, go for it. I’m not. I don’t recommend it otherwise.

BasKet Note Pads:

Cost: Free

Pro’s:

• Free-Form notes
• Can paste just about anything
• GTD is doable, but painful since it’s not mobile or cross-platform

Con’s:

• Not cross platform yet, but they are working on it. Linux only right now (deal breaker).
• No mobile app.

Screenshots:

BasKet is great, but the fact that I can only use it in Linux is a problem.

Evernote:

Cost: Basic is Free / Premium is $45/year

Pro’s:

• Cross Platform
• Great search
• Can embed documents / files
• Web based notes / viewing
• Mobile app for iOS and Android
• Simple & wonderful GTD setup

Con’s:

• Cost

Screenshots:

Evernote is my current favorite note taking solution. I wish there were an open source equivalent, but I’m happy to support good software. I won a free 1-year membership from workawesome.com, so I’m using the Premium version of evernote. I think it’s just the note storage that is increased with the premium plan. I also have the Evernote app on my iPod Touch, so I’ve always got my notebook with me.

Paper & Pen:

Cost: a couple bucks at Wal-Mart

Pro’s:

• Ink.
• Paper.
• Feels nice & tactile.
• Not taboo at meetings.
• Can doodle & draw drawings easier.
• GTD works really well.

Con’s:

• Not digital.

I’m pretty kinesthetic, so I do keep a real physical notepad in my backpack all the time.

Conclusion:

I love Tomboy and wish I could use it as my note taking app, but the fact that I can’t paste images into it or use it on my mobile device. Winning the 1-year free subscription to Evernote pushed me over the edge and I’m loving every minute of it.

My suggestion to you is to use whatever is most comfortable to your lifestyle. If paper won’t work and you’re cheap (like me), try Tomboy. The best solution overall, though is Evernote.

Fine Print:

I’m not receiving anything from anybody to talk about these subjects. I’m doing it of my own volitional will. None of these are affiliates and I’m not getting paid for this.

Stunned, I turned around and Matt K. (yes, there are 3 Matts in my group at work) said, “It worked. Thanks.”

I had helped him fix the problem with the dual-monitor setup on his newly reinstalled Ubuntu 10.10 system.

“You’re welcome,” I said, “But it didn’t work for me… ever,” referring to the hug.

Matt B. chimed in, “What just happened?”

K said, “Matt apparently doesn’t like hugs.”

“Are you sure of that or did he just not expect a man-hug while sitting at his desk?” B said incredulously.

“I guess he doesn’t have much of a feminine side.” said K.

To which I retorted, “Yes, I do. Her name is Rachel.”

“You know, one time, I hugged Rachel’s cousin’s husband — just to freak him out. To this day, he won’t come near me. It was pretty awesome.”

And we all laughed.

As Dave Ramsey quotes all the time – most divorces are (supposedly) caused by money problems. So check out Couple Money, try to win some prizes, and be frugal with your spouse.

You could use these in your church as a curriculum for Bible study classes or listen to them on the way to work. Check out the syllabus (if there is one), get the books, listen to the lectures, read the required sections, write the papers (and grade them yourself, I guess), take the test (if there is one).

I recommend all three.

BiblicalTraining.org

Includes lectures from Dr. William Mounce (wrote several Greek textbooks used in seminary classes, though not the one we used in my Elementary Greek class), Dr. Bruce Ware from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Lots of good stuff here.

Covenant Seminary’s “World Wide Classroom”

Covenant Seminary is the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a good school. We differ in some places, since I’m a Baptist and they’re Presbyterians, but there are more places that we agree than disagree. I especially liked the homiletics class and the youth ministry class. They even have some (if not all) their lectures up on iTunes, so you can download them to your iPod really easily.

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s “Dimensions of the Faith”

GCTS is a non-denominational seminary. They offer several classes in their “Dimensions of the Faith” ministry. In their own words:

Last night, I learned that Scribus has some nice extra features like a font preview to help you select good fonts and a color wheel.

Of special interest (to me) is the color wheel. It’s like Agave for linux, but with an extra vision-defect preview. You can see what your chosen colors look like to people with varying degrees of color blindness. Awesome.

I don’t mean to, but I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s green thumb gene. Seriously, though, I can’t even grow grass on my lawn. It’s all clovers.

On a positive note: I’m really good at growing clovers.

A little over a year and a half ago, I had seen video of Epcot’s hydroponic & aeroponic garden, I’d heard about aeroponics in Star Trek: Voyager, and had even read several blog posts about it. I was hooked obsessed.

So, with my wife’s blessing, I started my own hydroponic garden. I gathered whatever materials I could get for free and then ran over to Jolly Green Hydroponics off of Midway & 635.

The Original Setup:

• 1 Used Folger’s Coffee Can (courtesy of my father in law) = $0
• 4 Net Pots = $1.00
• Clay rocks = $10 – a really big bag
• Rockwool = 4.95 – like 20 or 30 squares (more than I need currently)
• Habanero seeds = $3
• Hydroponic nutrient solution = $12.95
• Fish Tank Air Pump & Air stones (courtesy of a good friend of mine in the fish tank business) = $0
• TOTAL = $31.90

Hydroponic Coffee Can, net pot, and air stone.

Super simple setup. There’s not much to it, other than this.

Sprouting through the rockwool.

It’s Alive!!! The roots were down through the bottom of the rockwool cube at this stage. I really should have removed the plastic wrapper on it. I believe I did finally remove it one day, but it was a mess.

Hydroponic Habanero Pepper after 2 months of growth.

The Habanero plant didn’t grow very fast. It took about 2 months to get it to this point. I think it needed more light than it was getting in the window and from the plant light. I also didn’t have the most optimal nutrient solution.

Really big leaves!

The leaves grew much larger and healthier than they ever got with the Habaneros I was growing in the dirt in 2008. A couple of them were about the size of my hand. Note: I didn’t get the nutrient mix quite right at first. I was experimenting with different things. One thing I learned is that Miracle Grow makes lots of bubbles and overflows the whole apparatus. At the same time, though, the roots were really happy with the oxygen from the bubbles.

New apparatus with a 5-gallon Home Depot bucket.

It also grew larger and produced more than the old fashioned (dirt grown) habaneros did. It grew so large that I had to buy a new bucket for it. Yes, I need to sweep under my plants. Thanks. It might grow better if I paint the bucket black, so less light gets inside.

The roots of the hydroponic habanero plant.

Lots of roots! Note: roots don’t like light… so don’t pull them up into the light and take flash photos!

The Final Product: Habanero Peppers!!!

Produce. It makes very yummy hot salsa. I freeze them so they last longer. It produces WAY more habaneros than I need. This is why they look fuzzy… It’s the condensation forming on the peppers because they’re so cold.

Check out my “Super Awesome Hot Salsa recipe.” It goes well with the habaneros.

Lessons Learned:

• Things happen quickly… more so than with dirt. Dirt may run out of a nutrient, but it can take a while.
• With hydroponics, you need to take a look at the plant and see how it is doing every couple days to make sure it’s getting everything it needs (this is probably also true of traditionally grown plants… Maybe I’ll try that next time I grow something in the dirt).
• The plants really want to grow. They’re not suicidal.
• Rachel is very supportive of my mad scientist activities. I must take care not take advantage of her patience so she does not get disgruntled with my future projects. She’s Super!
• I don’t hate gardening. In fact, I love it.
• Roots grow to amazing sizes.
• Habaneros are one of the few plants that can self pollinate. All I have to do is shake the limbs whenever there are flowers. This simulates the effect that wind has on the plants when they live outside.
• Certain types of seeds germinate better under different conditions.
• It doesn’t take much money, time, or effort to get started.
• Once you’ve got the starting materials, you can have several other plants going at minimal cost. I’ve already got plenty of clay pebbles, rock wool, and net pots (I have 4 net pots total, I think).

More Variables that need testing:

• Sunlight – I should try to waterproof the apparatus and move it outside.
• Artificial light – I have a plant light. I need to build an apparatus for it, but not in the kitchen / dining room.
• Water Temperature. I do not track the water temperature.
• Nutrient supply – I just add nutrients when I notice the leaves do funny things.
• Ph levels. I do not track the acidity or basicity of the water at all. So far, it’s still alive and it’s been over a year.
• Flowing hydroponic troughs. I’d like to test a trough system where the nutrient flows the whole time.
• Aeroponics.
• Air Temperature – I’d like to have the apparatus inside a greenhouse so I can regulate temperature & humidity better. Right now, it stays inside the kitchen / dining room, where the temperature usually stays between 65-77 degrees F. Habaneros are tropical plants, so I think something around 85 degrees F would work better.
• Rockwool block covers. While trying to get the seeds to germinate, they eliminate a lot of the light / algae growth. Maybe I could have gotten the spinach / lettuce to germinate… especially if it were a darker color, so it trapped warmth better.
• Paint the orange home depot bucket black, so less light gets to the roots. I probably ought to do this before I take it outside.
• Other stuff.