Lee Street Memorial Baptist Church

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I think I’ve found my church.

I went down to Lee Street Memorial Baptist Church down near Federal Hill this morning for 11am service. Very hymn-y worship, I noticed; almost every other section of the service was marked by the singing of three or four stanzas from the Baptist Hymnal. Pastor’s sermon, on the denial of self and taking up of crosses, was intense and powerful. Congregation was mostly aged, and there weren’t too many members, but they were wonderfully warm and friendly, many of them even hugging each other — and me — during welcome.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the pianist there is an old acquaintance, a skilled Filipino concert pianist from Peabody, whom ******* and I had met at a classical recital in Manila two years before. He has since become Christian, married, and is now a member at LSMBC. Small world!

So far this is the best fit for me, it’s not a far walk from Little Italy, and I feel the Spirit prompting me strongly on this one. I’ll continue to pray for guidance, and go again next week. Sorry, Valerie! I guess I’m destined to stay Baptist by association after all. ;)

(UPDATE: I had to leave this church because I found out that the pastor was a Freemason. Sorry.)

Harvest Moon

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Anyone get a look at that harvest moon last night? Beautiful. Do try and get a look tonight if you haven’t already.

And speaking of the moon, Buzz Aldrin got off the hook for socking one to Bart Sibrel, an active conspiracy theorist producer who tries to get Apollo astronauts to swear on a Bible that they did actually go to the moon.

Much more on that from BadAstronomy.com.

Another Baptist Church

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I found another Baptist church in the area, which I’m going to check out today: Lee Street Memorial Baptist, over in South Baltimore. They don’t seem to have a website, and I’m wondering why the heck they’re called “Lee Street Memorial” when they’re over four blocks from Lee Street, at Light and Warren.

Neuroprosthesis News

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Some mild hubbub going on over at MetaTalk about Neuroprosthesis News and the Neuroprosthesis News blogger’s penchant for rampant self-linking. This leads to to the discussion on the ethics of self-linking: when is it acceptable? On Metafilter, never on the front page.

It’s always funny when someone responds to being called out by lashing out with reactionary ad hominems, even playing the classic “free speech” card and claiming that his self-linking was an “experiment” which apparently gives him (her?) the right to transcend “DA RULEZ.” Someone seems rather unstable here.

Update: More info.

Iomega Predator CD-RW

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Just got me an Iomega Predator, the last one on sale at Staples. Pretty decent and slim external USB CD burner for its price. I don’t have USB 2.0 on my laptop, so I’m limited to slower write speeds for now — which is fine by me. Now I can get rid of this zip drive and stacks of 100MB disks. As soon as I can get a better notebook, I’m looking forward to burning some artsy interactive projects. ;)

So who wants to buy a slightly used Iomega Zip 100? Guaranteed, no Click of Death.

FreeDOS

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No more rummaging around the shoeboxes for that old DOS 6.2 floppy to boot up a freshly formatted hard drive: FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system.

“People have … been re-writing basic OS code for so long that all of the technology that constituted an “operating system” in the traditional (pre-GUI) sense of that phrase is now so cheap and common that it’s literally free. Not only could Gates and Allen not sell MS-DOS today, they could not even give it away, because much more powerful OSes are already being given away.” – Neal Stephenson, “In the Beginning was the Command Line”

Heh heh.

No More New York

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I’m not going to New York anymore. Bus tickets at the Graduate Office were sold out. :( Maybe some other time.