That's how I feel all the time ...

There is a joke that goes ... "You know how you feel when you're relaxing, leaning back in your chair, and then you lean back just a little bit too far?"

Well, people always ask me why I remind everyone that I am not very smart. The answer is simple. Tell me how you feel after watching this video about Daniel Tammet and Kim Peek:



because, that's how I feel all the time. If you did not catch my earlier post on this subject, watch it tomorrow so that you can begin to feel like me everyday. Maybe then we will have more in common to discuss.

God's Movie

From our friend in Africa:

Did you ever wonder what it would be like if God made a movie? What story would he like to tell? What would be the theme, the plot and what would the music be like?

I attended a premier of one of his movies myself, on our trip. Its subject was the glory of God. The main players were colors, of course. They do this subject best. He himself is the casting director, and He really does know what he is doing.

The story unfolded as we moved through unfamiliar terrain. Purple hillside called us and we gasped at her magnificence. Yellow wildflowers ... vied for our attention with such intensity and passion. Massive in number were the yellow wildflower extras: A cast of billions, each one smiling at us. The greens deserve an Oscar. The grains alone are so multi-hued that it would take too long to describe them.

My favorites are the tiny triplets, teff. They are found mostly only in Ethiopia and there are 3 colors on the end of the grass like stalks. There is dark brown, red brown and my personal delight, iridescent celery green. The wind makes such a wonderful display swirling over the different teff's. Her dance is never ending and moved on with each new vista.

Then the venerable old acacia trees with their dark, almost black trunks and deep green flat topped foliage, look so distinguished in their costumes of long fingered resurrection ferns. Some of them even had yellow flowers blooming. Then there are what I call the snow trees. For this showing, they don glorious tiny white blossoms atop each branch like a light snow has just fallen. Bamboo ... with its lighter greens spring up in the most unlooked for places, careless fingers lifted to heaven begging to be noticed. Like selfish movie stars they wave in the breeze. Clouds float and gather and then dissipate again adding stark contrast and setting the mood of the moment. Sometimes in grey they look threatening, sometimes they create a sense of delight and fantasy in white.

A finale came upon us quite unexpectedly. Thistles ... of all things, with purple flowers the size of a baby's head. They added to the display a faint (wish-I-could-do-more-but-I'm-just-a-thistle) fragrance. They obviously stole the show despite their false modesty.

The movie is playing at outdoor theaters near you. You will have different actors, but you will be no less awed. If you can't get out, ask to see it in some other medium. Or perhaps you could go and play it out for someone else (a la David in the Psalms). Let the worship overwhelm you and then let it spread to someone else, till 'the whole earth is full of his glory.'

Surprise

We ...

are ...

all ...

smiles ...

today.

May the Lord bless you likewise.

Genetics

Father and Son ...


Mother and Son ...


You decide.

April's birthday ...

.
The girls had a blast today at their friend April's birthday party on Lake Bryan over here.


They got to go "tubing" for the first time. I heard one of the girls say ... "This was the most awesome day of my life". It seems like everyday is that way ... yesterday, swimming at Grandma B's it was the same excitement.



Lots of screamin' ... 10 little girls, 3 at a time on the huge inner tube ... at least one girl lost her voice ... again, Lots of screamin'.

Praise the Lord.

Preventing empty nodes in Flash SOAP requests

Today our FLASH guru, Jason Reeves, resolved an issue we've been having with FLASH connecting to our web services. If you have been having issues connecting to Web Services using FLASH because it puts empty nodes in the SOAP requests, you may want to try this ...

Edit this file:

C:\Program Files\Macromedia\(your flash version)\(your language)\First Run\Classes\mx\services\PendingCall.as

Mx.services.PendingCall

Line 485 (or so) change this code:

var partNode = this.encodeParam(partName, partType.schemaType, elementNode, qname);
if (partObj != undefined)
this.encodeParamValue(partObj, partType.schemaType, partNode, document);

To this code:

if (partObj != undefined) {
var partNode = this.encodeParam(partName, partType.schemaType, elementNode, qname);
this.encodeParamValue(partObj, partType.schemaType, partNode, document);
}

Now when you use a webServiceConnector (or SOAP or WebService classes), flash will not add empty nodes to the request
SOAP envelope (which causes some web services to fail)!!!!!

ENJOY!