Adam's Website of the Day: pandora.com

Ever heard a song that you thought was fantastic and wanted to hear more artists/songs like it? Want new artists recommended to you not based on who bought their albums in combinations with one you liked (a la Amazon), but rather on their musical similarity to your favorites?

Pandora.com has what you've been looking for. Enter an artist and/or song and it will produce a radio station of similar songs based on their intrinsic musical qualities (melody, beat, etc.). As you listen you can improve and tweak the system by saying whether a given song matches what you're looking for.

New Feature: Adam's Website of the Day

I want to begin offering a new feature that I hope you'll enjoy. Adam's Website of the Day. As often as possible (hopefully every day, or at least every weekday) I will offer up a new website that is interesting, useful, and/or informative. Today's inagural website is...

Meebo.com

Ever been on a strange computer and need to IM someone? Does your office PC prevent you from installing your favorite chat program? Or did you ever just want to have a program that would log you into all your IM services at once (and didn't feel like installing or know about GAIM, Miranda, or Trillian)?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Meebo is for you. It's a web based instant messenger that supports AOL Instant Messnger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber/Google Talk. It's handy, and so well designed, you may forget it's a web page.

My first Wikipedia Article

Was searching on Wikipedia for my last name, and I ran across a link listing a WW2 Destroyer Escort named the USS Weeden. Thought that was interesting but saw that it had no article. After some research (into both the ship and into how to write a brand new Wikipedia article) I am happy to unveil my USS Weeden article.

All info taken from the 2 links at the bottom of the article. I also emailed the people who run the USS Weeden veteran's website to let them now that they now have their own article!

Very proud to have contributed something, and hope to expand on it soon, and maybe find how I may be related to the USS Weeden's namesake.

Update.....(It's been a while)

Wow, haven't been here in over two and a half months. Sorry to those two or three people who have actually expected me to put some updates here. Life's busy, and I'm a man of few words. That combination has left me either without sufficient time to post or without an idea of what I should be posting about, and quite frequently both.

So what's new you ask? I'll be happy to tell you!

• Can't remember exactly when it started but my wife and I are now leaders of our church's youth ministry (though technically I'm not a youth minister as I'm not ordained). We started out with four kids, but now that has grown to eleven kids, and I believe God will continue to help it grow.
  
• Dec. 18th, 2005 - Had a Christmas party for Family Ministries of Florida. They are a Christian group that provides homes for children who can no longer live with their parent(s). Family Ministries has three couples that will "adopt" (not in the legal sense as far as I know, but in the family sense) a child in need of a family. Between the three couples they have around thirty kids (whose ages go from three or four all the way to seventeen). My church decided that this year we would help them out by buying gifts for the kids and have a nice Christmas party for them. It was a blast. I really enjoyed being able to help the kids, and they certainly seemed happy to receive it!
  
• Dec. 25th, 2005 - Had a wonderful Christmas. Got a lot of nice stuff (a lot of Florida Gators stuff from my wife for my new Gators themed office, awesome!). And as the saying goes, it was better to give than to receive. I bought my wife an iPod Nano (black) and a beautiful male Golden Retriever puppy. I named him Luke, but Bre said that since I bought it for her, she gets to name it, so she renamed him Brady. Fair enough I suppose. He is a real blessing. Seems smart as a whip and is already learning sit and fetch at twelve weeks, and is getting good about where and when to use the bathroom. He is super lovable and really enjoys both horsing around and just laying there getting pet (though each is done when he feels like it).
  
• Dec. 27th, 2005 - Finally (for the most part) got into my new house. Got my bed in and got my stuff out of my storage unit. My landlord still has some things she needs to retrieve from the house, and I still have a laundry list of things I need to get done (paint, clean, etc.), but I am happy to finally have a place that I can call "mine" in some sense.
• Jan. 1st, 2006 - I officially began as an deacon of my church! I was nominated by some of the members of the church for the position and the members voted unanimously to trust me to bear this great responsibility. For those unfamiliar with the position of a deacon within a church: qualifications of a deacon, the word deacon comes from the Greek word for "those who serve", but basically I will be doing whatever I can to help my congregation.
  
• Jan. 2nd, 2006 - Went to the Outback Bowl. Had an AWESOME time. Iowa fans were real polite, even after they were guaranteed a loss after a bad call at the end. Still not sure how I ended up with a sunburn in January, not to mention the fact that I had to get out of my seat and go into the club area (thank God for club tickets) twice because the heat was getting unbearable. That is not to say that I wouldn't do it again in a heartbeat!

So far 2006 seems to be going great. For those praying for me: pray that my contract with my current company turns permanent. I really enjoy working here, and my boss is a really good guy. Hope to see you sooner than it took for this update to come. God bless!

Wilma, It Came, It Rained, It Left (At Least Here)

Let me begin by saying my thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by Hurricane Wilma both in Mexico and in Florida. I'm sure there are those who are going through extreme difficulties right now because of Wilma, and while I thank God for my blessings, I pray that he blesses you in the future.

I am happy to report that Wilma was significantly better here than I expected. It came ashore about 200 miles south of me, with tropical storm force winds (30-60 miles/hour) extending this far off. It made landfall this morning around 7:00 a.m. as a Category 3 hurricane. While this is a very serious weather event, I thank God that it wasn't the monster that Wilma was in my last post about her, nor the goliath the wreaked havoc on the Yucatan Peninsula.

To be honest, the effects here were minimal and bearable. Windy, rainy, and strangely cold because of a cold front that hit just barely ahead of the hurricane. Fortunately this cold front seems to have assisted in weakening and shifting this hurricane. Overall the only signs of the hurricane was an abnormal amount of wave action on the bridge I cross to get to work. 4-6 feet waves on a body of water where just white tipped waves are abnormal. I also saw a few branches blown down and one road sign snapped in half. The latter was probably caused by a small tornado (as we've been under a tornado watch since last night).

As I type this I've heard that there is only 1 death so far, but the hurricane is just now hitting the east coast. I'm also hearing that the Miami and Florida Keys area is taking a pounding and won't know how bad it is for a little while. I pray for the friends I have in that area that they are safe and will recover from any sort of hardships caused by Wilma.

Adam Weeden: Preacher, Programmer....Playwright?

I have always known that God has blessed me more than others in the realm of written communication. I wrote my first short story at 8 and, after winning a competition at my school with it, got to present it at a local writing convention. I got my first poem published at 14. And now I have had my first play that I have written recognized as being one of the best in my Introduction to Theater class, being one of the three plays chosen out of my class of about 30.

I say none of this to brag or to boast, for I know that not only do none of these accolades make me a better person than anyone else, but more importantly I know that none of these talents that I have originate within me. I label them as they are: gifts of God above.

My play is entitled "The Reluctant Soldier" and is more of what my professor refers to as a "playlet" than a traditional play (seeing as it is only about thirteen pages long and could probably be acted out in 15 minutes realistically). I will try to get a link up to it as soon as I can, so that I can share it with others who would be interested.

This does make me slightly excited though. I now have to direct some other students of my class in it. I don't want to sound "hollywood" or trite, but I want to make sure that my artistic vision of the play is reproduced accurately. I will have to make sure I walk the fine line of firm about what I want and being a dictator to people who essentially have virtually no choice to work on my play. I pray that God guides me through this time to have patience and wisdom.

UPDATED 10/19/2005 5:55 PM

Play can be downloaded here.

Something wicked this way comes...

Hurricane Wilma scares me. When I was a younger and (unsurprisingly) more foolish young man, I used to joke about how hurricanes were no big deal. My running joke was I had slept through more hurricanes than most people had seen in their lifetime. While this was true in a way, only one of them was ever anything close to a direct hit. After last year when I had 3 hurricanes come within a short distance of hitting me (and my old school , Florida Christian College where I was living at the time, suffered great damage) I realized that these weren't things to celebrate, to use as an excuse to get off of work or to throw a party for. These were real, destructive forces. The line that turned the period on the end of that thought into an exclamation mark came when Hurricane Katrina ravaged, raped, and destroyed the Upper Gulf Coast area in general, and New Orleans, LA in particular.

Now we are faced with a hurricane that's a record setter. Most intense hurricane on record. A record tying 21st named storm in an Atlantic season. A record tying 12th hurricane in a season. Not to mention that this is the third Category 5 hurricane this season (and I should not need to remind you what the previous two, Katrina and Rita, did in terms of damage). This is the equivalent of 3 serious earthquakes hitting the west coast. Wow.

Right now it looks like Wilma is going to hit south of me, but that's still too close for comfort, especially since I'm still very much within that projected path "cone." I will try to keep those who read this updated on info as far as if I have to evacuate.

Please join me in prayer for all those who have been, are being, and will be affected by this hurricane. May God be with us all.

Hear ye! Hear ye!

This is my new blog. I hope to keep it updated fairly consitently this time. I started it up here since my www.blog.com account doesn't seem to be linked to any email account I can recollect. Look here for some exciting news in the next little while.