NathanAndMeredith.com

But all is well now.  I’ve upgraded to 2.3.3 and changed my password.  Hopefully this will be the end of this little fight.  This site has a very high Google PageRank, which tends to attract the a-holes of the internet.  Hopefully, when I get all my old free WordPress themes transferred to NathanRice.net, the links will start pointing there instead of here (although if the WordPress theme viewer stays broken, that may not help very much).

“The Constitution wasn’t written to prevent us from protecting ourselves.”

“I don’t need renter’s insurance.” [why that was stupid]

“A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for John Kerry.” [hint: Bush and Kerry both were terrible choices]

“I think I might want to be Episcopalian”

“Let me explain why NewSpring Church is dangerous…” [hint: I'm a member of NewSpring now]

“I really don’t like coffee.”

“I don’t want to re-learn a new operating system.” [hint: I'm a recent Mac convert]

“Were you there?” [hint: this little nugget brought to you by Ken Ham]

“Kieth Olbermann is mean.” [ok, he's still mean, but he's right a lot of the time]

“This WordPress stuff is too hard to learn.” [hint: I now work with WordPress full time]

What’s the point of this post?  I just wanted to remind myself that I’m not always right.  Many times, as experience shows, mere months later I realize how incredibly wrong I was, and the taste of my own foot is a fair reminder of this fact.

Humility … one elusive S.O.B.

A couple of days ago, I was reading the local paper.  One of my favorite sections is the Letters to the Editor section, and I make sure I read that every single morning.  This particular morning, I read a very interesting story that, as you can imagine, I didn’t think could go without a response.

So, I figured out how to send a letter to the editor, and promptly began writing.  This is what I wrote.

Is it weird that I’m kinda excited that they decided to publish my very first attempt to write a letter to the editor?  I’m totally clipping this and sticking it to my refrigerator.

This past Saturday, Meredith and I headed to the mountains to visit the Biltmore house.  We spent a couple of hours there visiting the estate and just admiring the size of this HUGE home.  Afterwards, we headed to a lookout on the Blue Ridge Parkway (one of Meredith’s favorite places), and had a picknick dinner that I prepared the day before.

After lunch, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes!

We’ve been together for over 3 years, and I’ve been anxious to do this for a while now.

We’re not altogether sure when the wedding will be, but as soon as we figure that out, I’ll be letting everyone here know … because you’re all invited!!!  Don’t feel obligated to come, but if you would like to join us for our wedding, I’d LOVE to have you there! (as long as you don’t mind making the drive to Winston-Salem, NC)

I’ll post more details later about how you can RSVP.  I’ll also be setting up a website that will give all the information you need as far as times, dates, registry, RSVP info, etc.

I just want to say to Meredith that I love you so much, and I can’t wait ’til we are able to take this first step in our life together!

First of all, let me just say that I am fully aware that the environment at BJU is not one that would be obviously welcoming to a candidate like Ron Paul. His position of liberty on social issues like drugs and prostitution fly in the face of a university dedicated to seeing not only its students, but through them seeing the entire country hold to a “Biblical worldview”, which is more often than not a code phrase for legislating morality by letting your faith permeate your politics too much.

But one would also expect a university such as BJU (or its students) to NOT be openly hostile toward a candidate either. I believe, as I outlined in my previous post, that the university was at the very least extremely disrespectful to the Congressman by its handling of the event, but some of the students were open with their opinions, and not only were they extremely ignorant but they were also pretty funny

Here’s a sampling …

Guy 1: Hey man, what’s up?
Guy 2: Nothin’, just here to see Dr. Paul.
Guy 1: Did you bring any snowballs? (followed by a goofy laugh)
Guy 2: Actually, I kinda like him.
Guy 1: Oh, yeah, that’s cool … (followed by a nervous laugh)

Here’s another …

A very sweet and, I’m sure, well-meaning girl decided to educate her roommates, and in the process everyone around her, about the ins and outs of politics.

“Well, my mom and my brother are going for Huckabee, but me and my dad are going for Romney.”

Now, this is funny to me, because they kind of cancel each other out. Bummer.

After the meeting, I asked Meredith’s friend Sarah (and her fiance, Josh) to give me the rundown of the speech and of the questions he was asked. As they were finishing up telling me about, I noticed that a crowd was gathering outside. One of them was in the middle of a sentence, and I had to interrupt. “What’s going on out there?” I said. Josh said “I guess he’s talking to people out there”.

I said, “OK then, I guess we’ll see you guys later” and took off. I thought that was pretty funny

Here’s another funny one. As we were told in the Lecture hall that we were being moved back to the small classroom, one guy said, “Well that’s it … he just lost my vote!”.

This is funny because 1) the guy probably wasn’t going to vote for Paul anyway, and 2) it wasn’t Paul’s fault that the screw up happened in the first place.

During the meet and greet after the speech, I made my way to the center of the crowd to shake Dr. Paul’s hand.  Just as I got to him, an odd looking man introduced himself to the Congressman.

“Hello Dr. Paul.  I just had a question I wanted to ask you.”

Now, this made me mad, because the Congressman only had a limited time left, and I wanted to meet him!  Plus, if he wanted to have a chance to ask a question, he could have done so at the speech.  Anyway…

“In your testimony, I noticed that you didn’t say anything about Jesus.”

Was this do-gooder serious??? Dr. Paul gave him much more grace than I would have and said, “Jesus Christ is my Savior.”  Then the man followed up with, “Don’t be afraid to say that in public more!”

Paul’s campaign manager looked at me and those around me and said quietly, “He does … all the time” with a half grin on his face, then rolled his eyes.  A fitting response, if you asked me.  Obviously, this guy didn’t do any research on Ron Paul and decided he was single handedly going to save his eternal soul.  Well intentioned, maybe, but a seriously funny moment.

Finally, it was really hard to believe how many people were there, but were not planning on voting for Paul. I heard time after time students talking to each other about “what Ron Paul believes” (mostly incorrectly, BTW), and one or both mentioning that they weren’t even voting for him, but wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Goes to show you that political appearances actually draw impressionable ears, not just faithful cheerleaders.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. There’s more that I overheard, but I can’t remember anything else. I guess I have a really bad memory

It’s not surprising though … I’m much more well known and respected in the WordPress community than I am in the particular niches that this blog covers, so I purposefully decided to not go after subscribers at NR.net just to see how long it would take.

Now, I wonder how long it will take for traffic at NR.net to overtake NR.org? That may be a little more difficult, given the amount of google traffic I get here. Only time will tell…