Josh Young

I’ve made some changes to the links I list on here. Instead of just listing a few links to things, I’ve put my blogroll (i.e., every blog I read) in the right column. It’s actually being fed by NewsGator, which I just started using.

I have been looking for a good web-based RSS reader for some time now, and I’ve been using my NetVibes page in the interim, but it’s just getting too annoying jumping around from tab to tab. I’m really interested to see what the new Canary Reader looks like (and I’m sure I’ll love it), but I’m sort of tired of waiting on it.

I tried Bloglines for a day, but it’s just way too ugly for me. If I’m going to be reading something every day, then I want it to look good. Then I stumbled across NewsGator, so I figured I might as well give it a shot (hey, I’ve tried everything from NetVibes to t3h blox0r, from Bloglines to Newshutch, why not try one more!). Amazingly, I really like it. It really does look good, and so far it seems to give me the features I want (and bonuses like generating my blogroll for inclusion my blog).

They have a free version and a paid for version, but I couldn’t see paying for something like this when there are so many free options out there (notwithstanding the fact that a lot of them are ugly). If you want to get more into it, they have the ability to do automatic blog searches to help you find blogs you might want to read, but I haven’t really gotten into that since I just need a web-based reader that will look good and is organized well. And, so far, NewsGator gives me what I need (at least until something better comes along!).

Also, as a side note, when I get more time in a few weeks (after unpacking everything at the new house and rolling out the new church website), I’m going to make the switch to WordPress - which I’ve been wanting to do for a while now.

Things are coming along slowly but surely at the new house. We officially got the last of our things out of the apartment today. Now all that’s left is to do a bit of cleaning and turn in our keys. We have to be out completely by Thursday, so we’re good on time.

I have promised some of you pictures of our new house and what’s been going on, and I am pleased to say that I’ve finally cleaned up my office enough that I could sit down to upload the pictures! Click here to check some photos out (I put them in my Google Photos account this time instead of Flickr to try it out some more). They’re not that great, but it shows some of the progress and colors and whatnot.

One thing I realized though is that I have no pictures of the outside of the house! I’m going to take some in the next couple of days and put them up as well. I guess I just kind of overlooked that!

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m beat. I need to get some rest.

Relaxation is nearing!

Well, we officially moved on Saturday. And by officially moved, I mean that we now have a ridiculous amount of boxes sitting around our new house full of everything we own. Now we just have to unpack it all! What fun!

We had a ton of help on Saturday, which was a HUGE blessing. My brother-in-law-in-law, Aaron, brought his huge trailer, so with his and mine and all of the help that we had (like 10 people in total I think), we were finished moving before noon! Unbelievable! Thanks to all of you who came and helped us. You have no idea how much we appreciate it.

By the way, just as a sidenote, we had a meeting at lunch today to do some Apex planning, and I set up a free Basecamp account for the four of us to login to and collaborate for ideas and planning. After it only being up for a few hours, I can already tell this is going to be a huge benefit for us. If you haven’t checked out Basecamp or Backpack, I highly recommend that you do. Also, I’m watching ActiveCollab for new versions that come out so that we can do even more for free. It has a lot of the same project management capabilities, but it’s totally opensource.

I love opensource!!!

Well, the big moving day is this Saturday. Marie and I are frantically packing up boxes of stuff so that we can get as much moved as possible. Looks like we’re going to have plenty of help, which is great!

Last night, we moved the TV, DVD, surround sound, etc. and hooked it up so that the living room would be “wired” and all of the stuff would be out of the way for the move. Then we watched Memoirs of a Geisha. Not my favorite movie of all time, but it was still pretty good. It was just nice to sit there on some cushions on the floor of our new house and relax for a couple of hours (sort of - I’ll admit that I was still putting some other things together and thinking about things most of the time). But that just made me look forward even more to getting settled in an actually having an opportunity to relax with my wife. We’ve both been so busy lately, that we haven’t had much time like that. I’m anxious for that to return.

Maybe this weekend I can post some pictures of the new house. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while, but getting our internet switched to the new house complicated that.

This past weekend, I felt like we had a house full of Bob Rosses. We had about 8 people painting on Sunday at our new house, and we busted out some major work! Then, last night, Marie and I finished painting the kitchen, which has been the big nightmare (we picked a deep red color for the walls, and let’s just say that 3 gallons of paint later, it’s finally done). Now the only painting left is some touch-up on the trim and edging. Man, will I be glad to have that out of the way! All I can think of is how long that would have taken us without so much help this weekend. Yikes.

Tonight is “Put Up the Blinds Night” for me. Moving in our stuff is inching closer and closer.

Apex went REALLY well this weekend (see Mike’s two posts on it here and here). It was awesome to see a church family respond like that to each other and to God. God has done some amazing things so far with this new ministry, and it was definitely evident this weekend. I don’t even know what else to say about it.

Also, as a side note, I was very blessed to lead worship at ACC this weekend while Brian had a weekend off. I’ve been doing mostly “background” stuff at church since we started there (except for Apex), and it was great to be up front helping to lead in that capacity. I’ve missed being up there singing and playing with my wife and leading my home church in worship. Thanks Mike and Brian. :-)

I’m thinking of switching to WordPress for my blog instead of using Blogger. I’ve used it before, and I really liked it. I think I just want to have a little more control of things.

Any thoughts? Any good plugins that you use?