In our pastor’s message on Sunday (”The High Priest vs. The Great High Priest“), he talked a good bit about the Old Testament priests.  Today, I heard Randall Goodgame’s “Jerusalem” on the way to work and thought it seemed quite fitting:

I am Jerusalem
I am the temple of the Lord
Holy of Holies, the Lord dwells within
the Lord God Almighty, Maker of men

I am Jerusalem
I am the temple of the Lord
and of Aaron’s tribe
only a chosen few dared to lift the veil
and come and dwell with You
then You came to die, but not to fail
Behold the Lamb, the Lamb that tore the veil

“Jerusalem” can be found on Randall’s CD “The Hymnal” and in the iTunes store here.

I am really excited about this.  I got 3 books in the mail that are for kids.  And since my 4 year old son Brett loves a good bedtime story, I decided to let him offer a review for them.

This, the first of 3 reviews he’ll have for you this week, is a review of “God Loves Me More Than That” by Dandi Daley Mackal, illustrated by David Hohn.

Ron Davis: Did you like this book?

Brett Davis: Yes. I want to read it again tomorrow night.

RD: Did you like the pictures?

BD: Yeah, they were cool.

RD: Which picture did you like the best?

BD: (long pause) I like the one in the space suit and the one of the boy riding on the bee.

RD: (finds picture of the boy on the bumblebee) This one?

BD: Yes. I love that part when the boy rides on the bee.  I like bees, but not when they sting.  Bees are not cool when they sting.

RD: So what is this book about?

BD: God loves us a lot.

RD: How high is God’s love?

BD: Really high.

RD: How deep is God’s love?

BD: Really, really deep.

RD: How heavy is God’s love?

BD: Really, really heavy.

RD: Like how heavy?

BD: Like 100 pounds!

So there you have it, folks.  It’s got a good story, the kid liked it, and the pictures are great.

I’ve said it before - my loyalty in bicycle shopping lies at Outspokin’ Bikes in Woodstock.  Those guys are amazing.  Unfortunately, they’re also a long drive from my house.  Last weekend I broke a spoke when I was out riding with some friends, and I wanted to get it fixed before I take my daughter riding this weekend.

Yesterday I stopped to see the guys at Bicycle Jones here in Dallas.  I’ve been in there before, never really impressed with the people, but they do sell bikes, and I like bikes.  It seems only natural that I’d check them out.  I had almost given up hope for these guys, but then my friend Steph recently got a good deal on a road bike from them, so I figured I’d give them another chance.

It turns out that this bicycle sales and service shop doesn’t do service on the weekends.  They’ll gladly sell you anything with 2 wheels, but they can’t fix it unless it’s a week day.  That’s a problem, since most of my riding (and my time to get repairs done) is on the weekends.  So I left Bicycle Jones today (most likely for the last time) very frustrated.  Maybe one day when I’m rich and retired, I’ll have time to deal with a weekday-only schedule, but for now, this doesn’t work for me.

Of course, when I’m rich and retired, I’ll take my mountain of cash to Outspokin’ Bikes and be happy to deal with people who really understand what they do for a living.

Every time my friend John (“The Cisco God”) gets a new cell phone he boasts “It’s the best phone I’ve ever had.”  Then he gets a new one and says the same thing again.  My Blackberry 8830 isn’t just the best phone I’ve ever had; it’s the best phone ever.  I love the thing.  I’ve used Palm and Windows Mobile before, and compared to the Blackberry, well, (to be nice about it) they’re not so great.

Lately I’ve had an issue where messages on my phone disappear.  They don’t get deleted from my Inbox (we use BES with Exchange), but they’re gone from the phone.  My recent calls list disappears as well.  A little Googling helped me find that the problem might be a lack of memory.  I checked, and sure enough, the “File Free” line showed 0 bytes.

I figured I’d just go get a micro SD card for the phone (I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy one anyway) and put the apps that I use and my email on the memory card.  I found a $12 card (1GB) at Best Buy and installed it.  It was recognized right away and looked like it would be the ideal solution.

But no.  It wasn’t.

More Googling made me aware that you can’t put email or applications on your memory card.  That can’t be true, can it?  I did even more Googling and found that it seems to be true.  Well, that’s no good.  I wonder what I can put on my memory card.  Then I found it.

Media.

You can only put media on the card.  Like pictures and video.  Not email.  Not email attachments (unless, I suppose, if the attachment is a picture).  Not documents.  Just media.  One guy in a forum I found said that you might as well call it a “Media Card” because that’s all the Blackberry will let you use it for.

The catch here is that my 8830 doesn’t have a camera.  So yeah, I could load several thousand 320×240 resolution photos on the card and look at them anytime I wanted, but that’s pretty much all I can do with it.

It’s not a total loss.  My wife has a Blackberry with a camera, and she’ll be able to use the card.  She’ll even think I was sweet and thoughtful to buy it for her (until she reads this.  Hi, Honey!).

And now I’m back to square one with my Blackberry running out of memory.  If anybody out there’s got an idea for resolving this, let me know.  I typically use Opera Mini, Google Maps, Gmail App, “Mail By Google” for my own domain’s mail, and an SSH client.  Restarting the phone regularly seems to help the problem, but that’s not an acceptable solution to me.

If you’ve got a solution to this issue, let me know.  I’ll be off installing this memory card in my wife’s phone.

(oh, and for all you Mactards who would suggest an iPhone, as soon as they get a real keyboard and - more importantly - a non-AT&T provider, I’ll consider it.)

I just wanted to take a minute here on the blog to remember Joshua Dingler.  Today marks the 3rd year anniversary of the day Joshua was killed while fighting for freedom in Iraq.

We remember him often.  May we never forget.

I just wanted to clarify something for you all.

Apparently Bigfoot has been found in Northern Georgia.  There’s apparently a press conference coming up today sometime.  I just want to make sure you all know that despite what you may have been thinking, this is not about me.

The Braves will say farewell to broadcaster Skip Carey tonight when they play the Cubs at Turner Field.  I won’t be able to be there, but I’ll be watching very closely from home.  If the Braves win tonight, I hope they end the broadcast with Skip’s “Braves win” call.

I grew up watching baseball on TV before ESPN and MLB Extra Innings packages.  There were 3 choices for watching baseball: the Braves were on TBS, the Cubs (and eventually an occasional White Sox game) were on WGN, and the Mets were on WWOR.  Tim McCarver was the Mets’ announcer, so we didn’t watch them very often.  That left us with options of Harry Carey announcing for the Cubs or Skip Carey announcing for the Braves.

We’d usually end up watching the Braves games.  Harry Carey got to be a little obnoxious at times; plus, my childhood hero was Dale Murphy.  The voice of Skip Carey commenting on a Braves game was quite common in the Davis home.

I met Skip once.  I went early to a Braves game, hoping to see batting practice and collect an autograph or two, but weather caused them to cancel batting practice.  I wandered around Turner Field until I saw Skip Carey broadcasting the Braves pregame show from a portable broadcast booth.

I was the only person standing around that was listening to the show.  He saw me and gave me that “I acknowledge your presence but I’m not going to wave” head nod.  After the show was over, he stepped out of the booth and started walking back through the stadium.

Nobody was speaking to him, and I figured I’d go say hi.  I walked up to him, and he greeted me.  I asked him if he would sign a baseball for me.  He said “Sure. I’d be glad to” and stopped walking so he could sign it.  We talked for a minute or so, and then he left.

Now he’s gone.  I’ll miss his fun sense of humor, hearing his witty sarcasm, and his amazing ability to paint a mental picture to a radio listener.  He was one of the good ones.

Farewell, Skip.

Chris went for the random Monday bullet points today, and really, that’s about all I’ve got in me today, too.  So here goes:

• I learned the hard way that you shouldn’t start watching The Silence of the Lambs at 11:30 at night and expect to go straight to bed when it’s over.
• Last night I also learned that MythBusters works well for getting certain types of movies out of your mind at 1:30 a.m.
• My son started preschool today.  He looked pretty sharp this morning.  Those 4 year old girls are going to be all over him.
• Speaking of school, how is it that my little girl is in the 3rd grade now?
• I broke a spoke on my bike yesterday while riding the Silver Comet Trail.  I kept riding, and we got in a great 29-mile ride.  Sunday was perfect biking weather.  I’ve got to get that wheel fixed ASAP.
• I’ve got a big project at work that should get finished up this week.  I’m excited about that.
• Am I the only person in America not watching or caring about the Olympics?
• I’ll be spending some time in Birmingham this week.  I won’t have a lot of down time (get there, do the work, get out), but if you know of a restaurant worthy of my presence, let me know.  Even when there’s no down time, there’s always time to eat.

I’m sorry I’m posting this.  I really am.  I wouldn’t normally promote whores on a wholesome website like mine, but this is just hilarious.

Apparently John McCain used Paris Hilton in a TV ad (here), and Paris didn’t appreciate it.  So she created her own “I’m running for President, too” video (here).

I’ll admit - it’s a clever idea to do that video.  I’d bet good money she didn’t come up with it on her own, just like I’d bet that she doesn’t understand the definition to 70% of the words she used in the video.  Still, it’s a good idea.

And I see this on the evening after an instant message conversation with an unnamed friend earlier today prompted this comment, which I’ll offer here as the moreron.com quote of the day:

If I had a list titled “Non-Obese White Females That Some People Find Attractive But That I Would Never Sleep With, Even If My Wife Said It Was OK”, Paris would be at the top of it.

Recently when my wife was out of town, I took the kids to see Andrew Peterson play some music.  My AP concert attendance has been unfortunately lagging in 2008, and I was finally able to hear some songs from the new CD (which releases October 21).

One of the songs that really jumped out at me was called “All You’ll Ever Need” and was a song originally started by the amazing Ben Shive and was finished with the help of Andrew and Andy Gullahorn.  Now, I know I’m pretty biased when it comes to my music recommendations, but when you combine the songwriting skills of those 3 guys, you’re in for something special.

Andrew sent me the lyrics and was gracious enough to let me post them here.  Check this out, wipe up the drool on your keyboard, and then wait with me in anticipation of October 21.

All You’ll Ever Need
Words and Music by Andrew Peterson, Ben Shive, and Andy Gullahorn
2 Kings 4:1-7
2 Kings 5:1-13
1 Kings 20:18-39

The blood of Jesus, it is like the widow’s oil:
it’s enough to pay the price to set you free.
It can fill up every jar and every heart that ever beat.
When it’s all you have it’s all you’ll ever need.

The blood of Jesus, it is like the leper’s river
running humble with a power you cannot see.
Seven times go under, let the water wash you clean.
Only go down to the Jordan and believe.
Only go down in the Jordan and believe.

And I need it, I need it.
The closer that I grow, the more I come to know
how much I need it.

The blood of Jesus it is like Elijah’s fire,
falling on the altar of your faith.
All the wisdom of the world could never conjure up a spark,
but no power of Hell could ever quench this flame.
No power of Hell could ever touch this flame.

And I need it, I need it.
The closer that I grow, the more I come to know
how much I need the blood of Jesus.

The blood of Jesus, it is like the widow’s oil:
when it’s all you have it’s all you’ll ever need.
It is all you’ll ever need.