Jaybrams.com

I know… I’m awesome… just soak it in, guys… soak it in …

Popularity: 6% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Me Dang It!

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I know i know, it’s technically not even summer yet (June 21st, i think), but I can’t think that way. I’m 27 years old, but i still see summer as a break of sorts, especially now that I’m back in school. I tend to check out mentally, focus on nothing but entertaining myself or my kids, which is needed from time to time… But i know my history, and even before vacation I could sense that I was slacking… So i need to get back on the proverbial saddle and get to trekking along again… on the docket (in random order as they come to my mind):

1) Exercise: This goes without saying, doesn’t it? i mean… i’m fat… and don’t want to be… One of the things I’ve always wanted in this area is a Heavy Bag/stand… I got it for Birthday/Father’s Day. We set it up the week before we left and I used it a couple of times. Had a lot of fun. If you get a nice rhythm going, using your whole body, it’s a pretty good balanced workout in and of itself… strength and cardio… So i know i’ve never had any good excuses, but really, now i’m out completely.

2) Personal Journaling: Blogging is personal, but there’s far too much insanity to release to the world. Journaling is a good practice, but its tough for me to keep it up.  Even once a week would benefit.

3) Reading: I like to read fiction and non-fiction alike. I have the resources to read both (library, amazon gift cards, etc)… One of each per week is easily doable, one of each every two weeks is more likely… I picked up “Emperor: The Gates of Rome” from the library… five chapters in and i’m not impressed with the writing. I’ll give it one more night before I try something else b/c I dig historical fiction and the Roman era. But, as far as Non-Fiction goes… not sure, going to browse through Amazon.com today to determine what to use my Birthday gift card on. Something that isn’t at the library…

4) Fatherhood and Husbandry: Family Bible times, weekly walks with the girls, meaningful conversations, and quality entertainment (dates, family movie nights, etc.). I can’t ignore my number one responsibility no matter how often the XBox calls my name (yes i have it back… well, they sent me a new one, but its back).

There are others (house work, finding a church), but i think thats a good start… if i pack my docket with too much, i’ll just give up and play soccer on the 360 all the time.

So keep me to it…

Popularity: 15% [?]

Category : Church, Current Events, Eh... Whatever, Empyreal, Family, Fatness, Friends

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Most people have heard of the Blue Screen of Death… if you have an early gen XBox 360, you may be familiar with the Red Ring of Death. Basically in the first two generations, the console would either overheat or not heat up enough, eventually causing a hardware failure which resulted in this pretty little guy:

The racket was simple. Even if they had to fix a large number of systems, they used the negative publication to strongly suggest 360 owners to buy the cooling system, and continued to push for the cooling system even after they corrected the issue on the succeeding releases. I thought I was clear of the problem consoles…

And then a breaker blew…

It may have been a coincidence, but as soon as it blew, both my DVD/Surround Sound System (which I got for my birthday in June 06) and my blessed XBox 360 (Christmas 2006) stopped working… yes, there it was. The Red Ring of Death…

I thought for sure that I’d have to pay to get it fixed since A) I didn’t have one of the early generation models and B) my one year warranty was up… But, to my surprise and excitement the extended three year warranty for “general hardware failure” (signified by the three red lights), DOES apply to my console (cheer with me please!). All free… including shipping.

What is funny is they are paying shipping via UPS, to and from my house, when the repair center is only about 5 miles from me. If i would’ve known that before they sent the pre-paid packaging, I would’ve called and asked if i could just bring it in.

In any case, i’ve already been without for about a week now, and I have another 2-4 weeks sans 360… but I do have the PS2 that my Bro-In-Law was so kind to let me borrow.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Me Dang It!

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Hello. My name is Jeremy Wheeler. I have not been around these parts lately due to… general laziness? So lets get you caught up and get this blog ball rolling again.

1) I passed Old Testament Survey. I wasn’t too worried about it. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

2) I started to learn Spanish because I want to. Relearn really. It is going alright, but I need to concentrate on it more. Hopefully I will be conversational by end of summer. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

3) On Friday, June 6th we’re leaving for Branson. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

4) Blake is a bad word. He got me addicted to Sports based MMORPGs. “FAIL”

5) I’m still addicted to soccer. FC Dallas fired their coach, probably the right thing to do, but horrible timing and situation surrounding it. They gave up a goal in stoppage time last night which resulted in a draw instead of a win. “FAIL”

6) I bought the new Deliriou5? It is so yummy. “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

7) I’m still fat but until last week I was losing weight and staying off the Dr. Peppers. But last week and a half is horrible. “FAIL”

to end on a positive note… “And the monogram says ‘I-DOUBLE U-I-N”

Popularity: 13% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Family, Fatness, Me Dang It!, Music, School, Soccer, Sports, Video

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I know i’ve been fairly quiet these past two months. OT Survey has been a workload, and I added more to it voluntarily. I’ve had some time at work to post, but haven’t really wanted to simply due to the mental strain I was already exerting in class… I know it’s a lame excuse, but just throwing it out there…

I do have some plans for some things to write about (namely, our church searching experience), but i’ve got one more night of class (TONIGHT!) so i’m thinking tomorrow or wednesday i’ll start posting stuff worth while again.

In the mean time, lets see just how attentive you are. Just so you know, I did fail the first time, so don’t feel bad if you do.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Category : Church, Eh... Whatever, School, Video

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… Teach…

I disagree with that as a blanket statement, but sometimes its true… You also hear that those who can’t do, ref.

Not this guy…

I know it’s old (2006), but dang that Ref is in control! Shoot… I think he oughta be fighting… I love his reaction as he lets the guy down… throws his hand up like “Take that punk! I am THA MAN!”

Popularity: 11% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Sports, Video

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Let me distance myself from the last post… Somewhere in that mess of a post below, I made some valid points, but it took a different direction and invalidated itself when I focused on, er… attacked… one example rather than expanding on the validity of the thought that we tend to enforce our way of Christianity on people… So maybe i’ll revisit the idea later and see if has any real legs…

in the meantime, there is a running joke in the community of radio that I listen to which states that once you realize how much you’ve failed, just stop broadcasting and play only Beatles songs… so use this one to distance from the last post AND as a bit of preview for a post coming probably later today…

Popularity: 11% [?]

Category : Culture, Eh... Whatever, Music

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Man… proof that sometimes God allows complete dorks to work in His kingdom. Notice the full beard, full uni-brow, and glasses. And by the way, to those who said shaving my head a few weeks back would be great “because i wouldn’t have to style it” … as you can see, i didn’t really worry about styling it when it was longer… thanks to kiesch for being a good sport.

(and yeah, the rendering quality isn’t quite up to par with what we’re capable of now, but you get the point)

Popularity: 18% [?]

Category : Church, Eh... Whatever, Empyreal, Video, Youth

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Playing with my new webcam… i bought two of the same kind, one for me and one for Pops since Lnsy and Josh have officially moved to Ukraine. I didn’t like my first few plays with it, but after installing the correct driver and playing with the settings it turned out pretty good… so then me and the girls had a lot of fun screwing around… Here’s my famous tongue trick… you may act like it’s not that impressive, but i’m pretty sure you can’t do it…

Popularity: 16% [?]

Category : Eh... Whatever, Me Dang It!, Video

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I don’t do a lot of tagged stuff. Someone tagged me a while back concerning books I read, but i just started reading again so i would’ve had horrible answers. But my sis tagged me for “7 Things About Me” so I will oblige, only I don’t know if I can come up with 7 interesting things… so here’s 7 Things I’ve Failed At in my life.

1) Community College: I was put on probation (yes, at a community college) after one semester. I dropped out halfway through my second. Perhaps it was because I spent 90% of my “class time” in the computer lab.

2) ESPN Radio: This maybe is my fault, maybe not. I was an unpaid intern, working directly for Assistant Program Director (that’s second in command) at the Dallas ESPN Affiliate. I did really well everything he asked me to do, but wasn’t my jovial, talkative self around some of the other guys, thus making no contacts at all. Then he got really really busy and moved off to one of the Carolina’s. In the meantime, i was left with little-to-no-contacts and it never went anywhere.

3) Clear Factor: Once I started my own business to supplement the very little income I had coming in due to my transition from corporate work to ministry work. It was a storefront window-washing business, which has extremely low overhead and extremely high customer potential. I realized quickly that I wasn’t cut out for the sales / self-marketing part of the job. I could probably sell stuff at a retail place adequately, but i didn’t do so well selling myself. Instead I eventually sold my stuff to a friend, who eventually got out of the business as well ( I still own the company name “Clear Factor” if anyone wants to buy it from me).

4) The previously mentioned Ministry Career: I had it all figured out when i was younger. I was diabolically opposed to going to CFNI, and I was not interested in going to one of the larger schools. But I was “called by God” so He was obligated to make everything I touched in ministry work… after all, I was doing it “for Him” and if He called me, then obviously nothing I could do would fail… but getting your girlfriend pregnant, ignoring your responsibilities as a Christ follower, and convincing yourself you could do it on your own leads to “failure” despite and “calling.”

5) Novels: I’ve started two novels, both made it well into the second or third chapter (wow! that’s far!). I re-read them the other day and laughed at the writing. The concepts are still decent, so i think i’m going to pick them back up and re-write what i have, but for now, i’m still going to count it as failed (Despite the lack of skills I display on this site, it has been said by a few professors, friends, colleagues, etc that I have a knack for writing. I dunno about that, but I enjoy it none-the-less).

6) Music Career: My first “gig,” I opened for Darrell Evans, who at the time was one of the most popular worship leaders going. This was before Hillsongs went crazy and before the time of Crowder, Tomlin, Redman… Lincoln Brewster, who was Darrell’s guitarist, stopped to tell me to keep doing what I was doing and be true to who God intended me to be. Later I played for a few thousand people at a large variety show… several bands later, I’ve never done much beyond record the three songs that are sitting on virb and i’m not a huge fan of those.

7) This thing we call Life: I’m overweight and even more out of shape than I look (just ask the guys i went “jogging” with saturday!)… Not including my house, i’ve got nearly as much debt as my age in the thousands… I don’t show my wife I love her enough… I don’t teach my kids about Christ enough… I don’t allow God to work through me enough… I pretend to have it all together, when I don’t, often struggling with mild depression (my wife would probably say it breaches into the “moderate” level from time to time, but I try and keep things in perspective)… I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up… I play video games more often than I study or meditate on what God wants to do with me… and I can’t win a Scrabble for the life of me…

NOTE: This is not a “pity me” or even a depression-induced post… I look at these things and I look at where God is moving me, and I’m extremely grateful for learning what I have through all of the failures. I can see that He is evolving me so that I can one day remove #7 from this list, append #4 to say “early ministry career,” and, heck, maybe even take #5 off the list as well … It is these failures that have propelled me to a place that I can finally say “Lord, I can’t do anything without You because I’ve proven over and over that I will fail on my own… it’s Your turn”

So, what have you failed at?

Popularity: 32% [?]

Category : Church, Eh... Whatever, Empyreal, Family, Me Dang It!, School

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