We have arrived in Nashville and Impact is well under way! We are about to head to dinner but I wanted to post.

The first day has gone very well. Starfield performed a great worship set this afternoon and Grits rocked all the mid-Tennessee white kids last night. Craig Gross author of The Gutter and co-founder of XXXChurch.com will be speaking tonight.

I have picked up a few new books from the Lipscomb bookstore:

Mealtime Habits of the Messiah by Conrad Gempf
RealLivePreacher.com by Gordon Atkinson
Reaching the U: Effective Campus Ministry edited by Dennis Gaylor

No other news to report as of now. Have a great afternoon and a big thank you to Brandon Wood for the hotspot hook-up! Peace!

This post isn’t about that magical mix of sugar and milk that gives us a headache when we eat it too fast. No, this post is a review of an iPod cleaning product called Ice Creme by RadTech.

Somewhere between Christmas and today, my beautiful, sleek, black iPod U2 Special Edition picked up some minor scratches and a major scratch (the scratch that appeared one day out of nowhere) the ruined the finish of my iPod. These imperfections seemed to be magnified by the fact that this machine is black. Blemishes have nowhere to hide. I felt a little like Austin Powers every time I looked at the screen. I would try to look away from the scratch by like Fred Savage’s mole, all I could see was THAT scratch. There it was taunting me, laughing hysterically at my misery. Scratchy, scratchy, scratchy.

I needed to clean it. I used a product that worked well on my 3rd gen white iPod but that only added to the problem. I felt like a big idiot. Here is a great gift that my wife bought me, I tried to be careful, I tried to do right but in the end I messed it up.

On Monday, I was poking around iPodLounge and I came across an article on a product called Ice Creme. According to RadTech, Ice Creme is an acrylic polish so it will also work with those scratches on your iBook. I ordered it late in the afternoon on Monday and it was in my mailbox yesterday. Mad props to RadTech for the very quick turn around!

This morning I sat down and began the process of cleaning my iPod. Ice Creme came in a clear plastic tube with 4 cleaning cloths and two bottles of solution: Bottle A and Bottle B. Bottle A is applied first. The instructions said to apply heavy pressure to the surface for 30-45 mins. While I did polish for that amount of time, I notice results in about 10 min. I wiped off Bottle A’s residue and then applied Bottle B. Bottle B only took about 10 min. I did have to be mindful of the click wheel. I did get some of the solutions on the red wheel but quickly removed it with a Kleenex. I have not noticed any discoloration. I wiped the remaining solution off with a clean cloth and took a long hard look at my device.

My iPod now looks like it did when I opened it. With Ice Creme, I didn’t just clean my iPod. I restored it!!!

I don’t normally sing the praises of products but I made an exception today. Between the quick shipping and the amazing results, I can’t help but sing RadTech’s praises.

Months ago, news about Terri Schivo dominated the airwaves with every talking head throwing their two cents into the fray. I didn’t not take up the debate here because, quite frankly, it seemed like none of our buisness. I felt saddness and pain for everyone involved. Now, the autopsy report for the 41-year old has been released by the AP. Below are a few excepts and a link.

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

Autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman were made public Wednesday, more than two months after Schiavo’s death March 31 ended an internationally watched right-to-die battle between her husband and parents that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House and divided the country.

Thogmartin (Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner) also said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death.

She died from dehydration, Thogmartin said.

He said she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth as her parents’ requested.

“Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not,” Thogmartin told reporters.

He also said she was blind, because the “vision centers of her brain were dead.”

“The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain,” he said. “This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.”

Link