Easter Weekend Update

My friends the year is slowly coming to a close. The weather is getting warmer, classes are getting stressful, and Jackson's been sleeping upwards of 14 hours a day. As I sit here procrastinating on my homework, I felt that it is a prime time to look back on the Men of Willard's weekend.

Sam J. Bowman- Living only a short drive away from his hometown of Fishersville, VA; Sam made the trip home for the holiday with his girlfriend Eliza. Their weekend was laid back and joyful, spending lots of time with Bruce and Nancy (naturally). Additionally, Sam came back to Willard loaded up with goodies that I'm sure he will be quite generous with.

Jackson Strawn- One of two members to stay at Willard this weekend, Jackson's parents did a role reversal and came to see him. Jackson's weekend consisted of hanging out with the rents and elder brother Tyler Strawn (known for his six-sided die tattoo on his left shoulder). After a lovely dinner on Friday, the Strawns joined some of Dad's old Fraternity brothers on Sunday morning. Mr. Strawn's outfit consisted of pink pants, a light colored dress shirt, and a baby blue vest. As Jeremy Mateyk said so boldly, "Now I see where you get your fashion sense from, Jack."

John Carr- John got back like 2 hours ago. Not really sure how his weekend went specifically, but he did mention that he was defeated in ping-pong, which "pissed" him off. This then started the discussion of why we didn't play ping-pong more, seeing we had a table. Then Jackson noted that we had screwed it into our basement ceiling. After a brief debate, we voted to not ride our bikes to campus to play a quick game or 10.

Jeremy Mateyk- The only Northerner currently resided in the house, Jeremy did not return home for Easter, saying, "I hate cars, I hate driving, I hate family get-togethers, I hate weekends. Long live the Union." He said he hated cars. I know right? Weird.... Jeremy did spend his weekend playing a 99 life game of super smash (284 kills) and watching the Jack Black bust "Nacho Libre"

Joe Danehower- This family man headed back to Chantilly to spend time with the Family on this glorious holiday to begin passover. Consisting on a traditional Jewish diet of unleavened bread and no pork, Joe participated in a men's league basketball game and played baseball with his brothers. He also went to church, saw his grandma and made a scrumptious Easter Brunch for relatives. "James, that's a lie. I'm Not Jewish! Don't write that! I eat ham sandwiches almost everyday. I love bread and pork. Don't make me hit you. I don't care if you say funny things about me, they just need to be true."

Evan Underwood- Whereabouts currently unknown. Went to Fishersville for the weekend.

James Harris- Went to NOVA for the weekend, had a good time, I'm tired of writing now, if you wanna hear more you can ask me in person or over text messaging.

<3's
James C. Harris

I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most Of It Left

Steve Wold (Seasick Steve) is an American bluesman, but would rather would be called “a song and dance man.” He plays broken guitars and sings the blues. When asked about his nickname, Steve said: “because it’s just true: I always get seasick.” Lately Evan and I have been really into blues, along with other members of the Blacksburg community, we've become regulars at "Blues Night" downtown at The Cellar (Norton and Bobby even play sometimes.) Seasick Steve is a genuine trainhopping, jailbirding, cowboying, carnival working, migrant farm picking, occassional tramping, near-fatal heart attack surviving, old hobo. He's legit. And hes 69 years old.

Seasick Steve's 2008 album "I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most Of It Left" is fantastic. The opening song "I Started Out With Nothin' " and "Thunderbird" hit hard, and "Fly By Night" is a slow heartbreaker. Seasick Steve's voice is raspy and soulful, his first album "Dog House Music" was recorded in his kitchen on a microphone from the 1930's and "I Started Out With Nothin' " was recorded in a actual studio. The songs are new and fresh, narrative gems, deeply personal yet universal, howls or whispers of joy and despair, and they are always blues songs. Steve loses none of the grittiness that makes his music unique. He even commentates at the beginning of most of his songs explaining what they're about (chiggers for example) or how he should have thrown the guitar he's playing with away a long time ago haha, it has given Evan and I great joy to quote him the past few days.

Point is, its a great blues album, check it out. Listen to it while: cooking soul food, driving on a nice day with the windows down, or washing dishes in a sudsy sink

Here's the track listings:

1. Started Out With Nothing
2. Walking Man
3. St Louis Slim
4. Happy Man
5. Prospect Lane
6. Thunderbird
7. Fly By Night
8. Just Like A King
9. One True
10. Chiggers
11. My Youth

The Marvelous Magic of Matthew Hypes

Yes my friends, tonight was glorious.

As many of you know, a good friend of ours, (Matthew Hypes) is a professional chef (no joke), and has a passion for the men of Willard. As many of you also know, I have a passion for food rivaled by almost no one (see Big Man Club post, circa November 2010). (And yes I notice that i am using a lot of parentheses). Anyway, today Hypes joined us in Blacksburg for fellowship and freedom. Hypes loves this blog, and we love Hypes, so I figured I would describe our time with him today.

He arrived at approximately 4:52 p.m. at Willard, from where he immediately jumped in Jackson's Mazda and joined us in YL Leadership, held in beautiful Squires hall. Much has changed in Blacksburg since Hypes was last here (last year for the Lupe Fiasco concert). Anyway, leadership tonight was senior reflections (Col. 3:17), which we all enjoyed immensely, especially Hypes being able to hear Mark Richardson's (Hypes was his leader in high school.) After that, we headed back to Willard, where Hypes started cooking and we started playing SuperSmash (Joe beat me twice, but both were cheap victories, no honor there). After a few quick smash sessions, we went up stairs and chatted with Isaac, Hypes, and Caleb (HS senior from Towson, MD, who will be coming to Tech next year after visiting this weekend.) (Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, HI..) Then came the most miraculous portion of the day. Hypes' roasted chicken.

The master chef held nothing back tonight, with Roasted Chicken, Orza salad, and Bread pudding. My mouth is watering now thinking about what a good meal it was. Afterwards we sat around the table in a Willard tradition and shared our struggles and encouragements. After dinner, Hypes left to make the long trip home, and we retired to our various activities, (I went on campus to write a paper, which is going horribly.) So in closing, thanks Hypes for a lovely time. We miss you already, and eagerly anticipate your next visit, which will hopefully be longer.

<3's
James Harris

Man's Best Friend

at approximately noon last saturday the willard house began to plot and plan on bringing in a new member to the household. we had been toying with the idea of getting a dog for a long time, but we had never been serious. then for some unknown reason, could have been extreme boredom on a rainy saturday, the thought became serious, fast. within ten minutes a majority of us were on our computers looking at craigslist and the humane society websites. james was the most serious about this idea, we caught him multiple times day dreaming about cuddling with a puppy by the fire while he read. none of these things actually happen but james claimed that if we had a dog they would. we found multiple dogs on craigslist that fit our needs and sent out emails telling the people we would come pick the dog up immediately. our one and only returned email was concerning this mut by the name of toby. the current owners did not know what kind of dog he was or how old, but he looked so adorable in the pictures it was impossible to resist. during some more day dreaming and discussing we realized that on our lease in bold lettering it states no pets. this would be out biggest obstacle. our loving landlord michael powell has been very gracious and helpful to us over the past year we figured he would just say yes. however, we were all nervous and none of us actually wanted to call and pop the question to him. after an hour of annoying and persuading james he finally made the call. james was apprehensive but had this excited tone in his voice as he made the call. james politely asked mr. powell if we could have a dog, with no hesitation mr. powell said no... we could not hear the response as bystanders but the tone in james' voice dropped and he may have shed a tear. we all sat in silence for about 3 seconds and then decided to go on with our rainy boring saturday. so next time youre over at willard, dont bring up dogs, its still a sensitive subject for some. attached is a picture of toby.

Google Adsense...more like Google Scamsense

Bamboozled.

Its the name of a movie, an onomatopoeia, and also what happened to the writers of the blog.

As most of you probably knew, for the past 7 weeks or so, we have had ads for dumb companies on the side of the blog, which we were told we were going to be "paid" for when people looked at/clicked on the ads.

The first sign that something was wrong was with the process to sign up for this nonsense. It was a long process, one where you needed to enter a four digit PIN number in order to receive your money. They said this number would be sent in the mail in 2 weeks. However, on that page, it said if the number didn't arrive, you could request another after 4 weeks. The United States Postal Service has been around since 1775 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps). 236 years. After all that time, they've gotten pretty good at the routine of taking a piece of paper (or cardstock) and transporting it from one place to another. So the question is, why was Google assuming that we wouldn't get this piece of mail? The tools never sent it to me is my prognosis. However, being the good natured individual that I am, I naturally let this pass and re-ordered the PIN number. Unfortunately, the other day I received the following email from Google saying that we were the ones cheating...

Hello,

After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Yes, I did appeal. In it, I had a few scathing words, and called them cheaters and liars. They have yet to respond. After doing a bit of internet research, (on a Yahoo search engine...) I found numerous reports of other people being cheated out of their hard-earned money as well, right at the time we did, when were about to hit a hundred dollars in earnings. Additionally, the advertisers are also cheated out of their money in multiple cases, and the supposed refund to them is never enacted.

I'm writing this email in order to start a boycott of Google in all ways. This is the last time I will use Google Chrome to browse the internet. Go ahead, call shenanigans. I will use Yahoo search from now on. Those are the only viable options I have of boycotting, but please join me in this. We need to stick it to the G-man. This is not a joke, though it is funny.

Here are some more articles about this scam...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/united_states/article703023.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=520875

<3's
James Crockett Harris III

P.S. I hate Google.

Routine

I find it hard to write in this blog unless something extremely funny/ out of the ordinary has happened to myself or one of the housemates recently. Unfortunately, the only strange thing that I have noticed is the weather jumping to 80 yesterday, and then snowing on the way to class this morning. Oh and on Saturday I ran a 5k. As you can imagine, afterwards I was winded and covered in mud.

Anyhow, here I am killing time between classes in D2, and Scholar has decided to stop working, (Scholar is where I find out all info about all my classes) so that sucks. But it got me thinking, "I should write another blog or Sam Vaughn is gonna be pissed" and then "What should I write about?" and it hit me that I view life as a long string of menial tasks interrupted by hilarious antics and odd happenings. This my friends, is not a good way to view life.

When Jesus said, I have come to give you life and life to the full, he did not mean only when you're fully awake, not in class, not stressed about work, and not driving long distances. The whole full life thing kinda implies that it happens all the time, whether you want it or not. As followers, I feel that we cruise over this statement as a just a brief feel good, and keep going. But this is the essence of following Christ! Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that life to the full means happiness pouring out from every pore 24 hours a day. Full does not = happy; or constant joy. Your life will be full. Full of heartache, full of love, full of relationships. Yet when we forget that Jesus wants this life to the full to be all the time, and not just when something fun happens, we're missing out on a lot.

Don't put yourself in cruise control like I do so often. Don't do things halfway. Christ didn't get up on the cross for half an hour and then decide that's good enough and peace out. Live! Don't look forward to the future, it may not happen. Live now, and live to the full. When you're falling asleep at night, live life to the full. When you're riding your bike to class, live life to the full. When your hanging with friends, live life to the full. And so on, and so forth.

<3's to all,
James C. Harris III

Seven Swans Reimagined

this album was put out by an independent compilation company "on joyful wings." Its a wonderful cover album of sufjan stevens' album "seven swans." actually, as a matter of fact, if you haven't listened to the original album you need to buy it now. seriously. its a musically phenomenal masterpiece of a record that is in my opinion unmatched in terms of sufjan's creativity. the album is beautifully and subtly laced with the gospel. Its one of my top five favorite albums ever, so I was a bit apprehensive about people messing with it but it turned out pretty sick. derek webb's cover of "in the devil's territory" is wonderful, he definitely adds a different spin on the song with a mix of electronics, wood block beats, and snare drums. my favorite track on the album is joshua james' rendition of "to be alone with you." its incredible. he slowed the song down a bit and plays it on the piano. his voice is folky and somber and a violin and banjo join in later in the song, it literally gives me chills every time I listen to the song, its awesome. the only track I didn't like was david crowder's cover of "the transfiguration," its a bit cheesy sounding, especially at the end of the track, it sounds like a freaking techno song. I dunno maybe I just have an issue with david crowder covering a sufjan song.. regardless the album is a good look and you should check it out. you should know, however, that the track "abraham" was not covered on the album for some reason.. kind of a bummer but apparently on joyful wings is going to release it for free later. thats all for now, heres the track listing, PEACE

1. Bonnie "Prince" Billy "All The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands"

2. The Gregory Brothers "The Dress Looks Nice on You"

3. Derek Webb "In the Devil's Territory"

4. Joshua James "To Be Alone With You"

5. Damion Suomi "Abraham"

6. Unwed Sailor "Sister"

7. Wakey!Wakey! "Size Too Small"

8. Elin Smith "We Won't Need Legs to Stand"

9. DM Stith "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

10. Half-Handed Cloud "He Woke Me Up Again"

11. Carl Hauck "Seven Swans"

12. David Crowder*Band "The Transfiguration"

13. Jason Harrod "I Went Dancing With My Sister" (B-side)

14. Shannon Stephens "Waste of What Your Kids Won't Have" (B-side)

15. Inlets "Borderline" (B-side)