Material Girls and Boys in the Spiritual World

Remember the Police? We Are Spirits in the Material World. They were too cool. Isabelle got me a DVD of all their videos the Christmas before last. Walking on the Moon, So Lonely, etc. They perk me right up.

But how about it? How often does anyone really recognize either of these paradoxes (Being Spirits in the Material World or being Materials in the Spiritual World)? It's so easy just going along being material in the material world.

Last night we went to Target, and I browsed the Blu-Ray selection, which I last visited before Christmas so we would have a few good flicks for our new Blu-Ray player that we got for Christmas to go along with our new HD TV. Most movies were 24.99, 29.99 or 34.99, which was OK for Christmas, but more than I wanted to pay. Then, there it was: T2, $14.99. That's Arnold. Schwarzenegger. In his prime. #73 on imdb.com's top 250. I already have The Terminator, on DVD (#188). A no-brainer, right? Less than the price of 2 tickets to the actual movies for a high-def version of one of my favorite movies of all time, which we can watch on a projector with surround sound.

$16 (with tax). So we can stay home and watch it for 2+ hours, every once in a while. Oh and so we can watch the first one for 2 hours also just prior, most likely, also.

Does anyone else have a budget? We do. That's our material contract with ourselves. But it's a bit preposterous, isn't it? How many people in the world never see $16 at one time? That just slid right into our disposable income. I don't want to think about it.

Oh, and that time we spend watching our movies, that comes from our calendar, which is another contract with ourselves. And (gulp!) it's more spiritual than material! I really don't want to think about this one.

It's so much easier being reactive than pro-active. What must we pay? Bills! What must we do? Change diapers! But wait--why am I watching TV?

Trained! (And A Travel Reprieve)

Ah, training! Nothing scratches a technologist's itch quite like a week of on-site, pertinent, challenging, and thorough training. Our Database Administrators at my workplace (Bank Of America) were thoughtful enough to include us developers in a course called "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SSIS for Administrators." For those who are technology or acronym challenged or both, SQL stands for Structured Query Language (a standard across all databases) and SSIS stands for SQL Server Integration Services.

Another interesting connection here is that a friend of mine since I first arrived in St. Louis, Gerald Hinson, was on the SQL Server 2005 team at Microsoft, and here I was learning all about it. Pretty cool. Gerald can be found among my friends in Facebook. Gerald has since moved on to the Microsoft Zune team.

And, great news about our upcoming trip back to Mauritius. We had been told by Air Mauritius that they had closed their US office. Instead they upgraded, moving from New Jersey to New York. And when we checked, their prices for tickets from St. Louis to Mauritius via London were the same as the last time we went. Whew! No Euros or Pounds required, apparently. Who's coming?