My wife and I began our life together without television. After her long days of class, we loved to relax, talk, play cards. Yet somewhere along the line, we got a television, subscribed to cable and got into the habit of eating dinner in front of the television. Looking back on it now, it was like worshipping at some kind of altar: this do in remembrance of me.

Like any engrained habit, it was difficult to give up at first. Not only did we have “our shows”, but we had our rituals (none worth recounting).

Two things, though, frightened me most of all about my television consumption habits. First, I found my son forming the same kind of rituals. He’d wake up in the morning and immediately ask to watch a movie. Any time he was feeling upset, he’d ask for a movie. Worse yet, I found myself getting angry when my own viewing was interrupted. I’d fly off the handle at my wife or snap at my son if they dared intrude on my alone time with an engrossing show.

I am embarrassed to admit that kind of a reaction, given its relative insignificance; but it became the impetus for me to cut the cord and focus on the more important things in life. Our family has gone back to having dinner around the table, talking over our day and just generally sharing focused time together. Evenings are spent interacting, giving and taking, moving around together, being productive together, doing something together beside mindless consumption.

In fact, I found the whole exercise so fruitful that we decided to drop our cable altogether—saving about $70 monthly. That’s enough per year to pay for a weeklong camping trip.

Why not try it yourself?

Note: I realize this summary is coming a month after it’s respective August challenge. I have no defense for failing the September challenge, except to say that every night I prayed with my son we talked at length about the things we are thankful for. However, I felt the lesson I learned with my television fast was important enough to share, even a month after the fact.

Ah, technology.

See, I met Tim a few years back now online. Nearly all of our communication has been through email or IM. I scoured the annals of my inbox and discovered that one of the first conversations we had was about technology: website and logo design. We were both working to master this blogging platform called Movable Type and needed all the help we could get. So it’s rather fitting that my conversation with Tim today would focus on two of our shared interests: technology and faith.

It’s been five years since that first email thread and Tim has been working hard. Though he’s stepped back a bit from web design, he is now ministering as an ordained pastor at Grace Fellowship in Toronto. He is the author of several books. And that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he continues his impressive habit of writing something daily at Challies.com. (He’s written every day since October 31, 2003!) His consistency and his voice have inspired and encouraged many, many people.

This is a bit of his story:

Rogie is the sole proprietor of Komodo Media in Helena, Montana where he designs and develops beautiful web interfaces. He’s also recently been dabbling in illustration work, to much success, and working hard to open Fine Goods Market, a “hypertext boutique featuring fine goods” crafted by the man himself.

This is a bit of his story:

I’ve been working on some interviews that I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks, perhaps months.

When I first thought of doing these interviews, I really just had a single goal in mind: praising the worth of people I admire. I’ve met many talented people and every one is a storehouse of knowledge, experience and history. I felt far more compelled to write about their adventures and advances than the rather pretentious work of chronicling my own.

However, I realized very quickly—even while preparing questions for my first interview—that I needed some kind of point of view. I was interviewing myself, asking the most important question: “Why do you want to interview these folks?”

The answer is plain, but it says a lot about how I view life. I’m interviewing these folks because I want to hear their stories. I believe the story of what brought you to your successes are an integral part of those successes. Of course I want to know about what you accomplished and how often you had to practice and all the technical ins and outs of your craft. But I also want to find out about the detours and potholes and the other incidentals that are usually not-so-incidental. See, I believe in a holistic life. I find that the decisions and choices people make in one part of their life impacts all the rest of it.

So these interviews will be me, talking with people I admire who have done well, giving them the attention they deserve, learning about their craft and ultimately casting a light on the path that brought them to where they are today.

I hope you find their crafts and stories as compelling as I have.

I need to remember these moments.

Admittedly, a part of me wants to chronicle my own personal parental journey for the sake of grabbing hold to something that slips every man’s grasp: that elusive moment in time when we stop for a moment, lift our heads and declare the beauty before us to be good. The river of time pulls us so quickly away from those moments, though, try as we might to pause longer and savor them; and we’re swept onwards with a handful of earth that seems to dissolve away all too quickly in its flow.

Still, I cannot help but rage against the dying of the light. Savoring these moments—celebrating their arrival and departure—helps carry us through moments of darkness and difficulty yet to come and, perhaps more importantly, helps us articulate what matters most of all as we navigate the river ahead.

I love to pause with my son. When we’re lying outside in the grass and he wants to get up for the thousandth time and run in circles, I ask him to stop for a moment and listen. “Tell me what you hear.” The sound of the neighbor’s mower isn’t important, but the moment of remembrance we just created is. In that fleeting moment, he learned the importance of paying attention to the things that are easy to forget.

So this recollection is my effort to recline in the grass, close my eyes and tell you what I hear.

I’ve noticed that as he develops, Ethan has picked up certain conversational patterns.

When he hears something he’s never heard before, he’ll ask “Daddy, what is that…” and attempt to recreate the sound. When I was putting him to bed the other day, my phone signal created a bit interference on his noise generator. He sat up straightaway and blurted out, “Daddy, what is that…” buzz, buzz, click. When we were praying before bed last night, his stomach gurgled, prompting a “Daddy, what is that…” gurgle, gurgle. The printed word doesn’t do his impressions justice.

I’ve also been amazed (and frightened) at how much he hears and processes from other conversations that get worked into his own. The other day, he came into the living room where I was working on my computer and started out with, “Daddy, look at me.” When I looked up from the screen and he knew he had my full attention, he said very matter-of-factly, “Daddy, you have to come outside and push me on the swing. It’s your job.” Jessica told me later that she told him outside that she was too short to get him in the children’s swing and that it was a “daddy job”.

Prayer time with him has always been precious, but now that he’s older, it’s become a much sweeter time of participation. I usually begin and thank God for our family, and he usually starts right in with a list of things he’s thankful for: his family, his friends, the places we went or the memorable moments of the day. What’s especially interesting is to hear the things that make the biggest impact on him, especially things he brings up long after they’ve passed. A few months back, my sister’s 2-year-old daughter fell down the basement stairs at my parent’s house while we were visiting. Thankfully, she was alright, but those frantic moments must have had an impact on Ethan, because even now he’ll pray for “Harmony who fell down the stairs.”

One of the meaningful moments so far, though, was when he and I were working in the crawlspace beneath our house. It’s smelly, dark and cramped with only about 3 feet of headroom. You would have thought I’d taken him to the zoo. “Ooooh, what is that?” he’d ask about everything down there. He was fascinated with all the water pipes. “Red means hot and blue means cold,” he would remind me (and continued to remind me for months). But my heart was touched when said plainly, “I’m glad to be down here with daddy.”

There are countless funny quirks, mysteries of his amazing little brain that I can’t quite understand but delight in nonetheless. According to him, everything tastes like applesauce. He visits an imaginary land behind the couch called “Munch-a-munch”. If you ask him any morning what he dreamed about, he’ll tell you, “starfish”.

I could go on and on, but time is like inflation—it always seems to move faster than I can. We just passed another Father’s Day, and do you know what my children gave me? Another day full of beautiful memories.

This month’s challenge, though infinitely more frightening, will probably be easier.  I’m giving up caffeine this month.  My life is already so full, adding something is much harder than taking something away.  So even though my body is already starting to experience DT’s at the thought of no caffeine, remembering not to drink coffee will be easier in some ways than trying to fit one more thing into my schedule.

Of course, I may have to avoid any kind of public writing until my body acclimates to life without caffeine and my temperament improves. (Apologies ahead of time to those who have to deal with me in person at some point in the next 30 days.)

If you’re wondering what this is all about, be sure to read about my 2011 monthly challenges.

Last night, we all piled in the car to drive up to my parents house in Troy, NY. Typically, we stop at one of the rest areas along I-87, but I told my wife that just wouldn’t do since I had to fit in something new before the day was out.

So we pulled off the Mahwah exit just before crossing over from New Jersey into New York and stopped at a nondescript pizza joint for a bite to eat.

Jessica needed to nurse Anna, so she sat out in the car while Ethan and I went in for a few slices of pizza and a game of Ms. Pac-Man (his choice). I brought the slices out to the car so we could all eat together.

If you’ve never traveled several hours in a mid-sized car with two small children, it’s hard to understand how cramped things can get. There we were, sitting in the parking lot, Jessica trying to eat while feeding Anna, Ethan sitting on my lap sharing a slice of pizza and all of us feeling a bit cramped in the front seat.

Suddenly, a well-kept man approached my door and signalled for my attention. Maybe I’ve been a pastor too long, but I immediately thought he was going to ask for money. Instead, when I opened the door, he politely told me that he has 8 children of his own and that he felt compelled to be a blessing, at which point he handed me twenty dollars. Jessica and I both graciously protested, but he was persistent so we took the money, determined to use it to bless someone else.

But that act of kindness was profound for me. I didn’t get this man’s name or his address. There’s no way I can even thank him or return the favor. He gave in a way that drew attention to the gift more than the giver. And frankly, the real gift for me wasn’t the twenty dollars; I’ll be giving that away soon. The act of selfless giving impacted me more than anything and is what I’m most grateful for.

And now I have an even better idea for something new to try…

My April 30-day challenge is to do something new every day and I figured it would be a good idea to capture them all in one place.

Here’s my list so far:

1. Made eclairs from scratch.
2. Learned to make music with a loop box.
3. Learned how to treat wood with boiled linseed oil.
4. Got on the wrong train and got lost in the Secaucus Junction station.
5. Turned 34.
6. Launched the new AMCtv.com redesign.
7. Took an exit I’ve never taken, stopped at a restaurant I’ve never been to and got blessed by someone I’ve never met before.
8. Visited Prospect Park in Troy.
9. Discovered the Postenkill Creek Falls.
10. At a rest area, gave an elderly lady from Quebec directions to Florida and helped her check the oil in her car.
11. Tried out Pax Wholesome Foods, but it turned out to be exactly like Europa or Fresh & Co.—places I eat at every day. New thing fail.
12. Watched a new movie: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
13. —
14. Got a killer new app for the iPhone: Tweetbot!

I’ll keep this page updated throughout the month. Feel free to suggest ideas if you have them!

On Friday, I baked some amazing eclairs, which turned out pretty tasty for my first time. On Saturday, I got a loop box for my birthday and learned how to use it.

Here’s a rough list of ideas I’ve got for this month:

• Watch a new movie
• Wear a new outfit
• Cook something new
• Try a new food
• Eat at a new restaurant
• Study a topic I know nothing about
• Try a new board game
• Figure out how to do something you don’t know how to do
• Read a new book
• Learn a magic trick
• Learn a new song on the piano/guitar
• Play a prank on someone
• Watch a new television show
• Find a new poem
• Teach something new to my son

I need your help, though! As you can tell, this list, while good, could use some—inspiration. I’m looking to try new things and I need some interesting, thought-provoking and just plain outlandish ideas. Got any?

For those of you not following along, instead of a year-long resolution, I’m attempting 12 different 30 day challenges. The challenge for March was to be off the computer by 9pm every day.

Unfortunately, between deadlines at church and two big site relaunches at work, there were a whole lot of factors that made it almost impossible to succeed with this challenge. I also found that as a parent of small children, I didn’t want spend time on the computer while they were awake which left me with a lot of backlog after they’d gone to sleep.

The other thing I realized was how much the computer is an integral part of everything I do. If I wanted to watch a movie in my bedroom, I did it on our laptop. If I took a picture, it was usually on my iPhone. Jess and I often play Word with Friends together—which happens on the iPhone.

I’m not sure if that means we’re living in the post-PC era or if I just have an addiction. Either way, at least you guys get to see me failing every now and again.

We just crossed over into March, which means my February photo challenge is done. I’m not sure if it’s because February only has 28 days this year, but the end of this challenge caught me completely by surprise. Here and gone.

It was a fun challenge, though not much of a challenge for me since I’m such a shutterbug by nature. The challenge typically went something like this: take pictures throughout the day that summarized it’s events; sift through them at the end of the day to find the one that best represented the mood of the day; post that one with a summary of the day.

Of course, if you were following along at home, you noticed there were a few days where I gave it not that much thought. Those were the days I forgot about the challenge until I was lying in bed at night. And sad to say, there was one day that I forgot altogether (the 22nd).

As a sidenote, I had a lot of fun building the challenge site. I piggy-backed off the Flickr api I’m already leveraging for photos.plasticmind.com, but changed the presentation significantly to take advantage of Flickr’s new larger thumbnail size. I also added in some CSS3 transition effects to make the overall experience nicer and dropped in some social tools to make it easy for Facebook and Twitter users to share and react to each photo. I’m probably going to build this new format out across the entire photo site when I get some free time.

All in all, though, it was a good experience and certainly one I’d like to try again. Did any of you do a photo challenge for February? Some other challenge? I’m going to post another update in the next few days about my March challenge (no computer after 9pm!), but I’d love to hear about how you’re making out on these 30 day challenges…

Now before you start complaining that there are only 28 days in February—I realize that. I’m using the term “30 Day Challenge” loosely, so settle down.

And no, I haven’t forgotten about it. You thought I had, didn’t you? You thought since I didn’t link to photos on the 1st and 2nd from Twitter that I just forgot altogether, right? Well, you’ll have to forgive me, I’m still a little rusty with this social networking thing after 30 days off. Hard to get back into the mindset.

Seriously, though, I’ve been taking at least a photo day and posting it to Flickr, but I realized that I didn’t want the photos taken for the challenge getting mixed with all the other “stuff” I post to Flickr; so I created a special section on my photoblog for surfacing the 30 day challenge photos.

I take a lot of photos, so to put a finer point on the challenge, I’m going to try post pictures that best summarize the day. Of course, some of my days can get really boring; or rather, there aren’t many good ways to represent the repetition of my day visually (how do you represent 10 hours of meetings in a photo?). So perhaps the greater challenge isn’t so much taking a photo, but adding a little visual variety into my day.

I’ll probably do most of my posting in the evening after I have a chance to look through the pictures from the day. But you never know. Guess you’re just going to have to stop in often.