Ted Carnahan

I just got home Saturday from St. Louis, where for the last eleven weeks I have been taking a summer unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield, MO. I’m really happy to be back home with Jennifer! CPE was an excellent experience, and I recommend St. Luke’s to anyone who is looking for a CPE site in that area. I just uploaded some pictures from CPE. There are a few shots around the lunch table, the official group photos, a lot of pictures of the Cardinals game we attended, and a photoshopped picture of our supervisors (Mari Chollet and Chuck Orme-Rogers) as powerful Jedi.

Just six weeks ago, I announced the open beta test of WartVid, a simple website to lend and borrow DVDs. Today I’m pleased to announce that there are over 1000 media items available to borrow and almost a quarter of the student body has signed up to use it.

There are two new features:

• Quickly browse alphabetically by title with the new “letter cloud”.
• TV shows and VHS tapes – everyone was entering these in anyway, so they are now searchable under the “Browse” tab.

Next up: allowing anyone to lend a DVD out to anyone else, whether they are a WartVid user or not, by typing their name in. Then maybe some Dojo.

I created a system for lending and borrowing DVDs within the Wartburg community. The result: WartVid!

Here’s the announcement:

Greetings fellow students!

Realizing that many of us have prodigious DVD collections that often times collect dust, I have created WartVid, a simple website to coordinate lending and borrowing DVDs from other people in the Wartburg community.

It’s very easy to use – just create your account here: http://www.wartvid.com/signup and then (optionally) type in your DVD collection, one DVD per line (and try to capitalize correctly). Then you can browse other people’s movies, pick out ones you would like to borrow, and request them. It’s up to you to get in touch with the lender to get the DVDs, but the website coordinates the contact information for you.

When someone borrows your DVDs, you can keep track of who has what at all times. When you receive a DVD back, check it in to your library. The system sends emails to coordinate lending and borrowing, so please enter an email address you check regularly.

Best of all, WartVid is completely free. The service has been in alpha testing for a few weeks, and it has performed well. In fact, there are already 260 movies available for you to borrow for free right now.

I hope you enjoy WartVid. Please feel free to email me with questions, suggestions, or bug reports.

Peace,

Ted Carnahan, M.Div junior

Well, we’re deep in the dank murky corners of the different Greek verb forms in week 3 of summer Greek. One of my classmates commented that he’s about to “Greek Out,” and I liked that phrase so much that I named this Koine Greek verb quiz program after it.

As I understand it, we need to be able to take the other principle parts of various verbs and remember which verb (especially irregular ones) goes with which first principle part. So feel free to Greek Out on this verb recognition quiz.

Jennifer and I are moving into our new digs here at Wartburg Theological Seminary. I’ll post some pictures later.

My ELCA Candidacy Interview went well on April 13; I received a “postive entrance decision” which means that I’m in the candidacy process now. I also found out a few days ago that I got into Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, IA. It looks like I’ll be moving around July 15, and Summer Greek will start on July 22. I’m nervous about all of the things that have to happen in the meantime: moving, wrapping up various projects at church, work stuff, etc. etc. ad nauseum, ad infinitum, but I’m excited to take this next step.

That’s two hurdles down, four years worth to go…

Now hear this:

I got news from Wartburg Theological Seminary that, provided that my last recommendation form and a stray college transcript get turned in soon, I will get my provisional acceptance to the seminary. I also found out that I will have to take Summer Greek, so I can expect to start the third week in July. Less than 4 months to go!

My website was offline for about a day. Sorry about that - Nightmarehost’s one-click installer picked the wrong database hostname (but the right database, fortunately) for my Wordpress installation, and when I deleted that hostname, it took my site down (but not my data). Either that, or I picked wrong - but I’d rather blame them.

Merl Ledford III is my new personal hero. I read a terrific letter from this attorney whose “middle-aged, conservative clients” are accused by the RIAA of downloading gangsta-rap. He’s taking the fight to them. In his words: “It is no fun becoming a litigation target as the result of your clients’ widely-discredited tactics.”

That is all.