Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.

This was a fun wedding.

I did a 35-mile ride this morning. Got out the door a little later than I'd planned so the temps were up, and so was the wind. How does the wind know to switch directions the same time I do so that it's always a head wind?

I carry my cell phone in the middle pocket of my jersey in case I need to call for help. It went off at the 28 mile point but I let it go to voice mail. When I got home I listened and found out my MacBook Pro had arrived. HOORAY! So after a shower I headed over to pick it up.

I started by reading the very small, very brief manual. Mostly it just tells me where ports and buttons are. So I screwed up my courage and fired it up. Early feedback:

• the look and feel are cool. I like the back-lit keyboard, the screen is vivid (also backlit and LCD), and the billet aluminum case is nice.
  
• The touch pad does lots of stuff depending on how many fingers you use. There are no buttons. So far I especially like that two fingers dragged across the pad scrolls up, down or across.
  
• Safari 4 does not like Yahoo! mail. So I downloaded Firefox. But I goofed something up because I have a Firefox icon on the desktop as well as in the dock. But I can't seem to get rid of the former.
• There's definitely a learning curve. I'm preparing myself to gut it through the first two weeks. In the meantime I'll use the PC when I need to get a task done efficiently and/or on deadline (like writing this blog post).

I have Slate bookmarked because I find their articles thought provoking even when I disagree. Each Thursday they have an advice column called "Dear Prudence." The columnist is Emily Yoffe, and while her advice comes from a completely secular perspective I find the questions and her answers something of an indicator of what's going on out there.
Today I came across this column by Yoffe.
Superbly written and extremely poignant. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who had damp eyes by the time I got to the end.

Short post tonight. First, I'm tired and sore from this morning's ride. I need to learn how to dial back the effort for longer rides.
Second, I need to write the blog entry for the Pathway site.
Because the growing majority of people use an internet search engine to find things, including churches, we want Pathway Bible Church to appear high on any search using specific terms. Our goal is on page one (that is, in the top 10). We hired a firm to do what's called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). We gave them about a dozen search terms, including:

• Goodyear church
• Litchfield Park church
• Bible church Phoenix
• Expository preaching
• etc.

Then they go to work doing things that move us up the results for any search using those terms. And they tell us things we can do to help in that effort.

One of those things is to have constantly changing content, like a blog with daily posts. Search engines have "spiders" that go out and find sites to add to their data base. Sites with changing content get the spiders' attention. And if the search terms are used in that changing content (blog posts) it's even better.

So I'm tasked with writing that post and using at least some of those dozen terms at least twice per post. But I don't want it to look artificial, like it's only purpose is to use specific terms. I want to say something meaningful. Thankfully it's only supposed to be three paragraphs or so in length. But because it represents the church and not just a doofus - like this blog - I need to do it carefully so it speaks well of Pathway.

Oh, BTW, the more people who click on that page of our site the higher we rank among those search engines. I'm just sayin....