Appearances and the NBA Dress Code

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This past week, the NBA officially released their new dress code for players. The general policy is business casual when they are “engaged in team or league business.” In addition, when a player is at a game but not in uniform they are required to wear a sports coat and dress shoes.

There’s been quite a bit of initial reaction written to the policy. Much of the discussion has centered on whether or not it’s racially biased. Clarence Green wrote to the USA Today saying, “I cannot help but also wonder about the NBA’s reasons for banning items more commonly worn by the African-American players, such as flashy neck jewelry. The new rules seem racist . . . and to threaten a guy’s career with a dress code rule is just over the top.”

Charles Barkley of all people had a really great response on the Jay Leno show. He supports the new policy. He said, “If a well-dressed white kid and a black kid wearing a do-rag and throwback jersey came to me in a job interview, I’d hire the white kid. That’s reality. That’s the No. 1 reason I support the dress code.” That’s not racism. That’s business.

Every business in the country has a dress policy. If you don’t follow it, you don’t work there. The business wants to portray a certain image, and they have every right to choose what that image is. The reality is that people form opinions on others based on what they wear. If you’re in shorts and a t-shirt, you’re not going to thought of as a professional. Also, if you’re wearing a suit people notice.

I’ve had personal experience with this at my church. Whenever I wear a suit, which is not very often, I get a number of comments from people along the lines of “Looking sharp,” “Whoa, what’s the occasion,” or “Thanks for dressing up today!” I find it funny, but it’s reality. In 1 Samuel 16:7, God told Samuel, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” It’d be great if we could see each other for what we really are, but we can’t see another person’s heart. If we could, it wouldn’t matter what we wore. But since we can only see the outward appearance, we need to realize that others will make assumptions on us based on what we wear.

Welcome to Texas World Series

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The curse of Big Tex is finally over. For the first time in the State’s history, Texas will play host to the World Series. In their 40 years+ existences, neither the Rangers nor the Astros had made it to the World Series. That had been the longest dry spell for any state with a MLB team. Last night in St. Louis, MO that curse was lifted . . . at least halfway.

The Rangers have the longest-running, most pathetic history of any MLB franchise in existence. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Rangers:

The Rangers (when combined with their predecessor the Senators) are the oldest franchise that has yet to appear in a World Series; in fact, they have yet to win any playoff series. In their entire history the team has a combined one playoff win (on the road at Yankee Stadium of all places; they have never won a home playoff game).

The media talked a lot about the Curse of the Bambino with the Red Sox last year. They made such a big deal about how the Red Sox hadn’t won the World Series since 1918. That drought, however, was not nearly as long the Curse of the Billy Goat that the Cubs are under. They have not won the World Series since 1908 and haven’t been in it since 1945!!! Up until this year, the White Sox had not appeared since 1959 and their last championship was in 1917. Sensing an east coast bias, maybe?

There is a small list of teams that have never appeared in a world series. That list of five teams includes the Rangers, Devil Rays, Expos, Mariners, and Rockies. Teams that have appeared in but not won it are the Astros (this year being their first appearance), Padres, and Brewers. This is the list of the mediocre and sometimes downright lame MLB teams.

I think the saying “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” can apply to Rangers fans. We don’t know what it’s like to see our team win the World Series. In fact, we only know the joy that comes from ONE PLAYOFF WIN EVER!!!

Thanks for bailing us north Texans out Houston. I have a feeling that the Rangers won’t be appearing in the World Series in a long, long time.

Tomatoes, Drive-Thru, and Hot Sauce

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I must confess something. I hate drive-thrus. I know it might sound weird coming from someone spent two and a half years working at a place that has one, but I do. The main reason I hate them is because they’re so frustrating. Today, Brea and I went to Taco Bueno after church and of course went through the drive-thru. I wanted a combo and with no tomatoes. You would think that I asked for a Big Mac. As soon as the word “combo” comes out of your mouth, they immediately reply “What drink would you like?” Have we never been through a drive-thru before? We know the process. A combo comes with a drink. Don’t worry. We’ll let you know what kind of beverage we want. Heaven forbid we’d want to make a modification to our combo before we let you know what drink you want. Not only that, but how hard is it to figure out that when we say “Combo # 5 with no tomatoes” we mean we want no tomatoes ON THE ENTIRE COMBO!!! If we only wanted no tomatoes on one item, we’d say that. Every freakin’ time they have trouble unwrapping this mystery of the no tomatoes order.

With Taco Bueno in particular, I really don’t think they really listen to what you say. When you’re finished placing your order, they ask if you want hot sauce. It doesn’t really matter what you say here. You’re getting hot sauce. I can’t remember one time that they haven’t given me hot sauce, no matter what I say.

Ok, I feel a little better now. I’ll probably order from a drive-thru again.

Computers are Smarter Than Me

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I’ve been improving the countdown timer file that I have displayed on the left and I was getting frustrated. In Swish, I have to type in the date and time for the event I want the timer to countdown to. It was off by an hour when I had my computer’s clock set correctly. But if I advanced the timer to the day of or before the event (in this case, the Mavs opener) it would be right. Did I mention I was getting frustrated? Well, I thought about it for a minute. Why would it be wrong today, but right in a couple weeks? Then I realized. Daylight savings. The freaking computer knows that daylight savings is coming so it adjusts the timer accordingly. Amazing. I wish I would have thought of that a couple hours ago.

Updated Blog Look

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I spent a few hours yesterday tweaking the look of the site. Not a complete overhaul, but I think the overall look and feel of the site is much better. Here’s what I did:

  • Header (Removed the menu bar that was above the image, added kevinrossen.com to the image and made only that text clickable). I got the header from the Digital Westex Image Gallery and customized it in Photoshop.
  • Changed the picture that shows up in the address bar (it’s a Mountain Dew bottle). I figured out how to do it using Wikipedia.
  • Made a flash file for the countdown to the Mavericks season. I made it using SWiSHmax. It’s a great program for making basic flash files. I customized a sample countdown that comes with the program. I’ll write about the program sometime in the future.
  • Changed the Flickr Pics badge to the Flickr Daily Zeitgeist. It’s s simple script that Flickr create for you and you just copy and paste it into your site. I chose to only include my photos and my contacts’ photos.
  • Sidebar overhaul (took out “bullets” in the boxes, moved the subscribe links into the about section, fixed some of the spacing, and added an archives section)

Looks like a lot, but I’m really satisfied. The next thing I’m going to try to figure out is how to make the search function in WordPress work–it doesn’t now. If you have any suggestions or ideas please share them in by commenting on this post.

Vote For Shelby!

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KLTY, the contemporary Christian music station in Dallas/Fort Worth is having a Rising Star Talent Search. Shelby Pride, a student at Dallas Christian College, has been selected as one of the top 5 finalists in the competition. She has led worship at Valley View at various events (30 Hour Famine and Youthquake 2004) so if you’re part of the church you might remember her. She will be performing at the Plano Fall Women’s Expo & Holiday Bazaar at the Plano Centre October 29, 2005! If she wins, she will receive $5,000 worth of recording time at a studio.

Vote for her at KLTY.com
Listen to one of her songs here.

NBA Injuries

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I shouldn’t take pleasure in other people’s pain, but it’s hard when it comes to sports–in particular the Mavericks. The Suns’ stud center Amare Stoudemire will miss about four months of the regular season recovering from knee surgery. The caring person inside of me hopes that it’s not serious and he will recover completely and quickly. The competitive nature that I have hopes he’s out for the year (well, actually I wish this would ruin his career up until the Suns traded him to the Mavs and he makes a miraculous turn around and is the best player in NBA history).

Honestly this is a major blow to the Suns. They won 62 games last year and Stoudemire was a major part of that record. I can’t see the Suns winning that many games this year, even with a healthy Stoudemire. Now, the best they can honestly hope for is 50-55 wins with about a 4th seed in the western conference. However, this is the NBA and you never know what’s going to happen, except that the Spurs will once again win the NBA championship.

On a side note, Keith Van Horn sprained his thumb in the Mavericks pre-season opener. I jammed my thumb playing softball this past May and it still hasn’t healed completely. Hopefully Van Horn’s thumb will heal much quicker than mine.

Personal Response to L.A. Times Article

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I’ve sat on this for a couple of days, but I have to write something about all the attention that Valley View Christian Church has gotten in the past week. In case you haven’t heard, Harriet Miers was a member of the church for over 20 years. Since she’s unknown to the national media, they’re looking for anything they can find to write about her. One of the things they’ve discovered is her longtime involvement in church.

There have been numerous articles written about Ms. Miers, and at least 300 have made some mention Valley View. Mostly the articles have just mentioned that she was very involved and that it’s a conservative Evangelical church. There has been one article, however, that focused almost all of its attention on the split that the church has recently gone through. The L.A. Times published an article entitled Church Changes Led Miers to Join a Splinter Group . In it, there are a number of claims made that I would like to address.

The following statements are personal opinions and are in no way official views of the church or its elders.

The first statement that I took offense to was this:

The dispute is one over style, but it has political undertones too. Some of the more traditional members of the church fear that its effort to be more contemporary could dampen its emphasis on social issues, including its teachings against abortion and homosexuality.

While I have no idea how any logically thinking person could make this jump in logic, my biggest issue is that VVCC has always, and will always hold biblical truth as authoritative truth. One of the values in our Mission, Values, Strategies, and Measures that was officially adopted by the church’s elders in April 2005 states this well. It reads, “We value biblical preaching and teaching because the Bible, and the Bible alone, is God’s infallible, inerrant Word in written form and the supreme source of truth in all things.” This is one of the ten values that will shape us in the future as a group of believers. We will not bow down to cultural pressure to ignore parts of the Bible just because they’re difficult or not culturally acceptable. We are a Bible-believing church and we will continue to be no matter what style of worship we have in our weekly worship gatherings.

Another statement that is not correct reads: “Much of the money that had been spent on foreign missionary work, the elders decided, was to be routed back into the church itself.” Let me just give you some statistics. In the annual budget for 2003, missions was alloted 23.4%. In 2004, the percentage was 23.2%. In 2005, missions has been budgeted 25.1%. I’ll let you come up will a conclusion, based on the objective statistics, as to whether or not we’ve turned our backs on missions.

Here is a statement in the article that contained a completely false fact:

[The elders] brought on Barry McCarty, a charismatic and influential minister. This summer, they wanted to make McCarty the church’s senior minister. But according to the church’s bylaws, such a move required a full vote of the congregation. The elders sidestepped the bylaws by creating a new title, naming McCarty “lead” minister. [italics mine]

Not true at all. Barry’s title has been “Preaching Minister” since he was hired and that title has not changed. The elders have asked him to lead the staff for now. This is not unusual. The previous Senior Minister served as Interim Senior Minister for about one and a half years before he was voted on by the congregation. There has to be someone serving as the point person during transitions until a permanent leader is decided on by the elders and then taken to the congregation. They have not violated the by-laws in any way.

There are other statements that upset me, but I’m not going to comment on them. My hope is that level-headed people will be able to see through the rumors and gossip that has now become national news and see that the elders of Valley View are indeed godly, trustworthy people.

It’s been sad to me to see the group of people leave. I will miss many of them dearly. I hope that God can use them to reach people that have never had a relationship with Jesus that would not have come to Valley View otherwise. My prayer for Valley View is that we will be strengthened through these tough times in order to accomplish a great work that I believe he has for us to do.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).