Check out this awesome minute-long video. One of the highlights? How Walt Disney was “fired from a newspaper because he ‘lacked imagination and had no original ideas.’”

Enjoy. And a big hat tip to Zack Miller for the video.

Today, I got a handwritten note from a reader of this blog.

I hear you. “What? A physical letter? Like in the mail?”

Yes, in the mail. All the way from “across the pond” in London, England.

This new friend and I met in the comments on Fred Wilson’s AVC blog a few months ago. He wrote some very kind words in his note. I can’t wait until our paths cross and we can meet in real life.

Handwritten notes are a lost art form, for the most part. This one has inspired me to start doing that again.

Thanks, Rohan.

When did you get your last handwritten note?

I climbed Half Dome a few years ago, and I’ve yet to see a video or photograph that does justice to the wonder of Yosemite.

This is a combination of video and time-lapse photography…and it comes awfully close. Do yourself a favor: put it on full screen. Best 3 minutes of your morning.

Amazing! Thanks to my friend Casey for sending this my way.

If you have kids, you’ve almost undoubtedly read the children’s book “If You Give a Moose a Muffin.” Spencer loves that book, and we read it a lot in our house.

So I cracked up when I ran across this send-up on Facebook…enjoy “If You Give a Mom a Muffin.”

If you give a mom a muffin, she’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She’ll pour herself some. Her three-year-old will spill the coffee. She’ll wipe it up. Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks. She’ll remember she has to do laundry. When she puts the laundry in the washer, she’ll trip over boots and bump into the freezer. Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper. She will get out a pound of hamburger. She’ll look for her cookbook.

The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail. She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow. She will look for her checkbook. The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two-year-old. She’ll smell something funny. She’ll change the two-year-old. While she is changing the two-year-old the phone will ring. Her five-year-old will answer and hang up. She’ll remember that she wants to phone a friend to come for coffee. Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup. She will pour herself some. And chances are, if she has a cup of coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

My sweetie will vouch for the fact that this is 100% accurate. Have a great weekend!

Lots of people have written lots of things about Tim Tebow.

He’s not the first athlete to express his faith on the field. He’s not even the first one to do it in a noticeable way.

But what I love about Tebow is how he’s consistently ignored the critics, put his head down and played his heart out. You can feel his passion to win.

And simply because of that, whether he wins or loses today, he’s a winner in my book.

I think you can file this under “advertising before the time of Twitter and blogs.” Can you imagine if a company said anything remotely close to this today?

So whatever you do, don’t forget that you can’t believe everything you read. (Hat tip to my friend George for this piece of morning humor.)

One of our longtime friends is a book review blogger and is a passionate opponent of e-books. She recently posted this adaptation of Winston Churchill’s famous quote in support of her position.

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on Facebook, we shall fight on Twitter and the blogs, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength, we shall defend our old-fashioned way of reading, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the libraries, we shall fight in the bookstores and in the streets if we must; we shall never surrender our books.”

I’m a huge fan of my Kindle, for a variety of reasons. I love having my entire library come with me across countries, across continents, in my pocket, and in long lines. I read far more because of it.

At the same time, I still buy certain kinds of books in their paper form, particularly presidential biographies, which I love to collect.

What do you think? Do the benefits of e-books outweigh the drawbacks? Or do you love e-books so much that you can’t imagine buying dead trees any more?

I was saddened and completely stunned when the news flashed on the screen: former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage. Politico broke the news first and covered it here.

While I didn’t vote for Gore in 2000, his marriage always struck me as very real. Kiss or no kiss, the Gores’ relationship seemed like a solid and stable one – not a sham as some political marriages are eventually exposed to be.

Without casting aspersions on the Gores – because that’s not the point of this post – I hope this news serves as a wakeup call to those of us who have made “until death do us part” commitments.

Marriage is hard work. (Especially if, like me, you married up!) I am exceedingly blessed to be closing in on ten years with my wonderful wife. I’ve made innumerable mistakes along the way, but through our commitment to each other, our faith, and the support of our families, we have built a marriage that we are both working to make last a lifetime. And given that we got married at 22 and 20, we intend to celebrate 50 years together – and beyond!

That will only happen if we both invest in our marriage and work on it every day.

It was a sad day yesterday for the Gores, but don’t let that stop you from striving for 40 or 50 or 60 years with the person you’ve made a lifelong commitment to. I’m convinced it’s worth it.

Photo Credit: Jodi Cobb

(Mobile, feed and e-mail readers: embedded video above.)

A big hat tip to @abrahampiper for posting this piece of weekend fun.

Our church started holding an incredible annual concert and art exhibit for the community last year. It was an amazing production then, and now the amazingly talented team of young people is presenting Individually Inspired II on April 30th and May 2nd, 2010.

So if you’re local to the Sierra Foothills, come and enjoy original art, photography, music, poetry, drama and dance. The art and photography exhibit opens at 6PM and the concert begins at 7:30PM.

It’s a great evening, and admission is completely free. The event is at Foothill Christian Fellowship, at 1100 Sugar Pine Road in Meadow Vista. Call 530-878-0293 for more information if you need it.