In His Presence

Courageous

2011-10-01T23:18:00.000-05:00

I've been a big fan of the Sherwood brothers movies ever since I stumbled across the movie "Facing the Giants" on DVD several years ago. I think I may have even blogged about it back then. And I recommend it to everyone I have a chance to. Since then I have seen their other movies "Flywheel" and "Fireproof" and own the DVDs for FtG and FP (but not FW). I was very excited a couple years ago when I learned about their next movie framed in a police story and focusing on fatherhood. Well this weekend the day finally came and the movie "Courageous" was on my radar to see with the whole family. I ended up just taking the boys since Kathryne had other things to do today, but I plan on taking her to see it soon.

The movie centers around a group of men several of whom are police officers and face danger daily. Another who comes into their group struggles with the more mundane issue of just trying to feed his family. All of them face issues of how to be a good father. So many of the themes and situations hit home. As a father I struggle with all kinds of thoughts about what I'm doing right and wrong. How badly am I going to screw up my kids through my actions or inaction? Am I disconnected from my kids? What I am passing on to them?

The movie itself has some big changes from their previous films. It has the same gospel messages and may still feel a bit "preachy" to non-Christians. But the production values, acting, and story are all greatly improved. There was nothing in the production of this movie that you could look at an think it's not a standard Hollywood production (at least to my untrained, consumerish eye). But the drastic departure comes in the general tone of the movie. There is some serious tragedy going on here. It's an emotional roller coaster. I cried just about every other scene. There was the standard humorous banter between characters that we've seen in their previous films. But from the very start, there are no punches pulled. And there is no miraculous happy ending here. Just a lot of real life that is messy for all involved. I hate to say it, but I was really ready for this movie to be over. Not because it was bad or too long, but because I was emotionally exhausted. It is over 2 hours long and was emotionally draining.

It was also very challenging. Challenging to not be mediocre or "good enough". As a father. As a man. As a Christian. If you are a father you need to see this movie. If you have a father, you need to see this movie. If your father let you down and negatively impacted your life you really need to see this movie. Take your family. Take your friends. Support this high-quality Christian entertainment by going to the theater in the first week (or two). That is the critical time for the industry to judge the popularity of a movie. Let's help this one stick around for a while.

A couple caveats. I took Sean and Joshua. Sean was fine, but Joshua was a bit scared/bored/overwhelmed in many scenes. You be the judge of your children's readiness for this film. Also, it is PG-13 for some of these reasons and there is some violence and drug related content that the police deal with. The worst part about the PG-13 rating is the trailers and other promotions before the movie. The are a bit harsher than a G or PG rating would have warranted. But there wasn't anything that was so out of line that I wanted to leave or hide from little eyes and ears.

The movie website has the opening scene available for you to watch, but please head out to the theater soon.

Movie Website: http://www.courageousthemovie.com/
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630036/
Plugged-in Review: http://www.pluggedin.com/movies/intheaters/courageous.aspx
Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/courageous/

Motown Woes

2011-05-03T21:28:00.000-05:00

You hear about the bad economy in places like Detroit on the news, but it's so weird being here and seeing it firsthand.

We are right downtown, and there is NO traffic and no signs of anything close to a bustling city. If it weren't for this conference I don't think you'd see much on the streets besides the little traffic for the Tigers game. I'll be part of that traffic tomorrow night as they play the Yankees. There are so many office buildings that are completely empty and getting run down. The casinos around seem a desperate attempt to revive the dead. Just across the river in Canada, things look a little more lively. There are some signs of high-tech thriving business but they are like oases in the desert. I heard that in the 60's the population was 1.7 million, now it's below 800,000

If you want some cheap office space and no traffic commutes, Detroit might just be the place for you. Our CEO has already declined our suggestion that he look into it.

Thoughts on Harding University's Policy on Homosexuality

2011-04-21T11:15:00.000-05:00

My alma mater Harding University came into the national news recently in part thanks to a NY Times article entitled "Even on Religious Campuses, Students Fight for Gay Identity". Read the article if you wish though you might have to circumnavigate the NY Times pay wall. Basically it talks about school policies at Harding, Abilene Christian University, and Baylor University regarding homosexual students.

This plus some recent comments on FaceBook by classmates and friends got me thinking and writing. In some of the comments and much of the national dialog, one of the phrases I've heard used is that we need to "affirm the dignity" of all people (in this case gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, etc.).

Affirming the dignity of a person is a very nebulous concept. I'm not sure what it means or how it would be practiced in the context in which it is being used. In my mind, letting someone know that God loves them (each and every person) so much that He wants a relationship with them and sent His Son to die for them to enable that relationship is the heart of the Gospel.

In Dr. Burks's recent chapel address on the issue (video embedded below) I believe he stated something very similar. (As with all Youtube videos, please don't read the comments).

However, in the way Harding interprets scripture, homosexual activity is sinful just as other forms of sexual immorality are sinful. Therefore according to the university rules it is behavior that if discovered will be subject to disciplinary action, just as any other breaking of the rules.

You may debate whether the interpretation of scripture is correct, but it is fully consistent with their beliefs. Affirming behavior that you understand to be sinful would be inconsistent.

Jesus loved everyone, but when he encountered people engaged in sinful behavior, he didn't say "That's okay, just keep on being that way and I'll still love you." He said, "Go and sin no more." Then he died showing how much he loved them whatever choice they made.

I work with all kinds of people each day that engage in behaviors I don't myself engage in or often approve of and I treat them respectfully and kindly. I don't make it a point to tell them all their flaws or how sinful they are being. Such things rarely come up. But were I to have influence in their lives to inject my own opinion, it would be wrong of me to just say everything is ok.

I've rambled on too long and I know this is not a popular opinion, but I felt it on my heart to write something. I hope that Harding will continue to look for ways to minister to every single person attending or on whom they have influence. It is also my prayer that they never stop seeking to uphold the standards to which God has called us to be holy and pure in His sight.

Year of Jubilee

2011-03-19T05:00:00.001-05:00

Recently I’ve started thinking about the concept of the Year of Jubilee. This came up recently in our Bible study as we read through the Law as part of our Daily Bible Reading schedule. Also, one of my favorite songs to lead in worship is “Days of Elijah” which references the celebration. At each of these occasions, I made mention of the fact that we don’t have any indication of the Israelites ever adhering to the celebration of the Year of Jubilee. A wise old (older than me) man came up to me to ask why I was pointing the lack of celebration out. It started me thinking about whether what I was saying was accurate. As we discussed it, I thought back to some time in my youth sitting in a Bible class somewhere and the teacher saying that the Israelites never celebrated Jubilee in full because it was too difficult.
So I went home and started doing some research. I struggled greatly with not using my phone to do research during the sermon immediately after our conversation.

The following are links to some of the pages I read with a little commentary but not much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)
Jubilee years appear to have been used for counting even if not actually celebrated

In my brief searching I couldn’t find any direct evidence of Jubilee being celebrated in full by the entire nation of Israel.

Info on the Sabbath years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita
Sabbath years do appear to have been celebrated at times
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Sabbatical_Years
2 Kings 19:29-30
The conversation between Isaiah and Hezekiah seems to be an indication of a Sabbath year followed by a Jubilee year with regards to the agricultural aspects but there is no mention of the slave, land and debt aspects.

This article has a really good tie in of Jubilee from Moses to Jesus
http://www.yearofjubilee.org/2008/07/a-time-for-jubilee/
I especially liked that it tied in Jesus’ reading in the synagogue to the year of jubilee:Luke 20 4:14-21 “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
I’ll have to read through that some more as I think it has important implications to our lives today.

Of course people try to base everything including predictions on the coming of Christ on Jubilee year counting
http://www.growthingod.org.uk/jubilee.htm
Not too much useful info there unless you like reading rationalizations for millennial theology

So that’s about all the research I did and intend to do for now. No resolution to my initial inquiry but I certainly got some background information that I think will be useful.

A Wii Little Error

2011-03-01T11:24:00.001-06:00

Today Kathryne and I both woke up to a great surprise. We had each lost about 7 pounds in 1 day. At least according the the Nintendo Wii Fit where we track our weight. Kathryne was so excited. We were both quite shocked and wondering how such a thing could be. She verified her result and then I stepped on and had a similar result. After the initial excitement died down, we started trying to think of what might be the cause or if there was an error with the device. I decided to replace the batteries (4 AA) and try it again. Unfortunately, we had not found some miracle overnight weight loss scheme and the losses were much more reasonable with the new juice feeding the platform. Fortunately, there were still losses.

Nothing like a bit of reality to burst your bubble. But I'd rather know the truth than be deceived into thinking things are better than they are (at least most of the time).

Consistency

2011-02-22T13:23:00.000-06:00

I ran across a story today that makes me sad for the cause of Christ. There's more background that you can read here but my focus is a picture of a man with Leviticus 18:22 tattooed on his arm. This is one of the verses in the Bible that prohibits homosexuality. What interested me about this is that just a page flip away (variable depending on the layout of your Bible) is Leviticus 19:28. This verse prohibits tattoos. O.o

As Christians, one of the worst testimonies we can provide is when our lives our inconsistent with what we profess to believe and inconsistent with scripture. How often do we pick and choose those verses that we wish to live by and those we wish to ignore? We condemn those around us for one thing while ignoring our own issues. I think there's some verse in Matthew that speaks to this. Read the whole thing. It's good for you. Rather we should all work together in love to walk the path with God and when we stumble, pick each other up.

A Cold Wind Blows...and yet I Run

2011-01-12T10:34:00.000-06:00

Last year on Wednesday January 13th, I performed my usual ritual of driving through Chick-fil-A on my way to work to pick up a yummy chicken biscuit. It would be the last I ever had. If this were the opening to a SyFy movie it would be because I was carted off by aliens for some unpleasant probing. In reality it's because of something that happened on the way to Huntsville.

This morning I crawled out of bed at 5:40 am after a single snooze cycle for the purpose of going to the 'Y' for a run around the track and some weights. Did I mention that it's freezing outside? If it's going to be this cold I really need it to snow. And yet I woke up and got myself all bundled up for a run. First I took Lily for a run around the block. Then I went on to the gym for some faster sprints and weights. My wardrobe include 3 layers: long johns, shorts and shirt, sweat pants and jacket, along with gloves and a sock top. I really should get some cold weather running gear for the 3 times this winter when bundling up will be required.

The point of all this is not to complain about the weather or brag about my running prowess, but rather to note the change in my mindset over the last 52 weeks. But then I look at yesterday morning when I slept in and realize I still have a long way to go.

1 year ago tomorrow also marks the anniversary of the last soda I had. At work I would have anywhere from 4-6 per day usually Coke Zero or Diet Dr. Pepper. The fridge here is still fully stocked with such things but I resisted and now have no urge to pop one open.

So what happened on the way to Huntsville that day? On my flight, I watched the documentary "Food Matters" (currently available on Netflix instant streaming and DVD). That was the tipping point. I realized that I could take control of my health and the way to do it was to take control of what I put in my body and what I put my body through.

And so I run. And try really hard to not put anything in my mouth that will be harmful and to put in lots of helpful stuff. Last week I started a health journal where I write down everything that goes in (I'll stay away from what comes back out), what exercise I do, and how I'm feeling. It has really helped me stay on track as can be noted by the weight loss column. I had been stuck on a plateau for a couple months and have really started to see better results in just the last 10 days.

If I had to label the focus for my family for last year it would be "Healthy Living". I'm not big on new year's resolutions. The only one I ever make is to not make any resolutions which I break on the first day and keep the rest of the year. What's my focus for this year? I don't know yet. There is still a lot of work to be done on the health front, but looking back at the end of the year I hope I can say that I focused on spiritual and family relations.

In other news, I quit World of Warcraft for good and am loving my rediscovered freedom.

Happy New Year!

3 down, 6 to go

2010-12-16T14:29:00.000-06:00

Annual employee performance review forms that is. It's always hard to evaluate someone's performance especially when you're considering the entire year. Essentially I have to boil all that down to a number between 1 and 5 that will then be used determine their raise for the following year.And their performance throughout the year determines my raise so I want to keep them happy and productive. It's a symbiotic relationship between management and people who actually do the real work. I'm growing into my new role as manager more and more. I'm not sure whether I really enjoy it as much as slinging code, but I'm getting better at it. I try to continually remind myself that my job is to enable others to do their jobs better. I don't get to do some of the fun stuff, but I do get the reward that comes with orchestrating a successful project completion. I try to stay out of their way and be a buffer from the agonizing administrative details of contracting, proposal writing, and other necessary but painful overhead. And I get some satisfaction from doing that effectively.

So at the end of this year, looking back on the work that everyone is done I can relax and do my best to see that everyone remains happy and productive in the coming year.

Now back to those review forms.

Facebook, the Portal to the Internet

2010-05-17T15:12:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's just that the game Portal is on my mind but Facebook seems to have some resemblance to GLaDOS (the psychotic/sociopathic AI guiding you through the game): using us as lab rats in their social experiments, making money off the research, promising cake but we all know about the cake (pssst. The cake is a Lie). The main difference is that Facebook doesn't make you a neat gun.

Research:
The current top suggestion in Google search for "how do I" is "how do i delete my facebook account".
Portal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(video_game)

Random news (aka what Twitter and FaceBook do to my will to blog)

2010-05-17T13:09:00.000-05:00

Sean is about to turn 11.
Just celebrated 14 years married to a wonderful woman.
Ironman II was almost as good as the original. All the haters are just annoying.
The Lich King just won't die.
My iPhone has a small crack in the plastic on the back.
Preacher at church is resigning.
Brother graduated from college and is looking for gainful employment.
First outdoor pool trip of the year resulted in 4 sunburned peeps.
No travel in the month of May?!? That's unpossible!
Lost about 40lbs since January.
Something I'm eating/doing is making me nauseated most mornings. Or maybe I'm pregnant.

Parenting win

2010-03-08T09:39:00.000-06:00

I had an interesting parenting experience yesterday. The kind where you actually feel like you may get some pearl of wisdom imparted to your kids.
Sean and Joshua each wanted to play the computer. We had told them "No" for a while but finally decided to let them have their 30 minutes of play time. So I asked them "Who wants to play computer first?" They were standing near each other and Sean rushed forward not quite pushing his brother saying "I do!" I replied "Sean can play first for 30 minutes, then Joshua can play for 40 minutes." Sean looked shocked. Needless to say, he wasn't happy about it. He threw a fit so I then let Joshua go first with his 40 minutes. Now Sean was really not happy. He then tried to apply it to all future times where he could get more time by going last. I told him it didn't work like that.

Then the lesson started. I explained to him Jesus' words "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." When we rush to be first we don't often end up with the best. You could see the wheels turning in his head as he didn't want to believe it or accept the application. Only time will tell if it sinks in, but it was one of those times where I actually felt like a wise parent.

Cultural Transformers

2010-03-01T21:52:00.001-06:00

I listen to a lot of podcasts covering a wide variety of subjects. Some are pure fun and some are informational for personal or professional development. One of my favorites that I’ve listened to for several years is Dave Ramsey’s radio show. Recently while listening I started thinking “This guy is really crazy. He wants these folks to go totally against the cultural financial norms.” Dave is certainly more dogmatic in his teachings than someone like Clark Howard. Clark (or Mr. Howard if you want to irritate him) tells people how to work the credit system to keep a good credit rating and credit score, useful advice for living in a culture that values and relies on credit for its daily sustenance. If you’ve listened to Dave for 10 seconds you know he couldn’t care less what your credit score is. Dave refers to Bank of America as BoA (as in constrictor) and often says “If you play with snakes, you’re going to get bit.” While Clark teaches you how to play with the snakes safely so as not to get bit, Dave teaches you to stay away from the snakes. Clark teaches how to play the game. Dave refuses to play the game and goes off to have his own fun playing a new game (based on old principles) and tries to get everyone to come and play with him. I learn useful things from both of these men and am not trying to pit them against each other. But the difference in philosophy is one to consider in many areas of our lives including religion, health, morals, and work.

This goes right along with my previous post on change. When something in our lives is not going as it should how should we work to change it? The world is full of quick remedies and partial solutions. Get rich quick schemes, the lottery, fad diets, 30minuteworship.com, and protein power drinks are thrown at us from every form of media. The verse comes to mind:

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” Romans 12:2

How did Jesus live? Did he ask the Pharisees what they thought, study the culture and try to find the best way to live in it. Did he go off and live atop a mountain, take a few people with him, and wait for his purpose to be fulfilled? Or did he live his life counter to the culture, working with individuals to change their lives. He didn’t try to change the government policies. He wasn’t bullied by threats or name calling. He stood up for his convictions, and everyone knew where he stood. He worked to heal people’s hearts and spirits, not just their physical maladies. And when they left him, they were changed and inspired to spread the change to all around.

We have options for living our lives:

Embrace the culture and it’s values
Fit in to the culture and maintain your values
Separate from the culture to protect your values
Work to change the culture and infect it with your values

You can thrive in various aspects by 1, 2, or 3. But only through 4 can we be fulfilled and truly Christ-like. The wisdom of the world won’t get us where we need to be. Fortunately God gave us a healthy dose of common sense as well as a bunch of proverbial wisdom to go along with it.

Too many times (especially in the church) we focus on #3, separating ourselves from the culture for fear of letting it infect us. We teach our kids “do not taste, do not touch” (Col 2). We stay within the confines of our church buildings without venturing out into the communities that we are supposed to minister to. We must separate ourselves from the ACTIONS and WISDOM of the world, but not from the people. We don’t live the way they live, but we must LOVE the way that HE loved. Jesus never once shunned attending a gathering for fear of what he might hear or see. But when he was there, he would infect those around him with his compassion and love.

In, not of. Transformative, not conforming. Loving and living in a culture that doesn’t like us or understand us and yet that is our mission. I have several mentors from afar that I thank God for their transformative message:

Dr. James Dobson for his tireless work to protect and strengthen our families.
Dave Ramsey for his encouragement to “Live like no one else, so that later you can live like no one else”.
And most recently Dr. Josh Axe for his simple yet healing message of eating the foods our bodies were meant to eat and living all around healthy lives.

These men and their organizations refuse to conform to the conventional wisdom and values of the masses. They live according to a different set of rules and refuse to play the game the world wants them to play. Instead they demonstrate great love, great compassion, and great wisdom open to anyone who will listen. Sound familiar.

Personal Challenge:

I was just reading the book Re-Create by Ron Luce and he challenged me to challenge my children to become transformers of culture rather than conformers to it. Now I need to figure out how to impart that mission to them. Shouldn’t be too hard; I bet they’ll like the idea of being transformers.

How to Have a Healthy Marriage

2010-03-01T21:41:00.000-06:00

I started thinking as Kathryne commented that we’ve been really happy recently in our marriage as to why that was. I’m sure there are lots of reasons but I think one of the causes of this is the fact that we’re working together towards a common goal. Not a general goal like “raising children” or “having a good marriage” but a very specific goal of transforming the way our family eats. It’s the same kind of feeling I remember having right after we started working on our plan to get out of debt.

Something about having a specific, near-term goal and working together to achieve it seems to bring us together. There’s nothing really deep or surprising about this. Mainly I just want to record this for posterity so that next time we seem to hit a bump in the road we won’t have to rediscover this highly effective tool.

Change

2010-02-14T17:38:00.000-06:00

Kathryne and I were talking a bit today about the changes in our lives in the last few years. We used to live as pretty normal American Christians. Plodding along in live doing the things we do, going with the flow, following the wisdom of the masses. The main problem with that is the wisdom of the masses is not very wise. This is summed up quite well when the Apostle Paul writes:

¹⁸For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." 1 Corinthians 1:18-19

Three (3) years ago we started attending a class at church entitled "Discovering God's Ways of Handling Money" put together by a ministry called Crown Financial Ministries. What we discovered was that the way we were living was, to put it bluntly, STOOPID! Or in the terms of Proverbs: foolish. And yet to all those around us we looked perfectly normal. The problem is that normal in America is broke, overweight, deeply in debt, chronically diseased, and generally not happy with life. The class forced us to examine our financial situation, and gather more information on how to do things the right way. The results were quite dramatic as I described in detail earlier.

We were greatly focused on our finances which added an intensity that accelerated the whole process. The problem with focus is often that other things suffer. So while our relationship with regards to money was improving we also saw the need to work on other areas of our relationship with each other as well as our relationship with our kids. So we've read many books over the past few years on these subjects and attended several seminars to help in these areas. The signs are not as outwardly visible as with our finances but we see them in small things in our lives. In a couple weeks we'll be attending the Focus on Marriage simulcast seminar put on by Focus on the Family. In addition to books, we often listen to the Focus on the Family free podcast which brings us their daily radio program right to our computers to listen to at our leisure. The interviews and speakers they bring in are amazing.

There's one more major change we're currently undertaking that I'm not quite ready to write about in detail. But I do want to consider what are the circumstances under which change occurs. Not just temporary change, but lasting change.

First, you have to recognize the need for change. When we recognized our mountain of debt and it's impact on our lives, it served as a great impetus for us to make look for more information on how to get better.
Second, you have to gather information. Often it is information that is the impetus in #1. But you can't just gather any information, you have to gather the right kind of information from knowledgeable, non-biased sources. Examining the motives of your sources of information is key in this. Gathering information on getting out of debt from your credit card company is going to be suspect.
Third, and this is the hardest one, you have to make a COMMITMENT TO CHANGE your actions. James 1:22-25 says:

²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

Many people I've talked to recently know the information needed to effect positive change in their lives, but they're not willing to add or remove the necessary actions from their lives. Whether it's how you spend, how you serve, how you parent, how you love, how you eat, or anything you do you will have to change your actions and make sacrifices in order to change your life for the better. And when you make those sacrifices, you may just realize that the sacrifice is not that great and where you are is so much better than where you were that you kick yourself for not making the change earlier. I know my legs are tired from doing just this.

One final verse, Romans 12:2

²Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Debt Free and Lovin' It

2009-11-17T16:09:00.008-06:00

A few of you know bits of the journey my family has been on to pay off all of our debts and get our financial house in order. It is a journey we started about 2 and ½ years ago just before we moved to Austin and just after starting a new job at PFI. For our first ten years we had lived paycheck to paycheck. There was too much month left at the end of the money. We were classic consumers using our plastic cards for whatever we wanted. Occasionally through the years we would try this thing called a budget. We would write some stuff down on a yellow pad, average out our expenses, and juggle things around till it seemed to work out. But that never lasted long.

We played the game of surfing our credit cards around to lower interest and payments. We used those nasty checks to make up for monthly shortfalls. We refinanced our house for a remodel and some extra lifestyle. Upon leaving an employer we cashed out a 401k to pay off some debt and buy some more stuff. We leased a van, and paid way too much for a small car for way too long. Basically, most of the stupid stuff that people tend to do with money, we did. We had nothing in savings and were 75k in debt (not including the house). I often wondered “How can I make this much money and have nothing to show for it?”

Then in March of 2007 we started taking this class at church about what the Bible says about managing money. Something in us clicked and we made a decision to grow up and start managing our money properly. But first we had to figure out what “properly” was. We went searching for more information and found a plan that worked for us. We had tried doing things our way and failed miserably so we looked to the wisdom of others. It was not easy, but I can honestly say it was worth it. Now $75,000 and 30 months later we owe not a dime to anyone. We have money in the bank, and a game plan for continuing to build our financial stability. We are teaching our kids these things in the hopes that they will not have to follow the path we did and end up in a much better place.

I am putting this out there to let you know it can be done and to provide some encouragement if you find yourself in a similar situation. I am not trying to sell anything and I am not a financial planner or advisor by any stretch of the imagination but I can tell you what worked for us (and millions of others around the country) if you happen to be interested.

Trinity Oaks Reunion

2009-09-01T13:59:00.006-05:00

This weekend I had the joy of attending a reunion for members of the Trinity Oaks church of Christ in Dallas. I attended TO from 1983-1986. We moved away after my 5th grade year. That's a pretty short time and a long time ago so I don't have a lot of really clear memories from church. Mostly just flashes and a few names of people. But there are certain things that stick in my mind as "firsts" so I wanted to share them here.

First service in the church: I remember Arthur Hensarling would organize some of us young guys to pick up the attendance cards each week. Arthur was like a local grandfather to us kids. I'd get so excited when for Christmas I'd get a $2 bill from him in appreciation for collecting the cards (or at least that's what I associate it with in my memory). He also had the first car phone I ever remember seeing.
First learned to sing: Now I knew how to sing so when I say "learned" it's not a matter of ability. During worship I would not be singing and I guess my dad was sick of it. I remember one night when he took me out of worship to the "cry" room and had a little talk with me. I don't remember what he said or did (I don't think electrodes were involved), but after that I seemed to have a greater appreciation for singing in worship or at least was on the right road of faking it till it became real.
First started thinking of baptism: It was at TO that several of my friends and classmates began to make the decision to be baptized. I held off for quite a while as I didn't want to just follow the crowd and do it because they were doing it. I think I ended up waiting too long but eventually came to the proper decision.
First church politics: Now 5th grade is a bit young to be exposed to such things, but I remember one fund raiser for school selling M&Ms at church. I went to the youth minister and his reason for not buying any from me was that then he would have to buy from all the kids who asked. I guess they weren't paying him the big bucks that youth ministers are getting these days.
First major wilderness experience: My dad led a group of 4th-8th grade boys on a week long canoe trip on the Minnesota/Canada border. I remember rowing to the chant of "Coke" across the final lake before the pickup point. My dad always recites this line about "We're talking mist, we're talking fog". It was a great experience which we later repeated with a group from the church in Phoenix.

Most of my clear memories from Dallas revolve around my bestest friend Brian Davis who I have recently had the joy of reconnecting with thru Facebook. We met for lunch for the first time in over 10 years this summer and it was like we never were apart. The memories just flowed back. It was great to see him and his family at the reunion. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever find that Papa Smurf car.

Several of the people at the reunion I had encountered at Harding. But some of them I hadn't seen in 23 years. It was great to reconnect with them. I didn't spend much time at TO, but I could tell that those who had through the years were touched in great ways through their love for God and each other.

Is our worship too formal?

2009-08-15T15:47:00.003-05:00

I had the privilege and pleasure of writing a blog post as a guest on a local church blog where one of our members often posts in "response" to one of his earlier posts:

http://fbgtxchurchofchrist.org/blog/2009/08/is-our-worship-too-formal/

Thanks Bob for the invitation. Make sure to read some of the other stuff there too. It's thought provoking.

Murphy Strikes

2009-06-10T09:05:00.003-05:00

Murphy struck our cars yesterday. The rear hatch on the van had its hydraulics fail yesterday. So Kathryne had to take it to the Toyota dealership to get that fixed. We're letting David and Becky borrow our van for the month and we drove to DFW and back last night to meet up with them and give them the van, 4 hours each way. On the way home from DFW the tire on my car went flat...at 1am...1 hour from home. So we're on the side of the interstate with trucks wooshing past. I put on the spare and it was low on air too. Thankfully I had an air compressor in the emergency kit to air it up and get us home around 2:15am. I discovered that changing a tire on the side of the interstate at 1am is much better than any caffeine at waking me up.

The kids slept in the back seat through the whole thing.

So after driving 8 hours to and from DFW I was trying to go to sleep in my nice comfy bed. As I started to doze off, I was dreaming that I was driving. In my dream, I started to fall asleep while driving.

Now I'm sitting in Goodyear getting my tire fixed. Well, getting it replaced. They just told me it was really messed up on the inside.

Beliefs

2009-02-19T09:02:00.004-06:00

Ran across this wonderful way of stating the basics of Christian belief in God.
Some Things I Believe...Part 1
If we talked like this more often rather than using fancy words and dogmatic statements we would be much more "salty".

We want to Chase the Cheetah

2009-02-15T22:33:00.003-06:00

Kathryne had a great post on her blog about
http://kathrynesthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/02/credit-card-first-not-car.html

Tonight I also sent an email to Dave Ramsey (our financial mentor) about the same thing. He was talking about this a lot last week on his show.
Here are some links I found about the story of what Chase is doing:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29099482/
http://www.ledgerdelaware.com/articles/2009/02/09/news/doc49905449860ef355591420.txt
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/02/chase_class_action.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-02-08-chase-interest-rates-fee_N.htm

Here's the text of the message I sent. I wonder if he'll read it on air...

I heard you talking about Chase's slimy actions regarding their credit card fees and interest rates. Our last item on our snowball is our Chase credit card of about 16000. We're currently working on saving up to pay on or van fleece of about 14000. Next paycheck we would be able to pay off our van but given our disgust with Chase, we've decided to pay them off instead. We're not even sure if we're in the group that would be affected but are doing this on principal. We also have our primary checking and savings account with them and will be looking to move those away shortly. I know we're breaking the "rules" of the debt snowball by not paying off the smallest first but you always say that this is about behavior and their behavior has been atrocious. I hope you'll forgive us this minor deviation.

QBQ

2009-02-10T00:32:00.005-06:00

Ever had a coworker (or friend or schoolmate or family member, but in this case coworker) who was quick to point out problems or tasks that needed to be done but would never think of trying to handle it themselves. "It's not my job", "I've got other stuff to do", "When is management going to take care of this?", etc...

Those things may be true, but as part of a team, everyone is responsible for the work of the entire team. It's the silent "I" in "Team". We often hear that it's not there, and in the sense of the fame and glory of the Team there should be no "I" present. But when it comes to who is responsible for the success or failure of the team, it is each individual's responsibility to their very best.

This is the premise of the book QBQ: The Question Behind the Question? It's a book about personal responsibility and accountability. If you haven't read it or it's sequel Flipping the Switch, then I highly recommend them both. But be ready for a challenge to your sense of security in the status quo.

This is more of a venting blog than anything else. But maybe someone will decide to pick up the books (or borrow my copies) and change their view of work and life forever.

Death* and Taxes

2009-01-20T08:45:00.001-06:00

did taxes last night and actually owe a bit of money :( have the money saved up to cover it :) delays paying off the van 1 month :(

*No death, just taxes
**No IRS agents were harmed in the writing of this post

Video of the year

2009-01-15T10:16:00.004-06:00

I don't usually like to post just links to videos, but this is truly hilarious and being the big Star Wars fan I am i figured this would be appropriate. Plus i really needed some laughs today and this provided them.

"Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it)" http://vimeo.com/2809991

Happy Birthday Dad

2008-12-14T14:40:00.000-06:00

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the day my father was born, otherwise known as his 60th birthday. That’s 60% of the way to 100. If his age were a test score he would still have an F. Only 10 more years to a D-. Since he often remarks on my lack of blog postings and how much he enjoys the writings of his children, I figured the perfect gift for such an occasion would be a blog post dedicated to him.

I learned a lot of things from my dad: fishing, canoeing, bowling, song leading, basketball, baseball, English, history to name a few. If I were to speculate on one thing he would be most proud to have passed on it would be my proper use of the subjunctive mood in my writing.

I remember my sophomore basketball season when he travelled to every one of my away games. Some of my best memories are of the canoe trips along the Minnesota/Canadian border where we fished, hiked, swam, bathed in waterfalls, drank bug juice, watched for planes dipping their wings signaling it was OK to build a fire.

Some things I most certainly did not pick up from my dad are his love of westerns, musicals, and deviled eggs.

Growing up, most teenagers think their parents will never understand them and the parents feel the same way. Having become a father myself, I have a much greater appreciation for the time, effort, and enormous sacrifices that go into being a parent. I also better understand the personal inadequacies and insecurities that challenge both fatherhood and manhood. Sometimes it’s all a parent can do to hope that their kids grow up to not be a serial killer or thief much less a well adjusted, productive member of society. Somehow my dad managed to not screw up 4 times over resulting in 4 Christian families. May we all be so lucky and blessed.

Finally, I have no idea how many of my diapers my dad changed, but my hope and desperate prayer is that in the next 60 years of his life I never have to change one of his.

Happy birthday, Dad! Here’s to the next 60.

He Paid a Debt

2008-06-27T13:36:00.002-05:00

"Speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where the Bible is silent". This oft used motto is a baseline for doctrine and practices in churches of Christ and came out of the Restoration Movement in the 1800s. And yet on the subject of money, we are often very silent where the Bible speaks very plainly. Money is one of the top subjects in scripture. There's a ton of financial advice in Proverbs and Jesus spoke of it often. In church we rarely speak about anything other than the giving aspect of money. And the times we talk about being a good steward and giving unto Caesar are in the context of giving (because the giving is never enough). Here's a long list of scriptures that speak about money and finances.

One area where the Bible plainly speaks is on the subject of debt. The Bible never says that debt is sinful, but it strongly condemns the use of debt as a bad way to do business. Depending on the translation, words like "foolish", "stupid", "lacking in sense", and "slave" are used to describe debt, the use of debt, and the relationships it creates.

Here are a few of the scriptures on debt:

Proverbs 22:7

"The rich rule over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender."

Proverbs 22:26-27

"Do not be one of those who shakes hands in a pledge, one of those who is surety for debts; if you have nothing with which to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?"

Proverbs 17:18

"It's stupid to guarantee someone else's loan."

Proverbs 11:15

"He who is surety for a stranger will suffer for it, but one who hates being surety is secure."

And finally there's even advice on how to get out of debt:
Proverbs 6:1-5

"My son, if you have become surety for your friend, if you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger, you are snared by the words of your own mouth; you are taken by the words of your mouth. So do this, my son, and deliver yourself; For you have come into the hand of your friend; Go and humble yourself; plead with your friend. Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird for the hand of the fowler."

Notice that it never says that going into debt is a sin. It just says it is foolish and will take your very bed from under you.

We have churches going deeply into debt for new facilities, pastors encouraging people to use their credit cards to pay their offering, churches asking members to personally sign for the church's debt, and Christians everyone living the good life on credit cards, HELOCs, and car fleeces.

Jesus came not just to pay our debt for the redemption of our souls, he came to show us the best way to live. We're more than willing to condemn others for drinking or smoking or carousing or missing church services, but when it comes to finances we rarely insert ourselves into our brothers' and sisters' lives. The weight of debt can be as burdensome as addictions and guilt of sin. It can destroy marriages and wreak havoc in every area of our lives.

What a wonderful opportunity for outreach and showing God's love and His purpose for our lives. If we teach our children, neighbors, and fellow Christians God's way of handling what he has given us then we spread not only his love, but a great deal of peace to a world greatly in need of both.

Above all, love each other deeply

2008-06-25T21:47:00.002-05:00

Tonight in Bible class we were talking about 1 Peter 4:1-11. We talked about the suffering of Christ and suffering for the faith. Hard times can make us stronger or break us down. Here Peter is warning his fellow Christians of what to do when the hard times come. He first points to Christ as our example. Then he goes on to give some pratical advice of fighting the dark times:

7The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. 8Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

He continues with other advice such as practicing hospitality, teaching and serving. But he echoes the idea that Jesus tried to teach us. Loving God and Loving each other is the most important thing "because love covers over a multitude of sins". The covering of sins certainly refers to Christ's love in his sacrifice that brings us redemption. But in this situation, he's referring to our interactions as a body. The MOST important thing we can do to fight the hard times that the world throws at us is to love each because all the petty arguments, offenses, and differences will be abated by love. The covering power of the love is over our sins towards our fellow Christians. They criticize us, reprimand us, believe different from us, worship different than us, and raise their children different than us. How dare they be so different from us. But all my attempts to straighten them out and set them on the right path are just clanging symbols (like the kids banging on the pots in the kitchen) if I have not love.

When they do this things, believe these things, teach these things what am I to do? Am I not to correct them? We throw around the terms conservative, progressive, liberal, anti-this, and non-that. Whatever the labels, whatever the positions, whatever the doctrines, love must bind us all together. Whether I think you're wrong and don't choose to worship as you do or you think I'm wrong and don't choose to attend my gospel meeting, we must remember the words of our Lord and his servant Peter that love must be practiced above all.

I don't have to condone your actions or accept them for myself and I can certainly discuss with you where I think you may be in need of guidance. But I must not hold a grudge, spread gossip (true or not), publish nasty letters on my blog, or write you up in a Christian publication.

If my salvation is based on doing and believing the correct things throughout my life then I'm hosed. If my salvation is based on getting everyone around me to do and believe the correct things in their own lives then I'm equally hosed. I can't do it on my own and neither can you. But together when the dark times come (such as when some big man in a black helmet tries to extinguish your light from the galaxy) we can stand up under the suffering that the world throws at us. We can use our gifts "To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen."

Epilogue:
The thoughts in this article have been stewing around for a bit and our class tonight finally got me going on the track to write it all down. Some of the things rattling around in my brain are from a recent story involving the school where my mother work and my youngest 2 siblings graduated and the churches local to the area. I won't go into the story, but there are some blog entries, national Christian articles, and my brother's blog that refer to the situation. These things always make me sad. The congregation here where we attend has gone through a similar situation with lingering resentment (or fear of resentment) from some people.

Let us pray that we can love and be loved and that we will forgive others as we wish to be forgiven.

Am I Weird?

2008-06-13T10:37:00.005-05:00

I'm sure my siblings will immediately answer "Yes" to this but hear me out before making any final judgements.

For Father's Day we had budgeted $50 for gifts and $50 for eating out. Yesterday I told Kathryne that what I wanted was to take the $100 and put it on our debt snowball. We're so close to paying off the current credit card and I want it GONE. At first she wasn't happy about this, but Sean liked the idea and eventually she agreed to it. Still she called me this morning on the way to work to confirm that I REALLY wanted to do it.

We plan on being out of debt 1 year from now and we really enjoyed meeting Dave Ramsey last week during a break in his radio show.Our 3rd FPU class starts in September and we're really excited about how we've been able to help those in our 1st 2 classes (by helping them help themselves).

Kid Stuff

2008-05-28T16:26:00.003-05:00

Last week we watched both National Treasure movies with the kids. They really liked all the historical folklore (mixed in w/ real history). They've been looking at the 1 dollar bill and examining it's features and we've looked up the Latin phrases for their meanings. We saw the first one earlier in the week and at the end of the second one this weekend Joshua came to a vivid realization. He heard one of the character mention Gates's name and he shouted excitedly "That's Gates, the same one from the National Treasure movie." This was at the end when they were in the sunken city. He'd gone the whole movie w/out realizing that it was the sequel with the same people.

And today he is on the floor w/ the block from the Jenga game making a hidden temple and playing National Treasure. He's already found the treasure which consisted of a lego droid, lego helmet, and a lightsaber.

Now i think the temple is collapsing.

A couple weeks ago, Sean and Joshua combined the board games Settlers of Catan, Cities and Knights, and Risk into one mega-game. I called home and Sean said they were playing this game and i thought it was some new computer game they had downloaded. But they had combined all the games and made up new rules (Sean did the rule making apparently) and had epic battles.

A couple weeks later now the game is finally getting put away as we prepare for our trip to Columbia, TN.

Sean's finishing up this week in third grade. It's pretty much just parties for the remaining days.

And i've been home sick this week (but i'm not a kid so i won't write about that).

Oh noes, my shadoes

2008-02-02T18:41:00.000-06:00

Apparently the groundhog saw his shadow today. For some reason that means 6 more weeks of winter. Now in past years, that might upset me a bit, but given the winter we've had I'm content to 6 more weeks of 60-70s and sunny weather.

The worst we've had so far is like Seattle in the fall. That lasted for 2 weeks then it got sunny again.

Interesting thought. The popular culture still clings to the idea that a groundhog seeing it's shadow or not is an omen of the future weather, yet many refuse to acknowledge that anything exists that science cannot explain when it comes to God the creator.

"We're from the government"

2008-01-25T10:56:00.000-06:00

"and we're here to help..."

"ourselves to your money, freedom, and responsibility."

Here's an interesting chart come like to use to bash Bush:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/rchart4.gif

To summarize, when Bush took office, everything was great with the economy. Now after 7 years, things are horrible.

Good thing that things like world events and general economic trends have no effect on the economy. Since it's a single person responsible for all good and all bad, it's easy to fix. This means I don't have to work as hard cause someone else will take care of me. Pretty soon I hope to just stay home and play World of Warcraft all day.

John Edwards will make sure I have health care, Hillary will raise my children, and Obama will come and "change" me.

To be "fair and balanced"...

Romney will provide my underwear, Huckabee will attend to my spiritual needs, McCain will make sure I don't talk about politics before an election, and Rudy will keep me safe

I just need someone to feed me and I'm set.

Can't wait till 16

2008-01-19T18:07:00.000-06:00

Sean had a bit of a driving lesson today. One of our friends from church invited us out to ride in what can best be described as a mini-jeep. He took us around the trails on his farm and then I got to try my hand at it too. But the highlight for me was when Sean got behind the wheel.

Now we just have to teach him to parallel park.

What would you do with $1,600?

2008-01-18T08:33:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to remember what I did the last time grandpa government sent me a birthday check (aka rebate)* So I'm pretty sure I spent it on something that was either eaten or quickly obsolete or broken. Back at the turn of the century, the tax cuts included a one-time tax rebate of $300 (maybe $600 for us as a couple) the goal being for us to spend it along with some more of our money to stimulate the economy. And now again there are plans being made for rebates on the order of $800/1600 that we will be encouraged to spend on new TVs, game consoles, vacations and such.

Now I have absolutely no problem with the government sending me back the money that I send them throughout the year, but unfortunately this time I won't be doing my patriotic duty to provide short term stimulus to the nation' economy. Instead I'll be able to shave about 1.5 months off my debt snowball thus securing my long term future while deferring short term pleasure. I feel so unpatriotic. And yet I hope that people everywhere will take this opportunity to save their money or pay off debt. Now that would be a big help to the economy since much of the current problems are with people who have too much debt and really high interest rates both with their mortgages and consumer debt. I guess I will be stimulating Chase a little as I speed up my payments to them, but I'm not sure that's what Bernanke has in mind.

Now the question I have is since I moved this past year after tax time how will grandpa know where to send the check? I want my money ASAP. I'll have to check into that.

What have you already spent your tax rebate one?

*Other than the normal tax return.

Why do Christians like Rules?

2008-01-17T10:51:00.000-06:00

I just heard this quote from Josh McDowell while listening to Focus on the Family:

Rules without Relationship leads to Rebellion

That's great. I have to remember that both as a Christian and especially as a parent. It's not "Spare the rod, spoil the child". That's a trite saying we use to justify our discipline methods. The actual verse is

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him. (Proverbs 13:24)

Have to remember that too.

Gracious Receiving

2008-01-17T10:05:00.000-06:00

"It is more blessed to give than to receive" provides us with the words of our Lord (via Paul, Acts 20:35). We always use these words to encourage people to give, whether to the church or the poor or to our friends (especially at Christmas time). We teach our kids to not be selfish an to share their toys with their friends.

But how often do have trouble accepting gifts from others. Whether it's letting someone buy us lunch or pay for a coffee or accepting a large new 50" HDTV that someone wants to buy for you (hint, hint). And that's the very attitude we have to avoid. Manipulating people into giving and then using the excuse that you're helping them be more blessed is not what Paul had in mind in when he wrote to the Philippians (4:17-18):

"Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account. I have received full payment and even more; I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God."

He graciously accepted their gifts even though he didn't need it in order to allow them the joy of giving. God wants us to give so that we become more like him. C.S. Lewis wrote that prayer doesn't change God, it changes us. In the same way, the purpose of our giving is not soley to help the recipient, but to also change us into God's image the way he intends us to be. Christ left all of heaven and came here and gave 33 years of his life all for us. His whole ministry was a gift. He is a giver and being a Christian means being transformed into his likeness.

We teach gracious giving, but we should not deny others the joy they will receive when they give to us. Just say "Thank you" and then pass it on. If you pay them back, then it was not a gift. If you pay it forward, you make the world a better place and at the two of you have been able to experience the joy of giving.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

Optimizing My Life

2008-01-15T10:44:00.001-06:00

As a software developer, I spend a good deal of time thinking about and working on optimizing things to work faster or smaller whether it's processing cycles or memory footprint or file size. My current optimization effort is being put towards my morning and evening commutes. This involves traveling several different routes at different times, listening to the radio reports for major traffic problems, and discussing with co-workers the various routes that are available. After just over a week of testing, the current optimal route seems to be getting on I-35 North as soon as possible and exiting to highway West 290/71 then to 360 which leads to the office. I tried a lot of the back roads but with the school traffic plus work traffic, they are very congested. Unless 35 is at a standstill, it will usually be a faster and more stable commute. 290 traffic seems to flow pretty well because it is 4+ lanes and an easy exit onto 360. Once on 360 there are about 3 lights to go through, but they haven't been too bad so far.

I find myself optimizing other little areas of my life. For instance, at breakfast, I won't pour my glass of milk before warming up my hot pockets in the microwave. I'll do that while they are heating. That way I'm not standing around waiting for 1 minute 45 seconds. By using the down time in one activity to complete another, I've saved about 15-20 seconds of my life. I also like to optimize my entertainment. I will often watch TV and play on the computer at the same time. That way I double my entertainment value for the amount of time I have. Granted I don't get to concentrate on either one as much, but overall it works out.

No real point to this post. Just something I was thinking about. Do you try to optimize your life? If so, how?

The Office (Reprise)

2008-01-07T08:55:00.001-06:00

The trip in this morning was a bit longer than I’d hoped but at 40 minutes it wasn’t a bad drive. I got to listen to the Focus on the Family broadcast which took up most of the trip. It starts at 7:30 so I’ll try to make that my window of drive time so I get commercial free family goodness for most of the trip. The other 10 minutes I can listen to news or other random dribble on the radio. Finding something interesting on the way home may be more challenging. I ended up taking a slightly different route than I originally intended but it turned out to be just fine and perhaps slightly better.

I’m not off to a good start. I ran off this morning and forgot my lunch so I’ll have to find some place to eat around here.

The chair is really comfortable and there’s that new office smell in the air. Various amenities are still being acquired. The fridge is not here though they did take soda orders. The printer/scanner/fax is borked and a replacement is on the way. Some routers and other computery equipment are still in transit or needing to be ordered. But all in all it’s a nice office and should make for a good working experience.

I also forgot to bring in the camera to take pictures of the move in but I’ll try to remember tomorrow.

Time to get to work.

The Office

2008-01-06T23:06:00.000-06:00

I'm really hoping my upcoming experiences don't end up like the TV show this post is named after (I'm sure they won't). Tomorrow starts a new era in my employment with my current company. On January 29th of last year I started working with PFI out of my house in Bremerton, Washington. In June, we moved down to Kyle, Texas (south of Austin) and I remained working out of the house. Tomorrow will be my first day in the new Austin branch office. I make this transition with mixed emotions. It has certainly been a blessing to be able to work from home and make the move down here while we waited to sell our house. It's also let me spend a lot more time with the family and have a very flexible schedule. Kathryne could run out on errands as needed without having to worry about whether to get someone to watch Sean or Joshua. Also the lack of commute has been very nice. On the other hand, the productivity of working from home without a dedicated office space has been a challenge to say the least. Also the teamworks aspects are harder to work out.

The thing I am looking forward to the least is the commute. Till now, I've never had a regular commute longer than 15 minutes. Now I'll be lucky if I can keep the drive to 30 minutes. Traffic shouldn't be a huge problem till the last few miles of the trip. Most of it is on the smaller county roads, but the last couple stretches have larger interchanges which can back up very easily. Here's a map of the route I plan on taking in the morning.

View Larger Map

I'll try to take some pictures of the office and post them later. It's a nice building in a nice part of town. There's a high school nearby (which should make for nice game night traffic).

The biggest downsides are

I'll have to shower everyday
I'll have to shave more than once every 2 weeks
I won't be able to work in my pajamas (likely, haven't checked for sure)

Hopefully they'll stock the fridge with Diet Dr. Pepper and other sodas.
I'm still hoping to be able to work from home on occasion.

Winter time

2007-12-18T15:43:00.000-06:00

So it's Winter here in Kyle...
And the air conditioner came on in the house. It's about 75 today. I love it.

Raw Worship

2007-07-26T01:28:00.001-05:00

"David, son of Jesse" you can almost hear Michal exclaim "what in ****'s name were you thinking?!? You're the king of Israel for crying out loud. You know those historians are writing down everything you do and the royal artists had plenty of time to get you inscribed on a scroll in all your glory. And what about your sons, you know the ones that are starting to look at you with shifty eyes while sharpening their spears. They're going to use this to their advantage. If my father were alive, he would pin you to the wall no matter what song you were playing."

David's response: "I will celebrate before the LORD. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes." (2 Sam. 6:21-22).

You see, David had finally gotten the Ark of the Covenant back to God's holy city after previous attempts had failed. As he entered the city he disrobed while leaping and dancing before the Lord. Probably not too far out of line with most wives' reaction, Michal didn't like the idea of her husband, the king, disrobing and dancing in the streets in the presence of other women especially the lowly servant girls. In the church today, most people would seriously frown (at the very least) over someone worshiping God while wearing so little clothing. And the dancing would be taboo as well. But my point today is not about dress codes or choreography in our church worship services.

The idea I want to focus on is in David's response. He didn't just humble himself before the Lord. He humiliated himself. His celebration could be described as primal, emotional, and utterly unkingly. He bypassed respect for God, flew past awe of the Lord, and went straight into the realm of the considering himself slime on the nose of the algae that feeds the pond scum in comparison to the Almighty Creator of the Universe. His actions reflected the status of his heart. Before the Lord, he felt as nothing; opening himself fully to the Spirit that lived within him. His leg and arm flailings serving as primal moans that only the Spirit could interpret, faithfully relaying David's message to God.

Have you experienced such worship? How often do we humble ourselves before God to the point of humiliation? How often do we let our emotions pour out before the only one who can truly understand them anyway? Do we pour out ourselves before God? Do we pour out ourselves before God in the presence of our fellow man? David didn't celebrate in secret. He praised God in the streets in front of his whole kingdom. If the light within you is only visible when you're in the closet with the door shut and the lights out, then you're working too hard to hide it under that bushel.

How can we show our deepest emotions (joy, sorrow, gratitude, fear) in our worship before God? Is it by raising our hands, clapping, or jumping up and down? Do we have to cry or smile or laugh? Does it require any physical manifestation at all? I'm really not sure. But I know that I'm not humiliating myself before God because I'm too worried about humiliating myself before my brothers and sisters. If I raise my hands will people look at me funny? Am I moving around too much when I'm singing? If I close my eyes, will people think I've gone to sleep (I wouldn't be surprised if I sometimes sing in my sleepJ).

Who am I compared to King David, a man after God's own heart? If he can dance in the streets in his underwear, I can certainly allow my emotions to come out in my worship in some form. If I let anything or anyone come between me and my God in my worship, then I am not humiliating myself enough. Whether its clothes or distractions or fear or the shifty eyes of my children, I should lay myself bare before the Lord saying "Here I am Lord; I'm nothing before you; take me as I am and mold me into the likeness of your Son." Oh yeah, and Jesus prayed so hard that sweat fell like blood from his head. I think I could find it within myself to let out a little "barbaric yawp" once in a while.

I will not find this in myself except through complete surrender to His Spirit living within me. And I won't find it if my only search is on Sunday morning. If my entire life is not surrendered to His will, then there will be too much of me and not enough of Him.

Come, Lord Jesus! Let me hunger and thirst for you. Open my heart to the humility that David demonstrated that I may empty myself and be filled with your Spirit. Fill me that I may be wholly yours.

Solving Life’s Puzzles

2007-07-24T01:50:00.001-05:00

Life Lessons in Solving a Rubik's Cube

[This is meant to be a visual demonstration. Imagine me standing in front of a class or at someone's door and speaking text similar to this while solving the Rubik's cube. My plan is to go door to door and use this as a "gimmick" or hook to get people interested in a Bible study. Constructive comments are certainly welcome.]

Life offers us many puzzles to solve. In fact, our life in its entirety may be seen as a puzzle. We have to know how all the pieces fit together or what moves to make to get to the solution. Remember the Rubik's cube from the early '80s. It was very popular for a while and one of the most popular puzzles of all time. If you look past the initial insanity of trying to solve the Rubik's cube you find that there is an easy shortcut to solve it. Turning one of the faces diagonally and applying the proper lateral force will allow you to disassemble the cube and reassemble it in the proper order. This is what's known as cheating. Another cheating method is to simply remove the stickers from all the faces and reapply them in the proper order. This would fall under the life motto of "The ends justify the means" which a civilized and moral culture should disavow. While this method gave me a slight sense of accomplishment as a child, I still hadn't solved the puzzle. Recently, my brother-in-law visited and showed me that it doesn't take a nuclear engineer to solve the Rubik's cube, just some time in an airport and a decent set of instructions (I'm sure the fact that he is a nuclear engineer helped too). His playing with the cube revitalized my interest and the next week I set out to master the puzzle myself.

Now some people are enough genius to come up with a solution on their own, but I was not one of them, neither are most people. So for me, when I decided that I wanted to solve the cube, I had to seek external wisdom. So I went seeking for some expert guidance on solving this puzzle. In life, we can muddle our way through and try to figure things out on our own. But what we end up with is just as mixed up as the cube when I would sit and fiddle with it for a few minutes making random moves or trying to keep the colors together.

It's fairly easy to solve portions of the cube with just a little fiddling. You can make a cross or an 'H' on one side or even solve one side by making it all the same color. The difficulty comes in when you need to know how to move the pieces in such a way as to solve the rest of the faces while maintaining the current order. Often the goal is to switch two pieces or move one piece to a certain location without disturbing the existing solution. Of course to do this, for a while you have to break up the order you have made. Then you have to put it back together. Moving one piece into the correct place can be as many as 10 moves of the cube faces once you near the end. However at the beginning, it is anywhere from 2-6 moves. As the amount of order in the cube increases, it becomes more difficult to maintain that order. In life, we start with basic teachings. We teach our children right from wrong. We teach them to be nice, to share, to be polite, to obey the rules, etc. As we progress in life, things get more complicated, and it takes a more complicated set of moves to maintain the order in our lives.

Often when I'm solving the cube, still being the novice that I am, I'll make a wrong move or forget where I am in the series of moves. Sometimes I realize this and remember exactly what I've done and can undo the problem and start again. Most of the time, I end up with a cube that looks not much better than when I started. It's times like these when I have to go back to the center. The method for solving the cube that I use involves starting by solving the white face first. The white face always stays on the bottom and serves as the reference point or foundation for the solution. It's very important to have a foundation in our lives. It is this foundation, this center, to which we must return when our lives become hopelessly scrambled. If I were to try to figure out how to fix the cube without this center, I would never get anywhere. By building on a foundation and building up the cube one layer at a time, I can always be assured of reaching the end. Not because of how smart or dexterous I am, but because I'm following the plan laid out by the expert. One thing about starting over is that it is never as bad as it seems. At first glance, I think I'll have to start from scratch, but when I get the foundation back in place, the rest of the pieces are often right where I left them.

What better expert for our lives than the one who made all things. Almighty God has given us his instruction book for life. He made the universe and all that is in it. He knows how it works. He knows all the twists and turns I will have to make to successfully reach my final destination in life. If I follow His plan, and build my life on his foundation, then I can work my way up the cube. When I fall or take a wrong turn, I am not lost for I have that foundation to return to and start over again.

Please don't think I'm trying to say that life is a series of legalistic moves or that Christianity is a set of rules that you must follow to get to the final destination of heaven. But there is a plan, a series of instructions provided by the Creator. In essence He is saying, "Here's how I want you to live. If you follow my plan, you'll make it to the end." He even provided the perfect example for how to live by coming to this earth Himself, in the form of man, and living a perfect life. He did this to provide a pattern for us to follow, but also to provide encouragement for us. We have a God who knows what it's like for us because he was one of us.

So many of life's problems would not be problems if we would just follow God's plan from the beginning. Even better, when we mess up, His word provides solutions for how to get back on track.

In solving the Rubik's cube, I recently fulfilled a dream from my childhood. It's one that I thought was long gone (kudos to my bro-in-law for inspiring me to do this). My adult dream is to see my children grow up and be faithful servants of the Lord and strong leaders in His kingdom. God's word provides plenty of instruction for making this happen and most of doesn't have to do with how my kids act, but with how I act.

Caveat #2: Those familiar with the Rubik's cube will know that there are different methodologies for solving the cube each with their pros and cons. This is where the analogy must end for there is only one way to the Father and that is through his Son, Jesus Christ. Many other religions and ideologies claim to have the answer to life's problems and to some extent they are beneficial in this life. But only Christ provides the necessary forgiveness and grace that is our salvation.

In closing, life is hard and complicated. We need instructions. We have those instructions. See for yourself. Pick up a Bible and study God's plan for all of us. But beware. It's dangerous, for it will change your life if you let it.

References:

Fire and Rain

2007-06-29T22:29:00.000-05:00

The line of a song comes to mind, "I've seen fire and I've seen rain." The fire comes in the form of tiny little insects known as fire ants. As we dance them around the yard (poisoning one mound only to have another pop up) the kids have been bitten a few times.

The rain comes in the form of torrential downpours for the past 2 weeks. Austin and surrounding areas have received lots and lots of rain especially this past week. One city called Marble Falls received about 18 inches of rain in the course of a day. It's kept the temperatures down and mostly bearable to us northwesterners. The kids have enjoyed playing in the gutters during the storms.

Sean and Joshua have made many friends and spent a lot of time outside playing. Sean is learning to ride his bike without training wheels. His first attempts went well, but he's still very cautious.

I've been spending the last week commuting to north Austin for work. It's about 1 hour each way with spurts of traffic problems along the way. Next week brings the same thing. After that it should be back to working at home for a while.

We're still getting to know the area. We've visited 2 churches and found one that we like quite a bit. We're going there again this week, but we'll probably visit down in San Marcos in a couple weeks. We are very eager to get settled in and start back to work.

The Last of the Two-mores

2007-05-29T19:11:00.000-05:00

Today is the last of our "Two-mores". After today, we're down to the "One-mores". One more Tuesday; one more Wednesday; one more Sunday worship. We're down to the last week and it gets harder and harder to think about leaving. We're making progress on the packing, but the thought of leaving all our friends and loved ones here is very hard.

The kids are taking it very well, but I'm sure this will psychologically affect them for years to come. We've started a new discipline technique with Sean. I told him he could blame grandpa (my dad) for telling me stories about how it was used on him as a kid. Whenever he gets sassy or has a bad attitude, he has to stand facing the wall with his arms out holding books while we count to 60. We may shift to exercise weights later, so as not to create a negative impression of books, but for now they are already packed. We'll see if this changes his attitude that has continued to worsen in spite of many timeouts and spankings. Other similar techniques we may try include push-ups and sit-ups. In addition to disciplining him, this will also help his physical development.

Change

2007-05-05T00:55:00.000-05:00

[This was written last week on a flight back to Seattle from DC]

48 minutes out of Seattle. I just finished watching the Hillary Swank movie “Freedom Writers” on the 4 inch screen in the airline seat. I ended up in “Economy Plus” seating which has about 5 inches more leg room and it is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately I’m in the middle seat and I’m not sitting between 2 sweet little old ladies.

The movie was one of those about disadvantaged kids is a school where racial tensions are high, the teachers are just trying to make it though the day and the students are trying to make it to 18 without being shot. Ms. G. is a brand new teacher assigned to freshman and sophomore English classes. While the general theme reminded me of many other movies over the years (“Dangerous Minds”, “Stand and Deliver”, “Coach Carter”, and the dancing one with Antonio Banderas), it was still a very touching and entertaining movie. The theme was change. The students had to decide that they wanted to change their lives in the face of great odds and little encouragement from anyone other than Ms. G.

Change is hard. Sometimes change is forced on us such as with those in the Holocaust that the movie centers on. Many that survive the change come out stronger and as heroes to others as in the case of the lady (Ms. Gies?) who hid Anne Franke’s family. They are just ordinary people who inspire others to be more than what they are. The kids in the movie had a choice. They could be who they were and just accept their place in life, or they could make a change and be more and do more and possibly do more than just survive, they could thrive. These kind of changes are never easy and even unwelcome, but when we make the choice for change we open ourselves up to the possibilities of life. Another movie in this vein is “The Pursuit of Happyness” with Will Smith. I watched it recently and saw bits on the plane. If you haven’t seen it, you really must. Chris Gardner decides to be more than he is even though life keeps beating him down. The change from a life of woe to a life worth living is difficult, but it may not be the hardest choice to make.

Perhaps even more difficult is the choice to move from a life of comfort and mediocrity to a life this is spectacular. In my WASP, middle class lifestyle, I make choices every day, but these choices are often made for what is habitual and comfortable and familiar. I wear the same clothes, listen to the same music, do the same leisure activities, work at the same job, pray the same prayers, act in the same manner towards everyone around me. Everything is fine. Life is good. I’m well fed (too well). Well clothed. Well housed. Well loved and needed. I have no dreams or aspirations that I need to fulfill or at least none that I’m willing to devote the effort to pursuing. My life is all around a good one with ups and downs. I pay homage to God as the provider, but really it is me who brings home the bacon. At least that’s how I tend to see it. I don’t pray for provision of my daily bread because I’ve never had to go without (except for the 5+ hours on this plane because I didn’t have time to get something in the airport before boarding).

And yet I think of Ephesians 3:20-21 (which I will actually type in since I’m disconnected from the internet and http://www.biblegateway.com) “Now to Him who is able to do more, than all we ask or even imagine according to His power that is at work within us. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.” Is a normal, comfortable life what God has in store for me. Or is there so much more that I could be tapping into. So much more power. So much more strength. So much more heart. So much more soul. So much more relationship, with both God and man. The problem is there is nothing external to push me towards change. Life is not saying “Change or die!” In fact, I’m sure Satan wants nothing more than for me to live a comfortable life, only partially dependent on God. Satan doesn’t necessarily need all of me whereas God does. All Satan needs is for me to be lukewarm. God on the other hand is a consuming fire that will overtake my whole being. If I will just let him. Is this kind of change harder? I wouldn’t dare compare my conundrum with the trials of the Holocaust or the inner city kids who face gunshots and drugs or the starving children in the third world. And yet, each of us is put in our lives by the hand of the Creator and it is a life we must choose to live.

To be continued...

Budget + Envelope + Cash = $50

2007-05-05T00:41:00.000-05:00

We went to Walmart today and ended up spending $50 LESS than we had budgeted ($200) for the week. How many times has that ever happened. It happened because we had a budget, a set amount of cash, and a plan. Armed with the word "No" we were able to stick to that plan. We didn't buy just rice and beans or even mac-n-cheese, but we stayed away from a lot of premade stuff and we had the menu planned for the next week and knew what we needed for that. We were so excited we let the kids each pick out a candy in the checkout aisle.

This budgeting thing is really great. I wonder why no one ever told us about it before. :)

If we can do something similar next week, we'll have an extra $100 to put towards our emergency fund and debt. If we do it regularly thats a big step towards the financial goals we've just now started working towards.

Blogging at 37,000 feet

2007-03-22T12:56:00.001-05:00

As I write this, the Map channel on the in-flight entertainment system says we're at 36,886 feet traveling at a speed of 466 mph. I broke down and paid the $5 for the 24 channels of DirectTV for the next 2.5 hours. The question is "Is there anything more on TV at 37,000 feet than on the ground?" I watched some of "MythBusters" and am currently watching Bill O'Reily on FoxNews. Apparently Rush Limbaugh and Arnold Schwarzenegger had a big tiff while I was gone. (Luckily MS Word knows how to spell The Governator's name, because I got it really wrong.)

I've been in Atlanta for 2 days on business travel talking about the mapping functionality for our product that I'll be working on. I should arrive home around 1am PDT. The big question is whether to go to sleep right away or stay up a bit and watch "24" that I missed on Monday while flying.

On The Learning Channel, there's a story about a 750 lb man. That's a pleasant sight that makes me really appreciate the small woman sitting in the middle seat next to me (I'm by the window where I have a great view of the white crane/heron that's on the wing tip of the Fontier plane. I lucked out on the eastbound trip and the middle seat was not occupied for both legs.

So there's TV on the plane, but still no Internet access. Eventually I'll be able to play World of Warcraft while flying but for now TV will have to do. This also means I won't be able to post this till sometime tomorrow.

The TV in the hotel lobby had the caption today "Gore on Capitol Hill". Fortunately it was just about the former VP's testimony on Global Warming and not a mass slaughter involving Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees (sp?, lack of internet and IMDB is disconcerting).

The drink cart is about to arrive so I better put this away so I have somewhere to put my Cherry Coke and chips.

Will I purchase the DirectTV for the next leg of the flight? Will I watch "24" upon arriving home? Will we ever get to stop hearing about Anna Nicole Smith? These questions and more will be answered in my next blog which I know you'll be eagerly awaiting.

Dennis Miller will be on O'Reily later. He's funny. And they left the whole can of Cherry Coke. I'm in heaven (or at least closer to it).

They were out of chips; I had animal crackers instead they were pretty good but stuck to my teeth. Flying west, the sunset sky is nice and red. The clouds are always beautiful from a distance. I'll try to enjoy them while I can because from what I've heard, the world will be uninhabitable soon and it's all my fault.

From the second leg: There's the show on FoxNews late at night called "Red Eye". It's like one of those panel shows with a moderator (on LSD). They try to pretend like they're talking about real news, but then they also try to be funny which sometimes they were. Though there is much that seems funny at 37,000 feet late at night.

Travel woes

2007-02-16T14:10:00.000-06:00

So the final result from my previous post was that I arrived in DC without my bag. It was small enough that I could have carried it on with me and I thought about doing so. Now I know better.
Eventually I got the bag delivered to the hotel on Wednesday morning. I had just gone out to Target to buy new shirts, underwear, socks, and toiletries.

There was lots of snow in the area on Tuesday and it was really cold. The snow kept us at limited staff in the office at PFI so I didn't get to talk to everyone I would have like to, but overall it was a good trip. Working with Kara again was the best part. We had Valentine's Day lunch together. While driving to lunch, some of the melting snow on the roof of the rental minivan I had slid off while going around a corner. At the next light, the rest of the snow fell down on the windshield when I stopped. The windshield was covered with at least 4 inches of snow which I had to brush off while waiting at the light. Luckily, the cross street lights are on really long cycles so I made it with time to spare. The really funny thing was that no one really looked at me like anything was strange.

For the return trip, I decided to stay up all night for my 6am flight . About 2am, I was starting to think this was not such a good idea. I arrived at the Thrifty rental car office about 4:20. There was no one there, inside or out. I called their help desk and they tried calling. I heard the phone ringing but no one answered. I was about to just leave the keys there and try to hitch a ride with another company when another customer arrived. We saw a van with lights on out by the gate so we went there to see if someone was in it. There was a sleeping woman who turned out the be the desk agent.

After knocking on the window a couple times to wake her up, we got her to go back to the desk to process our returns. She was very incoherent and we wondered if it was just the sleepiness or if she was otherwise recovering from the previous night's activities. After checking us out, she called the bus which took another 10 minutes to arrive.

I made the flight with a few minutes to spare but only because I wasn't about to check my bags after what happened on the trip out.

So all is well and I made it home fine, but I don't think I'll be renting from Thrifty again anytime soon.

Kathryne's family is in town now. We had a bite on the house, but it turns out to be too expensive for them after they were preapproved for a loan. But at least things are starting to pick up. We have another open house on Saturday.

Airport Blogging

2007-02-12T13:04:00.001-06:00

Well, I’m officially an internet junkie. My flight to Chicago was delayed 1 ½ hours so what do you do while waiting at the Seattle airport for 2+ hours. Why you pay $8 to access the internet, check email, and maybe play a little World of Warcraft of course. Bad weather in Chicago caused the delay. My final destination is Washington Dulles and they’re supposed to have bad weather as well tonight. So if I do get there tonight it will be really late.

The trip is the first for my new job with Potomac Fusion. It’s mostly and orientation/meet-n-greet. I’m splitting time working from home and working at the office at ATS. That’s going pretty well so far.

They just announced that we should be able to make the connection in Chicago. Joshua was really upset with me because he didn’t get to say good bye to me this morning. Everyone’s starting to get back to health again after ¾ of us have been sick for the last week. One school near Seattle shut down for a few days after 300/1000 students called in sick with the flu last week.

[Updated 11:56AM PST] I transferred over to a direct flight to Dulles, but my bag may not make it. I should get there before I was originally scheduled to, though.

[Updated 11:39PM EST] I made it but my bag didn't.

Superbowl and Sunday

2007-02-03T13:50:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is the big day. The Superbowl. I remember when the Bears won in '85 and G.I. Joe made a Refrigerator Perry action figure that was special order only.

I remember living in San Angelo, TX and watching the Superbowl with my church youth group, cheering for the Cowboys and seeing Leon Lett get stripped of the football inside the 10 yard line after recovering a fumble. It didn't matter because the Cowboys were way ahead anyway, but it was funny to watch.

I remember squeezing a devotional in that evening at halftime between all the snacks and partying.

I remember some really great commercials, like the boy getting sucked in a Pepsi bottle from sucking too hard on a straw.

Especially when living in Texas I got very into football. I watched a lot of games and played it with the youth group almost every Sunday afternoon. In college, I lost most interest in sports and have very slowly started to regain some interest. While the commercials are usually the best part or the Superbowl, these days I don't even want to record it to watch the commercials.

There's a news story going around about how the NFL is cracking down on churches that show the Superbowl in their buildings on screens larger than 42". It's fine to have a big group in your home on whatever size screen you want, but outside of the home there are restrictions.

Now to my point, churches I've gone to have had a variety of reactions to the Superbowl ranging from canceling services, to having special parties, to meeting in homes or other common places to watch the game and fellowship. Whatever the official stance, there are always going to be people who stay home from morning or evening services to watch the big game. They do that during the regular season too.

But what would God have us do? What does he think about us rescheduling our worship and lives around a football game. Not just any game. A game where advertisers pay millions of dollars per minute to sell us stuff. The commercialization of sports is even worse than that of Christmas. And how many of the ads are for things that God would approve of. Many are fine, but the best ads are always the beer commercials. "Stay home from church. Drink more beer." Great message to send to the youngsters that you're trying to raise in the Lord.

Now I'm not perfect in my church attendance nor do I think God demands it and he is merciful as in all things. However if our goal is to please him and live our lives in service to him, are we reaching this goal by rescheduling our worship times.

Possibly a larger issue in my mind is one of conforming to the world. When football and God collide, God has to move out of the way. I'm not saying that we need to totally abstain from sports or television, but when the world sees us engaging in the same fanaticism as them that's not the message of Christ. In the world but not of it. We can participate in worldly activities, but within the boundaries of the law of Christ. When we compromise, we're sending the wrong message to the world and our children.

Too many sports and club activities for young people are taking place on Sundays and Wednesday nights, the traditional times for our meetings. And too many Christian parents are allowing and encouraging their children to participate without regard to the priorities that God would have us set. In a couple weeks on a Sunday morning, our elementary Bible school classes are taking a field trip to support one of their classmates at a sporting event. While I'm all for supporting our children's activities, I just can't support it by allowing my child to attend a sports event instead of Bible class. Sports has great things to teach youngsters, but the church has greater teachings. And I certainly don't want my own child to get the impression that it's okay to choose worldly activities over Godly ones.

So what will I do tomorrow? It's our normal fellowship group nights where we meet in homes anyway and I think we'll be watching the game on one of 3 different TVs. Maybe we'll have our own half time show where we sing or something, but I can't help feeling that we should do something greater to set ourselves apart. So that we can say to our friends and coworker, "No I didn't watch the game. Our church got together to worship God and it was a great time." Maybe I should try to get something like that together.

[Edited to remove too personal remarks]

By popular demand

2007-01-30T21:09:00.000-06:00

Well, at least one person was interested.

Here's a picture of my office when at home:

When at ATS, I have a real cubicle; though I'm thinking about getting a yoga ball for there as well.

Politics and religion

2007-01-30T18:53:00.000-06:00

I've often thought about whether I should try to be profound in my blog posts by talking about politics or religion. Most of my posts are about my life and family and more of a digital diary than any attempt to discuss hard hitting topics. It works well as a communication mechanism as well.

I've been reading my brother-in-law Eddie's blog. He's a history teacher and posts about politics and culture. I've started commenting and debating on his blog, but I don't think I want to get in to that here. Now religion is another story. Maybe I'll start trying to post deeply spiritual questions and start debates and win people over with my eloquent arguments.

More likely I'd just make a fool of myself, but since I've never been afraid of doing that maybe I'll give it a try.

What's new?

2007-01-30T18:41:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was my first day on the new job. It involved mostly getting things set up and trying to figure out what in the world is going on (as most new jobs do). Today was more of the same starting off with a mound of paperwork that has to be filled out. But so far so good.

I'm back at ATS now, not as an employee but as a tenant. It's kind of weird to be back in the old office again. It's like going home to live with your parents after a while away. You're not really sure how you fit in and things will never quite be the same, but it is all oddly familiar. One thing is for sure, it's a lot quieter than the average 10 minute span at my house. The boys have 3 settings:

Off
Loud
Noisy

and the first setting is only available with great force of will (on our part).

I'll post a pic of my home office constisting of 2 tray tables and a yoga ball. The yoga ball is actually quite comfortable (more than most office chairs) and the tray tables work well unless the boys bump into them or we need to get into the file cabinet that they sit in front of. We are so ready to move and get more space.

Cool time waster of the day

2007-01-24T15:22:00.000-06:00

Here's a fun little game that's probably cool more from a tech aspect than actually being fun for hours on end: Goggles, flight simulator using Google Maps. It uses Flash and Google maps. I flew over Disneyland.

File this under things to do when you're on the last week of a job.

Deal or No Deal

2007-01-18T16:35:00.001-06:00

A show I've taken to watching recently is "Deal or No Deal". It's especially good when you can fast forward through all the clapping and extra closeups.

Well I've felt like I've been playing my own similar game for a while and the time has come to say "Deal".

I've officially accepted the job with PFI and start work on Jan. 29. My last day at 21CSI will be next Thursday and I will take Friday off.

We're very excited and very relieved. It's alway hard to know what God's will is in matters like this, but I can definitely feel his hand guiding us along the way and pointing us in the right direction.

So close

2007-01-18T12:28:00.001-06:00

I'm in the process of drafting my final employment notice and on the verge of accepting the offer I have. It's a very good offer but I've been waiting on another possiblity that I just interviewed last week that has a lot of potential. I haven't heard anything from them and am running out of time on the offer.

Anyways, as I considered accepting the offer and started to draft some emails to 21CSI and PFI, a wave of relief started to wash over me. It's a really calming feeling to have all the uncertainty start to slip away.

There's still the house to sell, but the great thing about this job is that we wouldn't have to move until we sold the house. We want that to be ASAP, but we won't be in a situation where I have to move on ahead of the family to start the job. I can work from here until we move.

I feel really good about this decision an unless things change dramaticly in the next 2 hours, it will be a done deal.

Rules for "24" characters

2007-01-16T11:20:00.000-06:00

Well the season premiere of my favorite show "24" kicked of with a bang the last 2 nights. You had Jack Bauer going vampire on the terrorists and the typical "Jack doesn't know what he's doing, listen to me instead" from those in power in the government.

Here are my set of rules that all "24" characters should follow in order to safeguard the USA from terrorists:

Jack Bauer is always right
Never argue with Jack Bauer (see rule 1)
If you want to save the country, follow Jack Bauer's instructions immediately (see 1 and 2)
Never ever, under any circumstances, arrest Jack Bauer. Never. EVER!
If you think Jack Bauer is dead and want to cry, don't. He's alive and is still always right (see 1).

And now one for the terrorists:

No matter how injured/captured/dead you think Jack Bauer is, never ever tell him your plans or what's really going on. If you do, he will get mad/inspired and kill your men and escape. (see good guy rule 5. This actually goes for any bad guy in any story when they capture the good guy, but it is especially true for Jack Bauer.)

And one in the spirit of all the Chuck Norris/Jack Bauer stuff flying around teh interwebz about how powerful they are:

Jack Bauer has the ability to look directly at a nuclear explosion without going blind. Jack Bauer's eyes burn the nuclear explosion.

Next week is soooo far away and there's only 1 hour of 24. /cry

As we know it

2007-01-08T23:28:00.000-06:00

Well it's a big week. On the job front, tomorrow (Tuesday) I'm getting an offer from a company in Austin, and Wednesday I have a phone interview with a company that makes games for mobile devices.

Sunday I get to lead worship again at church (always love doing that) and we have another Open House that afternoon. Top that off with the start of the new 24 season and you have the makings of a great day. It will be even better if lots of people come to see the house. Oh, and that's also Joshua's 4th birthday. He's been waiting for that for a long time.

Funny thing, I rarely watch football but I caught the 4th quarter of the Seahawks crazy win over the Cowboys. That was the most exciting quarter of football I've watched in a long time, maybe ever. I used to be a huge Cowboy fan and may be again shortly after our move to Texas, but for now I'm with the Seahawks. In addition I watched some of the Eagle/Giants game on Sunday (after just watching the same teams in the movie "Invincible"). I also watched a lot of the Florida/Ohio State game tonight. I think Kathryne's getting scared that I'm going to start watching sports all the time.

The boys won the wrestling match tonight. They ganged up on me. Sean finished a version of "Gulliver's Travels" that he got for Christmas. He's really tearing through those books now. We're sending off an application for a Christian school in Austin for next year. There's already a waiting list so we're hoping he can get in.

Enough rambling for tonight.

Another year, another Dilbert Desk Calendar

2007-01-02T18:12:00.000-06:00

Happy new year everyone. This year for Christmas I got not one (1) but two (2) comic strip desk calendars. The Dilbert on is for the office. I also got a Far Side calendar which came as a shock to me because I distinctly remember a few years ago when a cow-irker had the "last" calender they were going to make. But Gary Larson decided to give his readers a treat and revive the calendar this year donating all his proceeds to a conservation group. It's kind of funny because the first comic is the one with the dinosaurs smoking cigarettes and the caption "The real reason dinosaurs became extinct" (paraphrased).

In other comic news, Bill Amend the creator of the Foxtrot comic strip has gone to a Sunday only strip. Foxtrot is always one of my favorites as he often runs week long homages to cool movies like those in the Star Wars and Spider-Man series. He also has the Jason character playing my favorite game World of Warcraft from time to time. I'll miss the daily dose especially since the Sunday ones aren't usually as funny and don't have story arcs.

Resolutions for this year:
Same as every year
"I, Matthew Lee, being of sound mind and able body do hereby resolve not to make any new year's resolutions."

As you can see I'm not good at keeping the few resolutions I make having paradoxically broken the only one (1) that I made. Maybe next year I'll do better.

Working from Home

2006-12-29T11:39:00.000-06:00

I'm working from home this morning while I'm waiting for a guy to come take a look at our septic line that has separated and been in-grown with roots. At the surface, working from home is great. No commute, free food, no cow-irkers to distract me. And since Kathryne and the boys are out of town, you would think there would be even less distraction. Unfortunately, the cats are not out of town and think I'm staying home to play with them. Then there's always the call of "World of Warcraft" and other not-so-much-work activities.

I post this because one of the new jobs I'm looking at taking would involve working from home for the next few months until they can get an actual office in Austin. Our current house is very ill-equipped for this sort of thing having no area where I can go to be away while the family is home. So in our new house, we're going to make sure there is at least 1 area that is somewhat isolated for office use (and just getting away from the noise of 2 boys running around).

If I do take this job, there's a possibility of using some office space temporarily at a former employer, which would be cool if not somewhat awkward at first.

For now, I just have to ignore K.C. (the cat) and carry on with my work.

Vista Rocks!

2006-12-28T16:22:00.000-06:00

The new Windows Vista is the most awesomest thing since Texas-sized sliced bread. It's got this cool clock and can do everything wicked fast.

It's "da Bomb", "da Man", and "da Bears" all wrapped up in one.

Disclaimer:
I'm posting this in the hope of getting a free laptop from Microsoft's PR firm so I can talk about how great Vista is.
See Joel and Scoble for more information.

"I have the Power"

2006-12-16T02:11:00.000-06:00

Well, Kathryne may enjoy the 26 hours without electronic interference,
but it was driving me crazy. When the lights came back on at 11:30
this evening, I could feel then energy coursing through my veins.
Actually, we spent the better part of the day out running errands. We
ate breakfast at the McDonalds in Silverdale and it only took 45
minutes to get the food. There are like 5 places in the area that
serve breakfast that had power and all were crowded. Then we got our
electronics fix at Worst Sell and ate lunch at the Black Eagle.
previous sentence has been encrypted with our super secret code which
unfortunately our kids have already broken.>

We went to see "Charlotte's Web" tonight. I cried like 5 times. It
was very well done and really brought the book to life. That's some
pig.

Show me the way

2006-12-11T17:06:00.000-06:00

When the right opportunity comes, will I know? Knowing the future is highly overrated. I have a hard enough time knowing what to do in the present (though knowing the future might make that easier, or it might make it harder as I wonder whether there is anything I should do to change the future or I get paralyzed with fear that I will bring the whole space-time continuum to its knees).

When the right job comes along will I know? Times like this I wish God would come down, set up a giant spinner with all the choices available (like in a board game), and spin me around so that where my head lands is the direction I am to go. Barring that, skywriting or other heavenly signs would work too. Having options is nice, but sometimes the decision making process is so stressful that you just want to curl up in the fetal position and wait for the future to pass you by.

From the words of a song I need to listen to some more:
If you say go, we will go
If you say wait, we will wait
If You say step out on the water
And they say it can't be done
We'll fix our eyes on You and we will come
Your ways are higher than our ways
And plans that You have laid
Are good and true
If You call us to the fire
You will not withdraw Your hand
We'll gaze into the flames and look for You

Free Hot Java!

2006-12-11T16:19:00.000-06:00

Following in the vein of my string of bandwagon tech new release posts, Java 6 has been released. This one actually affects me somewhat though I probably won't get to use it seriously for a few months at least.

Try it now. It's free.

Also my new favorite song is "White and Nerdy" by Weird Al. I've always liked him, but this release hits close to home. Also, "The Saga Begins" from 1999 is a winner. Check out Al's myspace page page to listen to the song or watch the video.

Life as Speck

2006-11-16T17:06:00.000-06:00

[reposted from my MySpace blog]

What is a company's most valuable asset? For a software company (and probably just about any company) the most correct answer is "It's employees". At least that's how I think it should be.

Software, intellectual property, capital assets, etc. are stuck in time and only change at the execution of the employees. If there are no employees then what you have now is what you'll have in the future. As markets shift, you need to be able to move along with the flow. Only the employees can make this happen. If suddenly the customer doesn't give a rip about your current software (and they sure don't care that you consider it IP) and they want something new, you can either give it to them or wither on the vine.

The kind of company I want to find to work for is one that values its employees highly and shows it not just through compensation, but also in the general attitudes of the management.

Also, perception and reality are very different things. Different employees may look at the same company differently based on their roles and experiences past and present. So it's really all about feelings and perceptions as are most things when dealing with other members of the human race.

Just some things I've been thinking about. I wanted to write them down to help make a decision about whether to stay where I am or venture into something new.

Gmail Milestone

2006-11-16T17:01:00.000-06:00

I'm now using 1% of my gmail space. Woohoo.

You are currently using 21 MB (1%) of your 2785 MB.

I guess there's some rounding involved.

I've been using gmail for all my personal stuff lately and it's very nice to have it all available over the internet. I also just started using Google Reader for all the RSS feeds (news and blogs) that I read every day. I was using Mozilla Thunderbird but now I can access my subscriptions from anywhere and the interface isn't too bad. I'm getting used to it. I used to just read the blogs while at work, but now I can read all the same ones at home or wherever.

And yes, Kara, I truly am a geek.

Testing Google Calendar

2006-10-19T00:19:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to the publicly available calendar for the Central Kitsap church of Christ hosted on Google Calendar:

Right now we're still testing things out but so far it looks really useful.

In Sickness and in Health

2005-02-01T00:38:00.000-06:00

When do we get to health part? :) Kathryne's managed to be healthy lately, but the rest of us have been fighting coughs and colds for the last couple weeks. We're finally seeming to get over it. I haven't not been congested since Thanksgiving. We really need to switch our carpeting to hard flooring. Also the windows need some work. I’m reminded of George Bailey's line in "It's a Wonderful Life" about the old drafty house. The weather's been fairly warm for a while unlike many parts of the country.

I'm getting ready to leave for Korea again in a few weeks. It's really cold there now.

We got Joshua some new clothes with the b-day gift card. I finally used my B&N gift card from Krista to get "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis. I've also recently read "They Smell Like Sheep" by Lynn Anderson as part of our elders and deacons leadership seminar. It's a very good book that I would recommend reading if you get the chance.

We should have some new pix of the boys soon. Kathryne took to JC Pennys after Joshua's b-day and got some of just Joshua and some of them together. We also have at least a dozen roles of film that we need to get developed.

We're all staying very busy these days and I need to get to sleep.

Have a good week.

2.5 days left

2004-12-07T23:41:00.000-06:00

We've got 2.5 days left to work and lots more to do.

I'm feeling mostly better but i'm really ready to come home.

Web Cam

2004-12-07T08:13:00.000-06:00

Here's a web camera that another developer put up in our work area. From about 3PM PST on it updates during the day. You can generally see me with my back to the camera on the other side of the room.

Happy Birthday

2004-12-06T03:10:00.000-06:00

I can't believe my little (?) bother... i mean brother... is 17 today. Happy birthday Daniel.

I'm feeling a little better but I'm almost out of my Korean cocktail of drugs. What's actually made me feel the best is the Tylenol cold medicine that I brought with me. I have had to replenish my supply of cough drops.

Things are going well here from a work standpoint, but I am really ready to come home.

Here's a link to a clock to see what time it is in four areas in which I have family:
Personal World Clock

Dr. Doctor

2004-12-03T06:33:00.000-06:00

I'm going to try to go to a doctor on base tomorrow if possible. I thought my cough was getting better but now I'm starting to feel it more in my chest. Hopefully there will be somewhere I can go. If not, maybe I'll try a local remedy.

I'm getting to watch Survivor on the armed forces network. I think "The Apprentice" was on at 8, but we were out at dinner. I was starting to feel pretty bad (sweating and coughing) but then we started talking politics and my blood got pumping and I'm feeling much better now.

Have a good Friday. Mine is almost over. Tomorrow is Saturday, but there's more work to do.

Native Cuisine

2004-12-02T07:01:00.000-06:00

After 2 full days here in Korea, it's starting to feel like a Little America. I'm feeling very comfortable now in the sorrounding even though it is really hard to order food and even harder to know how to eat it. Starting last night, we went on a mostly native diet. With the exception of breakfast, we're trying to eat the local food. We've had good luck so far. They serve lots of little dishes that you mix and match together with some meat to make your meal. Last night we put the meat and toppings on two differnt kinds of lettuce and rolled it up. It's felt like eating Korean fajitas. I'm getting better with the chop sticks but my hand starts to cramp during the middle of the meal and i get sloppy.

The weather has been great here. It gets up to 60 degrees in the afternoon. The mornings are a bit nippy as we walk to the base, but we soon warm up as we crowd 8 developers and 15 computers into a 10x20 room with no ventalation.

Jonathan is actually trying to learn the language and the culture a little bit. I'm just trying not to get lost or eat the wrong thing.

Hopefully we'll get some sight seeing time, but current plans are to work through the weekend.

Time for bed. Have a good rest of the week.

Home sweet Korea

2004-11-30T19:48:00.000-06:00

We made it without incident to Korea. We're staying at the Howard Hotel just outside the army base. This is a very Americanized area but with enough differences that you know something is not quite right.

We ate breakfast on base this morning for $1.70. I've never had biscuits and gravy that cheap before and they were pretty good.

The hotel is nice with a TV and internet connectivity. There are 70+ channels and even a few English ones. Luckily the toilets are not the Japanees style sit on the floor. I did see those in the Tokyo airport, but opted not to press my luck and try to use them.

It's pretty cold here right now compared to the Northwest, but it's not really bad. The worst part is the smeel which some of the others said I would get used to before the day is over.

There's a church right next to the hotel and a large Baptist church just across from the base. Korea seems to be a thouroughly Christianized country so I shouldn't have trouble finding somewhere to worship on Sunday and maybe even Wednesday.

That's all for now.

Be careful what you ask for

2004-11-07T23:09:00.000-06:00

Whenever you ask God to bless you or something you are doing, you had better be ready for the result.

My mom tells the story of when she was pregnant with my little (not so much anymore) brother. We all prayed for a little boy after having 2 straight girls. When Dan was born, he had a head of hair that made him look like a little boy rather than a newborn infant.

Well we've been praying for our LTC program which we've gotten started recently. We were hoping for 5-10 participants this year to get things going. Tonight we had 20 who have committed to participating this year. We're still getting organized and things are a little rough, but apparently God wants us to do much more than we asked or even imagined.

So we have our work cut out for us. I'm also in charge of VBS for next summer so I'll be more careful with that one... Just kidding.

Keep on praying.

Let the games begin

2004-11-02T15:44:00.000-06:00

With all the exit polls, pundits, and weather forecasts, it's hard to know what is really going on. We'll have to wait and see.

One thing is for sure. This is the most recent election in the history of our country.

Voting Bandwagon

2004-11-02T09:44:00.000-06:00

Well the rules of blogging state that you have to have an entry on election day telling people to vote so here is the obligatory blog entry.

Seriously, God has granted us freedom in our lives. We have free will to make our own choices each day of whether to follow Him and how best to do so. In the USA, we are also blessed to be free to choose our leaders. Most humans do not have this freedom at least not to the extent that we do. Though it is good to realize that there are two new countries embarking on the rocky road to self-government.

Whoever you vote for, please vote and please pray that God will bless our leaders to make wise decisions.

The big focus is on the Presidential election, but I think that the local races have a greater impact on our daily lives than the national races. So don't forget to vote for the local candidates and make an informed decision.

A Fridge'd Day

2004-10-17T00:21:00.000-05:00

We had a rainy day which we spent inside working on the kitchen. I also made two trips to Lowe’s in support of our efforts. Sean built some really cool roller coasters on the computer game and Joshua did his normal thing of playing with trains while telling stories about Thomas and Percy, watching videos, and drinking milk.

The new fridge is still sitting in our living room while the old one is sitting in our front yard (I need to call Sears about that). Most of my day was spent with running a water line to the fridge and scraping up the old floor. We tried taking the line down and under the house and over to where the fridge is. The first problem was that there was a cinder block wall about 3 feet short of the fridge, but there was a cinder block turned sideways to allow some cables to pass thru. Surely there would be another entrance to get around the wall. Well, there wasn’t, and don’t call me Shirley. So after drilling both the holes (which we now have to patch) we took the hose through the under the sink wall, below the drawers, through the side wall into the closet, along the closet wall, and finally into the cubby for the fridge. Now we just have to prime the floor, lay the tile and move in the fridge. Oh, that’s assuming that we can get the fridge by the bar. If not, then it’s bye-bye bar. We’re going to take it out sometime, but hopefully that won’t be tomorrow.

Back from DC

2004-10-01T18:43:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a trip to Washington DC. 30 minutes after landing at SeaTac, Mt. St. Helens did its thing. Sean was very excited about the volcano interrupting.

Someday, i'm going to take the whole family with me on the trip to DC and we'll stay some extra time and go sightseeing.

Mom comes tomorrow. I left the airport today about the same time she lands tomorrow. Luckily traffic won't be too bad tomorrow.

In other news, I may be going to Korea at the end of November. Lots of frequent flier miles. A coworker told me that when he was there it always smelled like someone forgot to flush the toilet. I'm psyched.

Back from CDA

2004-09-20T01:43:00.000-05:00

We had an enjoyable trip to Coeur d'Alene this weekend. It was rushed, but Kathryne got to see here sisters, except Bobbie who is at York.

The new van is great. Lots of room and a beautiful ride. We got great mileage and enjoyed breaking it in. Kathryne even dinged the paint on the door at a gas station. At least she says she did. I couldn't see anything, but she's pretty particular about such things.

She says she like to drive it, but for some reason I ended up driving the entire 7+ hours each way.

Another week at work starts soon. Hopefully I'll get over my cold soon without having to visit the doctor.

We turned on our heater tonight when we got home for the first time this year. It rained on us coming down the mountains and into the Seattle area, but it's supposed to be nice sometime this week.

Have a great week.

Beach Pictures

2004-09-20T01:39:00.000-05:00

In August, we went to Pacific Beach, WA. We stayed at the naval resort with the Fosters. Here are some picutres from our trip.

We built sand castles, but as the tide came in, they turned into sanctuaries from the waves for Sean.

This is Sean and his friend Maddie swinging on the playground.

This is me trying to fly a kite.

Luckily no one was injured.

Crazy Hair

2004-09-17T01:13:00.000-05:00

Here's a picture that some of you have already seen but i wanted to get something up. It was taken and framed in Joshua's Wednesday evening Bible class shortly before he had a hair cut.

Ministry fair

2004-09-17T00:56:00.000-05:00

Lots of stuff going on at church. With our newly added elders and deacons, we've had a lot of people with a lot of ideas which require even more people to implement. In order to involve everyone, we're having a ministry fair on October 3rd, before and after morning worship. Each area of ministry is setting up a booth or display describing the various aspects of the ministry in order to inform the congregation of what's going on and to solicit participation.

My areas of ministry are as follows:

Vacation Bible School
Leadership Training for Christ (LTC)
Wednesday night devo coordination
Office computer maintenance

I'm pusing really hard to get LTC started here this year. We did a VBS in 2000, the year before the fire, and I think it's high time we made it an anual event.

There's a lot to do, an I pray that many more of our members will become involved in the next year that has been the case in years past.

More about our congregation at www.ckchurchofchrist.org.

What's behind door #3?

2004-09-17T00:51:00.000-05:00

A new car. Our car shopping last week came to its conclusion tonight when Kathryne picked up our new Toyota Sienna from the dealership. We bought it on Labor Day, but it wasn't on the lot yet. We sat out in it for a while tonight and played with all the gadgets. Some of our favorite things are the way the rear seats fold down into the floor and disappear.

We're breaking it in tomorrow by taking our first trip in it to Coeur d'Alene. Kathryne's sister Janette is there for the week so she wanted to go over and see her.

Keep us in your prayers as we travel as well as all those displaced due to the recent hurricanes.

Posting comments

2004-09-17T00:50:00.000-05:00

If you want to post a comment, don't worry that it asks you to sign in. Just click the link below the sign in that says "Post Anonymously".

Labor Day

2004-09-06T11:46:00.000-05:00

Going car shopping. Please pray for us.

Back to School

2004-09-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

Sean started kindergarten this week. Wednesday was a 45 minute orientation and today was his first full day. He was going to ride the bus home, but there was no bus. There was supposed to be a bus, but we were misinformed. So he had to wait around until Kathryne went to pick him up.

It's like pulling teeth to get him to talk about what he did at school. I ask him "Did you do this, dis you do that?" and he still doesn't remember. He's already on the right track because he did say school was boring today. I look at it from the standpoint that no one brought a gun or tried to blow up the school. That's a good kind of boring.

He did get to look at some books about volcanoes and earthquakes which he enjoys very much. Just as long as they stay in the books. Visit the website for Brownsville Elementary if you want to find out more about his school.

We have about 10 rolls of film we need to get developed. When we do, I'll post some pictures.

Will this work?

2004-09-02T22:58:00.000-05:00

I've never been good at keeping a diary so I'm not sure how long I'll keep this up, but I wanted to try it out and see how I do.

This may be a better way of publishing reports and pictures for family and friends and to have them communicate back.

I'm also considering seeing if the church is interested in starting this as a means of communication.

Let me know what you think. That's what the comments are for.

In Him,
Matt