The Angry Coder

2011 In Review

2011-12-31T23:23:00.000-08:00

After taking the year off, this year it was definitely time to reflect on the past year and prognosticate the upcoming one, like the double-faced Roman God Janus, for whom the month of January is named after. I've seemed to be a bit more ADD this year, so in celebration of my briefer attention span, my post this year is less verbose and more snippets. What a wild ride this year was!

2011

new years day in india with my awesome wife.

black spots in toe-nails for a month

Visiting with and praying for families in mumbai. nalosapora. pastor abraham's village.

riding atop a truck, up and down the mountain.

Everest

paragliding.

lisfranc dislocation fracture.

10 weeks on crutches. with ice.

violin

what does being "relational" look like, anyways?

kane kaiser.

St. Joe meet: argument and turning point

districts. regionals. one match away.

broken camera.

team leader

teaching misssions class.

Broken TV and an extra power supply board.

thirteen?!

new bike for boo.

looking for medicene at 2AM in fulton on anniversary.

nepal. twice.

the spiritual Eisenhower of Nepal.

taking my son to nepal.

Switching to Benettis and cafe breve

sharing christ to bikash with Daniel in pokhara

class 4-5 white water rafting the upper seti, in thehimilayas, at the start of monsoon season

swim season

Rising early. Driving with coffee.

first massage ever.

B2 stealth bomber messed up Daniel's race

Galaxy tab no more

Cooking with the kids.

new roof from state farm.

zen body therapy

grandma chambers passed away.

okc visit.

grandma's sister is awesome.

built front porch roof. with friends and the kids.

elisa can cut a board.

mentoring

KJV research and teaching

decompression therapy

communication, compassion, understanding

learning the importance of fathers.

Hogpound brown and friends at McCoys

daniel framing

bike wreck with SUV.

Stupid Conan.

master cleanse

Ren Fest

backpacking with all the kids

cigars

diving in the freezing cold rocky falls

Best. Etoufee. Ever.

marital growth

teaching electrical to daniel and adrian

the entmoot.

Judo practices.

3^rd BB for the year.

taking over security team.

Lots of Langley overnights

Thanksgiving in Branson

Running 6 miles in the Ozark Mountains

Praising God for healing

Crazy marriage counselling.

Wrestling practice at Raytown

kidney stone and car wreck

Elisa's violin performance with Joe

i hate mudding

listening to the girls plot their room upgrades

finishing the bedroom

Crazy christmas eve service

Relaxing Christmas even and Christmas day

teaching Paul how to build a better capp

rock band 3!

family time

Fidels.

And for the coming year: the big question is, where the Mayans right? Well I've got other, smaller question too, and a few things noteworthy of celebration to look forward to.

2012

Justin and Rachel!

New Orleans!

Another Neitzey? Another Latore?

high school or home school?

Nepal for Daniel, again?

Orissa for me?

Romania for Li?

Branson half-Ironman 2012?

New car?

more teaching?

marriage ministry?

kidtown?

security?

Hiking the OT: Lessons learned

2011-10-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Back in "the day", I remember hiking always being a simple affair.   My pack never weighed much more than 20 lbs and that would include fresh foods, often some canned foods, and a small cast iron frying pan.   It still baffles me how I was able to do that.

Fast forward to over ten years and three children later... Every trip I've taken in the last several years I've also taken my son. This time, I brought the girls, and one of their friends. Every trip since those blissful, lightweight days, I've had to learn some lessons. In the last six years of trips, I've come to appreciate the value of a lightweight pack and a hastily prepared meal, even if it lacks flavor. But this time, with three little girls in tow, wow: there were lots of lessons to learn! As every, this blog is for me and me alone so I record my thoughts here to supplement my always strained memory. But if this helps anyone else out then great!

Lesson #1: It's not enough to prepare the equipment for the kids; you've got to prepare the kids for the equipment.
Too ill-fitting packs and too much weight and bedeviled us for the first day. About halfway to our destination, we made some good progress on the fit of each pack, but those were all work-arounds.   Backpacks work by directing the weight of it's contents to a persons hip bones. None of the hip belts were tight enough for any of the girls!   Fortunately they each brought a hoodie or sweater that could be tied around their waist to help "shim" the belts, but it took some practice to get this down for each one of them. Also fortunately, the weather didn't turn cool enough that they actually needed to wear these.
Also I didn't stick close-enough to the 20% rule.   The 20% rule dictates that you don't carry more than 20% of your body weight in your backpack.   While this is a "rule of thumb" for adults, it's an absolute law for the kids! The 2nd day went much better since we had eaten all of our food and were able to move a lot of the extra weight from the girls packs to my own, which ended up at 40 lbs

Lesson #2: Teaching time was required in advance
Aside from working the physical details out ahead of time, I should have invested some time with each of the girls during the weeks prior to the trip teaching them about maintaining and using their packs and equipment. This would've expedited the camp tear-down.
But more than then how-to's of packing and camping, we should have also spent time talking about team work, facing difficulties and expectations.   A couple of afternoon practice hikes, accompanied by some conversation, would've provided an great teaching platform for this. Following up with an evening fire and some hot coco or apple cider would be a great finish.
Expectations should have been established.   For an adventure such as this, the upward-outward-inward model fits. An appreciation for nature, it's beauties and dangers, as well as what it teaches about the Author of nature directs us upward. The strengthening of the bonds of friendship through a common experience, shared trials and teamwork directs us outward. Learning your personal limits and being forced to surpass them teaches us about ourselves. This understanding would have provided some great context for the kids.

Lesson #3: Responsibilities should have been delegated ahead of time.
Isn't this always a critical point of failure in leadership?! There was so much to do to prepare that it was quite overwhelming.   There was quite a bit to do at camp also and I had way underutilized my sons abilities. Practice sessions from Lesson #2 would naturally lend themselves to delegation.   Had the burdens of camp been more thoughtfully identified and shared, our entire second day would have been much easier than it turned out to be.

Lesson #4: Girls are different
This is the first trail I ever brought my son on. It was tough, but he did great and had a great time. This is the first trail my good friend ever brought his son on, and it went about the same. For both of our boys, the difficulty of the experience installed confidence in them.   After the trip, they had a feeling of accomplishment. On this trip, with the older girls, this seems to have been the case; but with the younger ones I'm not as sure. It will take some time to sort that out- did the difficulty actually act to discourage them? Or do they just need more moral support than the boys required?

Lesson #5: More time to prepare
In order to implement the aforementioned lessons, it would have been necessary to begin planning at least three months prior to the date, and preparations, including the teaching sessions, at least six weeks prior. During the two weeks prior, as my wife and I were gathering up equipment for everyone, it became painfully obvious we were getting into the game late.   All my previous experiences were inadequate for me to have predicted these lessons-learned.   Experience is, after all, the best teacher.

There were many positive lessons-learned as well.   The packing list was in good order, thank God! Had it not been, we might not have been able to have compensated for some of the planning deficiencies. The time of year was absolutely perfect. The mileage was right on target for a group like this.   If seen both bad weather and high mileage break down grown men.   A mistake on either of those points would have been catastrophic for this team! The itinerary was spot-on (we just didn't stick to it on day two!). My personal pack-weight, while a bit heavier than I preferred, was great. It included some great meals and accommodated me being able to pick up weight from the girls. And Lamberts is always a good call.

The best part, by far, was the team. The men, including my son, were exceptionally patient through many trying moments and ready to pitch in and help with whatever needed to be done with not a single complaint murmured from them.   At least not to me ;-) All in all it was a great trip and I'm already excited for the next one.

Eye of the storm?

2011-09-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

The major symptoms seem to have subsided for now. It was nice to wake up from a restful nights sleep and not have a headache at all today. On the other hand, my appetite has picked up quite a bit and hunger pangs have been a bigger issue. The lack of pain and nausea also means that my mind is more free to think about food! Glorious food!

Right now, I could really go for some Fritos and french onion dip. Definitely one of the biggest challenges thus far was to prepare the family dinner... and then watch them eat! Braised beef served aloft a mountain of veggies with the drippings cooked down to a nice sauce and drizzled over the whole lot... it smelled heavenly. I think I really nailed the proportions of the veggies, too. I tend to use too much onion a lot of time but this had a more balanced look to it. No complaints from the fam as they stuffed their mouths in front of me.

This Sucks

2011-09-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

Possible symptoms of detoxification kicked in hard last night. Hard like a punch to the face from Kimbo Slice. Hard like flying into an SUV at 15+mph while on a bike. I won't divulge all the nasty details, but the most debilitating one is the chronic, splitting headache. It abated for part of the day but came back in force this evening, about an hour later than when it first hit last night. Also the drink is becoming far less tolerable. Even with the lime, I was unable to chug down the last little bit I took a run at. But I'm going to go for one more day... like a recovering drug addict, I'll just have to take this day-by-day.

Okay, I'll mention one nasty detail. I'm tired of playing "Fart or Explosive Diarrhea?" I always take the safe bet on that one.

Mystery Drink Revealed!

2011-09-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today was the day. After three days of 'easing in' to this regimen, I finally have begun the full-on lemonade diet. Actually lemonade fast seems more appropriate, and I think would help dispel any myth that this is for weight loss. Nonetheless, my first encounters with 'the drink' were not pleasant. The after taste of the grade-b maple syrup was what rubbed me wrong. Also, it was difficult to be at church while my mind was in such a heavy, low Calorie induced fog. But we persevered... past the donut platter, replete with manifold baked goodies... past the fresh, brewed pots of Oddly Correct coffee... For some reason, home made pot-stickers and sushi rolls were set out today: an MBT first! But we persevered... then all hell brake loose! Chocolate cupcakes and a large chocolate sheet cake whose thick, moist bread was somewhat squashed under the weight of so much icing, settling o'er the top like a freshly fallen, heavy snow snow... But we persevered...

So far I have downed 3 cups of concentrated concoction. I've already figured out that I don't need to dilute it nearly so much as recommended: that only prolongs the torture. Just now, I've mixed up a new batch, another 2 cups. But this time I added a single lime in place of one lemon. Wow! What a difference that makes! The overall flavor us much, much better and the strong tartness of the lime even overwhelms the finish so that the drink is now beyond tolerable.

I guess this guy had it right all along.

Mmmmmm... Paaaaancakes!

2011-09-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

The smell of fresh, buttered pancakes roasting on the hot griddle even now is wafting from the kitchen over to the computer, where I am mostly through with an 8oz. glass of orange-pineapple-mango juice. Or, as it is known today: breakfast. There are 120 Cal per serving and a total of 7 servings in the 1.8qt carton of juice, or about half of the daily caloric intake that I need. I suppose I may run up to the store and grab another. Today is only juice, but not the full-on "lemonade diet". It's going to be a rough day.

Yesterday was only pulpy liquids, soups and juices. No chewing allowed! Thankfully there was no limit to quantity. Two bottles of naked juice; one fresh, juice blend from the Filling station; three cans of soup; two martinis and at least a gallon and a half of Crystal Light drink saw me through the day. It's amazing how much a person thinks about food when they aren't having any!

My beginning weigh-in yesterday was around 180lb, with 22% body fat and hydration of 57%. This morning it was 177lb, 23% body fat and a hydration of 56%. Go figure: after all that liquid I am now less hydrated than when I began!

Echo

2011-09-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

Hello? Hello? Is this thing working?   *cough*   Whew! It's a bit dusty. Guess I should blog more often. Or perhaps not.

I'm sitting here at Benetti's, taking a break from some angry coding and contemplating my last decaf breve.   Benetti's by far has the *best* decaf around, and they're right up there with their regular caps as well. By why 'the last', you ask? Just for a couple of weeks while I undertake an endeavor to complete... The Master Cleanse. Thanks to Percussivity for telling me about this and how it not only jump started his weight loss but helped him feel quite a bit better.

Since I'm waiting for my ribs to heal up from being-tackled-by-an-SUV while biking incident, this seems like the perfect time to give it a shot. Otherwise I'll just begin to plump up to portray a realistic Santa Claus this December.   Damned M&M's...   I'm not only hoping for weight control/loss during my down time, but I'm curious to see what sorts of other things might happen. The internets are full of first-person testimonials of people who felt they benefitted from doing this. So we'll see.
So today begins the "ease-in": no meats, no dairy. Well, just a little dairy... one, small decaf breve. Tomorrow will be juice only and then Sat. begins the "real deal".

Hot Wings

2011-02-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

Used this recipe:

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/sweet-spicy-wings/Detail.aspx

Only I used garlic powder, instead of salt, since I tend to shy away from salt. Also we had to settle of oven-baked instead of grilled. They cooked at 350 for 20 min and then we flipped them, added more sauce to the under side and cooked them another 10 min. They were awesome! I'm a big fan of the hot and sour combo.

Yawn

2011-02-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

Has it been that long since I've posted? I even missed my annual Year-In-Review!!! Hmm...

A bit of humor

2010-11-08T13:29:00.001-08:00

There were two "ladies" who, I believe, slept throughout most of the voir dire. Unbelievable! One lawyer asked 95% of the questions, the other had the chance to tend to any loose ends. Finally, the first lawyer returned to examine the two sleepyheads. The first was as defiant as she was inarticulate. It would have been humerous to watch her go off to the brig to cool her heels for a bit but alas, I think they are just glossing over it. The second was not as surly and tried to blame her work. I don't think she realized that her job can't hold this against her.

During the morning swearing in, the judge led in an oath that ended with "so help me God". He said they had another, irreligious version for anyone who wanted. "Anybody? Anybody?". No takers I thought it was a great way to shame any potential atheists.

Not looking good

2010-11-08T12:54:00.001-08:00

The case is about an accident that happened roughly one block from where I live. Also, City lawyers will be testifying as well as the chiropractor I go to. Bummer! I was really hoping to get the nod! They haven't selected yet, but I don't think its's looking too good.

Into the belly of the beast

2010-11-08T10:17:00.001-08:00

The courtroom is all about humiliation. First you are assigned a number, then a seat whereupon a large placard with your number is placed. I am a person, dammit! I will not be... Enumerated? Nmberfied? Once I took my seat, I realized my feet didn't touch the ground. These seats are oversized for Anakims reaching heights of at *least* six foot. Clearly this was designed to make me feel like a child. And so the psychological breakdown continued for the judge sits aloft, looking down on the nameless children. Oh and it gets worse: the judge is a woman. A female judge?! And the lawyers? Also females! The plantiff? Woman. And the defedant? Egads! Another woman! Its as though I walked onto the set of The View. I must go back, after a salad at Quiznos, and a suprise lunch with an old friend from KCBT, for what I expect to be more psychological abuse.

Yes!

2010-11-08T09:27:00.001-08:00

I've been called to a panel! Made the first cut... Now on to voir dire- an interview of sorts.

Nothing to report here...

2010-11-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

The first two hours we were provided with live entertainment and a video. By entertainment, I mean instructions. We were given the same set of instructions and explanations thrice, each time according to the speakers own particular....hmmm... Idiom! The video featured local famous dude and former baseballer G. Brett and local newsies Elisabeth Alex and Brian Busbie. The judge was actually the most interesting. He also administered the oath to us (about which I have somewhat to share in a bit). Then we had a 30 minute Starbucks break (mmm, pumpkin spice!) Followed by 40 minutes of instructionless sitting about while the herd was being thinned of those who felt they had valid excuses to be poor citizens. I put that time to good use and plodded forward into reading about the fall of the Third Reich and Operation Barbarossa. Oooh! We're being instructed now! Waiting for my name to be called to be part of a panel.

Looking good?

2010-11-08T07:18:00.001-08:00

Given that I want to be selected, "good" in this sense means getting to be off work a few more days. Since most people are, apparently, lobbying to not be here. That should give me a good start. There were 12 cases scheduled for this week and normally 90% of cases are settled prior to a hearing. But only 5 have been settled so far. So a limited pool and a big case load means things are looking up.

And speaking of looking, why does the lady next to me keep looking over at my phone while I type? These people are doing their damndest to drive me nuts.

Jury Duty

2010-11-08T06:01:00.001-08:00

For the first time in months, I got someplace on time. Even a bit early actually. I don't miss 71 highway with its accident-causing, revenue-raising lights. I don't think it was any faster than side streets, either. I found a place to park for free and within a mile of the courthouse. The day, being moderately cool and full of sun, made for a pleasant walk. After breezing through security, I found a comfy seat at the back of the jurors room with elbow room on both sides. That is, until Darth Vader came and set next me. He's shed his royal armor and has chosen to serve as a "regular" guy, but his breathing is unmistakeable. If the elevator ride is what put him out so much, methinks that *somebody* needs to step up their cardio. Ugh.

Bringing in the cones

2010-08-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

This was the second year for a Cascade hops plant that I put in the ground. Last year was very disappointing in that the vines only got to about four feet long each and produced no cones. However, I wasn't really expecting any from the first year and didn't have much expectation for this year either, since the plant has to get established.

But much to my suprise, by mid-June it started producing cones! And by July it began producing an unruly amount of lateral vines which each produced numerous cones. Just this last weekend, it was time to bring in the harvest, as the intense period of heat we just had had already begun to dry them out.

Above, the vines are covering most of the side of our gazebo swing.

The vine along the top, which is showing discoloration and fading, is the first vine from the spring. The lower vine is actually a shoot from off of the top one. There were a lot of cones on that lower vine!

Even along the back where the sun exposure wasn't as good, there were still plenty of cones.

This is a poor shot, but I'm attempting to show the yellow, powdery substance that is produced between the leaves of each cone. This is called lupulin, and it's what gives hops- and in turn beers- their flavor.

The net weight of this year's production was just over eight ounces of green, only somewhat dried hops. Right now they are sitting on a window screen in the garage, drying out, down to eight to ten percent of the moisture they once had. Then they will go into cold storage until what time they are ready to be added to the hot wort for finishing, courtesy of brewmeister Neufeld. I can't wait to try them out in a few months!

India-bound

2010-04-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

Back in Oct of 2009, a missionary to India and Nepal spoke at a prayer service at our church. At that time, I had been doing some long range planning to take my wife on some exotic vacation for our 15th anniversary coming up in 2010. But the missionary announced he was organizing a missions trip in 2010. That announcement grabbed my attention and I spent the next two months mulling it over. Because of the nature of the trip, I wanted to make this decision with my wife- which meant foregoing any surprise- so I gave her a choice: we can either go on a vacation just for us, or we can go on this missions trip. She didn’t hesitate: it was the missions trip all the way!

It didn’t seem fitting to me, though, that we would just “decide” we would go on a trip. I have been on numerous trips of this nature before and always clearly saw God directing me in them. The clearest direction I ever had with this was in 1991 when the still, small voice of God told me “You’re going to Kenya.” My immediate reaction, as a broke, nineteen year old college student with really no interest in going anywhere was “Ha! I’m not going to Kenya- that’s ridiculous!” Six months later, I was on my first trans-Atlantic flight. God had directed and provided. Knowing that God is “in” something gives a person unparalleled confidence no matter what circumstances arise. So in Dec, we began praying that the Lord would confirm to us that this was Him.

In January, I went ahead and signed up for the trip, thinking “If God shows us otherwise, we’ll just back out.” About a week or two later, they announced that the trip was now full and on a waiting list. By the middle of Feb, we had all the money saved up to pay for the entire trip. We already had our passports as well, so everything was coming together. The door was wide open, but I was still waiting to hear that still, small voice once more. But nothing.

The weeks turned into months and still no clear-cut word. My wife began struggling through the process and God kept telling her “abide”. So she did. At another point she began to worry about the money but eventually she realized that God would provide if He’s in it. In short, she was growing through this process. Of course I was growing too; mostly frustrated. We soldiered on in prayer.

Then a deadline of April 1st was announced. Deposits, passports and applications had to be turned in for the trip. To me, this was D-Day. Either I hear from God or we don’t go. As we got closer to that date, God was showing me things in His Word but I wasn’t getting the binary “yes/no” that I was looking for. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, He showed me much that led me to see that we need to go. I didn’t get the “yes/no” answer I was looking for, what I got was more “if you want it, go and take it”. That sounds a bit Machiavellian… let me explain!

There is a scene in Full Metal Jacket when the inept Pvt. “Pyle” gets his gut stuck on an obstacle. The drill sergeant approaches him and shouts: “Oh that’s right Pvt. Pyle, don’t make any *** effort to get up to the top of the obstacle! If God wanted you up there, he would’ve miracled your ass up there by now, would’nt he?!” I think a lot of times Christians put too much on God and don’t realize what He has actually put on us. In everything the Lord showed me, God gave His people an imperative. They had a choice to make.

In Rev 2:5, Christ counsels the angel of the church at Ephesus: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent, and do the first works;” Remember, Repent, Revive. That’s what I got from this time. Here are the highlights:

Remember: “remember from whence thou art fallen”

Rev 2:4 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

Ezekiel 16:22 …thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood.

16:43: Because thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, but hast fretted me in all these things…

Ezekiel 16 is what directed me to Rev 2, where the church is chided for leaving its first love. Israel had forgotten. They forgot the bondage they came from and they forgot the work of God in their lives. So they drifted off into sin. The first challenge from Rev 2 is to remember where Christ brought them from, how he brought them out and to serve Him with that same sense of joy and excitement they had in the early days. This was a command: they had to decide to remember.

Repent

Ezekiel 18:31 Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit…

Psalms 78:8 And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright; and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.

“Make” a new heart and a new spirit?! I thought that was God’s job! But once again, God’s people had a decision to make. Repentance is simply a ‘change of mind’. God tasked them with changing their hearts by changing their minds. The church at Ephesus was tasked with repenting from their loveless service. The key to that was to begin by remembering.

Revive: “do the first works”

Hab 3:2 O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.

Israel was being slack in rebuilding when Habakkuk came to them. Here, he asks for a revival… of the work! “Get back to work” was the message he had for them. God had already started a work, but “they” needed to get busy finishing it. Hence the “re” in revival. The church in Ephesus needed to get back to their first love. They, too, needed a revival. Not a revival of building but of love.

So after seeing all that, I was thinking “This is exactly where I’m at.” I, as a middle aged dude, have a lot in common with those Ephesians. I’m busy- there’s a lot to do. I’m generally consistent and disciplined. I go where I’m supposed to go to do what I’m supposed to do and I know the “right” things to do and, after a while, it doesn’t really take any thought. Life’s “autopilot” kicks in. But then you realize, you’re just sort of drifting. Nothing’s really wrong but then, nothing’s really quite right either. I’d like to get back to that “first love” I had about half-my-life-ago but I have to make a choice: God will not just “miracle” my ass back up there! So I choose to empty our savings and drag my wife halfway across the world for two weeks, on the day after Christmas no less, because I desire to serve the Lord from my heart and I believe that He will use this in my life to accomplish that. I am purposefully turning off the autopilot and trusting God to help me “make” a new heart and spirit.

Can the republic be restored?

2010-01-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've blogged. I fully intended to do a review of 2009 but frankly the year sucked. There were some high points, but I've struggled with putting it all in context and writing something that glorifies the Lord. That's still pending.

A question that I have had in my mind for some time is, 'Can the republic be restored'? It is my estimation that our federal government is broken. There are many reasons why I think this, most notably a complete departure from Constitutional government. But I digress from why I think it's broken, the more pressing question is can it be fixed? In reading The Spirit of Laws, I saw this statement today:

When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils, but by removing the corruption and restoring it's lost possibilities; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

I'm sure that some will disagree, and certainly everyone is entitled to their own rosy opinions. Some weight, however, must be given to this opinion based on the amount of study, research and thought that went into it. Montesquieu devoted decades of his life to studying the governmental systems throughout history, including Asian, Middle Eastern, meso-American and African cultures. That doesn't make him right, but that should give us pause for consideration.

Ding Dong, Cauthen's Gone!

2009-11-19T15:11:00.000-08:00

Facebook is lame. I'm friends with family, distant family, vague acquaintances from grade school through college and so on. The crowd is too diverse and if I post anything the least bit divisive, it turns into a 30+ comment argument. No thanks! I prefer the comfort and quietness of my own little blog. So it is here that I can wax visceral and really let my hair down. Er... if I had any, that is.

Today at 3PM a KC City Council document, signed by six council members and the mayor, was put into effect, to immediately terminate the employment contract with the City Manager. Wayne... Wayne Cauthen... Oh how I hate his name! May his name be listed in KC infamy and obscurity. May it be remembered along with Pendergast and Lynn Elliot, if it be remembered at all.

Now I realize it may not seem fair to judge him so. After all, he had a difficult job. I won't pretend that all my reasons for disliking are firmly grounded in objectivity and reason. Some of them are, some are not. Some are subjective and some are just my "impression". However unfair, I shouldn't let that stop me from articulating my distaste for the man!

First off, he's an outsider. He came from Denver, with a poor track record there, to show Kansas City how to be a "world class" city. I never cared for his pretention or for Mayor Barnes, who seemed to be obsessed with the phrase "world class". The whole notion that we aren't classy enough is based on a loathing of Kansas City's quiet simplicity and familial environment. I loathe their loathing.

Wayne acted like a teenage kid with his dad's credit card. He bartered the City's future with every TIFF and bond issue. He was all about spending money that doesn't exist, to build a brighter future. This mindset put some big ticket items on the map, but to what avail? He brought in contractors and management companies from outside of KC to tend to the P&L district. He forced through the Sprint center, which still doesn't have an anchor. He set up one area after another that, through TIFF's, encouraged existing businesses to move into the tax friendly zones or were driven out of business altogether. The immediate result has been a net loss of jobs (from what I can recall from articles I've read but can't cite). I believe the long term impact is that the City will be saddled with expensive maintenance of assets which aren't able to cover their own costs. In short, he has screwed Kansas City.

Wayne did a lot of damage to the internal operations of the City as well. How much money has been wasted by CIMO consultants? Yeah, they got some stuff done- but at triple the price! How much Water Dept revenues have been raped to pay for bloated IT initiatives (PeopleSoft) or providing basic services that should be funded by taxes (street sweeping, household hazardous waste)? He has hired numerous cronies from Denver who have had their own best interest at heart as well.

He has been rampant about consolidation. From CIMO to the action center, he has, without any proper thought or setting of benchmarks, reorganized City business. He has forced all citizen calls through the 311 Action Center, but didn't provide any increased staff. Never mind that they took on the work of over 30 customer service reps from the Water Dept alone. He thought their already overwhelmed staff of 17 was up for the task.

Now to get a bit personal, one such crony is the IT Director. His motto is "centralization is better". He's been marking his territory (and buffering his budget) by centralizing any and everything that looks like IT. This is done without analysis or benchmarks. There are no goals, no business metrics or any type of process analysis done. There is no way they can show that things indeed are more efficient and they're not interested in that. He just wants the money and is generally confident that centralizing things always makes life better. His effect on my dept has been very negative. It now takes us much longer, and with much more bureaucracy, to get the same things done. Hopefully he'll be out the door right behind his boy, lil' Wayne!

Now to get really personal. Hubris. I could withstand a lot of the other crap, but when he was rude to our secretary- all condescending and blowing her off at a City event- that was intolerable. It doesn't matter how low the City employee was on the ladder, or how high he was, that type of arrogance is totally unbearable.

And last of all, he had really soft hands and a weak shake. Yeah, that's right: soft hands. I'm a friggin programmer but I have calluses like a gorilla. This is from working on the house and other stuff, and from lifting weights. I'm no construction worker, but this guy's flaccid handshake was like holding a bunch of flower petals. That tells me he doesn't do anything. I already didn't respect him as a manager but that experience caused me to lose basic respect for him as a man. Maybe he's hoping to be Lady Wayne?

So long, lil' Wayne. Go back to Denver. Go cash in all those kickbacks I am reasonably sure you've been storing up whilst raping and pillaging the good people of Kansas City. This City deserves better.

Technogasm

2009-10-07T19:45:00.000-07:00

Gigiddy gigiddy! We are in the process of a home technology extreme makeover. This is thanks in large part to various technology tips passed along by friends.

Several weeks ago Percussivity told me about a sweet tech called Playon that will pump internet video from a computer to a Wii. After getting that put in place we signed up for Netflix and have been using their 'instant watch' feature quite a bit, although we really don't even watch much TV. We have decided that this is sufficient to replace our use of cable TV since the price for basic has steadily gone up.

A coworker told me about another product called Google Voice. This is an amazing new Google product that allows you to centralize all your phone numbers under one number. You have to request access from Google, which took about eight weeks to come through. Once in place, I could call my new Google phone number and my cell, home and Skype numbers all rang. It has tons more functionality as well, which gives you a lot of control.

We've also been using Skype and have just purchased a permanent Skype number plus a service that allows you unlimited calls to and from regular phones. My friend Guy has been doing this for a while now. My wife found a USB device that works with Skype on your computer and allows your regular phones to act as 'Skype phones'. So we'll soon be dropping our home phone service as well as TV. The only drawback to this arrangement is that we can't user our Google # as our Skype caller ID #, so people we call might get confused. I think at some point Google and Skype will probably work this out.

The sweet mulah we'll be saving on our reduced Time Warner bill is being shifted over to pay for a data service plan on a freakin' awesome T-Mobile MyTouch. Unfortunately this product is pimped by Whoopi Goldberg: but it's still a sweet product. My wife has been toting around a Dell Axim for about the last seven years and it's been telling us the system battery is shot for the last three years. Now it can be retired, along with her crappy Nokia. To my wife I say: Merry Christmas, happy birthday and happy anniversary! :-P Just kiddin'. With all the stuff she has to keep up with, this will be a great help to her. Now I can email her about dinner and expect an immediate response no matter where she's at.

One final note, if the unabashed short attention span reader is still reading this, mucho propso to you for fixing the lights on my trailer! You are one dude I will loan any of my stuff to, any time.

The Rights of Man

2009-09-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

The concept of the rights of man is one that I don't believe people in our country really understand anymore. The concept itself is critical to the nature of our government and it's operation. But ignorance of this, ingrained by modern humanism, and fear of it, for sounding "Laodicean", are it's enemies from the left and from the right. Because of these things, the point which is the very foundation of our government is undone. As the psalmist said:

Psa 11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

I will attempt to reflect that which I read by Thomas Paine on this topic. He certainly is not the only founder to have something to say on it, and arguably he is not the most authoritative. But it is a starting point and he makes a good case.

In the days of the founders they had a task that few have ever had before them: to create a government from the ground up. They could have copied a more well known form from Europe- noone would've blamed them. They could have set up the Kingdom of America and elected Washington their first monarch. They could have instituted a Greek-style pure democracy. But instead they reasoned from the very beginning of humanity: what is government? What is the purpose of government? Who is government for and what are the best means whereby it's goals may be attained?

They began their reasoning like an engineer would begin analyzing a complex system, by looking at it's original state. Paine, though not a believing Christian, quickly turns to the Biblical creation account, at least as a point of history. From this he clearly notes "the unity of equality of man". He quotes the Creator, "Let us make man in our own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." He notes, there is no distinction between men and that this "...shows that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record."

Our modern, Christian-fear to discuss rights are addressed when he says: "By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places him in close connection with all his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he is part; and it is only when he forgets his orgin, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute [indifferent to moral restraints]."

My impression of modern Bible believers is that they fear to discuss having any rights because they don't want to be associated with the church of Laodice. This is as much an overreaction as fearing to talk about the Holy Spirit because of foolishness done in the charismatic churches. Like any other concept, we shouldn't fear to address it and frame it in a proper context and hold it in a proper balance: we should only fear holding it in imbalance, or holding to falsehoods or ignorance altogether. Paine implicitly addresses this by equally discussing duty- and specifically duty towards our Creator- in the same context. Duty is what balances a discussion of rights, for the "rights" we have from our Creator are given to us that we may serve him and each other, and not ourselves.

On another note, his observation about people becoming less moral when they forget their "origins" is prophetic! This statement was writtin in the 1790's, seventy years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species.

This really just introduces the topic and sets it in a right context. Knowning the short attention span of certain persons, I will cover the rest of this discussion in my next post.

Freakin' awesome...

2009-08-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Mellowing out with Monty

2009-08-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Since Montesquieu has been less contentious, I'll post another smattering of his writings before returning to Paine and almost certain disagreement over his thoughts on 'natural rights'.

From Montesquieu, Book 3: 'Of the principles of the three kinds of government'

This statement needs some context. He is trying to explain what holds up a government (what he calls 'springs'), based on each type of government. Here, he is contrasting democracy with monarchy and despotism by highlighting it's most significant difference:

But in a popular state (republican), one spring more is necessary, namely, virtue.

Other statements:

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community.

As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government...

Fear must therefore depress their spirits, and extinguish even the least sense of ambition.

Montesquieu's observations about the requirement of 'virtue' (I think what we would now call character) for a successful republic are based on studies of Greek and Roman systems, which both eventually failed. This is very consistent with the thinking of a least some of the Founders:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts (1798-10-11)

If Montesquieu and Adams are correct, then the most fundamental civic duty that anyone has is to both practice and to teach virtue/morals/character. As Christians, this is already part of our core mission, a.k.a. the great comission,; so Christians ought to be the most desirable of all citizens!

On the note of fear, both under Barry and under W, we have been constantly bombarded with messages of fear. Fear the terrorists, fear global warming, fear pandemics, fear economic collapse. It's not difficult to see that this is nothing but power grabbing by the Federal government. As noted by Monty, that type of leadership is a trademark of despotic rulership.

Thomas Paine

2009-08-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Finally! My wife found the missing book tonight, so now I can post some of Thomas Paine's quotes from The Rights Of Man... that is, in between the crippling coughs...

Paine wrote this book largely in response to another work, Reflections On The Revolution In France by Edmund Burke. They are typically published as a single piece. Burke takes an ill view of the Frog's revolution while Paine ardently defends it. My own, very stunted, understanding of the French revolution has left me with the impression that it was a victory of unhalted humanism. It has been a great surprise to find out the details of this and to see it in an entirely new light.

Since this quote is a bit longer, I'll just post this one for the day:

It was not against Louis XVI, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back; and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed, by anything short of a complete and universal revolution.
When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to act at all.

This one stuck out to me because he's basically saying the government was so broken, it was beyond repair and revolution was the only recourse. That gave me pause to consider our own circumstance! Have the parasites and plunderers so infected Washington that it is ill beyond all healing, or is it simply the most daunting task ever faced by our nation?

Bathroom update

2009-08-01T09:46:00.001-07:00

Just over a year ago I took some construction shots, so this is an anniversary update.

before	after

And here's an extra shot of some of the laborious tile work next to the faucet.

Laws derived from the nature of government

2009-07-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

From The Spirit Of Laws, Book 2

...indeed it is important to regulate in a republic, in what manner, by whom, to whom, and concerning what suffrages are to be given...

(a quote from Declam, 17 and18) Libanius says that at "Athens a stranger who intermeddled in the assemblies of the people was punished with death."

The constitutions of Rome and Athens were excellent- the decress of the senate had the force of laws for the space of a year, but did not become perpetual till they were ratified by the consent of the people.

...but in a republic, where a private citizen has obtained an exorbitant power, the abuse of this power is much greater, because the laws foresaw it not, and consequently made no provision against it.

But the most imperfect of all (types of aristocracies) is that in which the part of the people that obeys is in a state of civil servitude to those who command, as the artistocracy of Poland, where the peasants are slaves to the nobility.

The notion of interfering with domestic politics being a capital offense is rather novel. Surely with China and Arab nations, practical enemies to our way of life, owning so much of our national debt, we are at great risk to rule ourselves. We ought to at least cast off foreign debt!

I especially am fond of the idea that all laws ought to have a short expiration date, unless they are approved by the people. This brings them under constant review and keeps the policians busy digging holes and filling them up again. The actual idea behind this was to allow for a 'proving time' for laws, which is something we lack. They are hardly ever repealed, and then only with great effort. Gridlock is good.

Bike Repainting

2009-07-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter, codenamed 'Boo' for inet anonymity, received a hand-me-down bike last year. In order to coax her into ditching the training wheels, I promised her that if she learned to ride without those that we could repaint her bike. There are several other repainting projects that I'd like to do someday as well and I definitely would like to learn how to apply a glassy finish to objects, so this is a great way to get into all that.

Also, my last post probably had too many words and was conceptually challenging for some of my audience, so this post will be much much easier to understand (I'm thinkin' of you, Unabashed! ;-)

Mmmkay, here's the "before" shot:

A pretty, pink Disney princess bike. Boo says she doesn't care for all the princess crap and, while she likes pink, it's not her fav. She has selected a lovely purple sort of color called French Lilac (#796878 in 'man-speak').

The first step is to strip off the old point. We are using wire disks and cups in a high speed drill. It's taking off the stickers and paint in one fell swoop:

How cute- A father couldn't be more proud! She did quite a bit of the stripping, too. I figured she'd get bored with it but really I'd have to take the darn thing from her to use it myself. We got most of it stripped off tonight but not all. I need to get a chain tool to pop that off as well and will likely need some dremel attachments to get some of the hard to reach spots.

Gleanings from Montesquieu

2009-07-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

The copy of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man in which I had made my notes has been misplaced, so my intentions to post some highlights from that book will have to wait until it turns up. In the meanwhile, I have undertaken to read The spirit of laws by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. This writing was very influential for our founding fathers and is most often credited for instructing them on the separation of powers, which is critical to the structure of our government. The book itself is a comparative study between the nature and laws of the three (as he identified them) types of government: republics, monarchies and despotisms.

All of these are from the first book, which deals with the origin and nature of laws.

...even most of them (brutes, animals) are more attentive than we to self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.

Such a being (man) might every instant forget his Creator; God has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of religion. Such a being is liable every moment to forget himself; philosophy has provided against this by the laws of morality. Formed to live in society, he might forget his fellow-creatures; legislators have, therefore, by political and civil laws, confined him to his duty.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

The strength of individuals cannot be united without a conjunction of all their wills.

Blog is dead

2009-07-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

Well, not quite dead. But my blog sure hasn't had much to say lately, either! I've been very busy and very tired. That tends to un-inspire me and I don't write if I don't have anything inspiring to write about.

There were a couple of posts that I almost wrote, but I got bogged down by the shear weight of it all. First was some excerpts from Thomas Paine's writing on The Rights Of Man. There's a lot of good thoughts in that book and the first really good explanation I've read on the topic of natural rights. It's very enlightening. I have numerous lines highlighted that I intend to post.

Next I was going to post on some Bible teaching related to the creation of the universe and it's forecasted end- God's ultimate plan for the universe and how we fit into it. I actually started writing this. I even busted out my college Physics and Thermodynamics textbooks and Shepherd's School materials.

In both cases, I realized that a single post would be totally overwhelming and not get read. Especially not by the Unabashed word-avoider. So I've decided to do a running series of short, focused posts for both of these topics. Well, someday. Maybe after I post pics of my finished bathroom.

Purgatory

2009-06-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Every husband from time to time must serve his wife in manners which he is not fitted to actually do. Yesterday was one such time as I assisted my beloved in finding the Holy Grail. And by Holy Grail I mean 'the perfect swimsuit'. If the gov't has to give up waterboarding, they should seriously consider making the detainees help women find swimsuits. I know, at first glance, that seems like a job they might actually enjoy. But once they are past the first ten minutes, any thought of pleasure will be far out of mind and the endurance sport of trying to keep your eyes from crossing as you stand amidst a sea of ladies’ swimming garments being picked over by women you in no way would want to imagine wearing anything other than burkas.

The dungeon where this occurred has three floor racks, each with four racks: two on one side and two on the other.

Each rack has an estimated one hundred hangers for a total of twelve hundred suits that make up the clearance section. Here is the process we followed:

--My wife shops by touching each item, inspecting the tag first and foremost. If the price is discounted 'enough', then it warrants further inspection.

--Next the size is looked at. It must be a 'small' but also must be 'large enough'. This hearkens back to the principle that all women’s clothing should be size 'small' or 'zero' regardless of the actual dimensions.

--Lastly, the style is taken into consideration.

--If all of these criterions pass muster, the garment is then queued onto my wife’s’ arm.

--Once this queue is full, additional garments are passed on to her Sherpa (me) until enough items are collected to outfit a water polo team.

--Each of these garments are then tried on, complained about and ultimately rejected. The garments must then be replaced onto the rack where the hunt begins anew.

This process is then repeated until the husband’s mind is turned into mush. Due to us being "in a hurry", we only had to endure this three times, for a total of one hours and forty-five minutes. A few years ago, we ran a half-marathon (13.1 mi) in about the same amount of time. We found the grail and proceeded to begin our vacation, where new adventures awaited us.

Miscellaneous Items

2009-06-02T20:28:00.001-07:00

Crack cocaine stinks to high heaven. Just a whiff is enough to make me nauseous. How the crap do people live like that?

Eight days in to the Atkins pain-and-suffering induction, I'm down 8#. Amazingly, I still have 16.6% body fat. I seriously don't know where all the fat goes... Is my head looking smaller?

Gorilla glue is the worst glue on the planet. Right now my hands look like they've got leprosy from that unworkable crap. It flows almost like water and then, as it dries, it expainds 2-3 times in volume, which generally messes up whatever your gluing. And it refuses to come off. Well, I guess that's a good thing about it, except it's such a mess.

Extras is hilarious. Props to Neuf for turning us on to that! Too bad they aren't making any more.

Tomorrow is our 14th anniversary! I'm looking forward to a day of vacation as we set off to Fulton, Mo to hang out a nice B&B and generally linger about, doing nothing. Tomorrow night we'll be going to the Stonehill Winery restaurant and I'll will break the Atkins diet with sauerbraten, red cabbage and potato pancakes. I'll break it like a Los Angelean breaks a plate glass window with a brick during a riot... I'll break it all to hell!

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Saying "happy Memorial Day" doesn't really sound appropriate, given the intent of the holiday itself. In an attempt to fulfill the spirit of the day, last night we watched the first part of the (very long) movie Gettysburg with the kids and explained to them how this battle led to today's holiday.

The movie itself was interesting. It has so far focused a lot on the lead up to the battle and a climax of the fighting on day two, focused on one particular unit. It generally followed the historical battle up to this point and then it diverged, which, I don't really get because the historical battle has so many stories equal or greater in valor ('valour' for Neuf). Jeff Daniel's character is outstanding with excellent dialog ('dialogue', senor Neuf) and acting. There were several thought provoking and memorable lines from it. Here is my favorite ('favourite', again for Neuf):

"Many of us volunteered to fight for the Union. Some came mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many came because it was the right thing to do.
This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. This hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here you can build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end, is each other. Sorry. Didn't mean to preach." (Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain - played by Jeff Daniels)

Bathroom update

2009-04-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

It's officially been eighteen months since this project began with some demolition, and a full year since the 2008 tax return and construction began in earnest. Progress is coming slowly but it is coming, which is more than can be said for KC's downtain renaissance. As of late I have put a lot of effort into the tedious details. I've posted some pics of a couple of nice, custom touches that are wrapped up.

First is the window casing. The interior corner trim doesn't show in this pic because it's too small. It is a corner shaped cove stacked on top of a round-over and round gives the inside jambs more polish than a simple bead of caulk. The photo does show an embellishment that was super easy to install and will really enhance the French provencial style of the room.

These faceplates are custom-made. It was difficult to find faceplates that had the right arrangement of holes and a style that goes with the rooms planned decor. Anything we found that was suitable started at $20 per plate which was outrageous! I made these by starting with the cheapest, white, plastic faceplates available, about $1 each. My wife selected a toile print fabric on clearance at Walmart that matches the style and I used a clear adhesive to glue the fabric to the faceplates. In order to give them some durability- this bathroom is mainly for the kids and guests- I sprayed them with thin layers of a high gloss finish. Once the finish visibly built up over the bumps of the fabric, I sanded between layers with 320 grit sandpaper and 600 grit before the last coat. I was very pleased with the end result, especially for the first time. In the end I think it was around $15 for the four faceplates.

TIF'd off

2009-04-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent article on the failure of TIF's in KC. I don't usually agree with this guy, certainly not on big picture issues, but on this issue we are in absolute agreement. Of course I've been ranting against the TIF's for a while. I never believed they would drive a true downtown renaissance, or sustainable progress anywhere else. I have detested that most of these are awarded to out of state, much less non-local, companies. And just as was suspected, as City revenues are falling, the City is giving it's money away to enable private developers who are in turn are getting a competetive edge against local companies and driving them out. TIF's are just a small-scale, localized version of the massive Federal bailouts and wrong for all the same reasons.

It would have been far more equitable and sustainable to simply lower sales tax rates. This would have placed money in the hands of consumers instead of developers, and encouraged suburban consumers to shop in KC, instead of the other way around. Increasing the desire to buy in KC would mean that smart businesses would seek to enhance their edge by moving to KC, instead of away from it, especially the small to mid sized businesses that make life- and shopping- much more interesting (the way the Plaza used to be and the Crossroads district is). More shoppers and more buying would have meant more revenues and, on top of all this, happier citizens. We could have been happy about the flourishing of local businesses, instead of suspicious of corruption and "outsiders" coming to push out local guys and we could have been happy about a better economic position. We also could have been happy with- heck, even proud of- our local government. But far be it from our City Council members (and I use the term 'member' in the lowest sense of the word) to make a right decision when there's good money to be made in making the wrong one. Bastards.

And as a post script, these miserably implemented TIF's happen because a private developer comes along with a plan. In this plan they boast a grand picture of economic development: so many jobs will be created, so much revenue will be generated and the face of the City will be given a lift. The Ephors at the Council buy into this and move to grant special favors to the developer. But there is no follow-up and no accountability for these claims. There is very little questioning of the assumptions that go into the grandiose claims and no research on the actual impact. The developers can and will say whatever they want to seduce the self-indulgent politicos into their bed. In short, they get away with it.

TEA Party

2009-04-15T18:51:00.001-07:00

Tonight I attended the TEA Party at the Liberty Memorial. I had no idea what to expect so I went sans family. The weather was perfect but the parking was horrible. I arrived just a few minutes after they had begun. I'm not expert on guestimating crowd sizes but I'll give it a shot and say about 4,000 people were there. It was full of families, posters, American flags as well as some Don't Tread On Me flags. Everyone seemed normal and I did not detect any KKK, Nazi or Aryan Nation types. One guy yelled something about rejecting the New World Order but he was on his way out and drew no attention anyways. There were even a few minorities there. It wasn't exactly a demographic crosss section of KC, but it wasn't pure vanilla either. It was, however, full of people that are fed up.

There were two speakers and I can't recall who they are. I've never heard of them. They did a fair job, though, of delivering nice speeches. But I felt that they lacked energy and failed to tap into the volume of frustration and anger that the crowd brought with them. I was glad that the speakers stayed away from bashing or embracing either of the two party Lizard system and the first speaker was outspoken in aknowledging God. All in all the speeches and the crowd were very subdued. Another weak point is that there was not tangible action plan or any direction on where to go from here. I guess we've had our say and now we feel better and can go back to ingoring the politicians as much as they ignore us. At least until next years budget comes up.

I wholeheartedly believe that this will be entirely unnoticed by the politicians who ignorned us in the first place. They will continue to mortgage the future, socialize the present and uphold businesses which are not viable anymore.

Snow Ball Theory

2009-03-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

No, this has nothing to do with the 8" of horrendous white slush that was dumped on us over the weekend. The Snow Ball Theory is a story- a story about the planet Earth, as told by it's rocks and a bunch of men with way too much free time and creative imaginations.

Last night my wife and I sat down to unwind while watching some TV. I would have preferred something funny, but we landed on the Science channel and some show called 'Let It Snow'. This episode was about the establishment, and acceptance of, The Snow Ball Theory.

Once upon a time, the fair, green Earth was smitten by a stranger from space. This stranger was a massive asteroid which raised a cloud of dust into the air so high, and so thick that it shuddered out the warming light of the sun for ages. The Earth grew cold, while swaddled in the dark blanket. So cold, in fact, it reached a magical tipping point where so much of the Earth's surface was encrusted in glittering white, that it reflected back into space too much of the sun's warming rays to be able to warm itself up again. So the earth grew colder still, until it was completely locked up in a ball of ice.

But as time pressed on, the Earth found within itself the means to throw off this frozen straight-jacket. Pockets of fiery fury erupted over the face of the earth, pushing through the aquatic glass and spewing tons upon tons of CO2 into the then cloudless air. After ten thousand years of these eruptions, and no outlet for the CO2, this chemical swaddled in the sun's warmth and allowed some ice to begin melting. This, in turn, allowed water vapors into the air so that new clouds could form. This allowed yet more sunlight to be absorbed and more clouds to form until, at last, rains fell upon the face of the Earth yet again!

These rains- initially acid rains- perpetuated the thawing and opened up the door for new life to evolve until our present day. Once again the Earth was garbed in emerald and azure and decided it would be best if she didn't date any more strangers from deep in space. And they lived happily ever after.

I'm so glad we have modern science to liberate us from believing foolish things such as: that at one time the earth was a giant greenhouse; that the earth was once covered with water; or that at one time the earth received no rain; or that at one time, the earth was subjected to instantaneous, cataclysmic shifts in the environment. Thanks to this painstaking research, we now know that the earth was at one time a giant greenhouse, was then covered with glaciers (made from water), didn’t receive any rain for a long period of time and suddenly, due to climatic changes, began to receive rain. Thank you, modern science, for clearing all that up!

This show made no mention of the great flood and so was not a critique. It was hilarious to us, however, how much of what they were saying lines up with the Genesis account of the antediluvian world and they seemingly had no knowledge of it. Also, their theories- based up on other theories- were yet fraught with assumption! And the entire show framed this theory as something that people were trying to prove, with “religious zeal”. The show frequently referred to “the believers” and once even referred to one of them as a “disciple”. Outstanding! Absolutely outstanding….

Truth and Error

2009-03-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been reading The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine and ran across this tidbit:

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

A couple of months ago, my beloved purchased a great book for the whole family to go through together called The Fallacy Detective. It was written by a couple of homeschool graduates and is focused on teaching children, from a Christian worldview, how to detect logical fallacies. It is really a book of short lessons, with lots of examples and age appropriate exercises. We have been going through it slowly, doing just a couple of lessons per week, and really trying to apply it. Neither my wife nor myself had ever received formal instruction in logic so this has been educational for us as well. On a day to day basis, we are seeing more and more fallacies enumerated in news articles, speeches, commercials and every day conversation.

I present the quote above, regarding ignorance, because if there is a root cause to our current failures as a free nation, it is because people have cast off thought for feeling, reason for affections and truth for entertainment. This ignorance is the root cause of our rejection of God and toleration of those who push us further away from Him. This blot of darkness that pervades the public mind is the slave trader who will soon sell us to a new master. The best thing that free people can do, right now, is learn how to think and to educate others in the same.

One last thing, to preempt the friendly wounds of criticism that would say "Our mission is to preach the Gospel alone, and none other!", learning how to think orderly thoughts and instructing others in the same is no contradiction, or distraction, from preaching the Gospel of Christ. God is willing to reason with man, and it declared by Scripture that the Greeks seek after wisdom. While the foolishness of the Cross will never be reconciled to human wisdom, it is necessary for the Christian to employ Reason as a colaborer in our great commission, as Paul did at Mar's Hill. But how can a Christian do this if Reason is no friend of his? And how can it be received if the hearer has no capacity to understand truth? It would be like building a bridge where no room is found for footing on either end: possible only by suspending the entire span from the sky itself. Christian brothers, it is every bit in the best interest of filling our mission to both exercise ourselves and instruct others in the mode of proper thought.

How Christianity Changed The World

2009-03-01T17:02:00.001-08:00

Finally, I finished this book. Here is my review.

This book is excellent: a must read for anyone interested in history, sociology or apologetics. It can be a foundation for any Christian seeking to understand "the big picture" and a guide for anyone wanting to unlock cultural secrets of the West to more effectively preach the gospel. The author consistently and directly tackles the question, "How has Christianity changed the world?"

The author establishes a benchmark for change in each chapter by contrasting early Christian views and practices with that of the surrounding world, chiefly the Greco-Roman system but also the Judaic and Semitic systems of the Middle East and, less often, the Far East systems. He then traces how Christ's followers impacted their world from a discipleship perspective and attempts to hit the highlights of change as they unfold in history to the modern age.

The first few chapters are by far the most impactful. The Christian ideas regarding respect for human life and women, health care and abolition were the most significant and often shocking to me. The high ideals held by and sacrifices made by Christians were in stark contrast to the very base and ignoble ideas of the Greco-Roman system- the same type of system we as a society are fast striving to rebuild. The middle of the book tackles important but less impactful ideas, specifically regarding government, economics and science. The end of the book was somewhat tedious, addressing architecture, music, literature, holidays and language; but he rigorously followed the same pattern and showed how much of our modern world still echoes the teaching of Christ.

The author is Lutheran and this slant definitely shows, but it never put me off. He equally embraces all mainstream Christian denominations without apparent partiality and constantly goes back to the Scriptures, to the teachings of Jesus and the acts of the early church. He favorably portrayed some people (such as Origen) and writings (Didache, Shepherd of Hermes) which I have been taught were the "bad guys" in some way or another, or were evil writings. This has caused me to question to some extent this clear-cut assumption. I may pursue further reading on some of these but it is really of little interest to me.

A week of blessings

2009-02-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

Our family spent last week at the dessert-end of the buffet of life. Last year was difficult in many ways and I was hopeful that this year would be better. But going in to January presented a very, extremely... awfully... I really can't overstate how bad it was... grueling... period of disobedience/rebellion/attitude with my oldest daughter. After a couple weeks of this, and my wife's patience wearing down to the bone, I began waking her at 5AM every day to do her math. After a week or so of this and much praying, she finally had a repentant heart. It took her a couple of weeks still to un-form some of her new bad habits but things are much better now.

One of the evidences of salvation in a person’s life is that person hearing from the Lord in His Word. Since that time of rebellion and breaking, our oldest daughter has had numerous times in the morning where she saw some little nugget from her daily reading that she was excited about and even was able to make immediate and personal application. My youngest daughter, who has not yet been called, even had a very personal observation regarding the necessity of the rod. It was a huge blessing to see and know that Christ is working in their lives through His Word!

My son has had a difficult year due to wrestling. Again, I can't do diligence to describing how incredible this experience has been for his character and spiritual development. He has a tremendous work ethic in practices, which we routinely hear about from different coaches. It is normal for him to come home sweaty, flush and quivering in weakness because of the intensity of the effort he puts in. Despite the constant effort, he lost every match this year at a tournament- most by pin. One thing I like about wrestling over team sports is that is very simple and yet very intense. A person can't make excuses and shift blame the same way they can with a team sport. You own your effort- it's all you. If you lose, it's your fault and you bear it alone. It is routine to see little boys crying at these tournaments. For many of them, losing is a soul-crushing experience. To have that experience, time after time, week after week, can be devastating.

That was exactly where my son was. He worked hard in practice but was too timid on the mats. He wanted to quit. "I suck", he said. Lack of ability was an excuse- really a way of blaming God. I didn't let him quit. I told him to work harder and trust the Lord. I knew that what he needed to do was let go of himself- of his fear- on the mats. A lot of parents/coaches might advise that he needed to "get angry", but that really is just an illusion, a mask to the fear that is still there. He needed to lose the fear so he could focus his mind. The only way that was going to happen was to continually face that fear until he conquered it. In talking with my wife I kept calling it "the fire and the anvil". This is how little boys become men of character!

Two weeks ago he approached his tournament with a new goal: to get a mere five points for the day. In his first match he quickly got pinned. He was in an emotional nosedive again and more determined to quit than ever. I promised him he was going on the mat even if I had to carry him out there and toss him on it. I also promised him that the other boy was going to humiliate him if he refused to stand for himself. At this point I felt like I was completely incapable of ministering to my son. I called my wife and asked her to pray about that with me.

Once he got to the mat side (he had about three hours to stew between matches!) he started to focus on his goal. He realized he had to get it together or he was going to find himself in a bad situation. His stance was perfect and his shot was strong. He brought it hard and managed to rack up five points before getting pinned in the second period. He let go of his fear and decided to fight and at the end of the match, he met his goal. He went home elated, feeling like a winner.

Those five points caused him to realize that he can do it. On the drive home, he asked me how wrestling could one day help him in a job, since I'm always telling him this experience will help him with everything in life. I explained how hard work and perseverance will help in any line of work. He then asked if there were any spiritual applications of wrestling. Wow! We then had a long talk about spiritual warfare and the battle against the flesh. He is beginning to see this activity as an allegory for life and for spiritual warfare and apply it to his life.

So last week, out of the blue and all on his own, he came home from playing with a neighbor boy from a few houses down from us. He talked with his friend about Christ and salvation and asked him if he knew he was saved. His friend indicated that he wanted to know for sure so they prayed together. I am as analytical as the next guy-provided the next guy is extremely anal and likes to over-analyze things- but the Lord reminded me that we have to come to Him with a child-like faith. So here was a child very simply explaining the Gospel to another child who very simply believed it. I don't suppose evangelism could ever be more pure than that! Praise the Lord for this young man who wants to follow Him!

And if that weren't enough blessing, my son went into last week’s tournament brimming with confidence but not arrogance. One of the coaches told me "If he works as hard on the mat today has he has in practice, he's going to win." Indeed he did win. In his first match he attacked aggressively but methodically and pinned his foe in about a minute. In his second match he did more of the same and got a second pin, also in the first period. My wife’s parents and brother were with us for that one and we all screamed and shouted for him together. It was a small bracket so he took first and got his first gold medal. I'm still not sure if he realizes this, but he earned it.

Lastly, after three years off, my wife has finally started running again! We are going to do the Trolley Run with several friends from church. I really look forward to the year ahead and spending time with her building up some long runs. And she is already getting excited about the whole deal as well. God has been better to us than we deserve!

Sorry this post has been so long, but we have been so blessed. Besides, I'm writing this more for myself to look back on than for anyone else's benefit, although I hope it will be a blessing to some.

Concerning Christ and Jazz

2009-02-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

For those who don't know, I am completely and utterly without the capacity to "do" music and, as a corollary, the ability to "appreciate" music. So I don't offer this so much to make a statement or even imply that I agree. Rather, I'm just poking a few people in the eye with it because deep down inside, I'm really immature.

Here's a quote from How Christianity Changed The World:

Richard Weaver, in his Ideas Have Consequences, saw this revolt even in the music of jazz., which, he said, gave the fullest freedom to the individual to "express himself as an egotist. Playing now becomes personal; the musician seizes a theme and improvises as he goes; he develops perhaps a personal idiom, for which he is admired. Instead of that strictness of form which had made the musician like the celebrant of a ceremony, we now have individualization.” Jazz, he argued, “has helped to destroy the concept of obscenity. By dissolving forms, it has left man free to move without reference, expressing dithyrambically whatever surges up from below. It is music not of dreams- certainly not of our metaphysical dream- but of drunkenness.” He further stated that the chief devotees of jazz are “the young, and those persons, fairly numerous, it would seem, who take pleasure in the thought of bringing down our civilization.”

Fine time to experiment...

2009-02-01T05:48:00.001-08:00

At 1AM last night we heard gunshots somewhere in the neighborhood- for the 2nd time this year. Ooooh, can't wait till the kids are out of school and it's hot so they can really start making trouble. A few minutes later came the sirens and a few minutes after that, the helicopters. Since I didn't know for sure what was going on, I thought it was time to load up a magazine. Wow- little did I know. My fingers are sore even now and I was only able to get ten of them loaded, out of 16. Clearly this was not a job for the soft, gentle hands of an angry and very sleepy coder. Is there some kind of machine for loading those things up?!

Christ-centered home defense

2009-01-20T04:16:00.000-08:00

Luke 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take [it], and likewise [his] scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Yesterday we finally made our handgun selection: the Springfield Armory XD9. We got the "service" model with a 4" barrel. It was not the cheapest weapon by any means but it did come with lots of extras, including two 16 rounds clips. Apparently there is a lot to be said for this gun, but as I am no expert I won't say much except that I am excited and apprehensive at the same time.

Our primary reason for getting a gun is home defense. The above verse has always been of interest to me because Jesus actually instructed his disciples to go about packing heat. There is no wrong in that and it does not indicate a lack of faith in God. Moses' story is a classic one because God chose to use the rod that was already in Moses' hand as an instrument of divine manifestation. There was nothing special about that rod but God chose to use it. While the Almighty certainly can do miracles, His style through scripture and through history is often understated, saving the true theatrics for the really big shows like the Exodus and Armageddon. I don't want to put God in box and limit Him, so I got myself a rod, just in case.

For a long time now, I have clung to Psalms 34:7 in times of fear:

The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.

And another one sort of related to this:

Psa 20:7 Some [trust] in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

Trust in God will still be the core of our home protection plan. Thanks to Neuf (and others) for the guidance along the way!

Wind chill is a factor

2009-01-15T04:08:00.000-08:00

We haven't had very much "ice biking" yet this winter, but there's been plenty of opportunity for really-freaking-cold biking. Fortunately today is a rest day for me, because the air temp right now is -1°. Assuming I could even get up to 20mph, like on a good downhill, that would have an wind chill factor of -23.3°! The coldest ride I've taken yet has been at 7°, which at 20mph has a wind chill factor of a mere -12.8°. My top half was fine on that ride, but from the waist down it got pretty cold. Time for some new gear!

Meanwhile, the City has opened a Community Center with an awesome gym right across from my work! I've been heading over there during lunch several times a week now. It's great to have a place so close.

These are my fitness goals/plans for the year:

1. Strength building: now thru March-ish.

2. Cycling base training: 6 weeks in hell. 25 mi / day, 6 days / week for six weeks.

3. Plyometrics training: never done this before. This sounds like new and wonderful forms of masochism. It develops quickness and power and will be good for hills. I will do upper and lower body. The ultimate goal will be to tackle another mountain. Any mountain will do but it has to be a "real" mountain, no fake Ozark mountains! Also, it will hopefully address shoulder issues that made swimming somewhat painful.

4. Endurance training: two to three months of stacking on high mileage rides with the ultimate goal of finishing a "century" ride- a 100 mile ride.

5. Compete in and beat my previous time for a sprint triathlon. All I need to do for this is learn how to swim for real!

Data Anonymity

2009-01-09T04:06:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago, a Facebook friend of mine posted a link to a Youtube video where someone was explaining how every piece of merchandise that is sold could be labeled with a "Carbon Quotient" - that is a numerical representation of the amount of carbon generated in the production and shipping of a product. Then consumers could compare CQ's between products to select the most "green" one. I suppose there is an assumption that manufacturers would then try to create "low carbon" products just as they do "low fat" products.

Over the last year or so the media has popularized the idea of selling "carbon credits". The gist of this, that I can tell, is that we are each allotted so many units of carbon we may produce in a year and must pay extra for consuming more. In my mind, it did not seem a stretch to use the idea of a CQ in order to implement a carbon credit system (which really would just be another form of taxation and do nil to "help" the environment). I explained in my response how product data can be cross referenced with a persons credit card history to build a profile and used for analysis. My friend scoffed at this and replied "or, people could just make an informed choice!". Sure, someone will be informed, but it's probably not you and I! We agreed to disagree... when in Rome...

The other day I had to sit in a software demo for an address validation tool. Now I love clean addresses probably a bit more than the next guy but this was dull, even for me. The sales guy- who utterly failed to bring any kind of offering to appease us- showed us how you input addresses and the program validates them against real USPS data. Ok, whoopie... any numbnumb can interact with their web services to do real-time validation.

So how do these seemingly disparate topics relate? Well in the course of his demo, I noticed that not just addresses were showing up. First, there were a few company names intermingled with the lists of valid addresses. "Oh", I thought to myself, "the USPS must be validating company names as well. Hunh... that is only slightly interesting." Then a few minutes later, I noticed there names- the names of real, honest-to-God, Joe-average people. I enquired as to where this data came from and here was his answer:

A credit card company is the parent company of the software company that made these. Credit card companies buy and sell names and so they used this list to build an ever changing, up-to-date database of who lives where- regardless of registration with the USPS. Additionally, any time you subscribe to a magazine, the data gets sold as well. At this point, alarms were going off in my head; black helicopters were circling about; swarms of locusts enveloped the conference room: how could noone else see this????

To me, the only thing this guy validated was the notion that all of our personal data is indeed being "rolled up" and used to profile us for marketing schemes and very possibly even social control. Color me paranoid, but I think it's a good reason to go-green by using cash only. Stick it to the man!

2008 in review

2009-01-01T07:02:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!

On reflection of a solid year of intermittent blogging, I'd have to say the "best" post I put up last year was a review of 2007. Even if no one in cyberspace ever reads it, it was good for me to write. 2007 was definitely a year of blessing for my family and for our church. 2008 was a year of playing roshambo with the devil. But God is good and gave us much grace.

Tragedy

Tragedy struck early in hard in our little church family with the passing of the two year old son of one of our churches best couples. He died from the flu, of all things. This impacted everyone and the whole church rallied around them physically and spiritually, the way a church should. Last night the mother gave a very honest and powerful testimony about her struggles and how Christ is still rebuilding her life- but it is being rebuilt. That was a comfort to hear and a reminder of how important our time in the Word is.

Misfire

One the heels of that group trial, I began a still continuing struggle with prostate problems. It started with a painful infection spreading throughout the region. It really struck hard while on a three day backpacking trip with my son and some friends which proved to make the trip generally miserable. After some time, the infection went away on it's own but other symptoms persist. The worst is the malaise - a sense of deep physical exhaustion- that comes and goes. It also has reduced interest in certain marriage related activities. On any given day, it's sort of like running on four out of six cylinders, so it takes God's grace every day.

Eyes up here!

Over the whole year, an enormous amount of personal belongings have broken. While things could have been much worse in that regard, it was just enough to be very frustrating. The worst loss was the big screen TV, which will not soon be replaced. But all of those "things" are not important and my wife and I realized the whole time it was nothing but distraction. So long as we have food and clothing we are instructed to be content, and we have so much more than that. We are truly thankful for God's constant provision in our lives.

The Presidential election was another occasion to remember that God is in control. There was a lot of Obama related fear and hysteria floating about the media and the internet. Maybe some of it is true, probably a lot of it is not. But either way it doesn't change our mission as Christians and my perception is that there is more determination to pray for this man on the part of the Church than there ever was with Bush. How can that be a bad thing? Maybe we're in a better political position now.

While you weren't looking...

God likes to be sneaky, but in a good way. While we tend to be focused on where we're at (especially when that place is not fun), a lot of times we miss "the big picture". Then it is only in retrospect that we see the things that the Lord has accomplished. While there was a lot of trials and discouragement for the whole church this year, there was also a lot of blessing.

We got to take several different couples through premarital counseling and really see them take hold to the ideas of a Biblical marriage. The Lord has also put a lot of things on my heart about how we can be much more effective in that ministry.

I had the privilege of taking a man through Directions and seeing God work in his life in some amazing ways early in the year. In the fall, God brought us a couple to take through Directions and the man has a friend who is now joining us. We are starting over in the lessons but these guys have a lot of energy and excitement to serve the Lord so this is going to be really good!

This year discipleship has begun in earnest with our older two kids, who both accepted Christ last year. The shiny-newness of salvation wore off and the gritty reality that knowing Jesus doesn't automatically make one "perfect" has set in. This year we spent a lot of time teaching about walking in the Spirit instead of the flesh and understanding that God has us here for a purpose. To that end, we attended the evangelism class as a family which was a great experience! It is awesome to see them grow in desire to tell others the gospel and refreshing for us as well. We're still praying for our last, little sheep to come into the flock!

The Lord has also opened up a huge door at Westport HS through wrestling and tutoring. Everything is just sort of getting off the ground now so we should see it come to fruition this year. I was glad to be a part of helping get it set up.

Our church was finally able to purchase it's building also! God really came through in providing the funds. When looking at the amount of money that is being offered, it's tempting to elevate that to "miracle" status. I think the reality is the only miracle is that so many people are being obedient. God has yet to prove himself- yet to do something truly miraculous. What has happened is what should have happened and we are only surprised by this because we're used to a lower standard. Praise God for His goodness being manifest through His people.

Good things to come

There were many more blessings along the way, these are just the highlights from my own perspective. 2008 has left some unfinished work that must be tackled in 2009. Among the things God is already in motion on:

-Continuing to pray for the salvation of our youngest daughter.
-Discipling the people the Lord has brought to us.
-Redeveloping the premarital lessons and ministry.

As a family, our vision verse for 2009 is Heb 12:1,2, with emphasis on running with patience while looking to Jesus. I am convinced that my own family has been over doing it and it’s time to scale back. You can’t start sprinting in the middle of a marathon- you won’t even finish the race! We have to pace ourselves slower for a bit to recover and then return to a “normal” pace that we can actually keep up with.

Greg Focker wasn't lying after all!

2008-12-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Dina Byrnes: "I had no idea you could milk a cat."

Greg Focker: "Oh yeah, you can milk anything with nipples."

Jack Byrnes: "I have nipples Greg. Could you milk me?"

It is better to dwell in the backyard than with a clawing and contentious kitten.

2008-12-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

It is better to dwell in the backyard than with a clawing and contentious kitten. -1st Illlusions 5:14 (ESV)

The day started off well enough.

This is Moonlight drinking from Max's bowl while he waits in line. It's nice to see cats and dogs living together in harmony.

Max is an incredibly obedient animal. We trained him as a pup to not eat food but by our command, or in our absence, provided we left it on a table or counter. He's doing good with kitty but she isn't really a fan of his for some reason.

But the harmony didn't last long. By the end of the day, Max volunteered to stay in prison. The door to the cage is wide open here.

Thanksgiving Day Standoff

2008-11-27T10:16:00.000-08:00

We have apparently adopted a stray kitten which showed up on our doorstep the other day. It arrived with some company which I accused of bringing the kitten; which also they adamantly deny. Getting our dog and kitten to cohabitate peacefully is our chief concern right now. The dog is impressively obedient as evidenced by the fact the cat is still alive. But for the most part we have to keep them separated.

The 2lb kitten shows no fear of the 90lb., African Lion Hound. Yesterday, due to the kids inattention to keeping doors shut, the two critters had their first face to face encounter on the ground. The kitten sat in the doorway like a Spartan holding Thermopolyae. She just sat there and stared at him as he edged closer and closer but never got near enough for her to swipe his nose with her claws... again. They both stood there, frozen, for nearly five minutes. It reminded me of this image:

I guess the analogy would be closer if the man was holding an RPG instead of a bag of groceries (Seriously- that's a 36 ton tank and he's got... groceries???) But kitty (possible name is 'Claire de lune', French for moonlight. The kids named her: not me.) stood firm and I finally ended the standoff because I didn't want to clean up fur and blood and have to console crying little girls that evening.

WTC???

2008-11-22T06:23:00.000-08:00

I understand the concept of "supply and demand" and think that it is generally true. However, I don't feel it is adquate to explain this:

I'm sure people were driving less when gas was well over $4.00 / gal, but with current prices as low as they are the national daily miles has certainly picked back up. Yet there seems to be no end to the bottom of the gas prices- just the same as the stock market. I have a really hard time accepting that current gas prices are driven purely by market forces and are not the result of external manipulations- that doesn't add up. Perhaps the government is driving gas prices downward in order to defribrillate the market and stave off a depression? Perhaps Lindsay Wiliams is right and the World Bank is driving this. The World Bank would, after all, have a vested interesting in halting a global recession/depression. Whatever the cause, simple market forces don't seem to add up here.

Buried

2008-11-15T19:54:00.000-08:00

Sheesh! What a season of business. Things are chaotic at work. I have three major projects, all stopped and pending... I don't even know what for. Leadership, maybe? The lady of the house is dissatisfied with the state of the bathroom and today I emptied a new bucket of drywall mud prepping the walls (bathroom, closet, hallway and our bedroom, all have first coat). I also picked up some surprise side work to develop a lease management program for buses that needs to be wrapped up by the end of the year. Our church is stepping up it's data management efforts which has generated a 'to-do' list for me. Somehow I have become the point man for organizing coaches for a wrestling club at Westport HS. It's a tremendous opportunity and a chance for our church to have some solid ministry with at least eleven young men. I pray we don't drop the ball here- that will be very, very irritating and disconcerting. I am willing to help out; but all I can really do is PT them until they wretch and then PT them some more. All this on top of the holidays and our Community Team getting ready to split and probably still be too large. Oh yeah, I've got to get our house at least presentable before January as well. I can manage the stress, but the persistent feeling of nothing being complete is very bothersome.

Lock and load!

2008-11-09T06:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the wife and I went shooting with a friend of ours at The Bullet Hole to try out an assortment of handguns. We've been seriously considering getting a gun for home protection over the last few weeks. Thankfully Neufunk, who has a great student and fan of the firearms and a fellow history geek, has been our principle advisor through most of this. (Props!) But there is safety in a mutitude of counsellors, so we've been asking around also. Our shooting partner was a former SWAT member and gun enthusiast friend of ours.

We sampled a 9MM and two Glock .40cals, one with a shorter grip. My first shot hit the target in the groin, even though I was aiming at the chest. My wife's first shot was dead on in the chest. *gulp!* Between the three, I liked the .40 with the long handle best: more boom and easier to manage. I think my wife liked the 9mm the best but was okay with getting a .40.

On our way out, some other shooters let me try a .45cal. Wow! It has a nice punch and I would not want to be on the receiving end of one of those! Or any of them, really...

Finally

2008-11-04T05:49:00.001-08:00

1 hour 40 minutes. And now the line is super short- the wait is probably only 30 min. Yikes!!!

10th in line

2008-11-04T05:33:00.001-08:00

Did I remember my license? Yes! I did.

Had I not, I would have had to seriously consider not voting. But if others aren't disqualified for stupidity then I suppose I shouldn't be either.

More drama

2008-11-04T05:24:00.001-08:00

At about 50' from the door, a lady poked her head out from the building and shouted an anti-light rail message. I was already conversing with the ladies in front of me and they were visibly aghast. I commented to them that I'm pretty sure that was a felony. Then another lady came down the line from the front passing out pro-light rail pamphlets. A minute later, the first lady came outside with an election official to chase down the flyer lady. Assumably this was because of improper electioneering: being too close to the door. Several people noted the first ladies' hypocrisy in this.

The line inside is not being managed at all and people keep packing in. Our voting system is apparently fill-in-the-dot ballots, like the standardized tests. People are filling them out at tables, on furniture, at chairs- whereever they can. I'm about 30th in the L-R line and getting very, very hungry.

Some entertainment

2008-11-04T04:53:00.000-08:00

After 25 minutes, a committee of four women was finally able to unlodge a small car from a moderately difficult parking situation. As I thought about maybe jumping in to help them solve this vehicular rubix cube, the lady behind me jokingly chided several youger men standing behind her: 'why don't you go help her? You know any one of ya'll could get that out of there!'. After some head wagging and laughs we continued watching. One of the ladies was finally able to break free and returned the car to the driver who crept through the mix of cars and people to the sound of applause and laughter.

The line has shortened somewhat and I have moved halfway from where I started.

Standing in line

2008-11-04T04:36:00.001-08:00

I awoke ten minutes before the alarm went off at six today from the anticipation of voting and the elections. I was amazed to pull up to a full parking lot and Blue Ridge being temporarily jammed with people trying to figure out where else to park. After finding a place, it was a quarter of a mile walk to the line. I have never been in a line longer than five or six people to vote. This one is literally hundreds of people. A steady trickle of people is arriving, like drips in an IV that never looks more full or less emtpy. My initial reaction to this was disappointment because I know 85% of them are voting for the greater of two evils.

The line has hardly moved for the last ten minutes. The flush of red light has washed out to a brighter hue of yellow. The faces of my fellowcitizens are plainly visible now. The anticipation of the crowd has cooled to resignation. Clearly we will be here in the autumn chill for a while. We have all shared a common mistake in thinking we'd "beat the rush". Hopefully that's the only mistake I share with this crowd today.

Wow! This guy just went through the line handing out a voting guide- to all the black people! He looked right past me as he walked right past me!!! But it's okay, he's black, so it's not racism...

Holding fast

2008-10-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged much lately due to general business at home and work. I have also had ample discussions lately with various friends whom I respect greatly on our differing opinions. One of the most common debates I've had has been with people who intend to vote Republican to "stop" Obama. Here is part of my response in one of these:

I reject casting a vote out of fear or as a defensive move. I want to vote for something. Even a vote against Obama is still a vote for something. So what are people voting for with McSame?

My issues with the Republican party are less idealogical and more practical. They say the "right thing" but do the "wrong thing" and they have proved it time and again over the last eight years. Voting for McSame is voting for a party that:
is supposed to be for limited government but has expanded the size and power of Federal gov't more than ever.
is supposed to be for fiscal restraint but has ballooned the largest Fed budgets in history.
is supposed to be for "law and order" but illegal immigration has gone unchecked and they mostly discuss the best plan for amnesty.
is supposed to be for free market capitalism but they have been using tax money to bail out failing companies left and right. They were silent when the Supreme Court took away our property rights, which has long been held as a cornerstone of individual liberty and economic development.
is supposedly morally conservative but when they had majorities across the board, did they defend marriage by defining it or scale back abortions? Did they scale back gov't spending on sex education or abortions or the perverseness that is the NEA? No!
claims to be a friend to Israel but ends up giving three times the amount of money to Israel's enemies than they do to Israel -and I don't doubt that Bush and the others use the aid given to Israel to bind their hands in defending themselves. The Republican platform generally looks good on Israel but still expresses support for "the vision of a Palestinian state".

The Republicans espouse Christian moralist viewpoints but have not delivered on anything. I don't like being lied to!!! And I'm not going to reward their lies with my support.

How history repeats itself

2008-10-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Let me be clear- I'm not advocating anything. My tendency is to notice patterns. I have to do that to be able to reduce complex processes to predictable routines that can be encoded in a program. It's how I'm wired and how my mind was trained. Todays complete failure of the Congress to heed to the will of the people and exercise any type of practical judgment reminded me of some passages I read in The Outline of History by H.G. Wells. Here are some excerpts...

Chapter 26: Section 1: The Science of Thwarting the Common Man

Our world to-day is still far from solving the problem of representation and from producing a public assembly which will really summarize, crystallize and express the thought and will of the community; our elections are still largely an ingenious mockery of the common voter, who finds himself helpless in the face of party organizations which reduce his free choice of a representative to the less palatable of two political hacks...

The comita tributa could be worked at times so as to vote altogether counter to the general feeling of the people. And, as we have already noted, the great mass of voters in Italy were also disenfranchised by distance.

There can be no doubt that all Italy, all the empire, was festering with discomfort, anxiety, and discontent in the century after the destruction of Carthage; a few men were growing very rich, and the majority of people found themselves entangled in an inexplicable net of uncertain prices, jumpy markets, and debts; but yet there was no way at all of stating and clearing up the general dissatisfaction. There is no record of a single attempt to make the popular assembly a straightforward and workable public organ. Beneath the superficial appearances of public affairs struggled a mute giant of public opinion and public will, which sometimes made a great political effort, a rush to vote or such-like, or broke into actual violence. So long as there was no actual violence, the Senate and the financiers kept on in their own disastrous way. Only when they were badly frightened would governing cliques or parties desist from some nefarious policy and heed the common good.

The real method of popular expression in Italy in those days was not the comitia tributa, but the strike and insurrection, the righteous and necessary methods of all cheated or suppressed peoples.

Section 2: Finance in the Roman State

Another respect in which the Roman system was a crude anticipation of our own... was that it was a cash- and credit-using system.

People began to buy land and the like not for use, but to sell again at a profit: people borrowed to buy, speculation developed.

We, who can look at the problem with a large perspective, can see that what happened to Rome was "money" - the new freedoms and chances and opportunities that money opened out. Money floated the Romans off the firm ground; everyone was getting hold of money, the majority by the simple expedient of running into debt...

The Equestrian order, in particular, became the money power. Everyone was developing property. Farmers were giving up corn and cattle, borrowing money, buying slaves, and starting the more intensive cultivation of oil and wine.

A small body of very shrewd men was growing immensely rich. Many patricians were growing poor and irritated and unscrupulous. Among the middling sort of people there was much hope, much adventure, and much more disappointment. The growing mass of the expropriated was permeated by that vague, baffled and hopeless sense of being inexplicably bested, which is the preparatory condition for all great revolutionary movements.

Smells like teen... er... agers?

2008-09-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

A small incident on Sunday morning really shook me up. As we pulled into the parking lot at church, my older daughter began loudly complaining about how her brother stank. Indeed, I too noted the unsavory aroma. This was not the smell of a little kid who merely hadn't bathed for a week. This was the smell of... man... it meant only one thing: hormones. Yes, hormones have begun to work in my little boy and activating the stink-glands was their first task in announcing their presence.

He's 10 -1/2 now. This morning I remembered that by the time I was 12 my voice had already dropped and before I was 13 I had to start shaving. So by that estimation, we have just one and a half years left to enjoy our son as a little boy before the more dramatic changes really hit.

And speaking of being smelly, I now know that I can move roughly 6 yards of dirt in 3 1/2 hours. That would be nearly 14 yards in a full 8 hour day.

Ron Paul throws support to Constitution Party

2008-09-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.constitutionparty.com/news.php?aid=778

Republican presidential contender Ron Paul, who has maintained a groundswell of popular support from within and without the Republican party, has now publicly endorsed Chuck Baldwin and the Contstitution Party by stating that they will have his vote this November!

I firmly believe that the two main parties will have lower-than-ever turnouts this year and that all third parties and write-ins (including "Mickey Mouse") will have the strongest showing ever. There are a lot of thinking people out there who have broken away from the two-party joke and are really starting to influence others. But grass-roots change takes the longest to take hold and we are fighting a battle for minds against a well financed, experienced and savvy enemy in the form of the existing system, including their media outlets.

If the ranks of Ron Pauls supporters follow the reasoning and come to the same conclusions as Ron Paul, then this will really strengthen the CP. Ron Pauls supporters have been ardent, highly active and contributed a lot of money. That same drive and energy would bring a lot of momentum to the CP and could make a big difference.

Whew!!!

2008-09-22T06:09:00.000-07:00

Job 41:8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.

About six weeks ago my pastor asked if I could preach sometime in September, using Ezra 4-6 as a base text. I felt compelled to say 'yes' and subsequently spent the next six weeks with butterflys and jitters. But in the end, it was worth it to have experienced the hand of the Lord working in my life.

For about five weeks, my studies focused on spritual warfare as that is a primary topic of that passage. It is also what we have been studying as a church, so it seemed a natural fit. But I knew the whole time that I wasn't getting 'it'. This was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the right direction. I mentioned this to a few people by last Tuesday night- because I was starting to get frantic. That night at prayer the Lord finally gave me peace about the topic.

Studying was difficult. We had an enormously busy week and I had a zillion thoughts flying around my head about what to say. It wasn't until Friday night that I was able to sit down and get the rest of this pulled together. God was faithful to give me direction and show me some cool things from His Word! Once I had peace about what to say I started to get excited, and that definitely helped to calm the nerves.

It was also on Friday that I got some un-cheery news from my Dr. regarding low testosterone levels. Yikes! I spent the day wondering if that made me a lesbian (my wife assures me it does not) and finding out all the possible side effects of taking testostorone supplements. I decided the best course of action was not to regard this for a few days. There would be time to worry come Monday!

On Saturday our church had a work-day with some friends from other churches. What an amazing day! The amount of work that got done in such a short time frame was astounding to me. It couldn't all be chalked up to the number of people either. Every person who was there was busting their arse to get things done and it really added up! But also, for me, swinging a pick-axe and using a shovel all day was really exhausting as I am primarily an angry coder, and not an angry digger. After eleven hours of work, I was already sore.

On Sunday morning I was extremely sore- head to toe. My wife asked me where I hurt and I just replied "In my body", which was totally accurate. My hands were swollen and itchy, too and I really don't think I ever arrived at full consciousness. I was pretty out of it!

Thanks to all those who were praying me through this! While I'm sure this wasn't the best message people have ever heard, I am confident it was from the Lord and that's what it's about. I definitely would not have been able to sail through this without those who were praying, and that really was the biggest lesson I got from it. We need to pray for our pastor and for each other in the work of the Lord.

Atticus Sux

2008-09-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

Atticus Sux... from the Latin "attics suck". I spent a good 6 or 7 hours last weekend running wiring for our bathroom extreme makeover. The only thing that was truly extreme was the heat in the attick. Our power vent has gone kaputz so it was a stuffy 115^ or better. Dark, no airflow and filled with piles of dust and loose fiberglass. What a way to celebrate the labor movement! But in the end, everything went perfectly on the first flick of the breaker and we have a beautifully lit bathroom.

Palin is lie! The Republicans are just trying to appease angry and betrayed conservatives! Honestly, what good is a Vice President unless the President pops off?! Don't be fooled!

For the second time this year, while biking, I made contact with a moving vehicle. This time was my fault. I was ascending the bridge on Gregory, next to the frisbee golf field. Today I decided to take it easy on my way in, so I wasn't going too fast and was enjoying some nice tunes. Over the sound of the rythmic thumping and swooshing of cars, I could hear some distant barking. It turned out to not be distant at all but just seemed that way due to the headphones. Off to my starboard side was a pack of three medium sized dogs chasing me. I didn't know if they wanted to play or just see if I taste like chicken but in any event, I stood up quickly and pulled hard on the headset to take off, lurching to the left with a hop. This brought me into contact with the rear quarter of a white sedan. Yikes!

To add to the biker-obstacle-course for the day, heading up 63rd St, I heard sirens screaming behind me. Crap! I was getting busted for speeding and didn't have my insurance with me!!! This is the first time I've ever had to pull over to the side of the road to get passed by an emergency vehicle. Turns out the cops weren't after me at all, but it was still a weird experience.

Travelling blues

2008-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

Travelling always puts me in sort of a down-on-KC type of mood. It doesn't really hit until after I've been back a day or two. I think it takes that long for me to process the contrasts of where I've just been to where I am. The honest truth is, I've never visited a place that I didn't thoroughly like more than KC. This place is horrible. The climate, the culture, the politics... the only thing it has going for it is the church I go to, my friends, and family. That's all the really important stuff, anyways, so I'm good with that. But it would be nice to enjoy the same people with a much more enjoyable back drop.

What triggered this for me was the humidity. We just returned from Albuquerque last Wed night. They are over a mile high and in the desert. It was hot, sure, but never reached 100 and there was zero humidity. The air was fresh and clean. The air was also thin enough to boost my riding speed by a solid 4mph! The views are incredible. Not only is the landscape scenic, but the thinner atmosphere and high mountains lends itself to spectacular skyscapes. Oh that we remembered the camera! It has been a long time since I've seen the moon with such clarity and so large, and it kept popping in and out of the clouds which were wreathed around it with some dramatic style. The moon there must shine five times brighter than it does here in the lowlands.

2008 Voting Guide: Which lizard best suits you?

2008-08-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

Percussivity duped me into reading his favorite pentalogy, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (which at least I could read for free online as opposed to buying a hard copy cleaverly disguised as a Bible so I could read it during church services like some people). In book four, 'So long, and thanks for all the fish', there is a very profound passage that really spoke to me about the current conundrum of American presidential politics.

To set the background for you a bit: a spaceship has just boldly landed in the middle of London, on the earth as we know it...

After a long, heart-stopping moment of internal crashes and grumbles of rending machinery, there marched from it, down the ramp, an immense silver robot, a hundred feet tall.
It held up a hand.
``I come in peace,'' it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, ``take me to your Lizard.''
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur...
``It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see ...''
``You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?''
``No,'' said Ford, ``nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.''
``Odd,'' said Arthur, ``I thought you said it was a democracy.''
``I did,'' said Ford. ``It is.''
``So,'' said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, ``why don't people get rid of the lizards?''
``It honestly doesn't occur to them,'' said Ford. ``They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.''
``You mean they actually vote for the lizards?''
``Oh yes,'' said Ford with a shrug, ``of course.''
``But,'' said Arthur, going for the big one again, ``why?''
``Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,'' said Ford, ``the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?''
``What?''
``I said,'' said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, ``have you got any gin?''
``I'll look. Tell me about the lizards.''
Ford shrugged again.
``Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,'' he said. ``They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it.''
``But that's terrible,'' said Arthur.
``Listen, bud,'' said Ford, ``if I had one Altairan dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say `That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin. But I haven't and I am...''

I hope this guide helps some of you to sort out this election, especially for those who are going to vote for 'Party A' simply to stop 'Party B' from gaining a victory. A vote for 'A' or 'B' is really a vote for the lizards. Choose wisely, lest the wrong lizard should win! And thanks to Percussivity for taking a few minutes to create the pic for this post!

Amused.

2008-08-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

Not in the sense of being entertained, but rather of being uninspired. I simply have nothing to say, but felt it necessary to say something if, for no other reason, than to break the awkward silence. I also wanted to avoid having my blog get egged with premature declarations of death or ambivalence and other malevelont things. Hence there is some necessity in not having too much time pass between posts.

Percussivity has finally found a way of getting me to read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The best line so far is definitely... "Rome wasn't burnt in a day." I'm saving that one for just the right occasion- likely a meeting at the City- as a sniper spends time sanding down a bullet meant for a special target.

Speaking of sniping, last weekend I got to play paintball for the first time in probably ten years. I had a terrible time with fog on the lenses but, nevertheless, it was an awesome time. My son is now hooked, too, which is even more awesome because it means I will get to revive that part of my life but now with my son. Freaking awesome!

Political Modeling

2008-07-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

The modus operandi for putting people in the right political "box" is to discuss political orientation in terms of "left" and "right". Graphically, this is represented by a single line; a one-dimensional element you may recall from Jr. High Algebra as "X", the X-axis or the X plane. Personally I have always chafed at this. It never really seemed to fit me and, on further reflection, it doesn't see to fit most people.

A few years back, a coworker sent me a link this site. It is called The Political Compass and attempts to describe political thought according to Cartesian coordinate plane by contrasting fiscal beliefs with moral. This seems to hit the nail on the head, at least for a simpleton such as myself.

Before taking the test, I had presumed I would still end up on the far right. Indeed I did not and was amazed at how "centrist" I really am. Taking this test a few years ago is really when I began questioning my current (at that time) political thoughts and assumptions and started to reevaluate them. Here is my current scoring:

I say all this in light of some conversation I had tonight, in which it was asserted that I am part of the "fringe right" and am company to the "kooks" and "conspiracy theorists" that dwell there. I felt the need to clear my name of such ignorant and presumptuous assertions. That being said, I can understand why some people may have that opinion although I disagree fervently. I am a Bible-thumper. Most of my compadres are right wingers after the typical vein of thought. I come from a military family (my dad was a career Marine Corps officer and an angry coder himself: double anal retentive!) and they are typically strong right wingers. I am idealistic, moralistic and still tend to divide everything into clear lines of black and white. Right, right, right!

But in reality, I am not a right winger! It's only in the last few decades that Bible believers have come to be associated with that. Traditionally, they have been very libertarian minded. After the persecutions of old Europe, they had not love or trust for established government. But the problem with the modern Libertarian party is they have no moral compass at all. There has to be a balance! It is the role of government to force morals on its citizens or else there really is no need for government. But what morals? Where do you draw the line? Murder, stealing, rape, speeding, weeds over 10", sodomy, animal cruelty, truancy, littering... Every law imposes some moral value. I felt the Constitution Party was the most libertarian minded group that still had a moral compass. That is why this is the party I will be supporting in this years presidential election.

I see dumb people

2008-07-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

AIG is not just a wonderful insurance company, it's also a company with a heart. Who else would would be so concerned for those less fortunate, in an intellectual sense, that they would bring in a short school bus chalk full of numnums to be gainfully employed? My lovely wife recently had an online discussion with one of these special people. Here's the transcript:

Thank you for contacting aigdirect.com Auto Insurance. You'll be routed to a Customer Care Specialist in 10 seconds.
You are now chatting with Customer Care Specialist 'Anita'.
Anita: AIG Auto Insurance at your service, how may I assist you? (operator may be chatting with other customers)
(MyWife): I was wondering if our policy covers reimbursement for our car being towed.
Anita: For verification purposes, please provide your name and address.
(MyWife): (MyWife), (Address... etc)
Anita: Towing is covered for free. Are you renting the car in result of a accident or just pleasure use ?
(MyWife): We did not rent a car. We just had our car towed and fixed and got it back the next day.
Anita: No, that type of rental is not covered
(MyWife): Our car was not in a wreck.
(MyWife): It wasn't a rental, we just had to have it towed.
(MyWife): To get it repaired because it wouldn't start.
Anita: The towing is covered. But not the rental because it was not in result of a accident
(MyWife): Ok, what do I need to do to get the reimbursement for the tow?
Anita: You will need to contact 1-800(number)
(MyWife): Is this a real person?
Anita: Yes
(MyWife): Ok, I was just wondering.
(MyWife): Nevermind.
Anita: Is there anything else I can help you with?
(MyWife): That is it.
Anita: You’re very welcome. Have a good day!

Batman: The Dark Knight

2008-07-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

I will not spoil this movie for anyone, but I will discuss the plot. I liked this movie. It is the furthest away from the "comic book" feeling of any of the Batman movies produced thus far. The traditional take on Batman is that he's fighting crime in a world where morality is black and white. This however is a film noir and that necessitates "moral ambiguity". The role of the Joker in this was to push people- good people, common people and moral superstars alike- into that gray area. The Joker desires to show what evil a good man is willing to do. He is not motivated by money, power, revenge or lust but, as Alfred says "Some men just want to watch the world burn." Thankfully, they weren't too gruesome when showing someone snuff it, but the Joker is still a disturbing and bloodthirsty figure. Heath Ledger was amesome in that role- he redefines the super-villan in the Bat-world (oooooh, sorry for that cheesieness!).

After watching the movie, I really had an unsettled feeling. This is not a feel-good movie, to be sure. What occured to me later is that the Joker's main intent was really not much different from that of the killer in the movie Seven (actually Se7en). They both were killing people to make a comment on human nature and, in the process, elevated killing to some sick type of art. That killing could be an art, in itself, is a sick and sad commentary on human nature. Oh that it wasn't true! But the legacy of the genocides of the last century- and the current one in Darfur- are too true and even more abominable than any one serial killer could ever be.

Another, but lesser, important question the movie explores is "what is a hero?" This one is central to Bruce Wayne as he tries to figure out what his place is in the world. Does the world need a hero? What type of hero?

If you don't wany any movie spoilage, then this is your cue to leave.

Seriously, leave now if you don't want to know any more about The Dark Knight.

Not gone yet?

Well, you can't say I didn't warn you!

WOW! Those fight scenes were just amazing!!! Like when he flipped that diesel and the whole chase scene prior to that. I loved the plot twists. I like how Bruce really bought in to the DA and determined that Gotham needed a "hero with a face". It still seemed like a bit of a jump for the Harvey Dent to all of a sudden become Two Face. Maybe I wasn't sold on how much he loved Rachel- they weren't that convincing together. The character of Rachel will not be missed by me in future bat-movies, either. The high point of the movie to me was when the prisoner on the boat takes the detonator from the warden and says "I'm gonna do what you should've done ten minutes ago" then chucks it out the window. I figured each detonator would've blown up the boat it was on anyways. It's not like the Joker was a real credible guy by that point in the movie! Alfreds story about chasing the smuggler was pretty cool, too.

And the technology was amazing! The whole para-lift thing from the building in Hong Kong was outstanding! The escape motorcycle from the Batmobile was sweet. And turning every cell phone in the city into a sonar device fed back to a central computer- WOW! That was some freaking awesome stuff! Whoever thought that up is an evil genius. Muhahahahahahaha!

I can't wait to have this one on DVD so I can watch... oh wait...

Horn Repair

2008-07-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

Last night I fixed up the horn on my 1993 Mazda Protege. The problem was that the horn would start honking for no reason at all, especially when it was cold, due to the material between the contact plates. For the sake of anyone else who may have to go through this, I have fully documented the process. I also decided to bust out the camera, so there are a lot of pictures which should make happy the quasi-literate and those with ADD.

First you will need to remove the horn assembly from the steering wheel. There are three, slotted screws that you undo from the back and then the assembly can be pulled from the wheel. There's also an electrical contact that needs to be unplugged.

Next, remove the horn contact plates from the horn cover. There are several screws that hold this in and, on mine, I also had to remove a little box that houses the cruise control switches. The contact plates can be separated by using pliers to pinch the plastic rivets and push them out. Once that's done, pry the two plates apart. There is a layer of old foam that separates them, and that is what needed replacing.

I used an exacto knight with a straight tipped blad to scrape the old foam off.

Then I used some fine, steel wool to buff it out and then wiped the residue off with a damp cloth and dried it.

Then I used 1/4" thick, 1/2" wide weatherstripping to add a new foam layer. It is important to make sure the foam does not cover any of the raised areas on the contact plate because these are what actually contact the copper plate to make the horn honk.

Once that was done, I reinserted the plastic rivets and- voila! The horn was repaired! And now I'd like to borrow a line from an automotive repair manual regarding rebuilding an engine "step #473: reverse procedures to reinstall". Isn't that helpful?

If you've made it this far in reading this post then you are either: a true friend, really bored or attempting to make the same repair. Good luck!

Some randomness

2008-07-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

Urologists are not nice people. They squeeze things that shouldn't be squeezed and poke things that shouldn't be poked.

I am sold on 1/2" drive sockets. 3/8" drive is just too mousey. There's nothing like the feeling of torquing down on a stubborn bolt with a 24" long, 1/2" drive breaker bar and tilting the entire engine of the car 15^ until you hear the unmistakeable sound of cold forged steel finally succomb to your superiority! Muhahahaha! (cue: "I've got the power!" by Snap)

And the Mitsubishi 48" widescreen projection device was pronounced dead at 11:45AM... My stupid TV is going to cost $450 to fix. It has a bad power circuit, apparently. In honor of this, a haiku:

I have a bigscreen

The warranty has expired.

My TV is broke.

The jacuzzi bathtub is working out well. However our dog doesn't seem to care for it too much. It takes five people to bathe that beast. He doesn't like water but apparently mud is okay, and he will not spare any plant when in the pursuit of small critters and butterflies... not even the Cilantro plants.

I don't usually do music/artsy stuff but I am going to post the lyrics to Muzzle by The Smashing Pumpkins because: it's a freaking awesome song, the lyrics are way deep and as of late I have been sharing the overall sentiment it conveys. It's probably just the exhaustion kicking in.

"Muzzle"

I fear that I'm ordinary, just like everyone

To lie here and die among the sorrows

Adrift among the days

For everything I ever said

And everything I've ever done is gone and dead

As all things must surely have to end

And great lovers will one day have to part

I know that I am meant for this world

My life has been extraordinary

Blessed and cursed and won

Time heals but I'm forever broken

By and by the way...

Have you ever heard the words

I'm singing in these songs?

It's for the girl I've loved all along

Can a taste of love be so wrong

As all things must surely have to end

And great lovers will one day have to part

I know that I am meant for this world

And in my mind as I was floating

Far above the clouds

Some children laughed I'd fall for certain

For thinking that I'd last forever

But I knew exactly where I was

And I knew the meaning of it all

And I knew the distance to the sun

And I knew the echo that is love

And I knew the secrets in your spires

And I knew the emptiness of youth

And I knew the solitude of heart

And I knew the murmurs of the soul

And the world is drawn into your hands

And the world is etched upon your heart

And the world so hard to understand

Is the world you can't live without

And I knew the silence of the world

That's what she said...

2008-07-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

One of the funniest episodes of The Office is "Sexual Harassment". It is comically obvious that the boss just doesn't get it. I think the best line from that one is when Dwight askes Toby (the HR guy) "what does a female vagina look like?" Toby's response is something like "I work in HR and Toby has just asked me a question about human anatomy. All I can say is, it makes me sad that the public school system has failed you so very very badly."

To the left, you can see a quick shot I took of our trainers.

But in the real world, harassment (in all it's many forms) is not funny. It's big business and very boring. I believe it also gives us a gauge to measure the moral decay of our society. We wrapped up our "Harassment Free Workplace" training. The word "harassment" strikes me as funny, too. "He said 'ass'." I digress...

In the past I have always been sensitive to the notion that I am to "accept" gays in an effort to be "tolerant". This year, we all got slapped with some new rules: the word 'homosexual' and phrase 'altnative lifestyle' are now offensive. The discussion on gays was short, but still expansive compared to last time, and now we are to include "cross gender" people. While gays and transgendered people are not (yet) a protected class by the Feds or even the State, the City likes to tout that it has a "higher" standard! WOW! Okay, they can say that in front of God and man with a straight face... evil is good, I suppose.

The next hot button for me is freedom of religious expression. Now the official policy hasn't really changed but the discussion sure has. It used to get a nod- more brief than even the gays. Today they showed us a series if ultra-cheesy videos depicting examples of harassment. All of them revolved around sexual harassment or some type of intimidation. On the last video, they had two guys sitting in an office and one asks the other what's wrong. The other guy starts to open up about his marriage difficulties. The first guys then invites him to a marraige retreat at his church, offers him a pamphlet about the retreat and gives some first person testimony. He wasn't preaching, he didn't quote the Bible or mention the name of Jesus. It could hardly be considered proselytizing or evangelism. But this was held up as an example of harassment and the well intentioned man was now an offender on the same scale as the office ass-slapper, minority hater or gay basher. Had the man been talking about a secular conference, I doubt it would be harassment. But because man #2 "felt" uncomfy, man #1 was wrong. Wow!

The real kicker with that video was that on the finishing shot, they zoomed in slowly on a copy of the Bible that was sitting on the desk and played some ominous, low pitched tones. By which, I presume, they mean to tell us that good is evil.

I am not a very good evangelist. But I do reach out to people, especially when I see opportunity. Now I know even this is forbade by the City in the course of doing my job. I won't go looking for a fight here, and I'll trust the Lord. But in the end, I must obey God rather than man, even if it means getting kicked to the curb.

Act 5:28
Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us.
Act 5:29
Then Peter and the [other] apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

It would be a great thing to be accused of filling this city with "my" doctrine!

The plumbing is now complete!

2008-07-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

The clean-water plumbing for my project is now complete. This including running the water lines downstairs for the someday-to-be basement bathroom and installing a garden faucet on the back of the house. Next I'll need to wrap up the drain line for the sink in the basement, as well and I'll be ready to hook up the sink down there. After a little concrete patch, I can install the toilet. The funny thing will be, it's just going to be a sink and a toilet sitting out in the open. But hey, if you gotta go bad enough...

Other tasks done this weekend include opening the back panel of my Mitsubishi 48" widescreen rear projection TV. I identified all of the surface mounted fuses on the panels (and I was amazed at the complexety of this device!) and tested them for resistance (none being good). All of the fuses were good. I did some more research and conculded that I was way over my head and now is not the time for me to learn the full scope of electronics. Mrs. Angry and I then researched and selected a TV repair shop to come visit us this week.

I completed the install of the combination switch on my 1993 Mazda Protege. I've never removed a steering wheel before and I had quite an ordeal figuring it out. But thanks to my boss, I finally got it together and installed the new switches. They worked great except for one oddity: any time I turned the wheel it would also turn the switch on! Finally I realized that the new switch box was not seating back quite as far as the old one and this was causing a plastic piece, which is responsible for turning off the signals after a turn has been completed, to grab the switch toggle inside the steering assembly and move the toggle. I took this part out and put it on the bench grinder to remove about 1/16th of an inch off the back of it and reinstalled. The whole assembly works like new, now!

I didn't have so much luck working on my weedeater. I replaced the very fouled spark plug, dumped the fuel and mixed a fresh batch of 40:1 (mmmm... home cookin'!), adjusted the carberateur and cleaned the air filter. No dice. It will start but then sputter out. Dare I make a visit to Raytown Feed and Seed? The Unstable Blogger recommends pulling the carb out completely and soaking it in fuel for a day. Might be worth the try, but I just don't have the time. Maybe he'd like to do it, for fun and personal satisfaction?!

Lastly, I got my old 97 Dodge Neon running again. I has sat idle for many months and I have intended to give it to a friend of mine as a work transport. After cleaning the positive terminal with a steel brush and jump starting, it fired right up. I then filled it with fuel and was quite excited to tell my friend it was ready to go. But that night, someone observed that it was leaking fuel on the ground. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to it until after church today and by then, the $40 in gas I put in it had coursed down the gutter and evaporated under the hot summer sky. After removing a guard over the sensors for the gas tank, I observed a vacuum cap on a nipple (plumbing term- not my mine!) which had a lateral crack halfway around it. This was the culprit! A trip to O'Reilly's and a $1.25 later, it was fixed.

My friend came by tonight to pick it up. We check the oil and the radiator fluid and it was waaay low on fluid. I filled up the radiator (with pure H20- the best thermal transfer agent available for cars) and removed the thermostat (cars don't need these in the summer anyhow) for optimal performance and... it still overheated. Grrrrrrr! Time to flush it again, but that will have to wait for the morrow.

I am so tired...

Parking lot idiot

2008-07-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Wednesday I took off work to get some more done on my bathroom (the tub and shower are installed and functioning, praise the Lord!) That afternoon, after visiting Paradise Park and Culvers with the family, we stopped by Lowe's to check out some faucets and such. I was walking lead and my youngest daughter was next to me, holding my wife's hand and the other two were in tow. We walked down the isle of cars towards the door and, as we neared the island that divides the 'road' going between the isles and the front of the store, a truck suddenly whisked down our isle. He, turned right, clipped the curb short and drew very close to us. Not only did I have to stop walking, I actually had to step back, as did my wife and daughter. I stood and stared at this long, black bed, edging closer and closer to me, till he finally straightened out and passed.

We proceeded into the store where what had just happened finally sunk in. I've already had up to here (about the 5'10" mark) with the degenerates who bandy about this city. I decided I couldn't let this one pass- he almost hit my little girl.

I went out through the doors and met the driver and his friend in the lot and the conversation went thusly:

[I will abbreviate the driver as "AH", because he looked a lot like an Arthur Henderson.)

(me) "Excuse me, sir, you almost hit my little girl."
(AH) "Well if I did it was because she walked into it."
(me) "No sir, you clipped that curb and just about ran into all of us. She had to stop and step back."
(AH) "Then she needs to pay more attention to where she's walking."
(me) "What?! So you're blaming a little girl? It's her fault that your crappy driver?"

[I was already angry, but at this point, I start coming a bit unravelled. Note, this was an older guy and obviously a "good ol' boy". So I press on...)

(me) "Have you ever drove anything that big before?"
(AH)[with smugness] "I've drove eighteen wheelers my whole life!"
(me) "Well you drive like you've never been in anything but a Toyota before."
(AH)[with irritation] "Well you sound like a [indiscernable mumbling]."
(me) "A what? I sound like a what? [pause] I sound like an angry father!!"

[at this point we're in the store and I'm sure that I was visibly and audibly upset]

(AH) "Well what do you want me to do?!"
(me) "Well an apology would be nice!"
(AH) "Okay- I'm sorry. But you need to do a better job of watching your kids."

[mom heard that one, he's lucky to be alive at this point]

(me) "She's alive because we were watching her, jackass! I ought to go get your license plate and call you in for wreckless driving you jerk..."

At that point, my wife grabbed my shoulder and asked what, precisely, I intended to do or had hoped to accomplish from here on out. Good point, so I digressed. It took about 20 min to quit shaking and another 20 or so for the fog to clear out. Adrenaline is such a powerful drug. The thought did cross my mind that it would be "fun" to buy a 20# sledge hammer and, uhm, do some work on his truck. But that was a passing fancy. I knew better.

Had the shoe been on the other foot, I would be thoroughly horrified to know that I even "almost" hit a child. Beware, bikers! If this guy has no compassion for the absolute cutest little girl in the world (sorry, fellow-dads), then what does he think about you?!

If it ain't broke, it's probably not mine...

2008-07-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

This year has brought a rash of broken items, most of which have been manifest in the last 30 days. Here is a review:

1. Flaky router - this has been ongoing. It "mostly" works. I have plans to replace it, maybe later this year.
2. #3 cylinder on the Windstar. It shuttered awful bad. Replacing the plugs and cables fixed it.
3. Distributor wire on Protege... this just fell out last Friday on my way to meet a Friend. $65 for the tow, $10 for the diagnostic. And "thanks" to the African Muslim guys who stopped to help!
4. Front driver side tire. Again, on the Protege. It had a visible hematoma for a few weeks but it finally popped on Saturday. Much thanks to Percussivity for his bail out. And Grrrrr...
5. Combination Switch. Again, on the Protege. It's got 190K+ miles so what do you expect? Still gets 29mpg so I can't complain too much. $35 used one is on it's way. When that comes then I'll also fix..
6. Horn contact plate on... go ahead, take a guess! This one has been a nuisance for a while.
7. Brakes on... yep... they were shot, totally, and grinding the disks. I fixed them about 30 days ago but now the emergency brake doesn't work. Getting that looked at tomorrow... oy...
8. 48" 1080i widescreen TV... **sniff**... I can't even talk about this one yet.
9. Weed eater. It just up and quit on me a couple of weeks ago. Grrrrrr!
10. Daughters bike. It's awesome that she learned to ride. The whole family is in on that now. But she learned a valuable lesson in parking: do not park behind the van!!! Front wheel got bent, I had it fixed but then forgot to secure it when loading into the trailer and somehow it popped off. Geeees... mea culpa!
11. Nerf gun. It's not a big deal, but it cost $1.20 for a new spring and took up my precious time. My precious!!!

And that doesn't even cover work! It seems I've spent a lot of time this year just fixing things that used to work but mysteriously don't any more, such as:
12. Our work managment system. It's been suffering from horrendous latency. Noone can figure out why, but it's just hammering the disks. A call with Oracle did nada; a new server has done a little but we can see it coming again.
13. FTP download process. Worked fine before I moved my office and onto a new switch. The IT dept affirms that all switches are configured the same. I move my connection to a different switch on my own (not bad for coder!) and bingo! It works like magic...
14. XML to PDF job. This little app just broke the other day because the local user account password got changed. That was a bear to figure out!
15. ArcGIS install. This went ill the first time because the license file was not adequate. After I got the right now, I decided to get fancy with the install and use non-default options. Even though it lets you do this, it apparently doesn't like it. After a support call with Apoo, I had uninstalled it, removed all directories, users and groups and then reinstalled it. Worked like a charm. Gees I hate other people's bugs.
16. BCL "Easy"PDF SDK. Easy.... riiiiight. Their words, not mine. Sure it's easy to write code to, but try to deploy this thing when it's wrapped in a web service. OMG I never knew there were so many places to set permissions!!!! This one is still open with the vendor. What really stinks is, it was working great just... 30 days... ago... hhhhhhhhhh

It's been a fun 30 days. Lets hope this phase is over!

Remodel Progress

2008-07-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

For years my wife and I have purposed to remodel our main bathroom. From day one, it was a target. The paint was peeling off the ceiling, the vanity was made from MDF so the edges were gnarled and it was slopily painted white with black trim to match the black and white linoleum tiles. It had a vanilla-carmel swirl colored sink top and the bathtub was in awful condition as well. It was encased in beige plastic, which began coming off the walls. The rest of the walls were covered with a crappy grey and white swirl psuedo-tile. The whole room was total crap. Last year, I determined 2008 would be the year.

Knowing that then, when Percussivity had a dumpster last November and offered to let me dispose of rubbish in it, I quickly gutted the majority of the monstrosity. For six long months this room sat with naked studs and flooring. Using MicroStation SE, the last CAD package with which I have professional experience, I began charting out detailed plans. This also involved fervent negotiations with the wife as we tried to reach a unified position for functional requirements and aesthetic details. Then, last spring, when our tax return arrived, the wife and I picked out all of the fixtures and most of the supplies we'd need to finish it (using a 10% off coupon at Home Depot we purchased from eBay.)

So now the project is well under way. The framing that faces the hallway is rebuilt, extending the usable space of the bathroom by about three foot. I also added a hall closet which is sheet rocked. The toilet is in and as of yesterday evening, the two pedastal sinks have been installed and the kids inaugurated them with a good tooth-brushing last night. Tonight I will frame up the structures on both sides of the bathtub and install the drain for the tub. Should providence shine upon my efforts today, I will even run the 3/4" lines up to the tub filler. Maybe- just maybe- we'll get to inaugurate the whirlpool tub tonight!

Pictures will be forthcoming...

Bathroomia

2008-07-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

On my way to the office bathroom, and I passed someone who was leaving while I was on my way in. I approached the three stalls: will I pick door number one, door number two or door number three?! Of course I picked one that "looks" clean but to my surprise, once I sat upon the pocelain throne, the seat was not cold at all. In fact, it was quite warm. Yes, I picked the "used" seat.

As if it's not bad enough to know exactly which of my filth ridden coworkers I am sharing germs with, when I approach the sinks afterwards, I noticed that there are no water droplets in any of the basins. I doubt they had evaporated that quickly, so it can mean only one thing.... ewwwwwwwwe! I will not be typing on that persons keyboard ever!

The internet is boring

2008-07-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today I'm baby sitting long running processes. It's not really that mentally engaging and normally I'll bring in a book when I have to do something like this because I can only take so much of the internet. I've got several good ones queued up at home- HG Wells' Outine of History, a couple of biographies on the founding fathers and an older Christian law journal with an excellent speech by John Adams in the 1840's (?) on the Constitution.

I'd really like to get a hold of a book called How Christianity Changed the World. This book analysis the differences between modern society and the ancient, greco-roman society that prevailed in the time of Chirst and attempts to explain how Christianity got us to where we are. I've read some excerpts and what I read was great. I love taking landscape looks at human history and then delving into details.

I've also wanted to read The Secret History of the Mongols for some time, but the times we've looked for it we haven't found it. It's the only historical document produced by the Mongolian empire and chronicles their rise under Genghis Khan. There's also an indie flick out called Mongol which looks freaking awesome!

Lastly, I noticed that my pastor has a book on the history of race relations in KC. That would be a fascinating read as well.

Ah, this process just wrapped up. That's enough thinking about what I'd "like" to read of have "almost" read.

Biker Self Defense

2008-06-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

In light of several recent spats of violence and stupidity against bikers, I have begun researching some effective self defense measures that an urban cyclist can take. The following article leaves little doubt that mounting a pitchfork to the headset is probably not a good idea.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9E0CE6D81F39E433A25751C2A96F9C94669ED7CF&oref=slogin

Bike upgrades for 2008

2008-05-10T20:27:00.001-07:00

Finally, I got the last of my planned upgrades installed and am ready to begin the 2008 biking season!

This is my steel frame, urban commuter tank: a Dawes "Lightning". An ironic name for such a heavy bike! But it is a comfortable ride.

The first upgrade this year was to get shifters mounted on the headset instead of the body tube. I lack the coordination to reach down to the body for shifting whilst going 20+ mph in traffic, with no shoulder and dodging potholes. It's not a fun game! I got a good deal on some used Shimano shifter from the guys at the Bike Shack.

Next up, I read some articles on the dangers of doing a lot of biking, especially for men. So I got a "man seat" by Specialized which has an ergonomic feature called Body Geometry. The idea is to protect the pipelines that supply precious blood to the boys. This is the Avatar model- their entry level racing version. I might race... someday.

Lastly, the big upgrade- a new wheelset! A friend who rides a ton more than I recommended upgrading to Mavic Aksiums. They are light, rigid and the spokes are fewer and bladeed. These are the 2008 Aksiums which are also lighter than previous models. They should make a great entry level set. After much internet scouring, I found an awesome deal at GottaRideBikes. Unfortantely they didn't carry them in stock so I was stuck, impatiently waiting, for about two weeks. Oh well, they got here and in perfect condition. If you look closesly in the pic, you can see that the spoke flattens out into a blade just after passing the magnet. This is to reduce aerodynamic drag.

And since I'm going to zero-out my odometer, I thought I'd take a quick shot of my current read from last year. Not a bad year at all!

McCrapé

2008-05-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

Today was the day to satisfy my curiosity- and that is the only thing that was satisfied by this abomination. It tastes like over-creamed, instant Folgers. GRK and the fine folks at Parisi have naught to fear... Neither does used motor oil for that matter!

I'm not dead yet! I feel happy!

2008-05-08T13:37:00.001-07:00

"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated"
-Mark Twain

The Shield of Faith

2008-03-02T18:54:00.000-08:00

In the wake of a tragedy which struck our church Body this last week, I had a difficult time focusing early on. I spent some time reading some historical info, trolling the internet as is my custom, just out of boredom. I was reading particularly several things about Sparta when I ran across this quote:

When asked why it was dishonorable to return without a shield and not without a helmet, the Spartan king, Demaratos (510 - 491) is said to have replied: "Because the latter they put on for their own protection, but the shield for the common good of all." (Plutarch, Mor.220)

Of course this reminded me of several scenes from the movie 300. The first when Leonidas was explaining to his son how the strength of a Spartan warrior was the man next to him and the next being when Leonidas explained to the hunchback, Ephialtes, that he could not stand with his men because he couldn't hold his shield properly. The purpose of the shield- to cover the man next to him. It seems a bit of historical accuracy crept in there!

Then I ran across this text, from a college textbook:

Legend has it that when a Spartan mother sent her son off to war, she would say to him, "Come back with your shield, or on it." If a warrior came back without his shield, it meant that he had laid it down in order to break ranks and run from battle. He was supposed to use his shield to protect the man next to him in formation, so to abandon his shield was not only to be a coward but also to break faith with his comrades. To come back on his shield was to be carried back either wounded or dead. Thus the adage meant that the young warrior should fight bravely, maintain his martial discipline, and return with both his body and his honor intact.

I was floored by a simple, spiritual concept. Epesians 6 lays out clearly that we are to wear "the armor of God" and a critical piece of that armor is the "shield of faith". In my mind- which is very visual in nature- I have always read this passage envisioning a single soldier dressed out for combat. That is very western, after all: the notion of one man, standing tall, being the hero. But this idea is not shared by all and many veterans speak quite to the contrary.

So here is this simple notion- I have a shield of faith, but it is not meant for me alone. My shield is meant to protect my comrades in the faith; and I am to rely on theirs. How simple but how profound! I am still thinking about what all that really means, but I think in this last week of trial I have seen this principle lived clearly through my church.

What keeps a person going in the hour of trial? Surely the temptation to be angry, bitter, overcome of emotion must be a constant threat. Our church massed around this family in their most dire hour. They were talked with, ministered to, cared for and prayed over earnestly by literally scores of saints. The body of Christ mustered together just to keep watch over this one, little family. I realize that they needed to be strengthened with all might in the inner man and this is accomplished by God's holy Spirit. Christ is, indeed, enough. But He has chosen to use us: so the reality is that no, He is not enough. He requires something from His people and when we answer the call, then Him, working through us and through His Spirit is enough. The Church brought our shields of faith together to cover each other, and this family in particular.

What an example! This family in turn showed up to the memorial service, man and woman, toting with them their own shields of faith. We were all covered from the attacks of the enemy bythe strength of their faith in Christ, trusting in His goodness and anticpating His good work. They responded to God and reciprocated and have covered the Body with thier own faith. Would to God that we let all the fiery darts of doubt, fear, anger and bitterness be quenched by the mutual faith of God's people!

When Paul wrote the words of Ephesians 6, Greek glory had passed into history. Roughly 200 years priory, the Roman legions proved their superiority over the Greek phalanx. (This was a much weaker version of the phalanx than what the Spartans had at their height. But the final outcome would have likely been the same.) Their methods were radically different. The Greek word Paul uses for "shield" refers specifically to a large, four-cornered shield, much as the Roman "scutum". The Greeks had a different word for a small, round shield. (per Thayer's lexicon). The Roman shield was designed to cover one man and their legions fought with more space between individuals. They did not cover each other the same way as the Greeks. However, when they would come under heavy fire from projectiles they would execute a very complicated formation called the "Roman Tortoise". The men would march, or even kneel, side by side, closing all gaps between their shields. Men on the edges would hold their shields at their sides and the men behind would loft their shields overhead ("above all"?) to cover themselves as well as the men in front. This made the entire unit nearly impenetrable. This is the same idea as the Greeks using their shields to cover each other but is specific to dealing with "darts".

Eph 6:16
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

Here's a thought regarding those fiery darts. We quench them. It's our job. That's what the Bible says. We can pray for them to magically disappear but the Scripture is clear when it says "ye shall be able to quench". We do that. God has given us the tools, the strength and the wisdom. We need to show up with our shield: our faith. When we hold our faith, side by side, covering each other, those darts will not avail. What the Church (at large) today needs is less whining in the face of attack and more obedience. We cannot be defeated except we defat ourselves.

This also requires of us that we stay "in position". If I leave- up and quit- because it's too hard to follow Jesus- I leave a hole. That hole will be used by the enemy, guaranteed, except the Church act quickly to cover the breach. That being done, the unit will be fine- but what of me? Once a believef lays down the shield and walks away from the protection of their cohort, will the enemy just give them a pass? Not likely! Now utterly defenseless, they will be consumed.

One last thing regarding the Roman shield: I have often heard how the sword of Ephesians 6 is the only offensive piece of equipment issued to the believer. I was surprised to learn that the Romans very much counted their shields as offensive as well. The shields were constructed with a wooden frame and covered with several layers of skins. But in the center they would mount a solid metal piece called a boss. They used this for pushing and punching. The tactical concept behind the legions' formations was to constantly apply forward pressure on enemy ranks. Their shield design allowed them to do this by functioning as a weapon as well as a defensive tool.

Lastly, Epesians 6 twice states that the posture of the Christian is to "stand". In Paul's days there were many different types of units, including archers, skirmishers (spear throwers, mostly), cavalry and siege engines of various types. But God chose the illustration of an infantryman- particularly a heavy infantryman- to describe how we should conduct ourselves in the spiritual battle. It seems to me that there was no more effective force to resist any type of assult (in the ancient world anyways) than a properly trained, highly disciplined and well equiped unit of heavy infantry. The history-changing victory of Charles Martel at the battle of Portiers is an excellent example of this. Outnumbered and unrespected by their enemy, they took the high ground and refused to give an inch.

"And in the shock of the battle the men of the North seemed like a sea that cannot be moved. Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs. Drawn up in a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts of the foe." - Bishop Isidore of Beja

May God's people stand firm, close to another as a bulwark of ice and, by Scripture, lay great blows to the hearts of those angelic powers that would try to break between us the love of Christ!

2008-02-24T20:09:00.001-08:00

1Corinthians 12: 25,26
That there should be no schism in the body; but [that] the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it...

Poem II

2008-02-15T14:49:00.000-08:00

This kid is really starting to get into this. Today my wife emailed another poem my son wrote. During homeschool he has to spend one hour writing anything that he wants. We don't provide a direction unless he asks for one. So this came out of his own heart and mind and I have to say I was pretty amazed. I used to wipe this this kids butt and now he's already a better writer than me.

Jesus' Thoughts On The Cross

I lie on a cross.

I bleed and cry.

My people shout,"When wilt thou die?

You claim thou art the Son of God.

We know the truth, thou art a fraud"

These words they speak are such lies!

I die for them as a sacrifice.

I die for them so they may live.

I pass away and I give.

Well, at least I can still do math better than him. For now!

Poem

2008-02-14T17:41:00.000-08:00

My son wrote this little poem last night at our small group meeting. I have to say, I was a bit startled at the topic. Then I thought the Musician would probably really dig this. After the initial shock, I was really impressed. I still need to talk with that boy about why this topic though!

The bullet moves slowly
I feel as if I can escape
But I can not move
Even my eyes cannot blink
The bullets hits it's strike
Then I fall into the night

Ice Biking: Now with real ice!!!

2008-02-07T10:12:00.001-08:00

Yesterday,8AM. (Yes, I was running late. Gaming has that effect.) 25 degrees with an inch of snow on the ground and more snow falling. In a nutshell, the perfect time to ride! Since I'm still a n00b at this, I learned sevreral things on my ride into work:

1. Don't stand up to pedal when riding on packed snow. It takes all the weight off the rear wheel and can lead to a nice spill.

2. The ruts in the snow are there for a reason: use them. Don't fight them- resistance is futile! Stay in the rut or fall on your butt.

3. If you don't like the ruts you can ride in the grass. With 2" of fresh, virgin snow. This is akin to a mime performing "man walking into wind". And still, no standing.

4. When going down a hill, my inclination (no pun intended) is to wonder "how fast can I go before hitting the bottom?". Add packed snow to the picture and the question becomes "How fast do I want to be going when I hit my bottom?". Speed is no longer the goal- control is.

5. No substitutions or comprimises on gear. I didn't have on my slick 'cold gear' pants, but instead some regular slick running pants. They just weren't the same! Plus they had a small hole in the right knee and it was very noticeable after a few miles.

6. Curves are bad (well, in this context anyways!). Down hill curves are the worst. Especially when the downhill side of the curve is a small drop-off into a pile of limestone with a creek running through it.

It is often said that the Inuit have over 100 words for "snow". I bet most of them are expletives...

(oh, and this is also a myth -> http://www.socc.ca/inuit.cfm )

Ice Biking: Drat!

2008-01-30T14:12:00.001-08:00

Sitting all cozy in my office chair with keys clacking away, the ever droning hum of small office noises fills the air. Scores of small fans whir away while industruial lighting ballasts are buzzing. The occosional soft banter or cough disrupt the unchanging symphony like leaves falling onto a still pond. "POP!" then a rapid whoooooosh... a persistant and loud hissing. I look above for a broken pipe, steam shooting out of the wall or maybe sparks from a transformer. What?! Where?! Am I in danger??!! Looking low, I see the culprit. Alas, t'was merely the front tire of my bike, burst and whistling away every ounce of pressure within it, till at last it reaches equilibrium. The clacking on my keyboard has stopped but the fans whir on and the ballasts buzz and people continue their banter and winter coughs. Guess next time I'll let off some pressure before subjecting my tires to a 70 degree climate change. Thermodynamics is a b17ch.

I wrote this for you, Musical Musician. ;-)

Ice Biking Update

2008-01-30T10:51:00.001-08:00

After lifting weights with Percussivity, I headed home for a hot bowl of plain oatmeal and to dawn my ninja-biker apparel. By time I left, it had warmed to 13.5 d- practically summer! During the ride I was mostly shielded from the gentle easterly wind except while headed up "the hill" on Gregory where it was actually at my back. The streets were mostly clear with some packed snow and loose snow-bearings covering the right portion of the street. The cold was fine. Same story as usual there- fingers and toes. Oddly, my hands started to warm up after 4 miles. As I approached my office, I had to make a right hand turn, uphill and into traffic. The rear tire slid out from under me there and I took a spill. But no damage was done and I made it in. Once I defrosted, a strange quiet numbness set over me and for a couple of hours I felt like I was floating- totally zoned out! It was a phschotropic ride. Must've been all the O2.

I'd like to wax eloquent about the stinging wind on my nose (when I'd pull down the balaclava to clear things out), the wonders of nature or the grand silence of being the only one outside at such a time. But the reality is not that beautiful. Burning lungs, cautious turns; always pedalling, pushing and churning. Cars wooshing by and you have to balance on the packed snow. No, there was no pleasure ride today: just a frantic effort in absurd conditions to go from point A to B. For some reason, this all strikes me as 'fun' and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Maybe next time, I'll actually catch the snowstorm.

Ice Biking

2008-01-30T03:59:00.000-08:00

5AM. Its 10 degrees with a windchill of -1. The wind is from the east at 8mph. At 10 degrees, a 20MPH wind feels like -9 degrees. That's pretty intimidating. Time for reflection...

Living in his dream

2008-01-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

I am posting this today in memorium of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A friend of mine posted video of his famous "I have a dream" speech which my wife and I watched. First let me declare my position on a few things and then I will make some observations regarding the speech. Lastly, I'd like to post a few observations about how we are all living in his dream today.

1. Racism is wrong. Biblically speaking, racism is absurd. There is only one race: man. If there were elves and dwarves in this world, we might have a real "racism" problem. All people are of one race but many families. If there is any classification of people in God's eyes, it is Jews, Gentiles and the Church. God is not a respector of persons. Not of the rich, the mighty or the wise. Not of whites or blacks or mexicans or anyone else.
2. The civil rights movement was due. It was just and fair for the US government to aknowledge all the rights "endowed by their creator" to the black citizens of this country. (The frame of reference of the founders is that our rights come directly from God, it is the responsability of government to aknowledge and protect, never to abridge, those rights.)
3. I believe MLK was sincere. I take that at face value. However, as a Christian, I believe he operated in error on several points. His fundamental mistake was displacing God's mission of saving souls for his own mission of securing rights. He leveraged the Church of God to conduct his mission. He drew from the Word of God to add legitimicay and weight to his speeches, but did so out of context. He handled the Word of God deceitfully.

I realize point #3 is not a very popular idea. I will address why I hold to those opinions shortly. First, here's my observations on his speech:
1. The guy can speak. He's an awesome "public speecher"! Those great, swelling words delivered with force and conviction really sound nice. Very emotive. He's got style, too. The alliteration and imagery he used was beautifully poetic. Again, very emotive. The masses were swooned.
2. I could not escape ever present irritation at the Nation of Islam guys standing about him. Yeah, Dr. King was all about the movement, the end game. This just reminds me that Christ took a back seat: his own rights and his own glory were front and center.
3. There were two posters they showed from the crowd. One said "full rights - full employment" and the other said something like "freedom and jobs". Dr. King was of the mind that part of true desegregation would include "correcting" economic inequities. (This socialist tendancy really irritates my libertarian mindset.)

Now here's the punch. God used Dr. King, but as a two-edged sword. Yes, he was used to aknowledge the full rights endowed by our Creator. But because of the willful way that he worked, he also captured the hearts and imaginations of the black churches; he focused their minds and efforts on what they could get for themselves and he never gave them back over to the Lord. They never should have left. So what do we have today? A nearly complete breakdown of the social fabric within the black community.

2005 Blacks are 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites
2005 Blacks are 7 times more likely to commit murder than whites
(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm)

Black men ages 18 to 65 are seven times more likely than white men to have a prison record. There are now more African American men in prison than in college.
Nationally, approximately 13 percent of African American men - 1.4 million - are ineligible to vote because of criminal records.
(also, 10% of black men now cannot vote because of felony convictions)
(http://www.cssny.org/pubs/urbanagenda/2004_03_18.html)

2004 Rate of gonorrhea 19 times higher than for whites
(http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats04/trends2004.htm)

2000 (I can't believe this is the "lates" data from Dept of Health and Human services?) Blacks are 39% of welfare recipients, 8% more than the second largest group, whites.
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/reports.htm

2003 Blacks are 2-3 times more likely to have domestic violence
(http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/abuse/a/blacer030917.htm)

2005 70% of black children are born to an unwed mother. (70%! astounding...)
(http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/prelimbirths05_tables.pdf#1)

2006 From 1970 to 2001, the marraige rate among blacks fell by 34%.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500029.html)

2004 Blacks have the highest % of weekly church attendance.
(http://www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Analysis/GSS2004/GSS2004_VAR1187_1.asp#I-RACE)

All of these problems and immorality, and this demographic has the highest church attendance! Why? Because the majority of those churches are spiritually bankrupt. They have become political instruments and social gather places rather than houses of truth and fervent prayer. To me, that is Dr. Kings legacy. While slavery could not break the soul and moral fiber of the black man, Dr. King stole it by leading astray the churches.

Joomla!

2008-01-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

First, let me address the poll. It seems the jury is in and 40% of respondents are hoping Jesus will return before the insanity really begins while 60% want to continue making a difference in this world and participating in responsible government through gun ownership. This poll has a margin of error of +/- 95%. That is still more accurate than the weather forecast in KC.

Psa 57:8 Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I [myself] will awake early.

I have numerous friends with all types of creative talents, a lot of which are musical. My church seems to be stacked with a disproportionate number of 'artsy' types and many 'demi-artsy' types. People write, paint, sing and strum and all for God's glory. But I'm not artsy, how could I possibly praise God? This verse in Psalms stuck out to me several months ago. David’s summons "my glory"... the psaltery and harp... and his determination to the praise and glory of God. So the real issue is not, can I write, paint, sing or strum, but what can I do? What do I do well- what would be considered "my glory"?

I'm more of a Hiram than a David. I can make stuff. I like to make stuff. Not fancy frou-frou stuff, but stuff. Endless home repairs and remodeling of everything but the foundation, car repairs, setting up computers and networks and of course, making applications. That's probably what I do best, what I have spent the most time investing in and what I believe the Lord has blessed me in. So how to use "my glory" for Gods? Does Jesus need a programmer?

Well, it seems he does! It came up a few weeks ago with my pastor, who is pretty technically proficient in his own right, that he could use me in tweaking an application for admin'ing the churches website. He commented, "This is an answer to prayer!". Yes, it is. Apparently his prayer, too.

***********************************************************************************
Warning! Boring technical stuff following. If you are already pretty much bored, do not read any further.
***********************************************************************************

Joomla is an open source content management system. This is used for collaborative web site management and does not require users to know HTML. My church has settled on using this software and I am getting involved a bit to be able to help modify and administer it as needed. This presents come challenges for me- this program does not use any technologies that I already know! It is designed for Apache on Linux and is coded in PHP and uses a MySQL database. I, on the other hand, work largely in ASP.NET with Oracle and SQL Server databases and IIS on Windows 2003 server. Plus, I haven't really though much of the entire open source trend. For professional computing, I much prefer working on large, ubiquitous and stable platforms supported by companies that have something to lose. However that opinion is largely founded on ignorance and I know it, so I thought it would also be good for my personal development to get involved with this product.

The first challenge was to get it installed. Despite it's intended design, it is capable of running on IIS and Windows 2003 (which is what I run at home) but the setup is a bit different. I first got it installed on my server several weeks ago, but then rebuilt my server and domain with some help from the Pensive Percussionist. So, I had to reinstall and kept notes the second time through. I did have some permissions issues- and am really still working them out- and have installed Joomla a second time on the same server but under a different site and with a different configuration.

Here are the steps I followed:

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=52721.0;wap2 1. install PHP (5.2.5)
a. downloaded new installer.msi. Last time this file was corrupt and had to use .zip file.
b. 3 opts for IIS install. I chose the ISAPI extension option since I am vaguely familiar with that and not CGI.--After piddling around with this... it still doesn't work. Thanks for aaaaaaall that, open sourcers...
c. give up on .msi installer and go with the zip file.
d. follow direction per http://aszelag.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7FD523D714963B13!321.entry
e. iisreset
f. Bingo! thx to aszelag ;-)
2. install MySQL
a. downloaded latest and greatest version (5.0.45) for windows off of http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.0/mysql-5.0.45-win32.zip/from/pick
b. ran GUI installer and it was soooooo easy. good work there!
c. final step in config required opening firewall port for mysql. again, good directions.d. just for fun, i also downloaded the MySQL GUI tools from here http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQLGUITools/mysql-gui-tools-5.0-r12-win32.msi/from/pick. I can work in Oracle PL/SQL all day but I just can't get used to writing queries in DOS!
3. install Joomla
a. got the dl... simple unpackage into the wwwroot directory
b. on opening the web install, there's a problem. i remember from last time that PHP and MySQL no longer play 'nice' right out of the box. On searching I turned up this site: http://www.builderau.com.au/program/php/soa/Install-configure-and-integrate-PHP-and-MySQL-on-Windows/0,339028448,339271632,00.htm which was excellent in giving steps to config PHP 5 with MySQL. This got me in to Joomla.
c. Next problem... ok so Joomla is connected and my site is created. But I'm not get any graphic content. Just by tweaking, I used IIS 'create application' function and that did the trick.*(See ppg below)
d. next problem... everything is groovy on the server, but not so elsewhere. text only view. hhhh.... http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=232853.0;wap2
e. next problem... trying to login from remote machine. argh! I OPENED UP PERMS ON CONFIGURATION.PHP IN THE ROOT DIR FOR THIS APP AND THAT SEEMS TO HAVE DONE THE TRICK.FINALLY, INSTALLED!!!

That was for the first install. *What I noticed after that was that permission on the directory became "squirelly". I kept trying to open them up to get a new module to work and they kept changing. It occurred to me that allowing IIS to create this as an application was may not a good idea. I think it started trying to help me admin the site in ways I didn't want. So I set Joomla up again under a different site name and used the same directions as above, only I didn't create it as an application. I did give IUSR_SERVER read and write perms on all subdirs and files. I know, I know... that so unsafe. But I'm a coder, not a security nut. I get satisfaction from making programs and seeing the impact they have, not from spending endless hours tweaking mundane settings to get something to work "just so". So far this new site has worked fine and now squirelliness.

Last thing- this was very important. The default site did not open for me the second time. I think this might be an IIS/Windows thing. I did set the default page in IIS but was not redirected; instead I got a PHP error. The directions included this optional step of going directly to the installation page: http://localhost/joomla/administrator/index.php Once I did that, everything ran fine from the default page (also after removing all installation files as directed).

So far I like Joomla a lot- it's growing on me. I'm going to get to learn it better by setting up my son's wrestling team web site with it and seeing if they want to run it that way. My boss is also thinking about using it for our engineering business unit to track projects with. This would be great as it would get me involved with Joomla at work and really allow me to become an "expert", which in turn would help my church!

If you're asleep, you may now wake up.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

2008-01-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we finally watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, henceforth referred to simply as POC3. It is in the nature of all IT professionals to acronymate titles and such... and to make up words like 'acronymate'.

I had heard this movie was long and confusing and not worthy of it's predecessors, so we rented it mainly for the kids. Boy, was I led astray! There were points where it was weird- artsy weird. But I never felt lost or put off by any hyperabstractionism. Rather, I thought there was not only good action and interesting scenery, but a solid plot line with some nice twists.

For some reason, the opening song has been stuck in my head. Perhaps it is the dreary gray cave I work in. It has the same kind of morbid catchiness as the Orc song "Where there's a whip, there's a way" from the old LOTR cartoons. (If you don't know what LOTR is, please stop reading my blog and grab a Dr. Seuss book.) While sitting at the computer tonight and fixing the IIS setup for my chat room application, my wife is clicking away on my BlackBerry playing asteroids and she starts to whistle the very tune that has been haunting me. This began a discussion and a googling for the lyrics to that Poeish peom, which in turn turned into a finding and further discussion... wait... what did I just say? Oh, buggar!

My beloved brought up the point that she thought the song was perhaps a summoning, which idea was supported by the odd reaction of the Admiral when notified that the pirates were singing. He replied, "Finally." Then I came across this post which elaborates:

I love that song. And it turns out to be quite important. Barbosa mentions to Sao Feng that “the song has been sung” while holding a piece of eight up. If you watch the opening scene, the boy also has a piece of eight. The lyrics to the song (emphasis added) are “The king [pirate king] and his men [the lords] took the queen from her bed [Calypso from the sea] and bound her in her bones. [locked her in human form]” This is the song that calls the Pirate brethren together and is a reminder of what they had done. Beckett, when told that they were singing, looks relieved and says “finally” as if he was expecting this to happen and is the signal he had been waiting for. So much detail in that movie. I love it! Glad you liked it to.

I think that is a great analysis and representative of the depth that is really woven throughout the story. I appreciated the quasitragic ending as well, with William and Elizabeth being separated ten years at a time just to spend one day together. Not quite a greek tragedy but not quite a typical cotton-candy ending either. I thought the movie was a good story and well told.

Now, see if you can find the words that I blatantly made up. There should be three... the rest are either typos or one of us is ignorant (I vote for 'you').

And for your listening pleasure: http://www.neitzey.net/hoistthecolors.mp3

My beloved and I will listen to this over and over while she finishes reading The Count of Monte Cristo (not a sandwich) and I endeavor to defeat the Azteks with the Chinese in the next campaign of Age of Empires 3: Asian Dynasties.

RSS feed for tracking comments

2008-01-05T07:45:00.000-08:00

If you're like me- and if you have a personality, you're not- you'd really like an easy way of tracking all those comments left by your adoring fans who literally have nothing else to do with their lives but read the crap that you write. Enter RSS!

Now I would think, as a programmer, that this would be a 'built-in' feature of blogger but no, no, no! In fact it appears this used to be a built in feature but has now been deprecated. (No Musician, that does not mean 'pooped'.) Grrr... that makes me so angry. Well at least irritated.

So after much ado about nothing, I have discovered the secret to publishing a comment feed. Blogger is actually already publishing it. But this knowledge is hidden in the labyrinth that is Google and I shall bring it to light now. If you've got a blogger.com account, your Comment feed is: 'http://www.yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default'. Once armed with that knowledge, you are ready to go.

What I have done is just to link to an RSS feed icon from the 'net and then post a hyperlink to my comments feed. This in itself doesn't really do anything. But if you click the hyperlink it will (obviously) take you to an HTML version of my comments feed. From there you may subscribe or you may cut-n-paste the URL into your feed reader.

In my case, I found a free plug-in for Outlook 2003 called IntraVnews and configured it to check my comments feed. Anytime someone posts a comment to any of my blog postings I will receive an email. Now ends those sleepless nights and hang wringing throughout the day wonder if there are any exciting new comments for me to read.

I so prefer chatting.

Other highlights of 2007

2008-01-03T19:06:00.001-08:00

This is more for my own personal memory, which is ever failing!

Major Tasks Performed

I tend to think in linear and concrete terms. Here's a list of physical accomplishments for the past year.

Rebuilt the top end of a 1996 Dodge Neon Sport, 1.6L 16 valve with dual overhead cams. It cranked up right away! With the onset of winter, however, the oil leak as sprung anew from the head gasket and the computer never quite figured out how to make it run smooth. But the job is done. Should I have to re-do the job, I'll be sure to have the manifold inlets and outlets ported this time, and perhaps even have the intake manifold optimized. Customer headers would'nt be a bad idea either. There are so many little tricks left so squeeze power out of that thing!
The remaining two trees in our backyard were removed, completing the deforestation of our property. Kind of a bummer because I really like trees, just not big dead trees covered with thorns.
I developed a groovy web based, AJAX enabled ASP.NET chat application for me and my homies. Ok, I don't have any homies but it's still a good app and supports a ton of customizations and is tweaked with many bells and whistles. Some of the bells are broken though. :-P
I hit 1,500 miles of biking this year. I really picked it up in July, averaging 120 miles per week for six weeks. What an intense time! My rib cage was sore for the first ten days because of the hard and heavy breathing. I'm sure my lung capacity increased quite a bit. Also a week in Branson allowed me four good rides in the Ozark mountains and man, what a difference that makes for tackling hills! The hills around KC seemed only nominal after that. I thoroughly enjoy hillwork now.
I installed over 60 linear feet of french drain, using 3" PVC with a 4" gravel base, 2" gravel cover and 2" of topsoil in addition to the fabric. That was a lot... a lot... a whole lot of work.
In addition to the french draining, I added a 2 1/2' high retaining wall built from 80 lb concrete stones for about 20' in front of our house. I built about half of a 60' long 2' tall wall between our property and our neighbors who are funneling all their roof runoff directly at my garage. hhhhhhhhhhhh.....
Daniel survived his first wrestling season. I am so proud of how he did! He really developed a lot of character and showed a tremendous work ethic. By the end of the season, he had learned to be a student of the art and in his last match even used a move he picked up just by watching. How amazing! I suck at sports so I'm sure he gets that from his mom.
Daniel and I and several friends enjoyed... oh sorry- endured- an ill planned backpacking adventure. All in all it wasn't really so bad, but for the pain. The scenery was beautiful, my Blackberry was quiet (an appreciable beauty in it's own right) and the fellowship quite enjoyable. Especially once the cream sherry was opened up. Daniel gave me another reason to be quite proud of him!
The whole family enjoyed a great time in Albuquerque, NM visiting my dad's place. The mountains there are beautiful, but the best time we had, I think, was running through the sage with the kids, my dad and our dogs, pelting each other with dirt clods and playing hide-and-go-seek. Here we discovered that our dog, Maximus, is most probably a Rhodesian Ridgeback, aka, African Lion Hound. He is missing the most distinctive feature of this breed- a ridged back- but otherwise fits the breed characteristics to a tee. We suspect he was part of an inferior litter and was culled.
I joined Facebook at the prompting of my wife. Facebook is gay. Enough said.
I began the remodel of our bathroom by tearing out our main bathroom and hauling the rubbish over to The Pensive Purcussionist's place. He had a big trash bin at the time. The wifey and I worked up some plans as well, which is always painful. But I'm confident she's got us on a good track as far as the design so once Uncle Sam returns my freaking money back to me, I can finish up this project.
Since the wall was opened up in the bathroom, I replaced all of the plumbing in our house. It was a mixture of (primarily) copper, PVC and galvanized. The galvanized was severely corroded since the builder failed to use a dialectric union, so that I had two valves break free from the wall entirely when trying to operate them! Also, our service line is 3/4" and the whole house was plumbed with 5/8". Why??? So wasteful! I tore out all the old and replaced it with 3/4" PEX, as far as was applicable. I found a great site to get PEX supplies and used color coded pipling (blue for cold, red for hot) and also added a hot water return line. This line comes from the farthest end of the hot water line run back to the water heater and hooks up to the water heaters drain, which is then opened. Natural convection provides the energy to recirculate the hot water supply. This means we get hotter water sooner since the supply is constantly recirculating. Hopefully it is helping to keep the water heater cleaner as well.

It was kind of a light year, as far as projects go. This year I'll need to finish the bathroom and re-seed the yard and tend to many of those 1,000's of unfinished little details. (I am the master of achieving "substantial completion". ) I've already put in a new whole house humidifier on the furnace. The money pit lives.

2007 In Review

2008-01-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

"Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God" Job 37:14

I am thoroughly irritated by reading the endless, self-righteous rantings of Elihu in the book of Job. But this verse stuck out as I was reading right before diving into this review. Here I would like to "consider the wondrous works of God" in my own life over the past year.

The fast

The year began with a challenge from our pastor: commit to 40 days of fasting and prayer. He laid out several different fasting options but all of them had the same principle effect of allowing us to focus more diligently on the Lord and to seek His face and His favor. For myself I knew a few things: my diet was out of control and I was getting bigger, I was spending too much time watching TV and that my body never responds well to simply 'not eating'. I also knew that I didn't want to bite off something this difficult without having an anchor in the Lord. In other words, it wasn't good enough to do just because 'pastor says so'. Things were going to get hard and I didn't want to end up projecting my frustrations and anger at him. So I got with the Lord and he gave me this verse:

"Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance." Ezra 8:21

In the spirit of this verse, my wife and I set off on a three-fold fast for the purpose of seeking a right way from the Lord:

An entertainment fast: no TV, movies or video games.
Re-inducing a low carb diet: following the Atkins diet strictly
A full fast for a weekend

Honestly, it was hardest giving up TV and video games. For me anyways! I was habitually hooked to these things and now I had more time to read and commit to industrious works. The low carb diet we had done before and was no big deal to me. It is rough, I usually have a debilitating headache for the first two or three days. The full fast almost killed me. By Sunday morning, I started getting dizzy, light-headed, my vision would intermittently dim (aka 'tunnel vision') and the weirdest thing of all... I was having muscle spasms in my neck and shoulders that felt like mild electric shocks. I ended that fast as soon as I could lay my hands on some food!

What we got out of this was control and discipline. We learned to use time for all types of reading which in turn leant itself to us changing curriculums for homeschool. We were in better shape for the spring when we returned to our exercise. But most miraculously, forty new people were added to our congregation. What a coincidence!

Glorifying God at work

This year at work presented me with the single biggest professional challenge I've ever had. The goal was to develop and implement an automated system for facilitating the managment and post installation activities of deploying over 160,000 Automated Meter Reading (AMR) devices. Knowing this was a potential 'feather in the cap' for my career, I was determined to glorify the Lord. My vision was that things would go swimmingly and at the end I would have some big occasion to pronounce my thankfulness to the Lord for Him making everything easy. What actually happened was that everything went to hell, quickly. From the beginning, things did not go well with our project manager. He never gave us any functional requirements, we had to strong-arm him into it and required signatures from him. He in turn required we also sign off on all documents. Our development time line was supposed to be three months and was cut down to six weeks. Our vendor supplied us reams of bad data as they struggled through their own problems. The devil himself inhabited my production server and it took two weeks and several tickets with MicroSoft to resolve the problems. Everyone was stressed and every relationship strained. I began very seriously to doubt if God was ever glorified in such a mess and was constantly questioning my own actions and attitudes.

But some things did go well. The Lord provided me a general plan in short order. He showed me how to leverage our existing work managment and billing systems, He allowed me to exploit the latest technologies to provide near real-time data transfer, how to build reusable components that will greatly hasten completion of this years development of a mobile solution. He gave me grace and wisdom to actually do the development in one week (a very long week) so that we still had five weeks left for testing. He showed me that our IT group is a really strong team as others were able to contribute to key efforts in support of this. In the end, we do have a stable and streamline system that is finally working as designed. The feather is ruffled and dirty, but still there. To God be the glory!

During this time, the Lord opened several doors to share Christ with a friend at work. He was clearly under conviction and began attending KCBT. I'm not sure where he's at right now- it can be difficult communicating ideas at times. But at least I saw God working in his life and He has propped that door open till this day. I am still praying for this friend's salvation.

The Lord opened other doors with coworkers as well. I work in the midst of a hard people so any door opening is a miracle. My constant (although not always diligent) prayer is that Christ would us me to share the gospel at work. He did that this year, in big but unexpected ways. He also showed me the importance of maintaining Biblical fellowship with the few coworkers who are saved, even if we find ourselves at odds regarding work issues. It was a hard year but a growing year so that makes it a success.

CommUnity Team

Our Community Team was hopping along this year, right through 2 Corinthians. But we took a break in mid-summer and I was pressing the Lord for our next study. No answer. People began to ask me more often 'What are we doing next?' I would tell them honestly, I don't know, I haven't heard from the Lord yet. I perceived some frustration from several people at this, but that was the answer. What else could I say?! We set the date for the first meeting of our next cycle and still... no answer! Finally, through what the Lord was showing me in His Word and in the lives of many people, it finally clicked one morning during the sermon. We need to look at relationships! I have never been a part of a topical SOT style study before so that would be a new challenge. The Lord was faithful to show me all the topics we needed to hit and at least one key passage for each.

He also put it on my heart that we needed to get the kids involved with the same concepts of personal Bible study and accountability. That was another struggle. There was seemingly no material that addressed this the way we felt it needed to be addressed and I didn't see myself as being equipped to develop that. Especially not in such short order! But again, after prayer and patience, the Lord provided us with a great little book called How To Study Your Bible for Kids by Kay Arthur. I was already familiar with her book for adults- which does a fantastic job- so I was really excited to see her kid's book. My wife and I rework the format each week and update it to the best Bible version available in English, so there is still a fair amount of work. But it is no more work than drawing water from the well. Thank the Lord we didn't have to dig the well!

The Lord also moved some old friends out into a new area. We still feel their loss but I am happy that they were moved to something specific and that it is clear they are where Christ wants them and they are being used. The Lord was faithful to replenish us with several new friends as well, and I can see that relationships are forming and strengthening several people. There is a lot of growth happening!

Kids Salvation

The single biggest spiritual event in our lives this year was when our nine year old son and eight year old daughter accepted Christ. Daniel had been praying since he was six that God would call him. He struggled through several times of disappointment, as he saw other children come to Christ. With each of our kids, we assure them, Biblically, that they are 'safe' until Christ calls them and they need to bide their time preparing their hearts to that end. Praise God, this seemed to help to give him patience! His disappointment was really rooted in pride and a feeling that he was better than so-and-so... It was the hard road, but I am glad the Lord dealt with his pride along the way. That will pay off huge dividends in the course of his life!

Our daughter, on the other hand, was not so prideful but very... energetic. Strong willed seems like a white wash. Tasmanian she-devil is much closer to how it was. The maniac of South Kansas City. There was more than one occasion I would get a midday phone call from the wife in tears or would come home to find her a furious and exhausted wreck. But she has her sweet side, too. In one day, this little firebrand could manifest the destructive energy of a nuclear meltdown and then the pure and soft love of a perfect little girl. She clearly had a need for Christ but wasn't really getting it yet.

On a Sunday in September, one of the kids workers was talking with Elisa and it opened up into a deeper conversation. Clearly God was at work. At home that afternoon she opened up to us and our son got involved in the talk. This continued again that evening during our family Bible story. They were asking us if they could get saved and this time, it seemed as if they 'got it'. We put them off until the morning to see if they would hold on to this desire, to prove the work of God. In the morning, they continued, asking questions and acting pressed. We put them off one more day, until the next morning, as one final test. But when a child is ready to be born, you can't stop it. It was time for our daughter to be born again and nothing would stand in the way. My wife and I talked with her and prayed with her while she sobbed on the bed. She prayed a simple but beautiful prayer of salvation "Jesus... I want you to live in my heart and clean all the yucky stuff out of my heart.". What a glorious morning!

As we came out to the family room to explain this to the other kids, our son interuppted us to tell us that he had accepted Christ. Now this was a shock. We thought he was close but didn't suspect that while we were praying with our daughter, the Holy Spirit was birthing our son in a different room! At first I was a little suspect of this, but over the next few days the Lord proved it out in him. One of the first things he said was that his heart was sad but was now filled with joy! I still remember my little girl clinging too me and, with a new light in her eyes, saying "Daddy, I feel like a whole new person!". That is just amazing to hear from children.

Two months later, they both followed the Lord in baptism and, coincidentally, got to be the first two people to be baptized directly into our new church :D

New Church Plant

This year our home church ("the motherchurch") commissioned us to become our own autonomous work. From the beginning, our goal was to start a satellite service in order to make disciples in midtown. The goal was NOT to start a new church. But God blessed us so much and so apparently, that the staff at the motherchurch felt they were actually 'holding us back'. Graciously, they offered to let us go. Now this experiment had turned into a full fledged work and we were commissioned and official in November.

More recently our pastor has been laying out an exciting vision for the future. We will be returning to our roots, those roots from which many of us have sprang forth since the early 90's. We will be focusing on teaching good Bible doctrine to everyone, developing leaders and establishing a mode of accountability for all. The long term vision is to become a launching pad for other new works, to be used by God to establish his Word and his people through our city and even throughout the world. This is truly an exciting time and has been an exciting year. After the rollercoaster this year has been, I dare not try to predict what the hand of the Lord will accomplish through us in 2008 but trust that He will be glorified!

Random Thoughts

2007-12-29T07:49:00.000-08:00

It takes a really long time to copy 250 GB.

Bacon, fried eggs and perfectly toasted whole grained bread slathered in butter has to be the best breakfast ever made. Maybe add some biscuits and gravy.

When men live in the house, one should not store books on the floor next to the toilet.

Legos are friggin awesome! Yesterday my son and I completed building the Lego King's Castle. I'm amazed at the detail they have. Friggin awesome.

Civilization IV by Sid Meier has to be the most complex game ever made and I am totally addicted to it right now. Maybe the Age of Empires III Asian Dynasties expansion will break the spell. We'll find out if my 250GB ever gets copied.

I should probably read more books. My wife has been reading classics like I've been gaming and she's starting to get smarter than me.

Non-coffee people should not give coffee as a gift. It's not like I have a superdiscerning pallet that can detect all 137 variation in the coffee gene. But I can taste... at all. You know, the four basic flavor. Well they should aknowledge a new flavor: suck. That would be the main ingredient of this raspberry flavored and hazelnut flavored coffee we got for Christmas from well intentioned n00bs. There are two little pouches of these beans inside the same bag and it made me gag when I sniffed it. Can't wait to try that...

One of my coworkers brews Maxwell house about 3 feet away from me. It smells like he's cooking Worchestershire sauce. I usually have to go talk a walk for about five minutes for the stink to clear out.

Well now, that 250 GB is almost done. Soon I'll be rebuilding my main PC and scrapping the 64 bit Windows XP. There was really no point to that and it was constantly frustrating. I'm not going to Vista as I haven't heard anything good about it yet. Once it's rebuilt, I'll have a full 750GB of space for all that... uhm, media... that I'm storing. I'll probly update the BIOS and give CrossFire another shot since I've still got a second card sitting here. Last time it made my box bluescreen! Thanks HP, for putting four PCIe slots on this board and NOT supporting CrossFire, even though the OS, chipset, board and video card all do. How the crap did they mess that one up???

RIM Job

2007-12-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

The wonderful Blackberry (aka "Crackberry") device is a product of the Canadian company Research In Motion, or RIM. RIM touts an open source development environment leverage the Java Development Environment (JDE). A year and a half ago, my company had a need for some field inspectors to be able to use barcode scanners to pull and post data in real time. I found these bluetooth barcode scanners online that also have an API (application programming interface) for the Blackberry so all the pieces fell in place. We got the scanners and the API and I got the JDE and SDK (software development kit) set up and I reworked the sample project so that it the Blackberry would receive the data from the scanner and then post it to a an ASP web site which would return the related work order in a web page for the inspector to complete. It was a great solution and very stable, once we got it out the door.

Fast forward to last summer. The Blackberry's start to get errors from the barcode readers. One by one they fell, like children growing up in the shadow of a petroleum plant. By summers end, the whole app was shutdown with a mysterious hardware error. After much proctrastination, I was forced to call the vendor to ask, "WTF????" It turns out, the vendor hired a third party developer to create device drivers who built in an expiration date. Things fell through (go figure) between these companies and our vendor now had a new set of drivers. How nice of them to just wait for things to blow up. I suppose a little proactive customer service wouldn've been asking too much.

So now I've got new drivers and a new sample project to recode to fit our needs. A peculiar things about RIM is that, even though they support open source, they won't let just anyone hit their core system files. To do this, you have to be a registered developer with them and purchase the appropriate registration keys. This costs about $100. After reloading the JDE, SDK and API, I got the sample project reworked fairly quickly and the code signed. All ready for redeployment right?

The users took their sweet time getting their devices to us and somehow, wonderfully and magically, the project got corrupt. The next step was to produce and application loader file (ALX) to actually conduct the install. This is the Blackberry/JDE equivalent of a MicroSoft .MSI package. Well now the damn project won't build. It can't load the RIM runtime. So I created a new project from scratch and it loads the runtime just fine. So I imported all the code and attempted to sign this project and one of the code keys failed due to a proxy error. Mutha f'n proxy... well I kept tweaking it to try and get it to sign. Apparently, you only get five shots at this and it all shuts down.

So now I've got to create a call with RIM to find out why their crappy open source crap environment isn't working and to get my freaking keys back. All because of an idiot vendor and a conniving coder. This has really put a cramp on my work-day game playing. Ooh the rage! My Blackberry came razor close to a high velocity impact with the wall.

My crazy little girl

2007-12-24T19:25:00.001-08:00

It's Christmas Eve and the kids are all just settling in for the night. We'll open the gifts in the morning so they get to go to bed with butterflies in their tummys and excited anticipation. In the morning my wife and I will pretend like we're asleep and we can't wake up in a ruse to see how bad the kids want to get their gifts. It will be a great time for us! ;-)

While the kids were putting up their clutter from the great room, I picked up a mini notebook to figure out who it belongs to. I could tell by the penmanship and horrible, horrible spelling it belongs to my youngest daughter, who is six. But I was amazed at the little poem she wrote:

Poor little bird.
Poor little bird.
He is laying in the street.
How can I help him eat?
He is laying in the street.

Where did she learn to write any poetry?! She is already able to express her emotions much better than I and possibly experience them as well. But she's still goofy. On her way to bed she was singing to herself "...tis the season to be germs." She is a total mystery to me.

A child shall lead them...

2007-12-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

The situation at City Hall is becoming ever more reminiscient of the 2000 presidential elections. Once again, the courts will decide our fate.

The Mayor had until today to either sign or veto the illegal ordinance passed by the Council last week. On advice from the City's law department, he opted to do neither. So now the ordinance is in effect. But on Tuesday, the mayor pro tem (aka- vice mayor) councilman Skaggs filed a suit against the City in Jackson County court for violating the City charter and State constitution. The City Attorney had already written an opinion that sided with the Mayor's interpretation of the charter so he is sort of defacto disqualified from representing the City. Instead. two private lawyers will duke it out in front of a County judge to decide if Funk is right or wrong. There are enough liberal judges at the local level that I really don't have confidence this will go right. A loss here would probably require an appeal at the state level and I doubt there is the political will to press the issue that far.

"Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society" (thx Wiki!) If the county validates the Council then that is what we have. The Charter becomes a suggestion and the will of the people and rule of law is subverted. The interests of the highly vocal and racists minority will become the law. According to some commenters on the Star, someone is even trying to get Jesse Jackson in KC this Feb (assumably in time for black history month). The NAACP was the first group to threaten a lawsuit against the mayor and the most vocal civic "leaders" were all black pastors from the City. Yet this is somehow not about race.

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." -Lord Acton

The Angry Coder

2011 In Review

Hiking the OT: Lessons learned

Eye of the storm?

This Sucks

Mystery Drink Revealed!

Mmmmmm... Paaaaancakes!

Echo

Hot Wings

*Yawn*

A bit of humor

Not looking good

Into the belly of the beast

Yes!

Nothing to report here...

Looking good?

Jury Duty

Bringing in the cones

India-bound

Can the republic be restored?

Ding Dong, Cauthen's Gone!

Technogasm

The Rights of Man

Freakin' awesome...

Mellowing out with Monty

Thomas Paine

Bathroom update

Laws derived from the nature of government

Bike Repainting

Gleanings from Montesquieu

Blog is dead

Purgatory

Miscellaneous Items

Memorial Day

Bathroom update

TIF'd off

TEA Party

Snow Ball Theory

Truth and Error

How Christianity Changed The World

A week of blessings

Concerning Christ and Jazz

Fine time to experiment...

Christ-centered home defense

Wind chill is a factor

Data Anonymity

2008 in review

Greg Focker wasn't lying after all!

It is better to dwell in the backyard than with a clawing and contentious kitten.

Thanksgiving Day Standoff

WTC???

Buried

Lock and load!

Finally

10th in line

More drama

Some entertainment

Standing in line

Holding fast

How history repeats itself

Smells like teen... er... agers?

Ron Paul throws support to Constitution Party

Whew!!!

Atticus Sux

Travelling blues

2008 Voting Guide: Which lizard best suits you?

Amused.

Political Modeling

I see dumb people

Batman: The Dark Knight

Horn Repair

Some randomness

That's what she said...

The plumbing is now complete!

Parking lot idiot

If it ain't broke, it's probably not mine...

Remodel Progress

Bathroomia

The internet is boring

Biker Self Defense

Yawn