Passing on my Childhood

One of the things my family always does around Christmas is to decorate gingerbread cookies. Last year, since I knew I wasn't going to be home in time to do it with my family, I did it on my own with friends from Church. This year I made them again, and decorated them with two different groups.

The first I did with the Palladinos. At four and six years old respectively, Diego and Sierra were old enough to enjoy it, but it was quite an adventure. I think that they ate more candy than they put on the cookies -- and it would be a mistake to say that any of their cookies were low on candy. Their results weren't fancy, but they seemed very proud of their creations.

The second group was with the Kennedys. At fourth grade and sixth grade, Amanda and Tarin were capable of doing a bit more sophisticated patterns on the cookies. A substantially percentage of their candy ended up on the cookies. I think this was largely due to the fact that they felt they needed excuses to eat the candy. For instance, if two chocolate chips were stuck together, or if a cinnamon candy was the wrong shape or size for their purpose, or making sure that a thick layer of frosting didn't harden on the knife.

Early on, Amanda and Tarin got into a competitive spirit about how many cookies each had decorated. I had made three giant angel cookies (over twice the size of the next largest cookie shape). Amanda was the first to decorate one, and informed Tarin that it counted as three cookies, thus putting her well in the lead. Tarin was quick to counter with a point that Amanda agreed to: "No, it needs to count as one cookie so that when Mom tells us we can only have one..."

Gift Exchange

Last night my home group had a Christmas dinner. As part of it we did a white elephant gift exchange. The first gift opened was the holiday edition of Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It has some useful advice in it such as "How to get rid of carolers" (answer the door wearing a towel). As things got more and more frantic in the gift exchange, the joke came about that one of the tips in the guide was "How to survive a gift exchange and end up with the gift you want." I ended up with the guide, and I have a feeling this won't be the last gift exchange the book ends up in this Christmas...

And so this is Christmas?

Yesterday I was driving somewhere, enjoying the warm weather with my windows down, while listening to Christmas music. Something about that just didn't seem to fit. I guess that's just part of Southern California.

Thanksgiving Finale

After all of the chaos and stress of having my return flight canceled, I would have thought that the story was over. Now, I could mention the extra opportunities this gave me, like the extra two days with my aunt, uncle, and cousins -- or getting to enjoy a dinner with Liz and Dan. That stuff, however, probably isn't all that interesting to read about, so I'll skip ahead to other things.

After getting a few days of snow in Seattle on Sunday and Monday, it warmed up enough for the snow to start melting, so that it could freeze over again as ice all over the roads. While this may be normal in Minnesota, in Seattle they have more trouble dealing with it. The news Tuesday morning recommended that people stay home if at all possible, or, if that was not possible, to allow as much as four hours for a normal commute, time which we did not have. Fortunately we got lucky and the thirty minute drive only took us an hour.

Once at the airport I checked in, and they informed me that although I had a reservation, there was no seat available for my flight from Seattle to LA. Somehow that didn't surprise me too much. I asked what else they had available, and the women cautiously started to suggest something. The way she was saying it prepared me for the worst. I began to mentally prepare myself for a long day at the airport, if not a few more days in Seattle. What she said surprised me:

"If you don't mind, we could put you on the direct flight to Santa Barbara. It will get you in at around 11am instead of 3:30pm."

It stunned me. I gladly accepted and then began to wonder how she possibly could have thought that I would have preferred two flights with a two hour layover in LA. As much as I love airports, and LAX in particular...

The rest of the trip was comparatively smooth.

An Inconvenient Snowfall

As stated in my last post, I am in Seattle a bit longer than I had expected to be. Some of us were planning to go to a showing of An Inconvenient Truth tonight. I've been wanting to see it, and it seemed like the opportunity was there.

Well, tonight it started to snow, so we've decided that the truth is, it is too inconvenient for us to go see the movie. Instead of seeing the movie, we are going to practice the message of the movie by not driving to go see it.

Thanksgiving Surprises

This year for Thanksgiving I flew to Seattle where my Aunt and Uncle were hosting my parents. By design, my parents were unaware that I was going to be joining them. To make it a little more exciting, I haven't been with my parents for Thanksgiving since 1999 when I was in High School. It certainly took some doing, but the surprise element was successful, and it was pure joy the moment that I revealed myself to my Mom in particular.

I was, however, on the other end of a surprise too. About an hour before I left for the airport to fly up to Seattle, I printed out my itinerary from a flight reminder email (Does travel actually slip some people's minds?). It was at this time that I noticed my itinerary was a bit different than it had been when I bought the tickets. See if you can spot the error:

Wednesday:
SBA -> LAX
LAX -> SEA

Sunday:
LAX -> SBA

My return flight from Seattle to LA was missing! They did, however, still have my flight from LA to Santa Barbara. All I needed to do was get from Seattle to LA on my own... I started hoping that this was just an error in the email that was sent, and called up Orbitz, where I had purchased the tickets. The women on the phone was polite, and told me that she needed to call up American Airlines, where the ticket package was from. I soon envisioned that the following was going on:

Me - On hold with Orbitz.
Orbitz - On hold with American Airlines.
American Airlines - On hold with Alaska Airlines (the operator of the actual flight).
Alaska Airlines - Looking up the information.

Eventually they got back to me and informed me that my flight had been canceled. I thought that it was considerate of them not to trouble me with little details like that, nor automatically schedule me into another flight with the potential to conflict with my schedule. In any case they were helpful enough to inform me of the few options available on the day before Thanksgiving. The two choices closest to my original date were leaving Saturday morning, or Tuesday morning...

To those in Santa Barbara, see you on Tuesday.

Of Soups and Cars

On Thursday my home group had a potluck dinner before our study. Everyone was supposed to bring either a soup or a salad. I chose to bring a soup. I came home from work a bit early and made a pot of soup. I then realized that I had a very hot pot full of soup that I really didn't want to spill inside of my car. I placed it at the foot of the passenger seat of my car, then proceeded to drive as gently as possible to home group. At the first light, I wanted to turn right. There were several opportunities when I could have made it, but I didn't want to accelerate as fast as it would take, so I continued to wait.

I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be ironic if of all the times I'm out driving, I had a collision while I'm specifically trying to avoid any extra bumps?" Then it happened, someone rear ended me as I sat at the stoplight. Fortunately it wasn't hard at all, but it was enough to make me worry about the soup... and then the back of my car. I put on my hazards, then got out and talked to the man. I got his contact information, and took a look at my bumper. It was hard to see in the dark, but I could tell there were at least some minor scratches. There clearly wasn't any massive damage to the rear of the car, so I went on to home group.

Once I got to home group, I was able to take a better look at it. I drive a Saturn, so some of you may wonder how Saturn's dent-resistant paneling held up. Now that I have had some experience I can say with a degree of certainty that it does not dent. No, the paneling breaks. I am now the "proud" owner of a few holes in my bumper.

Goodbye Mark

Mark, one of the men I share an apartment with, is moving out over a little thing like leaving town. Anyway, it means that unfortunately, less than a year after we moved into this place, we are either going to need to move yet again, or find a new third person to move in with us. I am greatly hoping that it will be a new roommate, because I'm not much in the mood to move again.

James 3:1-12

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

We studied this in my home group last week. Also, as is the custom in my Church, we received teaching on it on Sunday. As a result, I've been thinking about it quite a bit over the last week or so.

• How often have I let a few words spoken in haste deeply affect my thoughts and actions?
• How often have a deeply hurt someone or destroyed a friendship by words spoken in anger?
• How many times have simple words of encouragement been all I needed to accomplish something I never thought I was capable of?
• What paths in my life have been shaped simply by the challenging words of someone I respected?

I can think of so many ways that simple words have shaped my life for better or worse. I probably never would have done LAUP if it wasn't for the challenge and encouragement of several friends. I can think of too many friendships that have been deeply hurt by stupid words that I never should have said ... or that they never should have said - usually some of each. It is only by the grace of God that any relationship is ever able to outlast the power of the tongue.

Almost Humorous Conversation

I'll should qualify the title a bit. The conversation could have (but didn't happen). If it had happened, it would have been funny.

Setup: A close friend of mine in Santa Barbara just got engaged. He is also a big Cardinals fan. I talked to him on Saturday, at which point he was engaged and the Cardinals had won the World Series, neither of which I yet knew. If I had known about the Cardinals winning the World Series, it is quite possible the following conversation could have occurred:

Me: Congratulations! (Meaning the Cardinals)
Joel: Thanks, but how did you find out. (Thinking I meant the engagement but not knowing how I could possibly know yet because they hadn't told much of anyone outside of their families yet.)
Me: Um... isn't it public information?
Joel: Really?!? I didn't realize.
Me: Come on, it's all over the Internet.
Joel: ... (Confused silence)

Career Fair

Last Friday I had the privilege of being one of two Toyon representatives to the Harvey Mudd Career fair. I enjoyed the experience of the other side of things. By the end I was sure of one thing. The way I had approached career fairs as a student, I never would have considered hiring myself.

Faster than a Speeding Bicyclist

Yesterday while I was biking home, I passed one of those traffic displays that tell you your speed. I was in a 25 MPH school zone, and the readout currently said "Your speed is: 45." I glanced around, to see where this reckless driver was. There wasn't a moving car around anywhere. I suppose the logical conclusion is that I was biking at 45 MPH...

Sri Lanka in the News

This happened in Galle, Sri Lanka. As you may recall, that is the town in Sri Lanka I was in for three weeks last year. While I was there, it never seemed like the sort of place where something like this would happen.

Philippians 1:15-18

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

I've been thinking about this passage recently. I've realized that quite often Christians (myself included) complain about how other Christians (or Churches in general) are pursuing the gospel. In my experience, the concerns are rarely about something as blatantly sinful as false motivations, yet we worry as if these groups and individuals were undermining all of Christ's power.

I find Paul's response, however, to be quite surprising. Rather than be upset or worried, he rejoices! Even though the preacher may be evil, what does it matter if Christ is shaping the evil for his own good? I think that there is something quite deep here, and that the Church would grow much closer to Christ if we understood and practiced this principal.

There are quite a few little details that I could hash out, having to do with things like this, but I'm not aiming for this to be a book, nor even a sermon, so I will let this be enough.

Change in Theme

As you probably noticed, this blog has a new look. This is because the blogging site is now in the beta of some major changes (remember, Blogger is part of Google, so long, usable betas are the norm). Anyway, I could have stuck with a nearly identical layout, but when I looked at some of the new, pre-packaged layouts, I liked this one better. The primary reason is that the text fills the whole page now, although I also like the way it organizes the archives into a tree structure. There are also some other nice features included in the beta on the editing side, but you won't notice that by reading my blog. My guess is that most of you won't really care about the minor changes, but perhaps will find it strange that this makes two posts today, when most of the time I've only been writing once every week or two.

The Circle of Life at Mudd

Last weekend I visited some of the people I still know at Mudd. This year's seniors were the freshman my senior year, and it was wonderful to just spend time with them and see how they're doing. I had some good conversations with each of the three that I know particularly well. Even during the short time I was there, it was clear that they have grown a lot, and have picked up on the importance of loving each other, as well as younger students. It made me realize just how cyclic love is. My freshman year some of the seniors really poured themselves into loving us. Our senior year we did what we could to pour love into the freshman. Now, as seniors, they are doing the same. Praise God!

Long Beach Navigation

Yesterday Ian and I were down in Long Beach for the day. Maybe we were just both particularly unobservant, but it seemed like the town was designed to be unnecessarily difficult to navigate in a car. A few of the smaller highlights:

• Most parking garages failed to clearly mark their existence from the street. Bicycle parking was, however, clearly marked from the street.
• Of the two parking garages that were clearly marked, one was closed and the other had an automatic ticket dispenser that wasn't working.
• One block past the 200 block was the 400 block. We were, of course, looking for the 300 block.

Now for the grand finale. On our way back, we just needed to get to the 710, then the rest would be easy. We even had a low detail atlas to help us. We saw signs for the 47, which would take us to a street that intersected with the 710. Great, we got on it... or at least we thought we did. Then we passed a sign that said turn here for the 47 North, which was what we wanted. Unfortunately, since we thought we were already on the 47, we missed the turn. We took some exit, planning to turn around. Unfortunately, what looked like it would put us back on whatever we had been on, it put us on some road that led us into a harbor area, with it's own network of roads. There was no place to turn around (legally) and all of the signs had to do with docks. There were no cars, nor signs of life anywhere. As we continued along the road continually had forks, and we tried to choose the ones that seemed like they would lead us back to civilization. They did no such thing.

Eventually we pulled a U-Turn when there was no divider in the road, and decided that was the best way to find our way out. About this time the gas light came on. To recap the situation, we don't really know where we are. We don't know how to get out. There is no one else around who we could possibly ask for help. Now, on top of that, we are low on gas. After some driving we came back to a traffic signal, and there was even a sign to get on the 47. However they didn't specify how to get on the 47 North. No, that would have been too straightforward. Our options were east or west. We picked west. I don't remember why anymore. Once we were on it, I checked the map again and realized that there is both a 47 East/West and a 47 North/South the intersect at a mutual point of termination. Fortunately, the 47 East seemed to intersect the 110, so we felt that we were probably ok. We went over a bridge, then decided we needed to deal with the gas situation, so got off at the next exit. There was no sign of gas anywhere, so we got back on 47. Unfortunately, the exit/entrance were set up differently than we were expecting, so now we were headed back over the bridge on the 47 East. Usually backtracking like this is just annoying. When you're running low on gas, however, it gets a little more exciting. Still, we thought that this route would take us back to the 47 North, and the route we had been planning on from the beginning. Fortunately, we were correct for the first time all night, and this brought us back to a gas station and a known route to the 710. The rest of the trip home went smoothly.

The moral of the story? Long Beach needs better signs and I need a better map of LA.

Home Group Shuffle

The home group I have been in since I moved to Santa Barbara two years ago just dissolved. There were a variety of reasons for it, mostly involving the leadership moving around. Apparently it is actually somewhat encouraged that home groups change things up once every 2-4 years. The reason for this being that it tends to be the primary way of building deep relationships in the Church, therefore if you always stay in the same home group, it greatly limits the number of people you get to know.

In any case, I will be in a different home group starting with this session. Certainly I will miss the people from my previous one, but I am excited to meet some new people too. Prior to this change, I had actually been thinking that it would be nice to get to know more people through a home group setting, but I wasn't ready to leave the one I was in. I think it was good for me to just be forced in the matter, rather than having to pick a time to leave when the rest of the group was still together.

Bike Fixed

I just took the time to look at my bike. It turns out that it was just the shifter cable coming loose. It was a quick and easy fix, although it makes me wonder how it came loose. There was no obvious sign of it having changed, just that it was no longer tight enough to shift gears. This worries me, because I'm afraid that whatever caused the problem the first time, could cause it again. Time will tell.

Life is Like a Game of RoboRally

...Sometimes your gears get stuck.

More specifically, after hitting a bump on my way to work today, the rear shifter on my bicycle is stuck in high gear. Fortunately the bike is otherwise functional, so I had no difficulty in getting home. I haven't decided yet if I'll keep riding it the rest of this week, or wait until it's fixed. I already have a pretty good idea of where to start looking for a solution, so I'm hoping that a little time this weekend can get my bike back in full working order.

Gold Beach

Last week I was on vacation with my family in Gold Beach, OR. For as long as I can remember, my entire mother's side of the family has gotten together there for a week each summer. The previous two summers (2004 & 2005), however, I had missed. Thus making it back this year was a big deal to me.

I had a wonderful time, but I just haven't decided what to write about it, so instead of sharing anything meaningful, I will tell you about something fairly insignificant. Even the little significance it does have is likely to be missed by many of you. It is an even I have been looking for on the road for a while, and although I suspected the existence of it, I wasn't certain if such a thing really ever happened. I can now say, with certainty, that it does. The event in question is... Two log trucks traveling in opposite directions.

Proper Uses of Tupperware

On Monday night, Philip and I had a discussion about when Tupperware should be used. It was my contention that if something comes in packaging that can store the food even after the packaging has been opened, then there is no reason to move the food into Tupperware. Philip's standpoint was that Tupperware is a better container, so it makes sense to move food into Tupperware for storage after opening it. Later that evening I discovered the following item in the fridge:

Amtrak, L-A-T-E, Amtrak

My brother Timothy is currently on his way down to visit me. He's taking a train from Portland to Santa Barbara. The train left Portland about five hours late, and is currently running about nine and a half hours late. Amtrak's website predicts, however, that they will make up over two hours of that time and get in at 1:26am instead of the originally scheduled 6:17pm. At this point, if he arrives before this time tomorrow, I will consider it a success.

Remembering LAUP

This last Saturday I drove down to LA for a LAUP (Los Angeles Urban Project) alumni day. It was a combination of worship, teaching, praying, testimonies, Q&A, and just free time to spend with people. It was very refreshing to spend time talking with so many like minded people. The day was very helpful in rekindling some my passion from that summer.

A year ago I talked to the college pastor at my Church about trying to send a group from our Church down to LAUP. His answer at the time was no for 2006 (because something else was already being planned), but maybe in 2007. I'm going to try to talk to him again soon about planning to send a team next summer. I really hope that we can make it happen. I will certainly plan to write more as I investigate this further.

Exciting Day

Today was the first full day of my business trip. We were busy just about all day, but it was exciting to see our project coming together. We get one more day to work on things tomorrow, and then we're headed back to Santa Barbara.

Headed Out

It looks like I'm finally going to make my first ever business trip in a bit under 2 weeks. Even though the last one didn't pan out, I'm more confident that this one will since they've already purchased my plane tickets and made hotel reservations.

I am excited about this for a couple of reasons. First, the trip involves getting to use some expensive, geeky, toys. Second, my project manager chose to bring me along as a software expert. It's nice to know that he thinks of me as someone good enough with our code that I'm his first choice to have along.

Too Wonderful for my Own Good

Last night at home group was wonderful! Recently I've been feeling like our group has grown large enough that it is difficult for us to have deep, intimate, meaningful discussions. Last night we had 13, but we did something a little different. We talked for a bit as a whole group, but then we broke off into two sub-groups of six and seven. Down at that size, my group was able to have a much deeper discussion where we got into the deep patterns of weakness and brokenness in our lives. This was of course followed up with some time spent praying for each other.

After group people stuck around and were talking as we usually do. Eventually it dwindled down to six of us, and we got into another wonderful, deep conversation about struggles in life and making choices that will help to grow us closer to Christ. Two people were particularly open with the struggles of where they are at. We followed that up with some more time praying for each other.

It was very refreshing to have a home group meeting like that. I just have to thank God for the people he has placed in my life.

On the downside, I didn't make it to bed until about 2am, and that doesn't particularly help me the next day at work.

Done!

On June 22nd of 2005, I started a one year Bible. This morning before I left for work I completed it, right on schedule. I can't claim that I never missed a day, but I did catch up whenever I got behind, and most of the time I was right on track. Anyway, even if that's boring to you, I'm pretty happy about it.

Tidbits from Life

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. In my defense, the last time I tried to post, blogger was down for maintenance. Anyway, I don't have anything revolutionary to share, but here are a few small things:

• I got a free computer upgrade a few weeks ago. Basically my computer (at home) stopped booting. My roommate Mark had an old box sitting around and offered to let me scrap it for parts. Just about every part in his was better than what I had, so it was a nice upgrade to something that was top of the line about 4 years ago. The speed boost was actually quite noticeable and appreciated.
• I went camping with a group of young people from Church a few weekends ago. Mark was our unofficial official photographer, and posted a nice collection here.
• For the next session, my home group is taking a break from the usual study guide and instead we are reading this book together. Thus far I'm finding it quite insightful, although our group has grown large enough that the discussions just don't seem as meaningful as I think they would be with a smaller group.
• I've been wanting to make a personal project out of installing Linux on a USB flash drive. I've looked at a few distributions designed for that sort of thing (Flash, Puppy, and DSL) but each has it's own drawbacks, which I'm not eager to get into here. The other option I'm considering is building my own custom distribution from Gentoo. That would be a lot more work, and the results probably wouldn't be as good (if I succeeded at all), but it would be very satisfying and I'm sure that I would learn a lot.

Well, now you know a little bit about what I've been up to recently.

End of a Streak

Yesterday I had to boot into Windows to do work. I needed to use a proprietary third party app, and they weren't nice enough to send us a Linux version. It made me feel kind of dirty, like I need to repent of that sin or something. It broke a 3.5 week streak of doing all my work under Linux.

Cleaning Out My Desk

I left work early today after cleaning out my desk, and they told me not to come in tomorrow.

Fortunately that's because Toyon is moving to a new building, and the movers are starting tomorrow morning. The move is fairly short, but it will drop my commute down to under a mile and a half. The new building is much nicer, but the thing that excites me is that now we will all be in a single building, so I won't have to walk down the street just to meet with someone. The one problem is that now I need to figure out what to do with the 300* out of date business cards I have left over.

*: Complete estimate, and probably wrong. Actual is between 100 and 1000.

More On Linux

I have continued to use Linux at work almost exclusively. In fact, I only booted into Windows once last week, and that was only to load some new music into iTunes, and then I was back to Linux. This week the only time I've booted into Windows so far was an accident, so I didn't even log in. Needless to say, I've been happy with the environment, and continue to gain skill with the Linux and related tools.

Yesterday someone taught me how to compile and install the Linux kernel, which was convenient since a new version just came out. I just went through and trimmed a bunch of features out of my kernel. By default the Gentoo kernel installs with support for a lot of things that I will never use (like random motherboard chipsets and read support for Apple's file system). One feature in particular made me wonder a little:

Support for hot-pluggable CPUs

Fortunately that one is disabled by default. Still, I'm wondering who would actually have a real use for that.

Ok, my kernel is done compiling. Time to see if I accidentally removed any kernel options that I actually do need...

Update: Success!

Music for a Cause

Over the past couple of months, I've gotten two new CD's, both at Church. For each of them, the production costs were paid for in full, so that all of the suggested donations could go to Missions work. As an added bonus, both of them are excellent CDs.

The first was worship music performed by natives of Philippi, South Africa. As you will most likely agree, if you have heard any, African worship music is a joy to listen to. All of the proceeds from that went to support Bridges of Hope.

The second was made available just yesterday, and is a compilation of musicians at our Church, with two-thirds of the songs being originals by members of our Church. What surprised me was that very few of the original songs seemed like originals to me, because they are songs that we sing regularly on Sundays. I loved discovering that a good share of our worship music is straight from the hearts of our people within our Church family. The proceeds from this one are going to International Justice Mission.

I don't consider this to be anything revolutionary, nor do I consider myself a saint for buying them. Still, I really like the idea, and wish that the sales of all worship music was handled in such a way.

Finally - Another post!

As you have all probably noticed, my posting has been spotty at best recently. That isn't to say that things aren't going on in my life. In fact, there are multiple things that have happened recently that are on my mind quite a bit, however they involve other people in ways such that I just don't feel like it is my place to share them with the world. Also, when I do have something to share about, I'm usually too lazy to actually write it up and post it.

For the sake of sharing something, however, I'll share a bit about work. In particular ways that I have been growing as a software developer and that they have been trusting me with more responsibility. I apologize in advance if this comes of as bragging (or as boring). Really I'm just trying to share things that have been exciting for me.

Toyon hires a lot of engineers and scientists, and many of them spend a substantial amount of their time writing code, even though many of us have little formal training in writing code. Since starting at Toyon, my ability as a C++ programmer (a language I never used in school) has grown immensely, largely because some of the experienced developers have put a lot of time and effort into helping me learn good coding techniques.

A few months ago I was set up with an account on our Linux cluster and started learning to use Linux, purely on the command line. I've always wanted to learn Linux, but I never got that good doing it on my own as a personal project. The more I used it at work, the better I got with it, and the more I liked it.

Side note: As a result of my growing Linux knowledge, I am now using Ubuntu Linux as my primary operating system at home. It is a Linux distribution aimed at ease of use, and I think that they are coming close to having an operating system every bit as easy to use as Windows. If you've ever wanted to give Linux a try, but are intimidated, I highly recommend giving this one a try.

Back to talking about Linux at work. I soon found that I was using it more than Windows at work (granted I was actually running Windows XP, but ssh-ing into a Linux server). I soon decided to just install a dual boot with Linux on my work system. I still need Windows around for some of my work, so unfortunately I cannot ditch it all together. Instead of installing Ubuntu on my work computer, a coworker helped me install Gentoo Linux. This distribution is not known for being easy to use, but with his promise of help, I decided it was a good time to learn. I can say hands down that Ubuntu would have been easier and, as a result, probably more functional, but I really enjoy the tinkering aspect of it and actually having to configure many details of my system. There are now days at work where I can go the whole day without having to touch Windows.

In addition, one of the head developers has been throwing around the phrase "power developer" with regards to me recently. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm well on my way. A few weeks ago he even trusted me enough to give me access to commit changes to any file in a very large section of our code base - basically every piece of code that I currently use, directly or indirectly. Only a handful of people in the whole company have that level of access. Anyway, I'm quite proud to be trusted with that level of power, and it was really an encouragement to me as an employee.

So in short, I'm on my way to becoming a Linux guru, a C++ guru, and a valuable employee.

Accelerated Dance Lessons

Now that my arm is in good shape again, I decided I'd go back to taking Balboa lessons. They teach them in six week classes, so I figured I'd just go back and repeat the whole six weeks for practice and to pick up the two weeks I missed when I broke my arm. I was in for a bit of a surprise when I got there, however. It turns out that all of the other swing classes repeat every six weeks, but not Balboa. Those classes build, so that instead of stepping back in for week one, I was stepping into week thirteen after missing weeks five through twelve. When I first started, I just happened to hit week one by luck.

The first thing they taught was a combination of two other steps that I didn't know. Needless to say, it was a challenge and I felt lost the whole time. Fortunately, the male instructor was kind enough to give me some extra attention and try to catch me up on everything that I missed. He seems to want to get me back up to speed, and has offered to give some extra help both during class and at the dances every other Friday night. It was good to get that encouragement. Without that, I think I would have counted out these classes until they actually reset again.

Killer Debugging Session

At work I've been needing to do simulation runs using my group's primary software product. Unfortunately I've been having trouble with the runs crashing. Some of them would, some wouldn't. It depended on the random seed I used for the run. Oh, and the specific simulation wouldn't run fast enough on my Windows box to get very far into it, so I had to do my debugging remotely on one of our Linux boxes using GDB, which isn't the quickest debugger to learn. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I finally tracked down the bug. This was one of those crashes that would only occur when the planets were aligned just right (figuratively speaking of course) - my simulation had a few properties that made it more likely that most others. Plus, the location of the crash was about five times removed from the two places where semi-related things had to occur to set the crash up. All in all, I think I spent at least 20 hours tracking this thing down, which is an awful lot of time to spend tracking down a single bug.

On the plus side, I'm pretty confident using GDB now.

Healthy!

Over the past week, I've gotten quite a few updates on my health from multiple doctors and nurses.

Last Friday (one week ago today) I had a full physical. I'm pretty sure the last time I had one was prior to college. The doctor said I was absolutely healthy. As part of the check-up, I had blood work done. I didn't get the results from that until Wednesday, but when they did come, they were very good. In particular, I was pleased to discover that my cholesterol was only 108 (below 200 is considered good)!

On Tuesday/Thursday I finally got tested for TB (the test takes 48 hours). I've been meaning to get that done ever since I got back from India based on certain experiences there. I wasn't too worried about it, but again, I was happy to find that I do not have any TB running through my blood.

Finally, on Wednesday I had my six week checkup with the doctor I've been seeing for my broken arm. After looking at the X-Rays, he couldn't really see the crack anymore, but the healing was quite visible. He told me that in 3-4 weeks, the bone should be back to 100% strength, and that he doesn't need to see me again.

In the scheme of things, none of these are a big deal, but I was happy to hear all of them.

Identity and Value

Last Sunday at Church the pastor left me with a new insight into identity. He was talking about American materialism, and how easy it is for Americans to place our identity and value in what we have - My mind glossed over that. After all, I don't have all that much stuff compared to most people I know, and I spend very little money on anything other than the basics of living (rent, food, etc) - Then came the kicker... If we don't put our identity in what we do have, then we put it in what we don't have.

As soon as he said it I realized that describes me. I am quite proud of my simple tastes and my ability to live well below my means. I'm glad that there is no TV in my apartment, and I chose my car to be simple and practical. I place part of my identity and value in what I don't have rather than in Christ.

Recently I've realized more and more my tendencies to put my value in my "Christian" behaviors rather than in Christ. This is entirely backwards from what the Bible teaches. God wants me to know that I am valuable because I am loved by him. God wants my heart to be transformed and for me to live in joyful submission to him.

Early every Tuesday morning I meet at Church to spend an hour in prayer with others. These times of prayer have a very different feel than I had ever known prayer before. There is little or no intercession, instead the time is spent praying very relational prayers for ourselves and our Church. We are praying to grow closer to God and to focus ourselves on Christ. Don't get me wrong - I think that intercession is incredibly important - but I'm realizing just how valuable it is to spend that time every week just coming together to focus on God through prayer. That is the center of the Christian life. Everything else flows from there.

Quick Snippets from my Week

The "ski" trip last weekend with Church was wonderful. It was a great time of meeting new people and getting to know people better. While I didn't go skiing or snowboarding (because of the risk of reinjuring my arm), I did enjoy going snowshoeing with some other people that weren't interested in hitting the slopes.

The weekend was followed with a poor start of the week - I woke up quite sick on Monday morning. I don't think I've felt this sick since sometime back in high school. I don't know what caused it, but it passed fairly quickly and I was back to work by Wednesday.

Friday night I went swing dancing. This was the second time I've gone since my bicycle accident. Two weeks ago when I went, my arm noticeably inhibited my dancing. This time I didn't notice it the whole night, although I made a point to refrain from anything that would be particularly hard on my arm - basically meaning dips. I had a vision of a woman trying to give me all her weight when I dipped her - and consequently ending up on the floor.

Am I Small?

I'm headed up to the mountains this weekend for a "ski" trip with my Church. Granted, I won't be skiing, snowboarding or anything like that. I'm at the point with my arm where it mostly feels fine, but where re-injury is still a major concern. I was already signed up before my accident happened, and decided I'd still go just to enjoy the fellowship and a weekend away.

It's supposed to be very cold up there. Forecasts show highs a bit below freezing. With that in mind, I decided to pick up some long underwear. I went to K-Mart, and found where they had it. Everything they had was bottoms only long underwear, but I figured that's where it's harder to layer up anyway. The thing that got me was the sizes they stocked - nothing smaller than a large, which had a wait measurement a few sizes larger than I would have liked. I got it anyway, and with a safety pin it fits pretty well. Still, it got me wondering. Aren't there other people my size or smaller that want men's long underwear? I think of myself as being about average size for an American male - and there are certainly men smaller than I am. Thus it seems strange that K-Mart wouldn't stock a better range of sizes. Oh well, at least these ones will work for me.

Pure Brilliance

The Real-Life Simpsons.

The Blessing of Brokenness

This post is about the ways that God has used my broken arm for good. I've noticed it since day one, but I just haven't made the effort to sit down and write about it.

The first and most obvious thing was that my trip to the hospital set up a conversation with someone from work (the man who took me to the hospital), in which we got talking about Church. He grew up in the Church, and used to go to Church, but ever since coming to Santa Barbara a few years ago, he never really bothered finding a new Church. As far as I can tell, he was basically just waiting for someone to invite him to come to Church again. I hardly even had to invite him, he practically did that himself. It makes me wonder how many other people I'm interacting with daily that just need an invite to become involved in a Church.

Second, it reminded me of my weakness and frailty, and hence my desperate need for Jesus. It also forced me to slow down and listen to God more, something I really need to do more often.

Third, and related to number two, God showed me where I place my self worth. I put a lot of my value in my human abilities to do things. Being brought down to a point where I could hardly do anything on my own was very depressing because I suddenly felt worthless. I couldn't drive, type, cook, floss, type, write... Even the simple things that I could do were usually challenging. Through this God reminded me of my true value. I'm not valuable because I can handle life on my own. No, God loves me because I am His, and that's the truth I need to cling to. I'm not sure when I would have realized the extent to which I was doing this if not for injuring myself.

So in short, God brought someone back into the Church, and drew me closer to Himself. The only price I had to back was a little pain and a lot of inconvenience. Not a bad tradeoff when you think about it. All things are worked for the glory of God. Even my broken arm.

One Year Ago Today

February 16, 2005

Details

I'm starting to feel better, so I figured I'd give a little more details. My arms still aren't 100%, but I can use both of them to type.

I was biking to work on Wednesday, and was almost there when I fell. I didn't hit anything, nor did anything hit me. I've got about twenty different theories about what caused it, but my best guess is just operator error. All I know is that one moment I was biking and the next I was falling. I hit the ground, slid, and then as quick as I could, pulled myself and my bike off of the road. I laid there in a daze for a bit, trying to get up my strength to get out my cell phone and call someone at work. Before that happened, someone pulled up in a truck and took me and my bike the rest of the way to work. People at work helped clean my wounds, then one guy took me to the hospital. As I was waiting, both of my arms began hurting a lot, and I was afraid that I'd broken both of them. Fortunately the x-rays showed only a single crack in the right arm. My left arm was just severely bruised. They put me in a splint and sent me home. I spent the rest of the day watching DVDs, one of the few things my half of a capable arm was able to do. Seriously, I could hardly do anything that day. It was only with a ton of pain that I could even use the bathroom on my own.

On Thursday morning I saw a specialist who told me I couldn't be put in a cast because the proximity of the break to my elbow meant that scar tissue would lock up the elbow if I didn't keep moving it. At the advice of both the doctor people at work, I took the rest of the week off, returning on Monday.

I've been having to get a lot of help, including people to drive me everywhere, but all in all it hasn't been too bad. I have an appointment to see the specialist again, and I'll see how the healing has been going according to x-rays. Right now I have most of my full range of motion back in each arm, they are just weak, particularly the broken one.

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and your help as I'm on the road to healing.

Short Post

I broke my right arm on Wednesday. There's a lot more about it that I'd like to write, but I'm too impatient to type much with one hand.

Commute

Today was the first time I biked to work from my new apartment (Monday and Tuesday I was headed other places in addition to work, so needed my car). It took me about 12 minutes to bike the 2.5 miles - about the same amount of time as it used to take me to drive to work from my previous apartment. That doesn't count the time I spend unlocking and locking my bike, or the time to attach a bag to the back of it. Still, that adds maybe 5 minutes at the most, so I still have a nice short commute, but now I get exercise too.

Unexpected Conversation

I had a great conversation over email at work today. It started by someone forwarding an email over the staff list. The email was similar to this one, but modified in ways that didn't improve it. I rolled my eyes a little and ignored it. Another guy responded (to the staff list) with a rebuttal of why the information needed to be taken with a lot of salt, which I entirely agreed with. The following email exchange (summarized) occurred between the two of us (not on the staff email list):

Me: <Joke illustrating one of his points in terms of Toyon's business model.>
Him: That's funny, you should post it to the staff list.
Me: No, the person that posted it already took some flack from you for that email. They don't need any more from me.
Him: Wow, that's a good point. How did you learn to think like that?
Me: I picked it up over time based on how that sort of thing can hurt me and how I know I've hurt others.

Later...
Him: Based on our earlier conversation I changed an email I was writing. <Gives text where he reworded his opinion to remove the words "obnoxious" and "crap".> I'm used to being obnoxious as part of my character. I'll have to see if I can give it up.

It was really neat to realize that I've definitely picked up some sensitivities over the past few years to know how to control my own obnoxious and sarcastic personality when I realize it won't be appreciated. I still have more to learn, but that conversation showed me that more of that is coming to me naturally now.

Weekend Results

I had a very busy weekend. It was a good weekend, but not one that I would want to repeat. Here are a few results from the weekend:

What I Did Do:

• Moved almost everything from our old apartment to our new apartment, which involved one 17' U-Haul load and about 10 car loads to accomplish.
• Drove down to LA and back to see Liz and wish her the best for her coming marriage.
• In total drove about 300 miles.
• Biked about 10 miles.
• Slept in 3 different cities on the 3 nights.

What I Didn't Do:

• I failed both to shower and to shave one day. (It is very unusual for me to miss either of those. I think the last time that happened may have been when I was traveling internationally for 36 straight hours.)
• Went for over 48 hours without picking up a Bible except for purposes of moving it from one apartment to the other. (Again, very unusual for me.)
• On Sunday, I ate breakfast, but then only ate a candy bar and a root beer (Only things I could find in our place that I could eat while driving) up until about 9pm.
• I went over 60 hours without checking my email.

As far as moving goes, all that's left for our old place is to grab a few straggling things after work tonight, clean it up a little, and meet with our landlord to return the keys and get our deposit back. Our new place still has a lot of organizing left to do, and one more roommate to move in.

I Didn't See What Was Really Going On

Last night at Balboa class I had an interesting experience. My second partner struck me as ...unusual. She seemed really out of it, like she didn't know what was going on around her. When the instructors were demonstrating things she just stared at me with a blank look in her eyes. She kept at least one hand on me when we weren't dancing, but when we did start dancing she didn't meet me halfway into dance position - as if she didn't realize that I was getting ready to dance with her. It was weird, a bit uncomfortable, and to be honest, I was kind of glad to move on to my next partner. Towards the end of the class one of the instructors made a helpful announcement.

By the way everyone, this women is blind.

Moving Done!

Except for the part where we actually move. So really what I mean is that we signed on a place this evening so we know when we're going to move. We will be living here - out in the Santa Barbara boonies known as Goleta. Certainly it isn't the perfect home, but it struck a balance that I hope will work well for us. We get our keys on Friday, and should be moved in by the end of the weekend.

God and Money

Saturday of last weekend my Church had a seminar called "God and Money." It was aimed at young adults - those who are starting to set lifelong habits involving money. The time was divided up into two parts. The first hour was biblical teaching on money by Mike Willbanks, the college / young adult pastor at my Church. I liked a lot of what he said. One thing in particular stuck with me. I'll reproduce it from memory:

Is money good or is money bad? Is it a blessing or a curse? It is both good and bad, but never neutral. It all depends on how you control your money. Think about your life as a train, and money as fire. When properly controlled in the engine, fire provides a powerful driving force for the train. Money can be used to enable great things. On the other hand, consider if that same "good" fire was in the rest of the train - It would be an absolute disaster. Money is like that. If you don't keep your money in check, it will ruin your life.

The second hour was basic financial advice from two professional financial planners that are part of my Church. It wasn't anything particularly new to me, although one thing struck me as kind of scary because of what it says about our culture. They advised people to always use cash or debit for purchases, never credit cards. At first I thought, that's dumb, I use them all the time, and pay them off in full every month - no big deal. Then I thought about the fact that this was coming from professional financial planners. These guys have probably seen how thousands of people handle their money. That most likely means that an incredible majority of people cannot handle credit cards responsibly and get themselves into huge trouble with them, and that's out of people that are responsible enough to go to financial planners in the first place.

Yet Another Housing Update

This won't be the last housing update, because we still haven't picked a new place. I do know that there will almost certainly be three of us: Philip (current roommate), Mark (another engineer from my Church), and myself. Ever since returning from Christmas break we've been looking at places like crazy. We have until January 31st to move out of our current place, so we are starting to reach crunch time. We are down to the point where we need to just choose a place from the places we have seen. None of the places are perfect, but I think we're down to only having a few reasonable choices. A few of the big factors:

• Price: Housing in Santa Barbara is expensive. We were looking at 3-bedroom houses and apartments. The most expensive ones we saw were $2500 / month plus all utilities. There are plenty that were more expensive, we just filtered out anything more expensive than that. For reference the least expensive place we found was $2000 / month, but most were at least $2200.
• Size: Most of the places just weren't big enough for us. There was one apartment we looked at with a bedroom that was about 9'x8'. I don't consider that to be a bedroom. I consider it a walk-in closet with a window. A lot of the rooms we've seen just weren't designed to have a bed, a desk, and a dresser fit inside of them in their traditional orientations.
• Distance from Santa Barbara: The closer you are to downtown Santa Barbara, the more expensive housing gets. Things get noticeably less expensive as you move towards Goleta. For reference, the $2000 / month place is well into Goleta, but it is also the largest place we've seen (in terms of internal floor space) and is in excellent condition (not the case with all places). Unfortunately, the one person who cares the most about being close to work (because he bikes to work about 4.5 days out of the week) works right in downtown Santa Barbara. The better deals we've seen are well outside of his biking range.

Obviously we are going to have to strike some compromise. As soon as I know what the final verdict is, I will post something about it.

The Next Session of Home Group Begins

After taking a four week break for Christmas, our home group met again last night. We'll be starting a study on Colossians next week, but last night we just spent more time getting back into each others lives. We had an unusually small group last night - 7 out of our usual 14 - but I think it really helped facilitate our ability to be intimate with each other. Although I wouldn't kick anyone out of our group, I really do wish that we were smaller. Seven people seemed like a much better size for sharing deeply with each other about our joys, sorrows, and struggles.

The Proposal is Done!

This week I haven't actually put much time into it, but it is a bit of a relief to know that as of 6am EST this morning (you can always resubmit up until the deadline), I no longer have the option of working on it.

The Political Interpretations of Oz

I recently got a nice two volume set of all 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum. They were books that I dearly loved when my mother read them to me as a child, and since I hardly remember anything about them anymore, I've been eager to read them again. Tonight I finished the second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. I've certainly been enjoying them, but what I've found particularly interesting is that there is strong reason to believe that the original Oz book (not the 13 sequels) was written as something of a political allegory. I discovered this before starting the first book, and there were several things that caught my attention as a result. One in particular caught my attention. If you somehow are unfamiliar with the story of the Wizard of Oz, then this will be a bit of a spoiler:

The Scarecrow was now the ruler of the Emerald City, and although he was not a Wizard the people were proud of him. "For," they said, "there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man." And, so far as they knew, they were quite right.

It's impossible to know if he meant that as a specific jab or not. He always maintained that he meant the book purely as a children's story and nothing more.

There were quite a few other things I found interesting. To name a few:

• There are huge sections of plot that were omitted from the famous movie. Similarly, there are major sections of the movie that do not exist in the book.
• The compass on the official Oz map shows east pointing west and west pointing east. At first I assumed he must have been a Mudder, although that seems unlikely since he died in 1919.
• It turns out that originally he didn't intend to write more than one, but the flood of letters he got eventually inspired him to keep writing.

Ok, I think that's enough of my ramblings for tonight.

One Way or Another, I'll Get My Dancing In

Since before I moved to Santa Barbara there's been an Arthur Murray Dance Studio that has been nice enough to offer their floor to swing dancers for free 9:00-11:00 every Wednesday night. They recently decided to stop doing that, which was quite a disappointment to me. Now the only swing I have in Santa Barbara is every other Friday night.

Fortunately I've discovered a few other outlets. First off, it turns out that there is swing down in Ventura (about 30 miles "south") on the alternate Friday nights, so it looks like some of us will go down there at least this Friday, and I suspect some others as well.

Second, I discovered that there is a six week Balboa class offered on Wednesday nights. Tonight was the first night, and I figured it was about time for me to learn Balboa*. It was a lot of fun. Unlike the dance classes I took in college, tonight I was substantially below the average age. Also the ratio was closer to 1:1 (women:men) than it was to 3:2. In college it seemed like most classes the women were lucky if it was better than 2:1. In any case, soon I may be semi-competent in Balboa.

*: Part of my intermediate Lindy Hop class in college did one or two lessons on Balboa, but I never learned it that well to begin with, and have since then forgotten most of it.

Third Place!

I just got back from swing dancing. They had a casual Jack and Jill competition. There were about 30 leads and 30 follows to start with. I was pretty excited to make it into the top round with only 3 leads and 3 follows. I may have been last place out of the finalists, but I'm still pretty happy about making it into the top 10% - Plus I had a lot of fun dancing in it.

Housing Update

As I mentioned here, Philip and I have to find a new place to live. I just wanted to give you a brief update of where we're at. Right now it could be just the two of us again, but there are likely to be three, or even four of us. There are two other men from my Church that are considering moving in with us. We looked at a few places yesterday. We saw a two bedroom apartment that I didn't care for, and then a three bedroom apartment that seemed reasonable to me, and the others seemed to like it fairly well. Hopefully I will get around to posting more as things progress.

Taking Work Home

This entry will pretty much be a clarification of the title. I've been working at Toyon as a full time employee for about six months now and I have never done any of my work anywhere except at work. I somewhat hope to keep that boundary, although I may let it slide as long as it doesn't mean the rest of my life is being pushed out for the sake of work. In any case, that is a question for another time.

I've always been fairly happy that whatever is going on at work I can just leave there emotionally at the end of the day. This week has marked the first time when I've really been preoccupied about work outside of work. One of the parts of working at Toyon is writing proposals for SBIR contracts. They come out four times a year, and we are encouraged to write for them. Internally we have a review process for which the drafts are due Monday morning. I'm writing my first proposal this round, and it's been taking up a lot of my time and has been somewhat overwhelming. Another downside of the whole process is that we are only funded for a limited amount of time on it. Any additional time you put in is on your own time*, although it is expected that you will keep working on it until you have something worth turning in. I am already past my limit, and I suspect that by the time I'm done I will have put in at least a couple days worth of my own time on it. The combination of my first deadline, not really enjoying technical writing to begin with, and being over my paid time limit has certainly contributed to my general outlook outside of work. The bright side is that I am learning from this experience, and I should be able to write my next one much more quickly, perhaps even within the budgeted time.

*: If you win a proposal you get a bonus, so assuming you win some that you wouldn't if you stopped when you ran out of paid time, then you are still getting paid for time above and beyond. I also want to note that I'm somewhat mixed on this policy. Although I don't want to get into why, I can understand reasons to keep it in place.