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.