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.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
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.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
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.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
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.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
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:
Ok, my kernel is done compiling. Time to see if I accidentally removed any kernel options that I actually do need...
Update: Success!
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 CPUsFortunately 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!
Monday, May 01, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
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.
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.
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