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.