Ohhhhh… just randomly ran across this article on the Onion and HAD to post a link. Just HAD to…
I won’t even spoil it by giving you anymore info about it. Just go read it. Go ahead. I’ll wait. (If you need a clue before jumping over there, this post is tagged in my ‘Christianity’ category, and I did tell you the article’s on the Onion… )
OK, you’re back. Loved it, I hope! Think about that whole ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ bit as the economy tanks and your neighbor’s worried about their job and thus their house and their credit and their ability to support their kids. Think about the ‘love thy neighbor as yourself’ part as you go past an Angel Tree on your way to hunt down the latest toy for you or your kids. Think about the ‘love thy neighbor as yourself’ part as you dream of Christmas bonuses and hear on the news of food pantries running low. And if you need any other ideas, feel free to let me know. And then hold me accountable, too, because that’s also loving your neighbor as yourself.
November 19th, 2008
In March, there’ll be a geek conference out in Santa Clara, CA called ‘EclipseCon’. I wanna go. Trying to figure out a sure-fire presentation that’ll get me at least the cost of the conference registration, as well as a bit of leverage with my employer to make it a slam-dunk. Thinking, thinking, thinking. If you have any ideas for an OSGi or Eclipse presentation you’d like to see, drop me a line. Right now I’m thinking of things like walk-throughs on some of the R4.1 spec items like configuration administration, with demonstrations of their usefulness as well as working code. Also thinking of analyzing the distribution and update problem: does P2 handle things or do you need to go beyond? What other options exist? How does one update software running in the field? (Note that I don’t have an answer to the above yet, but am brashly confident I’d have one by the time of the conference.) But more inspirations and ideas would be useful.
November 16th, 2008
If anyone is interested in a wonderful Christmas present for moi, any of the following that refer to running would be nice: (running schwag that well fits me)
October 9th, 2008
Two weekends ago, I had the privilege of being asked to give my Christian testimony to the high school youth group at our church. I started hanging out with them last spring, when the youth director said they needed folks to come listen/talk/just basically be there for the kids. I’ve known some of these kids since they were 4, so it’s really a lot of fun to get to hang out with the now. Now, I’m the old lady they’re polite to, rather than the Sunday school or Pioneer Girl leader with all of the answers, but, hey, that’s life. They’re at least polite. 
So, in 10+ years of being a member of our church and of being a Christian, I’d never been asked to give my testimony before. Our church does require that you speak with a deacon and an elder as part of the membership process and explain your faith, but I consider that a pretty friendly audience. Giving these young adults something was going to be something entirely different.
I’ll talk more about how it went and how I prepared for it in later posts (yes, that does mean I have the intention of posting more frequently than I’ve done of late), but this is just a post to talk about why I think it was important for me to prepare to give a testimony. Just to make clear how I’m using the word “testimony”, what I told the kids was how God called me to faith, where I had been, and how I knew that it was Him who called me. There are other kinds of testimonies, having to do with what God’s doing in your life, and probably other things, as well, but the “come to faith” kind was what I gave.
My path to faith wasn’t the same as most of these kids. For one, I never was in a Sunday school or youth group. I became a Christian as an adult. And mine wasn’t a lightning bolt experience, or a Paul on the road to Emmaus experience. God used people and circumstances to bring me to Him, but there was nothing I’ve ever recognized as a pivotal moment. Just a buildup to what became to me a natural acceptance of His plan and His glory. Sometimes I wish I had had the Emmaus moment. Instead, I got to wrestle with whether I was just going with the flow, or whether I was going with God’s flow. I’ve wrestled with that before, but in prepping my testimony, I got to revisit it, and see if the evidence I looked to was sufficient to be convincing to others, and/or if there was something in my path whose description might help one of the kids.
I was very glad to give my testimony, and very glad when the giving it was over. Turned out conveying it was useful to me, in terms of structuring my own thinking, and bringing to mind some things I hadn’t considered in a while. One of the layman leaders in our church occasionally gives sessions on how to structure and present your testimony. I’m planning on catching the next one that I can. Doing it was a real gift to me; I’m hoping being able to do it again will somehow help someone else. If NOTHING else, seeing other folks do it might give someone else the idea to think through their own, and have an answer ready if someone asks why they’re a Christian, and how it impacts their life.
October 8th, 2008
I popped my knee last Friday, playing softball at the office’s “team-building” picnic. Went to scoop a ball, knelt down, felt it pop. Ow. Kept playing, seemed to be reasonably OK.
It hasn’t felt right since, though. For a bit, it hurt. Now it just doesn’t feel like it’s quite the way it was. And no, I haven’t seen a doctor. No real pain now, no way to describe the motion that caused the pop - what would I tell him?
The challenge: Saturday’s the half-marathon. I’m debating. Right now, I’m leaning towards yes. I ran on the treadmill tonight with a knee brace on, and feel no worse/weirder than I did before. I’m thinking that if I’m careful about planting my feet and don’t lead with the suspect knee when stepping off any curbs, I’ll probably be OK. Will see how it feels tomorrow, after sleeping after my run.
October 8th, 2008
I’m three weeks out from the Baltimore half-marathon, and feeling very excited. I ran this race 4 years ago, in 2004, and discovered that Baltimore has hills! This is not the thing you want to discover in the middle of a very long race. I slogged through the race, coming in at 2:37:19. That works out to be just slightly over 12 minute miles - bleah. Or, more positively put, a time which gives me a lot of room to improve. I’d like to come in at sub 2:15, which gives me 10:17 miles to work with. (Confession time: I’m slow!) On a treadmill, I’ve done 12+ in less than 2 hours, so this should be doable. And this time I’ve added hill intervals to that treadmill workout. Race day will prove whether I’ve done enough training and whether I’m smart about using these last few weeks.
So think about me October 11. The race starts at 9:45, and I should theoretically be done sometime right around noon. I’ll have a few minute delay to cross the starting line, since I’ll hang back with the slower runners for the starting lineup. After that, though, the race is mine! My daughters ask me if I race to win… my answer is I race to beat myself. I want to get faster and stronger. I’m already thinking about my goals for after the half (marathon in the spring - not sure which one yet). There’s just something about shaving time off, and pushing to longer distances, that really feeds the striving ambitious side of me. If you know of a local race that sounds interesting, tell me about it: Saturday races work better than Sunday races, since I don’t run fast enough to let me run and then get showered up and ready for church.
September 22nd, 2008
Cora’s started to read. Actually, she started to read last year in kindergarten, and is now going gangbusters. So things that I didn’t have to worry about her noticing before are now more of an issue. We were at the mall yesterday, and she saw a release notice for ‘Sex and the City’. She asks me ‘what’s S-E-X spell?’ Minor gulp. ‘Sex’, I tell her. ‘What’s that?’. More major gulp. ‘Um, good question - let me think of a good way to explain it to you’. After some spurts and fumbling (and several more questions on her part), we get to the mechanical question - how’s it work? So I say, well, you know that Daddy and Cameron have something that you and I don’t, right? She answers: curly hair? Nearly shot soda out of my nose…
For those of our friends who have younger kids than us, remember, Cora’s 6 (!). Your time is quickly approaching. So start considering answers soon to the most interesting questions you can think of. The ones that have an odd hand grenade quality - dropped unexpectedly, they tend to make you want to scatter. And malls just don’t have nearly enough cover.
September 20th, 2008
As the Washington Post reports that McCain’s chief of vetting only interviewed Sarah Palin the day before she was tapped as vice president, I wonder whether McCain’s maverick nature has bit him too hard. The disadvantage to being a maverick is you forge your own path - the one that others haven’t seen, or if they’ve seen it, have viewed it as too hard, too dangerous, or just unwise. I happen to view this choice as just plain unwise, as spur of the moment, as foolhardy. I’m female, I’m Christian, I’m what some would argue as middle class (hey, we make less than $5 mil a year, anyway), and I was an undecided voter. Until he picked Palin, that is. He had multiple women on his advisory team who would have made better picks (Whitman being my preference over Fiorino). There are multiple women senators, other women governors, current women Cabinet officers: any of which I’d have looked at more seriously than Palin. A relatively rookie governor from Alaska, which could hardly be described as a state wrestling with most of the same issues as others, whose previous experience was as a mayor of a 9000 person town. My university has a bigger population than her town did, and as much as I respected Dr. Hrabowski as a leader, my veep choice he wouldn’t be.
McCain’s choice demonstrates his inability to do several things: listen to his vetting team, select people appropriate to accomplish his vision, and convince the rest of us of his choice. All of those I see as key markers of him, not just of her. I’ve seen various comments that suggest the Dems put their inexperienced candidate at the top of the ticket, and the Republicans at the bottom. But what I’m seeing indicates that the Dems seem to have made a wiser pick for veep, which makes me much comfortable with their TOP of the ticket than does the Republican pick.
And by the way, for those in the Christian right who are applauding their issues coming front and center: when the candidate is only there to front those issues, and not any others that the American people cares about, it just yet again separates Christians from the concerns of the rest of America. I agree that (some of the) Christian right concerns deserve far more discussion and focus; I just don’t think they are the exclusive issues for the American populace, and I’m concerned to see Christians cast yet again as way outside of the fray. We are called to do God’s work in the world. That only works if we’re involved IN the world, as was Paul and the apostles, not trying to stand completely outside of it.
I don’t see McCain recovering from this, in my personal selection process. I had been undecided: both candidates had their plusses and minuses. But now I see myself needing to vote against McCain, against what I see as a pandering selection, trying to please both women and the conservative Christian right with one candidate who covers all the check boxes. Except for the ones that would cause me to see her as viable to fill the role of Vice President, to have some ability to step into the highest office in the land should that become necessary. And that is a horrible mark against the man who would like me to check his name in the ballot in November.
September 2nd, 2008
Seen, and enjoyed - happily linking to here with the hopes of my tattoo-party-wishing readers checking it out and maybe purchasing: 
July 27th, 2008
I just asked Cameron to put his Daddy’s shoes away. He did - he’s a good little helper. And then I stopped to think about what he’d just had to understand and figure out, and just how amazing it is that our brains put these pieces together.
First, you need to know that Daddy’s shoes were in amongst several other pairs of shoes in a group near the front door. Our family tends to do a good job of taking shoes off when we come in; we’re not as good about putting those shoes away, so there were at least four pairs collected there. So Cameron had to sort out a few things: one, which items in the room were shoes, which were Daddy’s shoes, and then grab just those two. (He did, and then commented ‘Heavy’.)
Then I realized he had to figure out where to put them. I hadn’t told him where Daddy’s shoes were to go, just “away”. He parsed that to mean, take them down the hall, and put them in Daddy’s room. Taking a quick peek, he not only put them in Daddy’s room, he put them in Daddy’s closet, and even on Daddy’s side of the closet.
I got into computer programming because I wanted to teach computers how to think. I’ve now spent some 15 or so years in the profession, and no program I’ve ever written intuited nearly as much as my not-yet two year old putting his Daddy’s shoes away for his Mommy. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” - Psalm 139:14
July 27th, 2008
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