Caleb

In the last few weeks, I have intercepted plenty of people discussing the pros and cons of having Christmas on a sunday. The last time it happened this way was 11 years ago and I was too young to really notice what church was like that day.

This year, I noticed, and I liked what I saw. Christmas is a time to celebrate and remember Jesus birth. What better way to do that then to gather together as a family. Most families in this country go to great lengths to get together over the hollidays. Why should we as a church (the family of God) not make the extra effort to gather together on Christmas to celebrate?

On Christmas Eve, people piled into church, many of them for the only time this year. I am not quite sure why this happens, but it does. I like the procedure; it is a great chance to share with the world what Christmas is all about.

On Christmas Day, only the people who really cared about being a member of Gods family bothered to come to church. It was more intimate setting than usual and the joy that was shared will be stick in my memory for years to come.

I think christmas should always be on a sunday — or at least we should always gather as a family on christmas, whatever day of the week it is.

It is my personal opinion that whenever a blog has gone stale for a while, it is a good idea to bring it back with a bang. So here it is. I am writting to yell at my blog because I’m tired of hearing myself yell at myself and there is nobody else handy to yell at.

Six am was well before my alarm this morning, but I felt (first mistake) well enough rested to get up and tackle some busy work in hopes of having a fun project to work on later in the day.

<power button>

<click, bang, stcratch (repeat)>

The sounds of a dying hard drive are always a nice morning greeting.

<sarcasm alert>

I decided it would be prudent to make an imidiate backup of everything on the disk, most of which was well enough backed up anyway, but there were a few sets of pictures from recent trips that had not been sorted and put in my svn repository yet.

<insert really bad mistake where I delete piles of files>

Grrrr. So I decided that this was the wrong way to get the morning started and that I should go chill out and come back and start over. I decided to go for a quick hike on a favorite trail a mile or so out of town. There is where I add insult to injury. I got a speeding ticket for 10-19 over just at the edge of town. My first citation ever. Fully deserved. 4 points.

<Rewind>

Oh how I wish life had a rewind button! On the bright side, I have not yet smashed my finger in a door.

Today marks a new milestone for me. I just deposited my first check that had medicare witholdings taken out of it.

Updated: Very mysteriously after making this post, a mirky green substance began oozing out of the server that houses my blog database, completly ruining a SCSI disk array imediatly below it. I didn’t know sarcasm was that sticky!

Walmart is not my favorite place to hang out. I prefer to make my once-a-month shopping visits at about 2 in the morning because there is nobody in the way and the re-stocking crew knows exactly where everything is. Due to circumstances beond my control (getting a jeep worked on at a neighboring dealership, I had to had to hang out there for a while yesterday afternoon.

Since Mothers Day is tomorrow I decided that I should look for a card for my mom. A walk by the card isle quickly made me decide that it was too crowded and I should come back later. Two subsequent walk-bys made me think I might not get a chance to pick out a card at all. Upon my fourth visit I hung around long enough to realize that I was missing out on some great people watching.

There isn’t much funnier than watching guys trying desperatly to find a card for their moms. Enter some woman on the scene and one of them will get up enough spunk to ask for suggestions, and I had to move to the next isle so people wouldn’t notice me laughing.

My own search was not very fruitfull. In the end I decided to make one myself becaues the only ones availible seemed to be for people who couldn’t actually think of anything nice to say.

It’s not easy for me to summarize my state of being, especally not to somebody who I actaully want to know how I am. I usually gloss over everything and convey nothing of substance, or else spend so much time going into depth that the point is lost.

However quite on accident this morning I said something that I think profound enough to bear repeating here for anybody who wants to know how I am.

I am learning to commit my heart to following Christ. It is easy enough to commit my time and activities to His care, but not so easy to trust Him with my heart and it’s desires. It is natural for me to hold onto a little corner that is what I want for myself and hope and pray that my Leader arranges my circumstances so that my heart is satisfied instead of letting Him work directly with my heart.

The realization of how accurate that statement is did not come until after I had sent the letter and re-read it later. I wonder how much easier my life would be if I would actually commit my heart’s desires to Christ’s care … and how much better my attitude would be if I could let go of the faint reservations that still pull at my heart because some part of me is still withheld in my control.

I took one of our rental Jeeps out today for a pre-season trail inspection. I was eager to get out of the office and decided that playing in the snow in a jeep was just the ticket. Of course none of the jeep roads are open for more than a mile or two yet, but it was fun to check.

Having gotten as far up CampBirdRoad as snow would allow, I was sitting in the Jeep talking to my friend when we heard a rumble very much like distant thunder, only instead of dieing off it grew lower. A quick inspection showed a large slide comming off the face of I forget it’s name but here’s a map. The crashing sound of falling rock and snow lasted about ten or twelve seconds and snow was still sliding around half a minute later.

Another exploration up DexterCreek lead got me stuck in the snow. I followed some snow-mobile tracks in for about a quarter mile, which was fine except I fell off them backing out and had to dig out for twenty minutes or so.

All round, a very succesful first-jeep-day for 2005.

2 1/2′ of fresh powder. Why am I not snowboarding?

Waste Management, meet the H2.

Please excuse the mess! I am still a long way for having a finished site, but I figured it was time to have something usable again.

New site features

• The wiki engine has been rebuilt and is now known as QueWiki. Go play in the SandBox.
• Blog engine
• XMLHttp requests for fast browsing!
• Usefull site-search using the Google search API
• AccessKeys for many common navigation features.
• User customizable including stylesheet and javascript toolkits.

You can checkout the SiteRedesign white paper to see if I accomplished my objectives.

Yet to come

• Real stylesheets with real designs
• Photo gallery & wiki picture macro
• Wiki & Blog Comments

Apparently God does not understand the concept of moderation. Last week I felt that our youth ministry was a little flat and prayed for a “little life”. Well apparently God has a surplus on life right now because all of us, leaders and kids alike got a double dose.

Now all that remains is to compose myself.