7.4 - The End is Near!

Pay no attention to the title—ok, well, maybe *some* attention—I'm just trying to take advantage of a trend I've noticed. It seems that of my seven topics, the two that garner the most response are "God" and "The Future." I must semi-logically conclude that people are really only interested in the Apocalypse, and the rest of life happens only as a means of reaching that most interesting end.

Since this falls sort of neatly into "The Future," here we go!

So, are we destined for some kind of apocalyptic end?

God-fearing folks (not all of them, mind you) have believed that theirs was the last generation for 2000 years now. Every generation could point out all the reasons why the end was near. I have a copy of "88 Reasons Why Christ Will Return in 1988," if you care to see it. I believe the sequel was called "89 Reasons..."

What is the point of an apocalyptic vision of the future? Is it a tool used by religion to keep the populace in check, on the edge of their seats, ready for judgement at any time? Is it the perceived natural conclusion of increasing political turmoil used to maintain some semblance of world peace? Is it simply a great device for science fiction? (Post-apocalyptic sci-fi rocks!)

Is the end of the world the end of the world, and if so, is it close enough to care?

I know what I was taught. I know what I've observed. I know the many opinions of others that have been relayed to me. I've studied all the theories. I've read many of the books.

Regarding the future and my personal end the conclusions are quite clear.

I'm going to be working on the house.

5.4 - Workin' Outside

Three weeks ago I said I'd be working outside: siding, windows, walkways—that kind of thing. Well, that's actually what I've been doing!

On weekend #1, I put fresh siding on the front porch (ok, the house within the vicinity of the front porch), replaced the light (the one that never worked quite right after my brother-in-law messed with it, like, ten years ago), added a new motion sensor, replaced the light switch, and installed a nifty-keen new GFI outlet (power on the porch—yay!). The new setup is really cool, the light stays on a really low here-is-the-door level until it senses motion, then it gets bright so you feel welcomed. I like it a lot, but then again I'm easily impressed.

On weekend #2, I replaced all the siding on the wall above the front porch. There are lots of nasty angles there so it took quite a while. Oh, yeah, I cleaned out the gutters while I was up there, too. Fun.

On weekend #3, I replaced the front window. Ok, that really wasn't much work—maybe an hour and a half or so, so I was a bit of a slacker maybe this last weekend, but hey, the front of my house is looking sweet!

So I'm trying to plan this next weekend (#4 if you've been keeping up). I probably should think about replacing the window above the front porch—since it's not even really a window, it's more of a storm window held into place with some odd bits of slightly inappropriate hardware. It's just about the last bit of nastyness on the front of my house, other than some painting, which I also need to do.

I also still have that vent to install, since the bathroom fan is currently blowing all that moist (FWIW: I really dislike that word) air into the attic which isn't good long term and will be really bad when winter comes and the attic fan isn't running constantly like it does now.

If all that goes well, then hopefully around weekend #6 I can get to walkways and other landscape-y kinds of things between apple picking, hay-bale buying, and pumpkin purchasing trips.

October seems to me to be one of the best times to actually own a house. You work on your house during a very comfortable day, and then as the cool of evening falls, you light a fire in the chimenea and bring out the TV to watch the Yankees win.

It's all very satisfying. You should try it. At least you should come look at my house—it's looking sweet!

4.4 - Dinosaur Comics!

Eleven days since my last post. Woah. What have I been doing? Have I been finding a new job? Working on my house? Spending time with my family? Well, yes... but that's not the point.

My normal blogging time has been overrun with dinosaurs. Somehow I—completely by accident—ran across Dinosaur Comics. There's no link here. It's easy to find at qwantz dot com, but it's not for kids (occasional bad words and not-for-kids kinds of topics) so I don't want to make it too easy (not that I just made it too hard there, hmm, oh, well <sigh>).

It is refreshing to find a comic so intelligent that occasionally (it's rare, okay?) I'll find one that I don't completely understand because the math is too hard or it has exceeded my linguistic skills. Let me pull a quick first-panel quote from a couple (ok, three) at random so you see what I mean...

• "Historically speaking, all I know are broad stereotypes! For instance, most people in the middle ages all wore dumpy clothes and spent all day hoeing."
  
• "I finally figured out how to gain the upper hand on that stupid utahraptor. I will adopt for my own the philosophy of pragmatism"
  
• "I had the most disturbing thought today...By being true to yourself, you are forever derivative!"

They also have great t-shirts which I may just have to buy. My favorite is reproduced above.

Humor for nerds. What could be better?

3.4 - Convergence or Inflection?

As I contemplate the trajectory of the collective experiences of my family, 625 days from today is a point of decision. The question that will be answered by this decision is essentially whether the activities in the preceeding 21 months culminate in a point of inflection or one of convergence.

In 89 weeks, my wife will finish her graduate program. In 15000 hours, my daughter will complete her two-year degree. 1.75 years from now, my son will complete ninth grade. After seven seasons, will it be time for something new or more of the same?

The question is essential with implications for today. While my family has a decision point 5⁴ days in the future, my crossroads are before me now. As Earth travels its next billion miles through our solar system, do I focus on the temporary, building toward that future inflection point or do I seek steadfast permanence, expecting future changes of lesser magnitude—providing stability and accepting our current life as a seamless precursor to our future beyond the coming convergence.

Do I spend the next 625000 beats improving my skills, taking classes, preparing to sell the house, and expecting a significant divergence from the current flow of events? Or is the significant move to be made smaller but now—using these next 3.5 Friedmans to build the stable base upon which all future actions are presupposed?

My actions today build momentum that will assist or hinder the future course of action. I must choose wisely. I must choose soon.

2.4 - A moment of silence

1.4 - The politics of God

I always pictured God as a republican:

• Steadfast, never-changing. No free handouts. You work to eat. A level playing field. You get opportunity and you have choices. Rules are rules and actions have consequences. You reap what you sow. Science must be wrong because creation is right.

Recently I've been seeing God as a democrat:

• Mercy and grace are decidedly not conservative values. I find numerous examples of waffling and regret—changes of mind—actions altered to comply with the requests of pitiful men. Acceptance, no matter how badly you mess up. Rules exist, but so does forgiveness. Science tells us "how," religion tells us "why."

Sometimes I have difficulty reconciling these two views.

• Unwavering vs. wishy-washy or stubborn vs. flexible?
  
• Justice vs. tolerance or unmerciful vs. forgiving?
  
• Fact vs. fairy tale or fable vs. allegory?
  
• Holiness vs. permission or condemnation vs. compassion?

Perhaps one is the God that is, and the other is the God I desire—a real God and an ideal God—but which is which?

7.3 - Happy dippy bird power

So I sit here watching my happy dippy bird do his thing, while pondering Global Intelligence and the energy choices of the coming decades.

Chevron has developed a nifty game that lets you determine the energy sources for a city through 2030, and enables you to see the impact of your choices. If you want to do well, you choose some combination of hydroelectric, wind, solar, nuclear, and hydrogen. If you want to do poorly, try to run everything on petroleum and coal.

I'd like to think that by 2030, we would find some method of generating power that no one has thought of yet.

I'd like to be that someone.

The idea of powering the future with multitudes of drinking bird toys is interesting, but some quick calculations indicate that it would take about 1 square mile of head-to-tail, side-by-side birds (that's about 300 million birds) to power three 100-watt lightbulbs—and that doesn't even account for keeping their heads wet. Apparently they are tremendously inefficient. So... although the idea has some definite visual appeal (Spencer Tunick, eat your heart out), I don't think that will work.

Maybe you only need one bird. One really big bird...

5.3 - It's nice outside. I'll be out there.

Labor Day weekend was spent getting ready to install a new bathtub in the master bathroom. "Getting ready to install" could mean preparing, planning, designing, stalling, or dreading—it all depends how you look at it.

The selected unit is significantly larger than the original, and required quite a bit of work to figure out how to make it fit right and be functional for us. Our bathroom is pretty big, but the tub will really take up a lot of space. It took most of an afternoon to create a design that might just work. The result of all this effort is a realization that the project is quite large, and will probably result in having no tub in the bathroom for several months.

When combined with the idea that we are hoping to move within the next couple of years, the extra effort to have a better tub lost its appeal. I can replace the current tub with a same-size model (but still a great tub: jetted and all) for half the cost, one-quarter of the effort, and one-tenth of the disruption to the hygenic cleansing schedule of master bathroom bathtub users.

While these conclusions are fairly straightforward and somewhat mundane, I assure you that the reaching of these conclusions was anything but straightforward and mundane, and involved a lot of discussion amongst the affected parties.

Anyway, I've decided that the duct tape covering the cracks in the tub (that have already been patched several times) will hold for another couple of months. Perhaps this project is best saved for the dead of winter, when everyone is grumpy anyway and soaking in a hot bath seems even more appealing.

For now, I'll concentrate my efforts outside. I have some siding to replace, an external vent to install, some brick walkways to construct, and a window or two I really need to replace. The weather's nice; I'd best get to work.

4.3 - Who is John Galt? Is he a gamer?

I enjoy video games. I enjoy them quite a bit, actually. Unfortunately, life is short, and the choices many, so I don't get to partake as often as I'd like. I'm sure my playing time will be even more limited as the job hunt continues and the semester progresses.

Since the kids were so great on our cross-country excursion, I bought me, er, them a Wii. What an amazingly fun piece of equipment that is. I know it has to be good exercise, too; the day after we hooked it up I was sore (my arms and back -- not my thumbs!).

I think Nintendo has been paying attention. Perhaps they've been learning from Apple's commitment to giving the customer what they want. The Wii does just enough, but not too much. It's simple to use and so much fun. I think I can even say that having played both Wii Golf and real-life mini-golf in the last week, I'd rather play on the Wii.

This wasn't supposed to be about the Wii. It's just so darned fun...

My favorite computer games have always been the ones most often labelled "First-Person Shooters." Whether you're actually shooting or not, I like putting myself into the game. Doom, Half-life, Myst, Unreal, Grand Theft Auto--all great (I can't wait to play a FPS on the Wii... sweet!... again I digress).

Anyway, I recently began hearing about BioShock, a new FPS which is set in Rapture, an underwater version of Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia gone awry. I think Ayn Rand got a lot of things right--most things perhaps--so that interests me. A friend of mine says the game is creepy. I'm not a huge fan of creepy, though I suppose half-life could be called creepy (FWIW, the Half-Life 2 soundtrack is perfect for halloween).

One review calls the world of BioShock "beautiful, brutal, and disquieting." It uses such great phrases as "moral conundrum" and "dystopian fantasy." I am intensely curious. There are few things as interesting as a post-apocalyptic world--especially one originally envisioned as a utopia. One of these nights I'll have to download the demo...

3.3 - Skills

I have about 5 months to find a new job. So far my efforts have been weak. I have discovered that most people who are looking for "software development managers" think my management skills are exactly what they need, but they are looking for someone who will still be doing technical work as well. The range seems to be somewhere between 20% and 50% technical, which means I really need to upgrade my skills to be competitive.

Somehow, after 15 years in IT, I managed to miss out on Visual everything. I can talk intelligently about object oriented programming and design. I've written quite a bit in ASP.NET (C#!) without using Visual Studio (long story). I've taken several online courses in Visual Studio, and ventured in on my own a few times, but I'm really still not comfortable in that environment

For example, in the online courses, they have you clicking all over the place in the development tool for five minutes or so, then the instructions say something like "click here to see the code you developed." So I click there and see a line of code I could have typed in about seven seconds. As a guy who prides himself on concise, efficient code, it just doesn't feel quite right.

Microsoft has this long and glorious history of making really difficult things easy and really easy things difficult, and it seems to me they've taken my simple text editor and replaced it with a screen full of menus and buttons. I'm frustrated... and off topic.

Anyway, I signed up for a Visual Basic.NET class at the local community college, and went to my first class last night. I figure I'm probably the oldest guy in the class and as educated as the teacher, but I think it's the only way I can force myself to learn Visual Studio. I've already learned a couple things that could have kept me from looking like a complete idiot in my last interview.

With all four of us going to school, it's going to be an interesting and educational fall.

2.3 - Choose your Bandwagon

Ron Paul 2008

1.3 - Holier than Me

I am a product of my values.

I have a lot of values. I value my relationship with God. I value life, respect, competence, common sense, and my time. I value family, friends, education, and (usually) my job. It may also be obvious that I also value my place on the couch, movies, ice cream, and those little powdered mini-donuts. Diet Coke and the BK Stacker are also on the list, but I digress...

I have a low tolerance for those who do not share my values--especially those values that are most important to me. To some, this appears to manifest itself as arrogance, or the idea that I think I'm better than they are. The truth is that I don't think I'm better, I know I'm better.

Any thoughts I have of being better than someone else are inextricably tied to my values. I work hard at being competent, logical, respectful, and educated. I have a very difficult time dealing with those who are incompetent, illogical, disrespectful, and uneducated--especially those who are making no effort to correct these tremendous deficiencies.

We all live our lives in some attempt to maximize our adhesion to our values, whether we know what they are or not. This is a constant balancing act. It is impossible to put all of your time and effort into all of the different things that are important to you. There are always tradeoffs.

There are those who value humility, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion. Perhaps these values are better than mine...

7.2 - Powering the Future

I have spent quite a bit of time lately pondering alternative power. Along the way I've learned a lot.

My current interest was re-peaked upon reading an article about the Think Citi. (It actually started some time ago with the Tesla--wow, what a car--but I digress...)

My main curiosity is about the Stirling Engine. I didn't realize that there was so much I didn't know about engines. My brain has been in overdrive ever since. It's the next best thing to perpetual motion. So many ideas, so little practical/marketable implementation. There must be a way...

Even if all my ruminations go nowhere, next time my son needs a science project, I've got one for him that's fun, interesting, and somewhat unusual.

6.4 - I'm back... mostly

I'm back from vacation. Time to post regularly again. Well, after the bills are paid, the fridge restocked, the bags unpacked, a new job found, the pictures sorted, a few promises kept, emails read, phone messages handled, books shipped, accounting done, cars maintained, yardwork done, computer errors fixed, and house put back in order. Essentially all the stuff I didn't do during the last month. Oh, yeah, I also need to get busy replacing a bathtub... <sigh>