Lasers & Links

My one year anniversary with my Little is almost here. Wow, time flies, eh? To celebrate this momentous occasion and to celebrate the birthdays of two of the South Korean boys at my house, we're going to play Laser Quest this Saturday. I have booked time for three games starting at 1:00 pm. It costs $7.50 per game so it's not as cheap as it is on holiday weekends Y'all can join us if you contact me.

Mason Williams has a fun sodoku game up on his website. This sodoku has a grid of sixteen squares divided into four quadrants. There are four characters that need to be positioned so that all four characters are in each vertical and horizontal line, and all four characters are in each quadrant. Even though this type of puzzle has become a fad recently, this was the first time that I had tried it. There's no gueswork involved, really, it's just logical deduction. And if "logical deduction" doesn't spell F-U-N then I don't know what does!

I hope you all have been paying attention to Battle's blog since he's been posting a stream of artwork lately. Tres cool.

Emotional Bank Account

I may be a good manager at my software development company. I may be able to schedule the development time at our company efficiently. I may be able to put the unique skills of each developer to their maximum use. I may be able to teach and correct our programmers. I may be able to provide accurate employee assessments. I may be able to solve problems and make crucial decisions.

I may be able to do all of those things in a calm, respectful and pleasant manner. I may be able to help make the development section of my company into a well-oiled machine. I may be able to listen to others, accept feedback and compromise. I may even be concerned for the morale of our staff members.

And I might still have people are not satisfied. I might still have people that resent me. I might still have people that fume after I make a decision. I might still have people that quit.

The picture here is that people have an emotional bank account. You can make a deposit into your relationship with somebody and develop trust, respect and appreciation. You make a withdrawal from your relationship and erode it. It's not enough to be nuetral or not be too negative. Every interaction that we have with somebody either adds or takes away from the emotional bank account. Even minor withdrawals can add up over time into a major deficit.

This bank account exists everywhere. It's in our personal relationships, in our professional relationships, in our social relationships. There are a lot of ways to make deposits into your relationship with someone, just as there are plenty of ways to take withdrawals.

To begin with, we just need to recognize that this exists. We cannot assume that this emotional bank account does not accumulate. We cannot assume that co-workers will keep working because of the all-mighty dollar. We cannot assume that we deserve respect. We cannot assume that our actions are always perceived positively - the person with the bank account gets to choose which transactions are positive or negative, not us.

Once we acknowledge this, we need to do something about it. We need to find out what our current balance is with people. We need to make deposits into their lives and into our relationships with them. And based on my own experience with this, we'll definitely see positive changes in both ourselves and in our relationships with others once we start to do this.

Reference: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (link)

Programmer to PM

Raymond Chen is an expert programmer at Microsoft and he recently had this blog post in which he quotes another programmer that became a project manager. That programmer eventually left that role and went back into full-time programming again.

This colleague was writing to explain that his social skills had improved and his desire for social activities had greatly increased once he went back to programming. The role of project manager demands that you can talk to anyone about anything at any time. You're there to help resolve problems, answer design questions, work with upper management, etc. People came at you from all sides. As a consequence of all this social stuff every day, this person found that he unintentionally tried to avoid social situations once work was done for the day, just to recharge his batteries.

I've made similar transitions myself in the past at work. Right now, I'm a project manager again and by coincidence I think that I have been exhibiting similar symptoms. Granted, I am an excellent project manager and I really do help many other people get their jobs done more easily and quickly. As an intravert, though, this extracts a certain personal cost from me since I definitely need my alone time. A couple of my friends have recently made comments about this to me and I didn't put two and two together until I saw that blog post.

I don't really have any conclusions about this. I don't intend to go back into full-time programming again, I merely program as a "pinch hitter" when we need something done fast. I suppose I'm just acknowledging the fact that others share my experience and I'll have to make sure this doesn't effect my social life too much. Life is funny.

Misquoting Jesus

I watched The Daily Show this past week on March 14 and he had a guest interview with an author named Bart Ehrman. Ehrman published a book in 2005 titled "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why." (Here's the amazon.com link with various summaries and reviews.)

The five minute interview on the show was filled with the requisite jokes but Jon Stewart (the host) seemed to be a little surprised to learn that there were so many discrepancies in our current translations. The original documents of the Bible are now lost and translaters work with numerous copies and copies-of-copies to figure out what the original text is supposed to look like. Jon offered his opinion that he was more impressed with the Bible now that he knew this, not less. He liked the fact that fallible humans copied the text and that we made simple human mistakes - and possibly introduced intentional changes as well, since we're only human. Jon didn't disregard the original text as God-inspired during this show, which Ehrman asserted several times. The conversation didn't segue into a discussion about Christianity, it stayed focused on the historical value of our modern versions (and the jokes, of course).

Apparently the author of this book comes to a few conclusions with which I would disagree but I'm not writing to address that intricate debate. I just thought it was funny that people would still be surprised that the text of our curent versions do not exactly match all existing documents. Whenever I read my NIV version, I like to glance at the numerous footnotes on each page to see what kind of translation problems are noted in each passage. There are two or three such footnotes at the bottom of almost every page in my Bible so the translation problems are easily available in fine detail to any casual reader.

I noticed one such detail during my Bible reading this past month. I'll explain it here just for fun but it's easy enough to find many such examples. In Numbers 2:32, it details the results of a census and it says that there were a total of 603,550 Israelites, only including adult men and not including the Levites. My study Bible has a comment here mentioning that scholars are not entirely sure about what the word "thousand" represents so they're unsure if this is a literal number. I thought it was funny that something as simple as counting would be a confusing issue.

Later on, I came across Numbers 7:84-85. This chapter is extremely repetitive and it details each identical offering that was given for each tribe when the tabernacle was first established in the desert. The last paragraph in this chapter provides totals of everything that was given. There were twelve silver plates that weighed a hundred and thirty shekels and another twelve silver bowls that weighed seventy shekels. That comes to a total weight of 2520 shekels, according to my calculator. However, this passage says that it came to a total of only 2400 shekels.

So what was the problem here? Did somebody mess up a number over the centuries of copying? Was the stated weight only approximate, this allowing a lower grand total? Or maybe one thousand doesn't necessarily represent one thousand exactly, whereas increments of hundreds can be accounted properly. It's easy to see how one odd total in this second passage can lead to doubt about the total in the first passage. It's an interesting bit of trivia, though I suppose that some would say this little detail is much more crucial than as a point of trivia. It certainly made my reading a little more fun, anyway.

Blue Blue Mountain

I was away this past Thursday and Friday on vacation. I drove to Collingwood, Ontario for two days of snowboarding at Blue Mountain. This past week was March Break for the South Korean boys at my house so my dad had already planned to take them there as their main event for the week. I went along for the ride since they were already going. We stayed in a gorgeous little apartment right at the foot of the mountain.

I did two and half hours of snowboarding on Thursday afternoon and four and a half hours on Friday morning and Friday afternoon. My dad was wiped out after the first shift of skiing and I spent most of Thursday evening sleeping but all in all it was rather fun. On Friday morning, the kids went to the heated outdoor pool and the outdoor whirlpool. There's nothing like swimming in sub-zero weather.

I managed to get a few good shots on the hills while I was out with the kids on Friday. My mom has all of them up on her homestay website if you want to check out a few of the pictures. My dad and I were taking the pictures so I'm only in one lazy shot of us watching TV from a couch.

I had to stay with the boys while we were out on the hills, if only to take pictures of them. As a result, I was dragged along on some tough runs despite the fact that I was the least skilled member of our group. We completed a couple of black diamonds and one brutal double black diamond, the "Elevator Shaft." It was iced over for much of the way due to the sharp incline. I went quite slowly on that last run but at least I managed to get down before two of the kids. Yes, I take pride in slowly going down a hill and beating a couple of grade school boys.

"Blue blue mountain..."

3 - 2 - 1 - Wait!

I was at Open Door church the other day with Andrea and we were listening to a prayer meeting in the sanctuary while we worked in the kitchen with a few other people. The church was considering a change in direction and we heard person after person tell about visions, pictures or prophetic messages that they had received about this matter. I posed the question: How much confirmation do you need before you take action?

For me, I've always been fairly practical. If God says go, I confirm it and then away I go. Visions can be good indicators of God's will but so are basic issues like money or work schedules. My approach contrasts sharply with others for whom patience is the key before deciding major changes.

Take the example of Jesus walking on water during the storm in Matthew 14:22-34. Peter asked if he could walk on the water with Jesus, which I'm sure is the first thought that would cross anybody's mind. Jesus answered yes and so Peter got out of the boat and did just that, at least for a while. In a situation like that, the water's not going to get any more solid if you wait and pray.

As another example, David was still a shephard boy and he saw the Israelite and Philistine armies lined up while he brought his brothers some food (1 Samuel 17). Snot-nosed punk that he was, he asked why everyone was afraid of Goliath, this giant that challenged any Israelite to a fight. David was brought before King Saul and David immediately offered to go out and fight this monster himself. That certainly wasn't a wise choice on the face of it but it's not like anyone else was going to do it. Some would call that kind of action impetuous or idiotic but hey, faith in God can make you take wild chances sometimes. It seemed to work out all right for him.

On the flip side, Jesus didn't begin his ministry until he had fasted and prayed for forty days in the desert by himself (Matthew 4:1-11). Moses' first trip up Mount Sinai took forty days as well, all in preparation to receive the ten commandments and few other rules (Exodus 24:15-18).

The moral here is obvious: You should either pray for exactly forty days or you should take action right away. (Heh.) Seriously, though, it's a question of extremes. On one hand, God does expect us to step out immediately in faith sometimes and if we don't then we miss what God had for us. On the other hand, timing can be everything in certain situations and being too eager can stop something before it starts.

Since I have often preferred the direct approach and preferred to take action, I've been burned by my presumption at times. I can think of specific examples in my life in which I mistook a message from God as "Go!" when in fact he was just revealing something that I needed to pursue in prayer. Sometimes this approach works very well and other times it doesn't. Sometimes a leap of faith is needed to see God move and sometimes we just need to take it one step at a time.

I can likewise look at examples from my family or friends and see times when action was needed but was not taken. Patience and prayer were the name of the game but problems still mounted until things blew up. Waiting is not always an act of wisdom and it sometimes disobediance instead. Sometimes this approach works very well and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes years are needed before we see God move and sometimes it only takes a day.

I was chatting with my dad about this earlier and it's interesting to see how I have been growing in the "wait and see" part of my life. Some of my friends and some of my experiences with Open Door church are certainly helping me grow in that and I'm grateful. Is God counting down to the start of a race or is it a countdown to another countdown?

"Wait!"

"Go!"

Just help me to hear the difference, Lord.

Links & Blinks

Congratulations to Tara! She received her G1 Driver's Licence this past Tuesday. I took her out for her very first driving lesson on Wednesday night before we went to cell group. C'mon, people, giving driving lessons isn't scary or frustrating. It just requires some courage and patience - and the will to put an expensive vehicle at risk.

Tara also had a job interview at the same company at which Richard works. She has training later today with them, which may or may not mean that she has the job. She wasn't sure if it was a try-out training session or if it means that she'll be working there soon.

My brother's blog on his MSN Space site is now open for public viewing. He can be rather verbose when he wants to be. He also has a few pictures of my family this past Christmas under the "December 31" photo album.

Oh look, Elyse has an almost-blog up on her MSN Space site as well.

Have y'all heard the hype about Origami yet? It's a new hand-held computer from Micorosft. It's bigger than a pocket PC, about the size of a portable DVD player. It will include full Windows and come with the tablet-PC touch-screen interface, like I have on my full-sized laptop. It's supposed to be between $500 and $1000. In theory, people will prefer to have a full desktop computer at home with this Origami machine for school and trips and whatnot.