A Tale Of Two Farmers

My brother wrote this blog recently and I received permission to re-post this story here. It's a great analogy...

There was a man. He was an normal average everyday man. This man, however, had a passion. His passion was to be a farmer. He wanted to be one since he was a toddler and sat on his grandpas knee as he drove the combine across the fields. Because life is life, however, this man grew up and became a banker. He was never really happy with being a banker but he had gone to school for it and was competent. He had friends, a family. He had a good life. However, this passion that he had deep within him continued to nag at him.

One day, after many years of banking he finally had enough. With much discussion with his family he left all that he knew in the banking world and bought a farm. Now this man didn't know a lot about farming but his passion drove him to learn all there was. His passion made him a sponge and he just absorbed it all. He cared for his land, really loving the feel of the earth between his fingers and the premorning chill that woke him up as he fed his cattle and gathered the eggs. He worked long hours, had to change his lifestyle habits in order to afford his farm.

At first his family went along with dads crazy scheme, but eventually his passion became instilled into them and they learned the land and became proud of what their hands grew. It wasn't the most productive farm but it held its own. More importantly, it allowed this man to live his passion. It brought his family together. His children grew to have a passion and they brought new ideas and technique to the farm, eventually taking over the farm from their father. The farm grew and became known as having the best crop in the district and they became prosperous. It was good.

Now, this man had a neighbor. They had the same land quality and size. It was run by a man whose dad was a farmer and whose dad was a farmer. He didn't know what else to do. This man didn't like the chill of the premorning as he got up to do his chores, wishing instead to be in his warm bed. He didn't work longer then he had to during the day. He bought the things of convenience that would make his crop grow faster and better, without understanding what it would do to his land. He made his family do chores in order to keep the farm going and keep the money coming in. They did not like doing chores just as much as the man didn't like doing chores, and so as soon as they could leave the farm they did.

Over the years his children left, meaning that he had to do more and more of the work. He bought more and more fertilizer and grew more and more cash crop to pay for the mounting bills. One year: nothing. His crop wouldn't grow. His land was dead. The man was alone, abandoned by his family for the pursuit of their own money.

These two men, while both farmers, became focused on different things. One man having to farm, and the other man just on the farm itself. The man whose focus was on the potential lost his love for the farm and it became work for him and in the process he ended up losing it all. The other man left all that he had for a passion and with his passion a knowledge that deepened his passion and was passed along to his family. He loved the land itself and cared for it, while the other man cared for what the land could do for him and he lost it all.

In this same way have we become focused on the relationship to the point that we forget to have a relationship. I am not saying that the ways that we have relationship with God are wrong. But are we going to church, volunteering, praying etc, in order to have a relationship or are we doing those things as an outpouring of our relationship?

Bruxy Cavey has a line in his book "The End Of Religion" that I want to leave you with. "Do I kiss my wife to earn her love? Or do I kiss my wife to express the love that we already share?" Do we do all the things we do in His name because we will have a relationship with Him by doing those things, or do we do those things because of a natural out pouring from our relationship with Him which compels us to those things?

GPS Jerks

Ah, the land of blogs. Safe haven for rants of all kinds. I recently discovered a new pet peeve of mine and now it's my turn...

You know what really turns my crank? When people borrow someone's GPS unit and they change the owner's chosen settings for it. Sometimes it's only changing the volume or day/night displays, which is fine in general. Sometimes it's changing the interface to add or remove certain statistics or displays, and that's tricky to reset. Sometimes, people reset the "Home" link and that just seems selfish and unnecessary.

However, there's one more thing that GPS users just love to customize: The voice.

Different GPS units treat this aspect differently. On some units, it involves the language feature and it lets you select the local dialect. On other units, the voice options are controlled by fun personalities with cute little names. Regardless, people love to get in there and flip back and forth between a bunch of settings until they find one they prefer or one that amuses them in some way.

And when the owner gets their GPS unit back and continues to use it as usual, the instructions come out in different way. Changing from a female voice to a male voice is the most drastic change. However, the vocabulary used by a British setting and an American setting can vary quite a bit as well. It's freakin' annoying! And now the owner has to find that long-forgotten setting and feature that their friend messed with and they have to remmeber how to reset it.

Sure, we may be anthropomorphizing the GPS a bit, giving it a name and treating it like a person. Nothing wrong with that, is there? People give their cars names and they treat their pets that way. I've had hilarious conversations with other guys as we mock the GPS personality as if it's really thinking. As long as we don't start to have deep emotional discussions with this little computer then we'll be fine, we can just stick to getting ticked off as it gives us confusing directions yet again.

So, my pet peeve is that people change the settings on a GPS unit that they borrow from someone else. Your friend was kind enough to lend you this expensive piece of hardware, so why are you annoying them by changing all of their settings? It's like borrowing someone's car and changing the pre-set radio stations. It's like borrowing someone's iPod and messing with their folders and play lists.

I say that it's rude and disrespectful. Back in the day, not removing your hat when speaking to someone was offensive. These days, we have new unwritten rules of etiquette that have evolved to match our technology. Well, this used to be an unwritten rule but I guess it's not anymore. So take that, GPS Jerks!

It's A Boy!

Yay! Congratulations to Joel Terry and Alma on the birth of their son! And now Rhea has a new little brother, too!

The baby was a little overdue and was delivered by C-section the morning of Sunday March 9, 2008. All are healthy and apparently the baby was bigger than usual due to the timing.

Their son's name is Jude Nathaneal Terry.

Movies & More

Any guesses about which actor plays the character in the middle? It's shocking and utterly awesome. What's the answer?

Did anyone see Will Smith's I Am Legend during the summer? The DVD is being released soon and I guess it will include an alternate ending that they shot, as described here. Oops, that video clip was pulled - check it out here. It's not viscerally satisfying as the final cut but it makes a much more brutal point, I think.

Remember last year when they discovered skeletons of a supposed Hobbit-like race of small people? The new theory is that these were simply malnourished humans with gland problems. Not as exciting, but maybe we'll still find a race of lvigin tree Ents or something...

Comic geek that I am, I've been tracking the making of the movie The Watchmen since the beginning. One of the best comics of all time, written by the genius Alan Moore back in the day. They have new posters showing each of the main characters now. Rorshach, of course, is the best one.

As Amy Goertz says, do not do a google image search for "Largest Bear."

Anybody care to try a bacon chocolate bar? Mmmm...

There's an interesting documentary called Winning For A Living, about people that enter contests as their full-time jobs. 'Mazingfruit...

As I mentioned before, an old co-worker of mine named Trevor was sitting by the red carpet at the Oscars last month. He wrote about his day, including a video. Apparently Viggo Mortensen was very cool.

I've been published! Well, actually, all I did was get a question published online on the Raptors blog at The Toroto Star's website. Click here and go down halfway to look for "Jamie A" from Mississauga. Even so, it's cool! C'mon, Raptors, doesn't anyone know how to box out?

Solo Like Frodo

Why do we have this tendency to go through life solo? Why do we prefer to struggle through our problems by ourselves? Why do we shun advice and help and experience when we should be seeking these things? Why do we think that we're better off alone?

I just finished watching the super-mega-hyper-extended version of all three Lord Of The Ring movies. (Now with even more false endings!) With the extended and additional scenes, it's now the length of four movies. At one point early on, the Fellowship disbands as they fight a bunch of Orcs and our hero Frodo takes off by himself, only to relent and allow Sam to join him when Sam almost drowns in pursuit. Later on, Gollum manipulates Frodo and gets him to get rid of Sam, only to have Sam come back and save his life after the giant spider attacks him.

In fact, Frodo has a strong tendency to wander off by himself at exactly the worst moments. Repeatedly, he states that this burden is his to bear alone. And yet, he would have drowned and been captured and been eaten a number of times if Sam hadn't caught him. Actually, I always found it annoying that Sam was supposed to look out for Frodo but Sam kept looking after his own butt while Frodo went into trances and walked into danger. You would think that Sam would have learned his lesson after the third time, eh?

The movie culminates with Frodo faltering as he and Sam ascend Mount Doom. Sam gives his Oscar-worthy speech about strawberries and better times, and then he lifts Frodo onto his back and starts to walk a mile up a smokin' hot mountain. That brave gardener must have been lifting weights back in the Shire or something. (Yes, I found that part hard to believe but the wizards and the all-seeing eye were just fine.)

My point is that going through life alone sucks. We might think that we're better off tackling our troubles by ourselves but that's just not true. Ever. More likely, we'll get caught in a trance of self pity and we'll get chomped by a Nazgul. Or we'll get lost in the barrens and we'll keep returning to the same spot again and again. We will sit there and suck our thumb, and we will despair and lose hope. We will look into the dark night and fail to see the stars and we will forget that dawn is coming soon.

Everyone needs a friend to lean on, everyone needs a helping hand. "Everybody needs somebody sometime..." (C'mon now, sing it!) We need to let people into our lives, instead of blocking them out. We need somebody to raise our head up and encourage us. We need to have a friend that can tell us what we don't want to hear but what we need to hear, that will help protect us. We need a friend that will walk beside us, in good times and bad. We need our friends.

Friends are precious. Yes...my Precious...

Grab a Surfboard

So, my life has been a massive tsunami of change lately. I have a new job, I'm living in a new city, I will be moving into a new apartment, and I'm getting married in less than four months. The only other thing I could have done was to skip the country entirely and learn to speak a new language. Heh. This ocean of life is moving pretty fast now...

The main difference that created this giant wave is my new job here in Mississauga. I recently landed a position as a Database Developer with OSL Marketing. I started my new job a little over one week ago and it's been fantastic so far. Plenty of fascinating work creating the database side of websites for famous brands like Pepsi and McCain. I'll probably post some links as my work is rolled out live but I definitely appreciate the fact that everyone will be able to see and use the fruits of my labour now.

It's a fascinating job for a cool company, with good benefits, fun/funky co-workers and some impressive management philosophy. I think that my talents will fit perfectly and I have plenty of room for my professional ambitions. I'm looking forward to being here for a long time. Thankfully, it's been great fun to delve into the database designs and offer my ideas, a distinct pleasure with very little stress.

On the other hand, almost all of my free time in the past few weeks has been devoted to apartment searches in the Mississauga area. Unlike being a database geek, this was a terrible ball of stress for me. To be honest, I was getting freaked out that I would not find something suitable at all. Every night, I was scouring the internet rental postings and calling place after place for more information. I visited a number of places during this period, and time was not on my side since I'm already working here.

After getting a feel for the local rental market, I tried to focus on basement apartments. The price range was much more manageable and it costs several hundred dollars more per month to upgrade to a proper high-rise apartment building. Granted, you get what you pay for - I had to sift through a lot of ugly options along the way. Kiss a lot of frogs to find your princess, as the saying goes.

So while money was a binding factor, my other main concern is that this apartment was no mere short-term residence. This was intended to be the first home for me and my fiance Cam after we get married in a few months, so I wanted it to be something that would actually deserve the title of "home" for us, at least for a while. Throw in the fact that we needed two parking spaces, since we're both working professionals in IT, and that made the pickings pretty slim.

Lo and behold, we managed to find a superb place this past Saturday. I'm moving in this coming Monday and it's fabulous. It's a basement apartment but since the house is on a slope, the back is actually a walk-out with a patio and private yard. It's extremely large, has two bedrooms, it's quite cheap and it's all-inclusive with internet access. I won't post pictures or anything but suffice it to say, we found a hidden gem. Many thanks to Cam for all of her work and advice during this entire process as well, especially since speaking to strangers isn't exactly my forte.

And speaking of thanks, much of it must go to Josh and Beth Jones, Josh being the brother of the infamous Abe. Abe got me into contact with his brother once he heard that I was moving to the area, and Josh was quite helpful in giving me local advice. Astonishingly, Josh and Beth also offered to let me stay with them in the guest room in their apartment during these first few weeks, and I still can't believe how generous they have been to me. I was going to have to take a motel room and their kind offer made my life sooo much easier.

The next four months or so will still be crazy. I have to get settled into the new apartment, pack up and move all of worldly possessions, and start the gradual process of importing Cam's belongings. Somewhere in there, Cam and I have to finish planning our wedding. I'm the Best Man for Battle's wedding at the end of this month and I'm a Groom's Man for Lawyer Kid's wedding in May. I expect to succeed spectacularly at work, of course. And the hardest part, by far, is that I only get to see Cam on weekends when I go back to London. Yeah...

The waves of life are crashing all around but the horizon is getting brighter and the dawn is going to be brilliant. I'll be happiest four or five months from now after the this phase of frantic activity is over and I can settle into my life with my new wife. Until then, I guess I'll just grab a surfboard and try to enjoy the ride...