Until next year....

Well, I am back just as I promised I would be. It has been two months since I actually blogged about anything and a lot has happened in that two months. Let's see how much we can cover before you get tired of reading this.

School:

I mentioned yesterday that I got an A- in the class I completed earlier this month. I am mostly okay with that, because I just wanted the class to be over. It was a class with just me and the professor, so I was getting tired of not having any other thoughts and ideas. I guess it was a good warm up for the class I have starting in January. January and February will be filled up with the Independent Study that I have mentioned before. I recently received a little more direction on what it will be, which makes me a little more comfortable with what to expect. I will be spending this time doing research for and writing my Literature Review for my dissertation. That is exciting to me, because that will be half of my dissertation being mostly written. If I am able to accomplish this, which is required to get an A, I should have little problem completing my dissertation by May 2012. The biggest thing holding me back will be waiting on responses from the survey I will submit as part of my research.

So, January and February I will be reading a lot of articles and finding information that will help me focus in on my research topic and prove that it is a valuable area of study that has not been done before. The end result will hopefully be 60 pages of my dissertation done.

Weather:

This year has been an odd year for us here. Normally we don't see snow until January, but we have already had at least three inches of snow on two occasions and one or two other occasions of a dusting of snow. While three inches of snow doesn't sound like much, it reeks havoc on our roads. Since my family and I live on some back roads, our roads are usually the last to be cleared, and we have hills all around us.

This leads to a fun story about the first time we got a few inches of snow this year. It was a Sunday, and the expectation was that we would see snow in the morning with no accumulation. Sunday morning it was snowing when I left for worship and was still falling when I got home. It snowed all afternoon and started to build up on the grass. My wife told me that I needed to stay home Sunday night and not got worship because she was afraid the weather was getting too bad. My daughter was sick, so she was staying home with my wife. My son and I left to get to worship. I am the preacher and felt like I shouldn't miss. By the time we made it to the church building(it's a 25 minute drive), the snow was starting to gather on the roads. Salt trucks had not been sent out because the weather people were not predicting any accumulation. After services when my son and I left, the roads were getting bad. We made it to the Interstate, which had finally had salt put on two of the four lanes, and began our drive home. When we got to our exit, I had a bad feeling. The roads were completely white and you couldn't see the lines, just some tracks from where others had driven previously. We get to the road we live on and turn. Right after the turn in a small but steep hill. We make it two thirds of the way, and start sliding back. I back up to get a running start and the same thing happens. This goes on for three more attempts, it is the best way for us to get home. On the fourth attempt, I drive off the road where this a little gravel shoulder which allowed me just enough tracktion to make it up the hill. The roller coast just began. We made it over a couple of smaller hills and began our decent towards the biggest hill we would face. It is tall, has a three foot drop off on one side and a five foot drop off on the other. There isn't a shoulder to drive on, so I start up hoping for the best. Three fourths of the way up, we lose our traction and start sliding backwards. If you have never been in this position, sliding down a steep hill backwards is very difficult to control. The van started to slide sideways, but I get it straightened back up and stopped about halfway up the hill. The only option I have is to back down the hill and pull into a driveway. Fortunately, my brother-in-law has a four wheel drive and was able to pick us up and take us home. The little front wheel drive mini van just wouldn't make the hill.

We had a white Christmas this year. It was the first one in 17 years for our area. I knew that I hadn't seen one in the 14 years I have been out here. It was beautiful. The roads were bad again, but this time we stayed in until they could be cleared. One of the elders preached for me that Sunday morning and was very understanding in why we weren't there. Total we had 20 that Sunday morning.

Church:

I am still preaching for the small congregation. We have hit 80 on 2 occasions, so the elders set our new goal to be 90, even though we average 65-70 on a regular basis.

Friends:

I greatly miss some friends. My best friend in Oklahoma is the one I miss the most. We have some friends that have worshiped with us for the last ten years that may be going somewhere else, and that is upsetting to me. Their daughter is my son's best friend and he will be devastated if they leave.

Family:

I have a great family. As a part of my New Year resolution to write on this blog each week, I will be introducing them to you. I am going to add pictures too. I have been really bad this year, so look for that to come in 2011.

Me:

I am exhausted. With work, school, church, family and anything else that decides it wants to creep up going on, I just get worn down. I took three days of vacation last week along with the holiday and am more tired now than I was before. I just hope that staying up to bring in the new year will provide me with the rest that I need, or at least the excuse to sleep in new years day.

Until next year....

In short, Merry Christmas!!

I want to take a few minutes to say Merry Christmas, even though it is a few days late. I plan on writing more tomorrow to catch up on the past two months. I also plan on spending more time each week next year on my blog. I am actually going to schedule time on my calendar where I write in my blog. I hope that it will provide me a time to step away from all of the things going on in my life.

I made an A- in my most recent class in school. I would have had a solid A, but I turned 6 assignments in atleast 2 days late. Those points really add up. The thing that stinks about the A-, is that now my GPA is a 3.96, despite never getting lower than an A- in a class. Oh well, I guess it can't all be perfect.

Well, I am going to go for today. I will write more tomorrow. For today, in short, Merry Christmas!!

Trying to slow down

Hello blog world. It has been a long time since I have posted and I am sure that you all greatly missed reading about what is going on in my life. I have been extremely busy the past few weeks, so I am going to try to catch you up on what has been going on in my world. Also, I am going to "try" to talk a little more about my family and what is going on with them moving forward. I can't make any promises, but I am going to try. My wife recently learned that I have a blog and was a little hurt to find out that I wasn't talking about her all the time. I guess I can see her point. I talk about work and school most of the time, so it might be nice for you to hear about other parts of my life.

So, to start us off, lets talk about school. I know what I just said in the paragraph above, but I am still going to write about what I started this blog to be about. I am rapidly closing in on the end of the class I am in currently. When I say rapidly closing in, I have sixteen days left in this class. I have a lot of work to do to make it and get a decent grade in the class. I am currently caught up with all of my assignments, but the two biggest assignments are still coming up and are due in 10 days. I guess the last six days are more of a vacation for me as all of my assignments will be finished by then.

When I finish this class, I will be 9 hours away from my comprehensive exam and dissertation. That is 3 classes. It looks like it will turn into 2 defined classes and an independent study, which will be great for me. It is kind of scary to think about the end coming so soon.

On top of being busy with school, I have been very busy with work the past couple of weeks. I lead the quality assurance team on my contract, which comes with a lot of work on its own. I am responsible for creating any and all of the templates used by our analyst and programmer team, and also used by the team for our other MIC contract. I also am responsible for driving the quality process to ensure that our clients only get the highest quality deliverables from us. This is a time consuming process, especially at the end of the month. To compound this, in September we scheduled a new staff training in our Baltimore office for the last week of the month. So, as the lead for the QA team, I got to travel to Baltimore and present several training sessions.

After we planned our training, I found out that I would also be giving a presentation to our client. So, I had to travel down a day earlier to give that presentation and spend all day in meetings there. I think the hardest part of all of that, was flying on Sunday afternoon and then getting up earlier than I ever do for three days. Monday morning I had to get up at 6:30. That doesn't sound like that early, but my body thought it was 5:30. To make matters worse, I never get up before 7:30 on a regular day. And to put the icing on the cake, since I normally stay up until 1:00 every night, I could go to sleep that Sunday night. In the end, the presentation and training all went well and I was very happy about that. I ended up getting home around 10:00 Wednesday night. Thursday rolled around and I was in the office from 9:00 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. It was the last day of the month and we had to get work done. Friday I got a little of a break and left early, at 3:00, but that was to plan for working from home Friday night. From the Saturday to Friday, I worked right around 60 hours. Then Friday night, I started working on updating on of our web-based tools. I happen to be the administrator for this tool on both of our contracts and our company decided we needed to make some changes. I went to bed at 4:30 Saturday morning. I really wanted to sleep all day on Saturday, but no such luck. I had important football to watch. Can we say Boomer Sooner?

This week has been a lot less stressful. I have still been very busy but at least things are trying to slow down.

I miss my friend!!!

I am hurting today. I have had a friendship with one of the greatest people I know for 14 years. We have been through it all. We almost hated each other when we first met, but then we got to know each other and decided that the other wasn't as bad as we thought. We struggled with maintaining a close relationship while we were hundreds of miles apart. We were there for each other during difficult times in our other relationships. We laughed with each other and we cried with each other. We saved our friendship after it almost fell apart because of my stupidity a couple of times. We rejoiced with each other as we found the ones we would marry. We rejoiced together with the announcement of my becoming a father and cried together when the struggles for her to become a mother. We rejoiced together again when she bore her first child and fulfilled a dream. We have shared almost everything over the past 14 years, and we have been there for each other. Today, I feel like we are slipping apart. We have not spoken in several weeks and reading each other's blogs seems to be where we learn everything that used to be first hand. I know that life moves forward, but I don't want to lose this friend. I miss her so much!!! I miss my friend!!!

Heading home....

I am writing this blog from the 14th floor balcony of Surfside Resort in Destin, Florida. In less than eight hours, I will be waking up to begin the drive back home. I had forgotten, since last year, just how much I really love this part of the country. There is just something about the feeling of being here. The feeling that life is so much simpler and the pace of life is at one's own leisure. I am sure that there are people here who feel the same about their favorite vacation spots, but I can't image a place more peaceful and more beautiful than this. Hearing the waves lap against the shore, and the roar of the Gulf as it pushes another round of waves to their end. It brings a peacefulness that I miss out of my everyday life. For the last eight days, I have negotiated around the desires of my kids, wife and parents to provide a great vacation experience. I told my wife that I have done everything that everyone else wanted to do and have not done anything just for myself. As I look back, I find that I lied and told the truth both in that statement. I did do everything everyone else wanted. I juggled the concerns of everyone and made sure that we all had a great experience. That is what I did for myself. I like to make people happy and I like to make sure everyone has a good time. For me, in making sure that everyone else was satisfied, I was doing what I wanted the most. I guess at some point I will have to tell her that I did do what I wanted. Tonight, though, is all about me. I am sitting here on this balcony just for myself. I have spent the majority of the last eight days away from my computer. I was almost completely unplugged from work, with one minor slip on Thursday. I wanted to get back to a life that did not revolve around my job, and give myself back to my family. I had planned to check my e-mail every morning, but I was instructed by my manager not to even think about work, as I was heading out of the office last week. All of that is about to change. I will be plugged back in and working hard to catch up on Tuesday. The rat race will begin again and I will let my love of this place slip back from the front of my memory. Tonight, I celebrate my last night in paradise, for tomorrow I am heading home.

It's been too long

I was just realizing that it has been over 20 days since the last time that I blogged. It might seem like nothing is going on in my life, but really there is stuff. I am just too lazy to blog all the time. Really, I am too busy playing pointless games on Facebook. So, this blog is going to be a catch up on what has been going on. I know that I have previously promised pictures, and I will try to get to that sometime. I just have to make myself a list and get it done.

So, I believe that I mentioned that I accepted the preaching position at Mission church of Christ. It has been a great experience and I really love being able to share my knowledge and understanding of the Bible with others. It is really hard to gauge how well people like my preaching, because no one walks up and tells the preacher, "That was a horrible lesson this morning. Why don't you get a new job and quit preaching." No, everyone always says, "That was a great lesson. It was just what we needed." I think the worst part of preaching is being able to see the faces of the people in the audience. It doesn't bother me to know that they are looking at me, but I wish I could read their minds. Sometimes I think they are wondering if I am going to finish my lesson anytime soon. I also think they are wondering what the point is. I think these are just my self conscience side working on me, but I will never know. I have really enjoyed getting into the scriptures and bringing out the true meaning in context with what was going on in the first century and how it still applies to us today.

My parents are in town visiting. They spent the last week staying with my sister and her husband. They are staying with us this week and traveling to Florida with us on Friday for a week at the beach. It is nice to have them visit. The kids really love seeing them. They brought two of my nieces and one of my nephews with them for a few days last week. That was not as pleasant of an experience. Don't get me wrong, I love my nephews and nieces, but some of them are starved for attention. I have enough trouble making sure my kids feel like they are getting enough attention without having others in my face wanting me to poof my cheeks out so they can push the air out with their hands. It is annoying.

I am looking forward to my trip this weekend. As I mentioned we are going to Florida for a week. We will be in the Destin area, staying in the same condo building we stayed in last year. I am ready for a break.

I got my schedule problems worked out with my school. I start a new class on September 7. I have two scheduled for this fall and that will leave two for next spring. I am scheduled to take my comprehensive exam starting the morning of May 16. I will have seven days to complete the three question exam. It sounds pretty easy, but considering each question will require 15-20 pages of an answer, it is going to be very time consuming.

Since my last blog, we celebrated my daughters second birthday. It was great to be able to mark that milestone in her life. It was a Strawberry Shortcake party, which she refers to as Cake Cake. I love that girl!!!

Well, I am going to be stopping here. As I say every time, I am going to try to be a little better about blogging in the future. I was going to comment on the New Coney at Sonic, which is great, but I will save that for another day. That would just be in response to a friends blog. I will try to do better in the future. I realize it's been too long.

What's been going on...

I was recently reminded that I am the worst blogger in the world. I was also reminded that some people consider it unfair that you read what is going on in their blog if you don't put anything in your blog. So, today I am going to try to make up for both of those things with a blog that will fill you all in on what has been going on in my life.

My last blog filled you in on my class that I had finished and the fact that I got an "A". That was very exciting, so I am going to take a little time to update you on my school. I am now only FOUR classes, my comprehensive exam, and dissertation away from completing my Doctorate!!!! I am very excited about that. I had a couple of weeks of frustration when I realized that none of the classes that I need are being offered in the fall, for either my local campus or the online program. I met with the Dean of the College of Business for my local campus yesterday where she assured me that something would be worked out. The resolution was that she is creating three classes where I will be in a class with the one other student in my concentration. The professors for the classes are being worked out. The fourth and final class will be an independent study that will focus on my area of interest and will be taught by the professor who will head my dissertation committee. So, while I was very frustrated and concerned about being able to complete my degree in a timely manner, Dr. K resolved those concerns. So, all is right in the world with my degree, well except not having a 4.0 despite getting an "A" in every class.

In my work life, I have had some pleasant developments. I don't remember what I have written about my job, but I love my job. I love the company I work for, and the work that I am doing. It makes it very easy to come into the office everyday. The downside to that, is that I have a hard time with taking time off. I will get to that a little later. The developments with my job go back to the end of February. At the end of February the contract that I work on underwent some reorganization to combine two contracts under a central Director and Quality Assurance team. At that time, I assumed the responsibilities of Lead over one of the QA teams. For clarification, we have two contracts that each have dedicated QA resources we call teams, but we all fall under the central QA team. So I assumed the responsibilities of leading one of those contract teams. Since that time, work has been going on to create the position that would give me the authority and title of that role. After long wait, on June 27, I officially became the Technical Lead for the QA team I am working on. To say the least, I am excited about the promotion and the pay increase that came with it.

I mentioned that I have a hard time taking time off. There are exceptions to that. My family and I are going to Florida in August, and I had to problem requesting the 7 days off work for that trip. I just have a hard time taking a day here and a day there. I would rather just come to work. Tomorrow is an exception to me taking time off. After many months of talking about having a yard sale, we are finally going to put the plan into action. Friday and Saturday we will be selling everything we have been storing up to sell for a long time. We have big black trash bags full of kids clothes and adult clothes. We have about 50 pair of men's slacks, 5 or 6 complete suits. We have a coffee table, boxes of books, toys, and many little odds and ends. I hope we sell it all, because it is too much stuff for me to store for any longer. I want it all gone.

We had pictures taken this past weekend. Most of the pictures were taken for Reagan's two year pictures. I will try to get some of them posted here so you can see more current pictures. I love some of them.

Finally today, I want to talk about something I have mentioned in my blog in the past. It is the most important part of my life. That is my church life. I have talked in the past about the fact that we were looking for somewhere that we would place our membership and work. We have visited all of the congregations in our area that we were interested in and each of them had something we liked and something we didn't like. One of the things that we looked for was a place where we could be active and make a difference in the lives of people. Last week we made a decision on where we will be spending the next chapter of our lives. One of the congregations we had visited had asked me to fill in and preach for them on a couple of occasions. It is a small congregation and the elders were good friends with some of the people we had been worshipping with at Cane Ridge. Apparently, several of their members really liked me and asked the elders if there was a chance that I would be given the chance to preach for them on a more consistent basis. The response was, at that time, that they would have to meet and discuss it and think about it. Last week I was offered the position of pulpit minister and after discussing it with Sharon, I accepted the position. Beginning this Sunday I will be the new "full time preacher" for Mission church of Christ. I am excited about the opportunity. It comes with a nominal salary, but the pay isn't the reason I accepted. I am hopeful that we can grow the congregation spiritually, which will enable us to grow numerically.

I know this has been a lot of information, but that's what's been going on.

It is finished...

It has been a while since I posted a blog. I had planned to do a couple a week, but my coursework for school really took a lot of my time the past few weeks. In this post, I am going to update my progress with class and will try to post another update about what has been going on with the rest of my life.

You might recall a certain individual who was hoping for a "B" in his class, but would be striving for an "A". I actually began with the thought that I might not even try to get the "A", but it turns out that I'm not that kind of student. I actually put a lot into this class, and I am so glad that I did. I received my final grade today. It isn't official yet, but all of my assignments are graded and the online grade book for the class shows me what I got. Before I get to that, I want to talk a little about something that bothers me about college.

Here we are working in a doctorate program. My thought is, "I want to put everything into the program and walk away with a degree I could be proud of." Apparently, that isn't the same opinion everyone else holds. We had one student who in the last week has submitted every assignment for the entire class. His view was that he just wanted to get at least a "B" so he wouldn't have to retake the class. I don't know what he ended up with, but a part of my hopes he has to retake the class. I'm not saying he has to get an "F", although I read his assignments and think that is what he deserves, I just think he needs at least a "C" so he will think about how important it is to do your work on time.

My second gripe for this blog, is somewhat closely related to my first. It is slightly different though. Here we are working in a doctorate program and some of these people can't write for anything. One of the assignments we had was to review another students final business plan and provide feedback. The plan that I read had so many errors on each page. From simple spelling errors that anyone could make, to missing citations, to fragmented sentences and numerous APA style errors. I am just amazed at how bad his paper was. Then I found out that he was an undergraduate professor for an online program and I cringed at the thought. I am not the best writer in the world, but I still try to make my papers seem very polished. I had three suggestions from the peer review on my paper and I corrected them. One of them was the difference in how it was accepted under APA 5th edition compared to APA 6th edition. I reviewed the other students final submission and he corrected two of my suggestions from the first page and didn't correct anything else. I had even done track changes in Word, so he could have just accepted my changes and then addressed anything I had mentioned in a comment to the side. Nope, that was too much for him to do.

Needless to say, I think some of the students in my program need to go back through undergraduate and graduate school again. I don't want them tarnishing the name of my school with their inability to write or even follow the assignments. That is a whole other gripe that I am not going to subject you to in this posting.

So, now that I have griped, I can get back to the point of this blog: my final grade. The results are in. America has voted and Adam you are safe. You received an "A" in the course. A 97 if we want to be more accurate. A spring board into the final four classes of my coursework, all in my concentration. As for this class, it is finished.

4 Weeks down

I have a little bit of catching up to do, but I wanted to make a brief comment about my school status. I am four weeks into the class, and actually have started enjoying the work. I am really getting into building this Business Plan that will be my final project. As of today I only have three weeks left and that is exciting. I still have a high "A". I was faced with the question this week of whether or not I wanted to settle for a "B" and I chose not to. I went on a short trip this past weekend, which I will blog about later, and did not have access to the Internet. So, that meant that my assignment was late. I looked at my grade as it would stand if I didn't turn in my assignment, and it was an 89. Right on the border of an "A". There is a chance that I could still make the "A" without the assignment, but worst case, I would settle for a "B". When it came down to it, I couldn't make myself settle.

I was afraid that would happen!!! All my life I have been an overachiever and have never allowed myself to settle for mediocrity. Some of you might say that a "B" is not Mediocre, but for me it would be. I couldn't bring myself to just walking away from the "A". Even if I can't get a 4.0, I can still have all "A"s.

So, here I am working on getting my "A". I am getting excited about my work, just in time to finish it. I guess that is the best time to be excited. Three weeks and Seven assignments left, I am pushing on. My "A" is in site with 4 weeks down.

Preacher's Slip...

You know how sometimes when you talk, you slip up and make a mistake? Sometimes you say the wrong day, month year. In some cases, you may forget the name of one of your best friends while she is sitting beside you. :) It takes a while to live that down. Well, this past Sunday I had one of those slips.

I was preaching for a small congregation who invited me to preach for them. I guess it is obvious they invited me, but I digress. This was the first time I had ever spoken in front of this congregation and as is my custom I like to give a little back ground about myself. It makes people more comfortable when they know something about you.

I start off with where I grew up, in a small town in Oklahoma. I was baptized at the age of 13 and preached my first full length gospel sermon at the age of 14. I mention what my formal education is and where I went to school and what my work experience is and what I do for a living. I spend about two minutes in a very short introduction. I never say the years that any of this occurs because one of two things happens. Either I say the wrong year or people try to figure out how old you are. This past Sunday, while I was giving my introduction I must have mentioned the year I was baptized along with my age. Well, let me say I mentioned a year. I didn't even realize I had given a year, but I had some confused people come up to me after the service. Some of them were very impressed with my accomplishments and experience at my age.

On Sunday I mentioned that I was baptized at the age of 13 in 2001. The I went on to college for a bachelors, Masters and currently on my Doctorate. On top of my education I mention that I have spent the last 10 years working in health care.

Have you done the math? If I have been working in health care for 10 years, that means I started in 2000. According to the year I was baptized I would have been 12. Prior to that, I completed my bachelor's degree, so I would have had to start college at the age of 8.

People always tell me I am smart. I didn't realize I was a child prodigy. For the record, I was not baptized in 2001. The year was actually much earlier than that, but that is what can happen with a single preacher's slip.

Two Weeks Done...

Well, I am completed with two and a half weeks of my class. I need to be working on the research and assignment that is due tonight, but I wanted to take some time to update you on where I am at.

Previously I mentioned that I had planned to strive for a B, but might as well work towards an A. I am still on that path. After two weeks of assignments, I have a 97. It seems that every assignment I turn in has something wrong so I lose one or two points. It has been a little frustrating. I have spent the past two years writing using APA 5th edition. That is the edition that is still acceptable for me to write in because of when I started the program. The problem is that some of the students in my class are new to the program and are under the 6th edition. So, to make it easier, the professor is grading using APA 6th edition. Although they are very similar and almost identical, only being one edition off, there are minor things that are different. So when I reference my 5th edition guide, I am sometimes wrong. I guess that is okay, because by the time I am finished with this class, I will be used to the 6th edition. My gripe about it is that while it is only one or two points here and there, that gives me fewer points I can miss in the end to make my A.

The class is going well otherwise. I am exhausted, but getting through it. Still have my A and hope that the next five weeks will bring fewer errors and more points. The bright side, I am two weeks done.

The pain of being a parent...

Being a parent is great joy. I feel for those who have the desire but for some reason are not able to have children. A very dear friend of mine recently had the joy recognized after a long (about seven years) battle. I tried to be there for her, and I hope that I was able to give her some comfort during that time. I share in her joy today, even though it is mostly through reading her blog. I wish I could see her more, but the hundreds of miles between us are hard to cross very often. I am digressing from the point.

Being a parent is great joy, but at times it is very painfull. My children are still young, so I know I will still have more pain ahead, but I will address that when it comes. Today I want to discuss an incedent that occured recently. My son has never really wanted for anything. He may have had to wait a few days or weeks on occasions, but he has mostly gotten what he wanted. Our daughter has experienced the same comforts, although she isn't quite old enough to be able to communicate what she wants other than baby dolls. (I am sick of baby dolls and refuse to buy more.)

A part of getting most of what you want, comes a feeling of entitlement to getting their way also. My son has gotten pretty bad about doing what he is told, especially if his mother is the one who told him to do it. Last night he was driving me crazy. Not doing what he was told. Finally, I sent him to bed, although he still had half of his milkshake from dinner sitting in-front-of him.

It was very sad for me because he was excited about that milkshake, but it had to be done. Did it cause physical pain? No, but it is sad to see your child run up the stairs crying because he can't finish his milkshake. Our daughter was all too happy to have to go to bed. She loves going to bed, but our son hates it.

Discipline is something that I have to do a lot and it is hard. It is necessary for children to grow up with rules and that those rules are enforced. I was raised with discipline and I turned out fine. That is just the pain of being a parent.

IT'S A SUGGESTION!!!!!

Have you ever had a person ask for a suggestion on how to do something and then argue with you about how it won't work? That really frustrates me. That just happened no more than 10 minutes ago.

We have a project that our client has assigned for us that covers 22 states. The states are divided into two teams. One team has 14 states, the other team has 8 states. The Lead on the team with 8 states asked a few of us for suggestions on how to best develop the requested output. When I gave my suggestion, his response was, "My team has never done it that way, and I can't change things with such a short deadline." My response was that the team had done it that way, and in fact was the standard way of doing this type of request when I was on the team prior to my promotion in March.

To make a 15 minute discussion short, he wants input, but doesn't want suggestions. I think what he really wants is for us to tell him to do it how he wants to, and then sympathize with all the work he has. He won't be getting sympathy from me. While he is dealing with a maximum of 32 algorithms across his team of 6 programmers, I am dealing with the QA of 56 algorithms by my team of 1 in half the time.

It's a suggestion!!! Don't ask for them if you don't want them!

Preach the Word...

In this post I want to talk about a special part of my life over the past year. A lot has happened in the last year that has provided me with the opportunities to strengthen my faith and my love of the Lord. I want to make it clear that I am in no way perfect and will never profess to be. I have tried to grow closer to the person that God wants me to be and this post will reflect back on that endeavor.

January of 2009, my wife and I decided it was time for us to leave the congregation we had been worshipping with since we got married. I had been worshiping there since my move here for college. It was a difficult decision, but had been in the making for the six months prior to the final breaking point. My wife and I were concerned with the lack of structure in some of our son's classes. He loved going to class, but on many occasions, the time was spent playing with toys with little Bible being discussed if any at all. This was not acceptible to us. We want our son to grow up loving the Bible and having a desire to study the Bible.

I want to take a minute before anyone says that it is the responsibilities of the parents to teach their children, and I agree 110%. I also believe though that Bible classes should teach the Bible also.

We raised our concerns with the elders over the congregation, but did not see any action to change the situation. As we talked back and forth about leaving, other situations began to arise. The breaking point came one Sunday in January when one of the elders stood up and slandered the names of some of our good friends from the pulpit. We decided we could no longer worship in that place.

It happened that the good friend whom had been slandered had also been talking with me about the need for an active congregation of the church in the area where we lived. God had opened a door of opportunity for us to reach out into our community and preach the Word. In total we had about twenty people who began worshipping with us in our homes. The services were very uplifting, and for the first time in a long time I began to feel alive again. I was no longer sitting in a pew with hundreds of others. I was in a close personal setting, and I was working.

I did most of the leg work to get our congregation recognized as an entity with the state as well as get a tax ID and tax exempt status. My good friend took care of getting our bank account open, and we began looking for a space we could rent until we could afford to build a building. We knocked on doors, which our young children loved doing. We prayed for people we had never met, took food and flowers to families who were struggling that we had never met. We worked in our community.

Along the way, some of our number decided to move on to other congregations. Building a new congregation takes time and is a lot of work. For some, the growth wasn't coming fast enough. Their enthusiasm ran out and they moved on. At the same time, we grew from a family who began to worship with us. It was very exciting.

We were able to rent some space at one of the local schools and this provided a place to invite others to come and worship with us. With the building, we decided we needed more consistency and structure. I began preaching full time for the congregation and my good friend began leading singing full time. The other men filled in the other areas that we needed workers. Our women were great at teaching our classes and the space at the school provided a chance to have those classes. We had families come and worship with us and even had one come back and visit a couple of times.

Some of our members suffered illnesses, others experienced family growth and others began to experience dissatisfaction with the slow growth of the congregation. All the while I tried to provide spiritual nurishment and sermons that applied to each of our lives. Perhaps in later posts I will provide some of my topics and add some notes.

2009 was a difficult year financially for our country. In November of 2009, the financial strains began to appear in our contribution. It became apparent that something was going to have to change. I want to make one point here, we did not have any paid staff. I was not being paid to preach, keep our finances or any of the other tasks that I performed. At the same time, no one else was paid either. Our expenses were in the space, which was our largest expense, as well as our website and our insurance. We decided that each family would try to find ways to contribute a little more than we had been. In reality, most of us were giving all we could give. Each month when we paid for the rent and janitorial staff, we shrank our bank account. By March we were down to our last month.

Our bank account held just enough money to cover the expense of the space we were renting. The men held a meeting and we discussed our options. We had two, go back to meeting in homes or search for another congregation we could join with to strengthen both groups. After two weeks of prayer and discussing with our families, we made the decision to find another congregation to worship with.

Perhaps in a better year we would have been able to survive, but financially we were done. So was the last year a failure? No! We were able to heal from the hurt some of our members had felt over the previous year. I was able to expand my study of the scriptures and spend a year preaching the Word to a great group of people. Most importantly, we were able to go back to work and get into the communities in which we live and touch those lives.

The past month has been difficult for me. I am now again sitting in the audience listening to the sermons, instead of giving them on a regular basis. Even in this, I have found the chance to grow my knowledge. I still have the opportunity to preach and will be preaching in a couple of weeks. It happens that the congregation we have been worshipping with is looking for someone who can preach on a regular basis. Perhaps the Lord is opening another door for me to Preach the Word.

It has started again...

Some of you might be confused by the title of this post. One of the things I love in my life right now is that I am close to completing my coursework for my doctorate. What most of you don't know is that I am having a hard time getting into some of my classes. Part of that is because they have so much busy work.

I have been trying to make A's in all of my classes. Although I have, I still don't have a 4.0. That is a gripe for another day. In short I am going to say that apparently not all A's are created equal. In some cases an A- doesn't count the same as an A.

I had come to the decision that I would strive to be satisfied with a B in the class I started yesterday. I was feeling good about the fact that I could put in less effort, maybe not do some of the assignments and still get a B. Life was good. Then we got the syllabus. For those of you who might not know what a syllabus is, it is the single most depressing document for any class. It tells you all of the work you have to do and when it has to be done. In the case of this class, it also broke down how the grading would be done. I assumed going into the class that I would have four assignments due in a week. That is pretty standard for the classes at my school. Based on this assumption, I thought that I could skip an assignment or two and still get at least a B. I think someone was reading my mind. The course has a total of 370 something points possible. If you divide that among the 29 assignments, missing a couple of assignments would not kill you. The problem is that the overall grade is divided into 9 assignments. Each of those assignments is divided into multiple parts. In order to get credit for the assignment one must complete all of the parts. Thus my skipping assignment thought is gone. As my best friend, next to my wife, told me, "You might as well try for that A."

I guess that is where I am at. the class has started and there is much work to do. The course culminates with a 40 page final project. Here's to hoping I get that A.

Back to the Blog

It has been over a year since I started this blog. In that time a lot has happened and I haven't written about any of it. After talking with one of my best friends in the whole world today, I decided to try to actually type in my blog. I think she was somewhat joking when she made the suggestion because she knows how busy I am, but I am going to try.

So how busy can I be? I have a full time job to which I put in anywhere from 42-60 hours each week. It varies a lot due to my job relying on others to do their jobs first. I am married, which most men will tell you is a full time job in and of itself, and to throw more excitement in, we have two kids. Right now our son is 4 and our daughter is almost 2. I try to stay active in our church and was at one time preaching, maintaining the church finances, and putting powerpoint slides together for both Sunday services. I am currently writing a book, that has taken longer than I expected and just for the fun of it, I decided to go back to school for my Doctorate. I am currently five classes, comprehensive exam and dissertation away from completing the degree.

Taking all of this into consideration, and seeing it written down, a blog might be a little ambitious, but I am going to try.

I thank you all in advance for reading this blog and commenting on any entries.