New job

I don't know how all of you work with a new job, but for me it is an all-encompassing experience. When I get the new job there are a ton of brand new things that I need to understand. I cannot stand going to meetings where I do not understand what is being spoken about when I am supposed to know it! I need to know and the only way to do that is to saturate myself with information. Right now, I am working all day, trying to go to lunch with my new co-workers, then going home to play with the kids and talk to the wife until she goes to bed when I start working again. I continue that work until around midnight or whenever my brain shuts off and refuses further input, then I crash and restart in the morning.

This is why it's been a week since I last blogged. I'm spazzing out with the new job. I'm beginning to get a hand on a lot of bits right now, so I'm hoping the drought is over soon, but until then I just don't set aside the 600 seconds or so it takes to blog. That doesn't mean I don't have my mental list of bloggable topics...they are there, just unused right now. I'll go rifling through them soon.

Great Thanksgiving

What a great Thanksgiving we had. We had no plans of traveling anywhere or having anybody over so it was just the Buckley family. We brined a free-range turkey from our friends at Benjamin Farms in a mix of our fresh honey, the cider we recently made and some kosher salt. That sat outside all night and this morning had a thin crust of ice on the top. Then it was cooked and some mashed potatoes were made, a bit of stuffing and a green bean casserole. Top that off with some fantastic gravy and honey-pumpkin pie and we were plugged. Then retired to the couch to catch some Dallas-Jets game (it was a rout) and sip coffee as we digest. mmmmm

Fear

Friday around noon I was able to have a massage. It had been a while, around eight weeks, since my last massage and I was looking forward to it. After the massage, I felt pretty good but I tightened up a lot that night.

Saturday was a tough day. I had my youngest's fifth birthday party and a lot of family over for that and I ended up taking more pain pills than normal to get me through the party. Saturday night came and I was really in a lot of pain.

And I was afraid.

You see, this level of pain was something I have not experienced since 21 August when the nerve was turned off. And I was now feeling it again.

And it scared me something fierce.

I ended up calling in to church and letting them know I was unable to attend on Sunday because I wanted to do whatever was needed to allow my back to heal. I spent the day just sitting and laying down. I still didn't feel the best Sunday evening so I took Monday off of work as well. Finally, now at 1845 I think I'm beginning to feel normal again and I think the increased pain is over. That was a very scary time for me worrying about whether the pain was coming back. It looks like it has passed now.

He likes the big bales

I don't really get why, but for some reason, the kids really like playing on those big 800 pound bales of hay. I purchased those instead of the "normal" ones so I wasn't tempted to try and lift them and breaking my back again.

Looking back...and forward

How long ago do you have your first memory of computers? I can remember 1983 or 1984 working on either an Atari 400 or Atari 800 computer in the lab to write a program that took only bytes of memory. Later on, around 1987 or so I purchased my very first personal computer. It had an entire megabyte of memory and a 20M hard drive. I couldn't fathom filling the thing up with data. That was back in the old days when the metaphor for how much data storage could hold revolved around how many pieces of paper it related to.

Fast forward to now. iTunes has made us able to have our favorite television shows and music and movies right on our desk. I first filled up 250G of external storage with my iTunes stuff, then quickly blew through 400G. Yesterday I received a new case with enough power to run an entire terabyte of storage dedicated almost completely to iTunes...I hope that will get me through this last season of Battlestar Galactica!

Too much work

I've been busy recently with my new job. Some of the effort I have put forth in the past has been going out as well. In the past I have put forth too much effort into work and my marriage and family have paid the price, but I'm seeing a difference now. I have a new job at Novell and it has given me a new motivation to get stuff done, but not at the expense of my marriage or my family. Oh, they have given up a bit of time with me, but I think I have this in balance now. It's a very satisfying feeling. Work will not always be taking this amount of time from me and I know that. The neat thing is my family comes first now and they know that. It feels good and right.

They fit fine, Dad

I can just put on a belt!

Selah

is a recommendation we read in the bible. It tells us to pause and weigh what we just read. It indicates the previous section just told us something we should take a minute to understand.

Just the other evening I had a selah...a pause. I learned about a little girl named Selah who blew my mind. This young lady is somewhere around nine to ten years old and she has made a decision to follow God in an amazing way. You see, Selah feels she has been called to be a foreign missionary. More than just talking about it, this young lady has put her feet into motion.

Selah´s home church was preparing a missions trip to Africa and she wanted to go. The only thing between her and her first foreign missions trip was $5,000. As adults, this kind of money is a huge amount and will keep a lot o f us at home. Not Selah, she just started talking to folk about donating funds to her trip. She has so far gathered most of the funds and still has months to get the final $1,000 or so she needs.

Jesus rebuked his disciples when they tried to stop the little children from going to him and it sure would be easy for the adults in Selah´s life to stop her from going to Africa. The adults in her life could have explained how it was impossible to raise that kind of money in time.

They didn´t. And young Selah caused me to pause. Do I have the faith of a child?

"I don't think you're right"

"Excellent!" I replied.

"In fact, I think you have it all wrong," she said

And that was the beginning of my conversation with three young women who attended church on Sunday. This past Sunday I had the opportunity to provide the teaching, and I talked about the Myth of the Holy Book where we asked can you read any version of the bible and find truth?

I won't go into the whole talk here since you can listen on our messages page if you are interested in that. At the end, though, my conclusion was I don't care what translation or transliteration or version of the bible you read, just get started reading it and let's explore any questions you find along the way.

And these three women were visibly upset by this idea.

You need to know we start off our worship experience (Sunday service) with the reading of a Psalm, then 30 minutes or so later the teaching starts and lasts the remaining 30 minutes. It's only an hour and we are strict on time because movies will start right after us.

These ladies were still upset of the reading of the Psalm.

You see, we read Psalm 32 to open our service in The Message. And they assured me they read along in their King James Version bible and it was completely different.

And then they lost me. I was solemnly informed by the spokesperson that every biblical scholar agrees that the King James Version is the most accurate of any translation ever made. Since I had just talked about how the New International Version was translated by over a hundred people from different denominations and different countries I asked about those scholars and I was informed again that

"every biblical scholar agrees that the King James Version is the most accurate of any translation ever made."

Now, I'm happy to discuss things with people. I especially like it when somebody has a problem with something I have taught because I obviously struck a chord in them somewhere and now they can go and research it themselves and explain to me how I messed up. And I want to learn! But this was too much. Nothing I said seemed to make an impact and I didn't fight which seemed to get them a bit more upset with me, but just repeating a thing over again without even responding to the discussion? A proverb went through my head then "pound on a fool all you like--you can't pound out foolishness" 27:22 (The Message). And I realized they didn't want to participate in an exchange of ideas, but just rail on me about how wrong I was. Thankfully it was right then the Reverend Mother gave me an out and I excused myself from the conversation.

Ask questions, disagree, argue! But do it intelligently. Discuss it and listen to others' responses and see what you can learn.