Mostly for posterity's sake... and perhaps random strangers & friends may want a somewhat wholistic view of my life.
I was reading some old entries of my Advogato blog, mostly programming stuff and read stuff that I wrote, but didn't remember at all. Weird, isn't it? So here's an intentional post in the same vein.
I live in a house with 5 other guys. They're cool guys, although we don't do a whole lot together. We do have a house dinner and house Bible study almost every week, which is really great. We also try to do prayer-partners each week, which is good. Lately (past few months) I've been more intentional about having time for daily devotions and having time for enjoyment and relaxation in life in general. This is possible mostly because I don't have a job. I don't miss it, really. Although that does mean that I don't do as much programming as I want to. Life, though, needs to be enjoyed and valuable every day. "Nobody ever died wishing they had worked more, been richer, etc.."
I've been into Apache Software Foundation stuff for almost a year now I guess. It's fun being in a community like that, but I haven't done much work on Forrest for a while because I don't have any direct use of it (I had been using it at work, at GFS). Reading planetapache.org is cool to see the whole community in action; there's lots of smart guys, leaders, hard workers, etc posting there.
I'm graduating soon and I hope to take a few months to travel (maybe out west) and enjoy life. I've heard from everyone that you should take a chance like this if you can get it. After that though, I'll start a fulltime job somewhere. I'm not worried about finding a job; CSI in Midland is going to make me an offer soon, and the Grand Rapids market seems to be pretty good. I am worried about choosing which one I want to take, because the jobs of course will have lots of different advantages, and living near (or far from) Cherith and other friends will hugely shape my life. But I'm only in the passive job-search mode yet, so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Back to software stuff, I'm getting quite adept at linux and the all the open source apps and how they fit together. I've been using linux as my primary desktop for almost 2 years now and so I've been fluent in using it for a long time. Now I'm quite good at having general knowledge of new software and being able to pull it altogether to do what I want easily. This is especially true for our senior project, where we're really pulling together lots of different libraries and such and getting a lot done without too much coding. I bought a DVD burner for $60 a couple of weeks ago, but haven't used it yet. It can do +R, -R, +RW, -RW, and double-layer too. Pretty exciting. I'm going to burn DVDs of VHS tapes; first, ones from my Dad's childhood. There seem to be all the tools in linux to do this (even nice looking DVD menus, etc) which is cool. I'm going to see if I can also do a gallery on a DVD, with thumbnails browsable with the DVD directional buttons, and then full-display sized images of each too of course. That'd be real handy to distribute digital photos: you don't need a computer, you don't have to sit by a computer, you can sit in the livingroom and use a remote, etc.
Cherith and I have been dating for almost 17 months. The "honeymoon" period of that lasted a long time. Probably about a year. Then there were some "black days" around the beginning of last semester. There was evaluation of our relationship, if we were good for each other, then lack of care/love/whoknowswhat, then sadness, confusion, confusion. We'd never had fights of any sort really, and this wasn't a fight, per se, but it was the most severe time of issues we'd had to deal with. And so I think a lot of stuff ended up worse than it should've, because we didn't know each other and how to handle such things well. Since then (we decided not to break up), things had been going quite well. A lot of times I felt like marriage was a for-sure thing in our future. We talked about it now and again, but nearly always with caution and intentionality as a primary concern. The past week or so have had some weirdness that reminds me somewhat of the earlier "black days".. but last night we had a good talk.
I feel like I'm getting old now. My parents are right and I listen to them. I give advice to people (even my sisters sometimes). I'm becoming wise in the ways of the world to a certain degree.
Family is good. Too often we don't appreciate them enough. And Cherith has a wonderful family too, which is really really cool. We all get along well (that is: Cherith & my family, me & hers). Some of our siblings have met. Our parents haven't met yet, which seems kinda weird. It seems like they have. It'll be interesting to see how they get along, but I'm sure it'll be fine.
Taking an active and intentional role in changing your own life for the better is really hard. Difficulties between Cherith and me have shown lots of places I can and should work on. Lots of this is brought out, I think, because we are growing so close and she is frank with me. It can be so hard to humble yourself and do what is right though. Struggles with sin can be hard to conqueror; one thing that has really helped me over the past many months has been to talk to other people about it. This gives & gets encouragement, which is critical. You cannot fight alone.
I hope I continue to be dynamic and learning, and more awesome as I grow up.
Senior Project with Andy is going along swimmingly. "Trust" me, I won't leave you all in the lurch forever. By May we'll have some version & presentation of it ready for the public.
I like spoonerisms. I make random sounds a lot. I sometimes run/meander/? backwards on stairs or on ice (which Cherith doesn't like). I go nutzo a lot. But it's okay.. I just have to get such stuff out of my system.
I'm taking a writing class (audit) to see if I'm good at such stuff, and perhaps become good at it. I think it'd be fun to write documentation (articles, books, etc) for open-source software.
My business classes (Organizational Behavior and Marketing) are pretty neat, esp. OB. The prof is great (Stacey Jackson) and I'm going to nominate him for prof of the year even though it's his first year and I've only had him for half a semester so far. He's on top of his game and all over it.
I gave blood for the first time last week. Hurt more than I thought. My driver's license says I'll donate organs if I die. I also filled out a statuatory will a few months ago (if you want to too, just google for "Michigan statuatory will" or something like that, perhaps limiting it via "site:michigan.gov"; that's all you need is that form, none of this expensive stuff that for-profit sites offer you).
I don't feel like saying much re: CSX but that BookConnection is a roaring success, leadership is somewhat apathetic, and we need better ways to run the organization. Hopefully folks will follow me and do well.
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