Harry's Ruminations

It's been said, "A boat is a hole in the water you throw money into."  Corollary: "There are two great days of owning a boat: The day you buy it and the day you sell it." In my experience, the same is true of houses.  A house is a hole in the ground you throw money into.  But you own the hole, so it's okay. Well, okay, after paying the bank 3x the purchase price over the term of a loan named after death, you own the hole. Then, you decide you need a bigger/smaller hole in a same/different locale (It's like a MAD LIB!) and then you repeat the process. Don't get me wrong, I love  my house.  I just wish it wasn't so needy sometimes :-D

Ah, so, Google Reader .  It's going away in July 2013. Yes, this is another rant decrying the shutdown of Google Reader.  However, it's my process for working through losing the app I've used every day since it was announced.  I mean that.  Every. Day. I've used Google Reader so long, I don't remember what I used before it to read RSS feeds; I vaguely  recall using NetNewsWire or some other installed application, but those never felt right.  Just as with email, the concept of sync'ing internet content to my PC never felt right. I've gone on fasts;  I've been off facebook for years at a time, I've demurred and neglected twitter, but if I've had access to an internet-connected anything (PC, laptop, smartphone, Kindle), rest assured I was checking my feeds. Why?  And why isn't twitter or something similar a good substitute? Leaving aside twitter for a moment, the simple answer is speed and uniformity.   Speed : Unlike...

Most New Year's Resolutions fail. If you doubt this, look at your waistline, your bank account, and the amount you spend on your particular vice(s). So, how are  mine going ? Status at the moment: Small Group leadership.  I've sucked at this one, at least in the short term.  I did ask my co-leader to take over, and he did a wonderful job.  I'm back at the helm through the end of this term, but I remain undeterred that I'm going to step out of small group leadership (and small groups) next fall.  Rating: Fail. Facebook.  I'm out, and I've stayed out.  The app is not on my phone, and I have no desire to go back.  Rating: Winning. Kindle Bible study.  This one was classic:  I did it like gangbusters for 2 weeks, then...uh.  Basically, I was on day 12 of my study in January,  then I loaded it this morning and I was on Day 12.  Rating: Fail. Writing code every day.  At this point, I'm writing code at least ever...

"Are these your kids?!" the 50-ish man leaned over and asked me.  Despite the din of 100+ decibel music, he seemed calm and his voice was clear.  We were second row back on the center stage, and Jamie Grace  just got done strumming her guitar in a duet with Toby Mac.  My son Joey was star struck, and Caleb looked like he'd just wet his pants when TobyMac strolled casually in on his part of the song, Hold Me . "Yup!  Well, this one is and the one in the green is a kid from our church." "Want to come backstage with me?" At that point, my mind went TILT .  Seriously?  Backstage...I told the boys to follow on and I passed my dumbstruck wife and mouthed the words. "We're" "Going" "Backstage" * * * How did we get here?  Remarkable coincidences abounded. Once my wife saw on Facebook that Winterjam was coming to Rupp, she posed-up to get a group from our church together to go.  There are two ways to get in:  Yo...

I hear this today as a planted sales question: "Why shouldn't I just use an Open Source solution instead of [my company's dooflotchy]?" So help me, this is what I recall as being what the speaker wanted the salesperson to respond. Well, first of all, you get what you pay for.  Would you really want to trust your sensitive data to a piece of Open Source?  We will support and stand behind our solution, and you have every opportunity to influence the product roadmap if you go with us. Yeah, I didn't really make it past the first two sentences either.  Of the last two, I have no complaints.  Of the first two I listened in disbelief.  What is this?  A 1997 Microsoft pamphlet? Let me be as clear as possible:   If you lead with that, you will lose.  Selling anyone on fear unless the fear is real is a losing proposition. Also, categorically, you're wrong.   You get much MORE than you pay for with alost any software you  buy, or (thes...

I remember distinctly being in Don Napier's 6th grade Language Arts class in Sebastian Middle School in Jackson, KY and getting one of those writing assignments everyone hates.   Write an essay arguing a position. It was the early days of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in Kentucky.  The Supreme Court of Kentucky (SCOK) had decided that the education system in Kentucky was unconstitutional, that our perennial position just above Mississippi on every aptitude test was not good enough, so out with the old, in with the new. Write More! Went the mandate.  We'll no longer grade you on objective things (neatness, grammar, spelling, content) but on subjective things called a "writing portfolio."  Thus, prompt like the genius nugget above. Let me put it further in context:  I was writing this paper out of sheer boredom.  A blizzard raged outside, an honest-to-God, Minnesota worthy 4-5 feet of snow with drifts.  It was so bad my Dad stayed in our tiny...

The other day, I found myself wallowing a tad, and I cried out to God, simply: "God, please help me." At the time, I was writing in my journal, some pretty negative, emotionally-charged stuff, like: I feel like a failure as a husband. I feel like a failure as a father. My career isn't working out the way I really would like.  I'm certainly duller than I was in 2010, and I feel overwhelmed all the time. I'm not coding regularly anymore. Writing the above, I literally stopped in mid sentence and immediately wrote these words: So, fuck it.  What am I going to DO?  Blah, bah, blah.  I've been here, what, a dozen times before?  What the fuck to do? Here's (part of) what I plan to do. I think it's time to step out of small group leadership. I strongly think going off  Facebook+  again would be healthy.  I'm tired of seeing all the happy people of the world when I'm sad, and at the same time, I'm wasting inordinate amounts of tim...