Where Chester Lives

I changed back to the original style that I had in the beginning. I like it. So there.

So...yesterday was a heavy post (relative to most of this blog). I'll try and keep today's light and airy, like a Twinkie. All flavor, no nutritional value.

On the cycling front, I am trying to get ready for my LiveSTRONG ride (go donate! PLEASE?) still. I WILL do 100 miles. Not non-stop, of course. they have rest stops with snackies and drinkies. I'm not one to pass up snackies and drinkies. I got up early this morning (not a usual thing for me) and rode ~15 miles. Not very far, but I do have to work...it had three good climbs, so there. I want this gadget incredibly bad. If anyone is willing to buy one for me, I'll take it. I'll even say, "Thank you, kind sir or madam, for so generous a gift." It would be very nice to know some of the things that I currently do not know on my ride, like my cadence and total altitude gain. Then I could come back from the 15 mile ride and brag about the 2000' I climbed. well, it's probably more like 1000'...but still. I hadn't ridden at all this week until this morning, it's so hot here. That's why I got up early. It wasn't exactly cool, but it wasn't hot yet either. There was no wind so I perspired quite profusely, especially on the climbs. But it's already 98 outside, and it isn't even noon. So my rides during a heat wave are either early morning or late afternoon/evening.

Change of Subject.

I'm reading two books right now. I do this alot...but this time it's different because neither of these books are in the realm of "pleasure" reading. The first one is "Time Management for System Administrators" by Tom Limoncelli. This is actually a very good book. I know there are tons of time management books, courses, techniques, etc...what makes this different is that it's geared towards my industry, which has its own unique challenges regarding time management. I can't think of any other industry that is so interrupt-driven. We all deal with interrupts, I know. If you are a sysad, I recommend this book. If you are not a sysad but deal with juggling interrupts and long-term projects, I recommend this book. tom has a great writing style and is very much a geek. He's WAY smart without being arrogant (too much of that in my industry).

The second book is "The CISSP and CAP Prep Guide" by Ronald Krutz and Russell Dean Vines. This is solely to get my CISSP, which is a target of mine for this year. I am trying to ramp up my study cycles on this stuff, for many reasons, some of them obvious. It's a good book, considering that it is covering very technical and detailed content that would absolutely bore a normal person to tears. Well, it bores me to tears as well...but I HAVE to read it.

This doesn't leave much for recreational reading, which I like. Oh well...the sacrifices we make.

Oh. OH, OH, OH! I almost forgot...my good buddy Adam is a new father! well, new in the since that they just had another baby. This one's another girl...poor Wyatt . I don't know all the details, I think it just happened this morning. Congrats, bro! Guess we aren't having coffee today...

that's all for now. cya on the flip side.

I've been thinking alot lately about those two titles that are given to Jesus Christ. Chris Goldman, about a month ago, said, "There are many who are willing to accept Jesus as their Savior. The number of people who are willing to accept Him as Lord is far fewer."

So, what does that mean?

I began by thinking about those words and what they mean to me. For someone to "save" me means a couple of things. First, before the act of saving, I was lost and incapable of rescuing myself. Second, it means that there is nothing I did to earn it. This is true of any type of salvation, be it my soul from eternal damnation or a child from a burning building. Using the child analogy, you can sense the helplessness in that situation, but it's harder to sense the fact that the child didn't earn his or her salvation from the fire. We place value on human life, and I don't think it's wrong to do so. In fact, I think we don't place enough value (more on that another time). But, in the end, if you are the savior of that child, how has that child earned the price you are willing to pay to provide rescue? After all, you would be risking your own life (and may lose it in the process), which also has value. So, while the child's life may have value, he or she has not directly "earned" salvation. So, if you picture yourself trapped in that fire, how hard would it be to reach out to the one risking everything to rescue you? You wouldn't even have to think about it.

The correlation to Christ as Savior is a bit tougher, though. First, in order to accept His brand of salvation, you have to categorize yourself as "un-saved." This is harder than you think. We have alot of things that get in the way of this, including our pride and sense of our own abilities. Also, it calls us to look at our lives as they currently are, which for a typical American really is pretty great by the world's standards, and then say, "This isn't enough. I am lost in all of this." It's because of this relative comfort that religiosity in general, and Christianity in particular, is shrinking in the US (there are other factors, I know. I'm being very general on purpose). For me, I have no problem working out that I need Christ to save me. It isn't hard for me to look around and see what sin has done in peoples lives, what pain and suffering those choices have caused. I have felt it first-hand.

Still even though it's more difficult to allow yourself to be saved by Christ, there are still truckloads of people who proclaim their salvation through Him.

But Lord? That really is a different matter altogether. You see, a lord is someone who has the rule, who enacts a system of acceptance into his kingdom and who expects certain things from those who would call themselves citizens. If you identify yourself as an American, then you are going to accept the lordship of the US governing body. This accords you all sorts of privileges, like freedom of speech and the right to vote. It also means that you are bound by its rules, which means you have to pay taxes and you can't drive 160 mph on the freeway, among other things.

So, to accept Christ as Lord is to say, "Since you risked so much for me, even to death by crucifixion, I acknowledge that there is a pattern after which you want me to live, and will strive my very best to do so." THIS is where the rubber meets the road. You see, it isn't enough to say, "Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, Messiah, and Savior." That doesn't make you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is you implementation of His pattern in your life. In other words, we have accepted citizenship into His kingdom, now we have to follow the rules and pay our taxes, as it were.

So, what does that entail? Well, theologists and preachers have been going on about this for centuries. I'm not going to start the argument again here...what I will do is say this: By accepting Christ as Lord, you are accepting His complete authority in your life. In doing so, you are relinquishing your specific "rights," and esteeming others higher than yourself. You are also accepting that He gave His authority to a certain group of guys, the apostles, and being the good Jewish boys that they were, they ensured we would have the pattern of His kingdom to follow in the things that they wrote. It is one thing to tell someone how to do something, it's another thing entirely to write it down. So, since we have this written record passed to us through the centuries, those of us who accept Christ as Lord would do well to listen.

I didn't say interpret. I said listen.

That's the crux of it...when I interpret something, I am running it through filters of my own in order to consume it in a manner of my liking. when I listen, truly listen, I am turning those filters off and not letting my predeterminations tell me what's important and what isn't. Just because an apostle may have written something only once doesn't mean it carries less weight than something he had written down dozens of times. Both of those things stem from the authority that I am choosing to recognize, and both of those things are parts of the pattern that Christ established.

He is my Savior, and He is my Lord. I am trying my best to listen.

You know how the rest of the song goes.

It's been a busy summer 'round here. I know it isn't officially over, but the girls are back in school, so it FEELS over.

I'm not even going to apologize for not posting. Because I would be apologizing from here into forever, and that really isn't productive. Subscribe to the RSS feed, and you'll know when I post. Simple as that.

To recap:

Tahoe Family Encampment:

We had a great time this year at the encampment. Got to see many friends, including Jim Gardner and family (Hi Tori!), Kerry Williams and family, people in our old home congregation in Vallejo, and some Tahoe-only friends, like Lester and Carol. I played a more active role in the actual program this year, coordinating the song worship and various song leaders. This helped out Paul quite a bit, I think. It took something off his plate that he didn't want to do and allowed him to enjoy the singing from his seat, which is always good. That's one of the wonderful things about the encampent. When there are 2000 people singing four part harmony under a tent in the middle of a wilderness...well, I don't see how it gets any more spiritual. The keynotes and classes were very good, too. AND I got to do two things that I love:

1) Hiked to the top of Mt. Tallac. It was a great day for this, since it never got too hot and I had good company, namely Lester and John. The views were way better this time than the first time I did it, since there was a breeze that was moving any haze off the lake. The wildflowers were really going nuts and I didn't expect it since it was in late July and we had a very dry winter. It is a strenuous hike, averaging ~12% grade over the course of 4-5 miles. However, since this was three weeks after the Angora fire, the evidence of that was definitely prominent. There were portions of the trail that went through burned forest (the burned manzanita was particularly striking), and you could see the burn scar from the top of Tallac. What surprised me about the scar was that, in relation to the entire Tahoe basin, it was not very large. It looked almost like a finger of dead trees following the backside of a ridge along the southwestern portion of Fallen Leaf Lake. We did not go into the neighborhoods that burnt. Part of me wanted to, but mostly I felt that it would have been too voyeuristic. Kind of like capitalizing on someone else's sorrow to satisfy my curiosity. I grieve for those that lost their home and their possessions, but I am very glad that no loss of life occurred. That fire could have been far more devastating.

2) I rode the Flume Trail with two of my bestest friends in the whole wide world, Adam and Dave. We did the trail from Spooner Picnic area to where it intersects with Tunnel Creek Road and back. All told, about 21 miles of great riding. Spectacular views of the lake and just a really fun time. We left earlier than we did last year, which worked great. we got the entire ride done before it got too hot and made it back to Camp Richardson by lunch time.

I felt lots better doing physical activities this year than I did last year. I've lost more weight in the past few months and gotten better at enduring long periods of exercise. Last year, we didn't do the whole flume, and it absolutely crushed me. This year, I felt like I could have done the loop with the Red House Flume and Hobart Rd., which would have added ~1000' of climbing. Oh well...maybe next year.

Church:

In the past few months we have been at loose ends regarding our family's welfare in relation to the congregation we were worshipping with in Placerville. In the end, we decided it was best for us if we found a different assembly to attend. This decision did NOT come easy. In the three years we were there we made close friends with many, and life-long friendships with a few. Teresa and I had never felt so loved as we did by our new-found friends (A&A, P&M, W&J, M&K). Ultimately we had to ask ourself a couple of really tough questions: First, were we willing to sacrifice peace in our family in order to work with Placerville during a time of serious (and lengthy) trial? Second, were we willing to continue to watch our oldest daughter be marginalized by a youth group that continually ignored her because of her realtive newness and a slight age gap? The answer to both was "no." So, as of now we are attending assembly with a congregation in Rancho Cordova, and have stated our desire to work with them. If you are reading this and are not a member of a church of Christ, it may seem like an odd thing to you. I would explain further, but really, it is hard to write about. Suffice it to say that we actually look forward to worship now and leave with smiles on our faces, and that our long-term plans are exciting and we are looking forward to some real opportunities to reach out locally and help families and individuals who are struggling. And that's how Christ would have it, I think.

If you are in Placerville and reading this, we miss you. We bear no ill-will towards anyone there and have only love for you. The statements I made above should not be new to you, and they are factual. I'm sorry if this hurts; it hurts us, too.

Family:

First, everyone in the family is doing well. Teresa's business is starting to pick up and the girls have started attending an academy hosted by the charter school that supports us. The academy is very cool, and it was time for us to do something like this, especially for Anne. It has a Math/Science focus, especially for HS ages, which is perfect, since that is where Anne is strong and Teresa is, well, not as strong. Anne attends four days a week, and Emma two (i think). The big drawback is that it's a 40 minute drive one-way, which stinks. There is talk of opening another academy that would be closer to us; we are hoping that it happens. In the meantime, we will gut this out and see how the girls do. Anne is already making friends in her age bracket and is excited by some of her classes (not so much by Geometry; she thinks the teacher is dry). All in all, this looks like a Good Thing (tm).

Second, my brother is really struggling. the past two months have been pretty horrific for him (please keep him in your thoughts and prayers). He is currently separated from his wife and divorce papers have been filed (i won't go into details; it isn't pretty. divorce never is). He is getting professional help, and has been for a while. However, the struggle for establishing a home for his daughters and keeping food on the table has been pretty tough. I do everything that I can to help him, but it's tough on us as well.

That's all I have to say about that.

Job:

For those keeping score, Reed Elsevier just sold MDL to Symyx to the tune of 123 million dollars in cash. So, the next question is: what does all of this mean for me? Honestly, I can't say, but I am not holding my breath. I have been with MDL for a LONG time (10+ years) and would hate to give up the working relationship that I have with my boss and my coworkers. Most of us on the IT staff have been with MDL for 8 years or more. We have a good rapport, we work well together, and we get the job done. Plus, in that amount of time, we have forged friendships. We know each other's families and we see each other socially outside of work. I don't know exactly what will happen (the uppity-ups always keep that kind of thing under wraps), but I am almost certain that this train ride is about to be over. The vibes we are gettng in the office just aren't that great, no matter how rosie they want to paint it. The sale finalizes October 1. I'll know for sure then.

That's all for now. I'll try and keep you posted. Asta.