Technical Difficulties

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Posted 25 Sep 2006 — by nick
Category Technology

Recent vissual poo-poo was indicative of some technical difficulties around here. My picture wasn’t loading and several of the links weren’t working on the sidebar over there. These due to the recent iLife server move – which just so happens to be where I serve up some of my sweetness from. That should all be fixed now because of my sweet server admin skills.

Those of you that subscribe via a feed won’t be getting this as beta blogger is having issues with it’s feeds at present. To fix that one follow the instructions in that link.

Other nerdish things include:

  • I’m currently working on coding a light-weight-uber-awesome-messageboard-esque deal for mI-Life (our iLife facebook-ish deal).
  • I’m reading up on PVST (per vlan spanning tree) standard as defined by Cisco Systems for work related knowledge, but mostly for fun.
  • I just bought some wireless headphones for work – they rock my face off.

I’ll post something more meaningful in the coming days, I hope…

Unplugging

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Posted 18 Sep 2006 — by nick
Category Spirituality, Technology

Two weeks, hard to believe but that’s how long it’s been since I started my new job – assumed my new identity, a Network Designer for the University of Illinois’ IT group. I realize that might sound like Yiddish or something to a lot of the world but it’s what I do. There is something beautiful about the science of information transportation through the ages, from inking cave walls, to oral tradition, to written manuscripts, monks and the like, to postage mail, to telegrams and the telephone, and emails, the web, etc at present. The technological advances in last 20 years have made this life skill fascinating and boasted a job field that employs me.

Have you ever paused and thought for a moment how much your life depends on email, the web, a computer? It can be so hard for me to fully grasp my dependence – largely I think because of the magnitude of it. My life is saturated by this thing. Even now I have returned home from work and I am sitting in front of my laptop, something I’ve been doing all day long. Yesterday I took a Sabbath’s rest, usual for my Sunday, only this time was different. I unplugged. It wasn’t intentional though, our power had flickered while I was running in the early morning, resulting in my computer rebooting and me being logged out of gmail. I didn’t realize this until mid-afternoon and decided to keep it this way – not logged in. I continued my rest, enjoying the ending of a book I had been reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, spending sometime with a couple close friends, and watched the delightful film A Mighty Wind – a favorite of mine. As I crawled into bed my heart warmed as I spoke with my God, relaxed I sank into sleep un-plagued by the pulls of responsibilities and worries.

Opening my inbox at work this morning, offered me a handful of emails from the past day – none so urgent as to warrant guilt for neglecting them. The thing that surprised me the most about this whole experience is how much more rested I felt by simply not checking my email. I think I may embrace this practice on a more regular basis – you should try it.

I had grand thoughts of writing about my new job and how I’m doing, posting pictures and stuff, but I’ve grown tired of this keyboard under finger and I think I’ll go unplug for the evening. Or at least a little while 🙂

"Against the black they look so bright…"

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Posted 28 Aug 2006 — by nick
Category music, Spirituality

The low drown of computers hum around me as the calming, worshipful words stream from my laptop speakers as I sit in this tenebrous room.

and how could such a king
shine His light on me
and make everything beautiful
and I wanna shine
I wanna be light
I wanna tell you it’ll be alright
and I wanna shine and I wanna fly
just to tell you now
it’ll be alright, it’ll be alright
it’ll be alright.
~ David Crowder Band ‘Stars’ off of Illuminate

My soul resounds with these words, like a gong from a mallet. I wanna shine, I wanna be light mutters my heart. For a moment I sit and talk to my King – we sit, He and I, as I thank Him from walking with me through the past week, months, years. The race has begun, the warm up complete – we’ve settled into a comfortable pace. Now its time to relax and let the path rise up to my feet with each stride, focused on the goal, my King at my side.

The campus is flooded with people again, wading through the masses I’ve picked up a couple new friends. My new friends and I spent a lot of time doing the usual New Student Month things with Illini Life this weekend – the Fall Rally, our Adventure Race, SNG and Crash the Pastors.

In a few short days iTeams will start back up and I’ll be inviting my new friends to join our family.

This song my heart is tuned to – God’s song of life – there is something beautiful, pure, lovely about it. I’m reminded, His way is the best possible way to live. This is why I follow Jesus.

The calm before the storm?

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Posted 17 Aug 2006 — by nick
Category Ministry, Spirituality

I’ve taken the better part of the week off. This was out of necessity as this summer has found me in a rather stressed-out, emotionally down state indicative of a long battle with joblessness. The wearisome hunt for a full-time job has wrung my heart dry of lifeblood. Rest has been the goal of the past several days, the theme carrying on today and the next, in an effort to restore my heart. So I sit here now, some familiar tunes fill my room, me on my couch with laptop under finger, talking to my God, tuning my heart to the song He is playing, that He has been playing for all time.

It crosses my mind that some might refer to this as the calm before the storm. Students return to campus in a few short days kick-starting illini life into ‘the short fall.’ We’ve been through quite a few of these, my heart and I – this will be the sixth. Soon there will be meeting after meeting discussing the events we have planned, our vision for the coming year, our hopes, expectations and desire to be unified with our Lord as we pursue it all. Then the first week of events – Quad Day, Follow-Up, The Rally, Adventure Race, First SNG, Crash the Pastors, I-Team. Follow-Up will continue as we move to the familiar routine of I-Team and SNG each week with meetings sprinkled around. The Storm being this line up, this pace.

This Pace…

That rings more true with my heart. This week, this summer, the past years – to me they have all been the training runs, the preparation for the big race, for going the distance. The Storm – that sounds dark, scary. The Race – that sounds true. My heart stirring with excitement and adrenaline as it pumps life to my legs and body, whispering “here we go again, you’ve trained for this, He’s prepared you, your heart is reflecting His.” The pace is always a shock at first, warming up after a mile or so the legs are loose, the breathing smooth, the mind focused and the miles fly past. It’ll be December soon – the aid station for a campus ministry – snow on the ground, trees bare, mumblings of final exams and students tired from a long sleepless semester. Not long after that will be the finish line in May. We’ve done this before, my heart and I, remember.

Working out the bugs

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Posted 16 Aug 2006 — by nick
Category Maintenance

I’ve been tweaking the template of this blog for the better part of the day. My perfectionist nature has reared it’s head and held me captive as we get that font size – just right, and the spacing- it’s oh so important, then – of course – there is the content. What would you say really defines me in the “links” category? Enough for now, I’m off to work on my Church History Final Exam. Real posts will be forth coming, I’ll be launching the blog officially this week with a series of posts on my recent teaching at Summer Church with Illini Life.

Going live in 5…4…3…2…1

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Posted 08 Aug 2006 — by nick
Category Maintenance

Welp, been playing with this for awhile and decided I should create an official blog for musings and such. I’m sure I’ll abandon it for something better (read real-life) in the future. For now it’s gonna be sweet though!

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