My Inner Author

Okay, I have been (accurately) accused of providing far too much social commentary lately, and while those issues remain very important to me, I do grow tired of the battles from time to time and wanted to take a step away. So, when wondering what a socially irrelevant topic might be, I thought...me. Just a brief FAQ of my own. Since I will likely be the only reader anyhow probably, I get to choose the questions... 1) What do you really do? I work in I.T. (Information Technology, or computers for short). I presently work as a Linux Systems Administrator, Storage Area Network Administrator, and have been a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer in the past. Okay, thanks, now in English please? I work on enterprise class servers (big computers) which run Linux, an open source operating system which is much more secure than Windows. (The normal non-IT person translation: I work on blah blah blah computers blah blah blah.) A storage area network is a huge collection of hard drives cl...

What is it about politics? To many, the mere mention of it sends most people into a fight or flight response. Too many people either run from the entire concept of politics or get so sucked in their objectivity and independence go with them. The old time notions of discussion and debate are nearly gone from our country. Now it is all about control, spin, approval ratings and the elimination the opposing view. There are times when the issues of the day are as interesting as a 6-hour documentary on grooming habits of the Mediterranean fruit fly. Given all that, I can almost understand the apathy towards politics which so many people today display. But, that apathy needs to be transformed into action. Our nation is at a crossroads. Not taking a stand or making a choice is still making a choice. It just means the choices will be made by someone else. So, in the interest of trying to stir up some good old fashioned discussion and debate, I decided to lay out some of the most fundamental pri...

Where does the soul reside in people? Yesterday at lunch, my friend Jeff and I had one of our more interesting discussions. He recounted to me a chapter from a book he had just finished reading about cadavers called Stiff. Apparently there was a section of the book which told of researchers trying to determine the weight of a human soul, weighing people before they died and again after they died, in an effort to see if they could determine the weight of a human soul. Rather than carry the discussion in the direction of how these must be government researchers, since they were obviously wasting large sums of money on a fruitless effort, he asked me the question: Where do you think the soul is? Well, I am sure the average American on the street might be polled and the results would indicate a strong showing for the heart being the leading candidate (especially among Twilight fans), but I chose to ponder Jeff’s question for a few moments before I responded. My answer was rather concise, a...

Well, after my last very lengthy and political note/blog, I still had several things I had been writing. However, I thought I might depart from the political or spiritual realm for a moment, and compile a list of pet peeves, and invite others to add their own. A kind of therapy, by venting. This list is by no means complete, I am quite certain others will add some that I will go, DUH! I should have thought of that. But, the idea is to let everyone vent briefly. With the pending Monday, I am sure lots of people will want to add to the list. So, as a departure from the norm, here is my list. They are in no particular order. 1) People who insist on bringing infants to movies. As a slight variation on the same peeve, people who bring small children to movies that are wholly inappropriate for kids. (Yes I have seen people take 4-year olds to see R-rated films.) Talk about unmitigated selfishness. Hire a freaking sitter! 2) Drivers who will blow past you on the left lane, only to slow down ...

Well, I have been debating what to write about after taking the past month off, something personal, something funny, something political? I went back and forth for several days, kind of working on all 3 ideas at the same time. I would simply see which one allowed itself to be completed first. And the winner is, my shout out on why Congress and Barrack Obama need to stay the hell away from our health care system. Is our current health care system perfect? Nope. Is it the best in the world? Yep. Can it be improved? Sure. Can the government design and run a better health care system? Only if you think we have an overpopulation problem and we need to be killing off a few thousand people a day. What is the real problem with health care? Well, the most talked about problem on the Network news is the millions of people out there without insurance. So, how to fix the problem? If you vote Democratic, apparently the solution is to throw out our current system, and let the government run things, ...

Readers of my notes may start to think I have nothing but criticism to share about Christians and churches, and my intent when I started to put this blog series together was to provide a voice of reason and speak of my faith. I wanted the last blog to focus on the real positives in Christian churches and the Christian Faith. My past few blogs have dealt, hopefully in a constructive and light-hearted way (for the most part), with the not-so-positive issues I see the Christian faith facing. I wanted to illustrate to anyone reading them, there are MANY, MANY more sane, levelheaded people with a loving, caring heart and soul who follow the Christian faith. We do not want to see our beliefs and faith hijacked in the mainstream of society by the modern day Pharisees (the Holier Than Thou crowd), the Prosperity snake oil salesmen, or the casual country club Christian crowd. There are millions upon millions of us who simply want to share our faith, make the world a better place, and love our w...

My final category of issues facing the Christian faith in my blog series, is my catch-all, entitled Things That Don't Really Matter. These are topics, which to me in the grand scheme of the Christian faith, make for interesting debates, great discussion topics, and intriguing mysteries, but do not stand in the way of someone’s salvation. But, it is sometimes these topics which lead to a divide in the overall Christian faith, and I think explains the plethora of denominations around today. Indeed as the authors of “I’m Fine With God…It’s Christians I Can’t Stand” state, “the Christian army might be the only one in the world who soldiers shoot at each other on purpose.” It is not my intent or desire to offend those of a particular denomination or belief, but rather to state for myself, as a Christian, the arguing and bickering over these points is driving seekers from our faith and our churches. And that is so terribly wrong. Now, let me preface all of this with the word FAITH. Look ...