Archive for September, 2006

Shadows

Posted 26 Sep 2006 — by nick
Category Creation, Light, Spirituality

I love this photo, my good friend barnsey took it one afternoon when we were at LT together. We two hiked up Eagle Cliff – one of the small nearby mountains. The view is of Moraine Park and the snow peaks of the Continental Divide in the background. Simply Beautiful.

Is there any question that God is an artist?

The thing I love about this image – what draws me to it – the definition between the light and dark places, the shadows and sunlit areas. The definition is so pronounced; only I’ve been in those shadows down there and it doesn’t seem like such a sharp edge or even that dark when you’re in it.

Life is like that, isn’t it?

When we’re in the shadows they don’t seem so ugly, so dark, so bad – but when we are in the light, looking back at them, they can seem so distinct, so trying. You can almost see the line where things changed and your path returned to the warmth and comfort of the light.

Starting work has been a bit of a shadowy place for me. Instantaneously my time disappeared – the thing is, I think I am working less and have fewer stresses than I did when I was in school it’s just that I have a continued commitment of 8 hours of my daily schedule. The breaks between class, the afternoon naps, the make my own schedule-ness of school is gone. That makes all the difference – after 3 weeks I’m just starting to get the hang of this balancing act.

The time has been shadowy because I’ve found it hard to get in a routine of spending time with God each day. It was easy when I was in school, when I got in from class I’d spin a CD, spend sometime unwinding and praying and then turn to scripture for a time and enjoy the Lord. After 8 hours of work I usually want to sit in front of the TV for the evening – or worse my laptop some more.

Recent days have been better. I’ve begun reading before bed and talking with my God in the mornings on a set pattern. My soul breathing deeply of His presence. Warmed by the light, the days seem more manageable.

Technical Difficulties

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

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 🙂