Bakery

I took another stab at baking bread, and this turned out pretty well. I had meant to do it on Tuesday, but the alarmingly quick snowfall on the commute home made my commute more than double its normal length. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get home. When I got home, the windows were all obscured with snow. The whole snow delay stole my baking time, so I ended up baking my bread on Wednesday night.

I've never had great luck with this bread recipe. However, it tastes great. It is beer, bacon, and onion bread. That's why it tastes good. However, this time around, following all the lessons I have learned in high altitude baking, I was able to get the bread to rise magnificently. Better yet, it has the texture of actual bread. We can make actual sandwiches out of it!

One thing I also did differently, other than not killing my yeast and avoiding over rising, was to use bread flour instead of all purpose flour. I dunno if this is the reason for my good success, but it certainly didn't hurt.

In completely unrelated news, this week we had a couple new people start at work. We've been slammed with a lot of work, so we've hired on a couple of folks. We hired on an intern who is working part time (Matt) and another person to do some HTML and CSS work (Kat). It's exciting to have new people at work, and exciting that they'll be taking care of some of the less interesting work that I and other people have done in the past. Welcome!

Crammedpackweekend

Friday afternoons have not been kind to me lately. If something's going to break or blow up at work, Friday afternoon seems to be the time for it. This time was particularly bad, and I was there until midnight dealing with a project blow up. It's a shame because we had our first house guest here at our place, and I had good plans for dinner. Mark was coming down to house sit, but couldn't make it up into the foothills due to Friday's snow, so we let him crash at our place.

Saturday, Mark got up to go to a wedding, and Jen and I met up with Tamara and Lisa to go to another. Ours was down in Black Forest near Colorado Springs. It was for Pat and Michelle, friends of Jen and her women's group. It was a nice ceremony with good barbecue at the reception. We had a good time and met up with one of Pat's friends from Pennsylvania, Katie. We danced, ate, and of course, I took a lot of pictures, which are up in my gallery.

We made it home late from the wedding, and I was up early the next morning to learn the procedure for running slides at church. I then came back slightly early to start making pozole for some friends from church who came over for lunch. We watched Wisconsin get mauled by Cornell and ate lots of cookies. The weekend was topped off with some Bible study.

Now I need a weekend from my weekend.

Bread of Life

I decided to try my hand once more at making bread. I have to admit, this was coming close to being the last straw with yeast dough. My ego had been bruised enough. But this time I was coming to it with more knowledge and experience. I carefully checked the temperature of the liquid to make sure I didn't kill my yeast. I also closely monitored it during the rising process to make sure that it didn't over rise and exhaust itself. I also made sure to add more flour in order to give it more structure (as well as to make it easier to knead). And lo and behold, I made a couple decent loaves of pepper cheese bread. Jen and I ate about half a loaf of warm bread right away. So good. Next up is beer, bacon, and onion bread.

Yesterday morning, I finished reading the Bible. I had been reading it straight through from Genesis to Revelations. I don't remember when I started this endeavor. I was doing about a chapter a day, 5 days a week. Jen and I calculated that it would have taken at least 3 years at that pace ... which would explain why there are all these things I don't remember. Well, I guess that's one good reason to keep reading it. I'm not sure where I'll go next. Maybe I'll hit up some feel good books of the Bible to get the taste of billions of people dying and suffering in Revelations out of my mouth. Yeah, that's definitely something I'll be chewing on for a while. Maybe I'll get around to putting some of that here when I have it better formed in my mind.

In other reading, I have started The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, the guy who wrote The Reason for God. Prodigal means spendthrift. I always figured it meant runaway. The book is great, so far. He started out with some standard analysis of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but he goes a lot deeper. One thing he pointed out was that the parable is grouped together with the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. In both of those parables, someone goes out doggedly searching for the lost item in question. But not so in the parable of the prodigal son. No one goes out looking for the younger brother. It would have been the responsibility of the older brother to go out looking for his lost brother. But the older brother is too busy doing good works and building his credit with his father to go find his brother. It's a good point that I had never noticed about that set of parables. I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.

Last night Jen and I went out to Via Toscana for dinner. Nothing like Italian food on St. Patrick's Day. We did it under a gift certificate from Restaurant.com, which gave us a $25 certificate for $2. Not too shabby. The food was great, and the decor was quite noteworthy. The restaurant is in a not-particularly-sparkling strip mall, but the interior is so transformed that you'd never know you were in a strip mall. It's nice to be able to get some good eats for not much green.

Et Tu, Brute?

Well, Happy Ides of March to all of you ... except for you, Caesar. You got nothing going for you today.

I've already done a couple of posts, but I may as well make hay while the sun shines (oh, and it was nice that it was still up when I got home). Since I've got time to write, I thought I'd put out there the interesting thing that happened after I got back from the conference.

I was at work and went to go use the restroom. The stall in the upstairs bathroom was busy, so I went down to use the downstairs one. When I came out, there was someone standing in the doorway talking to another guy in the hallway. I went by, and thought he looked familiar, but I blew on by. I heard him say, "Huh. That guy looked like someone I went to high school with." I turned around and said "Dan Bacon?" He literally staggered in surprise.

Dan and I went to high school together in a small town in Oregon. There were 55 people in our graduating class. Yet here we meet in an office in Denver. He works for a company that has an office in our building and had been visiting for a meeting. It is a small, small world.

He had to go back into a meeting already in progress, so we said we'd meet up for lunch the next day. I was excited to talk to someone from home and catch up on what he'd been up to. Unfortunately we missed each other somehow. He never came up to get me, nor did he answer his phone when I called to see if he was ready for lunch. I'll allow that there could have just been mixed wires in communication, but still. Grrrr.

I guess I have a different mindset about commitments and appointments. I expect people to follow through on what they say they'll do. If you can't do it, let me know. I'd much rather hear "No" than sit around waiting and wondering, especially when I'm hungry. I'm not sure what to do about this. Flakiness seems to be the modern malaise, brought on by cell phones and ... whatever else. I'm not sure. I guess the Christian thing is to extend to others the grace that has been given to me. We are all flawed. I just have a weak spot for expecting people to stick to their word. Well, it's good forgiveness practice. I just have to do it...

360 Flex Pictures

Okay, I finally got around to posting pictures from 360 Flex. You can view them in my Picasa gallery, including the drag queen singing telegram one speaker unexpectedly received in the middle of his session. Good times.

American Pie-dol

So, we had to celebrate Pi(e) Day. It was March 14 (3.14, get it?) and we gathered up some folks and had a pie party. Unfortunately many people were out of town and we had some people get sick and cancel, but we still had a great time stuffing ourselves silly with all the great pies.

To make things interesting, we called it American Pie-dol and challenged people to bring pies inspired by celebrities. It was great to see friends rise to the occasion. Our offerings to the collection were an avocado pie dubbed the Kermit the Frog Pie (It's not easy being green), and a pear pie with walnuts and a hole in the middle called the Ross Pear-O pie. It's a pear pie O that's a little nutty. You can see all the pictures (along with explanations of the celebrity tie-ins) in my American Pie-dol gallery.

While I was baking my pies, I made an extra little tart with the extra dough. I took a banana, sliced it, covered it with about 2 T. sweetened condensed milk, about 2 tsp. of grated lemon peel, and a couple dashes of cinnamon. I baked it at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes. It was incredibly yummy, but the sweetened condensed milk just erupted out of the pie and got onto the heating element in the oven. That's one way to learn a lesson.

Conference and Stuff

So, I got back from 360 Flex in good shape. No broken bones, no sickness, no blood clots. In fact, I had a marvelous time. The conference was probably the best I've been to for learning. I met a lot of great people and learned a lot of great information. On top of that, I had a lot of great food.

The conference was in San Jose, but we flew into San Francisco and took BART and CalTrain down. Pretty good transit system. We stayed in a nice Marriot and took light rail over to eBay's Town Hall where the conference was held.

The best sessions I went to were one about the awesome Flash Text Engine and Text Layout Framework and one about queuing and caching server requests. I also went to one about Flex game design with the Pushbutton Engine that was interesting. It was an impressive framework, but what really made the session interesting was that it was the speaker's birthday and in the middle of the session he was the target of a drag queen singing telegram. It was pretty hilarious, and I hope to have pictures up here sometime soon.

I finished The Reason For God on the way out. It is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in apologetics, the Christian faith, and adding more understanding to their relationship with God.

Ok, that's all for now. I have more to talk about, but no time to write. Oh, and Happy Pi(e) Day!

UPDATE: Pictures are up.

Briefly: Lost

We'll see if I can get myself some time to write about the conference I just got back from (good times!), but for now, I wanna give a shout out to Lost and my fellow watchers. I finally watched this week's episode on Thursday, and I was very pleased. Michael Emerson does such a great job. Who would have thought that I would be having sympathy for Benjamin Linus? I was also pleased to see the return of the touching musical ending for an episode. I can't remember the last time we had one of those. The touching exchange between Ben and Ilana set me up, and the musical ending knocked me down. So far this last season of the show has been worth the wait. I can't wait to see how it ends!

Not Much of Anything

Well, Jen is off at a seminar today and I've been baking. This time it is chocolate oatmeal bars for our Bible study and the girls at Heritage House. I made the trip to the store earlier and bought a mess of groceries, including very elusive sweetened condensed milk. Still on the list are rolling over my old IRA into my current 401K and packing for my trip to San Jose for the Flex 360 conference. I'm excited about that, but not excited about being away from Jen for that long. It'll be the longest we've been apart since getting married.

The weather has finally strung together several days over 50 degrees, which I am thrilled by. This afternoon I broke up my chores with a walk around Waneka Lake with majestic views of the snow-capped Front Range. Neighbors are starting to emerge from hibernation. The runners and cyclist are out. Unfortunately the loud motorcyclists are on the road again and cutting through the blur of traffic noise with their chainsaw motors.

I'm starting to think about gardening. I've started looking at calendars of when to start planting, and wondering what sort of fertilizer and equipment I may need. The things fresh tomatoes and basil drive people to do...

The Good Humility

I've started reading The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. I'm really digging the book. It's not written in the bland evangelical speak that tends to go in one ear and out the other. It has strong logic and reason and sticks it to moral relativism, hoisting it on the petards of its own arguments. This is good intellectual judo, and it rocks.

Keller is the pastor of a thriving church in Manhattan, of all places. Yet his church doesn't water down the Gospel. It still hews to orthodox Christian teachings. It doesn't put on a spectacle, yet it attracts hip, urbane, artsy folks. And let's remember that this is in Manhattan, of all places. In reading the book, I get the sense that Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC is a lot like my beloved Summit Church in Orlando or the ginormous Flatirons Community Church here in Lafayette. They preach the undiluted Bible, yet attract young, intelligent, sophisticated people. What's going on here?

I think one thing that is key, is a bit of humility. This is not wishy-washy, spineless humility. It seems to be a good humility born out of the sense that, although we have encountered the absolute Truth, we are neither perfect interpreters nor executors of it. It is a departure from the binary thinking that if we hold the Truth, that anyone who disagrees with us or differs with us is wrong, stupid, or evil. It holds a realization that we are humans and we are flawed. It bears in mind that because of our flaws, we can try to be righteous, but apart from Christ, we will fail. This breeds compassion, acceptance, and sensitivity. And furthermore, this humility is expressing these things to others, especially non-believers, with authenticity. It is speaking the Truth in love. Standing on the sidewalk shouting at every passerby that homosexuality is a sin may be factually correct, but misses the second part of that phrase.

How important is mixing love into our speaking the Truth?

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

It's pretty darn important. If your orthodox beliefs were handed to you straight from St. Peter, yet you execute them with judgment, condemnation, and a firm belief in your own superiority, you are missing the point. How might this love manifest itself in bringing the Truth to the world? Perhaps through compassion, sensitivity, and acceptance. It does not manifest as vilifying those who do not believe as you do, condemning those who live differently from you, or shouting down those who speak opposing messages. While you may satisfy your need to win, encourage those who believe likewise, and rest secure in satisfaction that you are in the right, it will leave a trail of bitter destruction, resentment, and fear.

Speaking the Truth in love is what I see in this breed of church. The love that they can show to the skeptical, the non-believer, and the opponent does not compromise the Truth, but alters the way in which they show it to the world. The blend of unyielding truth, sophisticated delivery, sensitivity to reasonable doubt, and sharing of the love God has for every person (believer or unbeliever) seems to be highly effective. Showing people that you are interested in them as a person rather than as a tally mark in the count of debates won or souls converted will go a long way to opening hearts to the Truth we as Christians hold. Their doubts about Christianity or God are their spiritual beliefs. Those beliefs are central to who they are, just as a Christian's beliefs are to them. Showing that you take their doubts, problems, and hurts seriously and that you can handle them with nuance and care, is a way to demonstrate the love of Christ to that person, and that you take them seriously. On top of that, it's a way to illustrate that Christianity does not require you to check your brain at the door.

Intelligent people generally have thought out reasons for believing what they do. Not all attacks on Christianity are motivated by hate or some crypto-atheist agenda. If we can treat people and their reasons for their beliefs with respect and love, we may find that they can muster respect for our beliefs as well. And God only knows where that could lead...