On "your life isn't working so come to Jesus"

18 July 2010

[photo: Josh hiking the foothills of Himalayas in 2002]

Much of the American Christianity noise seems to be around--"your life isn't working, come to Jesus and he'll make it better".

But before I became a Christian, my life was working.

I was happy before I became a Christian.  I had money, I was traveling the world, I was chasing a girl through Africa, I graduated a great college in 3 years,  I had just saved $30,000 from my summer job.  When I was in my home town I had stories to tell.  Success and adventure lay at my feet.

When God gave me a small glimpse of the reality that he was on the thrown of the universe, governing every detail of every atom for some purpose of his own idea; I got scared.  

He owes me nothing.  If anything, he owes the rest of creation something: giving my arrogant self a beat down.  And so I crawled over to the cross of Jesus and turned myself in.

The happy parts of knowing God have been better than the happiness of my previous life.  But the sorrows and the struggles have been deeper and harder too.   And I've had to give up many of my old practices that were fun.

So if you hear smiling pastors saying, "You have a God-shaped whole in your heart that only he can fill".  That may be true.  

But our problem isn't whether our not our lives are "working".  Our problem is God.  He's going to kill us.  The only solution is the cross of Jesus; where Jesus said "Father, let's not kill them; I will pay the debt; kill me".
 

New Nashville software development book club

22 June 2010

Rick Bradley is organizing it.  Going through the book Domain Driven Design.  I just started it.  I hope its good.  It's on a topic that if one masters it, you become a wizard of software.

http://crush3r.com/page/byizmqramp

Ruby Hoedown returning to Nashville?

14 June 2010

http://twitter.com/jm/status/15877026510

Nashville at Railsconf

12 June 2010

Including myself, I counted 6 Ruby on Rails developers from Nashville at Railsconf this year.

I met Greg Donald and Bob McClellan who are Ruby and Rails developers at Vanderbilt.  Apparently those guys have really warmed Vanderbilt on using Rails which is awesome.  That's as much of a gift to the Rails community as an open-source tool.

Former Nashvillian Alex Sharp is having a great time as a Rubyist, active in the open-source community, and working out in SoCal.

Rick Bradley of OG Consulting gave a great talk on how to rescue other companies' floundering Rails projects.  He showed a lot of code and gave us the key points what to do at each stage of a rescue.  http://en.oreilly.com/rails2010/public/schedule/detail/14114

(Rick setting up before talk)

Back from Railsconf in Baltimore

12 June 2010

Railsconf is the annual conference for Ruby on Rails, the web-developmet framework.  This year it was in Baltimore.  Stephie and Chanhassen and I went and stayed with friends in Frederick, Maryland.

What I got out of it: An excitement for my job, and for Rails 3.  Some knowledge as a software engineer.  And confidence that I can offer mobile apps along with web apps.

An observation:  I love how male-saturated my field is.  Railsconf had to be 96%+ men.  I love it because I can freely work with, talk to, collaborate with men.  Women outght to dive into web-development.  But I can work more intimately with men than women so I love having tons of men around to work with.

Touring afterwards

After Robert Martin's keynote, we toured Baltimore.  Highlight: the USS Constellation in Baltimore's harbor.  I am such a softie for sailboats.

Washington DC

Visited some cousins with a 1-year old daughter.  Went into the capital.  My impression:  I am very deterred by how pomp and self-glorying DC is.  Do not elect me President or Dictator, because I would cut the entire Federal Government down to just 2 or 3 buildings and the N Virginia and S Maryland unemployment would be 30%+ for a decade.

Summary

I would definitely go to Railsconf again, especially if it's in a good location.

I am in such an amazing profression, am glad to have found it, and am thankful at all the knowledge and open-source tools that are so freely shared.

sqlite3-ruby gem broken upgrading to Rails 3

12 June 2010

I got stuck installing sqlite3-ruby 1.3.0 trying to get up to Rails 3.  I'm on OSX Leopard 10.5.8.  I was starting on RVM with a new 1.8.7.

What was wrong?

The sqlite3-ruby gem got some cool upgrades for Ruby 1.9 and major speed increases.  But it was built and tested to work on Snow Leopard, and not early OSX's.

I posted the help I got from Aaron Patterson (@tenderlove) at Railsconf 2010 at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3000819/sqlite3-ruby-cant-make-on-rvm-1-8-7.

Your options are to upgrade to Snow Leopard, install sqlite3-ruby 1.2.5 and specify that in your Gemfile, or install sqlite via MacPorts.  The details are on StackOverflow (link above).

Testimonial from Duane Ward

04 June 2010

Duane Ward, Premiere Speakers Bureau

Project: IASB website and speaker database

Approx. transcription

Hi I'm Duane Ware at Premiere Speakers Bureau in Franklin TN. I had the privilege of working with Josh on the site for the IASB - International Association of Speakers Bureaus. As president, I relaunched a new brand--a new website--to replace a stale, antiquated site.

Although Josh had been recommended by someone i have a lot of confidence it's always risky to turn over a project of such importance to any developer.

From day one, he asked all the right questions and set our minds at ease. He did exactly what he said he'd do any more. I would say under-promise and over-deliver is definitely something Josh could use in describing how he does business.

He said he'd give us weekly reports. I said "yeah, yeah", but indeed he did. Even though some weeks were not as busy as others, he stayed right on schedule and kept us updated.

When it came launch time, he gave us tasks to drill down into the site to make sure we understood the depth of the programming he delivered.

When we had the presentation at the annual convention, everyone was thrilled and impressed!

I hope Josh gets a lot of business from other bureaus as a result of his work for us.

I'm a fan of his work, and of him personally.

There's a lot of depth of character there that is so important when you trust someone to deliver something of this size.

His fees are very reasonable.

I wish him all the best as he continues to grow his business.

Video explaining my development process

02 June 2010

David Brainerd on Twitter project

02 June 2010

On my bedside table is a copy of The Life and Diary of David Brainerd by Jonathan Edwards.  It was published first in the 1700's and never went out of print. 

I could read a few pages at night, but single sentences were enough to touch my soul deeply and cause me to thank God and pray immediately.

I thought he should be on Twitter, randomly interrupting our twitter streams with lines like

Brainerd I can't imagine ever using Twitter.  It would been utter vanity for him to tweet the deep valleys and mountain tops of his soul with God.  But at his death he committed his diary to Jonathan Edwards that Edwards could steward his diary as he saw best for bringing glory to God.

He is now on Twitter, working through his whole diary (more or less).

Links

The Life and Diary of David Brainerd

twitter.com/david_brainerd

Fat grapher

31 May 2010

I wrote up a small Ruby on Rails application to help me and my wife lose weight this summer: Fat grapher.

It's purpose: motivate us to lose weight by creating a public race.

Favorite feature: each day's weighing is submitted by email.

Technologies used:  Ruby on Rails hosted on Heroku, using Sendgrid to receive the emails of weight data, and Flot to graph the results