openswitch

I turned twenty seven years old today. I’m sure to some of you I still seem like a kid but you have to keep in mind that this is the oldest I’ve ever been in my life. I can see the big “three-oh” barreling towards me like a sumo wrestler charging down a hill and trust me, it’s not a pretty picture. There’s lots of jiggling and bouncing going on there.

Turning twenty seven didn’t hit me too hard but I have a feeling that thirty will knock me on my emotional butt. The good thing about turning twenty seven and seeing thirty approaching is that for the most part people don’t see me as a dumb college kid anymore (yes, that’s largely how adults see college students too.) I’m an adult now; especially since I’ve got a wife and son. That’s the good news; the bad news is that being seen as an adult leaves little room for error in the choices you make. People expect you to make fewer mistakes than you did at twenty two. I suppose this is a good thing, after all, who wants a twenty two year old running the country like it was a giant fraternity? OK, OK, put your hands down, I know he would throw some WILD parties. But just think of how the national deficit would increase even more than it already has.??

With that, here are my birthday lists.

What I’ve accomplished in the past year:

1. God has been growing my ministry here at Southside Baptist. What a blessing!
2. My wife and I continue to grow closer to each other; she’s my best friend and the love of my life.
3. I’ve learned to be more patient with my son, the most energetic toddler I’ve ever met.

What I’d like to accomplish in the next year:

1. I’d like to be able to establish a routine of daily spending time with God.
2. I’d like to become a more loving and supportive husband and father.
3. I’d like to be an encouragement to everyone I meet, not a source of criticism.

Those are the selfless goals I have. Here is the selfish one:

1. I want to join the 9rules blog network.

Pretty selfish, I know. But really it’s the only blog related goal I have. If there was one thing that would just make my day it would be being asked to join this network (a hint hint, nudge nudge is directed toward 9rules there.)

If it’s your birthday today, happy birthday! If it’s not, a very merry un-birthday to you too!

I’m a sound bite guy. When confronted with a complex idea I prefer it explained in as simple terms as possible. So for all the rest of you sound bite people out there I’ve put together this simple explanation of the Holy Trinity. Hope it helps.

The word “Trinity” is never used in the Bible. The doctrine has arisen from clear, but not comprehensive, biblical teaching. As a result it can be difficult to have a proper view of the Trinity. First, I’ll start with a picture for all you visual learners like myself. I’m sure that my artistry will take your breath away:

Note that the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God and the Father is God. However, the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son nor the Father. The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit. Weird, I know. It’s hard to understand too; especially given our limited grey matter.

Here’s another way to look at the Trinity; any time you try to describe or define the Trinity your definition or description must abide by three rules. Think of them as the three rules for a proper doctrine of the Trinity:

1. God is One. (Deut. 6:4; Deut. 20:2-3; Deut. 3:13-15; First Tim. 1:17; First Cor. 8:4-6; First Tim. 2:5-6; James 2:19.)
2. Each of the persons within the Trinity is fully God. (Ps. 2:7; Heb. 1:1-13; Isa. 6:1-3; Isa. 9:6; Gen. 1:1-2; Exo. 31:3; First Pet. 1:2; John 1:17; Mat. 3:16-17; Acts 5:3-4; Second Cor. 3:17.)
3. The Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is eternal. (Ps. 90:2; John 1:2; Rev. 1:8, 17; Heb. 9:14.)

Those are some pretty simple rules, aren’t they?

Over the years some people have come up with snappy analogies for the Trinity using everyday items. You’ll note, however, that each analogy falls short in fulfilling at least one of the three rules. Here are a few of the more popular analogies I’ve heard followed by the rule(s) they break:

1. The Trinity is like an egg. There’s the yolk, the white and the shell. Each are separate but they all form the egg. (This analogy breaks rule #2. The yolk does not possess the fullness of the egg, neither do the white or the shell.)
2. The Trinity is like water. It is one substance that can exist in three separate and distinct forms: liquid, solid and gas. (This analogy breaks rule #3. Being eternal implies that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist simultaneously. Water can cannot exist as liquid, solid and gas simultaneously.)
3. The Trinity is like a man: a man can be a husband, a father and a son all at the same time. (This analogy breaks rule #2 and #3. It refers to a man simply wearing three “hats.” This is an incomplete view of God because the Father is completely separate from the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son is completely separate from the Father and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is completely separate from the Father and the Son. In the analogy, however, the father is not a separate person than the husband, which would be absurd.)

So those are the basics of the Holy Trinity. I’ve given you a picture to help explain how the different parts of God relate to each other as well as three rules which every description of the Trinity must follow in order to be biblically accurate. This explanation of the Trinity is obviously not exhaustive but it wasn’t designed to be. It was designed to be simplistic and I think it accomplishes that.

What a great time you can have skiing with a bunch of high school students. It can be a source of great joy and great frustration all at the same time. If you’d like to look at some of the pictures I took on this trip you can peruse my “ministry” photo set. I’ve added a few photos from the trip. None of them have descriptions though, sorry. Before I start describing the ski retreat itself I’ve got to tell you about our preliminary meeting. A week before we left on our trip we had a mandatory meeting with all the parents and students.

At this meeting we went over the policies, itinerary and other information they would need for the trip. I also broke the news that they were not allowed to bring mp3 players, CD players, PSP’s and other high-tech devices. They took all this information in stride until, that is, I told them they couldn’t bring their cell phones either. At that point all their heads spontaneously exploded as they shouted reasons why they absolutely needed their cell phones at all times. They are, after all, their “life lines.” “Well,” I told them “you can do anything for 3 days. Even Chinese water torture takes longer to have any ill-effects on a victim.” They didn’t appreciate my sarcasm but were very good and didn’t bring any forbidden devices on the trip.

This was my second time skiing. None of the students, however, had ever been skiing before, in fact, I have the feeling this was their first time ever seeing any tangible amount of snow too. I think this because they had trouble walking in the snow without skis on; let alone telling them to strap waxed boards to their feet and pushing them down a steep incline. Yeah, that didn’t work too well. Most of them got through ski school and decided that was enough skiing for them. Others went down the “bunny” slope and quit. A few tried out the green slope and after falling 238 times decided to call it off. I was able to tackle the blue (intermediate) slope without falling; a feat of which I am thoroughly proud. But even with all the falling that occurred, no one was seriously injured (although a few egos got bruised) and everyone had a good time. We’ll be going back to Ski Ober Gatlinburg again next year.

One of the highlights of this trip to Gatlinburg was getting to meet Frank Sharp from Swap Blog face to face. He and his wife met the youth group and I at Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner on Wednesday night. He proved as easy to get along with face to face as he was online. It was such a great blessing to finally talk to the guy who has been a source of constant online encouragement. We mostly talked shop but occasionally sidetracked to other things. What a great guy!

I’ve wanted to write my memoirs ever since I heard that James Frey made a fortune writing his. However, I don’t think I have it in me to write a full book’s worth of interesting escapades that I may or may not have had over the years. Instead, I present to you here, a small segment about my drug addiction; in keeping with the style of James Frey.

I wake to the drone of the alarm clock. I don’t know where I am. All I know is I have a horrible headache. It’s a withdrawal headache. I haven’t had a fix for at least 10 hours now. You see, I’m horribly addicted to the drug “Methylxanthine;” otherwise known on the street as “caffeine.” I’ve been jailed a couple times for “possession with intent to distribute” caf. I never got into the hard-core use, that is, caf pills. I’m strictly what other addicts call “a natural user” because I only take caffeine in the form of coffee. I used to drink my coffee black, I liked the bitter taste at first. Now, though, I don’t do that crazy stuff anymore. You see, it was tearing me up inside (heartburn), so now I make caf more palatable with two spoonfuls of creamer and two spoonfuls of sugar. A million little spoonfuls over the years, all together in the giant coffee cup we call life.

P.S. – The above is “faction.” That is, fact mingled with fiction. I’ve never really been to jail.

As you can clearly see from the above picture of my office desk, I’m organizationally challenged. I used to just call myself “messy” but my mother-in-law convinced me that “organizationally challenged” is much more politically correct. Like using the term “melanin impoverished” to refer to white people or “utensil sanitizer” instead of dish washer, it just sounds better. There’s no helping me either. I’ve got plenty of storage space; I just refuse to use it. This is definitely a chronic condition. After I clean my desk it mysteriously seems to clutter itself again in a matter of hours. Weird.

My son, the lovable, cuddly toddler that he is has leaped head first into the “terrible two’s.” I was hoping we could just skip this part of his life and move right into the “cynical nine’s” as I like to call them. Alas, it seems we’ll be wandering in the land of No for a couple years at least. What’s more, we don’t have a map for this part of the country.

Thomas responds to every question asked him with an emphatic “Noooooo!” It doesn’t matter what you ask him either. Even if we know he hasn’t eaten for 8 or 9 hours he will refuse to eat anything we give him until it’s fully his idea to do so.

“Do you want some broccoli?” (Normally he loves broccoli.)

“Noooooo!” He says.

“How about some sugar-laden Frosty Flaky Flippers Cereal?”

“Noooooo!” He emphasizes as he reaches for the cereal and gobbles it down. You see, it has to be his idea to eat, indeed, to do anything.

We used to be able to feed him by holding a spoon in front of his face saying, “Take a bite.” Now it’s, “Well, here’s the food if you want it.” Actually, we aren’t allowed to say or do anything, we just put some food on a plate in front of him and make a caveman-like gesture with our hand that means something like, “Here.” It’s vital that we never show the slightest hint of wanting him to eat, otherwise he won’t. We must remain completely indifferent to whether he eats or not.

The secret to getting him to do something, we’ve found, is to make him think that doing it was his idea to begin with. This is tricky and blatantly underhanded but hey, it works; and let’s face it, Thomas doesn’t play fair either. He still possesses that ability to bend us to his will with a soft “Daddy, please?” Oh, he knows what he’s doing and it’s down right manipulative. Darn that sin nature.

WARNING: THIS IS A GEEK POST.

This post will be deleted once the changes are through. I’m cleaning up my K2 install. I decided to keep this post instead of deleting it. I don’t know why, I just hate deleting posts unless I have to.

Pretty much all I just did was clean up my code and upgrade to the latest release of K2, r167. Before I cleaned all this up my CSS was a mess. Sure, it validated and all, but it was hard for me to find my way around it. So I reorganized it to make things easier to find. I also cleaned up the sidebar a little. You probably will never notice any of this but from the back-end of things it’s much more tidy and in Ben’s world tidy is good. Good tidy, good.

I’ve also realized that for some odd reason my individual post pages and archive pages all fail to validate with between 1 and 3 errors. My main page, however, validates every time. It seems the problem in my post pages has to do with where the “p” tags are placed. Not to mention the fact that I’m still having trouble with a “div” that’s not being closed. I can’t figure out where it needs to be closed though. I’ll just have to live with not validating 100%. Sigh. Oh well.

In other news, I received my very first troll comment yesterday. I was about to delete it but instead decided to keep it there and put a “troll cap” on it. My Aussie friend, Chris Simmons, helped me install a plugin that lets me easily and quickly place a “troll cap” on any comment I deem worthy. The plugin required some php magic that was out of my league and Chris walked me through it. Thanks Chris!

Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day. That blessed day when men frantically run about looking for the perfect combination of chocolate, flora and mushiness. But for my wife and I February 14th is more, much more. It’s the day we got married! I wouldn’t have picked any other day on which to get married either; my wife and I went on our first date on Valentine’s Day. Today marks 3 years of a wonderful marriage for us.

Some men might think I was crazy for wanting to get married on this day. After all, now it’s not just an anniversary or Valentine’s Day. It’s BOTH. It’s like having a birthday on December 25th. It’s a super-holiday. I don’t think it was a bad move though. Instead of having two important dates to remember (Feb. 14th and your anniversary) I only have one to remember. What’s more, there’s no way on earth I can forget my anniversary; the whole world reminds me weeks in advance that my anniversary is coming up.

Yesterday as I was out shopping for a card, the stores were stuffed with men looking for last minute gifts for Valentine’s Day. But not me, no, I was looking for an anniversary card. Everyone was swarming around the Valentines Day cards while I was able to shop for an anniversary card in complete solitude; beautiful. I’m so glad we got married on Valentine’s Day. Happy anniversary, Bethany!

Updated: The post that got me thinking about this topic is located here.

I’ve read several blogs recently which say that you have to be a “niche blogger” in order to be “successful.” I won’t link to any of them here because I don’t want to point fingers. But regardless of why they say what they do, one common thread in all of them is they say that there are very few “successful” bloggers out there who write about a wide array of topics. They argue that in order to develop a large readership you have to be narrow in what you write about. I disagree for two reasons:

1. One person cannot tell another whether they are successful or not. How one person defines “success” may differ greatly from how another defines it. I suspect that those people who say you have to be a niche blogger in order to be “successful” would define the term with phrases like: thousands of hits a day, hundreds of subscribers and able to make a living off of the Google Ads on your site. While this definition of “success” may ring true to some, it doesn’t to me. I define “success” as being honest in everything I write no matter what.
2. There are plenty of examples of bloggers who write wildly popular blogs that are decidedly NOT niche writers. These bloggers write about their life, their thoughts, current news, technology or whatever else crosses their mind. Molly Holzschlag, Heather Armstrong, Jason Kottke, Derek Powazek and Jon Hicks are just a few that come to mind immediately.

In conclusion, I fundamentally disagree that the only way to properly “do” blogging is to blog to a niche audience. It’s not necessarily bad to blog to a niche, but it’s not the only “correct” way to blog either. There is no right or wrong way to blog, as long as it’s courageous. To quote one of my favorite bloggers, Molly Holzshlag, “I think it takes a lot of courage. Blogging in general – if you?re doing it well – it?s an act of courage. In my opinion, if you?re doing it well, it?s an act of courage.” (Link to quote) It doesn’t matter what you write about, but whatever you write absolutely has to be “personal, authentic and even controversial. Otherwise, don?t blog – it?s not going to be interesting.” “Courage is interesting.” Blogging is about breaking rules. Blogging is about not following a form, but making your own form.

Today I taught Thomas how to do the dishes. Hopefully he’ll have it down pat in a few weeks so he can do them instead of me. Dishes….ick.