My Meandering Mind

And so a new semester begins... tomorrow

2012-01-16T22:05:00.001-08:00

Spring 2012 is nearly upon me. I'm mostly ready for it, although I didn't make quite as much progress on my notes for the differential equations course as I had hoped. I'm trying something new with my students, which is to give them basically a lab assignment every couple weeks, and let them struggle through the material on their own. It will be an interesting experiment, and an increase in the amount of grading that I need to do. I've also found out that I'll be heading to Reno (Truckee Meadows Community College) on February 3. The trip to Reno is short enough that I won't spend the night.

I was in Boston for a few days a couple weeks ago. The Joint Math Meetings is our annual national math conference. This year, I was on my own. The food adventure wasn't quite as interesting because I had less time. The first night (Wednesday), I got in at about 10:30 PM, and so I went to dinner at the first place I found, which was a Cheesecake Factory. It wasn't local cuisine, but it was open. And I had not had anything to eat earlier in the day except for a Croissanwich combo when I left Las Vegas (plus a couple bags of honey roasted peanuts and a couple cups of soda on the plane).

Lunch the next day was at Atlantic Fish. I did not look this place up before hand, I simply started walking and it seemed interesting. Apparently, it scores very well with the local reviewers and won an award for the best chowder in Boston. I made the mistake of stumbling across this place around early lunch time, so I wasn't hungry enough to order a lot of food. So I got the mussels appetizer and a cup of chowder, at the recommendation of the server. (This is something that I've gotten into the habit of doing when I go to eat at some place new, and I'm not sure what I want. The servers should know what's good and should be able to give you a recommendation that will lead you to the better tasting foods.) I have to admit that I wasn't overly impressed with the chowder. It was very good, but as I ate it, I wasn't blown away by it. It just seemed like a very solid chowder. The broth was smooth and creamy, the potatoes were diced very small, and there were lots of clams. I sort of wonder if chowder is the sort of thing that tastes better later in the day after the flavors all had time to marry. I got a good amount of mussel for the appetizer. The broth/sop was also quite tasty, but again it wasn't spectacular. Or maybe I'm becoming a snob and it was actually fantastic but couldn't recognize it. Either way, I'd definitely try something else if I went back.

That afternoon, I got to talk to all six of our candidates for the math position. The great news is that none of them seemed weird or otherwise disagreeable. They all felt like they would fit in the culture of the campus, and they all seemed to share the level of enthusiasm for growing and creating new things that I have. As an aside, there's one more phone interview to go, and then we've got to pick three to come out for an in-person interview. I'm excited an optimistic about that.

For dinner that night, I went to Chilli Duck (Thai). The restaurant reminded me very much of the San Francisco Chinese restaurants I've been to growing up. It had the mirrored wall and the aroma of Asian spices (though I don't know which ones... there's an Asian hole in my culinary knowledge). But whatever it was, it had that familiar smell. I didn't really look at the menu and simply asked the server, and he recommended the chili duck. (Yes, the restaurant is called Chilli Duck with the double l, but the menu item is chili duck with a single l. I didn't ask.) It was pretty good. The duck was crusted in a chili sauce and served with rice and some vegetables. The crunchy duck skin slowly got soggy as the meal went on, which was a little disappointing, but perhaps that just means I should have eaten faster. Just as with lunch, I wasn't overly impressed. I don't know what was missing, but it felt like it could have been a little bit better.

For lunch on Friday, I ate at the food court at the Prudential Center. I almost ate at Cheeseboy (grilled cheese sandwiches) but instead went for Gourmet India. For a fast food Indian place, I was surprised at how good it was. I think the naan bread was made in a tandoor, which is a very high heat cooking vessel that creates the char that is characteristic of the bread. The rice was very light and fluffy, and I felt it was better than the Thai resaturant. I don't remember what I ordered, but it was a chicken something and a potato curry. I like the Indian curries. That's something that's now on my list of things to learn how to make. If a fast food Indian place can make it, I've got to have a decent shot at figuring it out, right?

That afternoon, I gave my talk to open the session. It seemed well-received and I chatted with a couple different people afterwards (plus I got a couple requests for the slides). After listening to a couple other talks, I found a quiet place to hop on my laptop and take care of emails and other stuff that needed to get done. That evening, there was a gathering of PROMYS alumni (PROMYS is the high school math camp where I was a counselor for about three years). It wasn't too well attended, but it was attended by people I overlapped with, and it was good to reconnect with them.

We went out to dinner at a place called Ginza Japanese Restaurant. I ordered a plate of nigiri, and it was good in a standard nirgiri sort of way. That dinner was much more about the company than the food. And I'm perfectly okay with that.

On Saturday, I flew back home, so that was the end of the Boston eating. I did have a couple hours at the Phoenix airport, so I wandered around there for a while. I thought about eating at one of the more restaurant-like eateries, but decided to get a Nathan's hot dog because I've never had a Nathan's hot dog. Four dollars and six bites later, I consumed my Nathan's chili cheese dog. The hot dog itself had a nice snap and flavor to it, and the chili and cheese were both completely generic. Now I can say that I've had the hot dog that hot dog eating champions eat.

It sounds like we might have a senior pastor candidate coming through in less than a month. The search committee will send out two delegations this weekend to visit the two finalists. As much as I feel that the process seemed rushed (six months from start to finish is really short), since we don't have an interim pastor and there seems to be no desire to get one, it's probably a good thing. There are a lot of long term planning and vision sorts of things that need to happen very soon, and none of that will happen at the church without a person in that position providing a sense of stability to the planning.

I've been fighting something on my credit report for the last year, and I'm hoping that this will be the final volley to finally get the charges removed. I noticed that one of my credit limits was cut dramatically (down to 1/3 of what it was) as a result of the unwarranted collections record. The good news is that I don't use that credit card, but it's still a reminder of how much something like that can have an effect. Since I don't carry a balance, I haven't paid much attention to the interest rates, so I don't know whether those were also impacted. But since I don't carry a balance, it doesn't matter. I dropped the letter in the mailbox on Saturday, so in another four to six weeks, I should have a response. Hopefully, it will bring closure to this whole nonsense.

Many nights when I'm going to sleep, I'll turn on my iPod shuffle and listen to an episode of whatever seems like a reasonable choice. Sometimes it's Car Talk, sometimes it's Wait Wait Don't Tell me, the Splendid Table, or a sermon podcast. (Yes, I am in the habit of falling asleep while listening to sermons.) Last night, I chose to listen to This American Life. The particular episode was a poor choice of falling-asleep listening:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

Act One is an excerpt from a one-person show. The speaker is a Mac fanatic who goes to China to see how Apple products are produced. As the story progresses, he starts to talk about visiting the factories, and meeting the 13- and 14-year old children who work 12 hours a day doing highly repetitive tasks. Descriptions of 12 ft by 12 ft dormitory rooms with 14 beds and cavernous 10,000 person cafeterias (or whatever it was) creates very strange mental images as the brain starts to doze off.

I don't make many recommendations of this type, but this episode is worth a listen. It evokes questions of social justice and matters of the exploitation of the poor. Make sure to listen to Act Two as well. The claim is made that what is going on is a step up from what used to be. This is a "better" way of life for them. (Not being knowledgeable in this level of economics, I have no idea whether it's true. But if it is it's a really sad commentary about how the world works).

It also reminded me of a picture that I saw (that I can't find) regarding the occupy movement. On one side it showed a protester claiming to be the 99% and on the side it had a picture that was probably of the poor in Africa. That thought then reminded me of another website. I am the 1%:

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

I need to go back to falling asleep to sermons. They don't cause me to think nearly as much.

It feels like only 364 days ago that it was 2010

2011-12-31T00:02:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the end of another year. It's been anything but a stagnant year for me. I think I'll summarize in a few categories of thought.

Food:

My culinary world continues to slowly expand. I had a great food adventure in New Orleans in January. I think that those meals were probably the heartiest and tastiest foods I ate for the entire year. I still need to learn how to make red beans and rice. Then I tried making plated dinners for a party the first time for my birthday. That was both interesting and challenging in a brand new way. I had never really tried putting my food "on display" like that before. I don't quite know how to explain the distinction. Usually, making food for potlucks and bringing snacks to small group and holiday dinners is about providing something to support fellowship and general hanging-out-time. But that experience was... different.

I also participated in my second turducken with my cousin. This one was for the Wong family Christmas on December 26. It was much better than the previous one (Thanksgiving 2009). The stuffing choices were better, and the entire process was much more relaxed and felt more natural. I've been contemplating the flabby duck skin problem, and I think that for the next turducken I do, I'd completely remove the skin of the inner birds and try to just stack the breasts and legs instead of trying to roll it. I think the layers will stay put, and it would just come out better.

Travel:

I have done more traveling this year than any other year in my life. Most of that travel has come within the last couple months. Of course, there was the New Orleans trip in January to the joint meetings, a trip home over the summer, for Thanksgiving, and for Christmas, and then a trip out to San Diego and Catalina island over the summer. That's the "normal" travel for me. But this year there was also the one day Chicago trip, the one day Reno trip, the three day Duke trip, all of which happened in the last few months of the year. I would never have really thought of myself as someone who does a lot of traveling, but it looks like reality is telling me that I am.

Religion:

I don't like that word as a category, but it's probably the right word to use. And putting it third makes it seem like it's somehow less important than food and travel. But that's the order in which things have come out.

Things at church are in a place where I'd rather it not be, but it's where it is. We're without a senior pastor, the financial situation is not very encouraging, and there's just a general lack of vision and leadership. Looking back, it's kind of hard to believe that the church has gone for as long as it has in this state.However, there are still positives to report. There is a process of leadership development that is taking place despite the absence of a senior pastor. We're taking the time to build leaders who are able to study the Bible carefully and thoughtfully, which is something that has been absent in the past. Along with this, there is a renewed focus on developing small groups, which has included shifting the worship pastor to discipleship. So there's a foundation that's being laid, and maybe there will be something healthy that will built upon that in 2012.

Small group continues to go well. Couples have become families, which has changed the dynamics of the group a little bit. But it's been a good transition. I hope that our studies start to transition into something that gives the new parents in the group some space to talk about how they can raise children in a way that honors God. I have no idea how such conversations might look, but that's okay. Friendships in general feel like they've deepened, and I'm glad to be in such a good community of people.

I've started reading "Morning and Evening" by Charles Spurgeon using YouVersion. Will I actually make it through the whole year? I won't know for quite a while.

School:

So much has happened on campus this year. I've launched the remedial math program that I've been working on for a couple years, and that has worked out very well. It's exciting to see it coming around after all of the investment, and I even got some money to continue supporting those efforts. My responsibilities in this have also put me into new places, such as ending up at Duke for three days at the NGA STEM conference. These are new opportunities that I would not have imagined even existed a couple years ago. I'm also doing new things like recording lectures and introducing problem sessions into my classes. Those are interesting innovations that I think will lead to other new things in the next couple years as well.

Of course, this has all meant an increase in the amount of work that I'm doing. I'm very near to being completely maxed out, which is why I'm glad that there is a new math hire on the way. Unlike last year's search that got frozen, this year's has a clear sense of moving forward with confidence, and there's no sense that anything bad will happen this time around. I think the administration knows how thin everyone has been stretched over the last couple years, and it's good to be at a place that recognizes this and is fully supportive of bringing us back down to a better workload.

I've had a good bunch of students this year, which has made the teaching very enjoyable. I even got some gifts from students (for the first time ever)! They certainly keep the classes interesting, and for the cluster that will graduate this year, it's been good to watch them progress over the last couple years. I think this will be the first batch of students that I've seen all the way through their studies.

Life:

I had some health issues this year (neck problems requiring chiropractic work, shingles, a jump in cholesterol), but my overall health is good. I've put on some weight in the last couple years (which at this point doesn't mean much -- being 143 pounds still allows me to be classified as "skinny").

I'm an uncle. Not only that, but I've been deemed the eccentric uncle. Horray! At least I have friends here who have children that are approximately the same age (a few months older), so that I'll have at least some sense of the progression as he gets older. But it will be interesting to get the "snapshot" view of him growing up (seeing him every 6 months or so).

I don't really know what else to say. Even though there are only a couple short paragraphs under "life" there's that whole wall of text above. Life has been full and exciting (and very busy), and I'm looking forward to what next year will bring.

Happy New Year!

It's raining at Duke University. How do I know? Because I'm there.

2011-12-07T17:11:00.001-08:00

I'm glad that I got out last night to check out the campus a bit. The weather was very pleasant. I had a couple nostalgia moments when I walked through the University center, not because I've been here before, but because there were students wandering around in slippers and things like that... stuff that you see on a residential campus and never on a commuter campus. I thought about trying to crash the InterVarsity group here, but they meet on Friday evenings, and I'll be gone by then.

But now, I'm sitting in my room at the Washington Duke Inn, watching Duke play Colorado State on TV (because there's no way I was going to be able to get tickets to this game). I'm here because I'm part of the National Governors Association Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (NGA STEM) Summit. It's going well, and I'm having a lot of interesting conversations, but it's going to cause an increase in the amount of work I'm going to have to do when I get back because I'm going to have to have a bunch of other conversations with other people. The day started at 8 AM and went until about 7:30 PM (which for me is 5 AM to 4:30 PM), and I've got another full day tomorrow, then a half day on Friday, and then a long flight home. Saturday, I go to campus to grade exams, and review some more applications. Pretty soon, the semester will be over so I can... ummmmm... keep right on working.

I'm missing finals week right now. This is a new one. I'd actually rather be there than here, but here isn't really that bad. It's really cold in Las Vegas right now, with temperatures in the low 30s. The room here is nice, the bed is comfortable, and I have free and mostly reliable internet. This trip is the second of my run of trips. The first one was going home for Thanksgiving. I got to meet my nephew in person for the first time, which was nice. He's cute, but if you want to see pictures you'll have to be friends with Corwin or Mandy. They've got plenty of pictures and I anticipate they will have plenty more.

I had turkeys three ways this year. The fried turkey still wins. And it's not really that close. It's tough to beat fried turkey. I still need to work on the smoked turkey. The flavor wasn't as sweet as what I remembered from the first time I did it for GCF a long time ago. Now *THAT* turkey could have competed with the fried turkey. I don't know if I'll ever get that one back, though. I may have to try smoking some chickens over the next year to work out what brine/smoke combinations work well.

Church things are rolling along. Where we're rolling to, I'm not sure. We still don't have an interim pastor or a senior pastor, which is making it hard for staff to really set out a direction for anything. We had a Christmas musical ("Word on the Street") which was entertaining. It was one of the many Christmas story re-tellings that are out there, this one in an urban setting. I'm not quite sure what else to say about it. On the kid's end, it looks like we're creating a children's worship service and pulling them back out of the adult service. It seems like the right move, since we've now reduced the children's participation to a single song before sending them off in prayer.

I guess that's all I've got right now. I'll be back in Vegas on Friday night, and then back in Livermore on December 22, Vegas on the 27th, Boston on January 4th, and back to Vegas on January 7th.

Wait... It's Novem... Wait... Didn't I do this last month?

2011-11-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

[Facebook will no longer import notes from an RSS feed. But I don't want to try to figure out how to move everything from here to there, so I'll just keep everything here.]

It's been a busy month, but I'm also at a point where I feel that things have slowed down to a reasonably normal pace from the frenzy that I've been at a while now.

I'm officially an uncle. Corwin and Mandy had their first child (Elijah) on 10/27/11. I'm excited to get a chance to see him over Thanksgiving. The baby inundation continues!

I had a random conversation with some students about the appearance of age based on marriage and children. Married people are older than single people, and married people with kids are older than married people without kids. You can especially see this in church contexts, where "family" (as defined by having children) is sometimes more highly emphasized than in other contexts. So I guess this means that my younger brother is now older than my older brother, or something like that.

Also in the last month, I had the revenge of the chicken pox virus. I had a vague knowledge of this, but now I have more intimate knowledge. Apparently, when you get the chicken pox, you don't actually get rid of the varicella zoster virus. Instead, the virus hangs out in your nervous system, and in most people it just sits there and does nothing. But for reasons that are not understood by the medical community, it is possible for the virus to randomly start doing stuff, causing shingles. Yes, I got shingles. Yes, it's a disease that generally occurs in people 50 and older. No, I don't know why.

The good news is that it wasn't as painful for me as it apparently is for some. I think part of that is simply my age, and that my body is generally more able to deal with things like this. So instead of being a very painful rash, it was a slightly painful but really annoying rash. It took a couple weeks to get over it. There's just a little bit of discoloring on my neck and chest where the rash was, and there's a tiny bit of residual itching.

While I was at the doctor, we also looked at some blood work that was done as a part of the school's wellness program. In the last year, my LDL (bad) cholesterol went from a very healthy 75 to a still-healthy-but-less-so 117. Also, my HDL (good) cholesterol when down from 82 to 50. The actual values are not as concerning as the sizes of the jumps in the given time frame. It is true that, especially in the last 3 months, I've been eating fast food much more often than I used to. But I think I'll blame genetics. (I will have to make some adjustments, but don't think it will be a big deal.)

I'm counting down the weeks until the semester is over. It has been a busy semester, and I'm looking forward to hitting the break. The break will be less busy, but still busy. I'm teaching a new class next semester (differential equations). It's not going to be a hard course to teach, but I do need to make sure I put notes together, pick homework problems, and all that stuff. This is something that, if I can just sit down without having distractions, I could probably push through in relatively short order.

But other than being busy, things are going well on campus. Both transitions of the remediation program have gone through with no problems. I've got that NGA trip to North Carolina in early December. I expect to have some sort of phone conference or something before that, so that I will have an opportunity to meet the other people on the committee, but it's less than a month away and there has been no contact so far.

And then the Joint Meetings in Boston in January. Hmmmm... if I include Thanksgiving and Christmas, that will be four trips in six weeks. I guess things aren't actually ready to slow down just yet. Oh well.

Wait... It's October?

2011-10-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

It's a Sunday evening, and I'm just sitting around the house watching TV. It's a good thing.

The school-related workshops are done for now. In mid-September, there was one that was related to retention and diversity. This is one of those things where I think a lot of people make mistakes by conflating and confusing issues. I respect the need to pay attention to diversity, and that it is important to be aware of unintentional messages (such as if all of your advertising only contained white students). But it's another thing to try to pretend that such things are at the root of the problems of racial equity in higher education. Specifically, we were led through a mini-session on looking at a nursing syllabus, and talking about how it's helpful if the syllabus contained quotes from doctors or nurses of different ethnic backgrounds. But to me, that's a bit much. Would students even be able to recognize that the quote is from a particular person? Is it even relevant to the class? And you can put in a lot of energy trying to find such quotes, but even at best the expected return would be extremely minimal.

The next week, I was in Chicago for a Complete College America workshop. It was my first one-day business trip that crossed time zones, and turned out to be a 21 hour day. That trip was a bit more interesting. This was related much more focused on remediation issues. There are some very good ideas floating around, but there are also some things that make me pause for a bit and wonder if it's going too far. There is a constant tension between the idea of making college degrees accessible and the idea that college degrees need to be meaningful.

One of the ideas presented was to create an alternate remediation path for students who are not going into a math intensive field of study. This is a good idea. But the application left something to be desired. The idea was to create a statistics-specific remediation class for students whose college level math class will be statistics. And while this is successful in the sense that the students who are prepped for statistics did well in their statistics class (of course), the speaker also made the off-handed comment that she's not sure whether her students are able to add fractions, and that didn't bother her. At that point, I have to question whether this is a good idea. If you meet someone with a college degree who can't do basic arithmetic, isn't this a problem?

This theme was repeated two weeks later at another workshop in Reno. That conversation was led by someone who was involved in public policy, and his entire perspective was driven by the policy perspective that the goal is to have X people with college degrees in the next Y years. It reminds me of the "No Child Left Behind" goal of having 100% graduation rates for high schools. If the high school diploma is supposed to mean something, then it is necessary for some people to NOT have one. In the same way, we can continue to de-value the college degree by changing our standards simply to attain some sort of numerical goals.

This is very speculative on my part, but if this trend in public policy continues, there's probably going to be an industry formed in the next 20-30 years for certificates that replace the traditional college degree. It's already happening in a number of industries, and I don't see any reason why it won't continue if higher education continues down this path. All it would need is a clear definition of what the certificate would represent, and then the approval of whatever industry is demanding it. I digress...

My next work travel is about two months from now:

http://www.cvent.com/events/state-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem-summit/event-summary-a0eff8ac4aa14fb7891723ab6bbdd96a.aspx

This one is even more closely tied to public policy, so it will be interesting to see whether I'm more encouraged or more frustrated by it. There's so much traveling that I will do this year. In July, I flew home. In August, I drove to Southern California. in September, I flew to Chicago. In October, I flew to Reno. In November, I will fly home. December will be a flight to Durham, NC and also be a flight home. Then January will be a flight to Boston. And who knows whether February will bring any more travel.

The Math 093 modularization project has continued to move forward very well, and I'm getting some interesting data. It has also been significantly easier to track this than I thought it would be, and much easier to make the room rearrangements than I thought it would be. There are some questions about scale, but I think that it will scale just fine, at least over the sizes that I expect to see this system applied.

I'm going to be presenting again at the Joint Meetings in January (which is the aforementioned Boston flight). I've been given the first speaking spot in the session, which I think is a good thing. But more importantly than just giving a 15 minute presentation, I've got to start thinking about a publication. There have been two journals that I've been considering, and there might be a way to get into both of them by presenting different pieces of the information in each one. One of the journals is more math-focused, and I can submit the data regarding the pedagogical aspects of the system. The other one is more general, and I can use that to talk about the structural issues that the system addresses. But there's a way to go between here and there.

We're losing our president at the school:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/nevada-state-college-president-leaving-for-colorado-post-131145518.html

It's a bit sad for us because she was a good leader. We've still got enough people in leadership positions that we can keep moving forward, but it's getting thin (as it is all over campus). So the campus will have to continue to band together to make sure things get done.

Church stuff is still rolling around. We've started a discipleship class that is essentially a small group leader training. It's only been going for two weeks, but it at least gives a focus and direction for us. We're at least having the conversation about discipleship and getting people to start to move towards that goal.

I'm not an elder, and I won't be an elder until we at least have an interim pastor in place, and then I will make a decision whether I want to serve. Part of the problem is that I don't want to be disruptive as a leader. I don't want to commit to a leadership position and find myself in a place where the person I'm serving behind hasn't been given the authority to do the things that need to be done. If the interim pastor is simply a guy who fills the pulpit, I don't think I can be an elder. It would be far too frustrating to be sitting there and watching nothing happen from the leader, and that would be very disruptive to the leadership structures. But if there's a guy there who has a sense of what needs to be done, and is looking for people to step up and help him accomplish those things, I would be all for it. So I'm just going to sit tight for a month or two and support the things that I already support.

We'll see what happens between now and the next time I have time to post something.

The word for the year so far is "busy"

2011-09-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's week 4 of the semester, and I'm already feeling a bit bogged down. I was at a faculty gathering this weekend, and I commented about things being busier this year. We broke into spontaneous laughter that can only come from a sense of shared experience. The school has continued to grow, but because of the budget, the faculty has not. The good news is that this year the school has decided to put a large investment in growing the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and so next year we will have a significantly larger faculty base. If I remember right (and I might not), I think we were supposed to increase from about 20 faculty to about 30 faculty next year, if all goes well. But that's next year. This year, we're all pushing hard to keep things running. (This was a tough decision from the President to invest in the core curriculum in this manner with the budget that we have. But I think it is grounded in a good vision for the long-term growth of the school as more than just a factory for teachers and nurses.)

Since I'm teaching all three of our "higher level" classes this semester, I'm seeing a lot of the same students often. There's a small cohort of students which I see 5 days a week, and with all of the office visits that they have, I probably see them 3-4 hours a day. It occurred to me that this is probably bad for the students, because they aren't getting enough variety in the perspectives that they encounter. I do things in a certain way, and emphasize certain things, but they need to see it done differently. I think I need to see it done differently, too. In some ways, my understanding of upper level math has become a bit stagnant because I haven't encountered anything new in a while.

Sadly, there's no solution to this problem for this year. Next year, we should have another math faculty for balance -- and my sanity. But that's next year. For now, we're just going to push forward because we don't have much of a choice on the matter.

On top of this, because of my work with the math remediation, I'm not being sent to workshops and that sort of thing all over the place. This Friday, there's a workshop in town. Next Wednesday, there's one in Chicago (and I'm flying out and back on the same day for that one -- if I were not already missing as many classes, I might have left the day before to be there in the morning, but I don't like missing so many classes), and then two weeks later there's one in Reno (another same day trip). This is good for me career-wise because I'm starting to develop a footprint in the conversation. But it also means that more and more is being expected of me.

(This also means I'm going to miss three days of class in the next four weeks, which I think is more than I've ever missed in a single semester, and more days than I missed all of last year! But I see my students so often, maybe they can use a break from me...)

Everything is going well with the remediation program. The part time instructors have bought into the system, which is one of the challenges that we were going to face. The grading is happening at a reasonable pace, which is another hurdle we've crossed. The last big hurdle for this semester (which we have yet to face) is rearranging the students at the end of the first 5-week module. I'm feeling confident that it will go well, but I can be blind-sided by circumstances very easily in this game, so I've got to be ready to come up with quick solutions to problems. If that goes well, then things should be pretty smooth up to the start of next semester, when everyone needs to figure out what class to enroll in.

On the topic of "problems"... church has gotten strange again. Less than 9 months after hiring the new senior pastor, it has been decided that we will not continue to have him as the senior pastor. In some sense there's mutuality, but in another sense it feels like he's taking the blame for things that he simply cannot control. I don't think it's reasonable to think that a church in the position that it was 9 months ago would be expected to suddenly be a healthy, vibrant church. The recovery process is slow, difficult work. The church didn't do much in the way of laying the ground work, which made it much more difficult for the new pastor to get started.

But there's a silver lining to the cloud, because the worship pastor has now taken on the role of discipleship pastor, and it seems like that is starting to move in the right direction. Daniel has gotten involved in that, and I've talked with him often enough about it to have a sense of the direction it's headed, and to feel good that it's a positive development. It's finally something that feels like long-term vision and planning, which moves us away from the event-driven church that we were. Or at least, that's the hope.

I was speaking with one of the elders last weekend, and was asked to fill out the eldership paperwork. This is also an encouraging development, as I've been a bit on the outside of the leadership of the church for a while. About a year ago, when I met with some of the elders to have a vision-type of discussion, it turned into another story about "putting out fires" and being lectured about how I worship and the fact that I wear a t-shirt to church.

(I still wear a t-shirt to church. I guess that might be labeled as open defiance, but I think it simply doesn't matter enough for me to change it. It's clean and presentable, and I'm not in violation of a larger cultural taboo -- though I suppose that some may still think of church as the place where you look and behave in a manner other than you normally do in order to ... ummmm... impress God? Impress other people? I don't really know why dressing up for church was such a big deal. Maybe the internet can be a reliable source of informat... never mind.)

Anyway, I don't know where church is going to be four to six months from now. We'll just have to wait and see (again).

There's a thunder storm rolling through right now. I tried to imagine some sort of interesting metaphor to make of it, but I've got nothing. So I guess it's just going to be a thunder storm, and nothing more.

And I want to try to make baklava again. It's been years since my last attempt, and I'm more competent in the kitchen now than I was back then.

Going... going... gone.

2011-08-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

Summer is over.

This last bit of summer was good. I got to go to the 2011 Leadership Summit, and it's been a while since I've been challenged in that sort of way. I've sort of forgotten how it is to sit back and try to take in these types of insights at that pace and in that environment. Michelle Rhee and Cory Booker were interesting political speakers. Steven Furtick gave a pretty entertaining sermon on digging ditches (2 Kings 3). There were others and I feel like I should have more to say, but I don't.

In my last week of summer, I was just getting the last bits of everything ready for the semester. The oversight role that I'm playing in the math remediation required me to have meetings with the PTIs (which I've never done before), but it's turned out to be great and a relatively easy thing to do. I'm surprised at how welcoming they are of direction. Maybe they're used to just being thrown into the middle of something and being forced to figure it out.

Nevada State College is now officially accredited on its own merits, which is a major step for a young institution. Here's an article from the local paper:

http://www.lvrj.com/news/accreditation-is-a-dream-come-true-for-nevada-state-college-127677508.html

Apparently, we came out so strong that we've got the attention of a few of the more established institutions in the commission. So we're all ready to keep pushing forward and making new territory on the educational landscape. I'm hoping that the remedial math program that we've been developing is a part of that.

My first day of classes went pretty well. Coming back after summer always leaves me a little hoarse because I usually don't spend 5 hours a day talking, especially with much of that talking at an elevated volume (classroom volume). I did mess up my first lecture video for Calculus 3. I didn't tell the computer to use the fast encoding method, which meant that I would have had to wait nearly 40 minutes to compress the video. It might have been okay if there were not another class immediately after mine. So that video ended up getting lost. But I fixed it before the afternoon class, and that was the more important class to me.

Getting the modules started wasn't very hard. All of the hard work happened well in advance of today, and the hard work that will happen will first appear on Friday when we try to coordinate a common exam in 5 different classrooms, and then try to make the grading happen in an efficient manner. That's really where I'm going to find out if I've got a good system, a great system, or a terrible system.

Things are church are starting to build up towards another small groups push. There's not a lot of information available yet, but there are events that are being planned, and various types of meetings have happened and will happen. So it's back to another wait-and-see time. I'm hoping to see the leadership of the church coalesce around a clear vision and a clear message, and that they are able to push the message in an effective manner. We've got a prayer meeting this week, and I'm looking forward to hear how they present things.

Running out of summer

2011-08-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

I had a student randomly stop by my office today. She observed that I appear to have gotten a lot of sun. More precisely, she said, "I'm used to you looking pasty." Thanks.

But she's right that I did get a lot of sun over the last week. The California vacation started off with a stop in San Diego. But I didn't get sun there. I spent the day indoors playing board games. I can now add "Titan" to the list of games that I've played. Apparently, it's a classic game from the early 80s. It's another one of those games that lasts a very long time. The back of the box says that it takes two to twelve hours to play (and has 800+ pieces). I think our game lasted about 5 hours.

I spent a day in San Diego and headed up to Long Beach to hang out with Justin and Janet. And as an added bonus, Katie joined us for dinner (Greek restaurant). And as a bonus upon the bonus, she brought Dominion and we got to play a couple games of that. Now there are more people in this world who know that game and enjoy it.

The next day, I got on a boat to head to CBS. This year, there was a much larger faculty contingent. I think it was about twice as big as last year.

A few quick highlights:
* A 7.5 mile hike into Avalon (that's where I got most of my sun)
* Learning how to change a diaper (though there was no hands-on application of said lesson -- thankfully)
* Presenting a session (which went pretty well)
* Hanging out with friends (both presently and formerly from both Las Vegas and San Diego)

Upon my return to the dock, I received a series of delayed texts (there's no cell phone access at CBS) and discovered that life-changing changes happened while I was gone. The last of the kids being born into the small group (in this cycle) was born. Exciting times!

I spent one more evening in Long Beach. We had a quick cooking adventure. We wanted to have a dessert of some sort, so we started with the concept of cocoa powder and ended up with chocolate custard served in a pastry cup with chocolate whipped cream. It was quite tasty and quite fun to just go with the ideas that came up. I have to admit that the chocolate whipped cream idea was stolen from a friend, although the proportions I used were completely made up (and cannot be replicated because I just dumped in the cocoa powder and powdered sugar, so I just don't know how much I used).

The drive home was an adventure in itself. I can now say that I've had a catastrophic blowout in the middle of the desert. And by catastrophic, I mean that it was a full zipper blowout all the way around the circumference of the tire. Both me and my car came out uninjured (I followed the safe protocol of NOT slamming on the brakes). There was a comedic element to the blowout. As I was driving, I started to hear a humming from the front left of the car. It was fairly loud for just road noise, and seemed like it was getting louder, so I started to have a conversation with myself: "If this noise continues, I'll pull over at the next exi...*FOOM*... I think I'll pull over right now." So I pulled over somewhere around here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=35.396887,-115.816154&hl=en&ll=35.308401,-115.328979&spn=1.266336,2.705383&sll=35.406961,-115.7547&sspn=0.158102,0.338173&t=h&z=9

It's approximately 80 miles out of Las Vegas. The good news is that my AAA membership gave me 100 miles of free towing, because I'd rather not ride a donut for 80 miles on I-15. So after a relatively short wait (30-45 minutes), my car was loaded up on a tow truck and I was once again heading home. I had a good (and interesting) conversation with him. Apparently, he drives to and from Baker about 3-4 times a day, picking up people like me (and not like me). I asked him about his more interesting rides, and I guess women would rather have sex with a stranger than pay him a few hundred bucks for a tow. Also, he's picked up his fair share of cross-dressers ("high heels, legs, tits, and an Adam's apple that sticks out to *here*." -- Only on the road to Vegas?) He values an education, even though he doesn't have one, which he wants to instill into his two daughters who are approaching college age in a few years. He also works 6 days a week, often running 14-16 hour days, plus he's on call. His desire is to just get a regular job working regular hours after he gets his daughters to college. Interesting guy.

To close this portion of my vacation, I got to spend an afternoon at a pool party with a bunch of 4th/5th graders. I got to grill food (burgers and hot dogs), which for me is a way to add fun to the party. Hanging out with the screaming kids wasn't nearly as bad as one might imagine it would be (in reality, I had a great time). No drownings or injuries probably helps. I got slightly burnt shoulders, which gives my back a tri-color complexion.

The fun is almost over. I don't expect to get much more sun from here on out. I've got to get back into the working mentality and finish typing up some notes and taking care of a few other things.

Summer's next few weeks

2011-07-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's already the end of July. Tomorrow, I head into California for a week plus a few days, and school starts up again in less than a month. It feels like my summer was shorter this year.

I spent a lot of time this summer working on the math remediation program. I've got 5 out 6 classes completely written up with notes and exams. I was hoping to have them all done, but it's just not going to happen. The good news is that the earliest that Module 6 will be needed is the last 5 weeks of the Spring semester. So I can push that off until Winter break.

On the first day to work when I get back to Vegas, I'm going to have to do a quick training for the program as well. It's a little bit scary, as we've got five sections but only two confirmed instructors (of which I am one). The good news is that I've got all of the prep work done. I have the notes all printed and in binders, I have all the exams prepared (but not printed), and I have the spreadsheets set up so that it will load easily into WebCampus. It "should" go smoothly. Only time will tell.

I'm teaching a new class this semester, which is a discrete math class. I'm treating it like a combinatorics class, mostly because that's what the previous instructor did. I like the textbook (A Walk Through Combinatorics) and I think it will be a fun class. I haven't done this sort of stuff in a while, so I think my problem-solving will be a little bit rusty. But I should be able to fake it well enough. I'm trying to do problem sessions for both this class and the abstract algebra class that I'm teaching. I tried to do this with analysis, and I'm working to make it a more effective system. We'll see how it goes this time around.

I'm also trying a two midterm, no final exam approach. I think it will work well for algebra because you can't really do well on the second half of the material without being grounded in the first, so it's like having an implicit final exam. I think it will be similar for combinatorics, but that one is not so clearly cumulative. But I decided to bite the bullet and just try it to see what would happen.

I've been appointed the head of the search committee for the math position. I've never done this before, so it's going to be a learning experience. The first thing I've got to do is to try to bring our application standards in line with what the rest of the math world does. This will take some research, and some of it has already been started, but I won't be able to look at it until after the retreat. I don't think it will be that much work, but I need to make sure we do it right.

Basketball has been fun. We were one game out of first place, but fourth place in the league, based on a 3-way tie breaker. There were three times with a 9-5 record. We had a non-transitive 2-0 head-to-head record (team A beat team B twice, team B beat team C twice, and team C beat team A twice). So the next tie-breaker was points scored. Our team plays a slower offensive style instead of a run-and-gun, so we simply did not put up the same numbers as the other (younger) teams did. we won our first playoff game, and I'm going to miss the next one (or two) because of the retreat. I can use the rest, because I got pretty beat up over the season. I don't know if I'd be able to maintain this level of activity during the academic year, so I might have played my last competitive basketball for a while.

Church stuff has been interesting. We had VBS last week, and I was doing stage support. I did a lot of VBS when I was in San Diego, and I have to admit that I kind of missed it. The fundamentals happened, which is really the only thing that matters. The kids had fun and they learned Biblical lessons (Saul/Paul in Acts). I had fun as well, which is an added bonus.

I've also started a conversation with Pastor Chris. There was a business meeting held last weekend, and I guess there wasn't anything said that was ground-breaking. We talked money for a while, and I can only give a tepid response to what I heard. It will require some tough decisions to be made, and I'll feel more confident when those decisions have actually been made.

I also spoke with Pastor Chris for a while about big picture things. I summarized the problems into four points which all indicate the same central issue:

1) For those we invite to church, we don’t have a clear path for them to follow to get to know us and for us to get to know them.
2) For those who are new Christians, we don’t have a clear path for them to follow to give them a solid foundation of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
3) For those who are more mature Christians, we don’t have a clear path for them to follow to help them find ways to be challenged to grow deeper in their relationship with God.
4) For those who want to use their gifts to advance the kingdom of God, we don’t have a clear path for them to follow to learn to develop those gifts and then put them to use.

In other words, we've got an adult discipleship problem. If you've never been in a church (or other fellowship) that has a focus on discipleship, you might not even realize that it's missing. But if you know what to look for, you will be disappointed when you don't find it (and usually move on to another church). So this ties into our retention and spiritual depth problems that have been lingering for an extended period of time. I'm mildly optimistic at the moment, but after the leadership summit in a couple weeks, I'll probably feel more inspired and I hope that the elders are in attendance to get exposure to these sorts of ideas as well.

I'm looking forward to getting to San Diego tomorrow, Long Beach on Saturday, Catalina Island from Sunday through Friday, back to Long Beach, and then back to Vegas on Sunday, hopefully in time to go to a party for the Route 45 (4th/5th grade youth ministry) pool party. And then there's the leadership summit on the Thursday and Friday after that... I'm either doing summer vacation really right or really wrong.

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 7

2011-07-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Chapter 7: Walking to Emmaus in a Postmodern World

We finally get to the application phase of the book. In order for the application to be meaningful, it must be meaningful in the historical and social context of the people who are to apply it (that is, meaningful to us).

In the context of this book, that means a discussion of postmodernism. This book was published in 1999, which is 12 years ago. I feel that Christians have been chattering about postmodernism forever. Blue Like Jazz came out in 2003 and is, to my knowledge, one of the first Christian books that was well-written to engage the postmodern audience. Wright had brought up these points 4 years ahead of that, and we’re now another 8 years past it. So it feels a little old to read about postmodernism, but I respect that this was the context in which the book was written.

Wright uses Psalms 42 and 43 to construct a narrative to understand the mindset of the post-Easter disciples. The psalmist begins in a state of depression, longing for God and not finding him. He then reflects on what it was like when he was in God’s presence, which makes him even more desperate for his return from exile. Psalm 42 ends with an instruction to himself to put his hope in God. Wright frames it with a sense of futility, saying that “telling yourself to hope is not the same things as hoping; but if it’s all you can do, it is better than nothing” (156). In Psalm 43, the sadness continues, but only for a few more verses. In verse 3, the psalmist calls out in prayer for God’s light to be led back home again.

With this narrative in mind, Wright looks at the road to Emmaus. The two disciples had put their hope in Jesus to bring about redemption (v. 21), but they were sad because it didn’t happen. They were looking for an end to the story (end of exile), but didn’t get it. The story in their minds is simply, “What went wrong?” They understood the signs and teachings and everything seemed right, yet it wasn’t what they expected.

The incognito Jesus then gives them a different storyline. It’s important to realize that Jesus would not have proof-texted his way through the scripture when he began with Moses and the prophets and explained things to the men. He was giving them a new narrative to understand what happened.

The story was never about Israel conquering her enemies, as they had hoped to see by the defeat of the Roman Empire. Rather, the story is simply about God acting on behalf of his chosen people, to do the things they (and the world) could not do for themselves. And now, that story was complete. The prayer in the Psalm had been answered, and they returned to the others to share the joy of God leading them back to the holy mountain.

So what happens now? Wright posits that it’s time to take a look at our Christian narrative within our context. The formerly current narrative spoke to a modern world, but is found to be wanting when spoken to the postmodern world. It’s not as if the story is “wrong” (just as the disciples weren’t “wrong” in their understanding of the signs and teachings), but there is a need to go back through the story and pick up the correct narrative to tell to others and to have God’s light lead them back home again.

To do this, the symbols of the narrative need to be re-examined, and the method of communication needs to be set straight. Modernity was trapped in its sense of having everything figured out. We had the four spiritual laws (which the internet says dates back to 1952) and those simply told us exactly how everything is and what we need to do. It also told us exactly how to evangelize and how people should come to know Christ. But this approach is not going to work in the postmodern world, where black-and-white orthodoxy does not carries the meaning of “strict dogmatism.” Wright uses an interesting story to make his point.

“I am reminded, too, of the power of symbolic praxis to go beyond words when I think of one of the greatest ballerinas of all time. After one of her great performances somebody had the temerity to ask her what the dance meant. Her reply was simple and speaks volumes to us as we consider mission in the postmodern world. ‘If I could have said it,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have needed to dance it’” (168).

With this, Wright pushes a turn towards a Christian existence of being the expression of God’s love being poured out in us and through us, instead of a system of dogmatic statements (not to say that this rejects the existence of dogma -- where would Christianity be without some set of core beliefs about the nature of God, Jesus, humans, and the universe?). We can’t just tell people about what Jesus did, we must show them what Jesus did. I’ll quote another short section:

“I believe we have this as our vocation: to tell the story, to live by the symbols, to act out the praxis and to answer the questions in such a way as to become in ourselves and our mission in God’s world the answer to the prayer that rises inarticulately, now, not just from one puzzled psalmist but from the whole human race and indeed the whole of God’s creation” (171).

What does this mean in practice? What is the narrative that needs to be rewritten and which symbols need to be communicated in a different way within academia? I can think of a few things, but none of them I wish to spend time expounding upon.

1) The monetization of the college degree: Why go to college? Because you can earn more money. The symbol of a college degree represents money, not an education.
2) The entitlement of good grades: I show up to class and try hard, how come I’m not getting an A? The symbol of grades represents effort, not the actual quality of the work. (I actually got this more as a TA at UCSD than I have as a professor at NSC. People feel less entitled to a degree when not everyone around them has one.)
3) The numbers-driven mentality: Especially in my area, there’s a lot of political pressure to produce better results, where better results simply means that certain numbers go up. It’s true that there is value to using these numbers as a gauge and challenge for improvement, but it’s also possible to create better numbers without actually increasing the quality of the education that students receive. Legislators tend not to understand this. The symbol of success has become good statistics, not well-educated students.

Summer's first couple weeks

2011-07-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

My summer session class ended, and I don't have anything more to say about it than I've already said. Good class, enjoyed it, etc. And during my first week off, I went to work. (Such an exciting life I live...)

Actually, I only went in four out of five days, as Friday I flew back home to Livermore for the July 4th weekend. It's always good to go hang out with family. Justin and Janet also came up from Long Beach for the weekend, so it was a full family time. It also turned into some extended family and family friend time as well. It seems that things are generally good with everyone.

As always, there was lots of food, and probably too much food. I think Saturday night was tri-tip, sirloin, and chicken. I cooked it all, and it came out okay. I really think I could have done better, as it was slightly under-seasoned. Salt control is still something that I don't feel quite comfortable with, especially with larger pieces of meat. I also did ribs on Sunday, and they felt like they needed a little bit more flavor. I probably should have spent a little more time trying to build a bit of a glaze or sauce for the ribs, but the timing just wasn't really there. I guess I'll probably get another chance around Thanksgiving.

I also got to see Karen, Chad, and Oliver on July 4. We went to the Oakland zoo in the morning and play around at Big Trees Park in the afternoon. I don't think I've been to a zoo since I left San Diego, so it has been a number of years. It was good to hang out and talk about stuff and life in general.

I came back to Vegas on the 5th, two days ahead of the 2+2 meet-up. The 2+2 meetup is an annual gathering of poker people that always happens near the beginning of the World Series of Poker Main Event. I ended up at the strip at around 1:30 in the afternoon to meet up with Tyler and Doug (whom I've met before), and a couple new people (Buzz, Bryan?, and Eva). We had some food at the Mirage and then headed over to the Venetian to play some cards. We ended up playing 4/8 HORSE. About the only notable hand from that session a heads up razz hand against Doug, in which I properly read his hand as pairing up too many times and called him down with a very rough 8 (87642, I think). I ended up winning $185 in that short session, which is well above anything that would resemble an normal winrate for that game.

After a couple hours of that, it was over to the Wynn for free food and more poker. I got a chance go meet one of the guys I've known by screen name only for several years. Todd seems like a nice guy, but I ended up sitting quite far from him when we ate and at the table, so I didn't get too much of a chance to talk to him. The poker was goofy, as it always is. We played things like 5-card Omaha, razz-dugi, and double flop crazy pineapple. I anticipate that almost every person who bothers to read this has no clue what these games are, and that's okay. It's really not knowledge worth having because they're just silly gambling games. I broke even while not even trying to play well at all, which isn't really an accomplishment since I don't think anyone at that table was trying to play well.

I missed a chance to go hiking with some of these people today because I had to go in to work to cover for one of the classes for a PTI. I also found out today that the building has settled in a strange way so that my door doesn't close all the way anymore. Apparently, this is nothing new, and the building has had these types of issues from the very beginning.

And to go out of order in time (I know there's a word for that), on Wednesday night we had our most dominating win all season long, while fielding our weakest team all season long. I think the final score was something like 59-21. It was a good win to stop our 3 game losing streak. We're currently in a 3-way tie for first at 6-3. There are a total of six teams with records of either 6-3 or 5-4, and it's only an 8 team league.

And that's how I spent my first two weeks of summer vacation.

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 6

2011-06-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Chapter 6: The Challenge of Easter

Wright moves on to explore the resurrection from a historian’s point of view. Even before getting to the chapter, I feel somewhat compelled to say a few words about the resurrection from a scientist’s point of view. The reason for this is that this type of discussion is the most potent for out-of-hand dismissal of Christianity, especially from the point of view of those in the natural sciences. The common phrasing used is that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence*.” At this, it must simply be recognized that there are some questions that cannot be answered with certain methods. If the claim is that Jesus’ resurrection is a unique historical event, then it simply makes no sense to approach the question from the point of view of “repeatable measurements.” That is, if Jesus’ resurrection actually happened and is unique, then drawing from the pattern that most people are resurrected doesn’t actually form a useful argument, and asking to provide some sort of naturalistic mechanism to explain the resurrection is similarly misguided (since “naturalistic mechanism” is itself a call to some form of repeatability).

* As an aside to the aside, this line turns out to be somewhat impotent when put to scrutiny. It sets up a doubly arbitrary standard, one for “extraordinary claim” and one for “extraordinary evidence.” In my experiences, it is not actually used as an open-minded inquiry, but instead it is being purely dismissive. If you grant that the claim is extraordinary, the person grants himself license to define arbitrarily high standards of proof, which often turn out to be unreachably high (even for demonstrating actual phenomena) and sometimes logically impossible (for example, attempting to disprove materialism using physical measurements).

From this type of backdrop, I found the discussion of Easter (as the phenomenon) interesting, as it draws from a very different form of reasoning. The actual challenge is not to “prove” the resurrection. It is really about understanding early Christianity in light of Easter, and to show that history makes more sense if the early Christians believed Jesus were actually resurrected (which stands opposed to one of many alternate theses, which is that the early Christians knew that Jesus had not been resurrected, but faked it for whatever reasons could be postulated, or that these are traditions that were written into the texts after the fact and did not represent the beliefs of the earliest Christians).

Wright constructs a three stage argument, with each stage requiring four steps. The three stages are to understand Easter from three different perspectives: as a kingdom of God movement, as a resurrection movement, and as a messianic movement. The four steps follow the same pattern:

1) Show that early Christianity was a movement of the given type
2) Understand Judaism’s understanding of that type of movement
3) Show that there is a gap between the Jewish and Christian understandings
4) Explain how that difference can exist

The kingdom of God movement has already been discussed at length, so we’ll jump straight to the resurrection. The concept of resurrection to the first-century Jews is well defined, even though there were still controversies associated to it. There was discussion about what happened to people after death. Some held that there is a state of “nonphysical bliss,” some held that the physical bodies of the righteous would be restored, some believed in a temporary disembodied state that is followed by re-embodiment, and some denied any sense of afterlife at all. However, the term “resurrection” only referred to re-embodiment, and not a general “after-life” concept. Furthermore, there was other language that was used to describe the disembodied state (angles, souls, spirits). Resurrection also had a metaphoric connotation, “the great return from exile, the renewal of the covenant, and to connote the belief that that when this happened it would mean that Israel’s sin and death had been dealt with” (135). The early Christians believed that the resurrection of the dead had already occurred (Acts 4:2), yet there was not a large scale re-embodiment of the righteous. This is the point of discontinuity. But before resolving this in step 4, Wright jumps to the messianic movement.

Many of these points have already been discussed as well. We know that the early Christians viewed Jesus as the messiah, and that Jews were looking for a political messiah, and so there is a gap.

So we finally get to the central question: How can these discontinuities exist? Wright’s answer is that the resurrection actually happened. It is the only thing that can reasonably explain the shift in understanding from the Jewish view to the Christian view. Again, it’s important that this is understood in its appropriate context. This is not a “proof” of the resurrection (from a scientific viewpoint), but it merely asserts that the resurrection is a robust explanation for the documents we have from the early church, and it is a more reasonable explanation than views that have the disciples stealing Jesus’ body, or that the New Testament was actually written much later in history and reflected much later theological developments.

In some ways, I feel a bit let down by this chapter. This is not because I think it’s erroneous somehow, or that it is a weak argument. I think I feel let down because I’m simply unable to appreciate the full force of the argument. Having read the chapter, I do not feel any more convinced or confident that the resurrection actually happened. But I’ve also never really confronted the historical reconstruction of early Christianity, so I’ve never dealt with attempts to understand the Bible as being out of place historically. Nor have I ever been involved in a church community that rejected a historical resurrection of Jesus for a strictly metaphorical one.

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 5

2011-06-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5: Jesus and God

Having looked at Jesus’ understanding of what it means to be the Messiah, the immediate follow-up comes down on theological lines: was Jesus God and did he know he was God? In the present time, we have clearly drawn a connection between the two, but is this conclusion reasonable in a first century Jewish context?

Of course, to get to that point, we must first figure out what “God” meant in a first century Jewish context. It does not take much to recognize that we should expect that the concept of God has changed with time and various types of philosophical thought. Of course, to enter into a discussion of how and why these differences exist would fill volumes, so Wright sidesteps the whole conversation and merely presents the Jewish understanding of God:

“Classic Jewish monotheism thus came to believe that (a) there was one God, who created heaven and earth, and who remained in close and dynamic relation with his creation; and that (b) this God had called Israel to be his special people.”
These pieces of theology were revealed through history, and were reinforced by the various feasts and other remembrances. These are simply things that God did, and God is understood through these actions that he has taken. It’s very much a teaching by symbol and analogy.

In addition to this concept, we need to add some extra ideas specific to Jesus’ time. “First, there was the expectation of the return of YHWH to Zion after his abandonment of Jerusalem at the time of the exile. Second, there was the tradition of the enthronement of YHWH, and of one who somehow shared that throne” (103). The second point is a bit nebulous, and its history is not traced out in this book. Of course, we can understand that it did exist, as this Messiah-concept was clearly present in Jesus’ time.

Apparently, this concept was a bit vague to the Jews as well, as that agent had a range of forms at various points in history. But as a result of these various forms, we can at least conclude that there were many ideas floating around, and that the possibility existed for this figure to be somehow divine without it being a violation of Jewish monotheism. His point here is to reject the idea that the concept of Jesus being divine is rooted in Jewish thought, not some brand new idea that Jesus introduced (thus rooting Jesus completely within Jewish thought and not as a completely aberrant theological figure).

This takes us to the question of where the worship of Jesus as God actually began. But before he answers this question (and this is a recurring theme in his writing style – he will introduce a question and take his time answering it), he points out three false understandings. It is false that the concept of “Messiah” already had divine connotations to it. There were other potential Messiahs in Jesus’ time, and there is no evidence that none of them (except one) had any claim of divinity. Second, we cannot draw divine meaning out of the phrase “son of God” since that phrase refers back to the Messiah, which did not have any claim of divinity. The third is that the resurrection was proof of Jesus’ divinity. As pointed out before, resurrection wasn’t even enough to establish Messiah-ship, so why would it be used to establish something even larger?

(I’m reminded of Acts 23, where Paul starts a fight between the Sadducees and the Pharisees over the expectation of a future resurrection. So this clearly points to the idea that resurrection wasn’t anything so far out of the ordinary that it had God-like properties about it.)

We do need to recognize that the resurrection did have an impact on the disciples’ belief, but it was a connecting-of-the-dots and certification of that Jesus was the Messiah. The jump to the idea that this was an act of God himself is made through a prophecy of David, when he is speaking to YHWH about building a house for Him. By this point in history, the phrasing in 2 Samuel 7:12, “I will raise your a seed after you, who will sit on your throne” implied a resurrection*.

(* Apparently, the original Jewish did not have this connotation, but in the Septuagint it does. There’s an interesting side thought about the Jewish way of understanding scriptures through re-interpretation and re-formulation of old passages because this is the opposite of how we might hold responsible interpretation of the Bible. A careful Biblical application can only follow from a careful understanding of the original writer’s meaning. This prevents us from manipulating Bible verses to suit our ends. However, since Jewish thought revolved more around narratives than declaratives, it would seem that they would be more open to such adaptations of scripture, so long as it is consistent with the overall picture of who God is. I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but it vaguely makes sense, which means that I’m speculating a whole lot and could be completely wrong.)

I’m simply going to copy the paragraph because I don’t know how to summarize it:

“Read this story now with early Christian eyes, and what do we find? That the Temple, for all its huge importance and centrality within Judaism, was after all a signpost to the reality, and the reality was the resurrected son of David, who was the son of God. God, in other words, is not ultimately to dwell in a human-built Temple, a timber-and-stone house. God will indeed dwell with his people, allowing his glory and mystery to “tabernacle” in their midst, but the most appropriate way for him to do this will not be through a building but through a human being. And the human being in question will be the Messiah, marked out by resurrection. This, I submit, is more or less how the early Christians reasoned. Jesus – and then very quickly Jesus’ people – were now the true Temple, and the actual building in Jerusalem was thereby redundant. We must remind ourselves, crucially, that the Temple was, after all, the central “incarnational” symbol of Judaism. It was standard jewish belief, rooted in Scripture and celebrated in regular festivals and liturgy, that the Temple was the place where heaven and earth actually interlocked, where the living God had promised to be present with his people.”

Do you get it? I don’t, at least not completely. I would say my level of understanding is “it kind of makes sense, I guess.” I’ll take the C grade and move on.

We finally arrive at the attempt to uncover what Jesus understood about himself. The argument is, of course, that Jesus did understand himself in this way, that he was the new Temple and had come to replace the old one. We see this in Jesus’ offering of the forgiveness of sins, that what he was offering that which previously could only have been received at the Temple. Furthermore, this new Temple announced the beginning of a new age, in which God has returned, as the Jews were expecting (though not in the form they were expecting). There are other symbols that are analyzed, but I’ll skip over that part.

The ultimate conclusion is that the concept of the vocation of Messiah, which encompasses all of these things relating to what the Messiah was supposed to do, which was not only suffer on the cross, but to be the ultimate revelation of God himself, and doing that which only God can do, is how Jesus viewed himself. He then goes on to compare the Western orthodoxy picture of Jesus with the first century picture of Jesus. His claim is that our understanding of Jesus is grounded in our understanding of God. That is, we start with a concept of God, and then try to fit Jesus into it. The problem is that this understanding of God is a post-Enlightenment God that is not anything like the God of the first century Jews.

So instead, he invites us to turn the picture around. Start with the picture of the historical Jesus, and use that to inform us about God. If Jesus is God in the flesh, then what better access to the picture of God is there? Wright goes out of his way to inform the reader that he is not rejecting the basic Christian creeds. But he is allowing his theology to be informed by history. When he says “God” he doesn’t think about the modern conception of God, but something much closer to Jesus’ conception of God.

This is an interesting and seemingly reasonable position to take. However, I’m not convinced that he’s right with his criticism when it comes to American Protestantism. From my experiences and observations, it seems that we have quite the opposite problem. We tend to see God in absolutely everything, and Jesus is supposed to be your best friend. This has its own problems, as the ideas we use to create our understanding of Jesus tend not to be rooted in first century Judaism.

I’m reminded of some random conversation I had with a guy when I was at UCSB. He was promoting some sort of vegan diet as part of some larger religious new age-like movement. As we talked, I mentioned that I was a Christian, and he got started talking about Jesus. I don’t remember how we got there, but at some point he asked the question of whether Jesus would walk through a line of ants or delicately step over them. I shrugged, and he went on to talk about how Jesus would never harm any animals at all. To this, I responded that Jesus likely participated in Jewish festivals, which required the slaughtering of various animals, and that it was unreasonable to think that Jesus would manage to be a vegetarian and yet we would not have a shred of evidence to suggest that he engaged in a culturally aberrant behavior. I don’t recall what happened with the rest of that conversation.

I also believe that a lot of American Christian views of Jesus tend to also be a bit disconnected from reality. At the minimum, our visual image of Jesus is rooted in the early renaissance. As far as understanding who Jesus actually was, I think we ended up with a Jesus that didn’t reflect the Old Testament writings. That is, we attempt to create a love-and-grace Jesus that stands against the judgment-and-punishment God of the Old Testament. So rather than using Jesus to help us to understand who God is, it’s as if we use Jesus to try to understand who God isn’t. This appears to be quite problematic, and pulls back on Wright’s primary thesis, that “the continuing historical quest for Jesus is a necessary and nonnegotiable aspect of Christian discipleship.” If Christian discipleship has at its root a deepening understanding of God, then it seems important to readjust this notion of how we understand Jesus in relation to God.

One more week... then the "real" break begins

2011-06-17T19:18:00.000-07:00

There's only one day of new content to lecture on left in my class, then one day of review, then the final, and then I'm officially on a teaching break. It's been a good class, and I'm glad I got to teach this rather than one of the usual classes. It was more interesting and more challenging in the right ways.

But I'm ready to take an actual teaching break. It won't be a full break (it never is) because I've got some stuff to work on. I always have stuff to do. The article I had submitted was ultimately rejected from the first journal I tried. The editor made it sound like he gave it a long consideration, which I guess is a good sign. So I've resubmitted it somewhere else and the waiting game begins again. The good news is that I don't have that much hinging on this article, so there isn't any pressure to make it happen.

The article that I've got coming down the line is going to be the more significant one. I'm going to have to write up what's going on with our remediation stuff. That one might be a bit of a beast because of the breadth of the changes that we've done and the amount of work that it will take to get the necessary statistics from the data. I won't have anything to write up until at least next summer (because the program won't be launched in full until next Spring), and I'm also going to try to do another presentation at the Joint Meetings.

Related to this, I'm basically done with 4 out of the 6 modules' worth of notes. I want to have all 6 modules completed by mid-July. For each module, I have a half-inch binder full of notes and practice exams that are to be distributed to our instructors. The purpose is to create a uniformity of expectation from among all of the sections.

Our potential math hire isn't going through this year. We're going to re-launch the search again in the Fall, and hopefully there won't be a mid-year budget thing that holds things up again. I had already come to terms with this as a potential outcome, so I'm okay with this. Since I'm thinking about it right now, the budget was ultimately resolved by a well-timed supreme court ruling that undercut some budget gimmicks that were in play. The cuts are going to be painful, but not as painful as they could have been. I know a number of public school teachers whose job situations are unclear these days, so it's still quite far from pain-free.

I'm playing in a recreational basketball league this summer with some church friends and friends of those church friends. We're off to a 4-0 start in our 14 game season. It's fun to get out there and run hard again, even if I'm not playing at my best. There's something like four years' worth of rust that needs to come off, and I don't know what there is underneath it all. I guess I'll find out in a couple more weeks.

The Challenge of Jesus has been an interesting read, and an interesting little side project. I need to spend another evening or two to finish it up. I've actually got more written up than I've posted, and I'm slowly rolling it out rather than just dumping them all at the same time.

I'm looking forward to some travel in July and early August. I'll be going back to Livermore over the July 4 weekend, and then out to Southern California at the end of July into early August for the retreat. I'm not sure yet if I'll go through San Diego or just go straight to Los Angeles. It depends on how much work I have left to do to be ready for the Fall semester. I'm also losing another day or two to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. So I've got to make sure that I set aside enough time to do what I need to do.

Church stuff continues to roll onward. Our small group is going to provide some dinner food for a homeless ministry (Next Step Ministries). So I'm planning out a simple approach to making a bunch of chicken and vegetables appear without too much work.

I'm actually listening to this week's sermon right now because I spent last week working with the 4th and 5th graders. We're getting the money talk again. It's probably about the third or fourth time in the last couple years. It's a reality of a down economy, combined with the changing demographics of the church, and specifically the shifting of the socio-economic background of the church.

I feel as if this sermon sounds different. There is heightened sense of urgency and a more transparent approach. I think the latter is probably an important and healthy change. As has happened many times in the last few years with this church, there are lots of questions (and not just the financial ones) about what's going to happen. As before, I'm neither blindly optimistic (in the sense that I somehow believe that this little-c church is so important that God simply will not let it fail), nor am I unduly pessimistic (in the sense that I've already concluded that the only possible outcome is the negative one). We'll simply see where things are a few months from now.

Facebook has failed to auto-import these notes in the last couple months, which is frustrating. I hope it gets fixed. In the meantime, I'm going to have to do a few extra clicks and upload them myself. But I'd rather things just work right the first time.

I guess that's basically all that's going on. Life is a little more pensive these days, as the year's cycle is nearing its end. I guess that's probably why I've typed as long as I have. Or maybe it's just that I have almost a month's worth of thoughts to get out. Or maybe I'm just rambling again. Either way, it's definitely time to stop.

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 4

2011-06-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

Chapter 4: The Crucified Messiah

Wright’s two main questions of this chapter:
1) Did Jesus think of himself as messiah, and if so in what sense?
2) Did Jesus expect or intend to die as part of his vocation, and if so what interpretation did he put upon that event?

I had to pause temporarily to consider the use of the word “vocation” here. According to the ever-reliable internet, the concept of vocation originated with Christians before moving to a secular context. Vocation is a “calling” (you can see shared root with “vocal”). That’s just an interesting side-comment and not that important.

I had not thought of Jesus’ life as a vocation. But since prophets had the vocation of being prophets, and there were others walking around who claimed to be Messiahs, so the concept of Jesus seeing himself as Messiah seems to be a reasonable question to consider. It seems sort of obvious (especially in light of Peter’s confession and Jesus’ affirmation of the confession). But we need to know what that meant in the cultural context. This leads to the question of what it is that a Messiah was expected to do.

Although there was not a singular concept of the Messiah at the time, there were two primary functions that the Messiah was expected to perform. The first is that he would rebuild the temple, and the second is that he would prevail against the enemy. So if Jesus was to be understood as being the Messiah, his followers would have expected that he did these things in some manner. If not, it would not have made sense for the followers to use this term to describe what Jesus did.

But in would seem at first that Jesus did not do either of these things. The temple was not rebuilt, and the Romans were not defeated. Of course, if you’ve had this discussion before, we like to say that he did, but just not the way that they were expecting. We usually get the temple being rebuilt on the third day (Mark 14:58 and Matthew 26:61) and the enemy was not the Romans but death and sin and all that stuff. But if he did it in this way that they were not expecting, what allowed them to connect the dots?

The resurrection alone is not a sufficient answer. That is, simply having a resurrection on its own was not enough to declare Messiah-ship. Wright does not go into detail here, but I think I can imagine why this is the case. Even though it was odd to have people resurrected from the dead, it happened in Jesus’ ministry, and those people were not claimed to be the Messiah. Even in Matthew 27:51-53, we have people being resurrected upon Jesus’ death, but they weren’t labeled as Messiahs. So for the label of Messiah to stick to Jesus, there must have been a sufficient claim of Messiah-ship that preceded the crucifixion so that when the resurrection happened, the disciples would be able to understand.

At this point, Wright begins to weave an extremely intricate symbolic picture of the Messiah. Even after multiple readings, I don’t think I follow it. He begins with a deeper explanation of the temple judgment. He discusses a couple “messianic riddles” where Jesus is speaking in parables about this judgment (his authority, his rejection, and the new temple), and this is followed by an analysis of Jesus’ trial before Caiaphas. This then rolls into the question, “Why did Jesus die?” which is also riddled with symbolic feasts, symbolic actions, and puzzles in the form of parables.

He eventually reaches his main point: “[W]e can credibly reconstruct the mindset in which a first-century Jew could come to believe that YHWH would act through the suffering of a particular individual in whom Israel’s sufferings were focused; that this suffering would carry redemptive significance; and that this individual would be himself. And I propose that we can plausibly suggest that this was the mindset of Jesus himself.” I find that I am affirming his conclusion based on the fact that this seems like a necessary conclusion to hold if we are to believe that the theology we hold regarding the Messiah did correlate to Jesus’ concept, even if I don’t really understand the argument. That is, if we don’t think that Jesus’ disciples were able to figure these things out (having been directly taught by Jesus), it seems unreasonable that Christianity would have grown out of first century Judaism the way that it did and still be rooted in Jesus’ self-understanding. At least, I think it’s unreasonable.

Wright concludes with four comments, and I will focus on his second. If the cross is the moment when evil and pain were dealt with once for all, why is there evil and pain still in this world? This is the question of the kingdom of God being both now and yet to come. If we only focus on the “yet to come” portion, then we’d be negating part of Jesus’ meaning. He will save a fuller discussion of this to later chapters. Here, it serves as a reminder of the recurring theme that the theology of Christianity does not allow us to neglect the world we are in right now so that we can blissfully dream of heaven.

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 3

2011-06-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

Chapter 3: The Challenge of the Symbols

Wright points out that religion is highly symbolic. There are certain things that represent other things that become meaningful and important. "[L]et the clergy try putting the church flowers in a different spot, and they will discover the power of symbols to arouse passion" (54-55). I would argue that the American flag inside of a church is a far more potent symbol. The overlap between American Protestantism and American patriotism is extremely powerful. The suggestion that the USA is not God’s favored country is nearly blasphemous to some. In the sense of these types of symbols, Jesus challenged his contemporaries by changing the symbols of their religion.

(Wright seems to have a particular point of view that he's setting himself against. I know nothing of E.P. Sanders and his views, so whatever controversy exists is basically unknown to me.)

Wright analyzes several symbols which are either dramatically redefined or abandoned through Jesus: Sabbath, food, nation/land, temple, people, family, and Torah. The overall point is that these symbols are addressed with Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom of God in mind. The things that the Jews believed they were supposed to be (adherents to Sabbath and food laws) in order to be the thing that God wanted them to be were thrown aside. Judgment was upon them for having gotten it so wrong (seen through the disruption of the temple, which was supposed to stand as the place of hope for the nations but was instead a place of injustice and oppression). And that the exile is over and the coming of the kingdom would be through a new people (a reconstituted Israel) defined by new characteristics (forgiveness).

There is an interesting quote from the Mishnah which highlights the type of symbolic replacement that is occurring: “If two sit together and study the Torah, the Divine Presence rests between them.” This stands juxtaposed to Jesus’ claim that “where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matt. 18:20). This is a culturally relevant connection that cannot be made without understanding the culture. It reminds me of the fact that saying “Jesus is lord” is a symbolic replacement of the greeting “Caesar is lord,” complete with its own set of political and social implications.

This section is relevant to me, because the prompt I’m working with includes a discussion of these symbols:

--

Enacting redemption, practicing restoration: “Our task is to announce in deed and word that the exile is over, to enact the symbols that speak of healing and forgiveness, to act boldly in God’s world in the power of the Spirit… The proper way to expound the parables today is to ask: What should we be doing in God’s world that would call forth the puzzled or even angry questions to which [Jesus’] parables would be the right answer? ... [We are to find] the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human.”

--

That is, the challenge is now to try to identify symbols that have come to represent the wrong things (or things that stand opposed to the kingdom), and either replace them or redefine them as Jesus did with his contemporaries. The specific context is within academia. Unfortunately, identifying symbols is difficult. Because they are so deeply embedded into the culture, it is not immediately clear what is and what is not symbolic, and what it actually represents (because it can be different for different people).

If I were to make a short list for academia in general, I think they would include things like tenure (the goal to which we all aspire) and academic freedom (our ability to do things the way we want to do them). Of these two, tenure seems to be a better discussion topic, especially at research oriented institutions. It’s not so much tenure itself, but the process by which tenure is attained. I know of some stories where candidates are told that in order to get tenure, they should basically expect to not to see their wife (or significant other – although as I think about it, I’ve never heard a woman tell that story).

I suppose it’s possible to draw up a couple parallels between the temple system of forgiveness and the tenure system of ultimate academic freedom. In both, the end goal is good and idealizes that which the entire institution is supposed to represent. In both, the system has taken on a political edge. It has been used as a means of oppression (there are stories of qualified people being denied tenure for personal and political reasons). Of course, it’s not an exact parallel. I don’t know that the call is to abolish the current tenure system and replace it with another one (although politicians have been knocking at the door recently because of budgetary issues). And it’s very hard to imagine a “symbolic way of doing things differently” at those types of institutions. Would you insist on leaving the lab at a reasonable hour in order to remain active in a larger community of people outside of the institution? I don’t know. That’s not where I’m at.

I feel fortunate that my institution seems to have a fairly sensible picture of what tenure looks like and feels like. We are a school with a teaching emphasis, and we primarily demand consistent high quality teaching (7 year process). It’s an internally cooperative environment, so that the tenure process does not have that same type of political edge at it seems to have at some other institutions. And the requirements, while high, are not oppressively so. I do not get the impression from those who have been recently tenured that the process felt like it was designed to crush them.

What about within mathematics? The academic discipline itself is pretty much a non-theistic world. The “evidence” for God within mathematics seems to me to be nothing more than the fact that math exists, and this is a reflection of God being a rational God. Nobody looks for equations for God, or try to understand results in light of God, or anything remotely close to that.

However, math does symbolically stand as the most difficult academic topic to many students and much of the world outside of academia (and even in pockets within academia). We stand as the gate-keepers for many degrees. Engineering students often have to survive the weeder-courses of the calculus series. Our nursing students must push their way through “College Algebra” (which really isn’t a college level math class). Almost every degree has a regimented math requirement (compared to science or humanities requirements, for which students have a good amount of flexibility).

We’re also the gate-keepers for entry into college, as many students (especially state college and community college) need to pass some level of math remediation. It is often the case that these classes are taught by the weakest teachers (for example, graduate students with zero teaching experience, who teach one semester and then move on to teaching something else) and that departments tend not to pay much attention to this as a vital part of its raison d'etre.

This is compounded by the fact that at some places remediation is a money-making machine for the institutions. They are allowed to charge extra fees for remediation, and so cynically one can accuse the institution of having financial reasons to make remediation more difficult (although I don’t think anyone actually thinks this way, except for those trying to make the argument for softening or removing remediation requirements).

To add to the symbolism, there is in some ways a prideful attitude towards these students, a notion that the low success rates indicate that “we’re doing our job” and “fighting grade inflation.” I’m happy to report that my institution doesn’t feel that way, and that we are invested in actual student success (which includes fighting the grade inflation that gives students artificial success). So perhaps, modeling the “different way” is simply a matter of us maintaining our student-centric focus on remediation and attempting to export it to other institutions that are willing to listen. (That sounds like evangelism. I don’t know how I feel about that label, but it seems to fit.)

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 2

2011-06-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

Chapter 2: The Challenge of the Kingdom

Jesus spends much time discussing the kingdom of God without ever defining what it is. Why didn’t the gospel writers bother to explain this concept? It’s because they didn’t need to. Jews at that time understood what the words meant, or at least had a decent concept of it even if they didn’t fully understand it, so why would the writers feel compelled to spend a lot of time explaining it? Jesus spoke of it in parables (“the Kingdom of God is like…”) but if those were parables to Jews back then, they must be even more mysterious to us as indirect recipients of the puzzles.

I consider myself fortunate to have been exposed to this question before, both through Mark camp (InterVarsity Spring Break Camp on Catalina Island) and through a book reading suggested to me by Dr. Pratt (an old book that was aptly titled “The Kingdom of God” by John Bright, 1953). I think my intellectual understanding has come from the latter, and my practical theology has come from the former.

The short response to the question of the kingdom of God is simply that it is the time and place in which everything is restored (or is being restored) to how it was supposed to be from the beginning, that all things are being set right. It is the last step of the overarching metanarrative of the fall, exile, and redemption through a chosen individual that turns into a chosen people.

Although there would have been agreement in broad terms with this understanding, it’s also true that there would have been many disagreements about the details of what this meant. But this isn’t really the direction Wright takes it. It’s more important to see how Jesus spoke to the common understanding of the kingdom of God

The first is that the kingdom of God was not viewed as an abstract and purely spiritual thing. The use of apocalyptic language was not intended to indicate cosmic (non-physical) events, but rather to ascribe cosmic significance on events. The arrival of the kingdom of God would be no more a “spiritual” event than the exodus. God would act in this world in some historical manner. “Jews of Jesus’ day did not, by and large, expect that the space-time universe was going to come to a stop” (38). Especially in light of the most recent failed rapture, it’s a reminder that there should be a very earth-ward focus when we consider the kingdom of God, and not be too myopic with imagining about the heaven-ward aspects.

Wright uses three headings to discuss the kingdom-message: the end of exile, the call of a renewed people, and the warning of disaster and vindication to come.

The discussion through this part is a little dense, or at least it’s difficult for me to condense it into a few short paragraphs. If there’s one point to hold up as the one that is seemingly the most significant, it is that proper historical context endows Jesus’ words and actions with meaning that might otherwise be missed.

For example, consider the call to “repent and believe.” Wright points out that in Josephus’ autobiography, he recalls a time when he was sent to try to stop some Galileans from attempting to revolt against Rome. He confronted the leader of that rebellion with “repent and believe in me.” The concept of repentance is about changing one’s mind about something, turning away from it. The question is, of course, turn away from what?

Sure, we have the usual notion of turning away from sinful behavior (which is a part of the oncoming kingdom), but it also takes on a political meaning. The listeners also needed to turn away from their kingdom-agendas and instead trust Jesus to be the one to define the kingdom-agenda. In essence, he’s saying, “Give up your old understanding. This is the way God is doing it.”

The “old understanding” is not the one we normally attribute to the Jews of that time. We often view them as doing good to earn God’s favor. But we need to remember that the Jews believed they were already favored by God. It was their birthright. So the political edge had much more to do with them turning away from specific ways they understood that God would vindicate them (the third part, which will be discussed shortly). Specifically, it is that they should not take the path of violence, or else they would bring disaster upon themselves.

What is the oncoming disaster? The Jewish narrative was that they were waiting for God to vindicate Israel them by political upheaval. Jesus’ message was that this is not what was going to happen, but rather a judgment of Israel for failing to do the thing that they had been called to do. And this judgment (as noted above regarding the kingdom of God) was not some sort of end-times judgment, but a here-and-now judgment by the destruction of Israel (a critique from within). Most of the passages that we often point to as referring to end-times types of judgment would never have been interpreted by the listeners as carrying that type of meaning. This highlights the importance of exegesis before hermeneutics. We must know what passages mean before we can know what it means to us.

Since the judgment will fall on Israel, who will be vindicated? This is easy: Jesus and those who follow him. By choosing a path of violence to bring about God’s kingdom (as seen in the Jewish-Roman war leading to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) instead of the path of peace advocated by Jesus, we see the completion of Israel’s judgment and the simultaneous growth and spread of Christianity. Again, events that are played out in this world, and not in some future spiritual world detached from this one.

To conclude, Wright then takes this picture of Jesus and brings it into today’s context. If Jesus understood the kingdom of God to have been ushered in back then, how do we make sense of that first century message today? I think his second point is the more immediately relevant of the couple. “What Jesus was to Israel, the church must now be for the world” (53). But Jesus did not primarily preach a message of heaven. He announced a present tense kingdom, that there is a different way of doing things today, and that it is all grounded in who he was and what he was doing. In its pursuit of rescuing eternal souls, it seems that the contemporary church has lost sight of the fact that it is supposed to be having an active role in the redemption this impermanent world. And we should look to the historical person of Jesus to show us what that should look like.

The Challenge of Jesus - Chapter 1

2011-05-30T12:39:00.001-07:00

I finished reading “The Challenge of Jesus” and since it’s the first book that I’ve read cover-to-cover in quite a while (which is somewhat embarrassing considering the number of books that I’ve started), I’ve decided to do a chapter-by-chapter summary with some brief reflections. Well, that’s not actually the reason. I’m taking the time to do this to make sure that I’ve carefully contemplated the information that I’m to take with me on the retreat this summer, and by forcing myself to express my thoughts in complete sentences in a semi-public way, I will be more successful than if I simply rely on my internal thought processes to reach their appropriate conclusions on their own.

This will be too long if it’s just a single post, so it will be done in a series of posts (which I will hopefully finish).

Chapter 1: The Challenge of Studying Jesus

Wright’s primary thesis is the following: the continuing historical quest for Jesus is a necessary and nonnegotiable aspect of Christian discipleship. After noting some level of controversy as to what that might mean (and I do not think it should be all that controversial), he goes on to lay out several reasons for the necessity of this “quest.”

I find his fourth reason, “the Christian commitment to mission,” to be the most compelling. If it is true that Christians are supposed to communicate some sort of message from Jesus to the rest of the world, then it makes sense that we be fully informed about who Jesus was and is, what he said and did, and what it all means. And if we believe that Jesus was a historical person, living in a first century Jewish world, shouldn’t the Jesus we’re putting forth include that first century Jew complete with his own first century context, and not some 21st century re-imagining of the first century Jew? Yes, we do need to put Jesus into a 21st century context so that it can be understood by the 21st century world, and Jesus is alive and active in this 21st century world, but everything is (or at least should be) grounded in the reality of the message of the historical person of Jesus, who is confined to a narrow slice of time and space. (I’m reminded of Dr. Bob Pratt from First Baptist Church in San Diego who had an entire lesson titled “Think like a Hebrew, not like a Greek.”)

Wright spends the next few pages talking about the influence of the Enlightenment on contemporary Christian thought. I think he’s actually drawing some rather deep ideas or insight into play here, but it’s a little lost on me. I think I lack a sufficient historical perspective on the Enlightenment to really connect with the observations. The primary conclusion is simply emphasizing that we need to see the first century Jesus in his own first century context.

This leads to the next point, which is a question of what useful statements can be made about Jesus? It’s clearly not a task of idle speculations about Jesus. As a historian, he wants to take look at Jesus from the point of view of a historian. This means drawing from a large background of extra-biblical knowledge. But it also means admitting that there might be some errors that have crept into Christian thought during the last two millennia. To be clear, this is understood in the sense that what we think of Christianity today is almost surely not precisely what the first disciples thought of Christianity. There might be ways that we understand certain passages which turn out to be different from what the original speaker (ie, Jesus) meant. And the only way to fix these things is to pay close attention to who Jesus was and who he was speaking to; that is, we must know the historical context.

He closes the chapter with 5 questions that he wants to address in the book:
1) Where does Jesus belong within the Jewish world of his day?
2) What, in particular, was his preaching of the kingdom all about? What was he aiming to do?
3) Why did Jesus die? In particular, what was his own intention in going to Jerusalem that last fateful time?
4) Why did the early church begin, and why did it take the shape it did? Specifically, of course, what happened at Easter?
5) How does all this relate to the Christian task and vision today? How, in other words, does this historical and also deeply theological approach put fire into our hearts and power into our hands as we go about shaping our world?

Merry rapture!

2011-05-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

Nobody got taken up in the rapture, so we're all going to have to suffer through the end of the world on December 21, 2012. I guess I should get my zombie preparedness kit ready, just in case.

To celebrate the (non)rapture, we had our second annual crawfish boil. There were a couple planning bits that went a little better this year. For example, we boiled the crawfish on the same day they arrived, which reduced the dead-loss significantly. We actually cut back to 30 pounds instead of 40 pounds (and there was still a lot of food). Lastly, we got a plastic kiddie pool which gave us some extra space to clean the crawfish before boiling them. It was also entertaining to have a kiddie pool full of crawling and swimming cockroach cousins.

We changed companies this year, which means that we got a different boil. This year's boil was good, but it wasn't as spicy. Thinking about it, I think I liked it slightly better with it a little less spicy. Maybe spicier than what we ended up with today, but not quite as spicy as last year. I missed the spiciness when eating the tails, but the head-sucking portion is more enjoyable because you better taste the goodness.

I did try a couple other things in the boil this year. I put garlic cloves (unpeeled but broken from the head), and those turned out pretty good. I really enjoy the sweet flavor of cooked garlic, and it picked up some of the spices from the boil. We also had mushrooms shrimp. The mushrooms were good, but the shrimp didn't pick up as much flavor as I had hoped. I think that next year the shrimp will get seasoned separately (probably just using the boil seasonings) and I'll put them in a little bit closer tot he end (because they came out overcooked).

I think everyone had a good time, and I don't think anyone went away hungry. If they did, it's their own fault! There was plenty of food left over. Speaking of which, I've already started playing with the leftovers. I put together a corn chowder tonight. I used some of the boil broth in the soup, and it has a good flavor. However, I think I overdid the seasonings and ended up with something a little bit overly spicy, but not too spicy to eat.

But enough about food. The first week of classes went well. There are only 8 students in the class, which means I'm not going to draw a full paycheck for this class. I'll only get paid about half of what I would normally get paid, but that's fine. It's a fun class to teach, and summer teaching is extra because I'm on a 9 month contract spread out over 12 months.

It looks like summer basketball is moving forward. I'm looking forward to playing competitive basketball. This league comes complete with refs, which always puts a different tempo on the game. It usually means you actually get more rest than you would in a game without refs. I'm still concerned about my overall conditioning. Adding two nights of intense basketball to the one night of semi-casual basketball is going to be interesting.

The legislative session is winding down, and maybe we'll finally have clarity on the budget situation (for better or worse). Nevada is not the only state that is trying to come to terms with the role and value of higher education. Nobody really knows where this is going. Being 49th in the nation in education is not good, and while simply throwing money at the problem isn't a solution, neither is taking all the money out of it. So it's more of the wait-and-see mentality.

I'm reading "The Challenge of Jesus" by N.T. Wright in preparation for the InterVarsity faculty retreat. I will be leading one of the sessions, and this needs to be figured out in the next day or two. I'm looking forward to it because I think I like the direction that the retreat is heading. N.T. Wright's perspective is a bit different from what most people think of when they think about Christian perspectives, and I think it's different in a good way. He takes very seriously the historical context of Jesus, which brings a completely different insight into what he says. I would say more if I had more to say, but I think I've got to finish reading, first.

That's about it.

Year 4 is in the books (almost)

2011-05-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

I went to the Nevada State College graduation ceremony tonight. It continues to amuse me that people congratulate me at these things. I suppose it means that I have yet to reach professor-image status.

For the first time, I was actually impressed and somewhat moved by the student speaker. It wasn't the usual 22-year old speaker who talks about how hard college has been, and how everyone has overcome obstacles, and thanks to the parents and faculty type of speaker. He was a late-30s Navy veteran who was homeless and in drug rehab only five years ago. Somehow, the story of overcoming obstacles is more compelling coming from a guy with that type of background. Anyway, this guy is off to get a Master's of Social Work and is interested in becoming a rehab counselor himself.

All my grading is done for this semester, which is nice. I actually had a somewhat lightened load because in one of my classes we had final presentations instead of a final exam. So in some sense, this means that I've completed my 4th year of being a math professor at NSC. But in another way, it's not quite so because I'm teaching a summer session class in a week. So I really have another 7 weeks to go.

I've got a couple days to decide whether I'm going to Catalina island for the faculty retreat. I've got to sit down on Monday morning and chart out the things I need to do this summer, and see whether I can afford the 1.5-2 weeks to go out to California (because I'd make a trip out of it). I'm already thinking of heading back to Livermore at a different time, and all that time not working on stuff adds up. Because of finals, I haven't really had enough time to work it all out. But now that I'm in that in between period, I can take the time to get it sorted out.

I had an interesting chat with the dean, who happens to be Catholic and participates in the faculty group that we've had going on for this year. He was sharing an interesting perspective on Thomas (Didymus, aka Doubting Thomas). Usually, Thomas is put forth in a negative light, that we should be more willing to believe and not wait for evidence or knowledge or that sort of thing. However, the disciples had been warned about being deceived by others (Matthew 20:5, Luke 21:8), so that he was simply being obedient. Furthermore, Thomas' confession is unique in that this is the only place recorded in the gospels where Jesus is called God (theos). Even Peter's confession that Jesus is the Messiah does not take this same (gigantic) theological step. So anyway, that's been an interesting nugget of thought that I was left with from that conversation.

Statewide budget stuff is still going on. Where will the final lines be drawn? Nobody knows yet. So everything is still in wait-and-see mode.

I got a check from Canada last week, which means that my poker money has successfully been transferred back to me. So now most of my poker bankroll is sitting in an online bank earning 1% APY. That's more than what I make playing poker these days (since I never play). I've been thinking about starting to do some investing, but that's going to require me to find some time and do some reading (and have enough motivation). The most likely target will be dividend paying ETFs.

I've lived in this house for two years now. My loan-to-value is 85.6%, so I guess I own about 14.4% of it. Off the top of my head, I would estimate that this means I own my closets and the bathrooms. The next milestone is to get the loan-to-value down to 80% so I can stop paying the PMI. That would be another $60 per month that can be applied to the principal. Part of me wants to try to refinance into a 15 year loan so that I can lower the interest rate, but that would be another thing that I would need to research carefully. I'd also need to consider future uncertainties in that contemplation. I don't know whether I would want to tie up more money into the mortgage with an unclear sense of what I might be making in a couple years from now. So I might just sit tight for a while. I don't know (which is why I need to do some research).

Update that happens to land on Easter

2011-04-24T20:11:00.001-07:00

As good as it is that we have Easter, I didn't want to call it an Easter update (because it's mostly not about Easter).

The Easter service at church was pretty good. The band played, the choir sang, there was a skit, the pastor preached, and we celebrated the risen Jesus. The only thing that was out of place was the smoke machine. It just felt weird and unnecessary. Afterward, the small group came over to grill some food. The food was all very tasty and it was good to just hang out as a group.

I got to meet the two new babies in the small group for the first time in person today. I don't really have much to say about it, although part of me feels like I'm socially obligated to talk about how cute they are and things like that if I'm going to bring it up (they really are cute babies). Since it's the first baby in each family, I guess this means that the parents have now officially crossed into a new life stage. Congratulations and good luck to them.

There's been some chatter among the Thursday night basketball crowd that we're going to try to get guys together a team for a city league. We're apparently gunning for the competitive league (as opposed to the recreational one), which should be interesting. I have no idea how competitive it will be, which is somewhat exciting for me. Maybe I should start working at getting my cardio back.

There are only two weeks of school left. I'm definitely feeling the crunch, and it's not helping that extra stuff is being tossed into my lap. But that's just how things go sometimes. And now I've got a mid-week meeting at UNLV to attend.

I've started up something new in my classes. I'm starting to record my lectures. Right now, the system is able to capture audio and the video feed from the Sympodium (like a tablet computer that you write on, except that it's attached to a podium). I've gotten to the point where I don't think it's weird to hear my own voice on recordings, which I guess is a good thing. One thing that definitely comes out is that random side conversations I have with the students are only one-sided (because the students don't have microphones). This is being done for the students in the class (and not for any other purpose), so this is not a big deal.

Here's a useless anecdote about the usefulness of math in real life. I use a liquid laundry detergent, and the instructions on the side recommend that you use about 1/3 of a cap-full for regular loads of laundry. But when you look inside the cup, the markings on the side range from 1 to 5 (5 being full). If people don't read the instructions, I would guess they would be inclined to fill the cup to 3 (because it's an "average" load), and end up using almost twice as much detergent as is recommended every time. And if someone reads the instructions, will that person know that 1/3 of a cap falls just above the halfway point between the 1 and the 2, or will they just fill it to 2 (and use about 20% extra on each load)? Maybe it's an intentional ploy by the company to sell more detergent.

For most people, this is a side story that probably didn't even catch their attention in the news. Black Friday hit the online poker world last week, and it's not a good thing like it is for retailers and shoppers. Online poker in the US has been halted due to an investigation by the Department of Justice. This has rocked the online poker world, and a lot of people are trying to figure out what's going to happen to their money. I also had money in an online poker account. It's not enough that I'm highly concerned about it, but it's still a reasonable amount of money. The good news is that I've always kept poker money separate from my real money, so that not having access to it does not impact me at all, financially speaking. I guess I'm losing a little bit less than $1 in interest every month, so there is some damage being done. Nobody is quite sure what will happen, but it will probably take a few months to sort it out. The poker world is cynical and frustrated about it and some are finding interesting ways to express themselves.

Age++

2011-04-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

It's just like clockwork. Every year, the calendar tells me that I've grown a year older. It's not that I don't believe it, or that I don't want to believe it, or even that I don't like that it happens. It's just a brute fact of reality.

In response to this brute fact, I decided to be a little bit selfish and self-indulgent and do something that I've been wanting to do for a while, but never found a good enough excuse to do it. I cooked up a big mess of fancy food. Of course, I have limitations on the quantity of food I can eat, and the big mess of food I wanted to make was more than what I could eat alone. So I got some friends to help out. And since I was aiming for fancy food, I was quite glad to have one of those friends help me turn up the elegance of the meal by helping me decorating and making sure that everything was done well.

Since I don't do fancy food very often, several of the things that I made were things that I had never made before. But since it's my birthday, it's not as if anyone would complain if things didn't taste good. It's a perfect plan! Anyway, here's what I ultimately ended up with:

Appetizer: Tomato bisque with crostini
Main course: Smoked tri-tip, broiled salmon with grainy mustard herb glaze, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and a simple sautee of zucchini and sesame.
Dessert: Chocolate mousse and panna cotta with strawberry coulis

My commentary:

Appetizer: I'm surprised at how much flavor you can get out of canned tomatoes. I was actually a bit worried about this one because I thought it would come off a little bit bland when I was making it. But it turned out much better than I had thought it was going to be, and it was relatively simple to make. It's something that I think I might pull out again at some point in the future. I left the crostini in the oven a little bit too long, so they were a bit crunchier than I had intended.

Main course: It was a little slow getting out of the kitchen because I mistimed the salmon. I had wanted to heat the plates to help keep the food warm as it got dished out, but I didn't pull that one off, either. Plating a dozen dishes is harder than I thought it would be.

The smoked tri-tip was very tasty (my favorite of the night). And the simplicity of it makes me want to try smoking more meats. The sauce was just a mix of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, vinegar, and some hot sauce that I let cook down until it became like a glaze. I think the slightly tangy flavor went very well with the smokey meat.

The salmon turned out pretty well. I think most of the trick was just buying very good salmon and not overcooking it. The mustard herb glaze was a grainy mustard with some mustard powder, rosemary, thyme, and parsley all mixed in. I added some olive oil and a little red wine vinegar to thin it out slightly.

Roasted garlic mashed potatoes are a standard dish for me now. I feel like I should have made more, because in the end it looked a little bit skimpy. But in order to do that, I would have needed to cook it in two batches (or invest in a stock pot). The zucchini sautee was about as simple as I could make it. It was just zucchini, sesame seeds, sesame oil, salt, and pepper that was lightly cooked together. I think it worked well with the potatoes to offset the stronger flavors of the proteins.

Dessert: The chocolate mousse is a 1:1 dark chocolate ganache that I beat before it cooled completely in the fridge. I threw in a splash of spiced rum because I felt like something that I should do. I honestly don't know if I could taste the difference. But I did serve slightly smaller portions than I had intended. I had thought the volume after beating was going to be more than I got. But the flavor was rich enough that I think I got away with one there.

The panna cotta recipe is one that I pulled out from the archive. I last used it a several years ago for a GCF potluck (I think). I think the strawberry coulis helps to fill out the flavor a little bit.

I think I just re-indulged myself contemplating foodstuffs, because that's probably far more words about food than what most people would want to bother reading. But it's my birthday, so I'll ramble about it for as long as I want.

I got a bonus birthday surprise today from one of my math classes. They brought in cupcakes and sang for me. It was a very kind gesture, and I figure that this is a sign that I'm doing something right. Unfortunately, many of these students will be getting their midterm back tomorrow, and that will be a less happy time for them. I think that a number of students had hit the wall, and the mix of personal issues in play (a child custody issue and a relationship breakup are among the things floating around) caused a minor collapse. That means that tomorrow I'm going to have to go in and clean up a bit before moving on.

I think I mentioned the proof-writing class before. I've decided that there's definitely enough interest to go forward with it. It's probably only going to be about 10 students, but that's good enough for me. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the notes right now, and will be putting in a lot of time on that in the next few weeks. It's only 4 weeks until the end of the school year, and I can feel it starting to drag a little for me.

It's coming up on a month since I submitted my revised paper to the CMJ. I hope that it will be better received this time, and maybe I'll finally get that publication out.

What else has happened over the last few weeks? My parents came through town, my sister-in-law officially announced her pregnancy (I'm going to be a real uncle, not just a cousin-uncle), a baby was born into our small group (the first one, with one more expected in the next week or so, and then another one a few months from now -- what's with all these babies?), and NSC came out of the accreditation visit very strongly (though the official announcement won't be until July or August).

Life is busy, but good.

The end of Spring Break

2011-03-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Things continue to be busy, but I did get to relax a little bit this week. I worked four half-days on campus and another half-day at home. I've got all of my exams ready for the rest of the semester, so I got a chance to start working on stuff for summer. I was going to teach our precalculus course, but when I mentioned the idea of teaching an introduction to proofs class, a bunch of students mobilized and started the process of petitioning me to do it. If we have 17 students, we can run it like a normal class, otherwise I'll run it as an independent study class if there are at least 10 students. It looks like getting up to that number won't be hard, so I've already started to put the notes together. I've never taught this class before, but it's something that a lot of institutions offer (and something that we've already proposed to do, but haven't been able to do because of a lack of faculty), so there are plenty of textbooks and resources available.

Speaking of math faculty, the search has been completed, but because of a campus-wide hiring freeze, we're not going to be able to make an offer. In a very real way, this means that our decision has basically been made for us. We may not know until June whether the line will be reopened, and it's not clear whether our candidate will even be available to pick up the position in June (because of the timing of contracts and that sort of thing). So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

I submitted a paper to the College Math Journal, and they sent it back for some revisions (which was to be expected, and I agree with the comments). However, they indicated that they find the content to be interesting, so I'm hoping to get my first peer-reviewed publication finally out there. Most people try to turn their thesis into a publication, but I have no desire to do that (and I don't even think it would be published -- though one of my friends told me that I'm probably selling myself a little short on that point). The good news is that I'm not at an institution that is focused on publications, so the combination of this, plus the textbook, plus something related to the math remediation program that I put together, I should have plenty of scholarship when it comes time to apply for tenure.

I bought a new dishwasher and refrigerator this week. (My half-day of working from home was the day I waited for them to be delivered and installed.) The fridge is a French door style with a stainless steel finish with much more space than I had before. I upgraded from 18 cubic feet to 25. Do I need that space right now? Not really. But paying $1100 for a $1400 fridge is tough to pass up, especially when it's only a little bit more expensive than the $950 20 cubic foot one I was originally considering. The dishwasher also has a stainless steel finish, and besides that I don't know what to say about it except that it's quiet (and it works).

The credit issue has been resolved. I got the official letter in the mail today: "You recently contacted us regarding a bill in your name... in the amount of $3069.11. Based on our investigation, we have concluded that you are not responsible for this bill. We have sent authorization to our outside Collection Agency to remove all negative reference in your credit record regarding this debt." It took about two months to resolve, and it may take another 2-3 months before the paperwork is finally all completed with the credit agencies. It wasn't a painful process, but it did require a bit of record keeping and a couple trips to the post office to send things via certified mail.

Where did February go?

2011-02-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

The calendar tells me that it's the 28th day of February. I don't have any reason to think that the calendar is lying to me. However, I also don't know whether I can account for 28 days of activity this month.

We're approaching the on-campus interview part of the search for another math faculty. It's pretty exciting professionally (because it will be good to have a tenure track math colleague to help carry the load) and personally (because I know one of the finalists personally). It's times like this when I wish I were in a larger department, because then I can shy away from the conflict of interest gracefully. But when I represent 50% of the full time math faculty (and 100% of the tenure track math faculty), there's no hiding. Having been up front about everything with the entire committee the entire time, I feel that I've created a sufficient level of impartiality and awareness of my potential biases. Hopefully, we'll have a decision soon.

The credit fraud issue is hopefully reaching a close soon. I had to contact AT&T Mobility directly (Fraud Department: 1-877-844-5584 -- for future reference) and they sent me some forms for me to fill out to attest to the fact that this is not my debt. It turns out that this account was opened in 2008, which dates it around the same time as previous issues. So I guess there was probably some "faulty" false information that kept them from actually associating the debt to my name, and then over time someone finally got names and addresses and whatever to match up (which is how it ended up on my credit report). I had to dig around my files to come up with a couple pieces of correspondence that would verify that I lived at my former address during that period of time. I'm sending these papers off via certified mail tomorrow, and I hope that will be the last thing I need to do.

Church is starting down that long road of changing the way we do things. There are good things happening in terms of an increase in attendance (especially with the kids and youth) and various pieces of organizational structures coming into place (deacons). But I'm under no illusion that this is a quick fix and that things are all going to be great and perfect. Moving forward, we will need to capitalize on the idea of adequate training for anyone in any type of leadership position. The deacons and elders need both Biblical/spiritual training as well as some level of basic leadership training. The existing small groups probably need better support if they are going to be expected to grow (and small group leaders probably need better training, too).

And now for something completely different, here are a brief couple blurbs in the direction of politics:

Nevada Public Employees Ninth-highest Paid in Nation

As you get past the headlines, you reach this paragraph:

"But the study found some public employees -- principally teachers -- are underpaid in Nevada in comparison with their colleagues around the United States. Elementary and second teachers received $50,444 average pay in 2009, or 96 percent of the national average of $52,305, while higher education instructors earned $68,529, or 91 percent of the $75,748 national average."

And that's probably before the 4.6% pay reduction due to furloughs. But for some reason, people continue to think that education (and particularly higher education) is costing too much money. The evidence seems to be pointing to local governments not managing their local monies well.

And in an "only in Nevada" moment, Harry Reid screws up:

Reid urges Nevada to Outlaw Prostitution

"The gallery in the Assembly chambers went silent Tuesday when Reid paused for applause after he told lawmakers from both houses that 'the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution.'"

Here's a fuller quote from the speech:

"We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do. If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come to outlaw prostitution."

I have to admit that I don't understand this at all (nor does most of the state). Maybe something like a Chick-Fil-A would stay out of Nevada because of prostitution (ignoring the fact that prostitution is NOT legal in the populous areas of the state, such as Las Vegas), but I'm pretty sure that the existence of brothels is quite low on the list of priorities when a company is considering moving out here.

The fun part about this is that the legal "working women" might be mobilizing:

Brothels Fire Back at Harry Reid

"'If I could tell Larry Reid or whatever his name is -- I'm not really into politics as you can tell -- it would be to let the small towns make their money,' she said."

Reality is strange sometimes.

The Times They Are A Changin'

2011-02-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

At least it seems that way. One friend is pregnant, another friend is losing her job, another friend is trying to go from part-time to full-time in her job, and one just went home to Texas. Oh, and there's another guy who has already been in Texas for a few weeks on a 3 month internship. And another guy is trying to take that step from grad student to professor. And church is going orange. Egypt is destabilizing... There's just a lot of stuff going on out there.

For myself, I'm starting into a new type of project related to work, but not specifically as a work project. I've been in contact with one of the coordinators at the Boys and Girls Club of Las Vegas, and we're looking at ways that I could help them to develop some math curriculum to help their elementary level students as well as their high school students who are struggling to pass the exit exams. Even though I'm involved in this way because of my position, it's not tied to my regular work load. In my mind, it's sort of in the same category as a lawyer picking up some pro bono work. Yes, it's a reflection of my actual job and it plays a PR role as something that (if successful) we would like to have our school's name on it. But in a very real way, it's just volunteer work like almost any other form of volunteer work. This is a brand new direction for me, and it sounds like a lot of fun. We've exchanged a few emails, and we had a phone conference, and we'll probably do a face-to-face meeting towards the end of the month, and we'll see what happens.

School budget stuff is just starting. Here's a brief article from the local paper:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jan/29/proposed-cuts-leave-nevadans-both-sides-budget-deb/

I'm not particularly worried because I'm not in a position where my worrying is going to do anything positive. It does rise to the position of me paying attention to it, but when I skim over the online articles for things regarding the budget, it's not with any particular sense of fear or urgency. It's just information. Just as with last year, it seems that we have a lot of support from a lot of the important people, and so I'm just going to watch the fight play itself out.

The Super Bowl was today. I was not invested in either team, so the outcome is pretty close to meaningless to me. In the battle between food and commercials, the food that the small group brought clearly won. Super Bowl commercials have not been very good for the past few years. A couple good ones and a lot of commercials that I've forgotten.

Although I feel like there's other stuff going on, I can't think of anything. If it's important, I'm sure I'll remember eventually.

Sliding back into the routine

2011-01-28T20:55:00.000-08:00

The water heater was fixed (replaced) the day after it broke, and so that's all good again. We're now at the end of the second week of classes, everything has fallen back into a normal routine.

My teaching schedule is a little bit different this semester. I've got an 8 AM class M/W/F (my first 8 AM class since my undergraduate days, I think) and a 9:30 AM class on T/Th. But I still have a 3:30-5 class in the afternoon M/T/W/Th. So I'm spending much more time on campus than what I normally do. In some ways it's good, because I have much more time to get stuff done. But on the other hand, the extra time means that the pressure to be time-efficient is diminished, so I'm less efficient.

The math program is not running, but we're still testing some of the content and the format. Things are running pretty well for me. I'm having plenty of time to lecture through the materials and do the in-class content. The other instructor has suggested a change in the test format, and I think it has a good chance of working out well. It will definitely reduce the amount of paper we use, and it may also make the grading more efficient. Now the question is whether the students can follow directions well enough.

My other classes are rolling along smoothly. The history of math class is fun because it's far more relaxed than most of my other upper division courses. I don't feel the same sort of weight of trying to cover specific material, and I feel that I can just talk more casually about stuff. I do need to be careful that I don't get too casual, because that quickly turns into laziness.

We're also moving forward in the hiring process for another math professor. We've got some phone interviews next week, and then we'll have on campus interviews over the next few weeks after that, and then we'll make an offer. We seem to have a batch of candidates that came together quickly for the committee. We now have to wait and see how things go forward from here.

I'm back to playing the letter-writing game regarding my credit. It seems like every 6-8 months or so, something pops up that shouldn't be there. I've got a monitoring service through my insurance company, and it's actually very good because I know usually within a matter of a couple weeks when something new shows up on the report.

Most of the time, I challenge it and it gets removed without any hassle. The last time I had a hassle, I had to contact a credit card company about it. This time, I'm contacting a collections agency. Just for reference, a good thing to know about is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. It's mostly about protecting people from being harassed by collections agencies, and placing boundaries on the types of tactics they can use. For me, the relevant section is section 809, which requires them to produce some form of evidence that I opened the line of credit, and their inability to do so should give me sufficient leverage to get them to pull the claim. Or, if they do produce evidence, it should be something I can take to demonstrate that it was originally fraudulent (I'm less clear on how this process would work, but if I need to figure it out I will).

It's only 10:40 PM, but I'm quite tired. I guess that's what happens when you wake up earlier.

Not a normal Sunday morning

2011-01-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

Just as I was leaving for church today, I noticed something peculiar. Running along the tiles in the hallway was a little stream of water. It wasn't a torrent, but it was definitely flowing water from somewhere. A quick inspection revealed that it was not coming from the bathroom, but from the garage. I opened the door from the house to the garage and found myself looking at a flow of water originating from the water heater. It wasn't gushing, but it was definitely pouring out in a steady stream.

I made a quick call the the home warranty company (I could tell immediately that this was not something I would be able to fix on my own), and started the process of trying to get the water under control.

By building a dam out of towels, Daniel and I managed to stop most of the flow of water into the house and redirect it out into the garage, and eventually out into the street. The good news is that this was discovered very quickly after it started (about 10-15 minutes), so it wasn't quite as bad it could have been (for example, if we had already left for church and came back a couple hours later, or if it happened overnight).

I also learned two very important things about my house. The first is that the shut-off value to the water heater is broken, so closing it will not stop water from flowing into the water heater. The second thing is that the main shut-off valve for the house also doesn't work. (I guess I learned three things. I now know how to shut off the water to the house at the meter. But I didn't learn this until a couple hours later, when I was talking with the plumber.)

Having never considered water flow in this way, I'm not quite sure how fast the water was leaking, but if I were to imagine some sort of analogy, it would be as much water as when the kitchen sink is running at 50% of maximum flow, right about where the water changes from flowing clear to flowing white. A quick experiment to the kitchen with an empty half-gallon milk bottle tells me that this as being about a gallon every minute and a half. So if you figure that it took us 10-15 minutes to discover the problem, that's only about 7-10 gallons of water in the house (as opposed to potentially 50-60). At the same time, if you imagine dumping two full water cooler-sized jugs of water in the house, it's still quite a bit of water.

Since the hallway is tile, the "damage" was minimal. There was a lot of water that flowed into the bathroom, and it flowed down the hall towards the master bedroom, but didn't quite get there. The living room carpet has a wet spot that's probably about 3 square feet in size. We soaked up as much as we could and now we've got two box fans blowing air over the top of it to try to dry it out more quickly. I'll have to see whether there are any long term consequences. But I had wanted to get rid of the carpet and go with hardwood flooring, so I'm not too put off by the idea of having to tear out the carpet.

It took about 75 minutes for the plumber to arrive (I think the call from the home warranty company woke him up). He was a nice guy. He worked quickly and bypassed the water heater so that we can have water for the house. He also drained the water heater (the water heater drain valve was stopped up because of mineral deposits -- the water is quite hard out here -- so he had to remove the valve completely and drain it into a garbage can, then drag it to the driveway to dump it.) Since it's a Sunday, he wasn't able to actually get a new water heater, so he'll be back tomorrow to replace it. Hopefully, the scheduling will work out well. I teach an 8 AM class and a 3:30 PM class, so there's a good gap of time when I can disappear from campus and deal with it.

Happy New Ye... oh... that happened a week ago

2011-01-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

The start of the new year has moved very quickly. Since the start of the year, I've spent a third of the days on an airplane and half the nights sleeping in beds that are not my own.

For the last four days, I've been at the annual math meetings. This year, it was held in New Orleans. This is the second time I've been to New Orleans. I gave a talk, and it went well, but mental energy I want to expend right now will be about the food.

I feel obliged to point out that most of the food adventures were spent with my former roommate, Andre, who did all the work of looking up and picking out the places to eat.

I arrived on Thursday night, and that's when the eating began. Somewhat appropriately, the place is called "Eat." I had a cup of gumbo (perfectly spicy), a stuffed pepper (in which the pepper was an afterthought and it was all about the stuffing), and a bowl of red beans and rice. Sadly, I think this is my first bowl of red beans and rice even though I've been to New Orleans before. At least, I don't recall having red beans and rice. But now I know what it is, and that all the things that I've made in the past under the label "red beans and rice" are completely wrong.

I've always looked for easy recipes for red beans and rice, and they had always turned out as red beans in a broth. But now I know that red beans and rice is much thicker, almost like a rich, hearty stew. So my conception of what this dish is supposed to be has been completely reworked. And I guess that means I need to try to make it again.

The next morning was breakfast at Cafe du Monde. This is a well known local chain that sells beignets almost exclusively (you can also get coffee or hot chocolate, boxes of beignet mix -- but if you don't want food they do have plenty of merchandise). For about $2.50, you get three little pillows of slightly chewy deep fried dough covered in about a cup of powdered sugar. My best attempt at describing the dough is that it's like a Chinese long doughnut, except not quite as crispy. The interior texture is chewy, but with an open structure (large chambers). Andre and I would return to this place several times for beignets and hot chocolate.

That day's lunch was an adventure. We walked about 2.5 miles in each direction to visit Parkway Bakery and Tavern. This a very famous local restaurant, and I understand why. The po'boys are very, very good. I had the alligator sausage (because I wanted to make sure I had alligator something on this trip), and Andre got the fried shrimp po'boy. The alligator sausage was good, but it's hard to really identify the alligator-ness of it because like all good sausages, it was a heavily spiced mixture. I was very impressed with the taste texture of the fried shrimp (I sampled one that fell out of his sandwich).

Dinner was at a place called Cochon (which is French for pig). Now there's a story here about trying to chase down more beignets while we waited for our seat, but I won't recount it. It's not that funny, although it does involve about another two miles of very fast walking and missing our table (and not getting any beignets). Andre ordered a bacon and oyster sandwich (which he raved about) and a plate of smothered greens (I sampled it, and I must say that *now* I know what deep greens should taste like). I had the fried alligator in chili aioli with mint leaves and macaroni and cheese. The mac and cheese was tasty, and rich and creamy, but it's just a straight-forward dish. The fried alligator gave me a chance to really taste alligator meat. And it doesn't taste like chicken. It's a different type of meat that has its own flavor. I couldn't compare it to any other meat that I've had. The texture is a little bit tougher and firmer than most other meats, but not in a way that made it difficult to eat. I wish I could say more to describe the meat, but I can't.

The next day's lunch was a BBQ oyster po'boy at Red Fish Grill, which was right around the corner from the hotel. It's not that the oysters were BBQed, but they were fried and tossed in a spicy BBQ sauce. I actually don't have much to say about this one. I liked it, and would order it again, but it also doesn't stand out for any reason except that I don't know when the next time I'll have a chance to eat a fried oyster po'boy will be. Maybe I'll have to make one of these, too.

Dinner was at a small place called Coop's Place. The atmosphere was very smoky, but like a smoke-house smoky and not a dimly lit pool room smoky. The food came out fast and was good, but I not as good as the previous couple nights. Although I will say that they had a sausage and rabbit jambalaya, which was interesting, but I had hoped for something a little more... something... out of it. I had what amounted to a sampler platter, and one of the items was called shrimp creole. It was basically a tomato, peppers, and okra stewed together. It was quite tasty as a simple, rustic sort of dish, and it played well with the other flavors going on. The other items were some red beans and rice, gumbo, and a piece of fried chicken. Now that I think about it, the fried chicken was excellent. The texture was pretty close to perfect, and it was well seasoned. I only got a single wing, which doesn't amount to much eating, which is probably why I almost completely forgot about it.

That covers all of my meals in New Orleans.

My talk went well (getting back to the real reason I was there). There were between 30 and 40 people in attendance, and they seemed to think positively of the ideas I put forth. I gave one person a business card (she wants to pass it along to someone at her school who was trying to do the same thing, but ran into problems with their administration) and I already have a request in my email box for a copy of the presentation. We'll see what develops from this.

After my work was all done (and actually, all of the eating), I went to play poker for 5 hours at the Harrah's which is a couple blocks from the hotel. It's somewhat ironic that I live in Vegas and don't play poker, but when I leave Vegas I do. According to my notes, in 2007 at that casino, I played for about 4 hours and won about $350. This time, I played about 5 hours and won $123. There were a couple bad decisions that cost me at least $100, so I could have done better. But a win is still a win.

The next week will be busy, with looking at applications and getting ready to launch into the new semester. I have a few ideas of new things to try, but I want to let them roll around in my head a little while longer before saying anything about it.

Countdown to the new year

2010-12-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

Flying home on Christmas Day was a breeze. There was no line at the security check-in, and plenty of space in the overhead compartments, and the flight was dirt cheap.

The last couple weeks have been busy, but this laptop thing has worked out very well, so my time leading up to my flight home was not nearly as packed as I thought it would be. On the downside of this, I get inefficient when I'm not under pressure, so I probably could have more work done than I do, even though I've spent more time working.

And, as if to demonstrate my inefficiency, here are two random observations and reflections I've had since the end of the semester:

1) Professional wrestling has found its way to the SyFy channel. The SyFy channel used to be the SciFi channel, which is short for the Science Fiction Channel. It reminds me of when The Learning Channel turned into TLC and eventually stopped being about learning. Pretty soon, SyFy will be showing reruns of the Amazing Race or something like that.
2) I saw fat free half-and-half at the store. Half and half is supposed to be half milk and half cream. But in order for the half-and-half to be fat free, you would have to have fat free milk and fat free cream. And to the best of my knowledge, fat free cream is just nonfat milk. So fat free half-and-half is 100% nonfat milk.

Anyway, the stuff that I'm working on is coming along well enough. I've got a presentation in about a week at the national math conference in New Orleans, but that talk is pretty much put together. I'll need to take some time to practice and time the talk, but that will wait until I return to Vegas. I'm putting notes together for next semester, and this is where I feel like I'm still behind where I want to be (but not too bad).

Spending time at home with family is good. We went out to San Francisco to visit the Academy of Sciences. As a side note, show up early, and expect to stand in line like you're waiting to get into Disneyland. I think we spent about 40 minutes waiting just to get in, and the major attractions on the inside have lines, too. But it was still fun to wander through the exhibits, especially the rain forest, the penguins, and aquarium. Actually, that probably accounts for 75% of what I saw. There was also an interactive exhibit that was controlled by stepping in an area that had an overhead projector displaying images on the floor. The object was to lure out bugs with food that you pushed around the floor, but some kids thought that the goal was to step on the bugs, and so no learning was accomplished.

I tend to do a lot more TV watching in Livermore than I do in Vegas. Since arriving here, I've watched an entire season of Hoarders and This American Life, plus some episodes of MST 3K and a few other things. At least this time, I have the laptop available so that I can work while watching. It's probably a good thing I don't have NetFlix and instant downloads of shows.

I don't have any special end of year insights or reflections. It's been a good year overall, with a few periods stretches of increased work stress (probably more work stress than I've ever had before) and a couple other rough patches, but if I look at where I am and what I've got, there's not much room for complaining. Life keeps moving forward. We'll see what 2011 brings.

Another semester in the books

2010-12-11T08:57:00.000-08:00

Well, it's mostly in the books. I have one student who emailed me late on Friday because she missed the last 3 weeks of class. I have some sympathy for this student because she was actually doing pretty well in the class until she disappeared and missed the final. So I've given her a window in which to make up the final. We'll see what happens with that. Overall, my classes did okay. My upper division Analysis class got slaughtered, but everyone still passed. Calculus 3 went pretty well except for one student. And I had one good class of Math 093 and one less good class of Math 093.

But even as I close the Fall 2010 semester, I have to immediately turn around and start working with the Spring 2011 semester.

I've got some concerns going into next semester regarding the remediation program. The enrollment numbers are too low right now to run a successful test. So we may be forced to push it back until the Fall. It's a little disappointing, but if we're going to do it, we've got to do it right. We've got to wait and see what the enrollment numbers look like at the end of next week and make some decisions.

I've actually got a meeting on Monday with the other instructors to let them know what's going on. I'm not fully prepared for that meeting, but I've got some time today and tomorrow to take care of it.

This also means that there are parts of my presentation at the math conference in New Orleans in January that I'll need to hold off on writing. I only have a 20 minute time slot, so I'm aiming for a 15-17 minute presentation. I think I've got a good structure, and I just need to settle on which details to include and which ones to exclude in order to make it fit.

I also need to go through the actual class content to make sure that everything is ready to go. For example, I don't think I have written up solutions to the practice exams and those sorts of things yet. I also need to put together the course webpage for weeks 6-15. This isn't quite as much work as it sounds because I've already got the format the way I want it. I just need to do it.

In fact, I bought a laptop last week so that I would have the ability to work on stuff when I went home over Christmas. I've got access to everything I need to write up my notes, but IT is still having problems with the remote desktop login. One of the guys spent about 90 minutes toying around with it and couldn't get it to work. Hopefully, they'll be able to get it fixed in the coming week or so.

I just got an email from the Provost, asking me if I can do a system-wide presentation on the remediation program in February. That one scares me much more than the presentation in New Orleans. The reason is that at the conference, I'm merely one person out of many who is talking about something. The system-wide presentation is mostly going to fall on my shoulders. We'll have to see where this one goes, because it's brand new news to me.

Our students took the Putnam again. This year, we had four students, which is the most ever. I'm somewhat optimistic that the team score will be positive this year, but I won't know until March. I'm going to do something that is somewhat competitive, which is to try to find out how UNLV has done over the last few years, and hopefully build a cross-town math rivalry with them. It's kind of nice because we're in a no-lose situation. If they beat us, it's because they draw from a deeper pool of students and they are a higher caliber institution than we are. If we beat them, then we win because we win. Sometimes it's good to rig the game in your favor.

Since it's the Christmas season, there are church events going on. Two weekends ago, there was a program put on by the kids, and last week there was a program put on by the adults. I think both events went well. It looked like the kids had a great time being on stage, and the adult program was put together fairly well. There were a few technical issues, but it's a church event and not a professional production, so the margin for these types of mistakes is (or at least should be) a little bit wider. I just hope that we don't fall into the trap of putting so much emphasis into these big productions that we lose track of the important other things that need to happen in a church (in particular, the development of small groups and the creation of other discipleship opportunities).

I bought a couple butternut squashes a couple weeks ago. I used one to make a soup, and I used the other to make a baked casserole dish. I've done the soup several times before, but I got a tip to try apple-butternut squash soup the next time. The baked casserole was done on the fly, but it turned out pretty tasty. I'll simply say that the use of cream and butter is one way to get favorable results most of the time. If I had some bacon to use, I'm pretty sure it could have gotten even better. One of these days, I'll learn to make a legitimate vegetable dish. That's one area of cooking that I've never really developed.

Thanksgiving week (and some stuff from the week before)

2010-11-28T14:28:00.000-08:00

I'm going to lead off with positive news from church, because such things are worth celebrating. Our new senior pastor was affirmed by the congregation, and will be arriving in the next couple weeks. He's a somewhat younger pastor, and not particularly deep in experience, but it's okay. He projects the right type of character (speaks truthfully, open and honest about himself, willing to learn), and for a church that is basically going to have to build from the ground up, it will be good to have a pastor "grow up" with us.

He has already implemented a change that is good, which is that the children's ministry has been given center stage, to the point that they join us for worship and we dismiss them with prayer. Actively putting the emphasis in this way will start to bridge the gap towards having a true family ministry, and help us to reach out the community more effectively. We are also doing better at the community thing, in that he's coming with "only clothes and books" and the church is doing a collection from the congregation to help to furnish his house or apartment. This will help to develop a quicker sense of intimacy and fellowship with the pastor.

This year, I had four Thanksgiving dinners. The first was with the small group, at which I fried my first turkey.

(Sadly, this is the only picture for this post. I have not yet gathered the other Thanksgiving pictures.)

This was done in a southern style, which means injecting the bird with a buttery spice mixture. There's still some head-scratching going on with this one, because it ended up that the breast meat was more flavorful and more moist than the leg meat. For a dark meat person, this is highly abnormal (but deliciously abnormal). My best guess is that the marinade in the leg meat could have run down into the open area under the skin down where the thigh meets the body. I did not jot down any notes from that dinner, so I can't remember much of the other foods. I remember a spicy cranberry something and a corn pudding (which I don't think I had ever had before).

The second Thanksgiving dinner was the GCF potluck. I got to catch up with a lot of people. These sorts of things have a high nostalgia value for me because it's not only my connection to the individuals, but also with the fellowship. Even people I met for the first time feel like friends. I think that's what happens when community is done well. There was a classic baked turkey (dry brined) that turned out wonderful (though I cut myself carving it -- fortunately it was right at the end). Other highlights included a cranberry salad (that involved running apples through a meat grinder) and some sort of cheese-filled phyllo-wrapped something.

The third Thanksgiving dinner actually followed the second. I drove up from San Diego to LA and arrived just in time for the Asian turducken. I made turducken with my cousin last year, and this year she made it by herself. Apparently, turducken is not a one-person job. When you get to the point where you need to use skewers to hold the final layer closed, you need a third and fourth hand. That's just how it is.

The fourth Thanksgiving dinner happened on Friday, and it was a feast of meats. We had a fried turkey, a prime rib, and a roasted suckling pig. We also had a roasted garlic mashed potato dish that turned out wonderfully well, and we played around with a spicy bacon and mixed nuts concoction that my cousin had at some bar somewhere.

While everything was good and tasty, it was also a very rushed Thanksgiving weekend. I left for San Diego at 6 AM on Wednesday morning, then went up to LA at 7 PM on Thursday, and left for Vegas at 1 PM on Saturday. I was so tired that I fell asleep on Saturday evening at around 9:30 (and consequently woke up at around 4:30 AM).

And besides all of the eating, it was good to catch up with friends and have some family time. There was a couple that I knew back when I was still a student who announced that they are pregnant with twins. Another couple is in the last stages of preparing to move up to the Bay Area. Others are making significant steps towards graduating. My brother just moved and is starting to look into getting his teaching credentials. It was just a good time overall.

Maybe in another week or so I'll have collected the pictures and post them. This requires two steps, neither of which is guaranteed.

Oh, and class stuff is coming to a close soon. We have two weeks of class left, with the Putnam coming up next week. Pretty soon, I'm going to hit my crazy time. But I'm not there yet...

It's "that time" again...

2010-11-05T22:09:00.000-07:00

Every semester, right around a month before it ends, I usually hit some sort of wall. Not a big wall, it's just the "Why are semesters so long?" wall. There are 5 weeks left in the semester. I trick myself into calling it 4 weeks because I've got two three day weeks this month, but that doesn't bring the official end of the semester (turning grades in) any closer.

My to do list was getting shorter, and then I started to write down the things I need to do in preparation for next semester, and it got very long again. I'm mostly trying to whittle away at it now so that I can have a focused push in December for the new year.

Even it has always been this way, it seems like this year a lot more people seem a lot more burdened with stuff on campus. This is related to the changing of our leadership and people stepping into new roles to pick up the slack, and the fact that we had an 18% jump in enrollment (read the news article if you're interested), and the slow build up to our final accreditation visit, and (for me personally) the completely revamped system of math remediation. There are just a lot of changes on campus (mostly positive), and everyone is trying to make it work.

This reminds me that we're going to try to hire another math professor. Right now, I'm the only tenure track math professor and one of two full time instructors. This is an unsustainable situation for a campus of 3000 students. The good news is that there are a lot of qualified applicants out there. The bad news is that there are a LOT of qualified applicants out there. This search is going to be very difficult because of the sheer volume we're expecting. So that's another thing on the to do list.

I haven't had as much to say recently regarding church because there really hasn't been much to talk about. It was about 2.5 months ago when our previous candidate left under a weird cloud, and the time in between had been filled mostly with quiet (but not hidden) pessimism about the long term prospects of staying at the church. The week-to-week game of sermon roulette and lack of strong, visible leadership were particularly frustrating because the problems are obvious, but I am in no position to help fix it. From a structural standpoint, they are things that would be addressed at the level of an Associate Pastor of Small Groups or higher. The problem is that we don't have one of those, and there wasn't anyone higher up the ladder who was willing or able to take up that type of role.

Despite the issues at the top of the organizational chart, there was some good work going on at a lower level. This year, our church had a Crazy Fall Festival as an outreach event to the community, providing a safe alternative to trick-or-treating. Outreach at our church has never really been a strong point. There is the idea out there that passing out bottles of water to people is an effective way to reach people. It's a nice gesture, but I've always questioned the effectiveness of such a project. If someone gives you a bottle of water with a business card that says "Call us when your next need arises" are you really going to call them up just because they gave you a bottle of water? Would you not just contact people within your own network, those people with whom you've had a pre-existing relationship, or a place that was recommended to you by one of those people?

But instead of one of those types of projects, this was aimed directly at the neighborhood. No gimmicks, no blatant church-isms... just a night to open the doors of the church and have fun with some kids.

Over the month of October, the leaders were able to pull together something like 100 volunteers (which is a huge number considering the state of the church and its history of getting volunteers), and it all came together in a very good way (not without its share of bumps, of course).

We saw a lot of new people come through the doors. I guess that means that the festival was successful at the task it was designed to do. But I think the thing that makes it successful is that there was a different "feel" around the church that evening. I was talking with a number of people, some of whom have been around the church much longer than me, and they expressed a sense of change. One person said that it has been a while since the it "felt" like the church was getting behind one thing, and not fighting with each other about it.

Next week, we have a senior pastor candidate coming through. There is a much more hopeful sense about him (even before he has arrived) than with the other two candidates. The Dr. Speer candidacy felt like it was forced and Pastor Al only had luke-warm support, but would have gone through if the other mysterious thing had not happened. I took a moment to look back at some notes and dates, and I guess we've now been without a Senior Pastor since April 2009 (18 months), and a pastoral staff of one (worship arts pastor) since February. I think the mood is that we're ready to grab onto whoever it is that shows up (as long as he's not painfully and obviously flawed). So hopefully that will all go down in a good way, and we can finally start a new chapter at church.

I've got more on my mind, and could probably ramble for another 3-4 paragraphs about stuff if I wanted to, but I'm done for the night.

Halfway through October, halfway through the semester

2010-10-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

As I sit here at my computer, I can hear thunder rumbling outside. Last week was above average heat-wise. The temperature climbed to the high 80s/low 90s and the normal for this time of year is in the low 80s. But I think that this week's storms will be the end of the hot season and we'll finally hit Fall.

All I have left to do for my classes this semester (in terms of prep work) is to write the final exams. I was about to write that sentence without the parenthetical, but then I realized that I still have to do all the teaching and grading, which is a non-trivial part of the workload. I think part of the reason for this perspective is that I've got a lot of stuff to do in advance of next semester.

I talked about the new math remediation program that we're going to try to implement, and pretty soon I'm going to have to get that organized. I need to...

* Talk to the instructors who are teaching it to let them know what's going on
* Put together a packet of worksheets so that the bookstore can get them printed in time for the students to purchase them when they purchase their textbooks
* Build the course webpage
* Hire a tutor specifically for the class
* Prepare a talk for the New Orleans conference in January

And I'm also teaching a new class next semester. History of Math is a class that I've never taken and never taught, so I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how exactly I want to structure it. Since it's a history-focused class, I can't quite handle it in the same way that I handle my other classes. It's still a math class, so there will still be an element of mathematical proof involved, but it's going to be significantly less technically intense than my other classes. I'm probably only about 40% through the reading that I want to do, and only about 1% through the planning. I don't even have a schedule for when I want this stuff to get done.

I'm also teaching Math 097 next semester, which I haven't taught in a couple years now. It's not really a "hard" class to teach, but I still need to get it all organized. I've changed how I do things over the last couple years, so I suspect that the notes will need to be updated, and I'll probably need to create more worksheets. Yes, I'm big on in-class worksheets. It's the best way to give quick feedback to the students so that they do not develop bad habits and wrong methods.

Speaking of worksheets, I also need to make them for the linear algebra class. But at least for that class, the notes are already done. The last time I taught that course it was a small disaster. The students who came to it were dramatically under-prepared for upper division math (ARL students = Alternative Route to Licensure), and they were the bulk of the students.

I like that we have ARL students because it's important to get more teachers out there. But I don't know how many times I had to tell them that this is an upper division math class, not a middle school math class. I'm not going to teach them as if they are kids. I'm not going to hold their hand the entire class. I'm going to expect them to read their textbook (gasp!) and learn from the in-class notes and problems, and from the examples and problems in the book.

This time, it looks like I'll have a good bunch of students who I've already had for a couple semesters, and they will help keep the pace of the class from being dragged down.

I bought a jar of herring in sour cream from the store today. I was actually just buying some smoked salmon when I saw the jars and made the additional impulse purchase. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to do that. I guess I was feeling adventurous. It tastes exactly like how you would expect pickled herring in sour cream to taste. I can't eat more than a few pieces of it straight, but I think with either bread or potato it should be a little bit easier. It doesn't taste bad, but the sourness of the pickled herring is just a little too much without something to soften the flavor (according to the internet, it's commonly served with a starchy food, and I would guess that this is why). My other idea is to make a salad with it and use the sour cream like a dressing (or to supplement a dressing).

Fall arrives in Las Vegas

2010-10-02T16:31:00.001-07:00

Average high temperature for the month of September is 94 degrees. Last Tuesday, the high temperature was 103 degrees. Next Tuesday, the high is forecast to be 75 degrees. I got to watch a bit of lightning while I was out shopping today. 'Tis the season.

This last week was the week of meeting random people. On Friday night, I met up with a guy I know from the online poker world. We played 4/8 hold'em at the Venetian for a few hours (made $141 playing less than ideal poker), then chatted for maybe another hour or so. He's a nice guy - a stay at home dad of three young boys taking his first "get out of the house and away from the kids" vacation since the first one was born. It's always fun to meet these people because a lot of them have interesting stories. Apparently, he used to do some sort retail management that kept him on the road a lot with an erratic schedule, and he decided that it was more important to spend time with his kids than make money. (It helps that his wife is a corporate attorney, so that he could actually afford to quit his job.) So we talked about life choices and picking our priorities and that sort of stuff for a while, interspersed with some poker talk.

On Sunday night, two people from San Diego came into town for a conference on human trafficking that I guess was held at Central Christian Church. I didn't have quite as much of a chance to chat with them, but one of them works for a non-profit in San Diego that I guess is like a safe home for victims of trafficking, and the other is looking to start up a non-profit focused on helping churches and organizations network with each other (or something like that).

Insert smooth transition sentence...

Next week is week 7 of the semester, which means we're approaching the semester midpoint. In a sense, the midpoint is closer to the beginning of the semester because of the many days off we have in the second half of the semester (Nevada Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving weekend).

I'm a little concerned for my pre-algebra class. One of them has a lot of younger students who aren't going to make it through the midterm. At least, the evidence up to this point is that they simply do not have the requisite arithmetic ability to survive. (When it takes 10 seconds to answer the question "What is 56 divided by 8?" and still get it wrong, it's not a good sign.) It's really obvious to me who works and who doesn't, there are other students in the class who came in with the same struggles but are now adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing with relative ease. If you don't do the work, you shouldn't expect to get better.

What is unfortunate is that some of these students are going to be squeeze by (as they always do) with a low C. The rest of the class is a lot of symbol pushing, which is something that the schools out here train them to do. So they average an F with a B and happen to come out at just about 70% final grade. And then they will go on to take Math 097 and probably not pass, and then eventually drop out. At least, that's a very common route for students to take.

But hopefully, things will change when we implement the new math program. I have heard from the President that the Board of Regents has been made aware of the pilot, so I guess that means that a lot of eyes are going to be peeking into this thing. I also got a presentation accepted to the national math meetings in January, so I'll give a 20 minute preliminary presentation there. This will be my first presentation at the national meetings. It sounds like a big deal, and I guess it is sort of a big deal, but it's really only going to be a presentation in front of 20-30 people. At this point, there is nothing so hugely exciting that it will bring in people for my 20 minute talk (that's mixed in with something like 6-7 hours' worth of talks on the same topic).

When I was helping to clean out the children's classrooms at church a few weeks ago, we found a copy of the "What Would Jesus Do?" board game.

"This group discussion game challenges you to look at the role of Jesus in your life as you explore over 600 thought-provoking questions. Each question deals with life's everyday dilemmas and provides answers on how you might want to respond to them. Would you take the easy route in these situations or ask the ultimate question - What Would Jesus Do?"

The game is spectacular, in the sense that a car crash can be described by that word. Most notably, the game doesn't actually revolve around what Jesus would do, but rather what the person making the decision would do (or more precisely, what that person claims he would do). In other words, the game is really "What Would You Do?". Then there are also these "Reflection" questions which basically ask you to give a mini-sermon on some topic. And if you get stuck, there is a "Spiritual Guide" to help you (a mini topical concordance).

The game is supposed to work by spurring you to think carefully about real life dilemmas and difficult choices, but it's really hard to take it seriously when it's asking you about your mentally retarded, sexually active daughter who is pregnant (again). There's a copy of this game on eBay for $6, and it's almost worth it just for that card alone. Also, while we were playing, I got a reflection card that asked me to speak about how Jesus' teachings on premarital sex highlight the importance of purity. I wonder what Bible they used when coming up with that question.

I spent some time googling this game, just to see if anyone has written a review or commentary about the game. I couldn't find anything along those lines, but I did find something else: The What Would Jesus Do Family Board Game! Jesus must be spinning in his grave.

Church stuff rolls on. Our small group continues to get bigger, the kids/youth ministries are getting organized and working together for a Fall Festival, and I'm still wearing a t-shirt to church.

And the next few weeks blur by...

2010-09-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

My calendar tells me that I'm more than halfway through September. My brain doesn't want to believe it.

The Labor Day Weekend Indian food went very well. We cooked at Sean and Jenni's place, and we extended the invitation to include several new people. I think in all, we ended up with 12 adults and 6 kids. The food turned out pretty well. I sort of wish we had increased the spiciness of it a little, but when experimenting for a lot of people it's probably best to be a little conservative.

I thought the tastiest dish was the vegetable rice (that I didn't make). I usually think of rice as just something that's a platform for other flavors. But this recipe had a lot of spices that infused the rice with extra tastes.

The chicken curry had good flavor, but suffered the most from the lack of spiciness. This one reminds me that I don't really know how to make a yogurt-based sauce effectively. I don't often buy plain yogurt, so I don't often give myself the opportunity to try. But now that I have a package of garam masala (an Indian spice mix), it seems like a perfectly reasonable ambition to try making it a few times just to see if I can find something a combination that I like. Of course, that would assume that I had the time to do that.

The naan came out pretty well. I actually thought it lacked a little bit of flavor (maybe it just needed a little more salt), but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. The lentil soup was simple, but tasty. I forgot to add the parsley right when we served it, so it lacked a layer of herbal flavor.

It was also a good time to hang out with some people I had not seen in a while, and to get to know a couple people a little better. I also have a new random phrase ("I want a solid wall of chicken -- all day, every day."). And no, I won't explain what that means.

Classes are in stride, and striding up to the first midterm a couple weeks from now. I'm enjoying the upper division classes because I've had the students before, and we have a generally playful dynamic. I give quizzes every day in my classes, and so a few of them have decided to return the favor by giving me riddles to solve while they take the quiz. I haven't been doing too well on those. I got the first one very quickly, so I think they increased the difficulty. So far, they've been mostly word puzzles, which is not an area of strength for me. But I guess over the course of this semester I'm going to get plenty of practice because I see these students 5 times per week (which means I'm probably going to get 5 riddles per week). But it's fun, and it represents a form of community with the students that is precisely the sort of community that we (as an institution) want to foster.

My remedial classes are going pretty well. I don't have much to say about them. They're just business as usual.

I had my three meetings this week with the consultant who is helping to guide the background phases of the math remediation project. They all went well, and it sounds like it's selling very well within the administrative levels of the school. Our president stopped by my office yesterday just to encourage me again about this project. She indicated that she thinks there might be something going on right now at a system level that may cause this to have more impact than what I think it will have, so we'll have to see what that's all about as we keep moving forward.

It's been really quite interesting to watch various parts of this come together. I've never been involved in a project of this magnitude, and I've certainly never organized such a project. The good news is that we have a lot of competent people in key places who are helping things along, which is saving me from a lot of headache. It also helps that I've got full buy-in from those people, so that I'm not fighting morale issues.

This week, we had our first Christian faculty prayer meeting. We did talk about the things that we should keep in our prayers (personnel shifts, accreditation, scheduling issues), but more of the time was spent in fellowship just talking about being academic Christians, and our various backgrounds and experiences with it. The group is highly ecumenical, which is fun. There were 5 of us there, and we've already set ourselves a regular once-per-month schedule.

I know of a few UNLV faculty who are Christians, but I know that this time and format would not work. However, something that I've got on the horizon is to look for a chance to get faculty from both institutions together. Maybe a luncheon or something like that would work. I haven't given it much thought, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

And then there's church... It's been a rough month for a lot of people, but I do see signs of improvement. We had a fall kick-off which seems like it was a bit of a dud. It didn't show a lot of signs of being very well organized, and there were mixed messages being sent, which led to a lot of confusion and frustration. On the other hand, I think the flop brought attention to the fact that we cannot continue with business-as-usual, and it sounds as if the right people are now being invited to the table when it comes to making decisions. It's at least a sign of things moving in the right direction. We'll have to see how things play out in the next month or two to see where it leads.

It's only the second week of class? It's a good thing next Monday is a holiday!

2010-08-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

I can't tell if I've decreased in efficiency or if the workload is simply larger. But it feels like I'm not reaching my expected levels of productivity in the way that I have in the past.

First, the fun stuff:

I don't have a huge history with Indian food. When I was a grad student, I was a TA for an Indian guy and he treated us (me and the other TA) out to Indian food because he didn't have a car and couldn't get to the restaurant. I don't have a lot of clear food memories, except for the bread and that everything had a flavorful sauce. I think I had dinner at a Pakistani place with friends at the last math meetings (San Francisco).

For the next cooking experiment, we're going to be trying to make Indian food. For inspiration and ingredients, we found an Indian market and went exploring. These were the ready-to-eat foods that we bought. Now, it's worth noting that trying to imagine "Indian cuisine" based on snacks is like trying to base "American cuisine" based on a Twinkie. So these things are just random food bits that we got to enjoy.

Aloo Masala - Aloo is "potato" and "masala" is just a generic name for a spice mix. I guess the American equivalent would be something like "chili powder" which is one of a number of mixtures of seasonings and spices. And that pretty much sums up that snack. The potatoes were cut a little thicker, so that the texture wasn't quite as crisp as our potato chips, almost like a non-puffy pork rind. There was some heat in those chips, but it sneaks up on you after you swallow.

The drink container on the far left was a smoothie. It tasted okay (but I have no idea what the flavor is), but I was caught off guard by the texture. It was much more yogurt-y than smoothie-y. I looked it up later (lassi) and discovered that the reason for this is that this is a yogurt-based drink. I got this one (khua) because I didn't know what it was. In fact, I still don't know what it is.

The line-up of sodas ranged from interesting to refreshing to weird. The sodas were generally less carbonated than American sodas, so the flavors came through a little more strongly.

The tamarind drink was pretty interesting. I don't know the flavor of tamarind on its own, so as far as I know, that's what tamarind actually tastes like. (That could be making a mistake like thinking that grape soda tastes like grape. The good news is that I also bought some tamarind paste, so I'll soon know for sure.) It was a primarily sweet flavor, but with a sour note right at the end. I looked up tamarind in "On Food and Cooking" and apparently, tamarind is used in worchestershire sauce.

That's the only one for which I feel like having an extended commentary. The one on the far left was "Ice Cream Soda" and I don't remember anything about it. Ginger beer wasn't actually beer, but more like ginger ale (but with extra ginger). The lime drink was tasty, the coconut juice tasted like coconut, and the one on the far end was a basil soda... I think. That one was really odd.

At the front left is a candy. The texture is a little crumbly and slightly chalky in the mouth, but it smooths out quickly. I don't remember the taste being anything interesting. And I don't remember what it was called.

The front right is a chickpea flour dessert called bundi ladoo. I looked up a couple recipes for it, and apparently it's created by making a bunch of little fried dough pieces and then mashing those all together into a large mass of pieces (this would explain the crumbly texture, and why it was so oily on the inside). After the dough is fried, they are soaked in a simple flavored syrup (which explain why it's so sweet).

I think I would visit that market again, just for fun. But perhaps the next time around I'll look for more of the savory food options. There was a "brain masala mix" and "liver masala mix" that caught my attention...

Classes have launched this year without anything of interest. Everything feels basically routine at this point. But I got an email today and I have three meetings in two days regarding the upcoming math remediation pilot that we're going to run. I also received an email from then-Provost-now-President encouraging me to move forward with this and to find the right place to present it. I've also emailed someone regarding a session at the upcoming joint meetings (New Orleans) where it might be appropriate to make such a presentation. So that's still charging ahead.

It's rather scary for me because I'm not going to get results for at least another year and a half (if there are positive results to be had), which means I'm going to be spending much of my time leading up to tenure focused on this particular project. If all goes well, it's a big win for me. But if not, I might be scrambling a bit leading right up to that tenure decision trying to get more positive things in my file.

I completed reading Axiom (Bill Hybels), and this is the first book on my list. The book consists of 70-something leadership maxims (I don't like calling them axioms because of my mathematical inclinations), and each maxim is accompanied by some reflections or examples of their application. I'm also about 75-100 pages into "The Divine Conspiracy" (Dallas Willard) which is a more dense read on spiritual development.

Church stuff is once again going crazy. The candidate that we had withdrew from candidacy, but it all went down in an unusual way. We went from what appeared to be a productive and confidence-building Q&A session on August 8 to we-may-not-see-him-again on August 15. There were lots of things that I read in Axiom that I wish our church leaders understood.

I know that this has left a lot of people completely unsure about what's going to happen in the future. I also get the impression that the leadership is just as lost. I've said this in the past, but it's important I say it again. I'm not directly blaming the leadership for these things. I don't doubt for a moment that their heart is in it and that they are doing their best. However, organizational leadership is more than passion. It requires a specific set of skills and knowledge about how organizations behave, and I'm just not convinced that they have a sufficient background in these things to take something that's in bad shape and fix it. They have been put in a position where failure is the most probable outcome, and all that's happening is that they are succumbing to that outcome.

I don't know when we will have another candidate (third time's a charm?), but whoever he is, he had better have a good mind for leadership structures and systems, otherwise it is highly likely that things will continue to be more of the same.

But even with all of these struggles going on, our small group is going strong and increasing in number. And we're drawing in more and more people who are leaders in some form at the church. I don't think there's a single person who is able to actively attend that group who is not serving at some capacity at church (or has served very recently). It's a strange juxtaposition of images.

Because of this, I vacillate between feeling positive and negative about the church. On the one hand, I see things falling apart all over the place. There are huge problems that need to be addressed if things will be set free to move forward. But on the other hand, I'm watching an authentic community growing organically right in the middle of it, and the right types of people are there, fighting to get things to move forward. There's definitely something about that picture that is keeping me looking ahead in the church instead of heading for the door (at least for now). So I guess I'm going to keep on waiting to see what will happen.

Back to work

2010-08-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

Summer ended three days ago. Upon my return to campus on Monday, the dam that was holding back the work broke and the everything came spilling out in full force. But before I get there, I want to head back a couple weeks to my California vacation. It's more pleasurable to ramble about that than to think about the work I need to do before the semester begins.

It's always fun to head back to San Diego and see people. I drove out on Thursday morning, stopping in Murietta for lunch and hanging out with my former roommate (and his wife, three kids, his dad, and his mother-in-law). This was an unplanned stop. It occurred to me as I was driving that I would be passing through his city, so I called and it happened that he had the day off. Lucky coincidence, I guess.

I arrived in San Diego just ahead of the traffic, and stopped by the supermarket for some supplies. There was a GCF potluck that evening, and I had decided to make stuffed mushrooms. I've decided that stuffed mushrooms is my new generic appetizer for random social events. They're tasty, easy to make, and extremely forgiving. The use of cream cheese as a base for the filling ensures a lot of flavor, and I think any reasonable combination of foods will work in almost proportion. I made it with bacon and onion, and added some cayenne for some heat. My only mistake was that I added the extras to the cheese while it was too hot, and melted the cheese. The remedy was just to throw it in the fridge for a couple minutes, and it all worked out okay.

Apparently, GCF is growing again. It's sort of the ebb and flow of any student group. My head is a little bit fuzzy on the details, but my recollection is that the focus has shifted back towards community (away from integration) and this is connecting with the sudden influx of new students. The potluck seemed well attended to me, but apparently it was actually a somewhat small showing relative to how things have been. I got to catch up a little bit with the old-timers (every year, there are fewer of them hanging around).

On Friday morning, a group of us went to a soup kitchen in downtown San Diego. As far as soup kitchens go, this was a highly organized affair. Instead of being a chaotic scramble, everything happened in an orderly manner, with clear instructions, and a sensible structure. The knives were dull (as they always are) and the cucumbers were gigantic (18 inches long, 5-6 inches in diameter).

The only odd moment for me was the devotional. Before I go any further, I'll point out that this soup kitchen is run by a church and uses the church facilities. If this were a generic soup kitchen with no religious affiliation, it would be less weird. Anyway, the second half of the devotional used a story from a book called "Welcome to the Wisdom of the World." The devotional expressed a "God is everywhere" pantheistic perspective, which is a clear violation of the Judeo-Christian understanding of the distinctiveness of God from His creation.

The rest of the afternoon (and early evening) was spent playing "Through the Ages," which is a civilizations-type board game. It's an extremely fascinating game, with a rich sense of strategy, but it took about 6 hours to play. I'd play it again, if I had the chance, so that's an indication of how much fun I had. What is frustrating to me is that I had something like a 20 point lead going into the last couple rounds and managed to lose by about 30 points. The lesson I learned was that the endgame heavily favors infrastructure.

Dinner that evening was originally intended to be an elaborate event, but because of the timing turned out to be a simple (but tasty) meal. The menu was fried rice, catfish, asparagus, with blueberries and dulce de leche gelato for dessert (the gelato had made previously -- "dolce de leche" means sweet milk, I think, and it's a caramelized milk product).

Saturday morning was a brunch with more GCF friends. It occurred to me during that conversation that I was really back among academics. It's not every day that a discussion about the non-commutativity of linear operators can arise naturally in a conversation. That was the first time it happened during that trip, but it wasn't the only time. My geophysicist friend and her family will soon be working in Menlo Park for the USGS, and I have to remember to try to visit them when I'm up there.

I drove up to Long Beach that evening to spend the night with my brother. The next morning, I went to church with him. I'm continually fascinated by visiting churches. Every place has its story, and its own expressions of worship and community. The church had a 1980s vibe to its construction. (I don't actually know whether it's a 1980s style construction for churches, but that's the image that comes to mind.) It was very rectangular, with lots of exterior-facing classrooms.

The main room (sanctuary, I guess... but it's more like an auditorium) was large and extremely wide with lots of international flags hanging from the ceiling. It was speculated that perhaps the church has a history of being missions-focused, and that's the reason for the flags. That makes sense to me. I guess it's common for the church to have moments where people wander all over the place during the service to lay hands on someone and pray -- in a structured manner, not people randomly standing up, walking around, and touching people.

I found the sermon to be a little bit wandering, but apparently that's how everyone feels the first time. There's clearly an underlying theme, but the pastor sort of wanders around as he goes. There's a part of this that I guess is a reflection of the church itself, as the pastor is someone who grew up in that church as the son of a previous pastor. He mentioned in the sermon that he's going back to school to pursue some theological degree, which is something he recognizes as being important to his ability to minister to people.

From there, it was off to Campus by the Sea on Catalina Island for family (and faculty) camp. I actually don't have a whole lot to say about the camp. I had a lot more experiences of intellectuals speaking intellectually with each other (sentences involving the words homogeneity, matriculation, and phenomenologist - and I don't pretend to understand that last one).

One food thing that I want to note is that on Thursday evening there was a banquet night, and the hors d'oeuvres included goat cheese and a grape on a toothpick, where the goat cheese was drizzled with olive oil and fresh cracked pepper. I would never have thought of using goat cheese with grapes like that, but I guess I've also never been to fancy meals where you have a cheese course (which is sort of the logical place to end up with that combination).

I had a good time overall, and my takeaway from that time is simply to do more reading, both devotional and intellectual (if such a dichotomy is legitimate). So now I've got a stack of books (though some have yet to arrive from Amazon):

The Good and Beautiful God (James Bryan Smith) -- Devotional reading
Axiom (Bill Hybels) -- Leadership reading
The Challenge of Jesus (NT Wright) -- I'm not sure whether this is devotional or intellectual, but I'd suspect it's intellectual
The Next Christendom (Philip Jenkins) -- Historical reading
The Divine Conspiracy (Dallas Willard) -- I'm expecting this to be in between devotional and intellectual
Becoming Sinners -- Ethnography written by the advisor of one of my GCF friends; this is driven more by curiosity than anything else

With a little discipline and a little luck, I'll have finished reading these by the end of the academic year.

Which brings me back to the present day, being swamped with work. In three days, I've had three meetings (one meeting for the math remediation program, two regarding the upcoming interim president decision), and discovered that I need to prepare for four presentations (two for faculty development, one for the families of students during orientation, and one to the Board of Regents regarding the math remediation program -- which may require a trip to Reno for a 5 minute presentation), extra paperwork (more math remediation stuff), plus I still need to finish preparations for the upcoming semester (syllabi and course webpages). And then there's a faculty senate meeting on the first day of classes, and thing related to the search for another math professor, and hopefully finishing up that article...

Goodbye, summer. I look forward to seeing you next year.

A busy month of semi-vacation

2010-07-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a month of a lot of little things. It's going to be another avalanche of text. I haven't really felt like typing up anything this month, so it's all coming out at once instead of several reasonably-sized pieces. I was also slightly annoyed at Facebook because there was a posting delay the last time I did this. Not that it really matters when these ramblings get posted (there's nothing time-critical... or critical in any sense... about any of this).

At the start of the month, I was back in Livermore. I got to visit my brother's church (where he is a pastor). The church is small, but they seemed to be a tight community (or at least gave the impression of being a tight community). It was the 4th of July when I went, which has its own quirks.

After returning to Vegas, it was back to work on the little things that I've got going on. I'm still pushing through typing up outlines, notes, and setting homework for the new math remediation program that we're putting together. I've got the first half (the half that will be piloted in the Spring) almost completely laid out. I've got two more classes' worth of notes to put together, and then I'll be done.

I've also been putting together my notes for the introductory analysis class that I'll be teaching in the Fall. I haven't taught this class before, so it should be fun to be trying out something different. I've also got a scheme to get the students up to the board more often. I think it should work out well. But either way, they're going to do it!

My third year review is basically complete. I've got all the pieces pulled together, and I'm going to give it a careful review in a few weeks just to make sure that everything is as it should be.

I had intended to start taking those actuarial exams, but it looks like that one is on hold for a while. The good news is that it doesn't really matter.

In the midst of all this, there is a lot of other stuff going on with the campus. The first is the passing of our president, Fred Maryanski. I wasn't particularly close to Fred. But it was always impressive that the president came around to visit the faculty offices when his schedule allowed him the time.

http://www.nsc.nevada.edu/5696.asp

For an entirely different reason, we're losing one of our full time math faculty, which is going to put us in a bit of a pinch for a little while. I think it's a good move in the big picture, even though the small picture means that we'll be short-staffed. This is the second math faculty that we've lost, making me the only math PhD left. On the one hand, this is an excellent opportunity for me from a career perspective because if I manage to keep things in the math department running (plus launch the new remediation program successfully), this would be a big win for the race to tenure. But it's also bad because this is probably going to be a rough year for me. The campus is growing in enrollment, and there's just a lot more work that needs to get done and fewer people to do it.

I did some Asian cooking for small group. I haven't done that in a while. Hot and sour soup, pineapple fried rice, pot stickers, and stir-fried vegetables (though I didn't actually cook the stir-fried vegetables or the soup). It all came out very tasty. As a bonus, I got to learn of the location of a couple Asian markets. They're smaller markets, so they don't have the same variety as the ones on Spring Mountain. I'm probably not going to return to the one that I visited, but I've got another one on the list.

I've got some new furniture. And I had friends help me shop for it, because I have friends with good taste. (Translation: They will keep me from making mistakes.) I have taken exactly one picture, and here it is:

I saw the Lion King at Mandalay Bay last weekend, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a show. The costuming was elaborate and creative, and the use of the stage was extremely clever. It's also very long (2.5 hours with an intermission), so you get quite a bit of entertainment value out it. If you sit up close to the stage, you will miss some of the stuff that happens in the aisles.

The Old Testament class at church is rolling along. We've been drawing about 20 each week, which is a good-sized class for us. Things are generally going well, but there are some things coming down the line that will need some attention. But this is going to be true in good times and bad, so it's not something that raises my level of concern above where it normally stays.

I'm heading into California next week for a couple days in San Diego and then for the retreat on Catalina island.

Wednesday morning at home

2010-06-30T11:09:00.000-07:00

In other words, my summer break has started. I turned in my grades yesterday, and I'm officially without teaching responsibilities until August 23. Unfortunately, that's not the same as being without any responsibilities until August 23, but I'll take it.

I've got two trips planned for this break. I'm going home this weekend, and at the end of the month and through the beginning of August, there's a Christian faculty retreat on Catalina island. I've wanted to go for the last couple years, but I had always managed to find myself teaching during that week. However, that retreat will be happening at the same time as the Willow Creek leadership summit. I was very impressed with the content of the last one, and I expect this one to be just as good.

I do think I'm picking the better of the two from the perspective of personal edification. I really haven't been engaged by (or engaged with) other academic Christians in a while, and I certainly haven't been engaged in any sort of discipleship in that context since leaving UCSD. Academics bring a different quality (as in characteristic, not as value) in their discussions of faith. Whenever I think about this, the books "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (Mark Noll) and "Love your God with all your Mind" (JP Moreland) come to mind. I think I would enjoy doing a series of classes on the latter at some point in the future, but not in the foreseeable future (because I'm already involved in teaching a class).

The class that I'm teaching with Mike and Daniel started off pretty well. We had around 30 people show up, and it seemed that they were fairly well engaged in the material. Mike is going to be left by himself this week because both Daniel and I are going to be out of town. I'm a little disappointed that I won't be there because we'll be starting into the manuscript study of Genesis 1. But I'm going to take my materials with me and try to make some time this weekend to go through it on my own.

I'm thinking about buying a bass guitar. It's something that floats in and out of my mind, but with the recent goofing around with Nintendo video game music that I've been doing, I'm once again considering it.

One more lecture... and then grading...

2010-06-21T22:45:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing that I'm running out of summer session. My brain is getting foggier and foggier, and I think it's going to need a break. The good news is that I have one scheduled for the July 4 weekend, which is a mere week and a half away. I've been pushing fairly hard on a number of different fronts, and making some good progress, so I think I'll be in position to be able to coast for a little while before having to ramp it up again.

My summer class is almost over. All I have left to do is to talk about basic graphing, and grade a about a dozen exams. It's a small class, and I'm expecting the grading to go relatively quickly. I should be able to take care of it all by the middle of the weekend.

I've make significant progress on the math module stuff. The first module is essentially complete, and most of the organizational details have been completed. I still need to write exams and grading rubrics, but I think that once I get my brain back in order, those should fall out relatively quickly. I'm getting more excited about the idea as I move forward because I think it might actually work. And if it works, it will be a pretty big deal for us.

I think I've come to a pretty good place on the math article. I think that the work I've got with Jason should be enough to make a decent article, and then it goes into the writing and submission process. I really hope we can get it out before the end of July. I really don't want to be fussing around with it when we start up the new semester.

My third year review application is in a good place. I say that, but at the moment I can't even remember what I've done and what I have left to do. I have no idea what that means for the actual status of the application, but wherever it is I'm just calling it "good" and moving on.

And at some point, I need to start reading the analysis book for Fall class I'm teaching. I feel that analysis is one of my weaker subjects because I'm not quite as meticulous as analysts need to be. I sort of like to gloss over the boring details and keep the focus on broader concepts, but that's exactly the opposite thing you need to do in analysis. I'm also going to need to do a bunch of problems.

I'm happy to report that church stuff is... happy. For the first time in a long time, there is optimism and energy on Sunday mornings. A lot of pieces are starting to look like they might fall into place. There are still issues, but the church will never actually be completely free of issues. We've still got a lot of infrastructure problems and little pockets of nonsense that are just there.

There was a comment regarding the new elders that made me smile in the "shake your head and smile" sort of way. The comment was something like "What can a 40 year old tell a 70 or 80 year old?" This isn't an indictment of the older generation. Just an indictment of this one person, and I don't even know who it is, nor do I care. But that is the type of pocket of nonsense that hopefully won't expand into a real issue.

There's also a bit of theological concern regarding women elders. It's the forever argument of egalitarianism vs. complementarianism. I believe that there's plenty of room to disagree on the issue, but the church has declared that we are taking the egalitarian position, so that's the way we're moving. Although I know that the resistance to this is a little larger, I still don't see it as a real obstacle to anything at the moment, nor do I see it being a major problem in the future. We've already got the ball moving in this direction, and it's going to take a massive effort to stop it. And I just don't think that there are enough people who feel strongly enough to organize some sort of counter-movement.

I'm looking forward to the new adult Sunday school class that I'm leading with Daniel and Mike. We'll be spending the next 10 weeks looking at the first 12 chapters of Genesis. This is basically all the stories that lead up the God's promise to Abram. I don't know how many people we'll have, but there does seem to be a warm reception to the idea. Now all we need is to have people actually show up.

I got a message from a guy on one of the poker forums, asking me for a copy of the article I wrote two years ago. I found it to be amusing. (Of course I gave him a copy of the article!) On the same day, some other guy wanted to ask me something about poker and Christianity, but he never followed up, so I don't know what specifically he wanted to know about it. I found this to be amusing as well.

Counting down... again...

2010-06-08T22:33:00.001-07:00

Two and a half weeks until finals! Summer session always goes by very fast. If I'm really on top of things, I might even have the final exam ready by the end of the week. But more likely, it's going to spill into next week a little bit. I haven't been nearly as efficient as I have wanted to be, partly because of some general fatigue. I've been kind of tired (and hungry and thirsty) this last week, but I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's just because we've hit the transition to the desert summer weather, and my body isn't happy about it. According to weather.com, the high on May 23 was 62 degrees, and the high on June 6 (two weeks later) was 108 degrees.

I'm making good progress on the miscellaneous sorts of tasks that I'm supposed to be getting done at school. I got an ISBN for my new textbook, and the bookstore is now arranging the delivery of my textbook for the Fall semester (in other words, my work with that is done... until the next time I need to make revisions). I've gotten a lot of stuff organized for the modularized math remediation. I'm hoping to have the first module completely done (diagnostic tests and all) sometime in the next couple weeks. I'm slowly compiling my third year review portfolio. I've gotten a lot of my writing done, which is the most difficult part. Everything else is gathering up documents, which is easy but time consuming. Also, I've got a math article that I've been working on with Jason that I hope to finish before the end of the summer. I've put the actuary stuff to the side for a while. I've just got too many other things going on right now. But I've got my notes and a couple practice exams, so I should be able to pick it up again relatively quickly once I have the time.

In the church-world, I wasn't nominated to be an elder, which is a bit of a relief because it means I don't have to make a tough decision. A friend asked, "How did you manage to dodge that bullet?" I don't know. I'm not even sure how the nomination process went forward. We're supposed to vote to affirm the elders next Sunday, but I don't even know who they are yet. I would say it's odd, except that coming from our church it really isn't. I have no idea why it was believed that we needed to fill up the elder positions in two weeks' time, and it's starting to look like the mysterious "them" are making decisions again. (That's not speaking to some sort of conspiracy, but rather that decisions get made but nobody can ever seem to trace back the decision to any particular person or persons. There really isn't a functional accountability system in place, so things just sort of happen.)

Instead of dumping time into whatever it is that the Elders are going to end up doing, I'm going to help launch a Sunday morning adult Bible study class during the second hour. We're moving to a single worship service this coming Sunday, and then this class is scheduled to launch a couple weeks from now. I'm not sure how much of a reception it will get, since our church is notorious for being a one hour church, but I'm hopeful that we can get at least a small core of people who are looking for more from their church besides an hour of pew sitting. The material is going to be missions-focused, which is a healthy thing for a church that needs to broaden its focus a bit. So we'll see how that launch goes.

In the "things that very few other people would do" category: I was walking down the frozen food section of the grocery store when I saw a package of frozen, sliced beef liver for about $2. Feeling adventurous, I picked it up and put it in my basket. Without consulting any recipes (what fun would that be?), I dredged the liver in flour and pan-fried it, sauteed some onions, and made a light gravy (butter, flour, and canned beef broth), and called it liver and onions. I've never had liver and onions before, so I don't really have a baseline comparison.

It tasted like... liver... and onions. It had a stronger taste than chicken liver, but it was still liver-y tasting. Somewhere in my memory, I recalled seeing liver soaking in milk, but I didn't do that. I believe it's supposed to soften the flavor a bit. (If I did it again, I would milk-soak them to see if I could notice a difference.) I guess I'm slowly working my way around the beef critter. Besides the usual muscle pieces, I've now made tongue and liver. I guess tripe is the next logical place to go (if there is a logic to it), but I'm going to research that one before diving in because I really have no clue at all what to do. In the back of my mind, I seem to remember some sort of pickled tripe or tripe salad from a Chinese banquet, but I have no idea if I'm just making that up.

What now, church?

2010-05-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

About four months ago, I spent an entire post talking about church. I'm about to do it again. Back then, we were coming up to the governance change, I had just come out of the Elder process, and we had just completed the Dr. Speer vote. As the second paragraph, I wrote the following:

As I look at my friends list on facebook, I see how few people there are who currently attend Warm Springs that are on that list, and most of them already know much of the story. For everyone else who bothers reading these long notes, this is really something much closer to a prayer letter, since there is much prayer necessary in this situation.

As I look at that list of facebook friends today, I find it's pretty much the same. The few people who attend Warm Springs know the story (so it's not "new" information for anyone), and everyone else who decides to read these long posts should take it like a prayer letter.

Without going into unnecessary details, in the last week the Elder board has more or less been completely dissolved. At the root was a violation of trust and responsibility by the moderator, and the refusal to confess and repent when confronted. It can essentially be viewed as a protest resignation of the most of rest of the board, and the removal of the moderator from leadership.

I think that everything was done in an appropriate manner. I think the promise of openness and transparency by the new elders was kept (except for the one). And I believe that a significant breakthrough in the life of the church has happened. I consider it a victory for a church that is accustomed to dealing with things quietly, hoping that problems can be swept under the rug and disappear to finally step up and deal with truth out in the open.

Even though there is a part of me that is very glad to see this person out of leadership, I want to be sure not to gloat over his removal. As one of the founding members of the church, he has had a time of important influence and relevance in the history of the church. However, it has been apparent for at least a few years that his influence had become increasingly negative and divisive. I know that it was a hard thing to take action of this type against this person, knowing that it would lead to the public "defrocking" of a church patriarch. It's even harder knowing that there will be significant fallout (again) as a result of this action. Nevertheless, in light of unrepentant behavior it does become necessary to take such actions, and the higher up in leadership you are, the more people will see it. In this case, one could be no higher on the organizational chart, so it happened in a place where everyone will see.

So, what now?

(1) The elder board will need to be reconstituted.

(2) We will lose some long time members and subsequently some financial stability (as if we had a lot to begin with?)

(3) The church may finally be able to move forward.

As before, each point needs some expansion.

Going from six elders down to one is a big deal. It was stated that the church is reaching out to the region (Growing Healthy Churches) and I expect that the church leadership will be willing follow their advice this time.

I fully anticipate being asked to consider eldership again (but I won't be upset if I'm not asked). There's a lot to contemplate in this. The enthusiasm I had in November has certainly been muted over the last few months. I don't have the same relationship with the pastoral staff as I did back then (that is, the pastoral staff that I did have relationships with aren't at the church anymore). The overall dynamic seems very different, and I'm not sure how I would fit into it now. I also don't know anything about how many or who else they might try to call to fill the empty chairs. Are they going to try to force the number six again, or are they going to recognize that the governance documents serve the church, not the other way around? I'd much rather be a part of a three person elder board with a healthy leadership dynamic than a six person board where half of them don't have a clue what they're doing.

The primary question is this: What function would I serve as an elder that I could not serve as a non-elder? In other words, if I can do everything (in terms of how I participate in the church) as a non-elder, why should I be an elder?

Also, I'm not sure whether I want it. Of course, events are very close in time to right now, and with time I can get some clarity.

(2) I was speculating with a friend about this one. When someone of as much influence as this person had leaves the church, he is taking people with him (especially under these circumstances). And the people he's going to take with him are older people, who are more generally consistent givers. There will also be collateral damage to some who have simply had enough of the nonsense at that church. I'm a little less worried about that (from a financial perspective) because it's not as clear that those people would be the ones who are actively contributing to the church.

The church's finances aren't in great shape right now, and this will make things a little worse in the near future. Historical giving trends will not be a good indicator of what future giving will be, and there may be a need to investigate active giving to see how we should deal with things moving forward. Maybe we'll have to take pledges from the congregation for the next six months (up to the end of the fiscal year).

Actually, pledging the budget was an idea that was discussed in the last year. The first thing a business must do to make a budget is to figure out how much money it expects to have in the coming year. Why do churches make their budgets with numbers that they pull out of thin air? They sometimes even put in a "faith factor" and pretend as if it's a mark of their trust in God to put themselves in a rough spot so that God can bail them out! (Giving was X last year, but we want to add some more programs so we will expand the budget by 10%!) That seems wholly unwise to me. During times of this level of uncertainty, perhaps it's a good idea to try to at least bring *some* reality to the numbers?

(3) There are various levels of hope in the church right now. I'm more "relieved" than "hopeful" at the moment. But at least some practical steps can be taken now that obstructive leadership is not a problem. With our attendance numbers down (and bound to drop some more), we're probably going to move to one service. This has been on the docket for at least a couple months. I view this as a positive step in terms of building up unity within the church and turning the momentum from negative to positive. It will also bring some much needed relief to the Sunday morning volunteers, who will have their work load reduced.

Now that leadership has been stripped down to a (near) absolute minimum, and everything is coming to a halt, there is an opportunity for vision-casting. Something that has been lacking for a long time is a coherent big picture vision for the church to strive for. How do the various ministries in the church work together to bring about some sort of positive outcome? How would we form a cohesive package of discipleship, so that those who become Christians have a pathway to follow towards maturity? There's no central strategy and no direction. If everyone is pulling in different directions, the net progress will be close to zero.

I was asked tonight whether I wanted to help start a "singles and college group." First, those two demographics probably shouldn't go together. They aren't in the same place in life, and their needs and concerns are entirely different. Second, we don't have very many singles, and we don't have very many college students. Third, I don't know whether this is something that our church in particular should be investing in. I'm not saying that college students don't need a place to connect, but is our church really the best place for it to happen? Is our church well-equipped to deal with the needs of that population?

[I question the value of a "singles" ministry, but that's a completely different conversation. While I'm distracted, I want to add that the conversation eventually turned into a fun theological discussion about "faith." Is the call of a Christian to "just believe" when you start up a new ministry? Is it right for a Christian to "deal in reality" or is it more appropriate to "walk in faith"? Are we supposed to ignore or deny "evidence" because it stands contrary to "faith"?]

Organizationally, starting a "singles and college group" right now would be a silo ministry. It will stand off on its own, and not play any role in the larger church body. That's not how a small and struggling church is going to survive. It's far more important to devote this time to getting everyone focused on the same goal. And then we can start moving towards that goal together.

----

The next couple weeks should be very interesting.

In the in-between time

2010-05-12T19:27:00.001-07:00

I turned in grades on Monday, but there's little time for rest this week. I pick up with the summer session next Monday, and I've got some other business to take care of on campus.

I'm trying a couple new things with the Math 093 class since I've got the chance. The first is that I'm going to use pre-typed notes for presentation. There's a larger scheme that's going on here, which is that we need to find a way to create uniformity of presentation between the various professors. It would be good to have a clear path for them to follow. To do this, I'm playing around with the LaTeX "beamer" package. It creates something that is basically like a PowerPoint presentation, but it runs through Adobe Acrobat (which makes it easier to use and distribute). The good news is that learning the new package has gone smoothly, since I've already got a lot of LaTeX experience.

The other thing is trying to incorporate a computer component. I've got 2.25 hours of class time three days a week, and I know that there's no good way of retaining student attention over that period of time with math. So I'm hoping to spread out their attention a little bit, going from quiz to lecture to worksheets to break to computer exercises and homework. I've spent a lot of time over the last couple years working on what I've called "Arithmetic Boot Camp." It essentially just a timed arithmetic practice program. All of the programming is complete, but the problem I have now is that I don't know how fast students are, nor how fast they should be. After all of the testing that I've done, my arithmetic speed is much, much faster than the average student. So I can't use my times as a benchmark. I've guessed at times, but I really won't know until I have some students go through it.

Tomorrow, there's a long brainstorming meeting that I've got with a consultant regarding our math remediation. The basic idea is that math is one of the "student killing" classes (students who drop out have a common theme of failing remedial math). One way of looking at it is that the students who fail out of remedial math are probably not college material in the first place. To some extent, there's truth to that observation. However, from the system's point of view, we need to remove as many barriers as possible (without lowering standards), and so if we could create a program for remediation that had better retention, we would have at least done something affirmative to address the problem. (You can't just shrug it off and say it's the students' fault every time... even though it might be the students' fault.)

The idea we're going to try to flesh out is to rewrite the math curriculum so that it fits into 5 week segments instead of 15 week segments. Most of the time, we already know who isn't going to make it after 5 weeks. So instead of creating a 10 week dead period for these students, we're going to try to funnel them back into another math class to try to keep them moving forward. There are all sorts of issues that stand in the way, but I think the idea is to present a clear enough plan to entice other people to jump through hoops for us so that we can make the changes we want to make.

The crawfish came in on Saturday and we feasted on Sunday (and had leftovers turned into other tasty foods on Tuesday). It starts with a 40 pound box of crawfish.

The water bottle (which was frozen and put over the top of the box to keep the bugs cold) can be used to visualize the size of the box. The box didn't fit in the fridge, nor did it fit in a cooler, so after loading it up with ice-bottles, it all went to sit in the coldest room in the house... my walk-in bedroom closet. I understand that it sounds weird to have a few hundred such critters in ones' closet over night, but when the goal is to keep them alive until you kill them, you will do what you need to do. Besides, crawfish are not terrestrial animals, so it's not as if they were going to be able to escape the box and run amok in the middle of the night.

Next is the pre-cooking purge.

Apparently, this is a step that some folks argue about. The purge is supposed to make the crawfish spew out whatever is in their intestinal tract, so that they aren't as gritty or whatever, but some people don't think that this step actually does anything at all. I can't say, but I do know that it didn't affect anything negatively, so for the cost of a few extra minutes and a couple canisters of salt, I think it was worth it. The water is also very murky because the bugs came uncleaned. As we were picking them out of the box, there would be the occasional grass or other stuff. The next time I do this (and there will be a next time) I'm going be a little more vigilant about the cleaning. At the end, some of the crawfish were still a little gritty on the outside (especially the underside between the legs). So maybe next time, I'm going to agitate the water a little bit more to loosen up those bits and pieces, and perhaps give them multiple rinses.

Then comes the cooking...

It's not the exciting to look at in the picture, but that's an outdoor propane burner
with a 42-quart pot on top of it. It took four batches to cook all the food. The crawfish went for about 10 minutes per batch.

The next picture is the pre-eating picture. There's probably only about 20-25 pounds of crawfish on the table.

Once the eating began, the pictures stopped. I don't know how much crawfish I actually ate, but I do know that I ate for quite a while.

---

I've been reading "Knowledge of the Holy" by A.W. Tozer (which is available for free as a PDF if you search for it, and I think it's public domain so I'm not encouraging illicit behavior). I'm not sure if I've read it before, but I've read other works of Tozer so there could be other reasons that it strikes a familiar tone.

As I've been reading, I've been contemplating the question of the role of theology in church. We've been listening to some Greg Koukl material that has also revolved around developing sound theology, which has only served to encourage this type of thinking. Being that the entire business of church is God-related, it seems to me that theology should drive what the church says and does. I admit that my theology is not perfect, nor would I expect any person or organization to express a perfect theology of anything. But it does seem to me that some errors can be avoided, and that Christians should take care to avoid those errors.

(Before I begin, there is not a single "new" thought that is about to follow. The theological criticisms below are things that have been fleshed out by many other people besides myself.)

Consider the following worship song:

http://www.lyricszoo.com/jonathan-butler/gonna-lift-you-up/

You said if you be lifted, You’d draw all men to you
You said if you be lifted, You’d draw all men to you
So draw me, draw me closer
So draw me
Draw me closer to you
I’m gonna lift you higher, higher

Gonna lift you up
Oh Lord, I’m gonna lift you up And I’m never gonna stop
Oh with everything I’ve got…
I’m gonna lift you up

It is true that Jesus said that.

John 12:32 - "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."

It sounds good, but then if you read the context (ie, the next verse),

John 12:33 - He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

So it seems that Jesus was talking about being "lifted up" on the cross (see also John 3:14 and Numbers 21:9). Now compare this to the use of "lifting up" in the worship song. They're clearly not the same sense of the words. If you interpret the song in this understanding, we're apparently putting Jesus on and higher and higher cross. This is bad theology.

What is the appropriate response to bad theology like this? After all, it's not a harmful bad theology, is it? It's not like trying to sell someone the prosperity Gospel (in which God uses material wealth to demonstrate his favor, so if you don't have material wealth God doesn't favor you). Perhaps to shade the question a little bit more towards how I view it: How much harm can come from completely misunderstanding and misapplying Jesus' words?

This seems to be my ongoing struggle with church these days. It makes me both nervous and uncomfortable (and frustrated) to hear about happy-clappy-smiley Jesus who keeps a picture of us on his refrigerator door. How far wrong can a church with a bad theology of God go?

From Chapter 1 of "Knowledge of the Holy":

Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.

Now I grant that Tozer is speaking to mid-1900s churches, and his primary concern for writing the book is to address the "loss of the concept of majesty" and "ignoble thoughts" about God. And it seems he's talking about "church" in a more broad setting than a particular local church in this paragraph. But I think that these words should still be taken in with consideration for the particular conditions of particular local churches, and that the warning stands just as severely.

We've got an upcoming sermon series based on a misappropriation of God's promise to Israel.

2 Chronicles 7:14 - [i]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Going backwards one verse and reading it in context,

2 Chronicles 7:13-14 - When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

I don't think our church is having a drought, locust, or plague problem (let alone one of these problems that has been given to us by God!). The picture in my head looks like ground crumbling beneath one's feet. This isn't safe theological ground to be standing on. This why I'm nervous and uncomfortable, and I'm frustrated because we don't seem to be moving towards solid ground.

[To be clear: I'm not saying that we shouldn't pray as a church for healing and institutional forgiveness and all that stuff. But can we avoid mishandling the Bible in the process?]

The more I think about it, the more concerned I become about the direction that the church is heading. Can God use people with a bad theology to do good works? Yes. Can God take a people with a bad theology and correct them? Yes. Is it a forgone conclusion that God *WILL* do such things for a people with a bad theology, even if they pray diligently? No. (Dare I mention any of a number of prophets who have called out Israel for faulty religion?)

Yet I'm still at Warm Springs. My deep gut reaction is simply to stay. I don't feel as if I've been "released" from whatever commitment I have to the church (as if I'm being "held" by something?). I feel as though I should watch this thing play out, for better or worse.

But I don't think I can watch in silence. Nor can I go in the church and turn tables over because of "bad theology." So I'm not sure what to do. Hopefully, when whatever opportunity I get presents itself (if some such opportunity arises at all), I'll be able to recognize it. I need to remain vigilant in looking for it. And in the meantime, pray.

(Wow... this ended up being about three times as long as I was expecting it to be.)

Strange...

2010-05-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

A year ago yesterday, I made the largest purchase in my life. And one year later, I've paid off less than $2000 of the debt (because of money going to taxes, PMI, and interest). This seems strange to me.

A paper version of my 550 page textbook (along with a CD containing a PDF version) was placed in a FedEx envelope on Friday, and is (presumably) on its way to the publisher (Pearson). By next fall, there should be a stack of textbooks in the bookstore with my name on it, published by a real publishing company (as opposed to the print shop at the community college). This also seems strange to me. What's even more strange is that I published something in poker before I published something in math.

I'm starting the process of working on my third year review. This means that I'm coming close to being in Las Vegas for three years. I've enjoyed living here, and am looking forward to being here for as long as I get to be here. In theory, this also means that I'm four years away from tenure (at least, assuming that I manage to do all the things I need to do to get it at a high enough level of performance). It's strange how fast if feels like I've reached the almost-midway point, but also how far away the finish line seems to be.

One week from tomorrow, we're scheduled to do a crawfish boil. This means that later this week, a 40 pound bag of critters that are closely related to the cockroach will be flown from Louisiana to Las Vegas. And if all goes well, they won't die until we kill them. For some reason, this seems less strange.

Church stuff continues onward. I had a good chat with the church administrator, and I'm looking forward to seeing where we go in the summer months as things continue to settle out. I don't think my concerns have lessened at all in the last month (in fact, my concerns have gone up), but it sure seems that I'm staying put for at least a little while longer. There are some things that I need to sort out personally, including my view of Sunday morning services (which is fairly negative right now). I wish that things at church seeming not to be going particularly well should be a strange thing, but it's becoming increasingly normal.

Three weeks and counting...

2010-04-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

The end of the semester draws near. I need to focus on getting certain things done very shortly. Fortunately, all of my notes are completed. That textbook is nearly completed (only a couple more review sections and a couple pages of preface materials), and I will need to contact the publisher to let them know. I need to write and print the final exams. Then I've got to get ready for the summer session. And try to write that article I've been toying around with. And get to work on my third year review.

The weather is warming up around here. But it seems like every time it does, another storm blows through and knocks the temperature down (which isn't a bad thing -- there will be plenty of "warm" days coming soon). The forecast has it going from a high of 82 to a high of 59 in one day.

I purchased one of these last week:

And one of these (42-quarts):

So that I can cook up a bunch of these:

If all goes well, it will happen not long after the end of the semester. And hopefully I'll remember to take pictures.

We had our meeting with the Elders on Friday. In the overall scheme of things, it was good. There are still a bunch of things that leave me scratching my head (for all sorts of reasons), and I'm quite far from believing that things are turning in the right direction. However, there was enough that happened to give me two clear senses. The first is that I now have a much better sense of how I feel about the Elders as a group of leaders. The second is that I also have a much better idea of where I should be focusing my attention and efforts within the church's existing structures. (And that's all I have to say about it for now.)

I ended up playing no backgammon at all this weekend. When I got up on Saturday morning, I just didn't feel like gambling. So I guess I'll just have to wait around until the next tournament, which will probably be in November.

I guess that's about it for tonight.

Older and Wiser? Nah...

2010-04-10T13:11:00.001-07:00

It was 1:15 PM when I finally got around to eating breakfast... and I wasn't really even that hungry. That happens sometimes when you eat all you can at an all you can eat sushi place.

I got a response from the Elders regarding the letter I wrote (with the help and input of my small group). We (the small group) are going to have dinner with them this Friday, to talk through some things and hopefully to build the "right" type of unity (which is a unity of consensus-building, not a unity by driving out those who disagree with your view). I think it's a good step in the right direction, and I hope that it is a productive time.

Since I'm doing that, I'm going to have to pass on the backgammon tournament that weekend. Play starts on Thursday afternoon, and goes through all of Friday and Saturday. I would be missing too much of Friday, and would probably end up having to forfeit a match or two, which would basically be a waste of money. Instead of entering the main tournament, I'm just going to take Saturday to play in some of the side games.

The countdown to the end of the semester has begun. It ends the first week of May. I've got one more round of midterms this week, and then finals a couple weeks later. My notes are almost all planned out, and as soon as that's done I can finish up those review sections for the textbook and send it off to the publisher. I'm aiming to have that done before the end of the month.

I've been going to the chiropractor to get my neck fixed. I haven't had any pain at all in the last couple weeks, and hopefully the neck curvature will be right soon. The therapy isn't bad, even though it looks and sounds a bit medieval. First, I do a neck exercise (a combination of muscle development and stretching), then I put my head in a harness and get strapped to a machine with weights that pulls it to the left. Then I get put in another harness that pulls my head backward while simultaneously pulling my neck forward (to introduce the curvature). Then I have various back and neck joints popped by the chiropractor. I'm usually in and out in about 30 minutes, so it isn't that bad.

And I finally got my tax refund.

Quiet Friday night

2010-03-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling that end-of-year slump coming on. Yes, last week was Spring break, but it doesn't matter. The 10-week internal clock that I spent 9 years developing on the quarter system is telling me that it should be time to wrap things up soon. But there are still 6 weeks to go.

I went to the chiropractor because my neck was still bothering me in the mornings after my self-imposed deadline. There were some tests and some x-rays, and the basic result is that my neck doesn't bend... at all. Normal necks are supposed to curve backward and mine don't. One might surmise that this is a posture thing (because I do know that my posture is less than perfect), but the convincing x-ray was the one where I was looking up, and the neck was still straight.

I was also amused by my lack of reflexes in my right arm. The bicep reflex is the reflex where they hit the inside part of your elbow and your hand is supposed to twitch. I've never thought that it would be possible to fail a reflex test, though it would make no sense for them to do this type of test if it you couldn't fail it. It was a strange feeling to know how my body should be reacting to the test and watching it not react at all.

The chiropractor found some evidence of a neck trauma, which I can't really place but know happened. Somewhere in my memory, I recall having an injury with my head moving forward, and I distinctly remember a sharp pain in the middle of my neck. And by middle, I mean the middle if you were to look down from above, not the middle halfway between the skull and the shoulders. It was kind of behind the throat, but not at the back of the throat. It was "down" from there (as if you swallowed the pain and it got stuck partway down). It was probably a basketball injury, but that's based on the fact that most of my injuries are basketball injuries.

I'm still waking up with a stiff and sore neck, but it has only been a week of treatment (and it's not as bad this week as it was last week). The long term treatment is to un-straighten my neck, but apparently the joints have settled into this position pretty tightly, so it's going to take a little bit of time before they are loose enough to be corrected. It's expected to take a couple months, and I decided I don't have enough excuses or the right types of excuses to put it off or not do it.

Church stuff has gotten weirder... again. The new elders have hired an interim pastor. They hired an internal candidate, which is a little strange to me. Given that the church is in need of a lot of administrative capacity, and for someone to come in and do an assessment, this is a bad sign. Unfortunately, he's not a good preacher. It reminds me a lot of when I first got to that church and the interim was an outgoing administrative pastor. If I had not known that the church was on the verge of a new senior pastor, I would not have stayed.

On Sunday, there was a "State of the Church" address, which I found to be a little bit disturbing. It was a lot of talk, and there were moments where it felt like battle lines were being drawn.

I have written a letter to a couple of the Elders who talked to me and asked me for some insights. I know that they want to do the right thing, and so I did a little work (with the help of the small group) to formulate some ideas of where we think the church should go. We are generally concerned that the church will draw inward towards itself and become an "old person" church (which is only slightly more polite than calling it a dead church). In the last 3-4 months, the church has managed to drive off a large chunk of the under 40 crowd, and unless a change happens the trend will continue.

I'm in no hurry to stay and in no hurry to leave. It's still a matter of watching and waiting.

I have no decent transition and a bunch of random thoughts that don't deserve their own paragraph. So I'm just going to mash them all into one paragraph: I'm still waiting for my tax refund. Homemade doughnuts are good, but homemade jelly doughnuts are better. I need to put in some extra time into my textbook next week and get it done. I dropped off my car for an oil change and new tires, and the shuttle driver thought I was 18 years old. I played poker last Friday for the first time in a while, and lost a multi-hundred dollar pot when my AA got cracked by 33 that managed to find a 2-outer on the turn. I hope to take a practice actuary test tomorrow.

Spring Break!

2010-03-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

These words (along with "Winter Break" and "Summer Break" and -- hopefully at some point -- "tenure") are words that remind me that I have no business complaining about my job. I'm still going in work to get stuff done, and that's really because I'm very unproductive at home.

I got a call from the Pearson's textbook editor on Friday, and now I've got myself a May deadline to complete the textbook and get it submitted for printing. I want to insert chapter review sections and then maybe one or two more sections before I submit it (at least for the first official printed version). They emailed me some generic covers to consider, but I don't really care about that for now.

I'm also going to dump a lot of time into that web program that I've been toying with on and off for the last year or so. I think I've got all the programming pieces in place, so now I just need to get it all laid out and then test it on some students. If I offer extra credit, they'll do it. Something I've learned is that students will do almost anything for extra credit, even if it's a small amount. If they would only put that effort into doing the work right the first time...

I'm in chapter 10 of 10 from the actuary exam study guide. I'll probably find the time to finish working on that this week as well, and then I'll have to set aside a couple three-hour chunks of time to work through the practice exams.

The church class that I was teaching has finished up. I think everyone enjoyed the class, and I was asked whether I would teach another one. I do like to teach those types of classes, and I'd be willing to teach another one, but I also want to see what the Elders are up to, and how they see things moving forward.

I bought a new hard last week. My computer suddenly got very unstable, and rather than messing with trying to rescue a broken system, I decided to just start fresh. The transition has been pretty painless, and I was able to get all my files over from the old system to the new system without any real difficulty, plus everything is now running several times faster than it did (especially at start-up).

I got my yearly credit report, and once again, there's some junk on there. This time, a couple of accounts in collection. It's another cellular company. Strangely, the account numbers are one apart (X8842, X8843), for the same amount, which suggests to me that this was probably done online through some automated scheme. I expect this to be cleared up easily. Other than that, everything on the credit report is good.

I'm still waiting for my tax refund.

We made stromboli last Monday. The dough was store-bought because of time constraints, but the sauce was fresh. I discovered that I don't have a rolling pin anymore, and I can't figure out where it went. It would have been helpful for rolling out the dough into a fairly even shape. Trying to mash out a rectangle by hand just isn't that easy. It will be worse (impossible?) to roll out doughnuts without a rolling pin (or similarly sized and shaped object).

I've had a neck "thing" for the last couple weeks. I don't know what caused it, but a couple weeks ago I woke up with a very stiff neck. It was quite painful to do a lot of normal things (leaning over caused pain, which meant that sitting down and standing up were a little awkward). It was like that for a few days, and then it was only like that in the mornings when I woke up. Right now, I'm basically better, except every now and then I'll notice a little discomfort in my upper back/lower neck. I guess it's sort of like a pinched nerve that has slowly been working it's way back where it belongs. I considering going to a chiropractor (I've never been to one), and I think I'm setting a Wednesday deadline to decide. I'll see how I feel over the next couple days.

I guess life has once again started to hit a comfortable stride. The last couple weeks seem to have just drifted by.

Where did February go?

2010-02-25T21:57:00.000-08:00

I feel as if this month has gone by somewhat quickly. (Yes, February has fewer days than other months, so it actually has gone by more quickly than an average month.) I feel like I haven't really gotten much rest in a while, and I think it's just because I've become busy.

I find that I'm now on a 4 day per week church schedule: Sunday service, Tuesday small group, Wednesday teaching a class, and Thursday basketball. The Wednesday night thing will finish in a couple weeks, which will free me up from a responsibility.

Church continues to be strange. We lost another pastor due to something that crept up from his (somewhat distant) past. It's another unfortunate loss for the church. As the new Elders take over, I'm still in a watch-and-wait posture to see what's going to happen. If the Elders hook up with a good interim pastor, and the elders are willing to push to make necessary changes, I'll probably stay for a while longer. But if it looks like it's just going to be more of the same, I think I might be done. The youngest elder is is his early 60s, and I'm just not sure how "in touch" they are with the under-40 demographic in the church (which is a strategic and vital part of a growing church). In particular, are they going to try to keep the church as it has been (something that feels like like a 1990s church), or are they going to allow it to change so that it can meet the culture as it stands today? My hope is for the latter.

Bill likes to say that "a committee is no substitute for a strong leader" but the Elders are not supposed to function like a committee. They are supposed to be the strong leaders. I hope that they will be, and I'm willing to give them every opportunity to prove themselves to be leaders.

There were also some more events which I find to be amusing about the Elder process. I don't want to sound as if I'm bitter about it, because I'm quite content with the idea of not being an Elder. I refused to sign a letter of commitment because my interview came before the Dr. Speer vote. There were some people who were interviewed after the Dr. Speer vote, whose answers to the questions had a completely different context and understanding because of the extra piece of information. Had I been interviewed later, I probably would have responded differently. Furthermore, one of the elder candidates withdrew from the process after being presented, but then was later re-instated. I know that some people feel as if I should have had the same opportunity (and under some sort of notion of "fairness" they're probably right -- but again, I really don't care that I'm not an elder).

I'm just taking it month-to-month. I'm in no hurry to make a change, and there's no reason to rush into anything right now.

I've also been studying for the actuarial exam, which has been interesting and somewhat fun. I haven't looked at some of this probability stuff in years, so it feels good to get a refresher. It's nothing hard, and nothing that I haven't seen before, so I should be able to breeze through this test. I think the financial ones will be much harder because I'll actually have to learn something new. I'm hoping to take the first exam sometime in the next couple months.

Experimental cooking seems like it's making a return. I found a person who wants to cook new things, and people who are willing to eat it, which is the perfect combination for all sorts of fun. I have also been asked to break out the Alton Brown food dehydrator and make some more jerky. Oh, and I need to make a smoked pork shoulder. And a turkey fryer so I can do a crawfish boil... and maybe fry a turkey. But one thing at a time. Here was Monday's experiment:

Shrimp Etouffee: Sweat the trinity in some butter, add some flour and cajun seasoning to make a blond roux, add stock to make a gravy, simmer a while, add shrimp and cajun seasoning (plus hot sauce), simmer, add extra butter, serve on rice. (It reheats very well.)

Crab cakes: Drain canned crab, a little mayo, mustard powder, old bay seasoning, bread crumbs to absorb extra moisture, egg for binder, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, green onion, shape into cakes, coat in panko, pan fry (or deep fry?), squeeze some lemon to finish it (something I didn't do).

I did my taxes. Horray for the $8000 credit for buying a home last year! That's all I have to say about that.

Once that money comes in, I think I will actually have a real long-term emergency fund in case Nevada System of Higher Education implodes on itself in the next year. I don't think it's going to happen, because it's looking like the legislature is going to push for only a 5% cut as opposed to the 10% cut proposed by the governor and our campus has the support of the right people. But it never hurts to be prepared. The actuary thing will be a nice backup plan if things get really bad, too.

Other stuff that's going on or has already happened:
* Change is in the air for a lot of people. Everything from dealing with the IRS to possible job changes to planting a church (and more!). I hope all goes well for all.
* Hofbrauhaus (February 19).
* Backgammon tournament (April 15).
* InterVarsity faculty retreat (first week of August) plus probably a San Diego visit the week before.
* Friends and relatives in town this weekend.

And thus concludes another rambling brain dump. It felt more scattered than usual, but sometimes that's just how it is.

Miscellaneous update

2010-02-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

After a very hectic first month, it's good to have things settle down a bit. Sort of... I guess.

First, a church update. One of the pastors resigned, and it's a sad day for the church as a result. He was at the root of the only "new" types of ministry being done there, starting up both our weekly basketball games and a theology class (that I've been asked to take over in his absence). The class is just a reading group for the book "How to Read the Bible for All its Worth" and so it's really just a guided discussion instead of a lecture (which equates to a bit less prep work for me).

There's still plenty out there that worries me, but at this point there's not much I can do about any of it, so I've shifted back to a posture of waiting to see what happens. In the meantime, I'll keep close to my oikos and make sure they're taken care of (and allow myself to be taken care of by them).

I've been very busy this week, with something going on every night for the entire week. Going backwards...

Super Bowl Sunday: Go Saints! We had the small group over to watch the game and eat food. I fired up the new grill for the first time, and it worked very well. I can tell that I'm going to need to spend a little time getting used to the three-burner setup, getting used to managing both the hot and cool (well... less hot) zones, as well as learning the natural hot spots (the front is cooler than the back).

UNLV/UCF Saturday: I got a free ticket to the UNLV/BYU game on Saturday (thanks Jenni!). I went with Sean, Daniel, and Nathan. It was my first UNLV game, and it was good fun. The Rebels got out to a quick start, and rode it all the way to the end of the game. That evening, we had a few people over to watch some UFC. I'm not a huge UFC fan, but there must be something about testosterone that makes watching people beat up other people (in controlled settings) very interesting and enjoyable.

Avatar Friday: I saw Avatar in 3D on IMAX. The visuals were very nice and the story was very predictable. In spite of that, it was still a fun movie to watch. I feel like I'm supposed to have more to say about it, but I don't.

Basketball Thursday: Our weekly basketball is up and running, and I'm playing better than I have in a while. My outside shooting feels much more rhythmic and I feel like my court awareness has started to creep back up again (I'm seeing passing lanes that I felt like I was missing before). This is still the only exercise I get.

Church Wednesday: This is the night of the class that I'm supposed to take over. There are 15-20 people in the group, and it's a good group of people. Part of it is self-selection. People who aren't interested in being challenged about how they think about the Bible won't sit in a class on how you should think about the Bible.

Small Group Tuesday: Our group has grown in spite of the church stuff going south, which is an indication that we're doing something right. Unsurprisingly, it's really about the simple things, like listening to and caring for each other, as well as challenging each other to grow into a more mature understanding of our faith. We're currently going through some Stand To Reason materials, and it seems to have connected very well with the group.

Board meeting Monday: The meeting started at 6:30 PM and lasted until about 12:30 AM. We listened to a lot of people talk (there was quite a bit of nonsense, but there were some sensible statements in the mix). We received and accepted the resignation of our associate pastor. Some other business happened, but I'm not about to try to remember right now.

Tomorrow begins a new week and life goes on.

Taking the time to ponder church stuff...

2010-01-28T23:42:00.001-08:00

Life has gotten interesting on the church front in the last couple weeks, which has caused me to once again draw into a pensive mood while I wait to see what happens next. I've had a lot of thoughts since mid-November, many of which have not been appropriate to express, but now that certain events have come to a close, I feel more comfortable expressing myself in a semi-public manner.

As I look at my friends list on facebook, I see how few people there are who currently attend Warm Springs that are on that list, and most of them already know much of the story. For everyone else who bothers reading these long notes, this is really something much closer to a prayer letter, since there is much prayer necessary in this situation.

Much of this is still being sorted out both at the church level and at the personal level, but there are a few facts to put out on the table.

1) I am not moving forward in the elder process.

2) Dr. Speer was not called by a 72-28 margin, which is short of the 75-25 super majority required by the documents.

3) Some people are taking it better than others.

Each of these thoughts merits its own analysis.

(1) Before the Dr. Speer vote, I was asked to sign a letter of commitment to the church. But because of my deep concerns with Dr. Speer as a leader, and because of various aspects of his theology, I found that I could not commit since I felt that I would leave the church if he were called there. Knowing what I know about him, if I were just visiting a church, heard him preach, and heard his theology of ministry, I would not remain at that church, and it would not be a hard decision for me to make. So rather than sign now and rescind later in the event that Dr. Speer is called, I simply refused to sign in the first place.

I know that this will cause questions to be asked of me. I know that some would view this as a lack of commitment to the church. And in a very real sense, they're right. I'm not blindly and permanently committed to Warm Springs. And I'm especially not committed when I'm at a point of decision, knowing that there's something around the corner that might cause things to go in a place that I will not want to follow.

I'm slightly disappointed that it has been expressed to me that I should now "show" my commitment to the church over the next year, as it feels like an affront to my integrity. The reason I didn't sign before the vote is because I take such a commitment seriously. But to now ask me to essentially prove my commitment comes across as if my word is not sufficient for them because I lack integrity. It's as if I'm viewed to have less integrity because I took a stand regarding my integrity. This makes me wonder whether there is something much more political going on under the surface, but I can't tell from where I sit. (See "scapegoat" in (3).)

(2) There was a very large turnout for the vote, much higher than previous votes. We had around 230 votes cast, whereas the governance change came in at around 160 votes. It's hard to know precisely why there was a 50% increase in voter turnout. Certainly, some of it can be attributed to the fact that more people are interested in voting for a senior pastor than they are a governance change. But I had anticipated that the vote count would not exceed 200. I heard some comments that people were there who haven't been to the church in a while, but that seems to be the modus operandi of the church (I heard similar comments regarding the first governance vote over a year ago).

What's more interesting to me is that over 60 people voted no. This is a significant number of people, given that a 90% threshold (which many pastors use) would allow only about 20 no-votes. This is a significant number and warrants significant attention. I'm not in a position to know who all those people were, or why they voted the way they did, but it does seem that it would be useful to have a forum in which people's concerns are addressed openly and honestly. I hope this happens as things move forward, so that the thoughts and emotions of these people are not overlooked. You simply cannot ignore over 25% of the active congregation.

(3) It's clear that some people were very invested in having Dr. Speer be the next senior pastor. Some people are merely disappointed that he didn't come, but some are also quite angry.

As I've become more and more involved at church, I've come to realize how desperate some people have become for a Senior pastor. I've started to call it a "Waiting for Godot problem" as people keep pinning their hopes on a senior pastor who will arrive to heal the church and start to move things forward ("into the promised land" as one person has prayed). And at the end of the play, they discover that Godot has not yet arrived, but they just keep going through the motions and hope that he will show up in the next act.

I have talked to people who insist on the necessity of a senior pastor in order for things to get set straight, and how other churches in the region are growing strong because they have good senior leadership. It has an eerie echo of 1 Samuel 8:19-20, where Israel clamors for a king: "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

I don't believe that a senior pastor is really the answer. (I also don't believe there is one on the horizon. It's likely going to be at least another 9 months for the search committee to find another candidate, but I would anticipate that number being closer to the 12-15 month range.) One man will not show up on the doorstep some day and suddenly all the problems that this church has been having will magically be healed. I think if people would just start dealing with problems truthfully and honestly, and dealing with each other truthfully and honestly, they might find that it's possible to be a healthy and growing church WITHOUT a senior pastor, and that a senior pastor (who does serve an important role) simply adds to what is going well, and is not the one who makes things go well.

I've seen some comments from people that frame the vote as "Us vs. Them." I saw a very disappointing comment that read something like "72% of us voted for unity." I was equally disappointed to see comments about people being "deceived." I'm glad to see that some of those comments have since been removed and hopefully the anger that was expressed has since passed so that we can get to work on the important things.

Somewhat rhetorically, I want to ask what it means when you pray "The Lord's will be done" and then find that the results were not what you had thought they would be. Does this mean that the Lord's will was not done because you thought it was supposed to go one way and not the other? I fear that some people have started to look for scapegoats because things are not how they wanted it would be.

---

I don't know where things go from here. I just have to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, I'm going to keep doing what I know I'm supposed to be doing, which is to take care of the people in my oikos. They matter to me much more than my 501(c)(3).

Before the new semester begins

2010-01-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

The first couple weeks have gone by in a blur, and it's just about time to start classes again.

The first week of the year was filling with scrambling around to get my syllabi put together as well as my first few sets of notes. Usually, this happens the week before classes begin, but I was going to spend the second week of the year in San Francisco at the Joint Math Meetings, so my procrastination week actually ended up being "on time" (or really, ahead of schedule).

Most of my stuff is printed up and ready to go. For the first semester ever, I don't have any evening classes. When I had fewer things going on, I enjoyed having evening classes because it meant I didn't really need to show up all that early, and I felt as if I had a lot more time to get things done. But with small group and basketball being added to my weekly schedule, I needed to reclaim my evenings. So now all my classes are condensed between 11AM and 5PM, which makes my work day look sort of like a regular work day.

The Joint Meetings this year were in San Francisco, so I commuted to and from the meetings on BART and stayed with my parents. I didn't attend any technical talks, but I did sit in on some education-related talks, plus some miscellaneous talks (history of math, mathematics of origami).

But I think the most intriguing idea I had the entire week was that I think I'm going to get an actuarial degree. Given my background, it doesn't seem like it will be all that hard to do. I spent 10-15 minutes talking to the actuary people in the exhibit hall (http://www.BeAnActuary.org/) and they sounded as if I would probably already know about 90% of the math, so all I would need to do is familiarize myself with the some terminology and practice working on a few problems.

I don't know what I would do with an actuarial degree. I don't think I'm going to be changing professions any time soon (but given the economy... you never know). I might be able to leverage it in some way at NSC, but given how hard it has been to just get a normal math degree going, I don't see any reason why this would have a chance of going anywhere.

I've been looking into buying a grill for the backyard, and with the Super Bowl coming up and with friends coming over, I think I've found sufficient motivation to spend the money. I've been doing a little research, and I think I've found a grill in the right price range. I'm going to check out a couple places just to see if I can't do better, but I'm closing in on a 3-burner gas grill in the $200 range. I'll also need some back yard furniture... but one thing at a time.

In one week, we vote on the Senior Pastor candidate. I know a lot of people have heart ache about the consequences of the vote (both yes and no), but nobody really knows what will happen until it happens. There are lots of things that I can say about the candidate and the process, but there's very little value in expressing those things (at least in this venue at this moment in time). My feeling at this point is that most people already know where they stand, and so everything is just waiting for the vote and then counting the votes when they come in.

Another year...

2009-12-30T22:42:00.000-08:00

And another failed Christmas letter. But at least this year, I tried. I might even try to finish it up and send it out late (better late than never?). Why am I making a note here instead of writing that Christmas letter? Good question. I'm not really sure. Maybe it's because I feel a deep sense of inadequacy when I compare my plain-text draft of a letter with the richly colored and elaborately decorated letters that people send me. Or maybe it's just because I just want to ramble for a while and that's much easier than trying to put together a more formal letter. Either way, the Christmas letter isn't getting done right now.

I'm sort of in a pensive mood right now. It's probably because another year has just about come to its conclusion, and throwing away my old calendar makes me feel that way. It's definitely been a good year for me, filled with much newness.

I bought the most expensive thing I've ever bought in my entire life. My house is a nice place to live, in a nice neighborhood, located a nice distance from work and other things. I've been told I need to work on the interior decorating (what's wrong with blank white walls?), but not before I get a grill. This has been a great experience for me, if for nothing else than it gives me a sense of grounding in one place. When I was a student, I felt myself as being somewhat transient because I knew that when I graduated, I was very likely going to go somewhere else. When I lived in an apartment out here for two years, I always felt as if that was not home because I was going to move somewhere else eventually. So in some sense, I spent 11 years drifting about, and it's good to be "home."

Even though this house is probably not my "forever" home, there's an "indefiniteness" about home ownership that makes it feel different. I guess this is what Suze Orman is talking about when she talks about owning a home outright gives a sense of security. Of course, I don't own it outright, and probably won't for quite some time (or perhaps ever, if I move before I pay it off).

(In that half-written Christmas letter, I also pointed out that I've had the new experience of getting into a fight with an HOA. But I don't have anything else to say about that one.)

I've had the new experience of preaching. Only once, but apparently it had a decent impact on people. I got an email from the church office yesterday to tell me that someone who claims to be a pastor from around here heard the sermon and wants to get in contact with me. It's very weird to me. I haven't figured out what church this guy is from, and I haven't decided whether to follow-up on it or just shrug it off.

On the topic of church, there have been a lot of new experiences (both good and bad) that I've had through the church. I never believed that churches were always supposed to be a nice and sanitized place to be, but I guess I've been exposed to how messy things can really get sometimes. But I know that challenges cause growth, and I think I've started to learn a bit more about myself that I may not have discovered otherwise.

I know A LOT more people at church now, some of whom are becoming good friends. This is one thing about Las Vegas that I was told when I arrived and have found to be true. It's not that easy to get to know people out here. The pace of life and the lifestyles people have can make it difficult to get to know people well. Everyone is generally sort of isolated from everyone else because that's what "normal" looks like out here. Hopefully that will change. I know that it's an ongoing effort of many groups to create a sense of "community" here. This is something that we try to do on campus.

Using that as a smooth transition to work, there have been new things there as well. I've written a 500-something page textbook in the last year, which is a new thing. I'm still in the revision process, as there are a number of things I want to add and a few other things to clean up. This has been a different sort of challenge. I've never really had a grueling writing process. Even my PhD thesis was "easy" when it came to actually writing it out (the work was hard, but that was a separate process than the actual writing).

There are a number of other little things that were new this year at work. I've got a couple web-based programming challenges that I've started to work on, I've got some more committee-driven experiences, and I'm starting to feel as if I'm becoming more influential within our school. Whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that it will lead to more work.

I'm done rambling. And if you read all of that, sorry for taking up so much of your time. You probably won't be getting a Christmas letter this year. Maybe next year.

Have a Happy New Year!

Busy weeks

2009-12-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy three weeks, and I'm actually taking the time to type this up as a break from taking care of some other work that needs to get done.

The first week back from Thanksgiving was the last week of class before finals. There's usually not a lot of work to do that week, but I spent the time updating my textbook and adding in some more sections (which I think are necessary).

Then the next week was all about finals and grading. This is always a tiring time. The tests went out on Wednesday and Thursday, and then I took almost a full day on Friday and Saturday, and then a couple more hours on Sunday to power through the stack.

This past week was supposed to be one that was a little more relaxed, but things came up and so I haven't really hit the brakes yet. I reworked our placement exam, added a couple more sections to the textbook, worked on some promotion standards, and a few other little things.

But most of my time and energy has been consumed with church stuff. We had a pastor candidate process that imploded. It's impossible for that to happen without there being a mess, but in some sense it's a good mess. Yes, people are hurt, angry (very angry), frustrated, and disappointed, but these are things that can be an instigator of tremendous growth. So we're going to deal with it (what choice do we have?) and see where we end up.

While all this is going on, I've been involved in the elder training process. It's good because I'm starting to get a sense of the different perspectives and personalities of the other elders, and (especially with the current assignment I'm working on) it is forcing me to go back through the scriptures and remind myself of things that I already know but could use some refreshing. It has been a while since I've dug around the Bible like this.

I still haven't gotten out to play poker. I guess I could still go out tonight, but I woke up somewhat early this morning and I'm feeling a little bit too tired to go play. If my brain really isn't with me, I'm not going to play. It's a simple rule that keeps me out of trouble. I probably won't have time to go until I get back after Christmas.

Thanksgiving Trifectas

2009-11-29T15:13:00.000-08:00

Last week was a bit of a blur. But I do have the distinct memory of three separate Thanksgivings. The third thanksgiving culminated in the production of a three-bird feast.

On Sunday, we had a Thanksgiving potluck at church. It was good to see that many church people spending time together at a time other than Sunday morning. It was some good old-fashioned church family time, and I think it was a good thing. The food was good for massive church potluck food. It sort of reminded me of the FBCSD Thanksgiving potluck from a while ago. Except in that one, I was a part of the kitchen crew. I want to believe that it was a massive turkey baking festival, but I can actually only remember making gravy and doing organizational tasks.

Thursday was Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family. Since I flew home on Thanksgiving day this year, I didn't do anything food-wise for that one (which is the first time in a while that I haven't done any food). I think there were 15 people there.

The third Thanksgiving started at around 10 PM on Thursday night, when my cousin and I got to work on the Thanksgiving turducken (from scratch!). Neither of us had done this before, but we're both pretty competent people in the kitchen, and we decided we were up to the challenge.

We went with the Chef Paul Prudhomme Turducken Recipe. He is viewed by some to be the inventor of this dish, but I don't know whether it's actually true.

Chef Prudhomme is a Cajun chef, which is why there are so many green peppers in this tray. There were three different stuffings, so this is one tray out of three of diced vegetation. We also had a tray of ground andouille, chopped shrimp, and crumbled cornbread. Good prep work is key to pulling off any large cooking task.

The most daunting part of the whole task is the deboning of the birds. Since it was the first bird (and the largest bird), the turkey took the most time. I think it ended up taking about 25 minutes to debone the turkey. The important thing with this is that you must debone the bird in such a way that you can fold it back up again into a turkey shape. This means that the skin must be left completely intact (except for a single cut down the back). The basic idea is that you start from the spine and "unroll" the meat off the carcass.

It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. Having a sharp knife helped, but really, it was a game of patience. After getting through the turkey, I watched my cousin do the same to the duck, and then she finished the chicken as I finished the vegetable prep. I think it was about 1:30 AM by the time we completed all of the deboning and prep work.

From here, we went to the stove work. Actually, my cousin did most of that. I think she's better at that part, anyway. I cleaned up the pans and brought her the trays as she worked her way through. The cooking of the stuffings is pretty uninteresting. After all of that was completed (at around 3:30 AM), it came time to stuff the birds with stuffing, then stuff the birds into the other birds.

You can see the stove clock on the last picture, which says that this part was finished at about 4 AM.

At this point, almost everything was prepared. The turducken requires 8 hours to cook plus an hour of resting, so we were aiming to put it in the oven at 9 AM. We put the turducken outside to keep cool (it was in the high 30s outside). At this point, my cousin and I went to sleep, but my dad (who was staying up with us) decided to stay up to clean up a bit, plus keep watch over the turducken so that the raccoon that had been spotted in the area wouldn't take it. (It was also about this time that my aunt and uncle were getting up for their black Friday shopping.)

I woke up at about 8:30, and we got the turducken in the oven at a little after 9. Very little work needed to be done from that point forward, and I found another couple hours of sleep on the couch before the afternoon rolled around and family started showing up.

The turducken was good, but it could have been better. The stuffings all tasted too similar for my liking, and the turkey could have stood a bit of brining, but it was all surprisingly moist for something that sat in an oven for 8 hours. I think it might be good to skin the duck, as well. The duck skin came out very floppy, which is not the best way to enjoy duck skin (crispy is the way to go).

I would definitely do it again sometime. I just need an excuse.

Almost there...

2009-11-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

The semester is almost over. And by almost over, I mean there are three full weeks left. My internal clock is still set to quarters, which means I still think things should be over before they are.

I've got all of my traveling lined up for the break. I'll be taking three trips back home in the next couple months: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a math conference in SF. Unfortunately, the conference is set too far back from Christmas, so staying at home the whole time just isn't really an option. I've got stuff to take care of out here (like starting into the third pre-publication version of the textbook).

The sermon went well on Sunday. I think it went a little bit better than I thought it would. It's available online through the church website, if anyone is brave enough (or bored enough) to listen. Just google "Warm Springs Baptist Church Las Vegas" and it should be the first hit. There were some topics that were a little delicate, in that I was basically asking the church to stop being stupid about some things. A lot of people thanked me for saying what they have been thinking (including some people who have been around the church for many years). I was sort of in a position where since I'm not a pastor, I can say things that the pastors can't say as effectively, like Hebrews 13:17 - "Obey your leaders..."

Other church things continue onward. There's a potluck on Sunday. I'm supposed to bring a dessert. I think I'll just make a batch of cookies because I don't know what I want to make (and cookies are both easy and tasty). There's also the Elder training that's supposed to start in a few weeks as well (which reminds me that I need to take an hour somewhere and fill out the paperwork).

I put out an order for a couple new board games. I don't know when they'll arrive, but I'm looking forward to getting something new. One is Ricochet Robots (which is a very nerdy game, but still fun), and the other is Alhambra (which I've played once, but I'll have to re-learn it because it has been too long). These should come in probably in the next couple weeks, which means they might come home with me for Christmas.

Tomorrow is the last day of basketball for the year. I cut up my left ring finger while smashing something in the garbage can, but it's mostly healed and I don't think it will be too much of an issue.

And I look forward to playing some poker when the semester is over. That is all.

What a dumb tournament!

2009-11-08T23:35:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the result that's dumb. I managed yet another 2-3 tournament, losing to players against whom I believe I had an edge. But that's how this stuff goes. With all the poker I've played, I'm slightly numb to losing outcomes in games of chance. I say slightly because it still irks me just a little bit. While at the table ("over the board" in backgammon parlance), I can sit there and maintain a completely stoic look when my opponent rolls a 44 joker to advance her anchor through into my gapped 6-prime, hit a blot, and make a 4-point home board is a spot where I was looking forward to winning a gammon. I lost so quickly that I didn't even have a reason to show up on Saturday. So I spent the day at home working on that sermon I'm supposed to give a week from now. And that's how I spent my two mandatory voluntary leave days for this semester. Next semester (in April), I get to do it again.

Justin and Janet were out here last week. They visited the campus and sat in on one of my classes on Thursday evening. I think they got the general sense of what was going on, which is fun. On Friday, we did some touristy things on the strip and just hung out. It was nice and uneventful in the good sort of way.

Back to the sermon, I'm meeting with Pastor Rick tomorrow to go over it to make sure that everything is good (Kosher?). Then I'm going to spend the time this week to actually practice it (speaking out loud to myself) just to work on some of the phrasing and to make sure the timing is right. I don't do this for my math lectures, but that's a much more natural environment for me.

I boiled a beef tongue today. This is actually the second time I've done it (I did this once while in San Diego). Every now and then, when I'm walking down the meat aisle, something like this will pop out at me, and I get curious, which leads to these sorts of things. It was tasty, but a little bit tough. Usually tough meat means that it was cooked too long. However it wasn't a dry type of tough (in fact, it was quite moist), just a bit chewy. Sometimes that means you have to cook it longer (like with a pork shoulder) to break down connective tissue. In other words, I have no clue whether longer or shorter cooking time is required here, or maybe that's just how it is.

I didn't do any fancy brining or anything like that. I wanted to get just the taste of the meat by itself. I don't quite know how to describe the taste. It's definitely a meaty flavor, but perhaps a bit more rich. I left it in simmering salted water for an hour. Apparently, beef tongue is quite fatty (though it doesn't seem like it when you eat it) and full of cholesterol. Today I ate some plain, but I'll probably put some in a salad tomorrow, or maybe cut some slices and put it in a soup. It seems to be used in Mexican and Jewish cuisines, but I'm not interested in doing anything like that right now.

Wednesday is another day off, which is fortunate because some extended family will be in town. If not for the day off, I wouldn't have had the time to see them.

It's almost Nevada Day!

2009-10-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

It still makes me smile that I get this random day off once a year. Nevada Day is on October 31, but I get to observe Nevada Day on October 30 by not showing up to work. There might be an extra bonus this year because I might have some family in town.

I mentioned in the last post that I was thinking about taking walks more often. I managed exactly one walk, and it was probably only about a half-mile walk before I got bored. I used to walk to and from campus 5 days a week in San Diego. What has happened? I've still got basketball once a week, and the walk to and from the Dawson building twice a week, but there should really be more than that.

I've been working on that sermon. I seem to be moving towards a much more reflective sermon as opposed to an exegesis. I've been feeling it moving in that direction for a couple weeks now, and it seems to be the right way to go. The church has been through a lot of stuff in the last year, and I feel as if it's appropriate to spend some pulpit time talking about some of the things that has hurt us in the past, and how we can overcome them as we move into the future. I have three more weeks to work on it, but I would really like to have it fleshed out in two, so that I can spend the last week fine tuning the language.

On the topic of church, we passed the governance change to an elder board by an 85% majority. This is good news. In a sense, it basically brings a close this chapter of the church's life (everything that has happened with respect to leadership in the last year sort of culminates at this vote), and I feel as if the next chapter provides new opportunity for optimism and growth.

So now we begin the four month transition process. I've been asked to serve on the transition team, whose responsibilities will include the vetting of potential elders. But I've also been pointed in the direction of applying for eldership. Obviously, doing both is a conflict of interest. My current stance is to be on the transition team until I come to a decision about applying for eldership.

I had all-you-can-eat sushi last weekend with the small group. It has been a while since I gorged on fish, and it was good. For $22, it was definitely a good deal. If I could do it again, I think I would have gone for more of the appetizer/sides and a little less sushi, just for more balance. But it's hard because I want to maximize the amount of expensive stuff that I get (ie, get sushi rolls) so that I can get the most for the money.

Two weeks from now, I'll have just completed the backgammon tournament. It's not that far off, but it feels very distant. I go into this tournament with a little more fear than I did before. Playing against the beginner opposition, I felt as if I was definitely the stronger player, but just lacking some experience. I don't have all that much more live play experience beyond the once-a-week with Jason, but this time I'm going into a much tougher opposition. We'll see how it goes.

I had a funny incident with my garage door this afternoon. As I was pulling out of the garage, watching the door close, I noticed that the lights on the drive mechanism were bobbing around. So I clicked the remote to stop it, and went in for a closer look. The drive mechanism had fallen off the ceiling. I fixed it myself... sort of... It's a little embarrassing how poor of a job I did on that fix, but I think it's stable enough that I won't need to worry about it.

It's not quite November yet, but I need to start planning out my schedule for Christmas break. The Joint Math Meetings are in San Francisco (Jan 13-16), and I should probably go just because it's near home. It might be too long between Christmas and the meetings to just hang out at home (plus there's stuff to get done around here), so I just might have to fly back three separate times in three months (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Meetings).

Semester midpoint... sort of

2009-10-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

I looked at the calendar today, and it's the end of week 7. But since the second half of the semester has so many days off (Nevada Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, voluntary mandatory backgammon days), the semester is really half over. At least it's close enough for me to declare it so.

On November 15, I'm scheduled to do something that I've never done before. I'm going to preach a sermon at church. I guess I'm honored to have the opportunity, and I'm looking forward to it, but in another way, I'm not. Maybe it's because it's a little outside of my comfort zone (my usual audience is in the 30-40 person range, not 300-400), or maybe it's just because when I read the passage (James 4:13-5:6) nothing interesting came to mind. I've got a month to figure it out, but I'm definitely going to need a little help coming up with ideas.

Sticking with the church theme, we've picked up playing basketball again. It's a good thing for me to get out and run around a bit, even if it is only half court basketball. Aside from this and the quarter-mile walk to and from the LAS building to the Dawson building twice a week, I don't get much exercise. The weather is nicer now, and I think I might start taking evening walks around the neighborhood before it gets cold.

I finished reading Eric Clapton's autobiography about a week ago. It's a long, but easy read. If I were more interested in music, I'm sure that the book could almost be used as an encyclopedia of names and musical connections that are worth a closer look. But I'm not, so the long list of people and bands is just going to remain a list without connections.

I've been a little sick the last couple days, which hasn't been all that much fun. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I think I'm going to get through with only a minor inconvenience. There's a faculty gathering tomorrow night that I would like to go to, but I'm not going to go if I'm still feeling a little out of it.

I've still got a stack of midterms to finish grading, which I will get to as soon as I'm done typing. I probably could have finished earlier, but being sick means I can't concentrate as much as I would like, and so I couldn't get through as much grading as I had hoped.

Dipping just briefly into politics, I'm confused by (but strangely not surprised by) Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. It seems rather premature given that he hasn't actually done anything yet. I don't begrudge the fact that he won, I just find the choice to be unusual. It seems that a lot of people, even strong Obama supporters, are going to scratch their heads over this one for the next couple weeks (until the next thing comes along and this is more or less forgotten).

I've managed a brief update of my textbook. I've rearranged the problems a little bit so that it saves paper by being more space efficient, and in doing so cut out about 10% of the pages (it comes out to about one page every two or three sections). Those pages will come back in the next edition when I put in the chapter review sections, plus a few more needed sections. I've also rearranged one of the chapters that I decided was completely out of order and fixed a large number of typos in the solutions. It's too bad that I need to have the new textbook submitted before the semester is over, as this means that the second half of the book will remain largely unedited.

My $200 has been sent in for the backgammon tournament in November. Based on a couple loosely defined metrics, I'm supposedly playing anywhere between a mid-level intermediate player to a low-level open player. But with a limited amount of live experience at those levels, I can't really say with confidence that those metrics are accurate.

Enough rambling. Time to grade.

Is September really thre-fifths over already?

2009-09-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

Where did this month go? Without realizing it, I've already squandered away the first four weeks of the semester. I spent much of this week getting midterms ready. I try to keep about two weeks ahead of the classes so that I have a little security buffer in case I start getting lazy.

As expected, the textbook has a good number of typos being discovered. However, I failed to realize that textbook orders happen in mid-October, and in order to avoid the beginning of semester SNAFU of not having books, I need to have the revisions ready when the textbook orders are placed. That means that over 500 pages of material needs to be reviewed and errors need to be caught. I've started into the process of revising a few things, but there's no guarantee it will actually be complete before that deadline. I'll just do as much as I can and start worrying about getting it ready for a real publisher in the summer.

In the back of my mind, I keep reminding myself that I should do something about my third year review. I haven't really looked into it just yet, but I feel like it's one of those things that just fills the time you give it, so by holding off on doing something I can make that time more efficient.

I've decided to play at the Intermediate level backgammon tournament this November. The entry fee jumps from $50 to $250 to do that, so I'm doing this at the cost of waiting a little longer to play poker. I guess that's fine since I'm a bit too busy for poker right now anyway. Even though I feel like I'm getting better, I still have such a long way to go before I start to consider myself good at that game. I also need to make sure that I think more carefully about the game over the next month and try to fill a couple leaks that I know I must have. I've got some mandatory voluntary unpaid leave days to use up this semester, so I'm going to take those two days and apply them during the tournament. I've already got the scheduling worked out so that no content is lost for any of those classes.

I finished reading "Fooled by Randomness" a couple days ago. It's a rather interesting look at how randomness leads people to think that trends exist where they really don't. I thought the following thought experiment was the most interesting one:

Suppose that you have a room full of 1,000 stock market traders, and that the probability of any particular trader being successful (profitable) for any particular year is 50%. After one year, you'll have 500 successful traders. After two years, 250 market winners. After three years, 125 market winners. In fact, even after 7-8 years, you still expect to have some people who have been very successful in the market, but this due to nothing more than pure luck.

The implication of this is that in a system for which luck plays a large role, it's extremely difficult to determine whether one's success in the seemingly long-term scenario is truly related to anything meritorious that they have done, or whether it's just luck. What matters is not the number of successes, but the number of successes relative to the number of attempts. Once again, it makes me want to learn some actuarial things.

I'm now in the middle of "The Prodigal God" by Timothy Keller. That's a short book that I should probably finish very shortly. It's a different look at the parable of the prodigal son that's particularly insightful in the context of the broken world of American Evangelicalism.

As I was reading it, I was reminded of a little pet peeve I have with some testimonies that people give with regard to things like service or short-term mission work. Sometimes, these testimonies end with people sharing about how they have been blessed so much for what they did. I'm not going to say that they weren't blessed for what they did, or that such blessings are somehow a bad thing. However, that feeling of blessedness should not be a selling point to others as to why they should do the good work. Why? It makes the good work a selfish work: "You should do this because *YOU* will be blessed."

What about doing a good work for the sake of doing a good work? "Did I have a good time? No. It sucked. It was a miserable trip. I'm tired and sore, the food was awful, and I got diarrhea from the water. I cut my hands up pretty badly helping to build that house. But those people needed a place to live, so I went. If there's another family that needs one, I'll go back." To me, this (made-up) testimony rings of a much deeper truth about service than a warm fuzzy sales pitch.

The appropriate metric for a good work is the amount of good done for the one being served, not the one who is serving.

I guess that's enough rambling for tonight.

Back in the routine

2009-08-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

The new semester is rolling full speed ahead now.

My textbook is a slight disappointment. It turns out that the CSN print shop didn't actually turn it into a textbook... or a reader... it's just a pile of papers that have been hole-punched and shrink-wrapped. It's a little sad, actually. And it arrived on the third day of class despite keeping on top of the paperwork to have it ready for the start of the semester. The hunt for errors and typos has already started. I already don't like how I did one of the section. But I've decided to hold off making corrections to the original files for a while.

My other two classes seem to be off to a good start. One only has four students, and the other has eight. It's good to be teaching higher level classes. The students I was afraid of having in the harder class aren't there, which is good for me. Those students were already under-prepared when I had them last semester and this is one of the harder math courses. I think the balance of the class is better than it would have been, too.

I have a small 12-month CD that's maturing soon. Interest rates on these things were about 4.5% a year ago. Now it's 1.5%. I guess I should have locked in that rate for longer. I remember hearing somewhere that in the early 80s, you could get CDs at 16-20% interest rates. But I guess inflation was similarly high, so it wasn't exactly a win unless you were able to make a long term investment. I would like to think that rates like that (and inflation like that) won't happen any time soon, but the economy is volatile and who knows what will happen in the next 12 months. When I start thinking about these things, it makes me wonder whether I should go take some actuarial classes and learn more about these type of financial risk models and related calculations. I don't want to become an actuary, but having the extra knowledge in my background would be both interesting and useful.

The church political season is here. We have a new governance to pass, and we have a small group of people who don't like change. So there's going to be a strange sort of campaigning going on for the next month. Last time we voted, it would have only taken 6 votes to change from no to yes for us to reach the 75% supermajority. So I don't think it will be all that hard to do. We just need a decent get-out-the-vote effort. We've got some procedural updates that will help this, too. In a way, it's weird to be politicking at church. On the other hand, whenever you have a vote, you have politics. That's just how it is.

I've spent some time this week arguing on the internet about Newcomb's Paradox. It's a fun little philosophical puzzle that has a number of "easy" resolutions, but because philosophy isn't fun if the problem is easily resolved, you reject those as solutions and instead try to make sense out of something that no longer makes sense. Here's how it was set up for this particular discussion:

Someone walks up to you and offers you $1,000. But he warns you of a catch. Last week, some very smart person made a prediction. If he predicted that you would return the $1,000 then he secretly deposited $1,000,000 in your bank account. But if he predicted you would take the money, then he did nothing. Since his prediction was last week, nothing you do today can affect the outcome. Do you take the $1,000?

Of course you do! The money is either already there, or already not there. But (as the paradox goes) the predictor knew you were going to think that way, and therefore didn't put the million in the bank. If (as the paradox goes) you had given back the $1,000 you would have had $1,000,00 in the bank.

What creates the paradox is that you are told to assume that you cannot affect the outcome, but any analysis you perform necessarily requires you to assume some sort of correlation between your decision and the outcome. This correlation turns into a causation in the analysis, and that's a contradiction because you started with no causation.

(Of course, real philosophers have much more nuanced and technical ways of arguing about this, and not being a philosopher I don't really know what they really have to say about it. I'm sure I could waste even more time searching the internet, probably starting with a wikipedia article, but I'm not going to do that. I care enough to argue about it with random people on the internet, but I don't care enough to do actual research.)

Anyway, it amuses me to do this type of thing sometimes. Maybe I learn something in the process, too. Or maybe not. I don't know if I'm any smarter for having spent time thinking about Newcomb's Paradox. If someone walks up to me on the street, I'm still going to take the $1,000.

I'm slowly getting this regular reading thing going again. I read "Too Small to Ignore" by Wess Stafford. I got his book for free at the Leadership Summit. It's a good read. I don't think it's particularly deep or insightful, but he brings a unique perspective to the table about things because his background is so different (and dark in some places). I don't know what I'm going to read next.

60 days of waiting, one day of work

2009-08-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Before:

After:

It was a lot of waiting and letter writing, but it's done. I no longer have 400 square yards of dead grass (not shown). The lawn has been removed and the overgrown bushes have been trimmed back. I'm surprised how much better things look without those bushes being gigantic and in the way. The new plants will take time to mature, but they should fill in the space a little bit more.

The landscaper came in and basically did it one day. He had to come back the next morning because I was on campus and couldn't let him into the garage to test and program the timer. What's really amusing (or frustrating, depending on how you want to view it) is that the HOA took about sixty times as long to approve the work than the work itself took. For such a small thing, they sure put up a huge fuss. But I achieved total victory by getting it done while managing to avoid all fines associated to the dead grass (and I didn't even have to attend the hearing that they threatened me with).

All of this finished just in time for classes to start on Monday. My textbook won't arrive from the print shop until Tuesday, so we're having to print up the first few sections for our students. Year three of teaching begins in two days. For some unknown reason, I feel less prepared than usual. Hopefully, I won't wake up Monday morning to discover that I've completely forgotten something.

Beginnings, middles, and ends... but in no particular order

2009-08-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today is the day the Architectural Review Committee was supposed to meet and hopefully approve my landscaping plan. The 30 day process is now about 60 days old, and I'm getting bored of the 400 square feet of dead grass. I'm planning on calling the office on Monday morning to find out where things stand. Will they find another reason to deny it? We shall see.

Last week was the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. I was very impressed with the quality of speakers and the content. The clear winner was Gary Hamel. I wish I could get a recording of his talk, but it's not going to be made available. I had never heard of him before, but apparently he was the #1 most influential business person in 2008 according to the Wall Street Journal and is the most reprinted author of the Harvard Business Review. There's nothing that he said that is worth rambling about here, but everything he said was golden.

Coming away from the conference, I realized that I really haven't done any real reading in the past year or so. I've read some stuff, but I've really drifted away from reading things that are challenging. So I've decided that I'm going to buy some books from Amazon and try to start up that habit again.

The net effect of the Summit is that things are moving at church once again. I've started to push the governance change that we had hoped to pass a year ago, and it looks like it's on its way. The vote is scheduled for September 27, and we're getting a full informational blitz ready to go.

I'm in the middle of learning PHP/MySQL right now. I've been slowly toying around with it, but I want to get a little more focused. I think I've got all the basic structures down, which means I'm really just going to have to dump a lot of time into programming. I am looking for some place to host the programs when it's all finished. There's a chance of getting something on the school system's webpage, but I've got to wait and see whether it gets approved.

Next week marks the beginning of the new academic year. My textbook has not yet been printed. It worries me a little bit, but I trust the bookstore to make sure it happens. I've got the first couple weeks' notes ready to go for my other classes, but I've decided to wait until I get textbook in hand to get to work on that class. I don't know why, but there's something about holding the actual textbook that is more motivating than staring at a PDF.

I've started to settle back into a "normal" financial cycle. I no longer have to pay rent for the apartment, and most of the big house expenses have been covered (except for the landscaping). This means it's time to start saving up money again. I've got to get some emergency cash in place, and then I'll get back to playing some live poker. I'm thinking of playing poker at the casino down the street instead of going all the way to the strip. The game I'm now playing can be found there, and I've heard that the action is pretty good. But I probably won't go play for at least a few months.

One week to go... and at least another 2.5 weeks to go

2009-07-30T23:06:00.000-07:00

The summer semester is one week from being over. I think I've broken most of my students. While nobody has cried in class, I know of a couple who have come close and there are stories circulating about students going home and crying. I warned them that they were crazy at the beginning of the semester. And if they weren't then, they are now. A 15 week, 5 unit math class squeezed into 6 weeks isn't an easy task. The second midterm is tomorrow, and the final exam next Friday (in a regular class, these would be 3-4 weeks apart). They just need to hold it together for one more week.

I won't be there for them on either Thursday or Friday next week, which is a bit unfortunate, but I'll be attending a leadership summit (http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/2009/). I won't be at Willow Creek, but at a satellite center in town. It's an interesting time at church, with a lot of things starting to converge all on the next couple months. My brain tells me that this convergence is somehow important in the life of the church because of the types of interactions that are coming together. Small groups hopefully kick off well, church governance stuff may (finally) get pushed through, a change in how the budget is handled... it's a lot of stuff. And I'm kind of in the middle of it all. I hope to have more clarity after the summit next week.

In the meantime, my application for changing the landscape got denied. I called the office a couple days after the meeting to discover that they wanted some rock and turf samples. I don't know how four rocks and a 6 inch square piece of turf will help them make a significantly more informed decision about whether my landscaping proposal is decent, but that's what they want. It also would have been useful if they had listed this on the application form in some way, instead of giving me an indemnification form that wasn't referred to at all in the instructions, or the "Neighbor Impact Statement" that asked for signatures of my rear-facing neighbors (despite this being a front yard landscaping). We've been talking systems at church, and it amuses me greatly to see broken systems in action in a place other than church. (Well... I need to let a amuse me because otherwise I'd be completely frustrated with the fact that I dropped off my initial paperwork on June 17, and approval won't come until AT LEAST August 14.)

Anyway, I've already dropped off my rocks, and early next week I'll drop off the turf. While I'm there, I'm going to pick up a copy of the minutes from both the June and July Architectural Review Committee meetings just to see what sorts of stuff that they do. I intend to write a letter to the board of directors pointing out the stupidity of it all. Maybe they'll pay attention, maybe not. I'm a little worried because I might be looking forward to writing that letter a little too much.

There was a little ant problem that was starting to brew here, but I learned of a nice little ant killer called "Terro." This stuff is pretty amazing. It's a little gel that contains borax (which I think is the active ingredient) that you put on a little piece of cardboard near the ant trail. I wish I had a time lapse of it, because I think in less than 10 minutes, a my little blot of gel was being swarmed by ants. I went back later in the evening and reloaded it, with the same effect. But by the next day, the ants were basically all gone, and by the third day they were completely gone. I kind of want to go find some ants somewhere else just to try it out again.

Only in Vegas?

2009-07-19T23:35:00.001-07:00

I went to a baseball game last night with Daniel and his parents. The local team is the 51s (think Area 51). It was Oscar Goodman Bobblehead night.

It's appropos that he's with that showgirl. Apparently, she's in many of the public appearances that the mayor makes. I would assume she gets a salary of some sort from the city... only in Vegas?

The 51s had a 4 run lead for a big chunk of the game, but gave it up in the 8th and 9th innings. They ended up winning in the 10th inning with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly to short left. The throw was a bit off so the runner made it pretty easily.

(Apparently, they did this promotion back in 2000 as well, and these things became a collector's item. Wikipedia always has all sorts of random tidbits of not particularly verifiable information.)

The summer semester is half over

2009-07-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have drifted by and nothing special seems to be going on these days. It's desert hot. We've been hovering around 110 the last few days, but the monsoon has come through here and we've picked up some moisture and thunder, which is bringing the temperature down just a bit.

I've spent quite a bit of time in the last couple weeks learning PHP and MySQL. Just like any programming language, the hardest part is getting the syntax right. I think I've reached the point where I know what to say in order to get certain things done, so now I just need to sit down for a while and code. I haven't quite felt motivated enough to do this just yet.

The precalculus class is transitioning into trigonometry tomorrow, which will be a good change of pace for the class (which is noticeably fatigued -- as am I). I think the trigonometry is easier than the algebra.

My textbook has been approved for the Fall semester. It turns out that instead of 2 sections of Math 093, we've got 6 sections. This is a little scary for me because I was hoping for a smaller trial run of this textbook to work out some of the kinks in it. All of the classes will be using the same book (one of the part time teachers also didn't like the old textbook, so he's on board with the change, and the other one is brand new, so he has no real point of reference). There's nothing left to do but wait to see how things play out.

I'm a little annoyed with Cox right now, although after spending 40 minutes on the phone with them I'm less annoyed (the guy on the other end was very helpful and patient as we sorted through the mess). I pay my bill via an autopay system. When I moved, they had to do some bookkeeping of changing accounts and transferring charges to the new account and all of that. This is all fine. Until they decide to charge me $400, and then not credit it back. Well, they did... sort of. On the next months' statement I have a $300 credit. I called them so that they could refund the difference back to my account (my money in my pocket is better than my money in theirs), but that's going to take 4-8 weeks to process. Furthermore, they charged my account another $120 for equipment that I returned, but (once again) the charge comes this month and the credit comes next month. So that means that if I didn't call them to get this squared up, they would be pre-charging me for about 8 months worth of internet service (no phone, no cable). Hopefully, no more surprises are coming there.

I'm still waiting for the HOA to approve the landscaping. It's been 30 days, so I'm going to call them tomorrow and find out what's going on. In the meantime, they sent me a letter informing me that the grass is dying. Of course it is! I'm getting ready to pull it out, so why would I continue to dump water (ie, money) onto it. If they would just give me approval to do the landscaping, there would be no problem. I find this whole thing to be silly and inefficient.

Later this week, I've got to go back to the apartment to return the keys (finally). And the car isn't always starting up in the mornings, so I'm going to have someone look at it.

Roommate, housewarming, classes, and poker

2009-07-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Have another two weeks flown by without me noticing? I don't know why everything seems like it's moving so fast.

Daniel is moved in now. It's been good to have a roommate again. The evenings are less quiet and just that extra little bit of energy in the house makes me feel slightly more motivated to remain productive when I might otherwise consider taking a nap on the couch. It has also been good to have some conversations about church things. I know I've mentioned a number of times that I would eventually say something, but I just don't think it's going to happen now. The events in the last several months have (sort of) wrapped themselves up, and I don't think there's much value for me to go back through it again.

The housewarming party went pretty well. I think there were about 16 people who showed up. I guess it's now officially just another home. I was sort of hoping that the church people and the faculty people would mingle a little bit, but that didn't pan out so well. The faculty people huddled in the kitchen while the church people gathered in the living room. The church people made the better choice, as there was plenty of seating in the living room, but none in the kitchen.

My summer class just finished its first week. On the first day of class, I showed the students the numbers that demonstrate that this class is essentially a full time job. I've already lost a couple students, but that's to be expected. I'm actually a little surprised at the size of the core students. They are all working hard, they're all moving towards the goal, and I hope they all make it. We had a minor issue with the web page (IT is rebuilding the web server, and it has caused a couple problems with access), but I think it will all be squared up on Monday when I make a separate webpage hosted somewhere else.

Last night, I played some live 10/20 limit for the first time in a while. I ran incredibly poor, burning through $500 in less than an hour. There isn't a whole lot I could have done differently, and it's just one of those things where you lose and you just have to take it. This money represents the last of my live poker cash cache (after redepositing $1000 into my bank account to cover the housing expenses of these first couple months). This means that I'm definitely not going to play poker for a while. It was still fun because I really went to meet up with some people I know from online. There was a catered party that evening, and I was there for the first hour and a half, but decided to leave a little early. I had a small headache brewing (probably slight dehydration since I didn't survive at the 10/20 table long enough to actually order a water), and so I just went home, drank some water, and laid on the couch for a bit. I'm still waiting to hear what I missed out on.

At the end of the busy week

2009-06-19T22:11:00.001-07:00

I'm so close to finishing the first draft of that textbook. I think one more day really ought to do it. I've been pounding out about a chapter a day of problems and solutions, and these last couple chapters are shorter and simpler than the others, so I really, really think I can do it in a day. I guess I'll find out on Monday.

I actually need a moment of mental decompression after the last couple weeks. I've been putting in many (somewhat tedious) hours into that textbook, and while the vacation to San Diego was a nice distraction, it also took away three days of work. I think it's all catching up to me. So I expect this to get long and rambling and somewhat stream of consciousness.

Friday evening, Jeremy hosted a games night, and I was able to see some more GCFers. If I'm not leaving anyone out, I think that makes 13 people in two days that I had an opportunity to reconnect with [dangling preposition]. There's a lot of good community that I left behind in San Diego and I have yet to find something similar to it out here in Vegas. We played one long game of Shadows over Camelot (and won).

I guess I would be somewhat amiss if I didn't mention the puff pastry shells that someone brought. I didn't know that they made frozen shaped shells, but Pepperidge Farm has 6 shells in a box (or 24 mini shells). That's a lot of elegance without a lot of work. They also bring much more height and flavor than the filo dough shells. I'll have to keep that in mind for the next time I make some sort of party hors d'oeuvres.

Saturday morning, more games (Galaxy Trucker -- definitely a buy). Then it was off to Santa Ana to hang out with Justin and Janet and Janet's family. Apparently, I'm some sort of poker celebrity to them with my one published article. Of course, we played a couple of hours and I won exactly two pots. One of those pots was a semibluff flush draw when everyone seemed weak, and the other was a rivered flush that got paid off. But it was still fun. Afterward, I talked poker with them for a while (another hour?), and it was fun. I drove back to San Diego that night, getting in just after midnight.

Sunday morning church. Scott preached on the nature of truth and the valid testimony of witnesses, using Val Thomas as an example of a miracle that was verified through the testimony of witnesses. He didn't go into John 9 (at least, I don't think he did), but that would have been a good Biblical example of testimony that unbelievers simply could not reject (but could rationalize away). I'm also reminded of an incident in the biology department where a faculty there had a dream about Barbaro's broken leg before the Derby in 2006. He shared the dream with a friend before the race, so there's some witness there. (Unfortunately, I don't have any names to go with it, so this lives in the realm of anecdote for now.) There was an interesting line that I jotted down: Doctrine that sounds good is not necessarily good doctrine. I like phrases that turn like that.

I got to see a play in the afternoon with Betsy. I think it was called "Unusual Acts of Devotion." I guess I didn't smile and laugh at the same time everyone else did, but I've grown accustomed to fact that I end up seeing things differently than other people, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. The play was entertaining, but I felt it was a bit garbled and confused with trying to weave too much stuff together (and what's with the murderer on the water tower?). But maybe that's what it's supposed to be and I'm just not getting it. Perhaps it's some big jumbled mess that is reflective of the types of messes people find themselves in when they make bad decisions. Oh well.

That evening, there was a free outdoor concert in Coranado. The band was decent, playing a lot of oldies and providing a good ambiance for the warm afternoon (that turned cool late when the marine layer started to filter in). The food we brought was very international. There was a hummus/falafel box from Trader Joe's, some brie and crackers, some sushi, and some blueberries. Not a cohesive menu, but everything tasted good so it doesn't matter.

I left San Diego early Monday morning, getting back here around lunch time, and life returned to "normal" -- where normal is really much busier than normal because of that textbook.

The second summer session starts in just over a week, and I haven't even put together the syllabus yet. I've got a schedule outlined, but besides that there's nothing. This is another reason that I really want to finish the textbook on Monday. It's a 5 day a week class that meets for 2.5 hours at a time. It's going to play out like a sprint for the students, and I hope they can keep up. I've also got some thoughts about some of the comments I got on my last set of evaluations, but I'll get to that later.

Daniel is moving his stuff in tomorrow, but won't be moving himself in until later next week. I think it will be good to have a roommate again. It resembles community more than living alone does. I've known Daniel for years (from my UCSB days) and I've been hanging out with him nearly weekly for about two years now, so there shouldn't be any real surprises.

I got some guitar playing in tonight. It's been a while since I've just goofed around. I was listening to a youtube clip and found the tempo to be just right for my mood. (Eric Clapton playing "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VukiMyI45sA. The first verse of the opening solo is really what got me going. It's standard blues stuff, and that's probably why I like it.)

I think my brain has been fully decompressed now.

A moment of pause in a busy week

2009-06-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting around the house right now for the Southern Nevada Water Authority to stop by and verify that I have a lawn so that I can trash it and get money for it. So rather than watch TV for another hour, I'm going to take a moment to get my thoughts together about the last couple weeks.

The trip to San Diego was good. On the way out, I stopped by Murietta to see Craig and Kelly. They're doing quite well. They've got kid #3 on the way now. They're also relatively new homeowners like myself. They have a nice three bedroom, 1.5 bath(?), two-story place that they've been working on upgrading. We had lunch together at a little Mexican hole-in-the-wall and just hung out for about an hour or so.

After getting into San Diego, I spent some time on campus to check email and such (all my codes still work in the math department). Then I went over to Jeremy and Aileen's, who I stayed with for the weekend. Jeremy and I got caught up a bit and I think we played some board games... or maybe we just did that on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but not Thursday. I don't remember.

Jeremy mentioned a faith and academics forum that he's going to try to host over the summer. It sounds like something worth considering out here. It would bring a different 'flavor' to the somewhat non-existent faith discussion out here, and would also highlight religious academic thought in a way that people out here probably have not encountered. But I need to do some background reading, first.

Later that evening, I stopped by a GCF small group and saw some people that I haven't seen in a while, plus I got to meet a couple new people. It's been two years since I graduated, and life just keeps moving on. I think this is the first time back where I've been that old-timer who the older students know but not the younger ones.

It didn't really strike me until later, but I think I miss the academic-Christian environment. There are different types of thoughts and conversations that are had there that aren't really had in other places. I guess this means I might need to try to create such an environment out here, but I'm just going to let that thought percolate for a while.

On Friday, I had lunch with Karen, Chad, and Oliver. This is the first time meeting Oliver face-to-face, though I do have a picture of him from a Christmas letter. He's a big little baby who is "asymptotically approaching crawling." He's also earning some money while helping further research in child development. After lunch, he was going to get a non-invasive brain scan. Karen is making progress towards completing her degree, and Chad is still doing GIS work.

The SWNA guy just came, and I'm approved for starting the landscaping work... and this also means it's time for me to go to work and try to finish up that textbook. I'll guess this post will come in parts.

Now I have this ugly lawn to deal with

2009-06-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

The inside of the house is mostly set up now. No more piles of boxes in the living room! (Those boxes in the picture have since been cleaned up.)

But then there's this...

The lawn took a beating in that period of time between when the other people moved out and when I moved in. But I don't really want a lawn out here anyway. Little patches of green in the middle of the desert seem so out of place to me. Besides, I can walk across the street to the public golf course and get all the green I want at someone else's expense.

I'm meeting with a couple of contractors in the next couple days to get some estimates on changing the landscaping to something more desert friendly. There's a program going on with the water authority where they will pay you $1.50 per square foot of grass you remove. I've got about 400 square feet, so that's about $600 for doing something I would have eventually wanted to do anyway.

I'm done with the examples for my textbook, so now all I need to do is generate problems and solutions. My minor programming background is helping out here because I can make the computer generate both problems and solutions faster and more randomly than I can do on my own. It's currently around 270 pages, and I'm expecting it to be about 350 pages when it's done. I really want to be done with the textbook by the end of the week, but that's very ambitious. As soon as I'm done with this, I need to start work on prepping my Math 128 class that starts on June 29. I haven't done much yet, and we changed books, so this means I've got a little extra work to do.

I'm going to be visiting San Diego in about a week! My vacation time has already been booked, and it's going to be great. If I remember to bring my camera, I'll take pictures. If I don't, I won't. I'm usually not very good at remembering to take pictures, so don't get your hopes up.

I also need to plan a housewarming party. Or at least get someone to plan it for me.

Moved and partly set up

2009-05-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

A moving party of 7 people came by to help me ship my stuff to the house. There were a couple couples from church plus some IV students. It all went pretty smoothly with no known casualties. I've spent a reasonable amount of time in the last couple days getting myself set up.

The living room is still a mess. But it's less of a mess than it was the first day. I wanted to find play a game of hide and seek with that photo, but there's nothing all that exciting going on.

This is a trick that I learned when I was growing up. I took the doors out of the closet in this bedroom because I don't really want to use the closet as a closet. Instead, I've put my MythTV computer in there (it's like a homemade TIVO). The extra floor and wall space (since I don't need to worry about blocking the closet anymore) give me quite a bit more room. This is the same room as the next picture.

My computer is in the opposite corner, which allows me to have the computer TV on in the background while I work or play games or whatever. You don't really see it, but in the back left corner I've got the guitar stuff stashed. I don't know what else will go in this room, but my mom has suggested putting the futon in there. I'll get there when I get there.

I've moved on to chapter seven of the textbook, but with my parents in town next week I'm not sure if I'm going to have as much time to work on it. I really, really want to have it done by early June, so I'm going to have to be a little more focused and efficient.

Almost there...

2009-05-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I move into the house (finally!). I'm about 90% packed now.

What's left? A few more kitchen things, the TV and its parts, and finally this computer that I'm using right now. (You also don't see the bed, futon, and some bookshelves in that picture.)

One more house thing that I'm going to have to confront is the landscaping. There's some grass there that isn't doing so well, and I don't particularly like the thought of growing a patch of grass in the middle of the desert, so I've got to figure out what to do.

In the apartment, there's just some cleaning to do. When everything is moved out, I'm going to go back through with the vacuum cleaner and try to clean it up a bit. I don't have a sub-leaser, and I think the prospects of finding one is getting smaller with every week that passes, so I might be stuck.

I haven't been able to put quite as much time into that textbook as I have wanted over the last week, but I'm close to 60% done with the examples and primary content. The current chapter will be a little difficult, but after this everything should be more straightforward. The current chapter is about making the transition from pure computation to algebraic patterns of thought (which is always a difficult hurdle), and then after that it's back to the mechanics of algebra.

I played at the backgammon club this week and lost my first match. I don't know why it's so hard for me to win there when I can keep pace with Jason (and by that, I mean feel like I'm playing somewhat competitively against him even though I know he's playing better than I am).

Now that I have the key....

2009-05-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

My life is once again going into boxes. So far, it's just books.

I should be starting in on clothes and linens, but I'm at the computer typing. And I'll have more pictures of the house after I move. I'm thinking that next week on Saturday will be the day, but I have to get confirmation from the friend who has access to a truck that this works.

I went downtown to get my water and sewer established with the city. I have a couple more things to do (trash/recycling, gas, and homestead), but that will have to wait until Monday. I went by the house and grabbed the mail and wandered around in the house for a couple minutes. Unfortunately, I left my inspection report at home, so I wasn't able to go through the list again and start to prioritize. There's a retired man in my small group at church who has volunteered to help me make the little fixes (he has tools, and I don't!). So that will probably happen on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. My parents will be here on May 25, and I hope that I'll be pretty settled by then.

All my grading is already done, so I'm in a pretty good mood. I managed to once again make someone in the Basic and Water building think I'm a student. I was dressed in my usual not-teaching attire of shorts and a T-shirt. I wonder how much longer I'll be able to pull that one off. The commencement ceremony is tomorrow evening. It should be fun.

This also means that I'll be able to put full focus on my textbook. I really don't want to use the same Math 093 textbook again. I've used it for two semesters, and I don't think I can stand the thought of using it one more time. So I simply have to get it done. My goal is to have it done in three weeks. And then I can focus on the summer class.

I don't have the key... yet...

2009-05-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

I went back to Livermore this last weekend for Corwin's wedding. It was a very nice wedding. It had a well-organized yet laid back feel. I don't have any pictures, but in theory there should be all sorts of pictures posted by others on facebook and perhaps other image-sharing sites.

Anyway, because I was back at home, I wasn't here to get the key from the realtor. But this will be fixed tomorrow evening. I don't know exactly when I'm going to move, but it's going to be sometime soon. I really want to get over there to start playing around with some minor do-it-yourself type fixes (some plumbing stuff). I also need to schedule a time for the insulation guy (to increase the insulation from a mere 5 inches to something like 18 inches), the locksmith (to change the locks... I don't know who else currently holds a key to my house, and that displeases me), and Nevada Energy (to install a free programmable thermostat).

I would move sooner, but the semester is coming to a close, which means a lot of grading must happen over the next few days. I've started packing, but not really. I have some books in some boxes, and some clothes in a suitcase.

I owe a lot of money now

2009-04-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

I signed the papers on the home today. I now have an inch-thick stack of papers with my initials and signature all over them. It makes me feel very broke. I don't think I've ever spent $21,000 out of pocket in one day (down payment plus closing costs). Plus there's the 30 years of debt that is to come. But on the other hand, I got a good home in a good location for a good price. Time to start saving again to get the emergency fund back up to par. I guess I'm going to go back to my grad school days and tighten up the spending for a few months while I do that. I guess I get an $8000 tax credit, which will be nice.

I won't actually get access to the home until after Corwin's wedding next weekend, and I probably won't be able to start moving until at least another week after that because it's finals week.

I'm going to need to start a to do list soon. There are a few minor issues that need to be addressed. Some plumbing fixtures are leaking (probably just need to replace the seals), maybe some minor touch-up painting, and adding insulation to the attic. This last one I might pay for someone else to do, if I can get a good price for it. The blown cellulose insulation looks pretty easy to do, but it also looks like a full-day project that might be more mess than I really want to deal with. (There might be some more tax credits for energy savings here, and I'll have to look into that as well.)

Church stuff... I'll get to that eventually. Besides the sudden and unfortunate departure of the senior pastor, giving falling short of expenses, and some conflict within the staff, everything's going perfectly. Church really shouldn't be a messy business, but it is.

There was another backgammon tournament last weekend. I played in the beginner tournament (again) and did poorly (again). I was playing Jason yesterday and he asked me why I can somehow manage to beat him (and be generally somewhat competitive against him) but can't beat the poor play in the beginner tournament. I blame luck, just like every other losing gambler out there. I really don't think I got outplayed or anything when I was there (though I recognize I made some mistakes).

The semester is almost over. Horray for that. That textbook is coming along again. I'm halfway through chapter 3 of 10 (or 11), but I'm turning it into more of a workbook of examples and problems, which will speed things up tremendously.

Going through the process

2009-04-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

Another week had gone by, and the house buying process is moving forward unabated.

* Inspection ($150)

There were a number of small things found in the inspection. There are some plumbing things, such as stiff or leaky faucets, but those things should be do-it-yourself fixes. I think they will be, anyway. I might also increase the insulation because it's a little low (5 inches) and insulation is important in a place like Las Vegas. The inspector suggested that this is a do-it-yourself thing, too. I'll have to do some research on these things (plus potentially replacing the sink).

* Appraisal ($350)

This hasn't actually happened yet, but it's supposed to happen on Monday.

* Locking up a loan

Initially, I thought I was headed for an FHA loan, but with 10% down and strong credit, the broker was able to find a conventional loan instead. The difference is small decrease in the monthly payment, but the possibility of getting rid of the PMI in only a couple years as opposed to 5 years. Two or three years less of paying PMI is a good thing. And only paying 5% interest is a good thing, too.

http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.htm

* Home insurance

I spent an hour today talking with the insurance agent. We went over the basics of coverage and spent a while playing around with the numbers to determine the best coverage. Something I didn't know about home owners' insurance is that a claim for $0 is still counts as a claim (unlike auto insurance), and that a lot of people shoot themselves in the foot by making a small claim (burglary, for example), collecting a couple thousand dollars, and then paying it all back with increased premiums for the next five years.

* Apartment issues

Because this is all happening so fast, I'm going to have to pay double-rent (apartment plus house) for a few months, which sets me back a few thousand dollars. My lease ends at the end of July, and I really wasn't expecting to land a house this fast in a foreclosure/short sale dominated market. I might try to find a short term sub-leaser, or I might just eat the cost. I haven't really gotten that far yet. I'm still gathering up boxes to move.

In the meantime, the rest of life goes on. Classes end in a month, there's a backgammon tournament next week, I turned prime, and church things (which I still haven't had time to think through) continue to happen.

And finally... PICTURES!

The view from the street:

The view through the living room and kitchen when you come in the front door:

Looking back towards the front door from the living room:

Strangely enough, I don't actually have any good pictures of the kitchen or the backyard. The pictures of the bedrooms are quite dull, so this is all you get for now. After I move in and start to get things set up, I'll have more pictures.

And just like that, it's basically over...

2009-04-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

I really meant to chart the last couple weeks a little better. I wanted to actually type up some of my house-buying thoughts and experiences, but that mental decompression happened while lying in bed. But as best as I can remember...

Last week on Friday, I visited 5 more homes with my realtor. The first was pretty nice at a reasonable price, but the second and third bedrooms were really small and awkwardly shaped. It felt like a home that I would definitely have to move out of at some point because it wasn't set up for a family. I called it a "young professional couple with no kids" home.

There were a couple run down homes, and then one more home that looked good. It was a two story home with a nice layout. It felt more like a "family" home. It was also down the street from a nice park and in a neighborhood where I saw a bunch of kids playing around during a drive-through.

The last house of the day was the *ONLY* house I visited that was a straight sale, not a foreclosure. It was another "family" feeling home. The bedrooms were good-sized, the kitchen was nice and open with plenty of shelf space (gas stove!), but most importantly it would be move-in ready with no further purchases. All of the foreclosures had issues with the appliances being removed by the previous owners (who were basically trying to get as much as they could out of the house). But since this one was a straight sale from occupants that seemed fairly responsible, this wasn't an issue at all.

After walking through the house for a little while, I got a sense that this might be a good choice. The price was good, the location was nice, and everything seemed to be in place. After chatting with the realtor for a while, I let him know that I was seriously thinking about making a move for that place, but I wanted to think about it for a little while.

On Saturday, I sent him an email to let him know that I wanted to go back, but with a camera to take some pictures, and to size it up a little bit more carefully. We were going to go in on Sunday, but the occupants said that they would be moving out that day and that the cleaners would be there on Monday. So instead, we waited until Wednesday to go back. I also had the realtor look up a few more houses, just to keep the ball rolling in case things didn't pan out.

Wednesday rolled around, and we visited two more homes besides the target home. Neither home was something that I would buy. One of them clearly had an unhappy foreclosure, as it was completely torn up. The previous owner even marked up the walls with how far behind under water the house was when they left. Then we went back to the target home. We walked through one more time (now that it was empty), and I gave it some careful thought. I had visited a dozen homes, and this was far above average and did not suffer from the defect of having to replace one or all of the major appliances at a price that seemed very reasonable. The realtor told me that there was another home nearby that sold for about the same price, but needed several thousand dollars extra to make it move-in ready (another foreclosure).

I sat in the living room by myself for a bit and just contemplated various things, then went out front and told the realtor to go ahead and make an offer.

From there, everything happened very fast (for reasons that I'll explain in a moment). This morning, I met with the realtor to sign papers to make the offer, we got a counter offer this afternoon, and I signed the deal just a couple hours ago. Tomorrow, I'm going to meet with the loan officer to submit all sorts of paperwork (W2s, bank statements, pay stubs), and that starts the appraisal/inspection phase of the story.

The owner of the home is a woman who lives in Florida. The occupants were the daughter of this woman and her husband (or boyfriend). Apparently, they have run into hard economic times, as their counter offer indicated that they have very little cash on hand to take to closing (they increased the sales price, but will pay more of my closing costs, which basically balance out in the end -- and since it's already at a good price, it's not something I'm going to get worked up over). They want to get it off their hands ASAP, and I think they were quite glad to have someone come in and pick it up so quickly after they left. They want to close before the end of the month to avoid paying another month's worth of interest on their loan, so this is all good for me because I know that they're not going to goof around.

So that's it. I'm not quite a home owner, but the ball is rolling down that hill.

And that's only half of what's been going on in the past couple weeks. But I'm a little bit tired right now, and I'll have to talk about the exciting church stuff that's going on whenever I get back to it.

House-hunting for real - Market 1, Aaron 0

2009-03-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it's happening for real. I drove around with my realtor yesterday and visited some houses.

The first house was the clear winner of the day. It was a well-kept home in a great location at a wonderful price. It also turns out to have been put into "Contingent sale" status. This means that someone has made an offer and unless some part of the process falls through, I'm not going to be able to buy it.

Houses 2-4 were all pretty terrible. Strange layouts, a mysterious "4th bedroom" in the garage that probably wasn't up to code, and just some not-so-good looking stuff. House #5 was the second place house, but it wasn't so good. I think I can do better, so I'm going to try to arrange time with the realtor to check out more places next week. After all, there are lots and lots of houses available, so there's no reason to settle for something I don't want.

Equifax threw a little curve ball at me, with a collections that wasn't mind that they said they had cleared but really didn't. So I sent them a follow-up letter and hopefully this gets resolved in the next couple weeks so that if I see something, I can move on it more quickly.

I've got myself set up with a $175000 hard cap with 10% down. This means I will have basically no problem getting a loan and (once the credit report gets cleared up) I should also qualify for a really good interest rate. It looks like the rates are in the low 5% range for 30-year fixed, which is probably about as low as I think it's going to go.

Spring break came and went. I got a lot of stuff done that I wanted to. I have most of my notes ready for the rest of the semester, and I started into chapter 3 of my textbook. In the next week, I have to prepare a midterm for my Math 093 class, but that one is easy to do. This frees me up for all sorts of textbook writing time.

I played some basketball for the first time in a long time this week. At church, they've started a weekly pick-up basketball league, but it's on a night that I teach. It was good to run around a bit, and I'm still feeling a little sore and stiff from it (evidence that I'm quite a bit out of shape).

I was planning to talk to the front office of the apartment complex today to find out about how they would deal with my lease if I buy a house. I know they want 60 days notice (yes... 60 days), but besides that, I want to make sure they don't have any other little policies or anything I need to be aware of. I'll try to remember to take care of that later.

I've decided to go with the Beginner level backgammon tournament again. Jason convinced me that I need to gain more live play experience. I have continued to play against Jason and the computer, but I haven't put as much effort into the analysis as I should be doing if I really intend to get better. I need to make a conscious effort to focus on my mistakes if I ever want to correct them.

A quiet pi day

2009-03-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

I didn't make a pie, nor buy a pie, nor eat any pie today. I think that makes me some sort of failure as a mathematician.

I spent some time today checking out some neighborhoods for potential home-buying. I looked mostly in the area near my apartment. I've got Spring break next week, so that will give me time to scope out other areas that are a little further away. I also spent a bunch of time online looking at house prices and seeing where the houses I could afford might be located. I took an interesting screen shot:

Each flag represents a home for sale. I'm not sure if this part of town was bought up by some investors that got slammed in the downturn or what, but I'm going to drive out that way sometime next week and find out.

I also get to play backgammon at the club next week. I haven't done that since the semester started. There's another tournament coming up in April, and I'll probably play the beginner's level again. Jason made a good point about still being in a position where I lack live play experience. So even though I may be at an intermediate level in terms of knowledge, I don't have enough experience to put that knowledge to good use. I hope I do better this time than I did last time. I certainly play better now than I did then.

Next week, I'm hoping to get all my notes together for the rest of the semester. Initially, I was thinking about just going through mid-April, but I got more done this week than I anticipated, so I might be able to push it all the way to the end. This will also give me more time to focus on that textbook. I'm halfway through chapter 2 now.

It's almost time for Spring Break

2009-03-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

It's one week to Spring Break and a couple days away from Daylight Savings Time. I'm aiming to have most of my class prep for the rest of the semester done by the end of Spring Break. It's a little ambitious, but I think it's within range. If that gets accomplished, then I can focus more time on this textbook that I've been working on. There have been a few points that I have found surprisingly difficult to articulate. For example, trying to explain *why* long division works is frustrating. It's really just a matter of taking a big number and breaking it down into useful smaller numbers that are more useful, but I can't just hand-wave my way past it like I just did. But at the same time, I need to worry about using too many words and making it more complicated in an effort to be technically correct.

There's another backgammon tournament coming up in about a month. Jason thinks that I'm a "middle of the road" intermediate level player, but I might just hang back in the beginner level to gamble smaller ($50 Beginners, $200 Intermediate) and just get more live play experience. On the other hand, the competitor in me thinks it's unfit to be playing below the level of your ability. I've got time to sort it out.

I'm planning to go the library tomorrow to borrow a book or two about home-buying and mortgages. I'm hoping to find something that has a workbook feel to it so that I can run through some of the calculations myself and build some intuition with the numbers. There's a part of me that thinks I should wait a little longer (closer to the end of the year) to try to build up more of a down payment to try to inch it up towards that magical 20%. (I got a good tax refund again, so that's going to help!)

Church stuff continues to go on. They're going to run Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, which seems to be a pretty good program. I have to admit to being much more familiar with Suze Orman's financial philosophy, but what I've heard from Dave Ramsey is that he's pretty similar on most fronts in terms of being generally conservative and focused on debt and money management issues that extend beyond just the bottom line. I'm not sure if I would participate because I'm in good shape financially. It might be good education for me and a common point of reference with others in the church, but I don't think there will be much for me where I am right now. I've got a couple weeks to make a decision about this.