Posted on alt.callahans regarding my recent conversion...

The reason for my conversion has, at it's base, a concept of 'truth', especially regarding to what a thing "is".

My breaks with mainstream Christianity was in having troubles with trying to express the problem with "names" versus what a thing really is.

For example: people would tell me that a person couldn't obtain salvation without "accepting the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross".

The trouble is, what does it mean to "accept the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross"? Even if I granted that it was necessary (and I didn't, but was willing to grant it to put forth my argument), it was incredibly hard to explain that there was a question about "what it means".

( Read more... )

Posted on alt.callahans regarding my recent conversion...

The reason for my conversion has, at it's base, a concept of 'truth', especially regarding to what a thing "is".

My breaks with mainstream Christianity was in having troubles with trying to express the problem with "names" versus what a thing really is.

For example: people would tell me that a person couldn't obtain salvation without "accepting the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross".

The trouble is, what does it mean to "accept the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross"? Even if I granted that it was necessary (and I didn't, but was willing to grant it to put forth my argument), it was incredibly hard to explain that there was a question about "what it means".

( Read more... )

From 12/14/2001

Once I'd arrived in Kent, I'd set up some livejournal entries, and I figured I'd post them once I had internet access from home. How long could that take? Today, I copied them to floppy so I can post them from work... here's the first.




Okay, so driving across the country wasn't nearly the pleasant adventure I had planned it to be. For one thing, I didn't have nearly as much warning as I'd hoped, so I couldn't set up visits with nearly enough people. Secondly, I had to go pretty fast most of the way. Thirdly, I didn't research the route as well as I could have.

One of the funny things about sites at places like Expedia.com is that they give directions, and they even base their drive times on speed limits sometimes, but they don't really give a picture of what you'll be driving through.

There's a lot of Montana that's nice and flat, and there's lots that's pleasantly hilly. However, there's also a mountain pass.

The days where treking through a mountain pass was incredibly dangerous are long past. However, that doesn't mean that it's suddenly safe and easy to drive through a mountain pass. If anyone out there ever needs to know, let me tell you some things.

First, your car should be in good shape. If you're losing power, obviously, you'll be in trouble getting up long grades. However, your alignment also has to be set properly. You don't want to have your steering off even a bit when you're driving down a mountain at 75mph, and only going that slowly because you keep hitting the brakes to drop your speed. Also, your cooling system should be up to snuff so your engine doesn't overheat either going up, or going down. Going down, you see, your car will be in gear, and that means that the wheels will be turning the engine, and hence, working the engine. It's not as bad as, say, driving up a long, steep-ish hill during the summer, but it's work. And cooling doesn't just mean "it was flushed and filled in the past year or two...", because those hoses you have as part of the cooling system are part of the cooling system. Build up the heat, and you build up the pressure, and if one of them bursts, you're in a world of hurt.

Next, though, you have to consider the human factor. That's you... the driver. You don't want to be tired or hungry, or in need of a bathroom break. It's also best if you've learned the art of relaxing while in need of precision control.

See, I don't know how common it is, but I do know that it's a problem for me, and I imagine it's one for a lot of people. When you need precision control, the tendency is to tighten up. How else can you be precise, one might think? But the key to good precision is not to tighten up everything, but to loosen everything... and use only the muscles you absolutely need.

One more thing: consider doing this kind of thing only in the beginning of the day. The difference between "It decided to snow in the morning, and I lost a lot of the daylight I'd have otherwise" and "it decided to snow at night, and I'm driving in the dark with pretty, swirling, hypnotic snow in my headlights" is the difference between... well, between day and night.

See, it seems to be a fact of nature that someone - and it seems to be truck drivers as often as anyone else - figures that a speed limit of 70 means one has to drive at least 80, and if that means driving 80+ mph downhill, around winding blind curves, on slippery roads, well, that is what makes it 'fun'.

I have to admit to being proud of myself for noting such a maniac (I know that's supposed to be reserved for those ahead of you... idiots are the one's behind you, maniacs are the one's ahead of you, but bear with me) from about 300 feet back, while I was trying to pass and the roads were slippery. Braking would have been more dangerous, so I accelerated, pulled over, and did so just in time to make my lane change smoothly and slowly when the maniac rocketted past me. (No, there wasn't *REALLY* a rocket involved; that's an urban legend.)

See, my normal reasoning in bad driving conditions goes as follows: being the hottest driver on the road usually happens because of the burning gasoline splashed across the wreck you made doing something stupid that would normally have been safe, but for something going wrong. I have no desire to be a 'hot driver'... a nice, safe, and possibly behind schedule driver is just fine for me, and I like noticing those things that could have going wrong after I've passed them safely.

Well, this time I had to be fast; this maniac couldn't have slowed down in time to prevent hitting me, and if I'd slowed down, I'd be decreasing the time to collision. Since I'd already started to pass two trucks (or maybe it was a double-trailer truck... I honestly don't remember at this point), slowing down just wouldn't have worked. I don't like speeding up, and every one of my instincts tells me not to...but I did it anyway. Score one for the good guys.

This was a good trip to learn that "relax when you need precision"; see, after getting through the last 50 or so miles of Montana through snow at night, I'd had a lot of chances to work on that. Then, when I discovered that Washington has its own mountain pass, I got in some really good practice.

Actually, Washington is a lot worse that Montana. See, Washington has some really nasty crosswinds, but that's not what makes it worse. No, what makes it worse is the stretch of highway right by the Columbia river.

It's beautiful... and that word is pitifully inadequate to describe it. Wonderful natural rock formations, fields of dried vegetation that you can still imagine in spring or summer colors, the river itself, the mountain landscape near and far... all I could think was "I live here... I can't believe I *LIVE* here!"

There bloody well better be riverboat (or the equivalent) tours of the Columbia, or they'll be answering to an angry ex-east-coaster!

Anyway... the gusts of wind could be bad, but not too bad. The winding roads where a patch of ice could spell disaster could be bad, but not too bad. But trying to keep all those threats in mind while gazing out at some of the most beautiful land I've ever had the privilege to drive through, well, *THAT* was hard.

Well... it's about 1 am, and I'm getting too tired to write much more. Though I really ought to try to stay up later, even if I succeed, it won't be through writing more in this journal entry.

From 12/14/2001

Once I'd arrived in Kent, I'd set up some livejournal entries, and I figured I'd post them once I had internet access from home. How long could that take? Today, I copied them to floppy so I can post them from work... here's the first.




Okay, so driving across the country wasn't nearly the pleasant adventure I had planned it to be. For one thing, I didn't have nearly as much warning as I'd hoped, so I couldn't set up visits with nearly enough people. Secondly, I had to go pretty fast most of the way. Thirdly, I didn't research the route as well as I could have.

One of the funny things about sites at places like Expedia.com is that they give directions, and they even base their drive times on speed limits sometimes, but they don't really give a picture of what you'll be driving through.

There's a lot of Montana that's nice and flat, and there's lots that's pleasantly hilly. However, there's also a mountain pass.

The days where treking through a mountain pass was incredibly dangerous are long past. However, that doesn't mean that it's suddenly safe and easy to drive through a mountain pass. If anyone out there ever needs to know, let me tell you some things.

First, your car should be in good shape. If you're losing power, obviously, you'll be in trouble getting up long grades. However, your alignment also has to be set properly. You don't want to have your steering off even a bit when you're driving down a mountain at 75mph, and only going that slowly because you keep hitting the brakes to drop your speed. Also, your cooling system should be up to snuff so your engine doesn't overheat either going up, or going down. Going down, you see, your car will be in gear, and that means that the wheels will be turning the engine, and hence, working the engine. It's not as bad as, say, driving up a long, steep-ish hill during the summer, but it's work. And cooling doesn't just mean "it was flushed and filled in the past year or two...", because those hoses you have as part of the cooling system are part of the cooling system. Build up the heat, and you build up the pressure, and if one of them bursts, you're in a world of hurt.

Next, though, you have to consider the human factor. That's you... the driver. You don't want to be tired or hungry, or in need of a bathroom break. It's also best if you've learned the art of relaxing while in need of precision control.

See, I don't know how common it is, but I do know that it's a problem for me, and I imagine it's one for a lot of people. When you need precision control, the tendency is to tighten up. How else can you be precise, one might think? But the key to good precision is not to tighten up everything, but to loosen everything... and use only the muscles you absolutely need.

One more thing: consider doing this kind of thing only in the beginning of the day. The difference between "It decided to snow in the morning, and I lost a lot of the daylight I'd have otherwise" and "it decided to snow at night, and I'm driving in the dark with pretty, swirling, hypnotic snow in my headlights" is the difference between... well, between day and night.

See, it seems to be a fact of nature that someone - and it seems to be truck drivers as often as anyone else - figures that a speed limit of 70 means one has to drive at least 80, and if that means driving 80+ mph downhill, around winding blind curves, on slippery roads, well, that is what makes it 'fun'.

I have to admit to being proud of myself for noting such a maniac (I know that's supposed to be reserved for those ahead of you... idiots are the one's behind you, maniacs are the one's ahead of you, but bear with me) from about 300 feet back, while I was trying to pass and the roads were slippery. Braking would have been more dangerous, so I accelerated, pulled over, and did so just in time to make my lane change smoothly and slowly when the maniac rocketted past me. (No, there wasn't *REALLY* a rocket involved; that's an urban legend.)

See, my normal reasoning in bad driving conditions goes as follows: being the hottest driver on the road usually happens because of the burning gasoline splashed across the wreck you made doing something stupid that would normally have been safe, but for something going wrong. I have no desire to be a 'hot driver'... a nice, safe, and possibly behind schedule driver is just fine for me, and I like noticing those things that could have going wrong after I've passed them safely.

Well, this time I had to be fast; this maniac couldn't have slowed down in time to prevent hitting me, and if I'd slowed down, I'd be decreasing the time to collision. Since I'd already started to pass two trucks (or maybe it was a double-trailer truck... I honestly don't remember at this point), slowing down just wouldn't have worked. I don't like speeding up, and every one of my instincts tells me not to...but I did it anyway. Score one for the good guys.

This was a good trip to learn that "relax when you need precision"; see, after getting through the last 50 or so miles of Montana through snow at night, I'd had a lot of chances to work on that. Then, when I discovered that Washington has its own mountain pass, I got in some really good practice.

Actually, Washington is a lot worse that Montana. See, Washington has some really nasty crosswinds, but that's not what makes it worse. No, what makes it worse is the stretch of highway right by the Columbia river.

It's beautiful... and that word is pitifully inadequate to describe it. Wonderful natural rock formations, fields of dried vegetation that you can still imagine in spring or summer colors, the river itself, the mountain landscape near and far... all I could think was "I live here... I can't believe I *LIVE* here!"

There bloody well better be riverboat (or the equivalent) tours of the Columbia, or they'll be answering to an angry ex-east-coaster!

Anyway... the gusts of wind could be bad, but not too bad. The winding roads where a patch of ice could spell disaster could be bad, but not too bad. But trying to keep all those threats in mind while gazing out at some of the most beautiful land I've ever had the privilege to drive through, well, *THAT* was hard.

Well... it's about 1 am, and I'm getting too tired to write much more. Though I really ought to try to stay up later, even if I succeed, it won't be through writing more in this journal entry.

From 12/15/2001

Again: a journal entry intended to be posted from home "once I had internet access". It finally got posted from work becausae I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have internet access at home





Well, staying up late is looking to be good for my journal writing.

Tomorrow is my first day of work in the data center, so I have to be up really late tonight to be able to stay up until 6 am Monday (and then Tuesday and Wednesday as well). I'm trying not to be worried about the quality of the job; I understand that the Seattle DC has the intelligence to buy pre-made cables, so I won't be expected to make dozens of Cat5 cables ("Category 5", able to handle 100 megahertz signalling. It's a pain to make by hand. It's simple to do, but it's hard to get it right because the last part is sliding 8 individual wires down into 8 individual channels, and those wires tend to shift, because until you strip and unravel them, they've all been twisted together), and I doubt Seattle is the one data center to have scheduled maintenances on Sundays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It's still a bit nerve wracking. Heck, the fact that I'm out here is a bit nerve wracking right now. Everything seems different.

I guess that's normal. Today I went to the supermarket, and found a cheese counter. There were cheeses I've never heard of, and some that I had in forms I'd never seen before. (I'd never seen mozzerella packed in water - or whey? - before, for example.) They had several displays of bean coffee, and more tea than I'd ever seen in a supermarket. And then, the layout was just so different... I don't know. I think that supermarkets probably start following similar patterns regionally, and it would make sense. A supermarket manager used to shop at the supermarket just down the street, so the new supermarket gets set up similarly. Oh, not "the same", sure... cereal might be aisle 5, not aisle 3, but pop tarts are near the cereals, not near "baked goods" or "cookies" (unless those are near the cereals).

This one just felt different. (I almost said 'wrong', and there's something about it that I can't put my finger on, but I don't want to make it sound like I'm just complaining that it's not what I'm used to. There was something about the layout that I really didn't like, and that felt like it was, or should be, objective... at least, to a degree.)

Ah well.

I'm going to have to take some time to get used to Washington drivers. I've developed a useful habit: if I want to get over, and someone is in my blind spot, I slow down. Usually, it's only when you really need to get over quickly that the person in your blind spot manages to match your deceleration exactly (note: so that they *STAY* in your blind spot). Usually, they drive past you.

Twice now, the only two times I've tried it, Washington drivers (at least, "people driving cars with WA license plates) have managed to stay in my blind spot. Once, I came to a dead stop in frustration, and damn if that person didn't start to make a dead stop too... maybe I was broadcasting a mental "don't you dare; I've got nowhere to go, and nothing better to do than sit in the middle of the road longer than you're willing to", because that person finally got the hint, and started to resume normal speed.


More funny things that surprised me: my water heater is actually outside of the main building, in the attached storage shed (I guess it's not really a shed if it's attached, maybe?). I was worried for a bit... we couldn't get decent amounts of hot water in here at all. However, the thermostat was set to 120 degrees. Now, I'm still worried about the capacity, but at least the initial temperature isn't too bad.

But still... having it outside is strange. Then I realized something else... three (or more?) thermostats. Why is that? Oh, of course... baseboard heating. There is no central heating unit, and I presume it's not really needed. That would explain why it's possible to have a hot water heater outside. (It is relatively modern, too, so the odds are it's really well insulated. Then I realized something that makes me really nervous. "No central heating... and no central air."

I'll try to relax for now. Chris and I can afford a window mounted air conditioner, and we have a good air corridor we could use to get most of the apartment comfortable cool from just one or two air conditioners. Still, not having it really bothers me. Chris might need it for health reasons, and I... well, I don't *NEED* it, but I sweat like a pig with overactive sweat glands when it gets hot, so I really *WANT* it. I really hope it's not needed. (Or, that the apartment complex has no problems with window unit air conditioners. I find myself suddenly panicked that I signed away my right to have window mounted air conditioners while signing the lease two days ago. (Well, "Friday". It *IS* Sunday, but only by a couple hours.)

Final notes: Chris and Chuck (my older brother) *STILL* haven't heard from the movers about an estimate (or a moving date!) yet. I can't lie and say that this is "starting" to piss me off, because it's well past "starting". However, there's not much to do now except wait until 5 am local time Monday morning, and making angry phone calls.

And since that was titled "final notes", I'll take that as my cue to tie this journal entry up. Here's hoping I manage to stay awake for another hour or so before drifting off to sleep for my first day of data center tech work tomorrow.

From 12/15/2001

Again: a journal entry intended to be posted from home "once I had internet access". It finally got posted from work becausae I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have internet access at home





Well, staying up late is looking to be good for my journal writing.

Tomorrow is my first day of work in the data center, so I have to be up really late tonight to be able to stay up until 6 am Monday (and then Tuesday and Wednesday as well). I'm trying not to be worried about the quality of the job; I understand that the Seattle DC has the intelligence to buy pre-made cables, so I won't be expected to make dozens of Cat5 cables ("Category 5", able to handle 100 megahertz signalling. It's a pain to make by hand. It's simple to do, but it's hard to get it right because the last part is sliding 8 individual wires down into 8 individual channels, and those wires tend to shift, because until you strip and unravel them, they've all been twisted together), and I doubt Seattle is the one data center to have scheduled maintenances on Sundays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

It's still a bit nerve wracking. Heck, the fact that I'm out here is a bit nerve wracking right now. Everything seems different.

I guess that's normal. Today I went to the supermarket, and found a cheese counter. There were cheeses I've never heard of, and some that I had in forms I'd never seen before. (I'd never seen mozzerella packed in water - or whey? - before, for example.) They had several displays of bean coffee, and more tea than I'd ever seen in a supermarket. And then, the layout was just so different... I don't know. I think that supermarkets probably start following similar patterns regionally, and it would make sense. A supermarket manager used to shop at the supermarket just down the street, so the new supermarket gets set up similarly. Oh, not "the same", sure... cereal might be aisle 5, not aisle 3, but pop tarts are near the cereals, not near "baked goods" or "cookies" (unless those are near the cereals).

This one just felt different. (I almost said 'wrong', and there's something about it that I can't put my finger on, but I don't want to make it sound like I'm just complaining that it's not what I'm used to. There was something about the layout that I really didn't like, and that felt like it was, or should be, objective... at least, to a degree.)

Ah well.

I'm going to have to take some time to get used to Washington drivers. I've developed a useful habit: if I want to get over, and someone is in my blind spot, I slow down. Usually, it's only when you really need to get over quickly that the person in your blind spot manages to match your deceleration exactly (note: so that they *STAY* in your blind spot). Usually, they drive past you.

Twice now, the only two times I've tried it, Washington drivers (at least, "people driving cars with WA license plates) have managed to stay in my blind spot. Once, I came to a dead stop in frustration, and damn if that person didn't start to make a dead stop too... maybe I was broadcasting a mental "don't you dare; I've got nowhere to go, and nothing better to do than sit in the middle of the road longer than you're willing to", because that person finally got the hint, and started to resume normal speed.


More funny things that surprised me: my water heater is actually outside of the main building, in the attached storage shed (I guess it's not really a shed if it's attached, maybe?). I was worried for a bit... we couldn't get decent amounts of hot water in here at all. However, the thermostat was set to 120 degrees. Now, I'm still worried about the capacity, but at least the initial temperature isn't too bad.

But still... having it outside is strange. Then I realized something else... three (or more?) thermostats. Why is that? Oh, of course... baseboard heating. There is no central heating unit, and I presume it's not really needed. That would explain why it's possible to have a hot water heater outside. (It is relatively modern, too, so the odds are it's really well insulated. Then I realized something that makes me really nervous. "No central heating... and no central air."

I'll try to relax for now. Chris and I can afford a window mounted air conditioner, and we have a good air corridor we could use to get most of the apartment comfortable cool from just one or two air conditioners. Still, not having it really bothers me. Chris might need it for health reasons, and I... well, I don't *NEED* it, but I sweat like a pig with overactive sweat glands when it gets hot, so I really *WANT* it. I really hope it's not needed. (Or, that the apartment complex has no problems with window unit air conditioners. I find myself suddenly panicked that I signed away my right to have window mounted air conditioners while signing the lease two days ago. (Well, "Friday". It *IS* Sunday, but only by a couple hours.)

Final notes: Chris and Chuck (my older brother) *STILL* haven't heard from the movers about an estimate (or a moving date!) yet. I can't lie and say that this is "starting" to piss me off, because it's well past "starting". However, there's not much to do now except wait until 5 am local time Monday morning, and making angry phone calls.

And since that was titled "final notes", I'll take that as my cue to tie this journal entry up. Here's hoping I manage to stay awake for another hour or so before drifting off to sleep for my first day of data center tech work tomorrow.