Life

For nearly 4 years I've had the opportunity to be apart of the drupal community building sites, hacking together modules, and attempting to make core better. Being apart of the community has helped my skills grow, given me the opportunity to help others, and allowed me to work on some cool projects. This has been a lot of fun but, doing this on the side from my full time job as an engineer was no longer enough for me. Starting today, I'm a developer for Tree House Agency. Tree House is a web development company that builds most of their sites with drupal.

What this means:

• I get to work on drupal a lot. Yay.
• I get to build some wicked cool websites.
• I get to work from my home office. This means shorts and slippers whenever I want to.
• My other projects, like Geeks and God, will continue and have more time for them. No more pesky commuting.
• I'll be a happier person. Have you ever seen me after being stuck in traffic?!?!
• The coffee selection is my choice. No more crappy office coffee.

For more than 6 years I've worked for General Dynamics Land Systems. Last week that all changed. I quit my cushy corporate job. Before I write about what's going on in my life next I want to take a moment to reflect on my experience working for one of the worlds largest military subcontractors.

For anyone wondering, I didn't have anything to do or any influence over the company's very outdated website. And, I'm not leaving because of any distaste I have. I'm chasing opportunities rather than staying in a comfortable place. GDLS, as we affectionately call it, doesn't offer the opportunities I'm chasing.

My time there is really divided between two areas of work. First, I got to play on and with tanks. This was followed by some time working on software tools.

The Highlights

• I got to play on tanks... I mean work on them. This meant I worked with the customers on military vehicles. This was my most valuable learning experience there. Every engineer should spend time with their customer and their products.
• I worked on testability, health management (of systems), diagnostics, and prognostics (detecting failures before they happen). There is some amazing work being done here. Imagine detecting a failure before it happens and handling the situation so a failure never affects your system or you minimize the impact.
• Conferences and trainings rock. I was fortunate enough to attend a few.
• I was a project lead on more than one project. This helped me plan and really learn to respect Murphay's Law.
• For the last year and a half I wrote 'Software Tools'. This is essentially writing web based applications. What an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of corporate development and the positives, bottlenecks, policies, and enviornment that makes big corporate work operate the way it does.
• I had the pleasure to work with some fantastic people.

If you're wondering what's next that will come in some follow-up posts. For now, I'm enjoying my week off between companies.

My first article appeared on the fshbwl, today, called "What If We Dropped the Word?". It's an article about the word evolution. This comes on the heals of my 2nd guest hosting spot on the Swim Podcast.

All this theological stuff is getting to be a bit fun.

I've often heard that science is capable of proving anything. Is this really true? Does science have no limits to it's deductive abilities? Sadly, there are some limits to what science and the scientific method can do. Let's take a look at a few of them.

Have you noticed all the bagging on the church in recent years? Sometimes it's the worldwide church. I've herd people call them ignorant or that they just don't get it. Sometimes it's the local church. I've herd people criticize it for not being the way they picture or want it. Sometimes it's a denomination. People love to argue who is right and why. I'm not talking about a discussion, I'm talking about an argument.

The Fishbowl is a faith based, non-profit community website that recently launched.

The idea behind the fishbowl is to explore faith from a number of different angles. Each day a new piece of content will come out in one of the 7 different categories. On Mondays it's content about World Views, Tuesday it's the Swim Podcast, etc.

How often do you think that if people knew the truth they would act differently? Or, if they just felt what you felt it would convince them to change? Or, if you could just get them to try something they would see that it's important and change?

About 5% of the people in the world say there is no God. According to the Pew Forum, the atheist population has been increasing at about 220% in America. In an effort to understand atheists and this modern day movement I've started to ask some tough questions. One of the first that came to my mind was, is there a way to know that there is no God? I'm talking about moving beyond belief into concrete testable knowledge. After digging through the different possibilities I've come to the conclusion that there is no way to know if there is no God. Let me explain my reasoning.

A lot of people I know would tell you they have found the truth or that they are searching for it. But, is that really the case? I have a friend who says he is searching for the truth. But, he is not praying, not reading up on science, not studying philosophy, not seeking out logic, and rarely seeking to take this search outside his own mind. Is that searching for the truth? On the flip side I have friends who sit in circles of people who share the same beliefs as them, they read only books that tell them what they are looking to hear, and they discuss topics with people who won't challenge them on it. Is this really searching for the truth? In both cases here I don't think these people are searching for the truth. They might be searching for peace of mind. They might be searching for what is comfortable. So, what does a search for the truth look like? Let's take a look at a few characteristics I've noticed.

I've herd phrases like, "We are only one generation from Christianity dieing out." I've read research findings like, "most Protestant pastors are neither called to nor competent in leadership" and "most 'church growth' is simply the recycling of church-goers from one congregation to another." And, yet, in this world where we have a lack of leadership and we have Christianity dieing out in western culture it isn't dead. In fact, it's expanding in the world. Despite our best efforts to screw up spreading the word it's still spreading, people are still coming to faith, and it's spreading to every corner of the earth without the use of force.

I dunno about you but I see this as a miracle and a mystery. It's God at work in the world and he doesn't need us. In fact, it's happening despite our superb ability to screw it up. Yet, He hasn't fired us yet.

I sit here this morning a bit amazed, humbled, and joyful.