Q: Is Clear 1.5mbps service fast enough to use Skype?

Q: Is Clear 1.5mbps service fast enough to use Skype?
A: Yes. On a Google Plus hangout, I get comfortably clear picture and audio with 1.5 service with the cheapo laptop dongle being in good range of a tower.

Here's what I get:

Q: What is the best way to remove silver nitrate stains from surfaces?

A: Bar Keeper's Friend scouring powder.

409, bleach, Pine-Sol: no effect.
BKF and several minutes with the scouring side of a sponge: stain gone.

This was a little too long for a facebook update, and my blog has been neglected.

Okay, I gotta be honest about my day. First off, there wasn't any Sarah in it. Now, my day at work- my first at my new position with CB&I was just fine- but here's the sequence of events that was my evening: left work at about 4:40 desiring to get to the post office before it closes (presumably at 5). I didn't understand the intensity of traffic in Plainfield/Naperville. I was coasting through green lights at first, but as it got closer to 5PM, I indexed along in sequence and started catching all the red lights. What's at stake here? $35 in rebate cash that need today's postmark. Middlin' on the bummer scale. 5PM comes and goes, but you know, it might be one of those post offices that is open until 5:30. Don't give up hope. Still more red lights.

Okay, so I make it- and- answer to prayer! It is open, and not just until 5:30, but until 6:30! Amazing! The post office I was directed to by my new work friend is the distribution center. But- bummer again, there's a long line, and all I need is stamps. Maaan, I gotta wait anyway. Hey- I wonder if there's one of those stamp vending machines in here? Well, now somebody got in line behind me, and I'd have to give up my spot in line to look... and I don't see one... not worth it, I don't think. (5 minutes pass) Now a woman is saying that the machine is broken. Null effect: there is a machine, but it is broken. I'll check that first on my next visit.

Alright, now I'm leaving the post office- but I don't know where I am. I just followed the directions to the post office, and I don't know if I went too far on 59 and am now past my hotel, or haven't gone far enough yet. I don't have a smartphone to check with. (Yet.)

I'll bet on having not gone far enough. Also, I need to get something for dinner. I'm hungry. Should I visit a restaurant, or go grocery shopping? On the pro-restaurant side: Immediate gratification, and there is a Sweet Tomatoes salad buffet quite close to the hotel which can help with my healthy eating goals. I wouldn't be grocery shopping hungry. I don't know if the hotel has pans to go with the mini-stovetop that's in the room. On the pro-grocery shopping side: I save money, and can get something to pack for lunch tomorrow, which also saves money.

I have plenty of time to ponder this, as there is a decent amount of traffic on the road, and the light I am trying to get through is timed instead of sensored. Very little traffic is going through the other way, but lots of traffic is backed up on my road. I watch a green-light cycle go by for the left turn I want to take because I'm trapped behind traffic and there's a median preventing me from getting into the turn lane. Grrr. Estimated minutes spent at stoplight: 6.

I get onto the main road again, and I see a Meijer. Snap decison time- grocery or restuarant? Decision made- groceries. Bonus feature: I can ask someone in the Meijer how to get to the hotel. Shopping: Pro: granny smith apples are reasonably priced. Con: have to wait to get sandwich meat at the deli. Pro: This is a pretty nice Meijer. Con: I don't know if the "10 for $10" sale requires you to actually buy 10. Pro: the deli guy gives me a sample of the turkey, I didn't even ask. Con: I grab the turkey but am immediately unsure if he was holding it out for me to take, or just to inspect, because he asked if the thickness was okay. Eat turkey anyway. Pro: bread is on sale. Con: I still don't know about these "X for $Y" sale prices. Pro: random lady in frozen foods aisle is friendly when I ask if she knows about the sales. Con: I don't know if random lady in frozen foods aisle thinks I was awkwardly trying to start a conversation and ask her out. Con: She doesn't know about the sales either. Pro: Meijer guy in dairy area tells me I don't have to buy 10 to get the 10 for $10 price. YESSS. Con: I don't know what to get for dinner that I can make in a hotel room that isn't really bad for me. Pro: I decide on canned soup, and find some on sale. Con: I am dragging out my grocery shopping because I have nothing to draw me away from the grocery store. Pro: Kalamata olives are reasonably priced. Con: self-checkout aisle scanner is acting up and doesn't want to scan. Pro: lady at in-store bank gives me some directions that I can infer my location from. Con: IT'S SO DARN COLD AND WINDY Con: I want to take a left to get onto that one road, but there's a solid median. Pro: Oh, the hotel is right there. Nice.

Okay, so here's the deal with the hotel: CB&I is putting me up in a hotel for the first little bit of work while I get my lodging figured out. More on that in a later post. Anyway, when I arrived last night, the hotel didn't have a reservation for me- alright, I thought that might happen, since I hadn't heard back from the training coordinator. I can put it on my card and get reimbursed, and things will get sorted out for the second night. So now I'm at the hotel for the second night- having re-packed all my stuff into the car again this morning since I couldn't leave it there, having only paid for one night. The hotel's computers are down, and he doesn't have a reservation for me in the stack of paper he's got. Okay, the system is coming back up right now. It's slow, and- no, sorry, no record of a reservation. Well, alright, on the card it goes again, and I'll do another expense report. Now, though, I have groceries in my car and the same conundrum as last night. I'm hungry.

What's the natural thing to do? Escape! Escape from the world! I get to my room, nuke a can of soup, and decide to watch a movie on my laptop. What's handy? I eventually settle on 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've never seen it, and it's got such a prominent place in movie culture, it must be good, right? WRONG! Crazy piece of film- it makes no sense at all, and only my misguided sense of finish-what-you-start keeps me from turning it off. Blech. I finish and waste too much time on the computer. Now it's getting late. I meant to hit the exercise room tonight, so I feel lame for not doing that. I feel lame for my focus on God being so up-and-down lately. What to do? Obviously, look at the olives I bought. I won't eat any, though, because I already had way too many of those 75% off close-dated almonds. Gee, what does 'thrown' mean in the context of an olive label? I wondered about that in the store. The internet tells me. I still feel empty.

Is this how God gets my attention? Has he intervened here to get me to where I can't ignore that I need him, or is it just so much the way that he created us that it is impossible to ignore that the hole in me is God-shaped? I pray. I sing a verse. I read Proverbs. I am reminded that yes- God is the center of the universe, and I am best when the God-shaped hole in me is being filled.

Newsflash: You are entitled to softer fabrics as a basic human right

I just got a great bit of news! Downy has somehow worked it out so that having softer clothes is now a basic human right. I imagine that now, the Human Rights Watch will now be on the case of enforcing this, so watch for your government-supplied Downy soon. You might wonder how I found out- after all it's not break in the news yet (what gives?). Well, this popped up just a minute ago:

It's simple logic. If Downy is displaying that ad to everyone on the internet, then that means that everyone deserves softer, fresher clothes. So it can't be that you have to do something to deserve soft, fresh clothes- because not everyone has done the same things. The only accomplishment that everyone in the world shares is that we're all alive- so I guess being alive is the only thing you have to do to deserve softer, fresher clothes. There you have it- every human deserves softer, fresher clothes, so the only thing it can be is a human right. Thanks Downy!

Be advised: If someone is telling you that you deserve something, they are probably trying to use you.

Dandelions

God works through many different ways, and I think one of them is the shuffle playback for music. You never know what's going to come next- maybe God picked it! Yesterday I was doing some homework and listening to some songs on shuffle. A song came on by Five Iron Frenzy, one I've listened to a hundred times before, I'm sure. It's called Dandelions. It could have just gone in one ear and out the other like it had so many times before, but something perked my ears up just then, and I heard something I hadn't heard before.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me- Five Iron Frenzy wrote a lot of deep lyrics for a band with an average fan age of thirteen. In fact, this blog is named for a deep Five Iron song. All these words were in the songs when all of us punk kids were listening to them a decade ago, but they didn't click then. If I keep listening to Five Iron as I get older and older, I wonder if I'll just keep discovering stuff in their songs.

Back to Dandelions- here is the audio from Youtube, and the lyrics below. See if you pick up on what I did.



In a field of yellow flowers,
underneath the sun,
bluest eyes that spark with lightning,
boy with shoes undone.
He is young, so full of hope,
reveling in tiny dreams,
filling up, his arms with flowers,
right for giving any queen.

Running to her beaming bright,
while cradling his prize.
A flickering of yellow light,
within his mother's eyes.
She holds them to her heart,
keeping them where they'll be safe,
clasped within her very marrow,
dandelions in a vase.

She sees love, where anyone else would see weeds.
all hope is found.
Here is everything he needs.

Fathomless your endless mercy,
weight I could not lift.
Where do I fit in this puzzle,
what good are these gifts?
Not a martyr, or a saint,
scarcely can I struggle through.
All that I have ever wanted,
was to give my best to you.

Lord, search my heart,
create in me something clean.
Dandelions
you see flowers in these weeds.

Gently lifting hands to heaven,
softened by the sweetest hush,
a Father sings over his children,
loving them so very much.
More than words could warrant,
deeper than the darkest blue,
more than sacrifice could merit,
Lord, I give my heart to you


There's not some hidden, veiling double meaning here. I just didn't get it until now- probably because I was hearing but not listening. The point that I got from it is that we are very much the little boy with shoes untied, bringing dandelions to his mother. His mother loves those dandelions, she loves them so much- why? Not because dandelions are the most beautiful flower, or that by their own merit they have any value. Really, dandelions are weeds. The dandelions are special to her because they are her young son's expression of love- his very best, with nothing held back. The little boy gave her the dandelions with a pure heart as a gift of love.

How are we like that little boy? In plenty of ways. We are all, in some way, incompetent and backwards- with our shoes untied, you might say. Like the little boy, we are all capable of bringing a gift of love with a pure heart which will be just the very thing that the recipient wants. Finally, just like there was someone for the little boy to give his gift to, there is someone to whom we should give our gift of love- God. Now, God has a lot in common with this proverbial mother as well. She saw love in those weeds, because that's what they were: a gift of love. God also judges your gift not by some rubric or abstract value, but by the heart that presents it. If you offer something to God out of your love for him, it will be greatly pleasing to him, because that's exactly what he wants. What if the little boy had brought his mother a diamond ring, but did it out of obligation and with a sour heart? She wouldn't love that, even though the gift itself was amazing. In the same way, it doesn't matter if all you can give with your life is things that seem small and inconsequential- God is looking for your heart of love. Don't think God will be impressed by your great achievements in your life, either, if you're doing them for your own reasons and not to glorify him. Doesn't this sound an awful lot like a story you might have heard?

And he [Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."


A lot of the time, when this passage is preached on, the conclusion is "give until it hurts". It'd be easy to conclude that, given the ending- but I don't think that's the message here. I think the message is the same one that we can take from Dandelions. The fact is that God doesn't care how much you give, how much you achieve, what kind of greatness you have to offer him as this world measures it. All that will pass away. God cares about your heart. Nothing pleases God more in an offering than a heart that is giving out of its abundance of love for him. Now don't run away and think "God doesn't care how much I give, so I'm going to give very little, but do it cheerfully". Replace 'give' with whatever you want- 'try', 'accomplish', 'care'. What does that say about your heart? What if the little boy was just wanting to give his mother the easiest flowers to find?

No, what you do isn't what matters- but it is the evidence of the thing that does matter. If your heart is completely focused on God, then you're going to give your whole life to him. That's pleasing to God not because it's your all, but because it was your love for him that compelled you to give it.

Take two things from this. One is this- are you living your life as a pure gift to God? Are you sliding by with however much effort/diligence/contribution everyone else is, or, are you so motivated by your love for God that you want to give him your very best? Look at things the way God sees them.


On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’


The second thing is this- don't judge your life on the same scale that the world does. The world's scale says that those dandelions were crap, a dozen roses is par. That's just not true. If all you have to give to God doesn't look like much on that scale, who cares? It doesn't matter in the least. You are a child of God, things are different. What matters is the heart that is giving it. Is it with a pure heart of love for God? That's what God wants. Don't aspire to greatness or accomplishment as measured by any earthly scale. Aspire to love God first and best, for that is far better.

He opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Six dozen failed projects

As I was laying in bed last night, I had a realization. I am afraid of failure. Not just a normal fear, like I think most people have, but a paralyzing grip-of-death fear. I realized that I was haunted by my failures in the past- when I let them, they loomed over me like black clouds which followed me wherever I went, and signaled to everyone around me that I was a loser. It actually goes a level deeper- I realized that all these failures in the past, of which I was so afraid, had actually been caused by the fear itself.

Allow me to explain. I’m a tinkerer and a project guy. I love to make stuff, and I’m constantly having ideas for neat-o stuff I could make. Right now it’s an electric bicycle. A few weeks ago it was a go-anywhere miniature portable speaker powered by an old laptop battery. For a long time, the idea of a fast electric go-kart has been in my mind. I’m always thinking of something cool I can make, and I have been since I was a kid. I often dig into these projects with great fervor and excitement. I have a whole bunch of junk to prove it- things I’ve purchased for a project, or little items I’ve found and refused to throw away because of how useful I think it could be for something I could make. I get really excited about how cool my new thing is going to be.

Here’s the problem, though: I don’t follow through. Of all the projects I’ve started, just a handful have been completed. The rest are either abandoned or languishing in various states of incompletion. Combat robotics was my hobby in high school. I successfully built two robots. I think I count three uncompleted ones, plus two more that were ‘done’ but incredibly lame because they were rushed together last-minute.  The three uncompleted ones weren’t just ideas I didn’t follow through on, they were projects I invested large amounts of time and (for a high-schooler) money in. Robotics isn’t the only thing- I bought a diesel vehicle because I thought the concept of biodiesel was incredible cool, and I planned on making my own biodiesel reactor and driving across the country on the cheap. It never happened. Then I got excited about it again after selling the first diesel car and bought another… and sold it. (At least I made a profit on both)

This cycle has happened many times with numerous projects- water-cooled computers, modifications to my car, several potato cannons, a motorcycle that’s now sitting non-running in a garage. Last night before I went to bed, I found out that my electric bike project probably wouldn’t be quite as fast as I had been hoping- only 17 mph. I was feeling like maybe I should give up on the project because it wasn’t quite as cool, not quite as worth it. What would my friends say, whom I’ve told about the project, when it’s not as fast as I made it out to be?

Then I started thinking about how I’ve done that so many times before, and how lame I was for it. I couldn’t make sense of that, though, because I thought I was pretty neat, and so did a lot of other people. God’s word tells me that I’m neat. Why did I feel so bad about giving up so many projects? Sure, giving up projects is bad, but why does it happen so often and why do I feel so bad about it? Then, I put the pieces together that explain why, on so many occasions, the same cycle repeats itself. I have an idea. I get excited about it. I make plans for the project. I start the project and get somewhere between 20% and 95% done- then I give up! Why? Why do I engage in such destructive, irrational behavior over and over again? It’s fear. The same thing that makes our economy run, that gives our political system its shape, that motivates beyond any other emotion.

For me, the fear block is stunningly effective because of just how excited I get for the projects. I have my idea and am convinced it’s just a ludicrously amazing idea and that when my project is finished, it’s going to be amazing. I jump into the project with the enthusiasm of a seven-year-old at his first tee-ball game. I make progress. I do good work. I overcome obstacles. But then, fear creeps in. It enters the space of my enthusiasm and starts replacing it. The expectations I had for greatness in my project turn into requirements or standards I must meet. The hype I built up in my mind is now looming over me as if some panel of judges is just waiting for my project to be complete so they can evaluate it according to the expectation of greatness I set up for it- and the prognosis is grim.

So what do I do when I feel like failure is looking over my shoulder, just waiting for my project to be not quite as great as I anticipated? Or perhaps when I’ve compromised some aspect of my vision for cost, difficulty, or time- did I just break a promise to myself? Now what? I give up. I just lay the project aside and do something else. After all, my track record shows a consistent series of failures, doesn’t it? Better to just give up- it makes more sense to abandon a project and guarantee failure than to end up with something that’s not quite as amazing as I thought it could be. I should just do something else that’s more fun- I’ll come back to it later … and then the terrible feeling comes on- the half-finished project is mocking me from across the room, or the never-attempted plans are calling to me from my computer, telling me I’m a loser for not bringing them to life. There’s always something more appealing to do than coming back to a sheer cliff named ‘Project Completion’ and beginning to climb it. Something easier and seemingly more fulfilling, and I, in the sinful human condition, have historically taken the easy way far more times than I’ve challenged that cliff.

So what is the cure for my problem? Well, it has these two prongs I asked about before: why do I keep doing this, and why does it make me feel irrationally terrible? The latter problem, I think, answers the former. I keep repeating this cycle of giving up because I am so afraid that my project will be a blunder- the fear paralyzes me. Here’s the key- I let all those failures make me feel worthless. Yes, it is true- I’ve failed many times before. The mistake, though, is letting those failures define me. I let my failure identify me, slapping a name badge on my chest that reads “Ned Funnell: Owner of six dozen failed projects”. I won’t say that success doesn’t have value, or that it’s wrong to draw conclusions about someone based on what they’ve done. However, however! Performance never dictates value. My accomplishments or lack thereof can never tell me how much I’m worth. The truth is that I have immense value that nothing and no one can take from me. God created life in me, and despite my inability to do anything good without him, he saw so much value in me that he, the self-existent author of creation, lowered himself to the position of a slave and offered himself as a sacrifice- to pay the very debt I owed and could not pay. God sees that much value in me.

I could believe what my fear is telling me- that I’m worthless because I’ve failed before. On the other hand, I could believe what God says- that I’m so valuable that he would die for me. I could do what the fear compels me to do- just give up and do something else. Or, I could do what God said to do in his book: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”. God doesn’t judge me according to my successes or failures, he judges my heart. Which heart is more pleasing to God- one that gives up in the midst of difficulty, or one that takes courage from God’s promises and continues on?

Just a thought

If you look for God only in the supernatural, you're going to miss out on a lot. God displays himself in so much of the natural and ordinary; you'd be wise to look for him under every rock. Refusing to see God in every day life doesn't profit you anything.