Vacations

Well, I'm back from Texas. Actually, I've been back for almost a week now. (I'm having a little trouble keeping up with my goal of one blog post per week. I've been busy, but I've been enjoying myself. I've been playing Ultimate and sometimes soccer, and I've checked out a few festivals. Then I went away for a week. I'm also in a bit of a rut when it comes to blog ideas. But for those of you that saw me push the envelope a while back, I thought of another way to push the envelope. So stay tuned and I might try it.)

Last week in Texas was kind of like my weekly games of Ultimate--it has me liking my church more. We had a great bunch of teenage people with us. They didn't cause too much trouble and they were a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with them and the other adult leaders. The trip included a Christian youth convention that probably had about 5000 people at it. For me, the speakers had some good things to say, including a good reminder that God really does change lives. It's also motivating me to think more about how I talk about faith in conversations at work. I know my standards on some things like sex and alcohol are different from a lot of people at work, so how do I make it clear where I stand, without being judgmental and defining my faith mostly by what I don't do? I've certainly thought about this question before, but I think I'm a bit more motivated now. Let's hope it lasts.

One special time was when our group sat down outside the convention centre to talk about what we're learning at the convention. We also prayed. It's great to see these people wanting to follow God more closely. Even if they're not so interested in God, I appreciate their honesty and having them as part of my life.

And soon I'm off on another vacation. This time I'll be backpacking near Mount Robson in British Columbia.

Vacation #1

I'm off to San Antonio tomorrow with the youth group from my church. I'm one of the adult leaders helping take them to the Church of God International Youth Convention there. Should be a fun time, but I might get just a bit tired and maybe a bit sunburned. I hear the Mexican restaurants there are excellent. My taste buds will be so happy and my stomach won't be. I can't wait.

June

At my church, we used to have fairly regular activities for the College and Career group. ("College and Career" is a common label that churches use for their younger adults.) Eventually, maybe people got too busy and nobody really wanted to plan anything. There were some of us that played squash, but there were a lot that didn't.

In May the place where we played squash shut down for renovations, so for a few Wednesdays nothing was planned. But someone had brought up the idea that we could play Ultimate (a.k.a. Ultimate Frisbee) sometime. Around the end of May, I got some of them together for a game of Ultimate, and I enjoyed it a lot. Quite tiring though. I thought it would be nice to do it again, and I guess some others thought so too because they decided to do this every week for the summer. We've also been going for ice cream afterwards.

I think this was what I needed. I have friends at church who are close to my age and older who I haven't spent much time with in the last while, except at church services and maybe lunch after church. And then there are the friends younger than me. They hadn't really had the chance to be involved in the group back when it was going, because they were too young. I work with them in running the youth group, and as much as I usually enjoy my time with the youth, it's nice to finally hang out with these friends without having responsibilities going on at the same time. Maybe it helps having a bit less going on with the youth group this month (no fundraisers in the last few weeks!). The exercise is good too.

It's been a refreshing month, and maybe it's been refreshing for some others too because they keep coming. Maybe in certain ways, pursuing some self-interest in church can actually do some good. After all, there's a good chance that if I need something (for example, refreshment and times with friends), others need it too. Of course, selfishness in a church can be a very damaging too. So how do you decide when your own desires are a good thing?

Nothing worth doing

Today I'm going to share a quote I found on another blog. Yes, it may be the epitome of laziness to copy from another blog that was itself copied from something else. But it's a good quote.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

Silverlight

A while ago when I visited the Microsoft website, it tried to get me to install something called Silverlight. I turned it down and looked up a bit more information about it. It turns out that Microsoft finally made a product to compete with the Adobe Flash browser add-on that almost everyone has.

I'm not militantly anti-Microsoft, but I would like to see them lose some of their market dominance. Generally, I don't think monopolies are a good thing, so I like to support Microsoft's competition, especially free high-quality programs. But where does Adobe fit in here? Adobe is one of the few software companies that truly dominates the market for software that almost everyone has. How many computers have you used lately that don't have Flash and Adobe Reader installed?

So in the Flash vs Silverlight battle, who should I support? Until now, Adobe had a virtual monopoly in that type of software, but if somebody has to have a monopoly, it's nice if it's not Microsoft. On the other hand, competition can encourage innovation. I ended up installing Silverlight, and I think its video quality is better than Flash's, so I see innovation happening already.

What would really be nice is if websites didn't tie people to certain products. If Flash and Silverlight could be replaced with an open standard and anyone could make programs that support that standard, then I wouldn't need multiple products that basically do the same thing.

Hockey Night in Canada song

So there was a big uproar when CBC decided not to renew the rights to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song. It looked like this could get bigger than that time they weren't going to renew Ron MacLean's contract.

On the way home from work today I heard that CTV/TSN got the rights to the song. When I got home, I checked my email and found out that someone invited me to a Facebook group called "Boycott CBC until they bring back Hockey Night In Canada's theme song!" Umm. It might be a little late for that. I don't think CBC can legally get it back for a while.

I think I know how the Conservative party can win a majority government. Just get Don Cherry fired and make it look like Liberals pulled the strings.

The house is filling up

Last weekend a co-worker of mine moved into my house, so now I'm not all alone here. It's nice to have another person here, and the extra money doesn't hurt either. It will take some time to get used to each other's schedules and not having the entire fridge to myself, but it should be a good thing overall. Besides, this gives me some more motivation to clean up and throw some junk out.