So I am in my second to last semester at Mars Hill Graduate School and boy oh boy has it been a funky one. I have 13 credits, which in the scheme of things eqauls what one might call ridiculous as well as working roughly 32 hours a week. So the entirety of the semester has been spent in somewhat of a daze trying to jump between a couple different jobs, papers, friends, thinking about my career, and attending to my marriage.

But in the midst of it, something crazy has happened with my attendance, and my professors attendance to class. Let me recount the ways in which this is crazy.

1. I have a Greek class that meets every week for the entire semester. I have officially missed three of these classes and my professor has missed two of them, and maybe three by the sounds of what might happen next week. So, of the 10 classes that have been scheduled, either myself, or my professor has missed half of them.
2. I had a week long intensive about a month back. This means that it was five days long and went from 9-6 all five days. The professor didn’t come for the first 1.5 days. But the 3.5 days he was there the class was amazing.
3. I have a class called “Crafting Transformational Moments” which is essentially a preaching class. For this class, I have skipped it once because I had to write a paper and the professor of record hasn’t been able to make it twice. Once because he was in Africa and another time because he was in Asia.

And yet, as I look ahead to this week, I have a 15 page paper due and my thesis due and a 5-6 page essay due. So in a weird way I am busier with school than I ever have been, and yet I’ve had the least amount of class.

this is quite a conundrum to me….
peace
joel

So Brooke went and picked up our first shipment from the CSA this weekend. We got almost 2 full grocery bags full of fruits and vegetables from www.growingthingsfarm.com

Some of it we had an immediate use for, like the apples, mangos, bananas, carrots, and spinach. But other things, like this prickly stuff that i don’t know what it is called and the turnips we had to be creative. Luckily, I have a wife that loves to be creative with her cooking (notice the ipod in her ears)

So Brooke went to town googling away, trying to find something to use the turnips and prickly things in. She found a soup recipe, and I had my first bowl tonight. It took a little getting used to, since I had never eaten turnips before. But about halfway through the bowl I really started to enjoy the soup — plus I got to eat it with Blueberry Cream Cheese Bread from Great Harvest.

But apart form being creative, I think that Brooke and I are really going to enjoy this new addition to our life. We found out that the farm is run by a married couple with two boys — who both help out on the farm. Michelle invited us to come out to the farm and told us that if we ever had any questions about something we could email her, we could swap stuff out if we wanted, and if we ever wanted organic eggs, organic chicken, or organic beef we could shoot her an email and she would bring it.

This process is so simple it amazes me that I am amazed. We officially have a relationship with a farmer about an hour away who literally picks the vegetables the day before we get them. And, the coolest part — they still have dirt on them. So instead of having to wash the vegetables to get the chemicals off we have to wash them to get the dirt off. How cool is that?

peace
joel

So the only reason I was holdig out on not buying a Mac was because of my familiarity with Windows systems. But now, Mac, in their marketing brilliance, has made my reason completely invalid. Go here to see why.

Now, all I need is for people to donate to my Mac fund, any contributors??? =)

peace
joel

In the known history of humanity there have been at least three major shifts in how information is collected and given. The first of these shifts is around 2500 B.C. with the invention of writing. This is the first time in the history of humanity that data can be (somewhat) permanently recorded and handed down from generation to generation. This eventually led to the necessity of the second of these major shifts. This shift occurred in the late 1500’s and is compliments of a man named Johannes Gutenberg. Gutenberg invented what we call the printing press. For over 500 years advancements of this amazing technology helped fuel the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and academic education as we know it. As we entered the late 20th century books were a standard artifact in every Western family’s home. The third, and most recent shift, was the invention of the inter-net. The internet first became accessible to gross numbers with the release of the Netscape Browser in 1995. It was with the advent of Netscape that, once again, information could be transferred at greater ease than ever thought possible. Suddenly an individual in Kansas could write about why they did not enjoy their job and a different individual in Tokyo could read it – only moments later. With the use of a personal computer and a modem each individual was their own publisher. Programs like Microsoft Frontpage and Netscape Composer made publishing webpages easy and accessible. Anyones thought could be discovered by anyone else and everyone was their own publisher.

In a post-Netscape world the way in which a person obtained social influence started to shift to a web model instead of a hierarchical model. The very way in which the inter-net is set-up is through a web of relationships. Within the internet there is no proverbial CEO or COO, but there are Hubs and Nodes. To help with this metaphor, think of a wheel on bicycle – at the center is the hub and each of the spokes leads to a node. The hub is the central locator for all the nodes and all the nodes revolve around the hub. One of the best technological examples of this is the inter-net search giant Google. Google is quite possibly the largest hub within the inter-net world. Arguably every page of the fifty million registered websites is node-ed back to the hub that is Google. In the upper right corner of the Google search results page is a line of text that says “Results 1-10 of (some large number) for (search term) followed by the amount of time it took Google to search.” For instance, if an individual wanted to search “weather in seattle” the text line would say “Results 1 - 10 of about 48,100,000 for weather in Seattle. (0.06 seconds)” Who really needs 48,100,000 nodes for the weather in Seattle – and yet in a post-Netscape world we have them. We no longer need to wait till the six o’clock news to see the latest storm front that is moving through – we simply go to Google and within 0.06 second we have 48,100,000 results.

We have information overload. 4500 years ago the written language was invented, and now we have an endless amount of information stored on little boxes forever. This past summer Google released their own email provider under the banner “Never erase an email message again.” When a person goes to www.gmail.com they can see the ever increasing storage space that is allotted to each gmail account. At about the same time Google released Gmail it went public on the stock market. For three months prior to the public date there was a conversation on the internet as to how high the opening price of Google stock would be. Since Google released Gmail it has also released many other empowering programs. Google Earth gives the average internet user access to satellite images that were once private property of the Government. Soon Google Calendar, Google Word Processing, and Google Operating System are going to be released. Google is taking on, and scaring, software giant Microsoft.

So how did Google become so influential? Simple, they caught onto the reality of the inter-net faster and better than anyone before them. They invented a technology that scanned websites, followed links and created connections. They did this at a time when “most search engines based their results on the number of times a search-for term appeared on a given Web site.” The founders of Google believed “that the more often a site was linked to, the more relevant it was likely to be.” Therefore, “Using complex algorithms, they devised a system they called Page-Rank and they put it at the heart of their search engine, first dubbed BackRub and soon thereafter, Google.” Google was an almost instant success. People no longer had to spend hours searching for good content and go to a plethora of search engines to find it. While other search engines still request that a person registers their site Google’s web-crawlers find the site based on following links, determine its relevance, and place it appropriately within the google-plex of results.

What can the Church and Christianity learn from Google? Thoughts?

peace
joel

Last year, about this same time I published a post entitled ‘CSA’s and the Kingdom‘. I know from talking to a few of you it had impact and you changed your buying habits because of what you learned through my typing. This is why I blog, so when something I write affects a person enough to cause them to think about something, or to even change then I have done my part, in part.

Now, a year later, Brooke and I have joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) again (last year it fell through). We are supporting Growing Things Farm and are getting a full basket and splitting it with Nate and Dayspring Schlachter(friends and employer) who live about 7 blocks from us. So each Saturday from now until the end of August we will be getting freshly picked fruits and vegetable from a local farmer.

This is a beautiful thing. If I remember correctly from last year, this farmer and his two sons show up at the farmers market each saturday and sell their product — it truly is a family ordeal, and a family farm. I can’t think of a better way to spend $25/week of our food budget.

looking forward to fresh veggies,
joel

It is raining in Seattle today.  Its is dark, gray, and gloomy.  This is unfortunate because Brooke and I had planned to go camping tonight.  To spend one night in our favorite spot on the mountain loop highway. 

We have both been running around like crazy the past two weeks.  I am working on finishing up my thesis as well as trying to balance all that is required of me in my many worlds and Brooke is travelling and getting used to a new semester at the University of Washington. 

So here we are, sitting on our living room on a gloomy day, I’m working on my second to last Greek assignment and Brooke is reading the Artist’s Way:  A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.  And now, because it is raining we have decided not to go camping tonight and instead, we are hoping to have fun watching the final four tonight.

I found out in the last couple weeks that my parents are coming out for my graduation as well as a for a short trip in Seattle.  I”m excited about this.  I’m excited that my parents will finally see the town that Brooke and I call home.  That they will get to interact with Brooke and I in our circle of friends.  So keep your eyes open for a party announcement.  I”m trying to decide if i want it to be a graduation party or not — since i do have 10 credits this summer. 

I also found out that my two younger brothers are going to come out here for a week in late june/early july.  I think that they will both love seattle, especially if we get to go to the ocean — which i think we will.

I also found out that my sister and brother-in-law are most likely coming out in early august. 

So I go from feast to famine it seems.

But what is kind of a side benefit of family coming to visit us is that we can spend our vacation money on a real vacation.  Brooke and I are yet to hop on a plane and go somewhere other than Midway Airport.  So this summer we will be doing that for the first time, we will be hopping on a plane and flying to Arizona, taking a bux to the Grand Canyon and spending 5 dayshiking around the backcountry of the Grand Canyon.  Glory Glory Hallelujah.
 

peace
joel