i still don't go to church

It's been almost a year and a half... and yet spiritually, mentally, relationally, I'm in the best shape I've ever been. How does that work??

I'm not questioning the value of church or any specific church, but the formula in which many of them appear to be carried out.

Some part of me foolishly thought I was breaking new ground a couple weeks ago when I made the firm decision to stop trying to attend a church (which had basically become any church) and to start a re-evaluation of what the church was about and what it was supposed to be about. But, as in all things, I've been beaten to the punch.

Donald Miller's "Searching For God Knows What" has been sitting on my bookshelf un-cracked since last Christmas (thanks Mom) and only showed itself a few days back. Not knowing what it was about, I picked it up and read the back cover and realized that I wasn't the only one thinking this way. So far I am very impressed on the written insight it provides into what I think are universal questions about the modern day church. It helps me articulate the thoughts that have been going through my head as well.

Chapter 1: "It seems if there was a formula to fix life, Jesus would have told us what it was." Even after reading all the self-help and how-to books in the world, we would still make mistakes and we would still not have everything figured out.

Chapter 2: "...that doesn't sound like a very good god to me. The televangelist can have him, for all I care." Perhaps God is not the god that we, from all numbers of sources, are told to believe He is...

.net telecommute position available

I've recently been hired on at a major insurance company to lead a very small new "swat team" of designers and developers charged with re-developing a number of reporting and other employee-facing software systems. We are currently looking for another probably mid-level C#/.NET developer to join us.

There is a great opportunity here to make a big impact on the everyday lives of thousands of employees, all the while working from home, enjoying excellent benefits, and maintaining a fantastic life balance in general.

We will be building new systems using ASP.NET 3.5 and C#, all test-driven applications. The team will be provided with excellent and thorough specifications prior to development to make life easier (a promise I can make good on, because I will be overseeing the analysis and documentation process itself). This team may also be responsible for understanding, but not maintaining, the code of older systems written build on various legacy platforms.

Basic qualifications:

• 3+ years experience developing web-based software in .NET
• C# and ASP.NET 3.5
• Very strong working knowledge of SQL, SQL Server, and ADO.NET
• Ability to write and modify clean XHTML/CSS layouts
• Experience with object-oriented JavaScript and/or jQuery
• Experience with WCF is a plus
• Experience developing in a test-driven environment is a plus
• Experience developing in a Java, PHP, Perl, or other environment is a plus

Want to know more or apply? Send over a résumé and salary requirements to cblack@cblack.biz and let's chat!

I think that there's a few things that never change and a few things that never stop changing.

I don't think we go through "dry periods". I think we go through periods where the opportunities presented are more difficult to recognize and the opposition is too easy to recognize, and we don't give opposition a good enough fight.

I think.

Where is the fight in us supposed to come from, during these different times? Different places, or the same?

foxcopy

FoxCopy is a business I built and ran sometime in the early 1990's as a subsidiary of my first, less-profitable business, Science Electronics. FoxCopy specialized in making cassette copies of CDs, vinyl, and other tapes, and retained such notable clients as my mother, and also my friend's mother.

When market demand dwindled, FoxCopy never formally closed but effectively stopped offering service. I was lucky to retain the business assets to this day, namely this pencil box with the rubber stamp I used to stamp my business name on to the tape case paper backing.




Sample product:



I always preferred Maxell cassettes, but TDK was a runner up. Ahh, cassettes.

php 5.3.0 + mysql + pdo_mysql on leopard

Thanks to Wieden+Kennedy for indirectly sponsoring this post!

This is a brief explanation of how you might be able to get pdo_mysql working on Leopard (OS X 10.5.6 and 10.5.7) with the stock Apache installation, on an Intel-based Mac, while conveniently updating PHP as well. I was able to scrape this together from a few blog posts, mostly this one, and also some guess work.

You need to know what kind of processor you have in your Mac. To find out, go to "About This Mac" in the Apple menu.

Instructions for Intel Core 2 Duo (64-bit)

1. Make a backup copy of this file: /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

2. Download and install the x86_64 Mac package of MySQL from the MySQL website. If you already have MySQL installed you can safely skip this step.

3. Download and unzip the PHP 5.3.0 source code from the PHP website.

4. Open a terminal window and move to the unzipped directory, then execute the following commands.

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 \
CFLAGS='-O2 -arch x86_64' \
LDFLAGS='-O2 -arch x86_64' \
CXXFLAGS='-O2 -arch x86_64' \
./configure '--prefix=/usr/local/php-5.3.0' \
'--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' \
'--with-ldap=/usr' \
'--with-kerberos=/usr' \
'--enable-cli' \
'--with-zlib-dir=/usr' \
'--enable-exif' \
'--enable-ftp' \
'--enable-mbstring' \
'--enable-mbregex' \
'--enable-sockets' \
'--with-iodbc=/usr' \
'--with-curl=/usr' \
'--with-config-file-path=/etc' \
'--sysconfdir=/private/etc' \
'--with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql' \
'--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config' \
'--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' \
'--with-openssl' '--with-xmlrpc' \
'--with-xsl=/usr' \
'--without-pear' \
'--enable-pdo=static' \
'--with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql'

make
sudo make install
sudo apachectl restart

See below for instructions on how to finalize and test.

Instructions for Intel Core Duo (32-bit)

1. Make a backup copy of this file: /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

2. Download and install the x86 (not x86_64) Mac package of MySQL from the MySQL website. If you already have MySQL installed you can safely skip this step.

3. Download and unzip the PHP 5.3.0 source code from the PHP website.

4. Open a terminal window and move to the unzipped directory, then execute the following commands.

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 \
CFLAGS='-O2 -arch i386' \
LDFLAGS='-O2 -arch i386' \
CXXFLAGS='-O2 -arch i386' \
./configure '--prefix=/usr/local/php-5.3.0' \
'--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' \
'--with-ldap=/usr' \
'--with-kerberos=/usr' \
'--enable-cli' \
'--with-zlib-dir=/usr' \
'--enable-exif' \
'--enable-ftp' \
'--enable-mbstring' \
'--enable-mbregex' \
'--enable-sockets' \
'--with-iodbc=/usr' \
'--with-curl=/usr' \
'--with-config-file-path=/etc' \
'--sysconfdir=/private/etc' \
'--with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql' \
'--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config' \
'--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' \
'--with-openssl' '--with-xmlrpc' \
'--with-xsl=/usr' \
'--without-pear' \
'--enable-pdo=static' \
'--with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql'

make
sudo make install
sudo apachectl restart

Finishing up on ALL platforms

Take a look at your phpinfo(), and if all went well, you will see MySQL listed in the drivers under PDO. If it doesn't work, the bailout is to put the original libphp5.so back into place... you know, the one you backed up in step 1... you did back it up, right?

If you want to use the command-line executables, I recommend adding /usr/local/php-5.3.0/bin to your PATH environment variable before /usr/bin.

PHP CLI users: If you are getting this warning:
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library './pdo_mysql.so' - (null) in Unknown on line 0

Comment out the following line in /etc/php.ini:
extension=pdo_mysql.so

ant

An ant, *really* up close. You must see this. The level of detail is stunning.

So, what else of creation can we not see with just our own eyes?

motive

I think one of my greatest fears now is being a fraud, even in the slightest way, and not being aware of it at all.

I re-examine my motives, my actions, a million times over, and I run myself in circles and I'm still not satisfied.

What can solve this one?

the struggle

I've been thinking a lot about The Struggle lately; that is, the spiritual war over all of us, how that affects us, and how we react to it.

How difficult is it to embrace the hard times and to receive the reward, the wisdom, that is waiting for us there? Very! Even though it's spelled out in so many ways for us (dear to my heart is James 1:2-3) it's often so difficult to execute.

He gave us lives to live, but the more I live that life, the more I'm aware that what is in the foreground is so auxiliary. Well, except for the people around you, who you have been called by God to love. (John 13:34) And of course what is love if it is not an active pursuit of the feelings and well being of that person?

When we become aware (again) that this life is stale, what are we to do but drop everything and dig in to the truth? I just cracked open the Word and I feel so much better. So, why is that always the case?

wireless reading

Amazon probably wants you to believe they invented "wireless reading", but the truth is that we've been able to read things without wires attached to them for thousands of years!

Despite this, Amazon has brought something very important to the table, but it's definitely not the Kindle. It's the Kindle's electronic book format, which, with Amazon's broad publisher and distributor relationships, is quickly bringing a vast number of titles to a growing number of mobile devices.

The Kindle, at a mere $360, is a big and clunky additional device that you have to carry around with you. It can be forgotten at home just like a real book. I say thee nay!

The Kindle App for iPhone and iPod Touch costs $0. Oops. And I'm here to say, the pleasure of reading a book from the bright iPhone screen is immense. It is actually easier than reading from paper pages in a lot of lighting situations. You can pop instantly to the table of contents and then click a link to go instantly to a different section of the book. After a while reading from the iPhone, paper books start to feel heavy and very clunky.

Plus, imagine the satisfaction you will feel when you realize you left home without your book, but then realize you bought it for Kindle and you actually have it with you because you have your phone. Yay!

efficiency: lose the bookmarks bar

I'm currently thinking about ways to increase my efficiency during working hours. In my mind this morning I was trying to visualize how it happens that I get distracted while I'm trying to work.

As I started to watch the various scenarios, you know what happened every single time? I'd be looking straight at the screen, trying to work my way through a problem, and suddenly in front of me I see links to my favorite websites staring me in the face, beckoning me to read my life away. And they are:

Friends blogs.
News sites.
Craigslist!
Myspace.
Facebook.
Wikipedia.
And more.

These sites could keep me occupied for hours. And they have. Even clicking one a few times throughout the day causes my thought processes to be completely broken up and I lose a ton of time.

So away the bookmarks bar goes. I figure it is less ready opportunities to "get" distracted. Distraction then becomes an active pursuit rather than a passive one.

consumerist nature

I observe this morning that we are bred with the notion that having stuff makes you more favorable. A child with big observant eyes approaches a table full of middle-age coffee shop patrons. The first observation spoken to the child? "Hi! I like your coat!"

Harmless... right?

What do you say when you distinctly have nothing to say?

Well, it looks like I had something to say, after all.

grit

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.

The sandpaper of Jesus Christ, it is a course one
and I sure am a rough surface

mac virus: ibotnet trojan

I've heard that there is a Mac virus, a trojan horse, showing up in illegal software downloaded off BitTorrent.

Basically, if you don't download illegal copies of software from BitTorrent or other pirate sources, you have nothing to worry about and you can stop reading this post. I think eventually someone will write a nasty virus that will spread via web browser, like we have seen time and again with Windows and Internet Explorer, but today is not that day.

The way the iBotnet Trojan virus installs itself is only through installation of the software, at which point the user enters their password and it unlocks the computer for the hacked copy of the software (and consequently, the virus) to be installed.

Removal information on theAppleBlog.

Mac viruses are practically discussed (by a photographer, no less) today on Ken Rockwell's site.

hinge

I am coming to a much deeper realization that the success or utter failure of any aspect of my life rests completely on my ability to give everything of myself to God and to His will, a very active and ongoing pursuit.

homelessness: why?

Does the problem of homelessness bother anyone else? There is so much I don't understand.

Why is a homeless person homeless? Do they want to be? What do they want to see in their lifetime? What do they see, hear, and understand that we don't?

Is homelessness simply a societal problem? Is it so simply that we haven't figured out what to do to fix it? (Preliminarily, no... but perhaps this will provoke some conversation.)

What resources do exist in Portland, in the United States, that the homeless can take advantage of? Are they being taken advantage of? And how is that different from the rest of the world?

What does a homeless person expect on a day-to-day basis? What is their take, and their reaction to their circumstances and surroundings?

Here's a loaded set of questions: What happens when they ask for money? Or for anything, for that matter? As a Christian what is my response? Do I concern myself with the powerful, repercussive effects of that gift, or do I hand it over without a second thought?

Send in yer verses... All the ones I have read talk plenty about the poor (whom I've also heard referred to as "the less fortunate"), so that leads me to my next question: Are all homeless people simply less fortunate, or is that path they have chosen? And what of it? Does that matter?

Only one thing is really for certain in my mind, and it's that I'll live unsettled until I figure out what God is looking for me to figure out here.

amy seeley's "walk to the park" on oprah

I'm very excited that Amy Seeley's song "Walk to the Park", from her latest album "Eight Belles", will be played during a video segment on The Oprah Winfrey show today (April 13, 2009), episode "Unconventional, Unforgettable Dads". The song was chosen as the background music to a video clip featuring Matt Logelin and his daughter Maddy/Madeline.

You can hear more of Amy's music and purchase her albums at AmySeeley.com and on iTunes.



Walk to the Park lyrics:

walk to the park and take a minute
maybe some fresh air will help clear our heads
i have seen way too much this month
these grievances they take from us ... they take

i've been realistic about love
i've been optimistic about the weather
but i’ve been complacent about us
so maybe it’s time

we walked to the park and take a minute
to re-write the map for the thousandth time

we make our revisions 'cause it’s not enough
to wonder if ... if ... if

i've been realistic about love
i've been optimistic about this weather
but i’ve been complacent about us
so maybe it’s time

we walk to the park and take a minute
and decide today to change our minds

© 2008 Amy Seeley

After the infamous early 20s, the years of searching, digging, wanting... am I finally home at home?

trying to get my thoughts in order

It's a weird night, right in the middle of this week, which is definitely not over, God help me.

I turned down a beer at OSF because I can't afford to be sleepy. I ate alone at the bar and watched golf and I stuffed my freaking face! It didn't cost that much. Monetarily, but dignity-wise, well, that's another story. Next week I'll be at the senior's center.

Wait, they're building one of those right outside my window. And taking my cell phone reception with it!

Ironically I'm drinking filtered water from a beer stein. What heck happened to me, all this beer stuff? Prohibition. Reform. Palette cleanse necessitated. Water is a good start.

I have four CDs on my desk right now and they are all amazing. In no particular order:

• Gavin Castleton's Home
• Hiromi's Sonicbloom: Time Control
• ELDAR: re-imagination
• Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Recording

Why do I take my work so seriously, but at the same time I don't take it seriously at all?

How does a day pass so quickly?

I have only have one very small lamp on in this room. I don't feel like having much more light on.

OK, back to work.

As unexpected as it seems right now... I can't complain how life has turned out.

php 5.2.9 + mysql + pdo_mysql on leopard

** Click here for PHP 5.3.0 **

This is a brief explanation of how you might be able to get pdo_mysql working on Leopard (OS X 10.5.6 and 10.5.7) with the stock Apache installation, on a Core 2 based Mac, while conveniently updating PHP as well. I was able to scrape this together from a few blog posts, mostly this one, and also some guess work.

This installation only covers 64-bit capable Intel Macs: those with the Core 2 processor. I might be able to guess at 32-bit (original Core) instructions; comment here if you need them.

1. Make a backup copy of this file: /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

2. Download and install MySQL from the MySQL website. Make sure to download the x86_64 package.

3. Download and unzip the PHP source code from the PHP website. I used the latest, PHP 5.2.9, at the time of this writing.

4. Open a terminal window and move to the unzipped directory, then execute the following commands.

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 \
CFLAGS='-O2 -arch x86_64' \
LDFLAGS='-O2 -arch x86_64' \
CXXFLAGS='-O2 -arch x86_64' \
./configure '--prefix=/usr/local/php-5.2.9' \
'--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs' \
'--with-ldap=/usr' \
'--with-kerberos=/usr' \
'--enable-cli' \
'--with-zlib-dir=/usr' \
'--enable-exif' \
'--enable-ftp' \
'--enable-mbstring' \
'--enable-mbregex' \
'--enable-sockets' \
'--with-iodbc=/usr' \
'--with-curl=/usr' \
'--with-config-file-path=/etc' \
'--sysconfdir=/private/etc' \
'--with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql' \
'--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config' \
'--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' \
'--with-openssl' '--with-xmlrpc' \
'--with-xsl=/usr' \
'--without-pear' \
--enable-pdo=static \
--with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql

make

sudo make install

sudo apachectl restart

Take a look at your phpinfo(), and if all went well, you will see MySQL listed in the drivers under PDO. If it doesn't work, the bailout is to put the original libphp5.so back into place... you know, the one you backed up in step 1... you did back it up, right?

PHP CLI users: If you are getting this warning:
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library './pdo_mysql.so' - (null) in Unknown on line 0

Comment out the following line in /etc/php.ini:
extension=pdo_mysql.so

php is scalable

Back in the day I had plenty of stuck-in-their-ways Java and J2EE developers tell me that PHP isn't scalable. They were wrong, and I politely told them that. It was a classic case of people reciting opinions without really having explored the truth. I never heard anything like it from any developer that had actually used PHP for developing a project.

PHP's interpreter is written in very fast C; it has an extremely low memory footprint, and its execution leaves no traces behind. What's there that won't scale? Slap an opcode cache on the server, parameterize your SQL queries, and it gets even better.

Today, thankfully, I don't hear much of that nonsense anymore, but I felt compelled to reiterate the point today when I was reminded that Wikipedia is built on PHP and MySQL, both major open-source projects. As of this writing, Wikipedia is the 7th most popular website in the world according to Alexa. I believe a great deal of Facebook is also PHP, if not all of it.

PHP is definitely not the answer to everything, and as an architect I generally rather prefer the rigidity of a Java or a C# when creating a system. But to say that PHP is not scalable is absolute nonsense.

emeco aluminum chairs

Emeco makes cool chairs out of recycled aluminum. In addition to great design, they are rather comfortable and extremely light! Discovered at LAS today.

opfton key

What is that for?

your move

I used to be bad at chess. I'd get in this habit of making a move before understanding, well as I should have, all of the implications.

Later in life I watched the Bourne movies. I began to learn the importance of Forethought. Consideration. Preparation.

It seems that time invested into thinking ahead always reduces the time to the end goal, anyway. So why not?

circumventing the cricket um100c software on mac

This article describes using the UTStarcom UM100C modem with Cricket's wireless broadband service on the Mac, without using the very flawed software that comes with the device. Well, sort of.

I wasn't the first person to notice that using the software resulted in the computer fans spinning up and sounding like it was clearing for take-off. My girlfriend actually complained about it before I knew myself. Some flaw in the software causes it to use most of the available CPU cycles even when doing nothing. That means your computer gets really slow and hot. Oops.

After I installed it, the Cricket card worked fine, but my Sprint card refused to work at all after that! Thank you, incompatible mess.

Also the interface is ugly. Who knows what else is wrong with it.

Enough already. Here's how to get this done on OS X Leopard. These instructions won't be the same for older versions of the operating system.

DISCLAIMER I can't guarantee that these will work for you or that nothing will go wrong. Performing unofficial hacks on your computer, like this one, can be risky. That said, if there is a problem with any of these instructions, I'd like to know about them so I can fix them. Please let me know if you do not have success.

1. Install the QuickLink software. What?! you say. Don't worry, you'll be removing most of it, but there are a couple pieces that you do need from the package. I recommend that you download this version which I have reposted from the Smith Micro site so that we're all on the same page.

2. Let the installer restart your computer.

3. Use the software to connect up at least once to Cricket's network. Doing this downloads a modem script that is necessary later in the process. Browse to a couple of websites and then verify that it is working. Then disconnect and continue on.

4. Open your System Preferences, select Accounts, choose your account on the left hand side and select the "Login Items" tab. Select "qlmwirelessd" and hit the minus button below the list to remove it. This will keep the software from running automatically.

5. Restart your computer again.

6. Open your System Preferences, and select Network. It should have added two new devices on the left-hand side called "UTStarcom" or the like. I'm not sure why it adds two of them, but it appears that one of them works and one does not. You'll need to identify which one is the working one. Pick one and punch in the following:

Telephone Number: #777
Account Name: [your phone number]@mycricket.com (example: 8005551212@mycricket.com)
Password: cricket

7. Click the "Advanced..." button and apply the following specifications:

Vendor: Other
Model: Cricket 1xEVDO Modem Script
Enable error correction and compression in modem: Yes

8. Click the PPP tab. For "Settings", select "Session" and note the options. Most of these are up to your personal preferences.

9. Now go back to the "Settings" drop down menu and select "Configuration". Uncheck "Send PPP echo packets" and click "OK".

10. Try connecting by clicking "Connect". If it works, yay! You are in business. If it does not work, try configuring the other "UTStarcom" device using the same instructions.

If still you have no luck, you might also try this hint, which I discovered after toiling with this nonsense myself. The idea listed is similar to what I devised.

If the Cricket card is not your only aircard, simply reinstalling your other aircard's software after all of this ought to get it working again.

cricket wireless broadband in portland & um100c on mac

Cricket Wireless is the king of cheap-o mobile services. They now offer a wireless broadband service for only $40/month (or $35/month if you already have a Cricket phone), which is $20 less than the major players in the industry.

Just in case you aren't familiar with Cricket, it's a cellular service provider that doesn't require you to sign into a contract, as any other (non-prepaid) wireless provider does. Instead, you pay full price for your equipment up-front and then pay for the service on a month-to-month basis as you like.

Cricket currently offers only one equipment choice, the UTStarcom um100c, pictured below. It costs about $135, with activation, but right now there is a mail-in rebate of $50. The first month of service is included in that price. From then on it is $40/month. It's wider than my Sprint wireless broadband card, but it's still a very portable device. An extension cable is included but it's pretty bulky.



In Portland I can download at about 70KB/sec, or about the speed of an old home (A)DSL connection, and less than a half the speed of my Sprint card. The upload speed is pretty low.

That said, it is completely useable for general Internet surfing and email checking. The bandwidth is high enough that most online radio stations and video sites will work without issue, though load times might be slightly higher than they would through a wired broadband connection. Add the fact that you now have an Internet connection that you can take with you on the go, and that $40 begins to look like a pretty good bargain.

Cricket's network is definitely not national. You can see their coverage maps here. Major markets are completely dark; for example, I can't use the card in Los Angeles, New York or Chicago at all, but I can in Modesto?? It's a long story regarding their expansion strategy, which cities they choose to set up shop in and which they don't. The short story is that, if you travel at all, you will probably want a card from Sprint or some other major wireless player.

The software included for the Mac is terrible. Once I installed it, my Sprint card refused to work. See my post on circumventing the software. I haven't tried the card at all on the PC, nor do I have any desire to do so.

sprint wireless broadband in portland & novatel u727 on mac

What is bad about either of these things? Really nothing that I can tell. For about the last year, I've been using the Sprint service and the Novatel U727 aircard on my Mac, both with OS X and Windows Vista, and it's been basically flawless. And thanks to a steady stream of software updates, it just continues to get better. For example, with the new Sprint SmartView download, you can now use the GPS features and see signal strength with OS X Leopard.



(I'm assuming) there are plenty of good reviews out there by Googling the Novatel card, so I won't waste my time.

Sprint has a really solid wireless network. Service is fast here in Portland, where I can download at about 200KB/sec. It's been the same where I've tested it in Seattle, San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno, Akron or Chicago. I even got connectivity last summer in rural western Montana, and the speed was just fine!

Lucky me... as an older customer I'm grandfathered in under the old "unlimited" plan, under which I'm not monetarily penalized for going over 5 GB of transfer in one month... but they could theoretically cancel my account or slow my access down to keep me at bay. I have never approached 5 GB in one month, and I use it pretty heavily, so I'm not worried.

the tape wall

Webster has no definition for my word of the day so I will coin it here.

"uncentered"
Cloudy about the goals ahead and disappointed with present self.



Is the importance of the outcome of my (hard) work equal to God as to me? Where is this not true? I ask myself. What changes need to be made so this is always true?

I considered a life as an empty wall, and its goals and projects as notes taped on it. The adhesive on the tape as strong as the heart's true desire to see the outcome of one or another. Some things are completed. A few things stay until the wall itself is broken.



And yet some, over time, fall off.
But do they fall in rhythm with the stripping of my layers from a God
who seemingly is willing to grant me peace if I only listen and obey?
Or do they fall to my own song of self-defeat?

The principals behind leading a real life, for God, are so strikingly simple. Is it complex to learn them (and therefore live them), or complex to learn to avoid everything else?

Sidenote: Check out John Maeda, president of Rhode Island School of Design; amazing.
FLYP article
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