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?