Back to Florida?

ELEVENTYONE

Watch out for kids on tricycles!

ELEVENTYTWO

You should always look up. The basilisks could be anywhere.

ELEVENTYTHREE

Imma get me some fish someday. As long as I don't have to clean the tank. 

ELEVENTYFOUR

Such a gentleman!

ELEVENTYFIVE

Artificial skies can be pretty awesome.

ELEVENTYSIX

ELEVENTYSEVEN

ELEVENTYEIGHT

I like new angles on old things. Although I probably looked pretty strange in the lobby of this hotel taking a picture of a chair.

ELEVENTYNINE

One of my favorite parts of this hotel in Florida.

The Total Perspective Vortex

"The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."


Chapter 11, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Wouldn't It Be Nice...

You can always trust Calvin to get right to the heart of the matter. 

We've been doing a series at GCC (and you can pretty much always assume that we'll be in the middle of a series. I've yet to see a standalone sermon. Slightly annoying. Anyway.) called Fair Questions. And really, it's been a good series thus far. The first week was about the Problem of Pain. (Well, suffering, but in Philosophy 111, we called it The Problem of Pain. Most of what I remember from that class is one big headache, one big cheating scandal - not involving me - and a really cool Prof who talked over my head 90% of the time. I think I got an 'A' because I was one of the five or so who didn't cheat. Definitely not because I understand philosophy.) The second week was asking if science disproves God. We'll have to see what the next few questions bring, but I can guess, because the pastor has been preaching straight out of The Case for Faith by Lee Stroebel. Good book, I would recommend it if you're less concerned about the emotional aspects of faith and want something intellectual to back it up.

This whole series, though, has me asking questions of my own. They aren't new questions - I've been asking them since before the summer after seventh grade when I finally had to accept that those questions weren't going to have easy answers, and I couldn't keep waiting for them and stay on the straight and narrow at the same time.

I haven't stopped asking these questions, though. I don't think I should. I have a whole list just waiting for Kingdom come, and while the answers don't change what I believe, they do change how that belief defines my life. I believe that part of being a Christian is a continuing exercise in asking questions and seeking truth. If we're seeking truth, we're seeking God, and God always finds us when we seek Him.

Now over the years, I have had some questions answered, some questions that led to other questions, and a complete lack of questions about some things that really bother other people. (For example, I've never really questioned the Trinity. I'm not saying I can completely wrap my head around it, but I've never questioned its existence or how each nature interacts with us. The Trinity just is.) However, there is one question, and it's pretty big, to which I have never been given a satisfactory answer. What is it?

Why do people even exist?

And okay, I know part of the answer. We exist to praise God and serve Him and to take care of this Earth on which He has put us.

But why even bother with people in the first place? We're annoying. We screw up everything we touch. More often than not, we choose to turn our backs on our Creator and try to tell Him He doesn't exist. In my human eyes, we are more trouble than we're worth.

Don't get me wrong. Most of the time, I am thrilled to be here. I love interacting with the world God created. I love learning new things and exploring.

But there are many times when I'm sick and tired of it. There are times when I look around and I ask, why did God ever think this was a good idea?

I'm not sure I'll ever have the answer in this life.

But I'm not going to stop trying to find it.

FLOWER POWER!!!!

ONEHUNDREDONE


ONEHUNDREDTWO


ONEHUNDREDTHREE


ONEHUNDREDFOUR


ONEHUNDREDFIVE


It rained like nobody's business this day. It was pretty neat. Except when we were sitting in the car waiting for the hail to stop.

ONEHUNDREDSIX


ONEHUNDREDSEVEN



I took this while I was spying on the people looking at my parents' house. Apparently I managed to not scare them away.

ONEHUNDREDEIGHT


Again, cars + night shots = awesome!

ONEHUNDREDNINE


Who doesn't love a parrot?

ONEHUNDREDTEN

Songs for Florida

Have you ever noticed that a lot of the songs about Florida are actually really depressing? Why is that? Are people's brains so soaked with sun that they just can't deal with life?

Fortunately, I did not experience these sensations on my recent trip to Orlando for the CLA conference. CLA stands for Christian Leadership Alliance, and I guess the conference is about helping future leaders or something like that. It was more about the technical stuff for me, and most of the stuff I learned was really helpful.

This whole journey started a couple of months ago when Ron Collins, the VP of Development, asked my boss if she was going to go to the conference again. She and Lori went last year, but because of schedules and other considerations, they had decided not to go this year. I think Ron wanted someone from Communications, though, so Susan asked me if I wanted to go.

I said, "Florida! Heck yes, I'll go!"

Of course, conferences, even in Florida, are still conferences. But we stayed in a pretty nice place.




No biggie. (Although I was keeping an eye out for a kid on a tricycle.)


I only got to spend about 20 minutes by the pool, and only on the first day, because the rest of it was non-stop.

Most of my time was spent in workshops and general sessions and technology summits and in the exhibit hall passing out business cards so I could win things.


And it actually worked! I won a lovely gift bag from the Girls Night Out booth, including a Kindle! How awesome is that?

Pretty much the only time I got out of the hotel was when we went to dinner. Which, admittedly, was quite nice, except for this one place that kept having thunderstorms...



That was a lot of fun.


Then there was the place with random weaponry sticking out of the walls. I wanted to stay there longer.

I also made a new friend.


I called him Steve. I thought for a minute that he was going to join us in the van.

It was a good trip. I would probably go again. Hopefully, what I learned will be useful to us in the future.

Reaching Cien

NINETY-TWO

Fun buildings in PA!

NINETY-THREE

I'm not sure why churches have red doors in Pennsylvania. Maybe it's a Dutch thing? I don't really think it denotes the presence of dead people, though.

NINETY-FOUR

I love night shots. They are hard to get with my camera, but sometimes I like it more when they aren't perfectly crisp.

NINETY-FIVE

Cars offer excellent angles and interesting shots.

NINETY-SIX

My mother may kill me for this. But honestly, how could I resist?

NINETY-SEVEN

Again with the night shots, but now adding wind.

NINETY-EIGHT

I love this. It's almost like a painting.

NINETY-NINE

Follow the creepily lit stone road.

ONE HUNDRED

Don't Read This Post

It's really hard sometimes to write down what I'm feeling.

Actually, no. It's not.

What is hard is writing it here, where pretty much anyone could read it. Granted, it's part of why I started a blog, but every time I sit down and type something up, I end up saving it as a draft and never posting.

That's not to say I don't talk about it. I tell a little bit to Arika, more to my parents, some to my sister...

But I always save the last little bit to myself.

It reminds me of what Wormtongue says to Eowyn in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: "Who knows what you have spoken to the darkness, in bitter watches of the night, when all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, like a hutch to trammel some wild thing in."

I cannot begin to tell you how much I relate to that.

What I do know is that there is One who knows everything I've spoken to the darkness. And it's not just dark of night - there is a completely different darkness of the mind, always lurking, waiting to consume.

I wish I could say it has been a while since I've felt it creeping around the edges. I wish I could say that I'm strong enough to resist even when my walls aren't up.

I wish being vulnerable didn't terrify me so much.

Photo Love: Gettysburg

SEVENTY-NINE

This starts my series on Gettysburg. If you've never been there, go. If you don't know anything about the Civil War, take me. I'll give you the grand tour. One of my favorite places at Gettysburg is the Cyclorama. Don't know what that is? I wiki'd it for you. The one at G'burg is gorgeous, and I've never had enough time to get some good pics of it. Turns out, if you go in March when no one in their right mind visits a battlefield, you get to stick around a bit. This up above would be the artist's rendering of Pickett's Charge.

EIGHTY


This could be one of several people. He's clearly high-ranking, but the artist wasn't always concerned about accuracy. The most historically accurate choice would be General Winfield Scott Hancock. He was wounded on the third day at Gettysburg when a bullet struck his saddle and sent splinters into his groin. That wound plagued him for the rest of the war and ultimately led to him missing the surrender two years later. Why is this significant? Because he also missed the end of the Mexican War due to Montezuma's Revenge. Hancock would go on to run for President of the United States, losing to Republican James Garfield. There's a bunch of other fun info about Hancock I'd love to impart, but this post is supposed to be about the photos.

EIGHTY-ONE


The most significant part of this photo (in my opinion) are the two round hills in the background. That's the extreme left flank of the Union line at Gettysburg, and they featured prominently on the second day of fighting. One of my favorite historical figures fought there. Can you guess who that was? I'll tell you on pic 87.

EIGHTY-TWO


This field hospital was actually nowhere near the line of battle, but it's an important piece of the cyclorama because it depicts the aftermath of a battle fairly well. The town of Gettysburg was absolutely devastated when the armies left, both because of the fact that 160,000 guys were firing guns at each other for three days and missing a lot, and because they left 50,000 dead and dying people behind over a ten square mile area. (Note for the future: if you don't want your town becoming the center of a game-changing battle that will destroy your livelihood until people use it as a tourist attraction, don't build ten major roads going into and out of it.)

EIGHTY-THREE


Regardless of what side you're on, you have to agree that 13,000 guys charging into the face of 175 cannons shows some serious moxy. (And stupidity, but I blame that on someone else.)

EIGHTY-FOUR


I mean, come on! Anyone who willingly goes up against that has issues.

EIGHTY-FIVE


I love this place. I have spent hours exploring it, and I still go back every time I'm in PA.

EIGHTY-SIX


To this day, there is no statue of this man to be found anywhere in a state formerly in rebellion against the Union. He is General James Longstreet, one of the best tactical minds of the Civil War. During the war, his men loved him, but after the war, he wrote a very unpopular account of the battle of Gettysburg in which he blamed the loss on Robert E. Lee. He also happened to be the best friend of Ulysses S. Grant.

EIGHTY-SEVEN


Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a professor at Bowdoin College in Maine, and he believed strongly in the preservation of the Union, so much so that he enlisted. He was offered the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the 20th Maine regiment. His first major battle was Fredericksburg, and by July 1863, he was a full Colonel and in command of about 300 men. His regiment held the extreme left flank on Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and on the second day, withstood continuous attacks by Confederate troops, finally repelling them for good with a bayonet charge. In the course of the war, Chamberlain was wounded six times, falsely reported dead, given a battlefield promotion to brigadier general by Grant, had six horses shot from under him and was cited for bravery four times. He was selected to preside over the parade of Confederate infantry at their formal surrender at the end of the war, and he ordered his troops to give a final salute to their once-again brothers.

I love that man.

EIGHTY-EIGHT


Multiply by 100 and see next photo.

EIGHTY-NINE


If you had to charge up that hill, you'd probably go for the left flank as well.

NINETY


They call this point the High Water Mark of the Confederacy because it is supposedly the farthest Confederate troops got into the Union. This is largely symbolic as the cavalry made it up into Harrisburg at least. But had the Confederates broken through this point at Gettysburg, the war would have turned out differently. Somewhat. I still maintain the South would have lost. Anyway, CSA General Lewis Armistead led the brigade that made it this far. He was best friends with Winfield Scott Hancock. Before the war, when the two men were leaving their posts in California for their home states, Armistead told Hancock, "If I ever raise my hand against you, may God strike me dead!"

Gettysburg was the first battle in which the two men were on the field at the same time. Lewis Armistead died a few days later from wounds sustained at The Angle.

NINETY-ONE


I take a variation of this shot every time I go to Gettysburg. I also take the opposing shot. From this point, you're standing in the middle of the Union line. On the far side of the field is the Virginia monument - a statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse Traveler. The space in between is the distance attempted by 13,000 men. Fewer than 8,000 made it back to those trees.

This ends the Gettysburg portion of our tour-de-pic. At least for now. I'm going back to PA in May.

:D

Wherein I Yet Again Reveal More Than I Should

It occurs to me that I've completely forgotten to mention where I will be next week. It's not actually a surprise that I've forgotten to mention it. While it has been in the back of my mind for about two months, I haven't really had a chance to give it proper thought because I've been writing a lot for Outreach and then a secret article that I'll tell you about later. I think.

Anyway, next week I will be attending the CLA conference in Orlando! Woohoo!

(Okay, it's probably not that exciting. It's for work, so I won't exactly get to enjoy much of the scenery, but still...)

CLA stands for Christian Leadership Alliance. I don't actually know what they do, but this conference is for non-profit organizations to come and learn about new strategies and marketing and social media and a whole ton of other stuff. I'm really excited about this, actually, because I've been on the fringes of email marketing and social media, and I want to learn more. It's quite fascinating stuff. Also, this is my first real business trip. It reminds me of the days when my dream was to be a lawyer/librarian.

Yeah, it's weird for me, too.

But we're getting away from the point. Upon realizing that this trip was a week away, I also realized that I needed business cards to be all networky (my word, I'm stuck in my snarky teen years! that'll make an impression), so I asked Foster to print some up. Then we had one of our impromptu department meetings.

(It usually starts when Susan starts yelling for Lori, or Lori starts yelling at Susan for giving her more work, which usually draws me in because I want to know what the fuss is about, then I start laughing, then Foster comes to see what could have possibly made me laugh, and that's usually where it ends unless Ben or Jason are passing by. We eventually settle somewhat and discuss - loudly - what brought us all there in the first place.)

(Is that not how everyone else does it?)

Anyway, we were discussing QR codes. You know, those odd looking squares that remind of you bar codes, and until you bought a smartphone, didn't really care about. Except now, a significant portion of the department has a smartphone, so we're more aware of them. So I started playing around with my QR reader on my iPhone and realized that I could actually create one. So I did one for the blog. And I started to think about the conference and my business cards and had a brainstorm.

Why not put the QR code on my business card?

So I did.


Fancy shmancy, eh?

Except here's my problem. I'm going to give out all of these cards to people I don't know. Those people are (presumably) going to be so impressed by my QR code that they rush to visit my blog. And when they get here, they are going to see words like 'networky' and that's probably not a great first impression.

I really don't know. I'm not the best with impressions.



I really need to do more with this thing.


...