Author: jason

Jesus, God’s Name, and Gay People

Jesus, God’s Name, and Gay People

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Every day, there is a set of web comics I read. I even have an application setup on a server at home that aggregates these comics on to one page to make viewing these comics easier and faster. One such comic is Player vs. Player, one I’ve read for years. While the strip is consistently funny, it is occasionally a little off color, and sometimes downright offensive. One example actually spans two days. The first day (warning: this is likely to offend) is where the offense started. For those of you that didn’t click the link (Trust me. You’re not missing anything) the last panel has a talking cat taking The Lord’s name in vain. As can be expected, some PvP readers were offended and wrote in to let the author know, which led to the second and possibly more offensive of the two strips (This one is "safe" and this post depends on your knowledge of it). Over the next few paragraph’s, I’d like to explain why Scott Kurtz is wrong. …

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The Wall of Separation Canard

The Wall of Separation Canard

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One of the greatest canards in modern public life, in my opinion, is the alleged "wall of separation" between church and state. The idea is that The Framers wanted a government devoid of any religion at all. I think history adequately shows, though, that that’s not the case. What they wanted, rather, was a religion without a state government. That is to say, they didn’t want any one religion to gain the official backing of the government of the land and then be forced upon the populace, as was the case in England.

Everyone now and then, like this case, we see this faulty idea of separation applied at the local level. I think the people that do this are either uninformed with regards to the Constitution, or are being intentionally disingenuous. While these people bow at the altar of the First Amendment, they gloss over the 10th Amendment, which states that any powers not expressly granted to the Federal government are reserved for the states and the people. So how is this relevant to the South Carolina case? The First Amendment says this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Note the emphasis I added. "Congress shall make no law…" Now, couple that with the Tenth Amendment, and I think you can make a case that the First Amendment does not apply to local governments. If a municipality, acting according to the dictates of its constituents, decide that they wish to acknowledge Jesus Christ in their town hall meetings, I think the Constitution grants them that right. The same goes for Allah, Buddha, or whatever religious figure one might choose. What we have in this case is the tyranny of the minority, where a single person was able to assert her will and overrule what is apparently (from the lack of widespread support of the plaintiff) the will of the local community. If you add in a Supreme Court that seems to have forgotten the Constitution they’ve sworn to interpret and uphold, and you have the federal trampling of states’ rights. Just one more in a long line.

I have turned in my notice…

I have turned in my notice…

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Well, I finally did it. Last Thursday, I gave my notice to Hobby Lobby. As one might expect, my boss wasn’t too excited about it, but he said he wasn’t too surprised. He’s known that I’ve not been too happy for a while. Part of my discontent was the adoption of .Net. The rest (and maybe the majority) was the installation of Peoplesoft Enterprise 1 (also known as PSE1, JD Edwards One World 8.9, and probably something else as soon as Oracle finished its acquisition of Peoplesoft).

Hobby Lobby made both of these decisions, as it felt that they were the best decisions for the company, which I can understand. Obviously, I disagree with the selection of .Net as the development platform. Peoplesoft, though, I supported and recommended (though it’s not like the whole decision hinged my opinion. They did, though, ask for it, so I gave it). I was led to believe by the salesmen, though, that we would interact with the system, as developers, via a Java API. However, as one might expect from salesmen, that picture wasn’t quite accurate. Not only will we not be using the API, there is no API. All interaction is done by reading from or writing to "Z" files and running programs. Not that the absence of a Java API would matter, though, as we won’t be using Java.

I spent some time doing development in both environments to see if I could enjoy my job. To be honest, though I am opposed to .Net for reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere, I could probably be happy enough doing C#. PSE1 development, however is a bunch of click here, double click there, type in a variable name on this line, drag this over here. Ick. The only way to see everything the program is doing is to print the "code." I just did not enjoy that (beyond learning it. Once the new wore off…)

So, I’m off to another company here in the metro. It’s a bittersweet decision. I’ve made some good friends here at Hobby Lobby over the past 3 1/2 years. It will be hard to say good-bye to them (though I’ll only be a few miles away from them and I go to church one of them). I wasn’t enjoying myself though, and that made me miserable at work, and the quality of my work suffered. That’s not good for them or me, so it’s probably best for everyone that I move on. Only time can tell if I’ve made the right choice. Right now, it feels right, and I expect that it will be…

Jesus and the Democrat

Jesus and the Democrat

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A little political/religious joke. Enjoy! 🙂

A Republican in a wheelchair entered a restaurant one afternoon and asked the waitress for a cup of coffee. The Republican looked across the restaurant and asked, "Is that Jesus sitting over there?"

The waitress nodded "yes," so the Republican requested that she give Jesus a cup of coffee on him.

The next patron to come in was a Libertarian with a hunched back. He shuffled over to a booth, painfully sat down, and asked the waitress for a cup of hot tea. He also glanced across the restaurant and asked, "Is that Jesus over there?"

The waitress nodded, so the Libertarian asked her to give Jesus a cup of hot tea, "My treat."

The third patron to come into the restaurant was a Democrat on crutches. He hobbled over to a booth, sat down and hollered, "Hey there, honey! How’s about gettin’ me a cold glass of Miller Light!" He, too, looked across the restaurant and asked, "Is that God’s boy over there?"

The waitress once more nodded, so the Democrat directed her to give Jesus a cold glass of beer. "On my bill," he said.

As Jesus got up to leave, he passed by the Republican, touched him and said, "For your kindness, you are healed." The Republican felt the strength come back into his legs, got up, and danced a jig out the door.

Jesus also passed by the Libertarian, touched him and said, "For your kindness, you are healed." The Libertarian felt his back straightening up, and he raised his hands, praised the Lord and did a series of back flips out the door.

Then Jesus walked towards the Democrat. The Democrat jumped up and yelled, "Don’t touch me! I’m collecting disability!"

Gambling for Education

Gambling for Education

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Here is a letter I mailed to The Daily Oklahoman concerning the upcoming vote regarding Governor Henry’s Gambling for Education proposition:

Oklahoma voters are being bombarded with commercials admonishing us to vote for SQ 705 and 706 to create a state lottery. According to these spots, this lottery will save our schools, hopefully much better than liquor by the drink and parimutuel gambling. What they don’t tell you is the impact the lottery will have on the local economy. For every dollar spent on the lottery, that’s one less dollar that goes to a local retailer, which pays for such things as salaries and health benefits. For every dollar spent on the lottery in Oklahoma City, that’s 3.875 cents that doesn’t go to the city in sales tax, which pays for such things as policemen, firemen, etc. It’s also 4.5 cents that the state loses in sales tax, which supports a myriad of state programs. A vote for the lottery may be a vote for funding education, but it’s also a vote against funding our local retailers, and our police and fire departments.

Christians are different, right?

Christians are different, right?

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One of the things you hear preached is that Christ changes a person from the inside out, and I believe that to be true. In my own life, I can see the change being made, little by little. That change, though, is not wrought solely by the work of the Spirit. There has to be a decision made on the part of the Believer that he *wants* to be different. Sadly, we see many Christians who have either not made that decision, or have long since given up on it. To be fair, it’s a *hard* life. Whoever thinks that Christianity is for the weak needs to take a closer look at the faith, but I digress.

What makes me ask this question, are Christians truly different, is a discussion I was party to after Sunday School one SUnday morning. One of the ladies in my class commented on the length (or lack thereof) of the skirts and shirts in church (how’s that for quasi-assonance? :). Our (some would charge delicate) sensibilities were a little put off by the amout of skin that even Christian teens were showing. As we were lamenting this problem, a perfect example walked by: a skirt so short that bending over in public would not be decent.

While I realize that style of clothing is currently en vogue, we are called to a higher standard, and I need to be completely fair about this. This idea of setting ourselves apart a la Romans 12:1-2 applies to *every* area of our lives, public and private. Just as much as the racy dress of our youth is sending a bad message is the Christian body’s acceptance of smoking, excessive drinking, profane and immoral music and cinema, etc. We should strive to set ourselves apart from the culture’s decadence as part of our surrender of our lives to the high calling of Christ.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Being different for its own sake is pretty foolish (if blue is popular, wearing nothing but red proves nothing), and personal freedom is far too complex to boil down to my miniscule missive completely, so there are many factors to consider when pondering the point I’m trying to make. Take alcohol, for example. Personally, I don’t have much of a problem with it. If a Christian is a recovering or struggling alcoholic, he should probalby avoid it. In the words of Ted Kirkpatrick, "Just because it causes you to fall don’t [sic] mean it tempts me very much at all." However, since there are those who may stumble if they see me imbibing a "potent potable," I choose not too (see Paul’s discussion of meat sacrificed to idols in I Cor 8).

If we are to show that Christ’s indwelling is efficacious, if we are to show that Christianity is not a farce, then we *must* allow Christ to reign in all areas of our life: our clothing, our music, our movies and television, our dietary habits, etc. I don’t want this to sound like a call to legalism; I think legalism is a weed that chokes the life of out of the abundant life that Chirst brings. However, just because we are *free* to do something, does not mean that we *should* do something. The world needs to see that Christ does indeed change a man. Let’s get out of the way and let sanctification have its way.

Dive! Dive!

Dive! Dive!

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This weekend, in preparation for our upcoming jaunt to the islands of Hawaii and Kauai, I spent this last weekend doing scuba certification with Adventure Sports. Each day was spent in the class room, studying the minutia of diving, as well as time spent in both a swimming pool, for the closed-water dives, and a private "lake" for the open-water dives. The pool dives weren’t bad on the first day. It was an indoor pool, so the water was warm, and there was no wind. On Sunday, though, we dove in an outdoor pool, so the water was cool, and the wind ripped right through us (I say "us" as Angela came along for a refresher for her five year old certification). The lake dives were cold on both days — really cold — and got even colder as we dropped down to the bottom of the lake at about 20 – 25 feet. After two days of freezing in the water, though, I am now certified to dive up to an absolute maximum of 130 feet, with a recommended maximum of 100 feet. Although the water was really cold, I had a blast just being in the water. I can’t wait for Hawaii. 🙂

Should we pull out of public schools?

Should we pull out of public schools?

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Cal Thomas, "America’s most widely syndicated op-ed columnist", recently wrote an article titled Giving ‘exodus’ a new meaning in which he discusses the debate among Southern Baptists about the overwhelmingly humanistic slant of government-run schools. I have heard a couple other authors and speakers discussing the ineffectiveness of the public school system. I’ve long held that there is very little that the government can do that the private sector can’t do better (those that make this short list are such Constitutional things as military defense, regulating commerce, etc). Not until recently have I begun to consider whether or not this idea could and/or should apply to public schools as well.

I’m not a big fan of home schooling, and neither is Angela. I question the capability of Joe and Jane Blow to teach as effectively as someone trained to do so (though there are obvious exceptions), but I’m sure that’s not really fair at all. We’ve always felt that it would better for children to spend time in a classroom with other children, as that would give them more social exposure, as well as giving them access to greater educational resources, especially in science. (Yes, I’m aware of home school groups and even studies that say my argument is not only not well founded, but possibly completely inaccurate. As more information of the sort comes out, I’m certainly open to revising my stance).

Private schools can have their own issues, though. In some schools, a larger portion of the population than I’d like is made up of kids who were kicked out of public schools. The net result is that you pay for the right to subject your kids to what you’re trying to avoid. Obviously, care must be taken in selecting a school.

But the question is this: should we, as Christian parents, pull our kids out of the often anti-Christian public school system? The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to agree with the idea. Cal Thomas hit the nail on the head:

In an essay published last week at ethicsdaily.com, Shortt wrote, "Government schools are converting our children to alien creeds and infusing them with false and destructive values." Pinckney added, "God gives the responsibility for education of children to the parents, not the government." Indeed. And it has been the decision by too many parents to allow government to shape their children’s worldview and values that is responsible for spiritual and intellectual disorder that now inhabits the souls and minds of too many offspring of Christian parents.

He asserts, and rightly so, that too many parents leave the task of "shap[ing] their children’s worldview and values" to the schools. Whether in a public or a private school, it’s of the utmost importance that parents be heavily involved in the education process of their children, which Angela and I have every intention of doing. The rub for me is that I’m a product of the government school system. I did have, though, parents that were involved, a healthy, well-balanced church, and I grew up in Oklahoma, where the secular influence, while present, still seems to be heavily tempered by the (at least professed) Christian faith of the majority of the state’s residents. Are things bad enough in general and, more specifically, in Oklahoma to warrant the abandonment of the public school systems? I don’t know. If we had a voucher system the question would be much simpler. Since we don’t, I have some hard thinking to do. Luckily, I have a few years to figure it out. Time will tell…

Microsoft .Net Is Bad for Your Enterprise

Microsoft .Net Is Bad for Your Enterprise

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Microsoft’s .Net is quickly becoming, if it is not already, the dominant development tool, for lack of a better word, for the Windows platform. For the uninitiated, "Microsoft® .NET is a set of software technologies for connecting information, people, systems, and devices. This new generation of technology is based on Web services-small building-block applications that can connect to each other as well as to other, larger applications over the Internet." It is MS’s answer to Java. Where Java has byte code, .Net has Intermediate Language. Where Java has a JVM (Java Virtual Machine), .Net has the CLR (common language runtime). There are numerous organizations migrating to .Net, some even from the Java world. But is this a good choice? On the surface, you gain a good degree of security from the built-in garbage collection and memory management, reusable components that will reduce the amount of coding necessary for a given project, and a great development tool. But are these pluses worth it? I would posit that they are not.

Those of you who know me know where I currently work. In order to avoid associating them with ideas with which they may not agree, I won’t name them. Instead, we’ll say I work for Widgets, Inc. Here at Widgets, we rely heavily on IBM’s iSeries machines. We have a plethora of legacy RPG code and seemingly innumerable files, tables, spool files, CLs, and so on. Fifteen or twenty years ago, the decision was made to run the enterprise of the iSeries (then known as the AS/400). At the time, the dominant language on the iSeries was RPG (for reasons that I don’t know), so all of the custom coding was RPG code. At the time, it made perfect sense.

Let’s fast forward, now, to 2002. RPG programmers are hard to find, and can tend to be expensive. That being so, the management of Widgets, Inc. decide to do all new coding in Java instead of .Net. This gave us access to modern technologies, and hordes of developers. A year and a half later, though, after some small- to medium-sized projects, we reversed our decision because user interfaces are easier in .Net. Choosing ease of development (an edge that Java will soon remove with JavaServer Faces), we have set the ball in motion for RPG, episode two.

How, one might ask, does .Net compare to RPG? For the longest time, companies making investments in iSeries and RPG-based technologies could rest assured that they were making a wise investment, one that would continue to make business sense for a long time. Over the years, however, the iSeries began to decline in popularity (for a variety of reasons I won’t cover here). As it became more expensive, in terms of developers and long term risk, to invest in the iSeries, companies moved more and more to other technologies, such as Windows. This made the iSeries less attractive to others, and so the cycle repeats. Now, those companies, such as Widgets, Inc. that have a substantial investment in the iSeries, have hardware and software that is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Among their options are to maintain where they are and hope for the best, which is probably suicidal, or migrate to another platform, a path fraught with new bugs and lost opportunities, but probably one of the wisest options.

Now, let’s fast forward fifteen to twenty years in the future. While Windows is the dominant desktop operating system in 2004, while also holding a respectable position (in terms of numbers) in the server market, no one can know what 2019 will look like. With Microsoft under increasing pressure from rivals such as Linux and MacOS X (don’t laugh, more and more people are turning to Apple), that dominance can not be assumed to run ad infinitum (anyone remember the once proud and invincible big blue of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s?). In fifteen years, we very well may find ourselves running systems predominantly based on Linux, or maybe even some other OS that currently exists only in some company’s R&D labs. Should that day come (and I feel it will. It’s just a matter of when), what are we to do with all of this .Net code?

Those on top of the .Net "community" will probably be quick to point out the Mono project or DotGNU, claiming that a cross platform .Net is on its way. To that, I would point to this article that talks about how Microsoft is patenting their Office XML file formats, so that they can restrict who and can do what with Office files. MS is patenting something that is standards-based as part of the business-as-normal process of blocking competition. Time will most likely show the heavy hammer of the Microsoft legal department falling on the efforts to the Mono and DotGNU groups as well. Even if that never happens, as long as Microsoft is not actively helping to port .Net to other platforms, these porting efforts will always lag behind the official product.

So where does that leave us? A whole bunch of nice, modular, object-oriented, garbage-collected code that runs on only one platform, but at least GUIs are easier to write. Every language has its problems. While there are things that are easier in .Net than Java, the inverse is also true. All that being said, though, if the decision to use .Net over Java is simply because UIs are easier, then the decision making process was extremely short-sighted. In fact, in my mind, it’s not really even a .Net vs. Java question. It’s a question of portability. Given the speed of modern languages and systems and what we’ve learned over the past 40+ years in this industry, there’s no reason why we should let any vendor tie us to their platform, whether that vendor is Microsoft, Sun, Apple, or Red Hat. With regards to .Net vs. Java, since their capabilities are so similar and run time benchmarks show that they run about as fast as each other, there must be something to tip the scales. If you ask me, IT managers should lean toward platform independence, and leave their enterprise room to maneuver should its vendor of choice start making decisions adverse to the enterprise’s goals and capabilities. If you’re not tied to your vendor’s platform, you can’t be strong armed into making decisions you don’t want to make. With .Net, though, you’re tying your own hands.

Black Thursday

Black Thursday

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Black Thursday has arrived. It’s a day I was expecting, yet hoping could be avoided. Oh, I didn’t know what day of the week it would be — it could just as easily have been Black Wednesday — but I knew it was coming. Management kept dropping hints. Licensing costs, alternative pilots, architectural changes. And, tragically, the day has arrived. The announcement has been made. The death knell rung. The wake cancelled. What might this tragic news be? My management (if you know who I work for you, you can fill in the details yourself) announced today that we are reversing our original decision to proceed with all new development in Java, with our new direction to be tied to Microsoft’s .Net. "What’s wrong with that?" one might ask. Allow me to expound.

Those of you in the technology field may look at my distaste for Microsoft products and write me off as a Linux zealot. After all, Microsoft puts out a quality product, right? Wrong, I think, on both counts. First off, I’m not a Linux zealot. I am, though, a huge fan. I have installed and run Linux boxes at my current job, as well as my last one. I also run it almost exclusively at home. Personally, I find Linux to be much more fun and rewarding than a Windows experience. Professionally, I feel you should select the best tool for the job (which can be a difficult metric to define and evaluate), and I have seen precious few scenarios where a Microsoft solution makes better sense.

As far as the quality of Microsoft’s products goes, I think the facts speak for themselves. For those who have used MS offering exclusively, you’re probably pretty happy and impressed with the current crop. They’re more powerful and more stable than past versions. Your assessment, I think, is correct. However, when you compare what MS offers to what other vendors, not just Linux (which isn’t actually a vendor, but work with me here), have to offer, and you’ll begin to see a vast disparity in terms of quality, security, stability, and reliability. Microsoft got where it was by being first. With the leg up that Big Blue gave them, they were the first to offer an operating system for the PC platform, which was cheaper (and still is) than the possibly superior offerings from Apple, among others. They maintain where they are by sheer monopoly force. Windows needs regular reboots to maintain sanity, and is prone to viruses and worms. Exchange and Outlook are high-priced vectors for "email" viruses (which should be termed Outlook viruses, as no other mail clients are affected). Office is over-priced and bloated, and has its own demons to fight with regards to viruses. While no software package is 100% secure or perfect, but Microsoft products, as a general rule, trail the pack.

So what does this have to do with my current employer? The decision was made to upgrade to Exchange 2003, but to do that, we need to upgrade to Active Directory. To do that, we either go through severe pain and anguish in trying to migrate our Win2K domains to AD, or install Windows Server 2003. The result of that decision is left as an exercise for the reader. This highlights the Microsoft business model nicely. "If you want to run the new version of Foo, you have to upgrade to the latest version Bar." With the level of integration Microsoft demands, which apologists applaud, installing the latest version of a Windows product strengthens the stranglehold Microsoft has on said enterprise. Being beholden to any one company, whether it’s Microsoft, IBM, Novell, or Red Hat, is not a good business decision, as now your enterprises are tied to the whims of your provider of choice.

Furthermore, too much from one company produces a monoculture, a scenario that security experts decry as dangerous. For example, with Microsoft sharing so much code (as well as tying non-essential systems like web browsers to the operating system) a flaw in a given piece of code will affect every product that uses that code. Let’s say, for example, that there’s a remotely exploitable bug in the authentication code in SQL Server that allows an attacker to gain system privileges. Now, for the sake of argument (as we have no real way of knowing) that Windows, Exchange, ISA, and every other Microsoft product uses the same piece of code to handle authentication. What does that get us if your shop is Microsoft-bound? A vulnerability on every server and desktop in the enterprise. On the other hand, if your web server is Apache, your directory server is Novell and your email server is Oracle Collaboration Suite, you have limited your exposure significantly. Granted, such and extreme mix of vendors can make managing an IT shop more difficult as you have to maintain a wider variety of skill sets, but security is not, nor will it probably ever be, easy or cheap.

So where does this leave my shop? In my opinion, heading down the road toward a life of constant updating and patching, forever running the Microsoft upgrade treadmill. Since it’s usually cheaper to upgrade than migrate, once you make a commitment the size we are making now, you are most likely forever tied to that vendor, and that will spell problems at some point. Will we be bitten by this? Time will tell, but if I were a betting man, it’s going to take just one new virus or exploit to sneak behind the firewall, and we’re going to rue this day.