Kirk's blog

It's been mostly dismal living in this system for the last couple years. But I must say like millions of others in this country, I'm becoming hopeful of what the future might bring.

Probably my best way to return to the world of blogging is to let a song speak for itself.  I don't think I can say this better than Mark of Christafari...

HYPOCRITICAL SYSTEM
Written & Arranged by Mark Mohr
Scriptural Inspiration: Isaiah 29:13, Colossians 2:2, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 & Matthew 23

So never let them criticize you my brothers for your individuality
And never let them disrespect you my sisters for your originality
I'm telling you God's children, they'll try to change you, they want conformity
But we celebrate His kingdom and His creation with diversity.

CHORUS:
We ago fight this hypocritical system
Refuse to live as the victim
We have to fight this hypocritical system yeah!
No longer will I be the victim
We have to fight this hypocritical system
Refuse to live as the victim
We have to fight this hypocritical system yeah!
So mind the Father ago lick them

I find myself more than a little appauled this morning to find myself lumped in with those who try to appease the Nazi's as someone who opposes Bush's infantile war on foreign soil. According to Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who chooses to also use the opportunity to take a blow at Winston Churchill, this war on "Islamic Fascism" will not be finished until we name the enemy. I'm confused, who is the enemy again?  Who are the Nazis today? What's an Islamic fascist? What does Islam have to do with terrorism? Why use buzzwords from the United States' days of segregation and oppression such as "fascism" and "nazi" to describe a war that has nothing to do with terrorists [anymore]. People equate 9-11 with the current 'war on terrorism'?  How many of the terrorists came from Iraq?  How many of them were tools of the Iraqi regime or people? This sort of revisionist history taking place before my very eyes is getting me more and more upset.

Hey peoples! I've been very deliquent in making updates to this site recently. Although such could be excepted when I started working. So I'll lead with that in a few short blog entries before I head out to lunch, to make up for the lack of information...

I've been working for abot 4 months now for Parity in Evanston.  It's a great place to work.  I passed my three month evaluation, and I'm now a full time employee.  It took me a little while to figure out the best way to get to work, taking the 'El' initially until the construction and slow zones along the Purple line got the better of me, and I started using the Northbound Metra trains.  So now my commute to work is a little under an hour.  I can handle that.  Work is great.  I love this job.  I get to program in any language that gets the job done, which so far has been lots of Java, XUL, PHP and Python.  The business is really laid back.  For anyone who was wondering how I do in a 9-5 job, I've been managing pretty well - Getting all my work done during working hours.  The people here are also great.  I haven't seen the guy who I share an office with much, as he works from home and I've only seen him on days when there are no games since the World Cup started.  Don't get me wrong, he's a great programmer, he reminds me of myself in my RTSG days.  He's the guy who keeps the ship moving, and I guess he gives his best hours to the job.  I've found my way to give the best at work, while still keeping a healthy balance for my personal and family life.

Well for those expecting the update to include 'little' Sarahs and 'little' Kirks, I'll set the record straight right now, we're waiting at least another year to start trying... that's at least. This last weekend, I got the Monday off to make it a great 4-day fourth of July weekend.  Sarah and I took off to a B&B in Michigan, where we spent the weekend unwinding, cheering for Portugal as they put an end to England's World Cup campaign and sitting in shock as Henri showed Brazil the door.  We travelled over South Haven, Douglas and Saugatauk.  We rode along the Kal-Haven trail. In case you're wondering... we have started cycling as oft as we can.  Bike trails are the best though because we've gotten tired quite quickly of cycling in the city, where drivers have no patience for us of the two wheeled ilk.  We enjoyed many a romantic dinner, and satisfying lunch, and all in all we were happy for this weekend away by ourselves in Michigan.  Sarah's off now... and I'll let her tell you about that herself.

I guess my whole problem again is expectations. I excepted to find community at a church that professes to be a 'welcoming church' and stresses 'community' in their regular services.  Although we've made some friends at LMC while we were attendees, it was a struggle and I found myself somehow only able to connect with those other International people at the church.  I remain dissatisfied with the outcome of the issues I raised with the church.  I should say my problem again is expectations.  I believe strongly in conflict resolution, and I thought this was a strong point of the faith of the church community.  Basically all the advice I was given, however politely, was to seek community outside of the church and see how bad it is outside there, and that the community within the church wasn't all that bad.  You see I get that already about the United States... I expect it.  I just don't get it about the church, who should hold themselves to a higher standard.

Hey, I have a real job now.  As much as I enjoyed staying at home with the cats, doing freelance web development work and making money through sales on eBay, it'll be good to get out of the apartment to go to work.  God knows me, I probably would've gone batty at an 8-4/9-5 job, so he provided me with a workplace with flexible hours like RTSG's up here in Illinois.  My new job is as a Java web-based programmer, working for a small development firm in Evanston, IL.  I hadn't used Java in a while, but that doesn't mean I'm a stranger to it, I completed my undergraduate final year project back in 2000 using Java Servlets which this job requires and I got an integral understanding of Java on the backend.  I enjoyed teaching the fundamentals of server-side web based OOP ever since.  This was the first job that I interviewed for, and was offered the position the following day.  I'm kinda passionate about it because the company is passionate about things which I am passionate about.  So I'm looking forward to working with them.  They use open source tools and methodologies, they're passionate about keeping their employees happy working 40 hour work weeks.  They use the Eclipse IDE, that should be enough for any open source programmer to get happy about.  I start tomorrow, and have to get up to speed on some new technology quickly, which has never been a problem for me. Now, we'll see if I'm this excited after a month.

So we're back from California.  The sun actually works there, but Los Angeles isn't as warm as one would like to think during the winter months.  And that whole it never rains in Southern California thing... phooey.  It rained almost everyday we were there.  Now don't get me wrong, LA was a nice place, it was indeed warmer than Chicago.  But not as warm as the hype made it out to be.  As you can see in the second picture we have people in winter clothes walking along the beach.  Well it wasn't that cold, but Californians seemed to be freezing that weekend, which had been the coldest it had been all across the United States.  Our friend who moved out here from Chicago was telling us that the weather has done enormous good for his temperament.

So our cats know us very well, everytime they see the suitcase come out of the closet they know that one of us is leaving, or worse yet.. we're both leaving them.  Zoe bid her last desperate attempt to sneak into our suitcase tonight to come with us.  Nice try.  Tomorrow Sarah and I will be off to Los Angeles, with many things planned for our visit.  Firstly, Sarah is attending an education conference over the weekend, but we also get to spend time with a friend who recently moved there.  I get to see an ocean again, a real one, with salt water.  We're also hoping to meet up with a friend and colleague from Trinidad and his wife if they can make it down from San Diego.  Finally the other purpose of our trip is to discern is Fuller Seminary in Pasadena is a place that we could possibly move near for Sarah to enroll in seminary.  There are many activities planned, some fun, some we just have to do, but we'll see, probably Zoe and Carly get to come out to California with us in the future if we decide to move there.  The warm weather scores easy points for us to move there, but we're trying to be more objective than that.  Pray for our discernment process.