Entry for 11/28/06

I used to feel kind of weird about thanksgiving, feeling that it is just a celebration of American gluttony with more food than one needs to eat. However, over the years I've come to see other facets of this holiday. Sadly, I confess that this year I felt no thankfulness or even a pause of acknowledgment to God for these things. I know its wrong, and I certainly owe God an apology. I've found a great quote in our weekly faculty newsletter that needs to be shared. I know its past the thanksgiving holiday, but its still worth sharing:



“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” –Abraham Lincoln

So here I am at this conference... (Entry for 11/10/06)

...and I'm so loving my job. Our school sends us each year to the Mid-Atlantic Christian School Association (MACSA) Educator's conference, which consists of two days of workshops for teachers. The workshops are usually various subjects ranging from apologetics courses to get credits in Bible, to computer classes aimed at keeping people informed. The school not only pays for our way to the two-day conference, but it also provides us with 10 dollars a day for lunch. I find that quite astounding and benevolent.

Right now I'm taking advantage of the free wireless access here at the hotel where the conference is to write this blog. Its very encouraging to see that there are so many Christian School teachers out there with a desire to learn and enhance their teaching skills. Sometimes I think that Christian Schools get a reputation for having teachers that are too under-qualified to be a public school teacher. While that might be the case in some schools (even public), its good to see that these teachers have not only a passion for what they do as teachers, but also a passion and sacrificial desire to serve God as well.

Entry for 11-6-06

Well, its official: The Pittsburgh Steelers have now tied up the noose real tight and kicked out the chair from underneath. The scary fact is that the past two games were really lost when they defeated themselves. It makes no sense why a football team would consistently gain over 400 yards of offense and somehow manage to lose a game. I do believe that as of this writing, Big Ben leads the league in interceptions. Oh well, at least I have a fantasy league to be excited about.

I've decided to try out a few services I've been meaning to look at. One of them is Xdrive, which is a service of AOL. Despite my loathing of AOL in general, I'm really curious as to how useful it will be having 5 Gigs of online storage space at my fingertips. We'll see I guess. If you are curious, check out the service for yourself ( http://www.xdrive.com).

My job is getting kind of interesting as of late. We've finally gotten internet access down at this building (as you can see), and now I'm into the challenge of investigating some good content filtering software, as well as learning to how service and administer a windows 2003 server (of which I stink at). Needless to say, if it weren't for good friends 'In the know', I'd be really in bad shape.

Well, enough blabbing.