An open letter to science, scoffers and Ken Ham

To Ken Ham and people who believe like that:

Denying truth and turning the Bible into a scientific record is apostasy. It is elevating a loose collection of tribal writings to the voice of the One True, which according to those same writings *ISN'T* the Bible but Christ Himself.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Here is a pretty good write-up on the Bible as the Inerrant Word of God. The author concludes that if you cannot trust everything in the Bible from a common, historic, or scientific viewpoint, that somehow it isn't trustworthy. I say that discounts how remarkable the Bible actually is. It also misses the point of the Christian Bible entirely.

So in light of that, lets break down some simple logic:

• Satan is the father of lies
• Science says Bishop Ussher is wrong by using techniques that are trustworthy and true
• Supposed Christian ministers are saying that you *must* believe in the literal account of creation, based on the wrong dates, or else <<enter your favorite "You're an apostate and I'm not" statement>
• These ministers are insisting that you put faith in their version of history, ignoring hard evidence and facts to the contrary. That means they are insisting you believe a lie. They are promoting a lie. 
• So, if they are promoting a lie, whose work are they actually doing?

Will I be judged by God for not believing that the scriptures are inerrant? I doubt it highly. Unless I missed that part in here somewhere?

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

To the BuzzFeed scoffers:

So, if you want to scoff at the devilish red herring, be my guest. It still does nothing to take away from the glory that is found in Christ. If you want to scoff at my belief in a risen Savior, go ahead. Just don't lump me in with the people who make a mockery of my faith through the misuses of its gifts. You might want to read a little of that book that you ridicule before you go too far. There is deep truth in it that has transformed the face of the Earth.

To Science:

Thank you for having the courage to continually fail and be wrong. Like the tendrils of an amoeba slowly feeling its way to food, you keep searching. It is too bad that you only find nuggets of food and not the source of the food. How sad for we casual observers that foolishly rush to trust the newly found nuggets, for we will eventually be left empty. We will be left with our hopes skewered on the next truth you find. No one likes to be continually wrong. Mercifully, you are oblivious to the hopes of your followers. You shun the personal connections that make us human in exchange for a refined truth. But something tells me you are missing a bigger picture due to the very nature that makes you valuable. Not everything is observable. There are often rich sources of food that we never see.

And to watch you being used to create anything is terrifying. You are the god of unintended consequences. And sadly, you lead your disciples down the road of discovery while sitting mute as to the true result of that discovery. And when, at last, the venture is run aground onto the rocky shoals of failure do we find you sitting by and leaving your ardent followers abandoned; blamed for the failure that is rightfully yours.  Never does "Science" get the blame for the countless deaths, horrible aberrations or world-changing disasters, yet there you are. You are at the heart of so much pain and suffering and for some reason people continue to throw their babies into your hands like a super-heated Baal. You offer the truth but almost never the whole truth. A partial truth is seldom a blessing. 

My new Nissan Versa

So, against my better judgment, I got a new car. I was shopping for a used car as I don't like to pay four grand for a carcinogenic "NEW CAR" smell. I have been shopping for a car for almost six months. I am patient. I like a great deal. The only thing I really cared about with this car was the MPG : sticker price ratio.

I figured that the best time to buy would be at the turn of the year when the 2013s and 2014s would be on clearance. I shopped Ford, Honda, Hyundai and Kia. Reliability is a thing for me. I don't count interior trim in my estimation of reliability. I view cars in the same category as my hammers or power tools; disposable necessities that should last a long time and not break down. How pretty they stay is the last thing I care about.

My 2001 Altima has 120K miles and still runs great, but only gets 20mpgs. I needed to double this due to my new commute. That made the MPG of the new car the number one thing I was looking for. That shortened the list quite a bit. In finally settled on the Nissan Versa. Yes the cabin feels as cheap as a jug of Vanilla straight from Mexico, and no, the engine isn't what you would call peppy. But I doubled my average MPG. And, its a Nissan. And I only paid 11,800. And it has a decent warranty. 

Going NodeJS

I have been working on NodeJS for exactly three weeks now. I am blown away with how powerful it is! I knew all that Javascript learning couldn't be worthless. If you don't know NodeJS, I would recommend this as a starting point: http://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/

There are plenty of ways to get introduced to Node, but WebStorm gives you a solid template to grow from. There is so much noise in the Node ecosystem right now, I would strongly recommend you start with a major vendor. If you just jump in and start trying to cobble together a site out of the Node Package Manager, you are going to contend with third party code that will eat the world. The coherent IDE from JetBrains gives you a soft landing and plumbs most of what you need out of the box.

There is an alpha release of Node support for Visual Studio 2013, but it lacks anything but local build support, lacks a LOT in the debugging and code-complete area. That said, if you are a MS toad like me, it is still an interesting place to start.

Testing you say? Javascript is weak in this area, but there are solutions. Being a Test Driven Development (TDD) ardent myself, I went with a framework called Mocha that has a slew of plugins for your desired flavor of Assert or Expect lingo. The lacking thing for Mocha is Windows support. For that gap, I use Gulp.

Gulp is a task runner kind of thing that you can plug into your Node project.

One of the best intros I have found:
http://cwbuecheler.com/web/tutorials/2013/node-express-mongo/

I went down to the Crossroads

I have an interesting choice to make immediately. I had to completely quit cigars (which I smoked socially so don't lecture me) and go through an indoctrination program or I had to pay my employer $600 more a year for my insurance. The problem isn't quitting cigars. They are tasty and I will miss them, but they are expensive and obnoxious as well. The problem is the social life. My life is a pattern. If the pattern bends, I am fine. I can adjust. I can be flexible. But if the pattern breaks, I am at a loss. Not being able to go to my favorite cigar hangout after a put my kids to bed changes the vast majority of my social life. I don't get a chance to be social before bedtime. It isn't that I can't, it is that I won't. My kids deserve a dad that is there, suited up and ready to go from the time I am off work until the time they drift off to sleep. My social life isn't allowed to disrupt my family life. So now, with this choice made, I am at a loss on what to do with my time after 8:30pm. I don't watch much TV. I like to read but tend to read obsessively so that it becomes a liability. I have considered taking up my paintbrush again and maybe doing something on canvas. If I dedicate myself to my original love, I know I can do some cool stuff. Maybe it is time?

A question on mobility. To this point in our history, we approach a technology, stand still to operate it and then proceed to the task at hand. Computers have slowly become the task at hand as software has grown more sophisticated. Now come the tablets. Are tablets the open door to cyber-living? Looking at the new glasses that Google demo'ed at their tech conference, are we far off from wearing our technology? I think the gesture software combined with wearable computing devices are not just a theory or sci-fi anymore. They are coming. What will these devices do to our work?

I am working on getting a world-record setting number of Zombies to walk around the historic Delano district in Wichita, KS. I have never tried to organize an event for 11K people, much less a zombie walk. It is interesting the number of permits, the resistance from the people who *should* benefit from this. The community organization in Delano loves the idea at least. I have that going for me. I will be posting more as the plan comes together.

So MaxelSoft just got accepted into the Microsoft incubator called BizSpark! I am beside myself with excitement. This is going to save us a fortune and should speed up our development quite a bit. Hopefully as we put the prototype to bed, I will be posting more about what I am doing. Right now, we can't really talk about it. I am so excited but my head is swimming with everything we need to get done.