Ya know, I couldn't do what I do, the way I do it, if it weren't for everything Stephanie does. She is so helpful, supportive, and sweet. She takes care of so many things for me! I am hugely blessed and very grateful to have her in my life.

So much of what she does, she does alone, when no one is watching. So, while people often see what I do, hardly anyone sees the amazing number of things she does for me, day after day. Some people have a hired personal assistant, executive assistant, administrative assistant, etc. for this ... and they'll often say they're worth every penny. I have Stephanie. If I had a personal assistant I'm sure they'd want to talk about a raise every once in a while. Every once in a while Stephanie wants to talk about something too ... and you know what it usually is? "What can I do to make your day go better? What can I do to reduce your stress? What can I do to help keep things running smoothly for you? What can I do to help you feel happier in life?"

This after 17 years of marriage.

OK, I'll stop bragging. Every once in a while, the amazement just hits me and I figured I'd blog about it this time.

Great blog post by a friend of mine here.

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the
violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for
about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was
calculated that thousand  of people went through the station, most of
them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician
playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then
hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman
threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him,
but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he
was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother
tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist.
Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning
his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other
children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed
for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal
pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over,
no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best
musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever
written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a
theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the
Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste
and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace
environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop
to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best
musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many
other things are we missing?

Make sure you hear the commentary too.

Rabbit Vs Snake - A funny movie is a click away

A friend of mine asked a question about processing the likes and dislikes between them and their significant other in a pre marriage relationship. I like to suggest processing those in light of the possibility of a marriage relationship. I found it to be a very thought provoking question and decided to post my answer here.

Here are some things to keep in mind. First, I think one must face every attribute of the other that one does not like, and consider that the other is under no obligation to change even one of these things. One could be "stuck with" every one of those attributes for the rest of one's life, and one is making a commitment to LOVE the other despite every one of the attributes.

Secondly, one must keep in mind that by the time one has been married to the other for, say, 15 years, the other will probably mostly not even be the same person any more. The other might lose many of the traits one likes, and pick up many new ones one does not.

With those two things in mind, I offer the following: one can only enter into such a relationship fully prepared to sacrifice deeply, and often, and to love unconditionally for life. I have found such a life long commitment to unconditional love to be the most defining and pronounced growth and maturing element in my christian walk. I believe God has used this relationship to make me twice the man I would be without it.

The good news: experiencing this commitment in each other, as it flies in the face of selfish culture's values, increasing in value with every hardship and sacrifice, has brought a greater joy than we could ever have imagined when we started out.

One more piece of good news: it seems that, after 15 years, one can become quite endeared to some of the very attributes in the other that one found most annoying at the beginning. Sometimes one must simply experience some of the other's attributes over time, to appreciate their amazing long term value.

As destructive as Ike was, no one I know was killed or injured during Ike, not even from improper generator usage or contaminated water. Praise God we were all spared! It could have been so much worse.

I hope all my friends are looking for opportunities to work with God in comforting and helping those who are experiencing any kind of loss or emotional distress from Ike. At a time like this, you know someone who needs some extra care and concern. God is there with that person. Where are you?

"Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. Likewise, cosmic irony is disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world."

The 14kw (yes, 14,000 watt) auto-starting natural gas generator that I ordered directly after Tropical Storm Gustav, has sat in it's shipping crate in my garage for the past 2 weeks, untouched. It was delivered the day I was evacuating for Ike. If I'd had an electrician and a plumber handy that day, it could have been installed and working, but I still would have been out of town (because Ike appeared to be capable of causing damage and internet outages that a generator couldn't help with).

Another supreme irony is that my garage, which is very old and run down, and needs to be demolished and replaced, some time over the next 5 years, survived Ike without so much as a scratch.

This is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School California staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine.

This is the actual answering machine message for the school. This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework.

The school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes.

The outgoing message:

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1

To make excuses for why your child did not do his work -Press 2

To complain about what we do - Press 3

To swear at staff members - Press 4

To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you - Press 5

If you want us to raise your child - Press 6

If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7

To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8

To complain about bus transportation - Press 9

To complain about school lunches - Press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day!

If you want this in Spanish, move to a country that speaks it!

So. What if you called your child's school and heard that? How would you respond?

OK, I have to break into my wordy story of our Ike adventure with this report and unashamed gush of emotion about my church family.

We're still stuck in Dallas because I can't move my servers back until Comcast restores their service at my office. Comcast service makes up 2/3 of my and my colocation customers' bandwidth -- the AT&T T1 (which is already working) is only 1/3 of my bandwidth. 

At our house in Baytown, downed trees, branches and leaves were scattered all over our yard and it was becomming very clear we were the only house on the block still vacant. Everyone else in the hood has moved back and cleaned up their yard. And so our house was really standing out -- and becomming a very attractive target.

And so today Thomas Cheevers, a member of our small church family whose been without power much of this week, responded to our text for "help" -- interrupted what I'm sure was his own long list of things to finish recovering from Ike -- and drove over to our house and spent hours cleaning up limbs and even surprised me more by reinstalling the half of our large swing gate in the back, that had fallen off its post.

Then he sent me a text telling me he's going back tomorrow with his wife Leslie, to rake up the yard - giving it that very cleaned up, someone is definitely taking care of this house look.

And then as if my mind wasn't blown enough and he wasn't already reducing my wife to tears of gratitude, he offered to go back today with a key to get in and try power - resetting my cable modems to see if maybe I can get back on with Comcast, and then we could move back sooner rather than later.

"This is family." He said. "This is nothing. This is what family does."

Family. I've known Thomas for maybe 5 months, tops. We just joined the Baytown Vineyard 4 months ago.  Family. But yes, I absolutely feel the same way about him and Leslie, too. It causes a heart check! Thump the gauge. Is this thing working? Could this possibly be the right reading?

And this is really how this eclectic, unlikely community of believers is. We are really very diverse in a lot of specifics of our beliefs and especially our politics, and yet, we love Jesus and each other deeply and passionately -- and it makes a difference in real and practical ways, in the moment.

But this is just a sample. Yesterday I saw another text come across Stephanie's phone, another group in the church organizing help for another pair of friends in the church who had severe weather damage at their apartment and were going to get some help relocating and sorting through their stuff.

This is a small community of believers, mind you. Maybe 15 to 30 depending on how you count. (How do you count anyway?) Small, yes, but shining brighter than the sun --  revealing my savior's heart clearer than any sun or eyesight ever could.

Later I tell Thomas I'm amazed at him, and he texts back: "It's not about me." And he's right. It's not about us. It's about Jesus working in us. But I have to say I'm still amazed, at him and every other heart and life my savior Jesus Christ transforms and empowers.

And so I am amazed at Thomas and Leslie -- and everyone else I've seen God work through.

I'm amazed at who God created them to be.

I'm amazed to be witnessing that bright powerful force at work in this dark world.

It’s so beautiful.

I didn’t want to get up, but if there was ever a day I needed to, this was it. Gotta go set up the servers, Tom ... gotta go set up the servers. I was exhausted.

During setup I discovered my power wasn’t on and my network cable wasn’t live in my cabinet. I put in support requests and both issues were handled within an hour. Meanwhile I arranged servers and routers in the cabinet. It’s a 24 x 36 x 84” space – not very large, but just enough for my nine servers, some of which were designed to be mounted in a rack, and others which are more like normal desktop PCs in size and shape. By 11am mail delivery was restored, and by 1pm everything was up and running.

At this point, my Houston customers were still up and so I verified connectivity to their VPN’s as well. All was working.

So I went out for my favorite comfort food: a Burger King chicken sandwich, fries, and a coke. The original kind. Mm, mm, good. Hit the spot just right.

I stopped by an Office Depot to pick up a firewall for one of my webservers, to substitute for one I’d accidentally left in Houston. Luckily it was one with a simple purpose and configuration – simply to block everything except access to the web services port. Easy enough to configure and readily available.

I decided to wait on setting up tape drives, for backup, until the next day.

We all went and had some dinner – me and Steph, Luke and Leia, and JaiLyn, Steph’s sister. One of my favorite things about Dallas is El Fenix restaurant. Absolutely outstanding Tex Mex. I think they got started way back in 1918. Anyway, it’s my other favorite comfort food. Since Don Bravo closed down, anyway.

When we got back to the room we turned the TV on. Everything was all about “here comes Ike.” We watched as they predicted it would roll up just west of the Houston Ship Channel, placing Baytown in the northeast quadrant, for maximum damage potential.

So then I couldn’t sleep. The track kept shifting. “We think it might go here” … “now we think it might go here” …. and each shift was just enough to potentially save or doom my house.

Meanwhile I watched my remote web cam I had left running in my office. It showed all was well, until about 2am, when it went out suddenly. This indicated I had lost my internet connection, not power. If I’d just lost power, the UPS would have kept the camera running and I’d see a mostly dark room. But the camera just stopped responding suddenly, so I  knew my T1 had gone down.

And internally, I  prepared myself to wake up in the morning and find out I didn’t have a house anymore. I often do that  - consider the worst possible outcome I can imagine, then pre-accept it.  Another outcome I considered was that the house was still there but had so much damage it would take months to repair, and that the insurance company would be difficult to work with.

I stayed up until 3am when I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. In fact, I don’t know what time I fell asleep.