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Ok, more changes added to the Bible pages. You can now do a parallel search in case you want to have a modern language on one side, and an ancient one on the other, or even if you just care to compare two versions against each other.
Yesterday I brought my car in to my mechanic, and he figured out that my "Mass Air Flow Regulator" was giving me problems, and causing the car to diesel and just go whacky. It's a computerized part that measures how much air is coming into the engine and then sends that information to the fuel injectors so that the amount of fuel being consumed is appropriate for a proper burn. Who'd a thunk it? Never heard of the part myself.
Still, knowing that I was under financial stress, my mechanic found a refurbished part at $250 rather than installing a new one for $375. That, coupled with an oil change of $5 (plus some oil), and I was feeling well cared for. Finally, because he knew the car needed to be running, he offered to let me pay the total amount in two installments, postdating a check for the remaining balance for my next pay period. How cool is that?
What's even better is that I went yesterday to pick up my car, I didn't have my checkbook with me and made the first payment on my debit card, offering to let him make a photocopy of my ID and then come back in the morning with that postdated check. He just said, "I trust you. Just bring the check in the morning." And, when I came in this morning, we realized that my brake lights were out. He replaced them quickly, and then when I went to pay for the two little bulbs, he told me they were on the house, since "You've paid enough for one visit already."
He's just incredible. This is why I'm a repeat customer.
Since I've managed to find some decent translations to enter into the Bible database on the site, I decided that it would certainly be worth it to write to the producers of the New King James Version, namely Thomas Nelson Publishers, and ask for the rights to use the NKJV on my site. As part of those rights, I also asked for a text-only version of the NKJV so that I could upload it into the database.
If we get the rights to use it, but not the text-only version, would anyone be willing to scan in 66 books of the Bible and put them into a text file for me?
The other day I was looking at Bibles over at one of the big bookstores in town, and I noticed that one of the boxes that some of the nicer Bibles comes in was empty. In other words, someone had removed the Bible, and failed to put it back. Not even on the shelf.
Now, I believe that the Word of God should be free to all, but I think that might be taking it a little too far, no?
Or do you think that it might be ok to steal a Bible at some point?
And then you can blame it on the nice people from church, who fed you over a pound of prime rib, gave you pumpkin bread, or gave you other and various forms of chocolate and cookies. Since the start of November, I've been fed well by people from church; talk about a blessing.
Thankfully, my body subtracts as quickly as it adds. Since January 1 I've been able to drop 8 of the 10lbs that were added unto me. It's funny how exercise helps... Now, only 25 more to go.
So, many thanks to the James', the Maciejewski's, and the Hendrick's for blessing me. I loved every tasty morsel.
One of my friends is always talking about how he wants God to show up in a big way. But the reason he wants God to show up in big, unmistakable way, is because he doesn't fully believe that God is truly out there. Well, he has an idea that God is there, but just needs a little more proof.
Today's Gospel Reading tells us the story of a father whose son was deathly ill. Because he had heard of Jesus' miracle of turning water into wine, he came looking for Him, to heal his son.
Now, here's where I thought it got interesting. He doesn't say, "I'll come and perform the miracle in front of your very eyes," nor does He do something fancy or even out of the ordinary. Instead, Jesus tells him, "Go, your son will be healed." And the beautiful part is, "The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went his way." (v. 50) There was no hesitation, there was no "Are you sure?" or any even sideways commentary about "Don't you need to do something? I don't know, wave your hands or whatnot?" He just believed and went. End of story.
Well, not quite. Because the man gets home and finds out his son was healed at the exact moment that Jesus said he would be healed, and then this man and his entire family become believers in Jesus as the Christ. Now, I know, to me that sounds like Jesus showing up in a big way. I mean, who wouldn't believe after such a huge miracle? But I think it's a matter of perspective: the man believed the miracle before he fully recognized Jesus as the Christ.
My friend, on the other hand, has had Christ revealed to him, and yet still refuses to fully acknowledge Him, because he simply isn't willing to believe the miracle. Somehow, unless it is a miracle that simply cannot be explained away, he simply won't accept it, and therefore won't fully accept Christ. And I just don't think it works that way: if we want to experience BIG, we must BELIEVE BIG. And if we believe big, we'll never see the end of miracles.
So, this afternoon I spent the day playing around with some new translations to toss into the online Bible search page. Since I'm not a big corporation like Bible Gateway, I can't afford the time and money to sway the big names (NKJV, NIV, NASB, NLT) into giving me a text file of their translations. So, I make due with the older versions, including the translation of one Noah Webster, founding father of Dictionaries everywhere. The one thing I can hype that other big sites can't really, is that by the generosity of the Oxford Text Archive, I have the Revised Standard Version — I wrinkle my nose in their general direction (the others, not the OTA).
Nevertheless, multiple versions are now online and available to browse and read. Future plans include making these other versions available for use in the Daily Office and Lectionary.
The timing on today's Daily Office reading couldn't have been better.
Last night in Bible Study, we discussed Jesus as High Priest, in the Order of Melchizedek, and how beautiful the argument is laid out in Hebrews Chapter 7. It attempts to show that the Levitical priesthood is inferior to the eternal priesthood of both Melchizedek and therefore Jesus, who played the part both of High Priest and Sacrifice. It really is an amazing piece of work.
But then we got onto the topic of how contextualized this argument is. It very clearly is attempting to prove, to a Hebrew mindset, why the priesthood of Christ outweighs the former priesthood of the Law, the one maintained by the Levites, mortal men, all of them. For us, it may still be a beautiful argument, but even we need to sit and study the intricacies of Hebrew thought to really grasp the beauty of it.
And so we got off onto the topics of contextualizing faith to those we're talking to, and how to bring them to the realization that Christ is all they need - or, in fact, that they even need Christ. Even the readers of the Book of Hebrews were already believers in God, they just needed some clarifying. But non-believers don't have that same faith, and so coming at them with words like "Salvation," "Sin," "Justification," "Sanctification," and something as innocuous sounding as "Lost" just falls on ears that don't quite understand our slightly varied definitions. Helping people to even understand the concept of "sin" and its consequences takes some contextualizing if they have no metaphysical scheme to dump it into. And so we came up with things like "God, the Judge," "Jesus, the Healer," and the like, and discussing the arguments that would help a non-believer to understand the consequences of "Sin" when their worldview differs from ours.
All in all, it was a great discussion. Hebrews is a fantastic book.
Yesterday as The Stacia and I were driving home from Taize Service, I had an incredible urge for something to drink. But the way I explained it to her was, "I'm at that stage where my lips aren't dry, but my body is still yearning for some water. I'm thirsty, but not like I'm close to dehydration. It's that in between stage of being parched or just needing something."
I'm not sure if that's how Jesus felt when he came to Jacob's Well, but I would assume that that's how the woman at the well felt when Jesus mentioned the whole idea of Living Water. I mean, this woman had already had five husbands, and the one she was currently with wasn't her husband. Talk about thirsting for something. And yet, she didn't quite know what it was she was thirsting for.
And, of course, she didn't know who it was she was talking to. As Jesus says, "if you knew who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." Had she known him, she would have known to ask. Its interesting to note that the asking was still required, even if she had recognized him. The gift of God (v.10) was free for the taking, but nevertheless, it required a desire on her part to accept it, and therefore to ask for it.
And ask she does, as soon as Jesus tells her that this water will keep the drinker from thirsting, and, what's more, will actually become a spring of water welling up to eternal life (v.14). Talk about great marketing! Drink this water, and not only will you never thirst again, but it will well up inside you to overflowing. ...Yeah, I'll have what he's having.
So how does this pertain to us? I'd say it's got to do with the asking, and with the spring that will well up inside of us. How is it that we as Christians can be discontent, disgruntled, bitter, and just plain joyless at times? I'd argue that too often we might recognize that the one sitting at the well with us is Jesus, but we either refuse to ask, or ask for things we perceive will bring us joy, but simply never can. It's like we see Him sitting on the edge of the well, but instead, almost ignoring Him, we pull out our pail, and keep dipping it in to get the water that hasn't done us much good in the past, when this amazing water is right there for the taking. Is it because we, like the Samaritan woman, don't quite know what we're thirsting for, or is it that we are refusing to ask?
Ask.
Drink.
Overflow.
Yesterday, before church, I stopped by to pick up The Stacia. Since she was already making dinner for her roommates, we had planned that I would come over and mooch off the girls for my dinner.
When I came over, The Stacia had chicken burritos cooking on the stove, and several of the roomies were sitting around eating. The Stacia was standing at the sink, washing up some dishes, wearing an orange apron. She looked exceedingly cute in that orange apron. I'm dating a beautiful woman.
That's all. Just wanted to brag.
So, the blog has been updated, renewed, revitalized. Or something like that. Along with the new software upgrades came some pretty nifty features in the templates. But to make use of them meant losing all of my current template changes, so I decided to do a whole redesign to incorporate the new features in the templates. And Voila! Here it is.
No, not our priest. But a priest, in a remote Bulgarian mountain town. Read on...
So, turns out a not-so-bright German guy stole a karaoke set from a store, only to have the cops show up at his door a little later: and look at what this guy stole...
In today's Gospel Reading I ran across, and noticed it for the first time ever, the fact that Jesus was compared to a snake on a stick.
I know, I know, you think I'm a heretic. But seriously, John 3.14 reads, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up." Now, if you remember, in Numbers 21.1-9, the people of Israel had recently demolished the Canaanites, after vowing loyalty to God if He provided victory. Then, after defeating the Canaanites, they continue on their way around the land of Edom, and, get this, they get impatient on the way (v. 4). Now, I don't know about you, but when I get impatient, it usually means something is not going my way, and that makes me less than content. Still, having just soundly defeated the Canaanites, you'd think the people would be just a bit happy. Instead, up with the irritation with God. Ok, so this ticks off the Father in Heaven, and next thing you know, there's a horde of snakes biting and killing people. Suddenly they want to rethink everything, and before you know it, they go to Moses and repent of their selfishness. And here's the good part: Moses puts a snake on a stick, and whenever people would be bitten and about to die, they need only look at the snake on a pole, and voila they were saved.
There's this song by Leonard Cohen called Suzanne, and at one point the lyrics say:
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
Now, I'm not exactly sure if Leonard Cohen was trying to write a Gospel narrative here, but I've always considered those few lines in an otherwise not so gospel-like song to be a good depiction of brokenness: "only drowning men could see him." Or, perhaps, only snake-bitten, and about to die Israelites.
Why the convoluted reminder about the discontent Israelites smack in the middle of John 3? Especially a passage that goes on (3:16) to show God's great love for us? Because John's listeners would quickly have remembered that story, and understood the implications. Christ must be lifted up as Moses lifted the snake for the dying, and repentant. Jesus wants to make it clear that it's not just a matter of believing in Him (3.15 & 16), but he wants to make sure that all must realize their absolute lack of ability to make it on their own. In short, they've been bitten by a snake. And, He wants to make it absolutely clear that death is imminent, and repentance required. Then comes the beautiful promise of verse 16.
And all this because the Son of Man was lifted up.
[published 1/18, though it refers to 1/16 - just didn't have time to write]
Every time I run across this story of how Jesus drives the merchants from the Temple, I get all charged up, and want to just jump up and holler "YEAH!!! That's m'Jesus!" Of course, I'm the quiet reserved type, so that doesn't behoove me so well. Instead, I just get all pumped up and excited on the inside.
Still, there's something about this passage that fires up something inside of me. Sure, we could blame it on the whips and the turning over of tables, and all the raw energy expended in driving out from the Temple those intent on turning the Lord's House into a means to their own wealth and pleasure.
But that's only part of it. If I wanted raw energy I'd watch Gladiator. Instead, this is a story that rips right into our lives, and shows us just a glimpse of what has already been accomplished. Let's recount real quick. There is a battle in heaven, St. Michael and his angels conquer the dragon and send him packing. The dragon and his minions wreak havoc on humanity, but they do it with great subtlety, so that selling things in the Temple looks like a good thing. Jesus comes and dies on the Cross for our rescue, winning the victory over the dragon with that death and subsequent resurrection. In the end, there will be one last great battle, and the dragon and his minions will be cast aside - forever.
Hmmm... So by what authority does Jesus whoop it up? Destroy the Temple, and in three days I will raise it up again. By my own authority. End of story. He does it because He's already won, the world just doesn't know it yet.
And I think that that's why I like this story so much: The world doesn't know it yet. And, it is our responsibility to make sure that they do. And how are they going to know? By living our own lives with that same authority. We read this story of the Temple knowing full well that Jesus has conquered death. So if He's conquered death, we have absolutely nothing to fear, right? Right. Talk about a Battle Cry! If there's anyone I would want to follow into battle, it'd be this Jesus guy, and I'd be holding a banner as high as I could.
Only problem is, that we often find ourselves manipulated ever so subtley, just as the moneylenders in the Temple. Without realizing it, we find that we have suddenly entered into the form of worship, rather than the essence of it. Our lives become slightly more focused on the procurement of personal comforts, and less focused on opening up the Temple. And before you know it, our lives look less and less like a place of Worship, and more and more like a marketplace, indistinguishable from everywhere - or everyone - else. And, just like the moneylenders, we're seduced into thinking it's a good thing.
Let us not be seduced. Instead, let us scream "Yeah!!! That's m'Jesus!" and remember that the victory and the authority is ours - already. If we can keep our hearts focused on that simple fact, the subtle seeking after anything but an open Temple will quickly fade away, and we'll be left standing with a banner, acting as a guidepost to Christ.
Sound the Trumpets. Victory is at hand.
The Federal Census Bureau wages show that women earn $0.86 to every $1.00 that men earn. Unfortunately, this is a gross average, and does not take into account certain trade-offs that women are likely to make in selecting jobs - trade-offs such as less annoying hours, and jobs that are less hazardous.
A recent book by Warren Farrell studies the wage gap between men and women in American society, and discovers that men and women have been making identical wages since about 1980, when their job titles and job functions are identical. In fact, when comparing apples to apples, women earn $1.10 for every $1.00 that men earn.
So what is Farrell's end argument? Men get paid more - on the gross average - because they deserve to. They are more likely than women to choose to work the night shift, choose hazardous duties, and select jobs that take them to Alaska, or other far reaches of the globe - all jobs that come with more pay.
For what it's worth, John Leo has an interesting Op-Ed piece here.
Apparently a decade's worth of study has proven that women can serve in the military in more than just supporting roles. According to the study, women's bodies, though, on average, still smaller and weaker than men, can handle all the stresses related to combat and other military duties; in some cases, even better than their male counterparts.
What does this mean? It means we may see a whole lot more of G.I. Jane, and she might be kicking some foreign solder's butt (provided she outweighs him).
Read the story here: Military Women Can Hack It
According to Reuters, a university in Stockholm has decided to work on a female crash-test dummy, as these dummies are manufactured to test for how men's bodies react in an accident. The new female dummy will rectify that problem. To begin with, the university will conduct research in how women's bodies react in accidents. I'm wondering what kind of a dummy would volunteer to be part of that research...?
In today's Gospel reading, Philip tells Nathaniel about this great guy he's just met, and Nathaniel responds with that question: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
That's some doubt, pure and simple, with a little personal bias mixed in.
But what's so cool about that is that Nathaniel goes with Philip to see Jesus, and Jesus proclaims, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" Now, I don't know about you, but if Jesus proclaimed that there was no guile in me, I'd be on cloud 9 with my little harp. And still, Jesus says this about a guy who just expressed some doubt and bias about Jesus' origins.
At first I thought that was a bit of a disconnect, but then I realized that Nate's question was really just an outcropping of his guilelessness. Philip had absolutely no doubt where Nate stood, and so could suggest that he "come and see" for himself. And, when Jesus said, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you," Nate instantly believed. Talk about no guile.
I suppose that if I were to run into a friend who told me he'd found the Messiah we'd been waiting for, I'd be a bit skeptical because who could possibly fit that bill? And then, if he said, that this Messiah guy had come from the Ozarks, I'd say something asinine like, "Huh? Someone from the Ozarks can form a complete sentence, and even preach and stuff?" Or maybe I wouldn't. Instead maybe I'd just keep it to myself, and let it be a private joke in my head that eventually grew into full-blown pride, and kept me from ever going to see this man with Wonder Working Power. And then I'd miss out. Not just on getting to know my friend a bit better, but on this guy who reads my heart like an open book. And I suppose that would be the problem, then. If my heart's not open, it's not without guile. If it's not without guile, then it's attempting to deceive. But in the end the only one who's really deceived is me.
Even though Nate expressed some personal bias, it was still the honest thoughts of his heart, and showed his willingness to be completely exposed to Philip, and to God. And if I could be even just partly like that, I believe I would share in Nathaniel's promise: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man."
Pray for me that it might be so.
I got my loan! And this morning I picked up the checks and went to the respective debt holders and paid them off. I am now the proud owner of low-interest debt, as opposed to the owner of exorbitant-interest debt.
It's a beautiful thing really. Monthly totals on two of these debts were causing some $700 a month in payments. I now pay only $310 a month, and the even more beautiful thing is that they take it out of my paycheck each month - since it's our employee credit union - and I don't need to deal with any paperwork. It'll be like I never even had the money in my hands, and completely removes the Fool from the equation.
"...and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage."
One of the most amazing things about our faith is that we have a God who came to the earth, not to seduce and impregnate unsuspecting women, but to offer His life up as a sacrifice that we might have life. (Hebrews 2:11-18)
But I think that the point of that death often escapes us: through his death we no longer have to fear death.
I don't know about you, but to me that spells freedom. Only trouble is, somehow we're still stuck in our own private versions of lifelong bondage. It's like we can't really tell that we're free. I'm reminded of the Indian trick of training elephants: when the elephant is young, they put a giant chain on the youngster's leg, and bolt it to something that can't be moved. Through time, the elephant quits pulling on the chain because he realizes that it is a futile measure, that he can never pull hard enough to get away. Then, when the elephant's mind has been trained into captivity, the owner can use a simple rope to restrain the beast, even though the rope could be snapped in an instant by this now fully grown, and powerful animal. It just doesn't know that technically, it is free.
Just so with us. It's like we don't realize that Christ's death provided us with the strength of an elephant, and that the things that hold us back are just puny little ropes. All we have to do is ask for the strength to pull, and then keep walking away.
The other day I turned in an application for a loan, only to have the loan officer call me today to say that there is a blemish in my credit report, and could I please explain.
Apparently, there is an outstanding amount of $864 in collections for an account I ostensibly held with ComCast, the cable company. Only I've never had cable the whole time I've lived in Los Angeles, and I've never lived in Los Angeles proper, specifically not near USC south of Interstate 10. I've been about 20 miles away from that location the whole time I've been here.
Nevertheless, what to do? The loan officer was very nice, and gave me all the information to contact the collections agency, so that I could follow up on removing this. The man at the collections agency was really nice, too, and gave me all the numbers to call to report fraud, and what to and how to report it, including number for the Federal Trade Commission. He also mentioned that part of the debt was for $660 worth of digital cable boxes which were never returned following the termination of the account. Wow. Someone walked away with good equipment - for free. Then he gave me the number to contact ComCast directly. ComCast customer service was very nice, even apologetic, and forwarded me a "Fraud Form" which they say can be completed in the next several days to help clear up this little mess.
In any case, once this gets reported, the police will get on it, and if we're lucky, whoever did this will find themselves coughing up $864 to clear up the debt they owe ComCast, while I get this nasty little blemish cleared off my credit record. That's the hope.
When I was growing up, my mother taught me how to cook. In fact, she made me learn how to cook. She did this because, as she said, "By the time you get old enough to marry, women won't know how to cook, so you better learn how to take care of yourself and your family, because you never know if you'll find a woman who can do that."
That always stuck with me, and over the years I've been amazed at how accurate a prediction this was... (what prompted this entry: Sad, on so many levels...)
I think that this comment from my mother helped instill in me a certain sense of self-sufficiency, so that one of my overriding mantras in life has been "Anything good or necessary is worth knowing how to do yourself."
Over the years I've had several friends who had almost nothing in their refrigerators, except for things like hotdogs, salsa, and beer. If they weren't eating chips with dip, or hotdogs, they were eating out. It wasn't because they were busy, but because they didn't know how to cook at all. I even had one friend who couldn't figure out how to open one of those cans of frozen orange juice. Apparently his mother had always done that for him. But while guys are the biggest offenders, I've been amazed at how many girls fit the same description. For them, cooking meant opening up a can of pre-packaged soup, and heating it up on the stove, or following the directions on a Trader Joe's type ready-meal. Suggest making something from scratch, and they'd scratch their heads. One of the women I knew in college was actually proud of the fact she couldn't cook.
Now, I know that there are things we all just hate to do, and there are things we don't know how to do. But I tend to think that it's better to know how to do things yourself, so that you don't have to spend the money having someone else do it for you. You can figure out if you hate it later.
This morning, after not having checked my spam filter for the weekend, I came back to discovering that the blog-robots had been at it again. And not just a little bit, but 663 times in only 3 days. Thank goodness I 've got the new spam filter installed. What a waste of internet bandwidth.
In order to combat it, I've changed the directory my blog is kept in to something completely different, so that the spambots get confused, and think that I've disappeared. Unfortunately, that also means that all of my listings that have slowly made their way into Google's search results will now also be defunct. Still, I think I'd rather forgo that and just kill the bots.
So yesterday was a not so pleasant day, being sick and all. To top it off, though, I had to go in to work because our web server got hacked.
Needless to say, I wasn't pleased, and really wasn't pleased with the fact that we weren't able to fix the problem. The first time we cleared everything up, we rebooted and put the site back up, only to be hacked again, within minutes. It seems that hackers have lists of vulnerable sites on the internet that they share with other hackers so that people can exploit systems and basically use them to send spam and cause worldwide chaos, and they use programs to do this, so they don't even need to be present to hack our system anymore. Ugh. So we pulled everything down and left it down, and I went home to try to get over being sick, irritable, and with a big stress hump on my back.
That's where The Stacia comes in. Knowing that I was feeling less than up to par, she offered to come over and take care of my aching stress hump, an offer I happily accepted. Lo and behold, my stress hump disappeared, and I was able to sleep well, so that today I awoke with a big smile on my face, ready to tackle this server problem. See how she made me better?
Thankfully, after our server guy spent most of the morning dealing with the security stuff, it seems like we'll be back up and running soon. We just need to have our network security people double check our latest rendition of our attempts at hardening our server, and we could be back up and running. Let's hope it works.
You may not notice it, but I've upgraded my blog. Actually, I've upgraded my blog software, so the back end is completely revamped. And there's some really helpful additions, like SpamLookup, a free plugin to reduce blog spam.
Over the last few days I started getting up to 50 spam comments a day, which is ridiculous, considering that these comments are in no way going to improve the spammers ratings on Google, or get people to actually click through. But since these things are done with "robots," once they discovered that my site can be spammed, I'm a sitting duck.
But that's where SpamLookup comes in. It determines if something is blog spam, and then automatically puts it into a "Junk" folder, without allowing it to be published. If a comment only barely fits the criteria, the system has me approve of the comment before it goes live. Either way, the only comments that get posted are yours, the good kind of comments.
It's a big help, because now I don't have to delete comments every single day, because none of these blog spams get published, and I can delete them when I have the time.
It's a good thing.
Or, maybe I should say made me sick.
See, she was gone for vacation to the East Coast, and while she was there she picked something up. And then when she came home, lo and behold, I wanted to give her a kiss, so I did (a few, in fact).
Now I'm sick.
So, logic concludes that she makes me sick.
You remember that book "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"? Well, in kindergarten I learned that girls have cooties, but I always thought that was a bunch of hoohey. Only now I'm beginning to believe its true...
Today at work, I undertook an endeavour outside my normal expertise: writing an article for the Institute's newspaper.
My boss has been inundated with several things, and the woman who normally writes these articles recently accepted a new job at USC, so the only one left to put together an article in time for publication was her. Only that would take time away from sorting through the editing for the web pages we're hoping to update, so I agreed to write a rough draft so that she could get to editing the web stuff.
I have to say, free-form writing like blogging is much easier, and comes much quicker to me than trying to pull together disparate pieces of information to compose an article on recent funding gifts to Caltech. It takes a real gift to pull together something like that, and after scratching my head for quite some time, I realized again that I'm a programmer, and not a journalist.
Thankfully though, this freed up my boss to pull together the time to edit the web documents that I will need to update. As of this posting, I've got 11 new updates sitting in my inbox.
All in all, it was a fair trade, I think.
Sent to me at work. Couldn't resist posting it here; some are just hilarious. Remember that these actually showed up in church bullletins...