Hi, all.
I wanted to let you all know that I've begun writing a book about church singles ministries, an idea I've been kicking around for a little while. My aim is to identify common mistakes and offer useful advice for how to run a great ministry to singles.
So, I wanted to ask you all, so that I have a multitude of counselors (Pr. 11:14), about things you think should be included in such a book (general topics, non-private anecdotes, guiding Scriptures, etc.).
Also, I'd like to interview as many singles and former singles as I can (via e-mail or face-to-face) about their experiences. If you'd be interested in answering questions about your experiences, please send me a PM.
Do any of you have any other thoughts about this project?

I feel I have made a little progress in my goals since my last update, so here we go:
WIFE - I'm pursuing a couple of avenues and leads. I'm sending e-mails to someone. And I'm planning to revamp my dating site profile and maybe reanswer all the match questions. Not sure what I should say about myself. Any suggestions?
By the way, I was thinking, and I've decided that I made a huge mistake cutting all contact with my previous girlfriend. I think we could have been friends until one of us got involved. Everyone needs good friends. So, if you're reading this, I'd love to talk again.
FRIENDS - I was talking to a woman I met on that site, and she went with us on the Poland trip. When we got back, I sort of impulsively, sort of impatiently, asked her out. I liked being around her, and I thought maybe I'd develop more romantic feelings for her, but while I grew to like her more and more, it was as a sister. It took me a while to figure this out, but I'm glad to say that we're still friends, and she's a big sister to me. I went over to her house again yesterday, and we had a lot of fun watching shows on DVD and playing video games. It's nice to have a friend like that. I wish I had more.
CAREER - I got hired by a big retailer to help remodel their store, and now they've decided to keep me on, so I have a position at least through the end of the year, but I think it's a permanent position. So, I am employed. I will probably stay there indefinitely. But eventually, I'd like to work part-time and run a non-competing business on the side, so I can do work I enjoy and have a steady paycheck.
WRITING - I've given one of my books to a friend to read, and I'm hoping that talking about that will get me fired up to do some writing.
Anyway, that's the status of my major goals as of today. I hope that I've given everyone at least one thing they can respond to, even if it's just to tell me I misspelled something.

Hey, everyone.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but I haven't been getting on LJ much lately.
I'm leading a small team to Poland for a summer conversational English camp in July. I covet your prayers for this endeavor. And if you felt led to toss a few dollars my way to help defray the expenses (mostly airfare), that would be great, too.
I'll screen the comments, in case anyone wants to leave contact information.
But most important, please pray for the team. We'll be traveling most of July, starting on the 6th.

Other than that, not much going on. Hardly anyone's hiring, and nobody'd want me now, when I'm leaving for a month in a month. So, work will have to wait until after the trip. I've been watching a lot of anime in the evenings. I guess I could write about those, if anyone's interested. I've been working on various side projects, but I don't have any exciting news in any of those.
I couldn't find anything interesting to do today, so I'll probably just get my license renewed, grab a movie from Redbox, and veg out all day.

How are all of you?

So, I was on a forum, and there was a discussion of whether a woman (or anyone) should be able to turn down a date saying that they've decided to take a break from dating. And the question was raised about what if God's chosen mate shows up just after she's turned you down saying she's taking a season... and whether she would accept the chosen mate's offer of a date. I made a reply, and I'm cross-posting it here so it doesn't get lost when the forum purges its archives next year.
If you're explaining to people you're taking a season, and that's why you can't go out with them, then you should be saying the same thing to a guy who seems perfect. For one thing, he could be sent by your Adversary to pull you out of your season in an undue time. For another, if you're explaining it that way to anyone as part of turning them down, you're basically saying you've taken a vow. And the Bible is clear:
...pay what you've vowed. It's better to not vow than to vow and not pay. (Ecc 5:4b-5 paraphrased).
So, if you're really taking a season, you should maintain that season through its end no matter who comes along. If they're God's plan, they'll wait for you. But if you're not, then you should respond by simply saying "No, thank you" and not giving a reason. And if they press for a reason, you should say either that you're not interested in them, or else give them the date when your season will end.
Because if you will jump at Mr. Right if he comes along tomorrow, you're not really taking a season. You're waiting for Mr. Right, and if you don't jump at the guy asking you today, it's because you don't think he's the one, so say that instead of "I'm taking a season."

Looks like the last time I did a status update, it was June. I feel I ought to say something before it's June again.

WIFE: Not sure how this is going. Talking to someone online, but I'm trying to take things slow and not let my emotions get away with me. Only been talking a few days, so I don't want to make any assumptions at this point.

FRIENDS: Haven't heard from that guy in a long time. But I'm talking to someone online, and we have a lot in common. I think we're going to be great friends. I dearly hope that the romantic potential goes one way or the other very clearly. I don't want to have a repeat of what happened with that sweet girl from up North who was such a close match we couldn't be just friends. I really need more friends in my life, so I'm glad to have found this one. Our messages back and forth flow easily, and we enjoy each other's sense of humor.

CAREER: Hmm... not sure what falls in this category and what doesn't. I put in an application for a job yesterday, and someone who works there thinks I have a great shot at it. But that's a job. A job I might stay in for years and years, but a job rather than a career. I've been spending my time, lately, writing code for a SQL-based distributed research assistant for writers. It may have some value for others, but I'm designing it for writers. I've also been messing around with sculpture in papier mache. Not sure whether either of those will lead to anything.

WRITING: I haven't written any fiction in a while. I've been reading voraciously and writing a little bit of non-fiction (still looking for singles to interview about that book on ministries), but mostly, I've been working on code.

So, that's the news from Okaloosa County.

So, the last week or two, I've been around a lot of people who've touted the benefits of FB for keeping in touch with people.
As you probably know, I left FB because I was wasting too much time blocking applications and refusing requests from myriad groups.
I would be happy if they'd give users an option to block all applications once for all, so a person could see only the status updates their friends actually type in. An exception for applications that are just repeaters for your friends' Twitter, et al, accounts would be great, too, because those are usually things that the friends actually typed in, just somewhere else.
But I'm not going to hold my breath for that.
And it occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn't the platform but the people I allowed on my friends list. Maybe I was allowing too many people with whom I had little in common, who spent too much time on too many applications.
And then if I'm on FB, will people then expect me to know everything they've posted about in the past week?
So, I'm wondering if it would be worth my while to go back, if I culled my list of contacts to those who post things that are going on in their lives instead of just playing applications all day.
Or would that be just setting myself up for disappointment again?

So, I finally got around to upgrading Koko to Squeeze (Debian 6.0) last night.
This morning, I opened up TEA (Text Editor Advanced) to start working through a programming exercise, and I was shocked at how much the interface had changed.

When you resize the window, the status pane resizes, but the main pane does not.
When you resize the main pane, if you're on a settings tab, the font resizes.
When you drag a file's tab, it moves, which would be an improvement over the previous version, except that the file handler doesn't follow. If your file was on the fifth tab, and you move it to the third position, Ctrl-S will save the file that was previously in the third position, while clicking on whatever is now in the fifth position will let you save the file now in the third position.
There's a TODO calendar, which would be nice except, I liked TEA when it was just a tabbed, suntax-highlighting text editor.
And that's just what I've discovered in the first ten minutes.

This is not comfortable for coding.
So, I think I'm going to need a new text editor. Any of you Linux geeks out there have a good suggestion? Prefer something that's not going to pull down every Gnome library in existence as dependencies, but if it has the functionality I used to enjoy in TEA, I'll live with the bloat.
It doesn't need syntax highlighting or bracket matching, though that would be nice to have, but it does need to have tabs and state saving (when I open it, it loads all the files I had open at the end of the previous session), and it should be a text editor, not an IDE.

Your thoughts?

I'm sorry to those of you who may be reading this and don't have a Livejournal account (or an OpenID), but you can no longer post comments here.
I opened up the comments because I wanted to be accessible to people who might want to get to know me, but too many jerks have been posting spam to my entries, and I'm tired of spending up to a third of the amount of time every day that I used to spend blocking apps when I had an account over at teh Book of Faces marking anonymous comments as spam.
So, it's over.
But come on, folks. Livejournal offers several ways for you to comment without paying. You can use your Twitter account, your Book of Faces account, or any OpenID account, and you can fairly easily get an LJ account for free (Basic or Plus).

So, I've "discovered" Redbox (I already knew about it, but have only recently rented any movies through them), and saw a couple of movies tonight.

One was "Letters to Juliet", which was a lot of fun, even if the main romance was predictable. The underlying premise about the letters in the courtyard was intriguing, and the return of Claire and her search was very well done with a fair number of twists and turns, and they hid Chekov's Gun well enough that I didn't see the end of the search coming until moments before the reveal. I highly recommend it.

The other was "The Social Network", which was pretty good, an interesting tale of jealousy and betrayal. Far too much bad language, though. *sadface* The character of Mark (and supposedly the RL guy) was an ass to a lot of people, but almost everything he said was a good point, too. It was a tangled web, but I think the conclusion I have to reach is that there was no good guy in this film. Most of the main characters were wrong in various ways, but also right about some other things... except the twins. They started out doing okay, but they let their jealousy get the better of them. I'm speaking of the characters in the movie, making no judgments about their RL counterparts... unless their actions were portrayed accurately. As far as I can see, the idea for the two sites was not the same, in spite of the overlaps in their concepts.
[ETA: I have to wonder what those two could have developed if they'd taken the campus president's advice and started a new project.]

The first movie I saw from Redbox was "Megamind", which was a ton of fun that I'd recommend you see, if you haven't. Not much to say, just go see it, now! :)

Hi, all.
I wanted to let you all know that I've been kicking an idea around for a little while, and I've made the decision to go forward with it. I'm going to write a book about church singles ministries. My aim is to identify common mistakes and offer useful advice for how to run a great ministry to singles.
So, I wanted to ask you all, so that I have a multitude of counselors (Pr. 11:14), about things you think should be included in such a book (general topics, non-private anecdotes, guiding Scriptures, etc.).
Also, I'd like to interview as many singles and former singles as I can (via e-mail or face-to-face) about their experiences. If you'd be interested in answering questions about your experiences, please send me a PM.
Do any of you have any other thoughts about this project?