June 4th, 2007
I don’t know if you’ve seen the new feature on Google Maps yet, called Street View. Basically Google sent cars with special roof mounted 360° cameras around the streets of San Francisco, capturing street level images throughout the city. Well apparently one of these camera cars caught my co-worker Chris and I leaving our building one afternoon on a Jamba Juice run, and now I am famous on the Internets. Judging by the fact that we’re both looking right at the camera, on that day in question we must have seen the car, but I can’t remember it now. Maybe Google is using some mind-altering device in tandem with their wizbang uber-peripheral-vision camera to make it’s victims subjects forget ever being snapped.
Personally, I think “Street View” is too bland a name. Perhaps Google Maps Paparazzi instead. Anyway, here’s a permanent link to yours truly, eternally enshrined on Google Maps.
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January 23rd, 2007
So I’ve been doing some web consulting on the side to bring in some extra money while Jen’s on the job search again, and as a bit of a creative outlet. I’ve been doing several hours a week of web design for a guy by the name of Eliot who runs a consulting company in addition to his day job. I met Eliot through church at First Pres.
My recent project has been a ground-up design of a site for a new book that’s being published by a guy by the name of Dale McGowan who’s relationship with Eliot apparently goes back to their freshman year at Cal. Dale has edited a book called Parenting Beyond Belief, which is billed as a parenting manual for non-religious parents. Now I come from a religious background where your first reaction to a book title like this would be to scoff and dismiss it right out. And there was a time in my not too distant past where I would have towed that party line.
I’m sure that I don’t agree with everything he says, and he says up front that as the editor of a book with multiple contributors, he doesn’t neccessarily agree with each of the authors’ every position. But what struck me about Dale is that his tone is decidedly different from the stereotypical vocal secular/atheist writer. Read this quote from his FAQ on the book’s site:
Honest questioning is too often disallowed in religion, the word “values” turned on its head, and an “us-vs.-them” mentality reinforced. Many feel that fear—of God, sin, doubt, and difference—is more prevalent with religion than without, and that children often learn to obey authority rather than develop their own judgment.
Instead of in-your-face arrogance and an air of see-how-stupid-those-religious-people-are, Dale writes with a humble posture and the sincerity of an honest questioner or doubter (gasp!). Now he is clear that he’s already made up his mind that religion is a deception, and he and his wife have decided to raise their children in a non-religious home. But I have a lot of respect for parents that raise their kids to ask questions and encourage them to seriously wrestle with what they believe to be the true nature of things. Here’s one last quote from the FAQ:
So religion isn’t all bad?
Of course not. Like most human creations, it’s a mixture of good and bad. We should embrace the best elements while finding our way out of those that are undesirable. The most important freedom we can give our children is the freedom to think, to discern, to determine for themselves what’s good and what’s bad in anything. But when we place ideas beyond critique, the bad survives along with the good—and that’s not good for anyone. Only if we agree to put all of our ideas on the table can we work together to separate those ideas that are unworthy and life-destroying from those that are noble and life-affirming.
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October 26th, 2006
If you’ve been tracking with us over the past year, you’ll know that 2006 has brought a lot of changes. Early in Janurary Jen and I quit our jobs, put all of our stuff in storage, moved out of our apartment in Berkeley, flew out to Massachusetts for the winter term at L’Abri Fellowship, went back a second time during the summer, driving across the country to the east coast and back over 7,000 miles and through thirty states. After that was all done, we thought we wanted to move to San Diego, then changed our minds and came back up to the San Francisco Bay Area. All of that you can read about in past blog entries.
When we got back up here to the Bay Area, a friend of ours hooked us up with a couple in Danville, CA who generously opened their home for us to stay while we both found jobs and a new apartment. We had a great time with Joe and Tanya. They were very hospitable and accommodating. I think they probably would have let us stay six months if we needed. Joe turned out to be quite the chef, I think due in large part to his Italian blood. At least a couple times a week he would grill or bake some great dinner for the four of us.
It took a couple weeks of hitting the pavement (online and in the real world) and Jen found a job at a small IT company in Oakland near Jack London Square on the waterfront. She went in for an interview and was offered the job on the spot because her boss said he recognized something in her character that he knew would be a great asset. She’s now working as an office manager / executive assistant / mother for two bachelor tech support guys and her boss. It’s not the most ideal job to suit her passions, but it pays decently well, her boss likes her, and it gave us a source of income again for the first time in the several months since leaving Crusade earlier this year. Some of you may wonder, “what about grad school? since that was her plan a few months ago. Well she’s still interested in doing it, but isn’t sure about commiting to two years of full-time schooling plus another 2-3 working to get established in the field. She’s still looking into grad schools, but right now is focussing on her job. It’s a big relief for her to be back working again, having a regular weekly schedule with evenings at home together.
About a week after Jen got hired, I landed a contract job doing QA work for Wells Fargo in downtown San Francisco. It’s related closely to computer programming, what I ideally want to end up in, only instead of writing new software I write software to test other software and find bugs so that other people can fix it. I just started there this week, and though I’m not sure yet if I’m going to love the work, I can tell already that I’m going to like my coworkers and the work environment which feels big-company corporate though fairly laid-back and casual. There is a strong possibility that my six-month contract will get extended to a year, and also a chance if it goes well and there is still more work to do that it could turn into a full-hire.
The timing of us getting our jobs worked out at the same time as this apartment that we found became available. It’s a unique sort of place unlike any that we’ve ever lived in before, but seems to suit us. The building was originally part of the California Cotton Mills factory built in Oakland in 1917. It’s all brick with big factory windows, and has recently been converted into loft apartments. Our suite sits on the top-the fourth floor, and affords an amazing view of downtown Oakland, and even the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and downtown SF. Sometimes we just sit in our living room and stare out the windows. The interior is industrial with all hardwood factory flooring, exposed brick and concrete walls, and steel girder beams that reinforce the original external brick wall. It’s got a lot of space, and presumably because of the location in the industrial part of Oakland (at 23rd Ave and 880) across the Park St bridge from Alameda, the rent is affordable. We feel really fortunate that it became available at the same time that we were landing our jobs. You can check out some photos on my Flickr page of the place during the stages of moving in.
All in all, we are really happy to be back in the Bay Area, not in the least because of our church home at First Pres in Berkeley. We’ve come to admire our pastor Mark Labberton because of his preaching, the importance he places on seeking the welfare of the people in our city and around the world, and for his personal input in our lives post-Crusade. He was largely responsible for getting us connected with the Massachusetts L’Abri which played a vital role in helping us transition from a poor fit in Crusade campus ministry to beginning to discover what this next phase of our life would be like and re-instilling hope for the future.
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