college

My Faith Journey

I wrote this at the beginning of the year for a missionary organization that I was applying to. I ended up withdrawing my application for other reasons, however, I thought this was worth sharing. And what better day to share than Easter? He is Risen.

I’ve never really been sure how to best answer this question. I do not believe there is a single identifiable point in time where I became a Christian. I was raised in a loving Christian home, as both my parents are Christian’s. My faith has been, and continues to be, a wonderful journey of understanding. Along the way, I have developed a relationship with the Lord that I can call my own. My goal is to seek Him, incessantly. I can, however, identify some critical points in my journey.

High school was a time when a lot of my faith flourished. I went on student trip to Lake Shasta through my church and an organization called Sonshine Ministries. I became part of an amazing Bible study that, even after high school ended, still stays in contact with each other regularly.

College has been hard though. I attended Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Campus Crusade for Christ for a little while my freshman year, but it was radically different from what I was used to and I soon stopped going. Sophomore year, I tried going to a variety of different churches around my school. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I thought I had finally found a church: First Presbyterian Church of Golden. I went for the remainder of sophomore year and the start of my junior year. However, it just wasn’t sticking. I found the sermons uninteresting and inapplicable in my life. The audience was also predominately older couples and children, there were practically no college age students. So I gave up and coasted for a while, going to church only when I was back in Seattle.

When I was back this last summer, I was talking with our senior pastor, Earl Palmer, and some friends from my Bible Study. One question came up about how to find another church away from home. Part of what I got out of the that discussion is that I was missing something when I was trying to find a church in the past: the community.

When I got back to school this past fall, I called up a friend, Matt, and asked if he wanted to go this church I’d heard about, Flatirons Community Church. As it turned out, he was already planning on carpooling up with another mutual friend, so we all carpooled together. After church, Matt introduced me to his community at church. This is when I stopped coasting in my faith. I had found community within a church; which is the part I had been missing previously. And it has been an absolute blessing to be in this community.

I have been enjoying going to Flatirons. I’ve also been going to The Annex (a college ministry run by First Presbyterian Boulder) on Tuesdays and I recently volunteered to drive freshmen from their dorms to The Annex and back.

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Countdown Timer v2.1.1

After dilly dallying around for a couple months, I finally got serious about pushing the 2.1 version out the door. A couple of reasons for this actually.

First, the WordPress 2.5 is coming out end of March/beginning of April and I wanted to get out one more release (this one) before the next version of WordPress hits the streets.

Second, it’s fits with my development flow; releasing every few months when I can.

Here are the list of updates in Countdown Timer v2.1.1:

  • Fixed i18n translation issues where mo file would sometimes not be loaded
  • Updated UI (note: Based on UI code from Google XML Sitemaps)
  • Removed code dealing with recurring events (which has not been included for a few versions now)
  • Added js countdown ability to admin example (which doesn’t have wp_footer hook?)
  • Updated the link to the JS file to make it dynamic in case a folder gets renamed
  • Fixed a bug in the JS file that caused dates to be calculated incorrectly
  • Append a letter to the beginning of the unique id (as per XHTML requirement)…who knew?
  • Added two language files: Swedish (thanks to Mattias Tengblad) and Spanish (thanks to Google Translator)

The biggest change user will notice is the new UI. It’s based off the code from Google XML Sitemaps which I’m assuming is based off the code from WordPress itself. The great thing about the new design is that you can collapse, expand and move around the boxes to fit your work flow.

All the other changes are ‘under the hood’ and deal with code changes to make things work better in a larger variety of situations.

The Countdown Timer plugin is about three months shy of its third anniversary of public release! I’ve basically been maintaining it since the end of freshman year in college, which is when I switched to WordPress.

The first public version was v0.6. It had about 50 lines of code and used a text file to store the data. There was also no UI at all.

Version 2.1 is about 950 lines of code. Storing data in a text file is gone, instead using the WPDB. There are also several support files, including the javascript port of the countdown mechanism which is another 150 LoC.

Since the beginning of last March, there have been over 8700 downloads, which would almost pay for a semester of college if everyone gave a $1 (wink wink)!

Read more or download version 2.1.1!

Update: Had to increment the plugin to version 2.1.1 because of the way that WordPress does version numbers. In short, v2.01 is the same as v2.1. So I had to release this as 2.1.1.

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Absolutely Ridiculous!

This is absolutely ridiculous! Who would ever want to go to a school like this? All I have to say is that Bob Jones sucks, and I would bet that Bob Dole thinks that Bob Jones sucks and is a disgrace to all people named Bob….or Jones. From Bob Jones University

Residence Hall Life

Residence Hall Life

  • A student must live in one of the University residence halls unless he is living with parents or
    other close relatives (approved by the Dean of Men’s or Dean of Women’s office), is 23 years old or
    older, is married and over the age of 20, or is a graduate student.
  • Freshmen may request a roommate. Other students are allowed one request for a friend to be in their
    prayer group, on their hall, or in their residence hall, but not in their room.
  • For the sake of accountability, students must "check out" when they leave the campus. Students
    gradually acquire more freedom in this area as they become upperclassmen.
  • Each night all students meet for prayer, either as a room or together with several other rooms.
  • Students are required to be in their own rooms and quiet at 11 pm. All lights must be out by midnight.
  • Students are required to keep their rooms clean and neat. Rooms are inspected daily.
  • Facilities and furnishings:
    • Laundry facilities are provided.
    • All rooms are furnished with twin-sized beds, dressers, desks, closets, cupboards, sink,
      telephone, and blinds.
    • Computer network and high-speed Internet access is available in each residence hall room.
  • An email account is provided for each student. Due to the flood of objectionable content coming
    through outside email services, students may use only this filtered campus email system.
  • All wireless access to the Internet is forbidden since all Internet use must go through the
    University’s filtered access.

What to Bring

  • List of what to bring pdf
  • Students may bring automobiles to campus. However, underclassmen (freshmen and sophomores) who are under
    21 years old may use their vehicles only to drive home and for extension.
  • Cell phones are permitted. Students will be instructed in cell phone etiquette.

What Not to Bring

  • Posters of movie and music stars and fashion models are not permitted. The subjects of personal photos
    should exhibit the modesty and appropriate physical contact we expect from our students.
  • Music must be compatible with the University’s music standards:
    • New Age, jazz, rock, and country music is not permitted.
    • Contemporary Christian music is not permitted (e.g., Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman,
      WOW Worship, and so forth).
  • Televisions and DVD/videocassette players are not permitted in the residence halls; computer DVD players
    may not be used to view movies.
  • You may not possess or play computer and video games rated T, M, or A or having elements of blood and
    gore, sensual or demonic themes, or featuring suggestive dress, bad language, or rock music.
  • Due to space considerations, appliances such as mini-refrigerators and microwaves are not permitted in
    residence hall rooms. A refrigerator for medical-related needs and microwaves are provided in each
    residence hall.
  • Residence hall students may not watch videos above a G rating when visiting homes in town and may not
    attend movie theaters.
  • All weapons must be turned in for storage. Trigger locks are required for pistols. Fireworks are not
    permitted on campus.

I think I’m going to write a email to query why BJ has this particular stance

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