Europe: Where the History Comes From

Today at work, we had a consultant come in for the week to help us with our implementation of the software we support. The cool thing was the guy grew up in Holland. Not only had he grown up in Europe, but he is trilingual with dutch, english, and german (and in that order). I don't know how long he spent in Germany, but apparently he lived there for a time as well. Now he lives in Illinois doing his consulting job. So what's the point of me giving all these details? Well, as Eddie Izzard once said, "Europe is where the history comes from."

I (along with a few others on my team) got into a fairly lengthy chat with the guy that started on World War II. Most people that I've known (aka Americans) have a rather narrow understanding of the era. It's not their fault, it's just the way it's portrayed in textbooks and Hollywood. I don't want to this to come off as arrogant, but I like to think I have a little better understanding than the average person I meet on the street. While I originally started being interested about 10 years ago, I've only done solid research on it for the last 3-4 years. In that time, I've read things written by Americans and British along with translations from French and Germans. Needless to say, I've gained a much wider perspective of what happened during those years than I used to have.

This guy seemed to have all that down without the extensive years of reading books. The best part was he had the perspective on pretty much any topic. It was fascinating talking to him about all sorts of things. In some ways it is nice to be part of a country that's so large. In other ways, it kind of sucks. The lack of diversity and learning to deal with people who don't think exactly like us is one of the disadvantages. I think about the only thing that can be done to combat the ignorance is to make a concerted effort to immerse ourselves in other cultures. Anyways, that's my two cents on world politics even though a lot of people will think it doesn't have much to do with politics at all. That's for another day though.

Christianity

So the other week I received a call from my mother. Nothing special including when she asked me if I had made it to church that Sunday morning. Now I haven't "made it" to a church service when I wasn't at home in over a year. Still, she tends to ask on a regular basis. Then she proceeded to ask me if I'd like help finding a church in the Des Moines area (I only have lived here for 3 months last summer and since May this summer). She even remarked, "I could probably look something up on the internet for you." ... ... This is coming from my mother who has a notecard detailing how to turn on her home pc. All you have to do is flip the switch on a surge protector... Meanwhile, I am the computer science major who has her new computer at the moment so I can set it up in the exact same manner as her current one. That way she will still know how to use it. Despite all of this, she asks me if I want her to look churches up on the internet!

So now let's move pass the question into why I have not been to a church service except for as a family tradition in a couple years. She thinks I need to go to church so I can be a better Christian. Of the churches she approves of, all they do in a church service is tell one how to live their life. I am 21 years old and have an above average intelligence. My intellectual strength is learning things quickly. So after going to church every Sunday practically of my first 18 years of my life, I pretty much know inside and out how a Christian is supposed to live their life.

My question is this, why should I waste my time getting up on a Sunday morning to be told how to live my life? I would be much better spending that time being a good individual to others and attempting to make an impact on the world. So many Christians today are way too complacent with going to church and making a public display of their piety. I am not saying all of them do this, but unfortunately, a fair portion is. Maybe one day Christianity will be more concerned with making an impact on the world it is a part of and less time trying to separate itself from it. Sure, I get the idea that "worldly things" are "evil". That being said, it doesn't mean we can't try to salvage as much as possible. When a town is destroyed by a tornado, flood, hurricane, or other disaster, do we just completely abandon it? No! We donate our time and money to salvaging as much as possible. At the very least, we attempt to rescue the people affected. We attempt to pick them up and get them back on their feet. Why should things be any different for someone who is down on their luck in spiritual ways?

My First Blog: Metablogging

So blogging has started running through my friends like the flu. Fortunately, we're just puking out a bunch of words instead of our guts. Anyways, I had enough to say in response to my freinds' blogs that I could write blogs to their blogs. Therefore I thought I should start blogging. So here I am at my first blog and what do I do? I blog about blogging. My question is, is that considered metablogging? Afterall, data about data is metadata. It only seems logical then that blogging about blogging would be considered metablogging.

What do I intend to blog about? I have no idea. As most people who know me know, I am quite an opinionated person. I usually have something to say about anything. So I will likely blog on my thoughts about other people's blogs. I will probably blog about some different types of technology I've been recently playing with. I may write a few blogs as how-to's. I play a lot of videogames so chances are I will be writing some about those as well. I'm an avid sports fan so there will definitely be a few those (Go Cubbies!). But yeah, I feel like I've used the word blog way too many times in the past few minutes so I'm thinking I'll just stop here for now and hit it again sometime later. Enjoy!