Nate & Kristen’s Weblog

Nate and I spent the last weekend on a mini vacation in Palm Springs and we did it with no kids. We did have to attend a time share presentation but it only took an hour and we got our hotel paid for plus 100 dollars in american express gift cards. It was really fun to just be husband and wife and not have to focus on being parents. Sometimes I forget how fun Nate is. We went out to a couple of nice dinners, went dancing, road the tram up to the top of the San Jacinto mountains and did a little shoping at the outlet mall. All in all it was a great time. Thank you Mom for taking care of the boys!

I am reading a book titled Perspectives On Prayer by David Hocking. David is one of my favorite bible teacher/writers because of his no nonsense, get straight to the point kind of approach to scripture. He is also a big guy with a very powerful voice which you should keep in mind as you read this personal experience he shares in his book. The account is pretty funny but it also made me ask the question whether I could be as bold as he was.
“I was with a group of pastors in Arizona and we were sitting around a table-five other pastors and myself. It was a crowded restaurant and it was noisy. One of the pastors said ‘Why don’t we just pray silently? We don’t want to give any offense.’ He shouldn’t have done that. My friend next to me put his hand on mine and said, ‘David! Don’t do what I think you’re going to do!’ It ticked me off to think of praying silently! I stood up and called everyone to attention. Then, I asked everyone to be quiet since it was such a noisy restaurant. I couldn’t believe it! Everyone around us got quiet and bowed their little heads! I had an audience, so I prayed through the whole gospel, finished praying and opened my eyes to find my fellow pastors hiding under the table.

I believe in Free Software. I believe in its charity and I believe in its business models. So it saddened me a bit when I heard an industry juggernaut put the most successful open source software company in its cross-hairs. Not that I don’t like competition in the marketplace, and this kind of thing adds viability to the idea of Free Software, but I hate to hear talk of Oracle squashing Red Hat with what I know will be inferior products and services. I am almost positive it will be, initially at least, a loss for the open source community.

I just don’t understand how Oracle will be able to compete with Red Hat. How many all-star kernel or desktop hackers does Oracle employ? Oracle may have a superior organization but it has little or no cubicle credibility in the the market they’re jumping into. I don’t really know, but I can’t imagine they have or will contribute anywhere near as much as Red Hat does in terms of Free Software development. But then again, it may turn out that none of that really matters.

Last night I was thinking all these things out loud and Kristen responding rather quickly with the idea that Oracle might be trying to make a quick cut into Red Hat’s profits to lower its stock price–RHAT dropped over 25% on the initial news–in order make an acquisition cheaper. Hmmmm, I am not sure how realistic that is and it does seem to contradict some of what Ellison said, but it sounds like a perfect way for a multi-billion dollar company to shave a few million off the price of an up and coming market leader. Pure evil, albeit non-expert, genius.

And yippee for the National League.

Tuesday was Heathers birthday and Mike put together a really cute slide show of her. Check it out!

Last thursday Nate came home and told me about a story he heard on NPR. It involved a middle school student at a cross country meet in Bend Oregon being mounted by a deer. The story sounded pretty funny so I of course called my best friend Heather who is a middle school teacher in Bend. Well Heather came through for us, her are some pictures of the event. The funniest part (according to what Nate heard) is that no one came to the kids rescue until after some good photos were taken. I guess a group of coaches were able to shoo the deer away and the kid was laughing about the event afterwards.

Well Levi has made me laugh with a few more comments. Yesterday I caught him getting in to a drawer that he’s not supposed to. When I came up behind him and said “Levi what are you doing” he responded in a startled manner “Oh suck” I said “What?” “Oh suck” he said again. I didn’t make a big deal of it and made him clean up his mess. After the encounter was finished I laughed and again encouraged Nate to watch what he says when he is having trouble with the computer. It sounded so funny coming our of his little mouth but I sure hope he doesn’t say it again.

The second conversation happened a few weeks ago. It started with the house being a little to quite so I went into Levi’s room to see what he was up to. He was sitting in his rocking chair with a wood puzzle piece. Again I posed the question.
Me: What are you doing?
Levi: I’m fixing him!
Me: why?
Levi: I’m fixing him. I spank (with hand motion) then we sit in the chair and talk and pray. (ending with a hug for the puzzle piece)

I just left him to play and went to call Nate.

Well as of yesterday Conrad can officially crawl. He is very proud of himself. On Monday before crawling he managed to scoot to Levi’s crayons and eat them for breakfast. Good thing they are non-toxic.

“As much as I converse with sages and heros, they have little of my love and admiration. I long for the rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.” John Adams

Our friends Peter and Dara DeSoto are serving the Lord in El Salvador. Recently they posted a couple of things about there work which brought me to tears and challenged me. I have found that it is easy to serve christians in our church community and even some opportunity outside of our church but how do I reach out to the lost. It seems even more of a challenge since I stay at home with my kids, the only nonchristians I talk to are the Jehova Witnesses that come by once a week. I want it to be an out pouring of my love for Jesus and a desire to share the love of the gospel with everyone. I guess I just need to put my thoughts into action