The Shepherds' Journey

I just updated the banner at the top of the blog with recent pictures of everybody. This post also marks our 1,000th post!

Labels: Misc

A Shepherd Tradition is to make lots of noise at midnight!

(and the rest of the year too, for what it's worth)

Labels: Family, Holiday

I've not been keeping up with the blog here much, but hope to really change this in 2009.

So, with that said, my goal is to have everything caught up all the way through today by midnight. That means that I have about 5.5 months go, so time to get started!

Have a Happy New Year!

UPDATE: It's nearly 1am now, and I've gotten through August up and September is in the works. I will have to continue my blog-a-thon tomorrow!

UPDATE2: Lots more pictures reviewed/cropped/uploaded through about mid-November, but the posts are still under construction.

CAUTION: This post may seem a little technical, but stay with me!

My recent post about "Refactoring" caused me to think more about my experience as a software architect/developer and how some of the techniques for development parallel Biblical concepts and truths.

"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" is a classic among programmers. The concept of Design Patterns is simple: When you are writing software, it is very likely that your problem has already been solved in the past. "There is nothing new under the sun", right?

In fact, you can reduce many of the issues to a core set of "patterns" that have been well thought out and documented. Each of the patterns is a separate concept and carries a unique and, usually, brief name. This makes it easy to refer to them while you are working with others.

So with this simple background I am going to embark on paralleling some of the "classic" Patterns with Biblical examples, concepts, and truths. I think it will be fun and enlightening, if only for me!

Here are a few of the Patterns that I will start with:

• Singleton
• Proxy
• Observer
• Facade
• ...

So, until the next post, ponder what examples you think should pair with these Patterns.

Labels: Design Patterns, Study

I was thinking a bit more about Refactoring and how the concept is found throughout scripture. Here is an example from 2nd Corinthians.

2 Corinthians:
11 O Corinthians! We have spoken openly to you, our heart is wide open. 12 You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections. 13 Now in return for the same (I speak as to children), you also be open.
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you[a] are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

  “ I will dwell in them
   And walk among them.
   I will be their God,
   And they shall be My people.”[b]

17 Therefore

   “Come out from among them
   And be separate, says the Lord.
   Do not touch what is unclean,
   And I will receive you.”[c]
   18 “ I will be a Father to you,
   And you shall be My sons and daughters,
   Says the LORD Almighty.”[d]

7:1 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Labels: Musings

This morning we received our new laying hens as day-old chicks. Kyle headed up the effort to get them all warm and happy in our nice brooder.


Katie and the new chicks

Labels: Chickens, Katie

Over the last week I've been working on finance stuff. This usually happens around February or March, but we are trying to get a jump start on refactoring (a programming term) our budget. What is refactoring? Basically reviewing what you already have, adjusting to reduce exposure to error, improve performance, useability, and/or readability.

The goal this time for our family is to achieve a specific savings goal while learning how to get by with less in certain areas.

Labels: Finance, Jay, Musings

Last night, right after I posted about trying to catch up, the blog promptly was destroyed by our hosting provider. While a freak event, I was still faced with suddenly having nothing and, seemingly, not a good backup.

Tonight, I've spent most of the evening reconstructing the server and getting the blog up and running and it looks like it's mostly here. At this point I just need to go through the archives and look for any missing pictures.

Thankfully, I had a decent backup of everything and have learned a valuable lesson in the process.

Take a moment, think about what would happen if you lost all the data on your computer, and then look into what it takes to get a good backup plan in motion.

Now back to the regularly scheduled catching-up phase...

Labels: Maintenance

This blog's 5th birthday came and went like a dud back on July 1st. Quite honestly, the pictures and events over the last few (5?) months have piled up and making the task of getting caught up here more daunting with each passing day.

However, we are committed to get things up-to-date as this is one of our main historical tools that we are using to chronicle our lives to our children and beyond.

I will at least start with getting pictures up and posted with some captions and then back-filling with some descriptions.

Meanwhile, a lot of "micro-blogging" goes on by Ruthanne and I over on Facebook, which has been quite an interesting experience in finding lost friends and relatives. Check it out if you get a chance.

Labels: Maintenance

(This entry was posted by Jay but written by Ruthanne):

Our family maintains a clothes closet of baby, toddler and maternity clothing to donate to local and not-so-local pregnancy resource centers (also known as crisis pregnancy centers).

These clothes are given to us by a couple of Christian women entrepreneurs who facilitate a HUGE children's consignment sale twice a year here in Birmingham. The sale is so big that there is an amazing amount of beautiful clothing that goes unsold. These clothes, donated by the sellers, are then turned around and distributed to various charities, churches or families in need.

We call our clothes closet ministry the "Gentle Shepherd Clothes Closet" and have been blessed to be able to direct baby and maternity clothes donations to pro-life pregnancy resource centers in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois and Iowa. Soon we are due to take a delivery to Texas!

We get much joy out of de-tagging, removing from hangers, sorting and repackaging the clothing with our children, who have also come to love the work. It's an honor for us to be able to facilitate the meeting of needs of mothers experiencing unexpected pregnancies who have chosen not to abort their children.

Lord willing, we'll get another big batch of clothing in March, after the Spring/Summer sale!


Jay at a Raleigh, North Carolina CPC unloading big bags of baby clothes.


Ruthanne signing a guest register

Edit: Any family can do this work. Look on the Internet for a listing of your local children's consignment sales, which usually happen in September/October and February/March. Contact the organizers of the sale early on to see if they would be willing to give your family some of the unsold and donated clothing to give to pregnant mothers in need. (Make sure they know it's for charitable purposes and that you're not planning to keep the clothing for yourself! And understandably, some organizers may want more information.) It's worth a try. Sometimes free clothing for the needy is right under our noses simply for the asking and we just need to ask the Lord to lead us to it. God bless!

Labels: Raleigh, Travel