BrianReese.com

The men’s group at the church I attend is doing a Bible study called: Into the Wild. This study is based on John Elderedge’s Wild at Heart. I have read Wild at Heart while in college and even attempted to lead a Bible study using it as the source material. What follows are some of my current thoughts on the first chapter.

Elderedge uses the first chapter to setup the premise of the book. What I understand that to be, is: We as men have stopped longing for the desires of our heart and have instead attempted to mold ourselves into what “the world” thinks men should be. “The world” would be the society around us, including the Church.

Elderedege proposes that men need three things: A battle to fight, An adventure to live and A beauty to rescue. He seems to think that the only way one can find their spirit of adventure is to journey into the wilderness. While, I do enjoy vacationing in the mountains, I’m not 100% sure this idea applies to all men. In fact, the undertone of this big adventure in the wilderness gets quite tiring and I haven’t even finished the first chapter.

Skipping back to the battle to fight… Elderedge asks us to think back to our childhood days and remember the games we’d play and how they revolved around themes of war, cops and robbers, Coyboys and Indians and so on. Honestly, as a young boy, I enjoyed the swing set and the sand box. I’m not sure what kind of battle a bulldozer, a dump truck and a cement mixer can have. Sure, we had water guns and water balloons but, we mostly just ran around an squirted each other. Having said all of that, deep down, there is a part of me that wants to “fight for the little man” and I often find myself rooting for the underdog.

The beauty to rescue. Elderege hasn’t really gone into a lot of detail about this topic just yet. He does talk about how every great story has a beauty to rescue (Like a prince rescuing a princess). I can never recall not aspiring to one day have a wife. However, I have never really given much thought to rescuing a woman to be my wife until I read this book. I have since found my beautiful wife and am eager to learn or relearn how to edify her.

Some other thoughts… To truely appreciate this book you have to be familiar with certain movies. So far, this seems to be: The Gladiator and Braveheart.

Over the past couple months, as I have been determining how to revive this little blog, I moved my web sites to another host. I thought moving could be a good topic to restart this little blog.

Much like you don’t just pack your belongings and move out of your house, you don’t just decide to pack up your belongings and move your web site. The first thing I needed to figure out why I was moving. Did I need place with a fancy kitchen and extra bathrooms or was I looking to move to something more affordable in the ‘burbs. The two main things I was looking for was the ability to host more than one domain on the same account and a bit more hard drive space. Like all moves, there’s a budget involved. My goal was to find the above without adding to my annual costs. My former host cost me about $50 per year.

So let the house hunting begin. Unlike the search for real estate, you don’t need a broker. However, much like real estate, there are many options. So, how do you find the right host? I honestly don’t know. What I did was look at a fairly popular dreamy host. Their plan looked good, but many of the sites I have visited seemed a bit slow. So, I started looking for hosting reviews. What I found is that many of the review web sites seemed overly positive but, now I at least had a list of potential hosts. I thought I had narrowed my choice down to a farm animal then, I looked at the terms of service.

So, I have some observations. Anything unlimited is not really unlimited. Sure, you can be offered unlimited storage and transfer, but don’t use too much memory or too many CPU cycles. If a host seems sketchy, it is. If a host has public support forms, take a look at them. Those forums can usually tell you at least three things: how often services malfunction, what the technical support staff are like and what your neighbors are up to. Just like you might not want neighbors who are loud, in realm of shared hosting don’t want to have neighbors running services that are going to demand a lot of resources and slow you web site down.

You know what they say… Good fences make good neighbors. The same applies in shared hosting. I considered two flavors of shared hosting: VPS which stands for virtual private server and traditional shared. Shared hosting is when you share one server with many other users, the provider typically manages the operating system, software and services. A VPS host is still shared, you are renting space and resources on a physical server, but you manage the operating system, software and services. A VPS is more fenced in. You should always have the amount of memory, CPU and storage space specified by your host provider.

I chose to stay with a traditional shared host. My budget for hosting doesn’t allow me to “move up” to a VPS. I found a provider who has been in business for 5 years. That’s probably a little on the short side but, everyone has to start somewhere. So far I have not had any problems with my new hosting provider.

It is finally winter time in Florida. I know this because we had our second major tornado event and it has been cold enough to require a jacket all day today. Hopefully, it was the last major weather event for the winter. However, I will not be surprised if there is another cold front that spawns tornados. The current weather conditions are conducive to that sort of storm.

I’m wondering if there is anything I could do to help those who were greatly affected by the storm. I know of a couple of things that could be done, so I’ll see what is possible. In our area, the worst we had to deal with was a series of intersections without power during the morning rush hour. I’m grateful that we were not in the direct path of the severe weather.

I did get an e-mail from someone at church that is organizing a group to go and help clear some of the damaged homes. They are in need of a Bobcat to help clear the debris. If you happen to know of where they could borrow one, I’ll pass the information along.

So, it’s been four months since I’ve posted anything. I have a really good excuse, I promise. Forget excuses, how about a summary of the last four months of my life.

Where to begin… Perhaps the beginning of this blogging sabbatical is a good place to start. The first weekend of May was a trip to North Carolina for a service project. This was the second trip to Camp Grace. This time a group of six people went. Since there were fewer of us, we took on some smaller projects such as putting the walls on a bike storage structure, tweaking several bikes so they would be safe for the summer campers, teaching some children a Bible lesson on the rolling chapel among other things. Once again Frank was there and he was a huge blessing to our group.

Shortly after returning from North Carolina, I had something new. Something I hadn’t had in quite some time… Yep. I now have a wonderful girl friend. For those of you wondering her name is Colleen.

For some reason June is a little foggy. I finished up my database project at CHS and had applied for the web developer position. I interviewed for the position in July and started the position at the end of July. I’m currently converting our internet site so we can host it “in house.” Once that is complete, I am slated to begin redesigning their intranet web site. I also get to maintain the database that I finished up in June.

After finishing my project at CHS, I took a couple of days off to travel. My friend and former college roommate, Andrew, was getting married in Chicago. I went up to Chicago and met up with the old gang for the wedding and a mini vacation in the Windy City. After the wedding, we celebrated Independence Day with a fireworks show over Lake Michigan accompanied by the symphony in Grant Park. We also toured the Field Museum and went to see the view from the top of the Sears Tower. I can’t forget to mention the authentic Chicago deep dish pizza we had for lunch, I was really hungry and had three whole slices.

More recently, Colleen’s mom and step dad were in town for Labor Day. We went out for pancakes at the DeLeon Springs Sugar Mill as well as an eco tour of the river that the springs feed. The following day, we went to the Canaveral National Seashore’s Apollo Beach. Bret and I attempted to body surf some waves. Afterwards, we all ran from the mosquito swarm and into Colleen’s car, where we swatted mosquitoes the entire trip home. On Labor Day, we went searching for alligators on an air boat ride over Lake Jessup. We found several baby alligators and some birds, but we didn’t get very close to any adult alligators. This adventure was followed up by a small barbeque at the pool. We all had a good time that weekend.

I’d try and post some pictures from Chicago and Labor Day weekend, but I don’t spend a lot of time in front of the computer when I’m at home so, I haven’t implemented the photo album yet. Also it seems I have a lot going on, on the weekends. Most that is not of much interest, but nonetheless, I keep myself pretty busy.

While this isn’t a complete journal of my summer, I’m sure it’s enough to fill you in on my life. I suppose I could say more about Colleen, but I’ll leave our story for another entry since this one is already quite long.

One of the many problems a developer is asked to solve is integrating two seperate but related systems. Today, I was confronted with a request to bring two related systems together. It is really a fairly simple request. The system I’ve been working on for the past five months involves a database and a collection of documents kept on a file server. The problem was that while the documents were related to the database, there was no plan to store file information in a way that would make it easy to query for the file path and link to the file.

I came up with three different approaches. The first idea was to add a table to the database and the associated screens to allow a data administrator to link the documents to the related information. While this appears to be a feasible solution, there is only one data administrator who has little time to keep track of the revisions and maintain the links in the database. The next solution I considered was to put a link, on one of the screens, to the fileserver and allow the user to find the file manually. While this is a simple solution and could be accomplished in under an hour, it is not very user friendly. This had me scratching my head for another solution.

After some thought and investigation, I realized that all the documents the users will need to retrieve have an identifier in the file name that is associated with an identifier in the database. I did some testing and deducted that I can use the MS Windows built in search capability to reliably supply me with a list if files the user may be interested in opening. I thought to myself, “If only I could do that in my application.” Then I remembered that Microsoft has created a plethora of APIs to allow one to provide similar features as they provide in the common components of their computing platform. I completed a quick Google search and found the following: http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.asp?ID=3510.

Armed with some code, I was ready rock. I imported the code into MS Access and took out some items that where not compatible with VBA. I created a test scenario that supplies the search criteria and, viola! I have a collection of files with attributes that match my criteria. Utilizing the MS Search API that is in the kernal is much more efficient than writing my own search using the VBA Dir() function that recurses through all the sub folders I would need to search.

You may find the Windows API Reference a useful resource.

Another month has passed. There are so many things I should be blogging.

I’ll start with the most exciting news. My little brother is getting married! This just goes to show, I don’t have to be the first for everything.

Aside from that, my work as a contractor for Children’s Home Society of Florida has occupied most of my time. I think as far as work goes, I’ve grown the most during this project. As always there are things I need to do to improve myself, but up until now, I have not been very confident in myself. I had often doubted that I was offering the best solution. On this project, I have found that my first instinct has generally been correct. In the past I would spend a lot of time looking for a solution to my question on the Internet. Lately, I have found that I am having questions about things for which there is not a well known answer. If I do run across an answer, it has been after I had already solved the problem, and often times, my solution is similar to or better than the one I have found.

If I’m not at work, I may be found at church. We have moved the contemporary service into the larger worship center and have eliminated the second blended service. This change has brought about new challenges for me. My area of service changed from simply being sure the sermon was properly simulcast for the contemporary service to directing and switching the cameras for the contemporary service. I have found directing to be a fun challenge. I’m still getting accustomed to the new order of activities but, I think we are getting all the kinks worked out.

I’m hoping I will make more time to blog here in the future. I can’t promise it will be interesting, in fact, I really want to post about programming things I have discovered or am working on. Topics may include but are not limited to ASP.net, MS Access, PHP and Linux systems.

Where to begin… Perhaps a history lesson, 3 years ago, some friends of mine decided we’d try to do a mountain bike race put on by Red Trail Racing. Red Trail is known for putting on races on some of the most difficult terrain in Florida. So, my friends, Josh and Paul decided to give their 6 Hrs. of Carter Road Park a try. That year, as a team we completed about 7 laps.

The following year, Red Trail created a corporate course. That year Josh and I decided to ride in the solo competition as the terrain was much easier and we figured we could survive. Josh managed to finish in 3rd place and I pulled out of the race early for medical reasons.

That brings you to today. Josh, Paul and I had a reunion run of this race. This year, we rode in the corporate team classification. We figured if we completed 10 laps we’d be competitive. Once we arrived, we received news that there were many more teams this year. We didn’t mind the extra competition; we figured “The more the merrier.”

We were off to a good start with Josh taking the start and the first lap, followed by a lighting fast lap by Paul. I started my lap trying to catch the rider in front of me. This really turned out to be a bad idea, but I don’t think it hurt the team in the end, I completed my lap with a decent lap time, it was much better than I had expected. We continued in this fashion until we completed 12 laps and had no more legs left.

While we made a tremendous effort, the top 3 teams had completed 13 laps. Nonetheless we were proud of our effort and left the race in good spirits. It’s not every day one puts an all out effort into riding a bike 22 miles over a total of about 2 hrs and walk away.

On a side note: There were several people taking pictures, hopefully I can find one of us riding to post somewhere.

So long 2005. Hello 2006.

In honor of the new year, I suppose this will be a 2005 top 10 things happened in my life.

10. Was rearended by a drunk driver
9. Removed popcorn ceiling texture
8. Discovered that I can use Linux for 90% of my computing activities
7. Almost bought a house
6. No longer working for BestWorks and becoming a contractor
5. Family reunion/road trip
4. IDIDARIDE 2005 50 miles of off-road cycling in N. FL
3. On CBM trip, blowing a tire on the way home
2. Going to NC and building a playground for CBM
1. Rafting in Ocoee, TN with friends

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I forget what they are after a month so I don’t see the point. This new year will certainly be interesting as I have a lot of things that could be happening.

Merry Christmas

During the Christmas holiday, be sure to remember the reason we share gifts. To commerate God’s gift of his Son to us.

-B

Over the past week or so, I have finally found a good use for my USB memory stick. It just so happens that portable software is seemingly making a come back. Portable software is software that can be installed on a device such as a memory stick and then run from more than one computer with out needing to be installed for each computer.

I have found it quite handy to have a couple of programs and, as I explore the available software, I’m sure I will find more useful stuff. The goal is to build a small library of essential tools. Since the drive is rather small, the binary packages must also remain on the small side.

So far, I have found a program called PStart which is be useful as a launch pad for other programs. It puts an icon in your task bar, you click on it and a menu pops up, much like clicking the start button in MS Windows. Since I work in different computing environments, I have found a simple mp3 player to be a handy tool to use to make a play list and play mp3s either from the drive or from a different disk. Currently, I’m using Zoom Player. I have found the program to do the job well, but a little lacking in the different codecs it supports. I’m looking for a program that can store the codecs on the drive. The idea is to not rely on the host computer having specific software outside the operating system. Finally, I’m using Wiz to pack and unpack .zip files. Just today I needed to unpack a .zip file and the host computer did not have an unzip utility.