Encourage Your Pastor

Saw this on Jared’s most excellent blog (which will definitely get a link once I get my blogroll issues sorted out) last night. He lists some sad facts on what the burdens of ministry are doing to pastors. They’re leaving the ministry, they feel inadequate, they’re depressed and burdened.
Think about it. They’re the one that gets called when a marriage is in crisis. They’re the one that gets called when a member is sick or dying. They’re the one that gets called when someone doesn’t like what’s going on. They’re the one that gets called when someone is in sin. They have to deal with the demons in the church. They’re the one that deals with all of those messes and more.
How often do you call or email just to encourage? Just to say that you support them and their work? Not because they did something specific that moved or impacted you (by all means, call then too), but just because?
A good friend of mine stepped into the role of minister, temporarily, after theirs resigned. He and another brother decided to fill that role for the short time while they searched for a replacement. A short time turned into about 2 years, I think. Shortly after they finally hired someone new and he could step back, his comment was “I am so grateful for the folks we hired over the years to deal with that mess so I didn’t have to.” A little negative view, sure, but revealing as to what your minister deals with on a regular basis.
In the history of this blog, I’ve been critical of my denomination (I bet they hate me saying that, but that’s what we are) and of my local church fairly often. I’ve been critical of my minister specifically at times as well. What I haven’t done enough of, is tell you how much we are blessed to have Doug Geyer lead us. Is he flawed? Of course, but he’s also humble, determined, and passionate about the church. He doesn’t feed us what we want, he gives us what we need. He points us to God and illuminates His Son to us. He longs to grow and to see us grow. He makes me think and stretches me spiritually. I’m grateful that he’s there.
Your pastor deals with the bad stuff. The least you can do is hold up his arms a bit. Call him. Encourage him.

Adventures In Upgrading: Typekey

I’ve amended my MT 4.21upgrade instructions to include revising the link to your MT installation in your Typekey profile, if you use Typekey. When doing a fresh install, the Typekey token will still be pointed at the old install and Typekey authentication won’t work. Make sure you change it by logging into Typekey and editing your account preferences.
Any other services that interact with your MT installation (like Flickr’s email to blog feature) will need to be updated as well.

Sad Things Come In Threes

Last July, I wrote about loosing my wife’s cat of 15.5 years. It was hard, but the pain was tempered by the long time she was with us and the understanding that she was sick and hurting and her time had come.
At the time I mentioned in passing that we had 4 cats. What I didn’t write about was that a short time later, my oldest daughter’s cat, Midnight (at left), which was almost 5, was having a hard time finding the litter box. While visibly healthy and happy (well, Midnight wasn’t ever particularly happy. She was a bit like the Oscar the Grouch of cats), she was slowly destroying our carpets, throw rugs and whatever else got left on the floor. We took her to the vet and tried some medication, but it became clear that this wasn’t working out. We took her to the local shelter, hoping she might get adopted, but knowing that once we told them that her litter habits were sporadic, she may not make it.
It was hard on Jessica because she had gotten her when she wasn’t yet weaned. We bottle fed her for the first few weeks. Jess loved Midnight, even though Midnight wasn’t overly affectionate. Though she’s a very strong girl and understood why it had to happen, it was still hard.
That meant we were down to 2 cats, Emily’s Cookey and the hitchhiker, Cally (remind me to tell that story some time). Not too long later, however, we got two new kittens, one for Jess and one for Audrey who hadn’t ever had a pet of her own. Two little black boys, Twitch and Boo. Those two were a riot, chasing each other around and playing. Even when they’d calm down, they’d be together, laying in a chair one’s arm over the other. Twitch, on the right with the white belly and paws, was Jess’ and all-black Boo belonged to Audrey.
Well, wouldn’t you know, on Monday we noticed Boo was throwing up and had slowed down considerably. By this evening when Maria got home, he was quite lethargic. Off to the vet he went.
The prognosis was not good. He was seriously dehydrated and had lost 0.6 of his 3.6 lbs. He either had a virus or an obstruction. IV fluids would be needed right away and a night in the hospital and a lot of money.
It one of those decisions a Dad hates to make. There’s just not money to do what needs to be done, yet it’s so hard to say no. Mom was with him at the vet and she didn’t want to let go, but understood why we should. In the end, after further talking with the vet, a recovery would be very expensive and was, frankly, a long shot. That made the decision a lot easier, but still hard. Sigh.
Audrey was home with me, finishing homework. We hadn’t had supper yet, so I asked her to go to McD’s drive through with me. It was a diversion, as the real mission was to go say goodbye to Boo. In the car, I told her what was happening. We had done all we could, but Boo wasn’t coming back home, but we wanted her to be able to say goodbye. After a lot of tears, I carried my brave little girl into the vet’s and she held her kitty for the last time and said her goodbyes. There were more tears as we left and more at bed time and probably more to come. Even Twitch has been crying out, wondering where his brother and playmate has gone.
Boo only spent a couple of short months with us. There will be a new kitten, but for now we’ll just mourn.

Jett-amino!


I came across this while taking the family to dinner on Saturday. It was in the Grove City OH O’Charley’s parking lot where there were a bunch of HS kids taking their dates to homecoming. I’m wondering if some lucky girl got to ride in this thing in her frou-frou dress. I quickly grabbed my daughter’s cell phone to record the find (Dad’s phone is so ancient, it has no camera).

Evidently a VW bunny truck wasn’t rare enough for this guy (he obviously had access to one) nor was he content with the all too common Rabbit/Golf to pickup conversion. No, he went the route of a second gen Jetta to pickup conversion. Never see another of those driving around Columbus!
This has all the marks of fine craftsmanship associated with any good car/truck conversion. Note the stylish C pillar extensions (move over Avalanche!), the exquisitely fabricated divider with the large glass opening (not evident in the photos is that it actually had a defroster grid) and the Great Stuff foam sealant for a comfortable, air tight cabin. Also not evident in the photos is the pop riveted body panels that gracefully smooth out the transition between the Jetta body and the VW truck bed extension.
If I had more time and a better camera, I’d have gotten shots of the interior which was mostly stripped if I remember right. The divider is forward of where the rear seat back was, so this is not a 4 or 5 passenger truck in the spirit of a Ridgeline as one might hope, but more like an extended cab. Instead, where the rear seat had been, there was a home made sub woofer box with 2 downward facing 12″ subs held down with clear packing tape stretched across their magnets. I’d be a little concerned that were the full power of those subs be unleashed, not only would they break free from their adhesive backed moorings, perhaps the entire bed would be as well. The impressive looking amps were cleverly laid loose in the passenger foot well, resting against the center console, considerately, to make room for the lady’s feet.
This, my friends, is why the terrorists hate us. Because only in America can a young man, armed with nothing but a pair of old VWs, a pop rivet gun and a can of Great Stuff foam, can create such a work of art, and then use it to transport his date (and some unknown box of, uh, stuff) to the big dance. God bless America.
Full sized images:
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Adventures in Upgrading: The Story Thus Far

This is my first post since the upgrade. If you’re reading this, then the upgrade went well, or at least so far. I had expected more trouble than I got.
Thus far, I’ve upgraded MT and loaded the Right Fields to Custom Fields plugin. The upgrade went smoothly and Chad’s plugin was easy and effective. My RF data came in flawlessly into CF. I expected that to break every entry with an image and It did, but only briefly. Thankfully, when I set up RF, I had the foresight to set up the template code for placing the images in it’s own template module. That made it easy to replace the RF tags with CF tags. In fact, I was able to do that before rebuilding my blog. Easy.
Next, I upgraded Notifier, the plugin that powers the email notifications that some of you get. This plugin is by Chad Everett as well, and the upgrade was also straightforward. However, the way the notification signup works has changed, so the form at left will not work for now. But, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute, I can’t update that left column yet.
Lastly, I updated the plugin that builds my blogroll at left, MT Blogroll. MT Blogroll was replaced by Linkroller but there was supposed to be a means of importing the data from MT Blogroll into Linkroller. I say supposed to be because I followed the instructions and got an error that blocked the upgrade process. Only be removing my old MT Blogroll data was I able to get the Linkroller upgrade to run. Now I’m not sure if I can recover my MT Blogroll data or not. I’ve posted a question about it on the Movalog support forums, but frankly the folks there have more questions than answers because of the sparse documentation for Linkroller and Arvind hasn’t logged in there in months. I’m not hopeful. If necessary, I’ll start over, the blogroll was hopelessly out of date anyway.
In the mean time, most of my left column is built from MT Blogroll tags. Thankfully it’s a server side include file built by a template that doesn’t automatically rebuild. That means I can leave it alone for now and it’ll display just as it has for months. That’s why I can’t yet fix the subscription template though.
That’s where I am. Tomorrow’s unplugged Sunday around here, so no more work until Monday. I haven’t tried to upgrade Photogallery yet, but that’s a bit lower on the priority list. There are a whole bunch of new things to try in MT4.21 as well, once I’ve gotten these glitches worked out.

Heroes

This Sunday, Doug gave a combination sermon/communion lesson (which he likes to call a ‘Sermunion’). As he was transitioning to the communion, he read an article about a car crash from a small town Indiana paper. My first, highly spiritual, thought is “how did he hear about this?” Then he read the following:

DCSD Sgt. Brian McCullough said five men traveling behind the Bosses witnessed the crash and decided to intervene. Todd Hager, Westerville, Ohio; Brian Cunes, Cincinnati; Joe Stanwick, Columbus, Ohio; Andy Erickson, Cincinnati; and Mike Meyers, Dayton, were at the same charity bike ride event as the Bosses although they had never met.

Wait a second – Todd and Joe are members of my church and and the three of us along with Andy and Mike all went to college together back in Cincinnati.
The news story covers the overview, go read Andy’s blog for more details on what happened and the emotional effects. You might think that pulling two men from a burning truck with only minutes to spare would be perhaps uplifting or exhilarating. From Andy’s perspective, you’d be wrong:

The bottom line is that, despite our efforts, we left the scene with more questions than answers. And now, a few days later, that is the part that is difficult to live with. We felt, deep down inside, less than adequate. Why on earth would I question whether or not we should stop and help? These guys were badly injured and we were pulling on them like rubber bands to get them out of the burning truck. In tears, Todd questioned his own actions, “We had to get them out. They would have died.” The balance of our own safety, our families, vs risking our lives to get these guys out. The questions bounce around like a racquetball inside our heads – on and on and on.

It’s an amazing story that makes me proud to know these guys.

Adventures in Upgrading: Plugins

I’m blogging through the upgrade process to MT 4.2. You’ll be forgiven if you forgot I was doing that since my last post on it was 2 1/2 weeks ago. Someday I might get to the actual upgrade. 😛
One of the questions anyone reading this series (Heh, like someone is going to read this :-D) might wonder is why haven’t I upgraded to MT4.x until now? After all, MT 4.0 was officially released over a year ago, MT 4.1 came along back in January and MT 4.2 has been in it’s own beta for several months as well. So why haven’t I until now?
One word – plugins.
I mentioned in my first Adventures in Upgrading post, Getting Ready, that I thought dealing with plugins was “the Achilles heel of the upgrade process”. Many simple plugins haven’t changed for years and should work fine on 4.21, but the more complicated and the more integrated into MT, the more likely it is that a plugin will break when upgrading. I use a few like that, three of which are crucial to the function of my blogs, Photogallery, which powers my photo gallery blog, MT Notifier which manages the email notifications and RightFields which I use for uploading my images and automatically adding them to my posts. It turned out that two of these plugins (MT Notifier was upgraded pretty quickly) would tie my hands and prevent my upgrading.
Lots of other software use plugins, they are a great way to extend the functionality of the software by tapping into the expertise, and enthusiasm, of the community. Researching the status of your plugins is part of any upgrade, and any one, in my case two, can put a roadblock in your upgrade path. The irony in my case was that Six Apart played a role, perhaps indirectly, in each situation.
The big one was RightFields. RightFields was a slick plugin that allowed you to add extra data fields to your entries and had some of the best documentation I’d seen, sorely lacking in some plugins.. To make the long story short, after MT4 was released, myself and other RightFields users began asking when an upgrade might happen. “Soon” was the answer we got from Kevin Shay, the developer, and later by Apperceptive, his employer who had evidently taken over responsibility for RightFields. Then, when MT 4.1 was announced in January, it came with the news that Six Apart had bought and integrated a competing plugin, Arvind’s Custom Fields (then only if you bought the Pro Pack, now available to all). Even though that sort of made RightFields redundant, we were assured that an upgrade was still coming. Shortly after that, Apperceptive was bought by Six Apart, who also insisted that an upgrade path for RightFields users to Custom Fields would be provided. Ultimately, no upgrade came and no Six Apart solution for converting to Custom Fields was provided that I’m aware of, though I suppose they may have helped out with the solution that did emerge. [See update below]
So, what happened? In May, Chad Everett of Everitz Consulting released a plugin for converting RightFields data to Custom Fields data. He originally created it back in December 2007, but the first version couldn’t handle data in a custom SQL table, as was the recommended method for RightFields and how my data was stored. The new version released in May overcame that limitation, finally providing me (and others) an upgrade path. MT 4.2 was in development by then, so I decided to wait for its release. I will still have a pretty significant amount of work because Custom Fields and RightFields work differently and the template language to place the images in posts is different, but at least I have an upgrade path.
The frustrating thing is that Six Apart played a direct role in this road block. As I’ve said, issues with plugins are expected, but you don’t expect the developer itself to create a hindrance to an upgrade. Their buying Custom Fields and then Apperceptive had a direct impact, I believe, on RightFields not getting updated. Perhaps the ramifications were considered and thought through on their part, but from the outside, it seemed that the fallout was considered only after the fact. In the end, a member of the community not affiliated with Six Apart, RightFields or Apperceptive ended up bailing out those who were stuck. I could understand if this had been an obscure plugin, but RightFields has been around a long time (longer, I think, than Custom Fields) and was used by many. Even members of the MT ProNet, folks who make their living implementing MT, were left trying to explain to their clients that they couldn’t move to MT4 because of this issue. I wonder if any lost clients over this.
Ultimately, I think MT is better for having Custom Fields integrated, ironically, because it avoids the very drama that I experienced in the future. However, these kind of situations need to be better planned out in the future.
The other problematic plugin was Photo Gallery. Photo Gallery is a plugin implementation of Doug Bowman’s slick gallery templates for Movable Type by the MT project manager at Six Apart, Byrne Reese. Photogallery takes all the required plugins (there are many), the complex templates and the mind boggling CSS and adds a one-at-a-time upload mechanism. Without an upgrade, I wasn’t sure what my gallery would look like. The gallery isn’t a big part of the site (obviously since I’ve never provided a link to it here), but I’ve got some 1,300 photos in there of cars from various shows and other things that I’d hate to botch up in an upgrade. So I waited. Finally, in February, Byrne released a version of Photo Gallery for MT 4.1. This converts all the photos to MT assets and updates the galleries to MT 4.x. It’s still, I believe, considered beta (or maybe even alpha) software, and it hasn’t really been tested (that I know of) with MT 4.21, but I’m tired of waiting so I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens.
This isn’t really Six Apart’s responsibility. They can’t be expected be responsible for what their employees do outside of work,even if it is related to MT. In fact, it’s an asset to the community that they have such an enthusiasm for the product that they’d develop plugins for it on their own time. Based on some recent dialog on the ProNet, Six Apart recognizes this and does provide some ‘company time’ for personal plugin development. However, when I as a user go looking at plugins and I see some that have been developed by Six Apart employees, the very folks who work on MT everyday, my expectations for that plugin are going to be higher. I think that Six Apart ought to have high standards for their employees who make plugins too. Each plugin ought to have a home page on their website, there ought to be clear communication on the plugin’s status (what version it works with, version number, if it’s alpha, beta or production at the least) and support inquiries ought to be answered in a timely manner, even if it’s to say “Sorry, can’t help now”. My experience with plugins made by Byrne and another Six Apart employee, frankly, has been the opposite. Documentation is lacking and support is hard to come by.
In an ideal world, the standard would be even higher with complete documentation and full testing. But I understand that personally developed plugins will not be built to the same rigor that Six Apart would do in house. I understand that personal resources are limited and choices must be made as to where to spend their time, but in the least good communication on the status of their plugins and timely replies to support inquiries would be extremely helpful. Six Apart employees should be setting the bar high in this regard, not low.
My hope is that sharing my frustrations will help upgrades involving plugins by Six Apart and it’s employees go more smoothly in the future. For those reading this for advice with their own upgrade, be aware that if you use any more sophisticated plugins, you will most likely have issues. Hopefully they’ll be minor, but don’t attempt an upgrade until you know what you’re in for.
Next step – time to pull the trigger and actually move to MT 4.21.
Update: I had forgotten this from the MT Wiki detailing a proposed expansion by Six Apart on the solution by Chad (below). However, it was announced on the ProNet in June and the page hasn’t been updated since July. They did put up a migration page in the official docs and they also came out with a plugin (still in development) for creating and converting Right Fields LinkedEntry fields to Custom Fields. So to imply that Six Apart has done nothing for Right Fields users is inaccurate.

Mark 16 – Resurrection and Commission

Mark 16:3 – I wonder what their plan was, if they needed the stone moved, why did they go out without someone to help them move it? Perhaps they just went out, and if they could get it moved, they would, if not they would not.
Mark 16:5-6 – They were alarmed, I’m thinking I would have been angry. After all, in the frame of my understanding of the possible, the only explanation of a missing Jesus is thieves or pranksters. Isn’t that how we look at the world, from the framework of what we see as possible? It’s hard to expand your thinking to include all that God sees as possible. I think that God understands that (I hope so) and deals with us where we are and with what we can accept. but I think I need to constantly remind myself that God is bigger than what I can fathom and things that I can’t even imagine are possible with Him and are being done. I’m convinced that, just as Jesus was limited in what he could do because of the lack of faith in some places, I limit how effective the Spirit can be in me because I can’t see beyond reality and experience. Lord, increase my faith and my vision!
Mark 16:7 – The angel says “… g, tell his disciples and Peter …” (emphasis mine). Today we would never make such a statement, but God doesn’t hold back. Peter had denied Jesus, and at this point God was accepting that proclamation, listing him as separate from the disciples. Today we’d say that such a distinction was rude and uncaring. Don’t kick the guy when he’s down, give him a second chance. Look again though, Gods is giving him a second chance, he’s reaching out to him and calling him to meet Jesus again in Galilee. Yet the angel doesn’t mince words here, the fact is that Peter has turned away. There will be an opportunity for reconciliation, but Peter will need to accept it.
I don’t know why the Spirit singled out Peter when all deserted Jesus. Maybe Peter’s denial was more public and vocal. Maybe God knew that Peter needed to face this head on, to understand exactly what he had done in order to clearly choose to follow.
Mark 16:15 – “”Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” What an instruction! Of course, you’re sitting there with a dead man who is now alive and handing out missions, who’s to argue or doubt?
Mark 16:16 – This is one of those “See! Baptism is necessary!” verses. Jesus says that hose who believe and are baptized will be saved. But when talking of those who would be condemned, ho only mentions those who don’t believe. What of those who believe but aren’t baptised? Jesus doesn’t say. Frankly, this verse doesn’t say anything conclusive about the necessity of baptism for salvation (although a plain reading certainly implies that it is), it says more about the necessity of faith.

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