Another New, Exciting Blog

Same bland author.

Same bland content.

A WHOLE-NEW bland theme.

It's my new blog! Faithful readers, please visit my new blog at PhilJerkins.WordPress.com. This BlogSpot blog has served me well, hosting the blur of new posts and the infrastructure-exhausting traffic for many, many years. But I must bid BlogSpot goodbye.

Later!

Phil Jerkins

Three Books about One Bible

I've come to realize now that my study of the Bible has entered a new phase. And facilitating that transition have been three books.

Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology was the first of the three books that I was introduced to. There is a men's group at our church that has been going through this tome for the past year. We're expecting to finish it by this summer.

It's an exhausting read. But, while I may not agree with Mr. Grudem on every point, I certainly agree with his approach: begin with Scripture, continue with Scripture, and end with Scripture. While he definitely has an opinion on controversial topics, he presents both sides fairly, including for all sides of the debate both supporting and difficult passages in Scripture. Never have I seen so many Bible references on one page, and that's true of all of the 1500 or so pages in this great work. It may sound like a huge book, and it is. But because of the number of subjects covered, it is actually a very dense book, full of logical analysis, historical background, and references primarily to the Bible, but also to theological works by other authors.

Kay Arthur's Lord, Teach Me to Study the Bible in 28 Days is an awesome approach to studying the Bible on your own. It's not a read-it-in-one-year program, or a Pentateuch, Proverbs, Prophets, Gospel, and Epistle-a-day program. Rather, it's a discipline-based approach that lets you choose what you read, and help the text speak for itself. Ms. Arthur uses a couple passages to walk readers through the disciplines that comprise her method. Writing a structure of each chapter, underlining key people/places/concepts in each chapter, and listing in a journal what the text says about each are examples of the disciplines Ms. Arthur teaches.

What's most interesting is that, while the book can be used as a daily Bible study for the time you spend reading it, Ms. Arthur does not violate her own principles. She takes great pains to let readers discover the passages on their own, rather than giving her impressions.

Her goal is twofold: help untrained laypeople study the Bible in an organized manner, and leave their Bible marked and highlighted in such a way as to be a good reference for sermons or future study.

The NIV Application Commentary for Hebrews is an eye-opening book for me. For one, it's my first Bible commentary, and therefore is my first experience with a commentary to supplement my own study. However, it was recommended by my pastor because of the application notes it contains. The commentary has a separate "chapter" for every passage in Hebrews. (The passages covered are usually quite short; the first one I read was on Hebrews 7:1-4.) Each chapter is divided into three sections:

Original Meaning
A traditional commentary, this section discusses the meaning of the text at-hand.

Bridging Contexts
To quote the Series Introduction: "This section builds a bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of today...by focusing on both the timely and timeless aspects of the text."

Contemporary Significance
Here the authors and editors mention specific circumstances in which the passage could be applicable.

I freely admit that this is my first experience with commentaries, a tool that's both popular and, for some, an everyday staple. But for me, this commentary struck a resonant chord with my study of Scripture and my desire for a more educated perspective.

These three books are, together, accelerating my study of the Bible and my understanding of God, His character, and His plan for us. I highly recommend them, and I hope that you will investigate them to help you in your studies.

OnStar vs. Cellphone

The commercial shown above implies that your cellphone may not be available in a crash. That is certainly true.

However, OnStar may also not be available. I quote a footnote from OnStar.com's own page about the Automatic Crash Response feature:

OnStar services require vehicle electrical system (including battery), wireless service, and GPS satellite signals to be available and operating for features to function properly.

While watching this commercial on TV tonight, it struck me (no pun intended) that the cellphone, while it did bounce off the front of the vehicle and fly into the back seat, at least it didn't crumple-up as the car did. And what's located in the very front of almost every car? The battery.

So I wonder how many severe crashes - the very kind for which you'd pay for a service like OnStar - occur without OnStar's operators even knowing about it? I wonder if OnStar offers a battery backup solution for the Automatic Crash Response feature? And I wonder, if my cellphone is in its usual place - my pocket - would it fly around as the commercial shows?

Just a thought.

Bad times for Microsoft?

Their software patent portfolio is now worthless:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/24/1713259

And businesses – for years, the crucial core stronghold for Windows’ popularity – are now realizing that upgrades are not a foregone conclusion:
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/12/01/0317244.shtml

I'd like to hear opinions from all three of my readers on this one.

Tale of Two Technologies

My church needs software to replace time-consuming paper-based process. I volunteered to do it. My thought was I'd do it in .NET 3.5 both to learn the technology, try to follow best practices, and get something for the resume in the process. According to my source control logs, I started on Sept. 8th.

This past Monday (Oct. 6th), I realized I had spent around a month on what should have been a fairly simple three-table CRUD+workflow app, and still wasn't done yet. So I decided to revisit Ruby on Rails, just to see how much I could get done, and how quickly.

After spending Monday and Tuesday reviewing Rails, I started a Rails version of the church software on Wednesday (Oct. 8th). Four days later, I've already passed where I was in .NET.

Now, it's true that I haven't written ANY unit tests yet (I'll probably write my first tests tonight). EVERYTHING in the .NET project is unit-tested. But still. Here's a list of the feature comparison between the two projects:

Feature	.NET	RoR
Login	X	X
CRUD for people	X	X
CRUD for events	-	X
Enforcement of permissions dependency rules	X	-
Enforcement of security on People	Model	UI
Enforcement of security on Events	-	Working on UI
Global search bar for searching membership	-	X

I enjoy writing in .NET, but my productivity in Rails the last week has my jaw on the floor.

Proof of the Revolutionary No-Scar Surgical Technique

Now that my hand is liberated from the soft cast that held it hostage for two weeks, I thought I'd answer my sweet wife's post about the Revolutionary No-Scar Surgical Technique.

I firmly believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. As it still hurts to type too much, that's a good deal for today:


Here's a close-up:


This picture CLEARLY illustrates that no scarring is visible. For those who believe this to be just a trick of lighting, I provide the following false-color image showing the smooth topography of my incision site:


And there you have it! Proof positive of the Revolutionary No-Scar Surgical Technique!

Yet Another Post-of-the-Day

I just saw that my last post was on September 29th.

It's obviously been a while since my brain's been full.

Hmmm...

Home Page

Well, I've been in the IT industry for 10 years. Writing web applications the whole time, with Microsoft software.

Well, I finally have a personal web server, and it's running Linux (and C# via Mono):

http://TheJerkins.HomeDNS.org

Enjoy!