Online Book Sale!

Hey Black Friday Shoppers! Remember that books make wonderful gifts! You are invited to an Usborne Books & More eShow to explore the world of Usborne and Kane Miller Books. A child’s interest in reading and learning is stimulated by the lavish illustrations and informative content. There are over 1500 bright, colorful and fun titles covering activities, puzzles and a wide range of subjects for children of all ages.

Usborne Books & More – We bring you the books kids love to read!

Hosted by: Gwendolyn Haley
Place: www.myubam.com/HOS210087
When: Today thru 12/3/2011 11:59:00 PM

Everyone is welcome, so invite a friend.

It’s a rewarding experience when a child opens a book and discovers the magic of reading.

Guys’ group’s notes on Heaven and Hell

On Wednesday the blokes made a list of Bible passages that might tell us something about heaven and hell.

• In Isaiah 38, king Hezekiah tells God he doesn’t want to die and says: “The dead cannot praise You.”
• In Matthew 25 Jesus talks about hell being intended for Satan and his angels, and also being a destination for the “goats” in his parable/metaphor of judgement
• 1 Corinthians 15 talks about the resurrection of Jesus and the expectation that Christ-followers will be resurrected with new bodies
• 1 Peter 4 talks about our inheritance waiting for us in heaven
• Revelation 4 describes heaven (actually, the description is introduced as events that “will happen after this”)
• Revelation 20 describes hell as a place of punishment of Satan
• Revelation 21 describes “The New Jerusalem” – the ultimate city of the future
• Genesis 3 describes the introduction of death – dust to dust; the chapter also mentions people will be held accountable for blood that they spill, which could refer to end-times/after-death judgement
• 1 Timothy 6 emphasizes eternal life as something to access in this lifetime
• Daniel prophesies about the resurrection of “those who sleep in the dust”
• Throughout the Old Testament, “Sheol” is a word used for death or hell, a personification or place where the dead go (to die is to “go down to Sheol”)
• In Luke 24, as Jesus is dying on the cross, a criminal crucified next to him believes in Him, and Jesus tells him, “today you will be with me in Paradise”

Art of War for Writers: Too-Low Expectations?

It was tempting to skip over blogging sections 5, 6 and 7 of AOWFW. They deal with expectations, and I’ve never really had any when it comes to writing. Sure I have hopes, but expectation is another beast – one I generally avoid. I’m not planning on a writing career or even making money. I would like to publish something, someday, mainly for the outside validation I imagine it would bring. But I’m not counting on it.

Red flag? Can a writer’s expectations also be too low? Well, that would affect goal-setting, which I hear is important for successful ventures of all kind. Gut-check… Yup, goal-setting is not a specialty of mine. Dreaming, yes. Eclectic, eternally entry-level hobbying, sure. And without high expectations, I can’t really maintain passion or priority for my writing.

Who knows what James Scott Bell would think of my take-away from these three sections, but it is this: Expect More Than Nothing. Haha.

And I suppose some expectations are realistic, if I’m honest. I can truthfully expect more than nothing from my writing. I can expect to improve. I can expect that I will write things I’m proud of, that capture the crazy ideas I have in poignant ways. And from the work I’ve already done, I know I can expect to have fun with it. That’s not nothing either.

Accountability for the Wannabe Writer

In sections 3 and 4 of James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers I found some accountability for the wannabe writer that I am.

First, I’m reminded that I need to focus more on improving my skilz. It’s not that I’m always thinking, “how can you improve on Awesomely Awesome?” It’s that I’m afraid to discover that my writing as it is now is as good as it gets. And maybe I’m a little lazy and afraid of how much work it will be to improve.

The good news is that one of the best tools for getting better exists brightly in the second bit of accountability: I need to write almost daily. Consistency is part of the reason I’m trying to blog through AOWFW. At this point, writing anything consistently is an improvement for me.

Bell introduces Anthony Trollope’s method of tracking the number of words written each day, with a weekly quota. I love playing with numbers, and the trap here is that I’ll be distracted and waste time playing with dismal numbers rather than improving them. To avoid that trap and gain the benefits of actually being disciplined (productivity and mad skilz – Tangent! There’s this relationship between organized and organic, discipline and creativity. Discipline makes space for creativity! Monkeys need monkey bars. Tangent over.), the quota system has to be kept simple. Just the naked numbers.

Well there’s no time like the present to look at naked numbers, so here goes. No fear. Today’s word count, in terms of fiction: zero. DOh!

But… the day isn’t over. Do I have the passion to stay up and crank out some more words when I’m end-of-week-tired? Do I have the courage to face the crappiness of what I write, and the faith to believe it will get better if I do?

[edit: For the record, Friday night I wrote 926 words, the second half of a short story draft.]

AOWFW 1 and 2: Passion, Humility, Courage

I bought and read James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers a while back and I just plowed through it. I tried to stop at each bite-size nugget of wisdom and really think about it, but I was having too much fun. It’s a great book.

Now I’m going back through it and taking the time to put my responses to each section into words.

Thoughts on the first two nuggets of wisdom

If there are costs to being a writer, I’ll think about them later. Right now I’m thinking about some things I think I can gain as I continue down this path.

(PASSION)

First, the book is about being/becoming a career writer – not on writing a single book and calling it good. Later on, I remember he describes stages of writing, something like: 1) write a book 2) write many books 3) publish a book 4) publish many books 5) maybe get a lucky break and become famous or something. My first real consideration here is do I want to become, and stay, a writer?

I think so. Even though right now all I can think of is the one book I’m dying to write, I know it’s really one of many past and future ideas that are worth putting into story and developing. I know I’ll never be bored. The question is, do I have the passion to stick with this particular pasttime? Or any venture, for that matter. The jury’s still out.

(HUMILITY)

I’m not totally sure at this point that writing is the one thing that I want out of my life. I think I could be swayed by some other hobby or course of study or field of service, if I thought that I was really good at it and could make a difference. So, there’s some pride to consider – maybe I just want to build something, make my mark, and call it good. I better remember that anything I build will be, in the grand scheme of things, temporary. And, remembering that, do I want to write temporary stories, many of which will never be appreciated by another person even now, and all of which will fade eventually? Well, it is fun in the moment too.

(COURAGE)

Writing is worth some disappointment and discouragement – but how much? Sometimes I come to a point in a project where what I’m creating seems valueless and devoid of potential and I think, “This isn’t fun any more. Why stress about it?” Yet, facing discouragement is part of the value of the experience. If one day I’m able to look back on the birth of creative, tight novels and short stories - published or not, successful or not - I know I’ll have climbed over obstacles and grown in endurance.

* * *

Will dedicating myself to writing be worth it, if none of my works finds an audience but my character grows in passion, courage and humility? Sure, but what negatives might be lurking out there, serious enough to outweigh these gains? (How’s that for anxious and ominous? Sheesh! Time to start exercising the courage muscle…)

how to detect mixed case (SQL can be so insensitive)

So I was trying to find cities in an address table with mixed case names (like, “Seattle” instead of “SEATTLE”, etc). I was completely stumped until my search turned up the Collate clause. Which I think I used once last year, and then forgot about.

select * from tableX

where fieldY not like upper(fieldY) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS

and fieldY not like lower(fieldY) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS

The logic could also be switched around to detect all upper case or all lower case conditions. Getting a little fancy with substring, you could also look for terms that begin with a capital letter or some other pattern.

Note: COLLATE has to come after each condition that it applies to.

Giving IS the Game

This morning I read 1 Corinthians 9:6-15. It’s about giving money but it can be applied to giving anything. It resonates with me because I love to give. It’s easy for me to catch the vision of a group like World Vision or Cup of Cool Water and want to get behind it.

I give because I want the results that they are trying to produce.

It’s worth noting that  the results of giving are not magical – it’s not money coming back to us like karma or something. Giving to support a charity increases (or should increase!) the effectiveness of the charity. Giving, in Christianity, isn’t ‘pay to play’ – giving IS the game. Give to what you want to see grow. To hijack a famous saying, “Give to the good you want to see in the world.” Hrm.

The passage also scares me, because it can be applied to emotional giving. That’s a bigger challenge. Enthusiasm sometimes drains me, leaving me bitter and depressed – particularly when my excitement isn’t matched by others’, or what I’m hoping for doesn’t happen. It’s just emotional ups and downs, but without intentional effort I begin to shy away from “the drama.” But again, how much I put in to something affects how much it grows. If I care, if I want to see results, I’ll allow myself enthusiasm.

Arrogant Leaders

1 Corinthians 4:19,20 “But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people have been talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”

Paul is challenging the men in Corinth who are dividing Christians and leading them away from Jesus’ way of life. These leaders are big talkers who claim to be wise (see chapter 2) and people are distracted by their leadership, dividing into factions when they should be following Jesus together (chapter 3). In chapter four, Paul sarcastically points out that these leaders aren’t suffering for their cause; they are living in luxury and security.

This brings to mind the politics our nation is suffering through today. We are being ripped apart, in our hearts, by the angry and hopeless (faithless?) rants of the conservative entertainment industry; at the same time, our sense of right and wrong is being anesthetized – euthanized, even – by entertainment at the other end of spectrum.

But rather than dwell on all that and be defined by what we’re not, we just need to move on. We need to get our focus on to the only leader worth following. There’s no point in reading Corinthians, with all of its advice on how to do life and church, without having that figured out first. Paul is writing to people who have already heard the Gospel and sort of signed up; their leadership problem – maybe more of a followership problem – came after that, when they began to line up behind big talkers with no real Gospel power behind them.

“The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”

It’s time to move on, past the disagreements and the divisions, and get our Gospel on. It’s not enough to be inspired by words, even good words of great people. Even the words of the bible itself are limited if we’re just translating them into our modern language of agenda bullet points and post-modern wishywashy “narratives”. We need to draw on the real power source – God, and our relationship with Him; our faith in Jesus who saves us from sin, ours and others’, and leads us to walk through our lives in prayer and trust in a God who knows everything about us and still loves us and walks alongside.

The power is in that good news, the Gospel. The Gospel doesn’t waste time with self-pity, hatred, un-forgiveness, even fear. The Gospel is a wellspring of the forces that renew hope, restore relationships, and empower positive change in the world.

I envy you if you can peacefully ignore today’s insanity on the right and on the left and just keep on pursuing God and His goodness. I’m going to try to be more like you.

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pressure (people) – prompted

Things to do this year, to be more productive (whatever that means). Quick, before I forget.

• Share ideas with more people. I like ideas. I don’t always like sharing.
• Instigate more.

Maybe these come down to extraversion, of which I have very little. But I have enthusiasm, so I should leverage that. I just hate the feeling of being excited about an idea only to have no one get excited about it with me.

Also,

• Find a way to tie more goals to pressure agents. The things I get done are the things that have deadlines. External deadlines – I can’t fool myself with my own deadlines. Probably gets back to instigating and sharing. I need people, for the pressure they provide to get things done. If I plan to put together care packages for homeless/pan-handlers by myself it probably won’t ever happen; it’s another thing entirely if I have people helping me. But, are there other pressure agents – other than people? Hmmm, maybe not many, for me.