Trying something new

So I have not blogged for a while - much of this is me trying to balance my personal data communication between: blogging, facebook, and email (let's not forget cards since we just finished the holidays).

Another reason is that this blog had EVERYTHING in it - personal and tech - the lack of focus gave me even less reason to work on it. I have since moved all my tech blogs to here: http://josherdmantech.blagspot.com/

Hopefully that will give me more incentive. We will see!

How accurate is the Bible? How many times is it translated?

The holidays bring up visitng and plenty of conversation over a few beers. Eventhough I could barely finish one, a discussion was brought up covering - you guessed it religion. My extended family (at least 60 or so) is traditionally Christian - varying in those that attend church habitually (sort of the legalistic side that feel that church earns their way into heaven) to the other side where they believe in God and Jesus but have plenty of questions and ideas that Challenge their faith leaving them inactive.

Plenty of reasons came up - I call each of these challenges to the faith - and I had a chance this morning to send an email addressing the translations of the bible. Here is what I wrote:

I was reading my bible this morning and remembered our conversation about how many times is the bible translated? I too had that question a few years ago and found the answer on both the foreword of my bible (not a very good read however) and also Haley’s Bible Handbook.

The entire old testament is written in Hebrew – the language of the jews. It contains all their holy scriptures and contains historical documents, psalms, and prophecy all looking forward to the coming of Christ.

The original manuscripts of the New Testament is written in Aramaic and Greek – this makes sense considering the letters of Paul are written to non-jewish town – the Book of Romans is a great example.

You are right scholars do not have ANY original copies of these letters. Each letter was copied and distributed to other churches and copied again. In total that are over 4,000 complete and incomplete manuscripts of Greek and Aramaic that the scholars take from to compose a bible translation. Texts today are not re-translated from the King James or other older copies.

The amazing fact here is the VOLUME of manuscript copies found (more are found every century – the Dead Sea Scrolls (found in 1947 - http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html ) and the Sinaitic Codex in 1844 by a german schold in the Monastery of St Catherine at the foot of My Sinai. The story of the Sinaitic codex is actually amazing. The German Scholar, L. F. K. von Tischendorf was visiting the monastery and notices in a wastebasket a bunch of vellum pages with Greek writing set aside to be burned. He returned again in 1859. All of these vellum leaves can be found in the University Library at Leipzig and the British Museum. These new findings have only verified the accuracy of the existing bible that we have been using.

Other copies of old manuscripts can be found at the VaticanRylands Library in Manchester, England. All this is stuff I found out in the Hailey’;s bible handbook.

In all over 4,000 complete and partial manuscripts exist. In comparison to Homer’s Odyssey – no complete copy exists earlier than 1300 AD.

In short the Bible is the most accurate and complete ancient writing in the world. The other amazing fact is the accuracy between the copies, despite the fact that they are separated hundreds of years and countless miles!

Of course one can always punch holes in this since they want Original texts – they want to SEE Paul’s signature on the text. That is where faith is required.

I hope you find this helpful – Putting this letter together for you was actually quite exciting for me. It renews y spirit seeing just how amazing our God is. Yes man and Satan have many schemes to lead us astray, but you need to ask yourself – is our God big enough to conquer those?

References:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t007.html
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/bibleaccuracy.htm

I realize that this is an answer to only ONE of the many stumbling blocks for Christians. During our conversations someone said – “that is where faith comes in” – and yes, you need faith to persevere in these challenges – especially when you currently do not have an answer or solution – but what I have also found in my walk is that THERE ARE ANSWERS! You just need to find them – the Internet and a few helpful books make this so much easier today.

I then suggested that we continue to find the answers for each challenge and created this list of popular Christian challenges:

1) Where to the dinosaurs fit?
2) What about the verse in Gen 6:2 – “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.”
3) The bible was written so long ago – (4,000 for the oldest writings to 2,000 years ago) – how can it really apply to my today?
4) If there are demons in Jesus’ day to be cast out – where are they today?
5) What about ghosts and the paranormal? Aliens?

I just made one condition - I will work on answers to these challenges if he would put a bible in his bathroom and every time he sits on the porcelain throne, he must work on reading a chapter from the book of Proverbs and James. Just one chapter at a time.

As I said above, it has been alot of work - am I an sure I do not have water tight answers - but what I have found has been very exciting to me.

Crazy last seven months!

April: Moved into hour first house & Nephew born
May: Church Men’s retreat
June: Camping at Hume
July: Sister's Wedding
August: Trip to Colorado via Train for Family Reunion -> Oldest turned 5 years old -> Oldest started Kindergarten -> work sound board for our church’s 3 day summer camp at Camp Hammer (took oldest son with me)
Sept: Fostering two Bassett Hounds –> Took on two new clients (Visualpurple.com, cheaofca.org) -> Lost one client -> Travelled to SF to do some on site work for a remote client (Guayaki.com)
Travelled to LA for some on-site work with (Cheaofca.org) -> Took Employees to Magik Mountain before the Fall Quarter started at CalPoly
Oct: Took on another Client (Alanjohnsonperformanceengineering.com)

Who knows what I am in for in Nov!

Grace Church Men's Retreat

I just got back from a Men's retreat - 50 of us got away to a campground just south of Oxnard. What a great time of relaxation, reflection, fellowship and learning. As a hard working man, you realy forget about what it feels like to do stuff together and feel connected. There is nothing like getting a bunch of guys together around multiple camp fires - all cooking different kinds of meat - roaming from campground to campground - its the ultimate potluck!

Even today as I am going back to work - I still feel connected somehow - knowing all these other guys are doing the same thing. There is definitely strength in numbers.

Our Night at Madonna Inn

My wife and I got to get away for a night at Madonna Inn - Mi-ma (my wife's mother) generously watched the boys last night and part of this morning. We stayed at 'Country Gentleman' - a room filled with wood and leather furniture, fireplace, king size bed and two twin beds upstairs. Yes, upstairs. We were pleasantly surprised to find that our room was more like a house! It was fun to look around like a kid snooping in someone's fancy mansion.

Each wall was either old fashioned brick, duck and pheasant wall paper, thick wood paneling - or any combination thereof. Any large space of wall had a painting that fit the theme of the room perfectly. Two Large screen LCD TVs finished the wall décor.

The fireplace was very large, open in the front and one side, with a copper hearth. The fireplace put out a surprising amount of heat for running on gas.

The L-shaped leather couch was large enough to sit two families with a creative coffee table in the shape of a bellow (the air pump you use to blow into a fireplace). This is an older picture of how it looked before it was remodeled - the layout is simailar, but the wallpaper, funiture, curtains, and carpet have all been changed.

The shower tub was tiled - one wall had these small one inch copper tiles that totally made me smile - they always find a way to sneak in copper in places you would never expect.

Overall our stay was extremely relaxing. We started the evening off with dinner at the steakhouse, went up to the pool, tried out one of the hot tubs and visited with a little bit of chocolate. The room was extremely quiet - combined with a full belly of steak - I have never slept so deep.

I am writing this on my laptop IN the room right now. They have wireless access - my wireless card shows two bars!

The only disappointing thing is that today is now Thursday and I will be going back to work right after breakfast!

Helping people

So I got the opportunity to help someone out there on the internet. they noticed I wrote an article for a software program they use and his install CD was broken by his three-year-old. Support would not send him an install CD so he asked if I would be kind enough to send him a copy.

This of course is not breaking iny licensing agreements - the REAL license is ownign the box WITH the install Key. So I sent hime a copy of the CD and he asked if there was some way he could repay me back. Really I was not prepared for this. I wasn't going to send an invoice or anything for being kind - then I remembered all the things that get stuck in my head that I never have time to do, Here is what I sent him:

Things are crazy busy for me –
Here is an idea of two things I have never had time to do – feel free to choose one:

1) Please go to the focus on the family website and buy the CD pack for the greatest of 2007.
2) Send a copy of the book: Business by the Book – from crown.org
3) Another story is that I just got back in the office this morning after a meeting and saw that our office got another letter from the child we sponsor through food for the hungry. I realized that if I can have this kind of effect on someone for only $28 per month – I should sponsor another one. So it would be great if you could sponsor one yourself. It has been such a great blessing for myself and our office – I would love to pass it on.
So I have no idea who this guy is and no idea what he will think of the suggestions I gave. This definitely gives me something to look forward to!

Busted Truck

So on Moving day the O/D (Overdrive light) on our 2002 Ford Explorer start flashing rapidly and it shifts funny.

I had the mechanic who is a neighbor to our office diagnose it and the solenoid on it is toast. The parts alone are $355. What a bummer. He mentioned that since the vehicle has such low mileage I could call Ford customer service and ask about some financial assistance. So I called, 1-800-521-4140 and spoke with a support rep there.

She said they 'might' help me, but I wouild first have to tow it to an authorized Ford dealership who would need to diagnose it. I already spent $140 on the diagnosis. Theoretically speaking, if I paid to get it towed to the dealership, paid for an additional diagnosis, factored in the more expensive labor for repairs at the dealership and Ford gave me that parts for free, I would break even with the estimate of letting my local mechanic take care of the problem.

Talk about frustrating. So for the past 5 days, we have only one vehicle and I have left my wife stranded at our house with 2 busy kids! I just pray this $800 I need to spend is the last of our car problems for a while.

Moved in!

What a blessing to be in our new house! We spent two weeks before moving in painting, packing, and tearing down the aviary. Moving in has been just as hard! But we count all our blessings, especially those friends that helped us out with packing, moving, or baby sitting. Thanks to you all!

San Francisco

Well over the weekend Travis, my business partner, and I drove up to a client to give their computer network a thorough inspection. That night we stayed at Travis' friend's place in downtown San Francisco. This two bedroom apartment on the third floor rents for $3800 - I am just trying to get a house - this is literally twice our house payment!

There is something appealing when youa re driving to locations that are considered exotic. I get this same feeling when driving through Hollywood and Vegas. And then you get there, you are slapped with reality.

I remembered as a kid going through Vegas, and my parents were trying to distract my little brother from seeing the postcard sized advertisements for Porn and Prostitutes.

My First Snow Cave

Going to the snow this weekend with my family allowed me to fullfill a childhood desire, to build a snow cave. While my brother and I were trying various ways to actually create a snow shelter, I kept thinking about a recent Popular Mechanics article where the authors took a 3 day survival class out in the dessert. It said the first three days are when the majority of lost people are found. During these three days, the state of mind of the lost person usually determines if they survive or not.

Back to the snow cave: It took us about 2 and a half hours to build one, and we cheated - we had a shovel. Having no experience we learned alot and I would like ot think that I would do well in the first 72 hours.

First we decided to build it against a hill. This would make it easier providing one of the walls. We dug out a hole and then compacted the snow around the hole terracing it as you would if you were laying a foundation for bricks.

Then I began to compact snow away from the shelter and used the shovel to cut out compacted snow bricks. This sounded like a good idea, but the snow was very dry and the bricks kept breaking in half. Also this still did not address how we would be able to 'lean' the walls in the center and have them arch like the ice bricks in an igloo. After we built the walls up about four feet, it really became obvious that arched walls would not work.

Version 2.0 - my brother thought that we could still use our walls would then fill it with snow until we had a nice mound. Then we could compact the snow on the top and dig it out. This worked good, as we had plenty of snow uphill to shovel - but I was looking for something faster.

I climbed to the top of the hill and we built a large snowball. We rolled it around until it was about 4 feet in diameter (and weight a few hundred pounds!) and rolled that down the hill. It grew to 5 feet in diameter and delivered a ton of snow (it also broke down some of the walls we made previously).

A few more minutes of moving snow boulders and shoveling loose snow created quite the mound. Digging out out was the easiest part.

After we finished, we found ourselves scared to allow my kids to go in. There was easily a few hundred pounds of snow that made up the roof. My brother walked along the top to test how easy it would colapse and it held up.

In the end, our shelter was about 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall. Of course, you still need something to keep you dry since the floor is all snow and ice.

After our challenge, I decided to search the internet for recommendations on building a snow shelter. I found a video of someone in Finland doing the same thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jNFy0MKyqY

Other Snow Shelter links:
http://wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/shelter/snow/index.html