Tom Squared

In college I found a real “relationship” with Jesus. I remember feeling alone and a bit down and was out walking on the beach during a campus ministry retreat. I felt someone’s hand in mine, and we walked together for a while. I could scream about how hard life is, how hard it is to believe in Him, and still feel comforted with the arms around me. From that point on I’ve always recognized that Jesus is my best friend, and always there even if I ignore him for a while. I’m always the most important thing to his heart, just as each of us are. I also recognized, and continue to figure out, what friendship means. If we are best friends, then I really need to make him proud of me, just as I’m proud of him. I need to change my life in a way that people know who my friends are, and why. So, I loved coming across this quote from one of my previous students, but more importantly, my friend, Kate : It suddenly struck me today how personal of a friend Jesus is. Because, okay, I knew he ...

In church today Anne, our priest, made an interesting point about our church during her sermon (her big long talk in between music). When she was determining whether to join us as assistant rector, she called the bishop. The bishop is essentially the representative for our region, kind of like the House representative for your state. He responded that St. Matthew’s gives more to missions, per capita, than any other church he knows of. That in itself is wonderful. We had at least 100 people go on mission trips this year, not to mention the people who worked to organize and make it happen. But it got me thinking about what made this happen. Our missions program happened because one person was passionate about the program and the entire church supported him in that passion. Leaders put money into it and individuals volunteered weeks of their year, again and again. My own role at St. Matthew’s is a great example here. I love teaching and leading. Changing and molding lives i...

It’s the only way to describe the way I’m feeling lately. Too many things going on all at the same time. Peace, +Tom

How many of you know what I mean when I refer to Ajax? Okay, what’s it stand for? Right, Asynchronous JavaScript. So, what’s that mean? Anybody? Right, essentially the Web browser submits information back to the server and renders a response without refreshing the entire page. An obvious example here is clicking a button to submit a rating, like with Amazon [go to http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Complete-David-Tennant/dp/B000JBWWP6/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1223001940&sr=1-12 ]. I started using ASP.NET Ajax in the olden days when it was still called Atlas in a community technical preview. Kind of crazy to think that was over two years ago, and quite a bit has changed, though not as much as you might think. At its core Microsoft has created an Ajax base that is easy to quickly put into practice and also provides the backend JavaScript to allow flexibility and a framework for more powerful Ajax based applications. So, today, I’m going to talk about the...

Erin and I finally took the plunge. We realized over $9 three or four days a week for coffee was ridiculous. So we bought the cheapest, well-rated, espresso machine we could find. for what it’s worth, the Starbucks barista was incredibly helpful in the purchase and offered to walk us through exactly what he does and help us through the fine art of frothing milk. So, the only question left is, what flavors do we try? Does anyone have a great syrup mix that they love? Peace, +Tom

Colin’s favorite “toy” in our house is, without a doubt, the toothbrush. It doesn’t matter whose it is, though he tends to prefer Erin’s (even when she’s bought replacements). If he had his way he would always walk around with two toothbrushes in his hands and one in his mouth. Lately we’ve been limiting him to one, though today he had two in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other. Needless to say, this kid will have good hygiene. Probably better than Rachel, who we have finally gotten into the habit of brushing at night. Colin would brush morning noon and night. Sometimes I wonder if he is already defining his future career as a dentist. That got me thinking a bit about expectations. There are so many different times that others define our own lives… and we let them. We let our parents shape us into working professionals when all we want to do is live free and help others. We let girlfriends or boyfriends define how we should act from day to day. We let bosses define th...

I spent an evening at church listening to some of the amazing stories of people who have gone on mission trips in the past year. They showed pictures, videos and their own stories about the trip. As one person told their story she mentioned that she had “given herself to Christ” but never really “followed” Christ. The first, and only thing that came to mind, and stuck with me the rest of the night, is that I will never fully give myself to Christ, because I just can’t physically do it. I certainly try to follow Christ. I’d like to think that I really follow him, then I realize that it’s impossible. No matter how much I do, God will ask me to do more. No matter how much I give up, there are others who have given up more. I went to Jamaica on a mission trip in College. This was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had from college. On that trip I worked at a retirement center, which is being very forgiving, since it was a strip of very small rooms with do...

One of the things I think all projects need, even more importantly that detailed requirements (since no one seems to read those) are screen designs. Every time I have to do this for a new project I open up Visual Studio and drag controls onto the page and use HTML to lay them out. It’s not bad, but it sure can take a while. Especially when you want to just move something around during a meeting. I tried Expression Web, but it really isn’t any better. I know you can do it in Photoshop and Fireworks, but, for one thing, I don’t have the money. For another, it’s pretty complex. Then I was reading Tim Heuer’s blog post on Software Mockups using Balsamiq . Balsamiq Mockup is a tool where you simply drag elements onto a page and put them where you want. It also uses a pretty obvious hand drawn style which makes clear that both, this is all for demo purposes, and that anything can be changed. One of the amazing things is that Peldi, the founder of Balsamiq , is willing to give away li...

One of the best things about being a parent is to see someone else notice what you’re doing, and get passionate about it. When I started the dream journal, it was just for me to see what I’ve been thinking about. It’s helped me remember a lot of details in dreams, and move past them, never having them again. It’s been great. Alas, it’s another thing I stopped doing recently since waking up in the middle of the night and writing for 15 to 30 minutes made me too tired in the morning. But, I also saw how much my dreams drove my daily thinking, like I’d dream and forget about some song, wake up and have all kinds of memories related to that song. Rachel soon noticed what I was doing with the pad of paper in the morning, and asked about it. From then on she would wake up each morning and proudly tell me what her dreams were that night, and then tell me to go write them down. These aren’t incredibly deep or long ones. One on August 15th was Tico (the squir...

I was talking to a teen tonight at Starbucks who was asking to hear my life story. We’d started that conversation over a week ago, and I never finished. The main reason I finally figured out tonight, is that there was too much detail without a point. Every other time I tell a story about my life, it’s been in conjunction with either a talk or some point I want to make. Here I was just going through my life and I actually think the teen was more interested in the story than even I was. Truthfully, stories don’t stick unless they impact the person hearing them. There’s no point in telling a story without a point. Really, it needs a point that resonates with the listener. So, the next time you’re telling someone, even your spouse, about your day, think about what the point is. If it’s simple information then it’s probably going to go in one ear and out the other. It it’s going to make the listener feel something new, both the story and the feelings are tied together and may never b...

I don’t think I’ve ever actually given an update on what’s going on in my life here in the blog. That’s mainly because whatever I write about is generally what’s going through my head and either directly or indirectly related to what’s going on in my life. If you read carefully you’ll get a pretty decent picture of who I am, without some of the depressing parts (those are for personal conversations, thank you very much). But then a week goes by, or a month, or multiple months, without any consistent posting. I figure it’s fair to give a quick update. First, nothing earth shattering has happened. Work is going very, very well, though the company shall still remain nameless for fear of random stupidity misunderstanding from legal. It’s busy, pretty interesting, and I genuinely enjoy the people I’m working with. I also get to work from home a bit more, which is great. I also stopped waking up at 5 a.m. Since Colin kept waking up in the middle of...

When I was in high school I discovered the band Asia (about a million years after they started making music). One of the songs I put on every morning for at least a few months, at full blast was Days Like These (I Fell Like I Can Change the World) from Then & Now (act fast, you can get the album for 24 cents on Amazon). Then I got in contact with my friend Laura from high school. I don’t know if I’d say we were the type of best friends who stay in touch forever, since it’s been about 15 years since we’ve talked, and we were only friends for about a year. But when I think of high school Laura often comes to mind. There’s a point, really. In high school I’d pick Laura up and she’d drive up to school. It was her way of getting driving experience with her permit. When Annie Lennox came out with Walking on Broken Glass in her Diva album, we’d blast that music, both of us singing at the top of our lungs. We must have looked (and sounded) like idiots, but at those moments we we...