On Churches and Merchants (aka Laodocia)

Another wonderful Sunday morning had come and for whatever reason I decided to experiment. Dawning my Sunday best I put on a happy face, stepped into my car, and drove off to one of the more popular and politically active churches in the area (where the conservative right is concerned).

Upon entering the Church campus (a phrase I thought I would never utter in the protestant denomination - Luther would at least have even larger doors to nail his revised thesis to) I beheld such monsterous behemoths of buildings that I wondered if I had driven to the wrong area. Perhaps I had entered into a manufacturing district. Alas, no. The sign near the entrance confirmed that I had reached my destination.

Parking my mechanically challenged ford escort compact in the shadows of the SUV forest, I straightened my tie in my side view mirror (the rear view broke off months ago), turned my cell phone and PDA to silent mode and progressed to the main sanctuary.

I must note that I arrived purposefully about an half-hour late. This would deliver me from the annoyance of the pre-service backslappings and (dis)interested ushing of the the door guards (aka greeters).

The choir's command of white-black-gospel, was compelling, if not entertaining. Remarkably I was able to enjoy their performance a stone's throw away and outside the building. Upon opening the door I was overwhelmed by the sheer volumn blasting from the sound system. I thought perhaps their audience might be elderly and in need of such audible assistance, but not so. The audience was primarily composed of younger married couples, who possessed an eerie likeness to one another.

Oddly, and somewhat uncomfortably, the doors to the main building opened immediately into the santuary. I was thrust into the view of everyone in the congregation. Having become accustomed to being stared at by congregations, I simply moved to the side and back of the auditorium and waited for the appropriate moment to make my move forward.

To my relief there was a baby-dedication which allowed me the opportunity to operate with some immunity as I wondered around the back to see what it offered.

And there it was before me. The table.

At first the table close to the main entrance did not catch my attention as being anything other than a spread of books that the church thought would be good reads for its congregation. Upon closer look, I found that it was much, much more.

Before me lied a spread of close to twenty books. For the most part they seemed to be concerned with modern day current affairs, Some of them had titles that were specificallly current affairs, but many carried the appearance of being commentaries on various books of the Bible. Upon closer inspection of the "commentaries" I noted that they were deliberately fashioned around further political commentary.

Now this would normally cause me no greater discomfort than any of the many entertaining, albeit, useless and ineffective sermons one hears in many modern day Churches. However, as I looked at each of the books I noticed a common similarity. All of the publishing companies for the books held the Church's logo. Yes. The Church had published them. But the tipper for me was that every book on the table (with a couple of exceptions) was authored by the head Pastor.

Now, I have no complaints about the gifting of a pastor who writes. In fact I would encourage this social responsibility in the Church. It is a necessary and reasonable extention of being the "salt of the earth." What I do have concerns about is when the Church itself enters the business of publishing, a potentially very lucrative business.

To be fair, if the Church is able to demonstrate that they make no profits from the books, but only meet overhead cost, then I don't see a horrific dilemma. Yet, in the age of web distribution I wonder why they don't post the books on the web in a pdf format. After all, I don't recall that any Church can hold publishing rights, etc to any book.

As a fan of the tremendous growth and benefits of open source (the work of programmers released free to the public) it is becoming increasingly distressing for me to see the trend in western churches to charge money for the "intellectual property" they possess in the form of their publications (whether audible, or text). Since when has the free gift of the Truth of the Creator been a commodity for commerce. Wasn't it Jesus who wrote, "Freely you have received, freely you should give?" And was it not the Creator of the Universe who overturned the tables of merchants in the Temple?

Suffice to say, I found my way to the main entrace where I left the building as inconspicuouly as possible before the sermon started. After all, it was apparent what the message of the Church would be without needing to suffer through the pontification of such a powerful church merchant.

Just moved

I decided to move to blogger.com from jroller.com. The association with java (although my favorite platform at the moment) does not best represent my intentions for blogging. Besides, I like to think I'm a programmer, but it's only just a dangerous hobby.

So let the games begin...

SUN, JSF, and the rest of us.

I like the idea of Sun Microsystem's strategies, but that's about it. It is challenging to figure out why Sun feels the need to keep feeding their sacred cows of Swing and Sun Java Studio Creator. Granted, they are nice products, but why, oh why, won't they listen to the developers in the field. Why can't they hear us screaming at the top of our lungs..."Our users don't want to work on user interfaces made out of granite slabs."..."We already have an open and extendable IDE with Eclipse, stop with the confusing (and user-un-friendly) IDE developments."

I do of course understand the benefit of product line revenue. However, rather than reworking an entire IDE (that fewer and fewer people are using), why not develop a killer plugin for Eclipse. There are a number of individuals (like myself) who would pay well to have such a tool. AND, (for the SUN CFO) it would provide a tremendous revenue stream, without the overhead expense of such a robust application development (Java Studio Creator). Let IBM and the Open Source community share that burden.

To use JSF as an example...I just read an article, Why do JSF tools suck so bad?, which was quite disturbing, but so very true. For some reason Sun thinks that developers out there would rather purchase 3rd party toolsets/components to plug them into their applications, rather than using open source, or roll-their-own solutions. Who wants to deal with the licensing and expense nightmare of 3rd party integration?

I agree with Matt Raible when he notes that SUN seems to be forgeting the developers, in favor of the tool vendors. Toss us a bone here SUN!

At least David Geary's work with Shale is providing some light at the end of the tunnel (e.g. ease of validation for goodness sake).

Well, enough for ranting. Just needed to share some thoughts.

Bigger is better

It was Edison who said, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." Truer words have not been spoken.

I never cease to be amazed at the amount of individuals who raise their eyebrows, or roll their eyes at the suggestion of a great idea. Most people tend to look at grand ideas as simply that...grand ideas. They picture the "great" tasks as out of reach, as if there is somebody else out there who is magically better suited for the task, or part of some elite class of success which enables them to meet the challenge, almost wholeheartedly buying into Plato's class of philosopher kings.

What surprises me most is that these individuals do not see the potential, the reward, and the possibility of accomplishing greatness. Ironically, the secret of successful people, for the most part, is just plan ol' hard work. There are no intrinsically successful people, just individuals who see opportunity and can deny themselves their luxuries long enough to reach the goal.

Opportunity rarely asks any favor save that brave and humble soul to do the work and to take the blame.

To BE, or NOT to be

It is 2:30 in the morning...I'm wide awake...and I've got too much to do to be without sleep. But, no matter, that's what blogs are for.

As I progress along the lines of entrepreneurship, building my business with the help of people that I am truly blessed to have found, I find I am more and more frustrated with myself. Time has become much more of a commodity than any one precious jewel I possess. And yet I find myself spending this purse of time on frivolous and meaningless items. Moreover, I find myself caught between the choice to be, or not to be.

I can choose to be a successful business man, or I can choose not to be. The choice is here and now and not later. The choice is today. But choosing to be necessitates a nearly impossible task. This task requires of me to become (by way of my self perception) that which I do not currently seem to be.

Case in point, I drive a used car (very used). Many acquaintances of mine drive much nicer cars than I do (a practice they consider to be successful), but I continue perceiving myself as successful, since for now all of my money needs to be for the business. It is ironic that many of these people are in debt far beyond their means, placing them in a success-holding-pattern.

To be successful means that I must be now what I would like to be in the future. This means that I have to practice those habits and lifestyle choices that correctly reflect what I would be like if I were to be successful. For now, however, those around me find my behavior odd since my new practices do not seem to reflect my current status.

So what if I don't drink the night away(as I have found it to consume too much of my money and sleep). So what if I don't watch all of the latest TV programs (which further evangelize me on the need to spend money and rarely provide me with a real portrayal of life). It all comes down to time. That's the only one autonomy the Creator has given us.

It is our choice to be what we wish. Some have greater obstacles, but we all run the race.