It's Like a Breath of Fresh Air

There was a link to this site in a Townhall.com article today. The church put billboards up all over the area, and all they showed was the URL and four bare feet sticking out from between the covers (picture). I like the idea - it's bold, it's creative, and it probably made at least a few parishioners squirm in their seats.

Admittedly, the church may have been a little too provocative, but it beats the alternative most churches go with - keeping mum. Jesus wasn't afraid to openly take on the issues of His day, but we in the modern church seem to have gotten away from that idea, because it makes us "uncomfortable". Hopefully, things like this will start to change that - if we don't tell people the Good News about the whole of their life, who will?

Fun At RPI

Life at RPI is always an adventure, because the place seems to be a perpetual SNAFU. Today we had a rather nasty set of storms pass through, and one of the transformers got hit by lightening, taking out power to the majority of the residential campus. I was in my room at the time, and got to experience the whole thing first-hand. This is the second time this academic year we've had a transformer blow - the first being when someone tried to fix their toilet and instead flooded the building.

Personally, I love blackouts, so it wasn't too big a problem to me. It has elicited some interesting anecdotes, though. For example, the maintenance guy was telling me that, when it happened, one of the students came out to complain to him that his lights had gone out. The guy politely asked him to notice that the hallway he was standing in was rather dark, too. I'm not sure, but I think the complainer was probably an engineer.

Also, in the "I wish I was a fly on the wall" category, as I was walking to the Student Union (where I'm writing this), I passed a campus tour on its way up to show off the dorms. Apparently, no one told the tour guide the lights were dead. I almost wish I'd followed and watched.

The power will probably be on later, when I get back there. How disappointing - RPI's a lot more fun when things go wrong.

It's Been a While

I haven't written anything on here in quite a while. Things have been pretty busy, and I've fallen into the Jared Crocker mode of blogging. However, he's posted again, so I guess I should, too. Except that, as usual, I'll probably write more than him. I tend to do that.

First off, I've semi-officially switched academic fields. I'm out of Aeronautical Engineering, and into Information Technology. I needed to try Aero and see that it wasn't where I should be, but now that that torture's done it's good to be back where I should be. It's also a little bit scary, because, until recently, I'd viewed the CS stuff as kind of a stopover before I got into the engineering stuff. It's looking a lot more like a career now.

The interesting thing is that, officially, I'm still listed as an Aero. It worked out (and I credit God entirely for it, as it's rather unusual) that Aero needed me to fulfill its TA commitments, so they let me stay as an Aero major, get the TA job and pay from them, yet start the IT coursework. Which is good, because I would have been in rather dire financial straits had the TA-ship been cancelled. The official switch probably won't happen until after the end of the semester. The only problem with it, so far, has been some funny looks from IT class profs when they see that major listed on their classlists. IT is really an interesting program to be in, though. It's more of an interdisciplinary field than a subject in its own right - for example, this semester I'm taking three CompSci classes and a Decision Sciences class. Variety is a good thing.

Outside of academics, my life has been going pretty well. I'm busy as a bee, but it's with a lot of fun stuff. First off, obviously, is homework. I like IT homework a lot more than engineering homework - especially since it doesn't involve Differential Equations. The Alliance Church up here is still letting me play the piano, and I've also been playing with some electronic stuff there - messing with the sound equipment they have but don't use (it used to be a much larger congregation) and pushing for a website. I'm also keeping up my involvement in the campus's Intervarsity chapter, which is a nice way to have a mini-Nyack experience.

On a professional note, my first website went live last month, which was kind of exciting. I'd done the design over the summer, but it had been on hold until I got back for the Christmas break. It went up in January, and so far seems to be going over well. If you want to see it, it's at www.wvefc.org .

Looking forward, my big project is finding a co-op or job for the summer and fall. So far the search is going pretty well - I have a company that was recruiting on campus and seemed very interested in me (an avionics company called Avidyne - www.avidyne.com), and there's a faculty position at RPI opening up that I would have a pretty good chance at getting. God will work the right job out for me, I'm sure, but, until it's all set, I'd appreciate your prayers about it. Also, if you hear of anything that I might be interested in, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know.

That's it for now. I haven't heard from anybody from Nyack in a while - are you guys still alive?

Later.

-Nathan