Performed Well

Last week, Christine and I were in Philadelphia, PA for a convention.  And for whatever reason, we decided to eat at the McDonald's across the street from the convention center.  There were so many poor quality little things about this fast food experience that it became comical to think through them all.  I'll list a few here: The floors were very sticky. No tables were clean.  Christine ended up cleaning a table herself with the cleaning fluid that was on the counter. One of the two soda machines was completely boarded up. There was no ice in the ice machine on the other soda machine. I asked for more ice, and the lady on break said "You have to wait.  I'm the one who gets the ice, but i'm on break now, so you have to wait." I asked over the counter for more ice, and they just told each other, but nobody even attempted to remedy the situation. So I waited for ice, and when the lady on break got it (after her break was done), she just set the bucket...

Have you ever felt that your life was too good?  Too easy?  Too much fun?  Too many things to be grateful for and not enough conflict? That's me sometimes. In some sense, that's me right now. I listened to a podcast today that raised some serious doubts in my mind about the likelihood that our country would remain mostly free--as i feel it is right now.  This made me sad to think about.  But I also found myself faced with the realization that this is not really my burden to carry anymore than the plight of billions of less-free people all over the world is my personal burden to carry.  My life is so unbelievably good right now, that at times I feel guilty about it all.  Should I just enjoy my life or do I owe a debt of misery or something in solidarity with all the people who are truly hurting right now? I'm not really sure what good that does though.  Things are great where I live.  My family, my job, my health... it's all wonder...

I am very excited for my little sister Mindy! About 15 months ago, Mindy started dating a wonderful man named Brice Belden.  Last Sunday, on her birthday, after a production of White Christmas that Mindy directed and choreographed, Brice proposed to her onstage in glorious, lavish fashion in front of a crowd of her best friends and biggest fans. It was one of the finest proposals I've ever seen.  I'm so proud of Brice for putting on such a big display for Mindy and giving her an amazing story that she can tell her friends and children for decades to come. And more importantly, Brice loves Mindy deeply and is immensely supportive of her and her dreams.  I have prayed for years for Mindy to find someone great like him.  We are thrilled to welcome Brice to our family.

When I wrote Code for Teens , I set out to teach programming concepts in a way that was accessible to anyone, regardless of religion. Those of you who have read it know there aren't any religious messages in the book.  Still, I was recently turned down by a group of educators known as Secular, Eclectic, Academic Homeschoolers (SEAH) solely for having two paragraphs that reference a church. SEAH was excited to promote my book on their website until they found two short paragraphs that mention a church (no reference to the faith of this church in the book at all--just a mention of it).  SEAH asked me to rewrite this portion. I told them that I did not control the published book anymore (the publishers do), but I could make an insert that replaces the "church" with "summer camp".  So I rewrote those two paragraphs and submitted them as an addendum that they could distribute with the book or use any other way they wanted. Apparently, this wasn't enough. ...

 A close friend of mine was recently wronged in a terrible way by a scoundrel of a man and then afterward by our own legal system. I'll speak with vagaries to protect the identities, but here's the gist.  My friend was taken advantage of by a pathological liar.  In order to seek justice, my friend took him to court.  The liar was caught committing perjury over a dozen times (literally) while on the stand , and was forced to admit many of his lies in open court, along with having broken contracts and lied to cover his tracks. It seemed like an obvious, cut-and-dried case to prove and vote in favor of my friend.  But to everyone's astonishment, the jury sided with the liar.  And now my friend is stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of legal fees (including paying for the shyster's legal fees). It is such a blatant miscarriage of justice, that it almost makes me sick.  How did 8 members of a jury come to such a conclusion?  Did an...

Around this time last month, I was kind of excited about the prospect of writing the 2nd volume of Code for Teens.  Then I received the sales report from my publishing company.  Sales are so low, they are almost non-existent.  They tell me that things should pick up, and they are confident that we will do many more sales this year.  But I can't help but think to myself "Did they actually anticipate sales numbers that were really this low in the first three months?"  Surely not.  I'm not sure what to make of it all.  I expected that people reading and enjoying the book would cause increased exposure and attention, but it seems like the book is only dropping rapidly in the Amazon ranking despite having an average of 5 stars basically 100% positive feedback from all of the readers. It's an interesting age we live in where it's surprisingly easy to write a book and get it available for sale, but it's so hard for the book to receive any attention--likel...

I started working on Volume 2 of my Code for Teens series!  This time, I'm making it a point to write at least half a page every time I get on the bus to or from work and also write several pages every weekend. At times I wonder if all of this will be worth the time and effort.  I very well may end up losing money on this book.  I hope to sell enough copies to at least get my financial investment back, but there are no guarantees.  Volume 1 has been extremely well-received among people who've read it, but it's been a real challenge to get noticed.  Volume 2 adds some additional time pressure with it as I'm trying to have everything completed in time to take both books to the two large education conventions this year. One of the things that keeps me going, however, is knowing that my life is composed of all the things I do with it.  I may lose money on the book.  I may have been financially better off not writing a book at all.  But at the end ...