The Evolution of Christianity?

This is a conundrum.

I've been exposed to a whole range of Christian belief over the years, and as a confirmed atheist (I've confirmed this myself), I've always looked on it with condescending eyes.

I went to the "Alpha Course" a few years ago, and had to quit because I found it assumed you believed the dogma before you even arrived.

There are several devout (Evangelical?) Christians in my social circle now, and I'm noticing something unnerving with their behaviour.

But let me step back for a moment.

Laura and I visited Lytton this summer to catch up with an old HP colleague and his family. We've known Steve and Yolanda (and their three daughters) since we moved back to Vancouver - so for twenty years now. The girls were babies (or unborn!) when we met them as a couple. Everybody is all grown up now, and their oldest girl has followed her mom into Counselling and Social Work.

Here's where the rubber meets the road. The entire family are Seventh Day Adventists.

This led me to a kitchen conversation with Yolanda and Stephanie about how they can set aside their personal belief system to counsel people who (very likely) share almost none of it? I also wondered why Steve and I worked so well together, and remained good friends, over our careers.

Yolanda said something very profound (I'm going to have to paraphrase).

"There are several levels to being a good Christian. Most people get stuck half way through this journey, where it's all about judgement and fear and anger and rules. They never get to unconditional acceptance and love ... that's where we try to live".

She does so well in her career (and Stephanie will too) because she accepts who you are at the outset. Never judgemental, and never putting her beliefs ahead of yours. Unconditional acceptance.

This is in sharp contrast to most other "Christians" I've met. Judge first, tell you the way the world should be, tell you how you're wrong, and tell you that they're right. We need more guns, and being gay is an abomination.

It seems to me that my Atheistic belief system is closer to Steve and Yolanda's than (fill in the blank with your favourite religion).

PS: This isn't to say that I share their belief system at all. I find it really outrageous. But we don't go there. I accept Steve and his family for who they are, and they accept me for who I am. Never prosthetizing. Never recruiting.

PPS: Very early in my days at HP, my local manager was a Mormon. Same thing. Different beliefs, but total acceptance of who I was.

Friendship...

I was thinking about the friends that Laura and I have. Most we share because we've been together so long, and there are some peculiarities. Since I'm writing this I can only speak for me, but it's similar for Laura too...

My first best friend would have been David Sandison - back in Regina. I lived down the street from David from 1967 to 1972, and saw him a couple of times when Laura and I lived in Saskatoon (1982-1988).

Another friend in the same neighbourhood - and the same time period - was Rod Anderson. So lets call this 5 years for David and Roddy (I called him Roddy). Funny enough, Rod's parent's remain good friends of my folks (they lived next door in Regina).

We moved from Regina to Prince Rupert in 1972 and I formed a whole different set of relationships. A few of those friends have stayed in touch. But we only see each other once a year - if we're lucky. I would say Doug Lenuik and Pat Roper were my best friends in high school, and I've seen Doug a couple of times in the last 30 years (I haven't seen Pat since 1979). Let's call the Rupert years 1972-1979.

The only friend that's held up from childhood through today isn't even mine. Laura and Sherri met in high school, and I met THEM BOTH at BCIT in 1979. We see Sherri and her husband Dave a couple of times a year, but we do keep our fingers on the pulse of each other's lives.

We've retained one relationship through most of the moves - the Devall's in Calgary (Mike died in 2010, but we still see Kelly often). We met Mike and Kelly when I started with HP in 1984, and have remained good friends since (so, 31 years so far). 

The point of all this is that Laura and I have friends now that we never really knew until we moved to Vancouver as adults and parents in 1995. And we've had that same set for 20 years now. We see them all the time. 

Our closest friends, the ones who would do anything for us (and we'd do anything for them) are people we've met later in life.

Is this an artifact of people that have moved a lot? 

PS: I know I'm simplifying this a bit, as there are a few friends we met at BCIT (Al, John, Mo) that we still see pretty frequently. 

The Election That Was

I had a visit with friends yesterday, and Lynn asked why I hadn't written something about the Canadian Election yet ... knowing that I'm passionate about politics and have never been shy about sharing my opinion.

It's been five days now, so it's time to rant a little bit.

Like almost every Canadian I know, we're fiscally conservative and socially liberal. The "Conservative Values" that were talked about during the campaign are real - and I don't have a problem with them. What I take exception to is when those values trump everything else. Name a social program in this country that hasn't been affected by budget cuts - you can't.

Balanced budgets at all cost were the demise of the Conservatives (and the NDP). I think most people understand that there is intelligent use of debt. Investment in infrastructure is good debt. Seems to me the Conservatives did just this after the financial disaster of 2008. Most examples worldwide prove that austerity doesn't work.

This election wasn't an overwhelming vote of confidence for the Liberals. It was a spanking of the Conservatives. Mostly their leader, although I took great pleasure in seeing people like Joe Oliver (former Minister of Finance), Pierre Poilevre (former Minister of Employment), and Chris Alexander (former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), lose their seats.

Even where they won their seat, knuckle draggers like Rona Ambrose (former Minister of Health) cannot continue the damage they've done.

But the Liberals won with the same majority the Conservatives did in 2011. 39.5% of us wanted a Trudeau government, or voted strategically to get one (they didn't vote Green or NDP because they wanted Harper gone at all costs - this describes me).

In the final analysis I'm very pleased with the outcome - the Conservatives are decimated (sorry, Lynn) and are re-examining where they failed.

Trudeau has some big issues to tackle, but this whole "inexperience" thing - proffered by the Conservatives - is a red herring. I could run the country if surrounded by bright people.

The ability to be driven by fact, not by dogma, is all you need. This is where Harper failed.

Migrating to the Cloud - The Chromebook Experience

After mulling it about for months and months, I took the leap about a year ago and bought a Chromebook (an Acer C720 - 2GB RAM and16GB SSD - $269).

I rely less and less on native Windows applications, and found I spent most of my time in the Chrome browser anyway.

If you use your Smartphone a lot, and have migrated to online banking and online bill payment, I'd encourage you to measure the actual time you spend using PC or Mac applications versus just existing on the web.

What I Use Most

There are a handful of applications I use inside the Chrome browser (and consequently the Chromebook) most of the time. Other than normal web apps (email, calendar, banking, Twitter, Facebook) there are a few "quasi-browser" programs I use on the Chromebook:

• Dropbox - is now a Chromebook application from the Google Play store.
• Microsoft Office Online - works just fine and I use it with Dropbox to edit Microsoft Word documents (I could use Google Sheets as well).
• Google Docs/Sheets - works offline as well.
• Bittorrent Client - I'm playing with Bitford right now, but searching for another client - install from the Google Play store. 
• Flipboard - I use this for all my newsfeeds - I don't trust Facebook to filter news for me.
• Hootsuite - this manages multiple Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin feeds.
• Netflix - works just fine from a Chromebook. Change your virtual country (see PrivateInternetAccess below) and stream different Netflix streams - the UK and USA are very different from Canada.
• PrivateInternetAccess - give me a virtual presence in several countries. Highly recommended and works fine in a Chrombook.
• Chromecast - this is a hardware/software dongle you attach to the USB port on your TV. Indispensable for anyone operating a Chromebook, as it allows you to do a number of things with your TV (like display your desktop, stream movies, project YouTube and Netflix, etc). 

I Still Can't Replace These

There are still a handful of applications I need a Windows computer for, and if you rely on a Mac, you'll have a short list as well. The Windows PC sits in the bedroom mostly unused, and I'm always searching for a "cloud" way to do things. Over the last year, as the popularity of the Chromebook increases, the list of "PC only" apps has shortened considerably.

• HP Scanner Utility for the Envy 4500 wireless printer/scanner. Only the scanning part won't work with the Chromebook. Printing works fine, and cloud printing is pretty painless.
• Calibre is an ebook management programs for managing my Kindle. Most people wouldn't need this, as Amazon handles all their ebooks on their site.
• Videostream is used for streaming movies to my Chromecast/TV. I only need this when I'm really lazy - I can either cast (using Chromecast) video to the TV or use the included HDMI connector on the Chromebook. But since there's limited storage on the Chromebook (16GB), I normally store all my movies on the PC.
• Scrivener is an ebook editing/publishing application for creating ebooks. I haven't used this program in a few years, but it's there if I ever feel the need to write another book.
• Prezi is presentation software I sometimes use or some contract work I do. Again, I haven't used this in over a year.

Overall, I use the Chromebook about 90% of the time. I use the desktop/laptop PC about 5% of the time for "PC only" apps, and the other 5% is for times I'm too lazy to use the Chromebook.

Other Benefits

The biggest benefits (to me) with the Chromebook platform are:

• Cost - if I break or lose this computer, it's trivial and inexpensive to replace. The one I'm using right now cost $269.
• Battery Life - I can get a full day of use out of my Chromebook, and often forget to charge it overnight. It will recharge in a couple of hours, so I can plug it in when I go for a walk, and it's ready to go again.
• Size and Weight - this thing is small. Not Macbook Air small, but small - 2.76 lbs.
• Speed - as long as you're aware that the number of browser tabs you have open effects the speed, it's very fast. If anything becomes an issue, close a tab or two. I often have 5-6 tabs open at one time, and see no performance hit.
• Ultra Portability - as long as you have an Internet connection, this thing is fantastic. If you need to do something without net access, you have to think twice (make sure your Docs and Sheets are synced, any movies you want to watch are on the internal drive, etc.).

I'm pleased with the switch. I have a friend in Victoria (Rick) who is very Microsoft-centric and wanted me to move to the Microsoft Surface platform. It looks pretty good, and the ability to run anything and everything is a bonus, but cost is a factor. If I break or lose my Chromebook, no biggie. And since everything exists in the cloud, I lose nothing.

My next computer will be another Chromebook.

The Rest of the World Comes Here...

Laura and I, like you I suppose, talk a fair bit about where we'll travel to next.

Some of this is tied to just getting out of the winter (that means rain here in Vancouver), and the remainder is to visit places we haven't been before. Often, though, we return to places we have been.

We go out of our way to support local businesses where we can, so why is it that we don't support our own tourist industry?

I think it's time to change that.

The rest of the world comes to British Columbia to see all the grandeur we have to offer, but we go to Phoenix or Asia or Europe or Mexico or ....

Granted, there are six months of every year where the weather doesn't cooperate with a local vacation, but from May through October things can be spectacular.

So this year, Laura and I are taking Clark (the motor home) for three weeks and doing a circle tour in our own province.

Vancouver - Bella Coola - Port Hardy - Victoria - Vancouver.

Although I've been looking forward to this for some time, Laura is now getting more than a little curious and excited about this different (for us) holiday.

I don't know what the highlight of the trip will be, but I am looking forward to seeing:

• Alexander Mackenzie's rock (he beat Louis and Clark to the Pacific by twelve years)
• Grizzly Bears fishing for salmon on the Atnarko and Bella Coola rivers
• The Museum at Bella Coola
• The day long ferry from Bella Coola to Bella Bella
• Ocean Falls
• Northern Vancouver Island - Port Alice, Coal Harbour

I plan to post a gallery of photos once the trip is done... stay tuned.

Grateful

As I have no belief in a higher power, I struggle with the word "grateful". I am pleased with the way my life has turned out, but not sure I can thank anyone except the universe. As David says "we won the sperm lottery".

The other day I started to count all the things that are good in my life (our lives), and they stack up well against the challenges. All our difficulties can be classified under "first world problems".

Health

You'd think I would be the last person to wax on about good health - but I really feel as though we've negotiated the tough times pretty well. They've been navigated because I have always tried to do the pragmatic, healthy thing - and am convinced that's paid off. Fortunately for us, Laura, Kathryn and David don't appear to share any of my health challenges. The benefits of my circumstance is that both Kath and Dave are hyper-aware of their own habits, and make good health choices.

Social

Laura and I are fortunate to be surrounded by good friends. Not only are these people we've known for decades, but have new friends we've known for only a short time. The whole stroke recovery process for me has turned into one big social event. These are people I never would have met, and most of them are fascinating in very different ways. Laura and I have a few friends we see on our own, but for the most part we share the same network. The older I get, the more important our social lives has come to be. After spending time with other stroke survivors, some with major impairments, it's probably more important than health.

Kath and Dave

Maybe because of my situation(s), or maybe because of exposure through their friends, both kids aren't afraid to travel the world and try new things. I think they live more "in the present" than we ever did, and worry less about what tomorrow brings. It's unfair to compare where they are in their lives (as they both approach thirty) compared to where Laura and I were at the same age. The world is a very different place, and their ability to change and accommodate is light years ahead of ours. Their priorities seem more realistic as well.

Housing

Somehow we lucked out in the housing market. Even though we've moved around a fair bit, our first tiny home in Saskatoon has been leveraged into the condo we live in now. I think we've ended up exactly where we intended. I think for Kath and Dave, owning a home is not realistic in Vancouver. Maybe owning a home anywhere isn't practical.

Rewarding Jobs

Both Laura and I have part time jobs that we enjoy. Laura is doing what she loves, and I do what I'm good at. My volunteering is starting to gain traction, and it's really rewarding. I don't think either of us would ever go back to full time employment - too restrictive!

Money Stress

We're certainly not rich. But we're not poor either. There will always be a little stress when we talk finances, and we've had to downsize our plans, but for the most part we've been able to do what we want and not freak out about the costs. Just being aware of costs is a big step forward!

Downsizing

One fortunate side effect of all the moving is we've gone through everything we own. Much of it has been given or thrown away. Life just feels more manageable when there's a lot less stuff. Everyone we know is still in a large house, and we don't envy the process they will (eventually) have to go through.

Flipboard has become my GoTo app

I was on Facebook. I'm on Twitter. I'm trying Instagram. I use Readability. I work on LinkedIn.

But the application I tend to go to most for news, reviews, articles of interest, and general useless knowledge is Flipboard.

Flipboard lives on my computer - a capability they rolled out in the last few weeks, as well as on my Smartphone (the implementation is spectacular. Flipboard would also live on my tablet - if I hadn't dropped it onto the floor and crushed a corner of it.

I would invite you to have a look - you could see the stuff I like as well.

Yes... and we're important

"The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping bird’s-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbor. Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, The Hubble Space Telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disk. It's like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And there are lots of stars in this sweeping view -- over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk." ...  from NASA.

This fly-through video was created by daveachuk.  Stick around till the end. It explains just how insignificant we really are...