Exciting Ruby Stuff

In the last week, I’ve seen a new group pop up in Omaha, NE and Tulsa, OK. The Omaha.rb will be meeting on Monday, May 2nd from 7-9PM (directions on their web page). I don’t know when the Tulsa.rb will meet, but hopefully it’ll be soon.

By the way, the Utah Ruby Users Group is set to start meeting on the third Wednesday of the month (May 25th). The Seattle.rb is meeting tonight. Wow! That’s a lot of Rubyists.

See more progress on: help build local Ruby Brigades

Home Teaching Survey

Home Teaching in our ward is pretty bad, getting to 40% of the families assigned to the elders quorum is looked at as an achievement. To help understand the problem a little more deeply, we passed around an anonymous survey in Primary, YM, YW, and RS. I knew it wasn't terribly scientific, the sample was poorly chosen among other things, but I thought we could use the data anyway.

I worried that even though this was anonymous, people wouldn't respond honestly. The first several forms I got back all said (essentially) 'All is well, no problem here.', and I thought my fears were confirmed. Gradually, I started to see some of the concerns that I knew were lurking. Here are the results.

I asked six questions:

('Yes' or 'No')
Do you know who your home teachers are? 70% did
Do they visit as often as you'd like? 50% did

(sliding scale)
Do they present an appropriate message? 68% positive
Are you comfortable asking them for service? 65% positive
Would you be comfortable asking them for a blessing? 64% positive
Do they help you to strengthen your family? 56% positive

(Comments)
How could they help you to strengthen your family? I got a lot of answers to this one. Here are a few:

---

Personally, I see no value in home teaching. I sit there while he talks to my husband, wishing I could be somewhere else. . . . Rather than share what he wants to share, think about us and focus on us, then prepare an appropriate message for us.

---

He strengthens us each time he comes because he really does care and calls us often

---

To help, they should actually come!

---

Have lessons for young children so they'll sit and listen.

---

Instead of asking if there's anything they can do, be more specific. For example: "Can we help you with your garage sale next week?" Take initiative: "I know you've been sick so we brought you a lasanga."

---

Know my children and take an interest in their lives

---

Come!

---

I haven't got a husband, or parents, or children, so I need home teachers

---

If the active, easy to visit families feel this way, I think we've got a long way to go to straighten out home teaching. How is it going in your ward? What are you doing well? Where do you need to improve?

skipping stones

skipping stones,
originally uploaded by pate.

One of my goals over at 43 Things is to do more hiking with my son. I posted some pictures of our last hike over at flickr.

r43 is being built test first

It’s so nice to watch it build like this. Add a test, watch it fail, write some code, watch it succeed. Here’s how it looks right now:

% ruby test_r43.rb
Loaded suite test_r43
Started
.........................................................................
Finished in 0.611202 seconds.

73 tests, 112 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors
%

If you’re not writing your code this way, you should give it a try.

See more progress on: Practice religious test-first development for a month

'This I Believe' from NPR

It sounds like NPR has turned up a winner. "What I believe" based upon a radio series of the same name from the 50s. You can post your essay explaining what you believe at the website. All the submissions will become part of an archive, some will be selected to be read by their authors.


I plan on submitting an essay. Maybe you should too.

r43, seattle.rb, and stuff

We had our March Seattle.rb meeting last night. It was huge we had 18 people there including at least 5 folks from Amazon. It was also pretty cool to have Chad Fowler with us.

Ryan kicked things off with a discussion of our upcoming code fest. I'll post a date when we get it figured out, but if you're a Ruby hacker and are going to be in the Northwest in May you should consider joining us. We're going to be working on Ruby Gems -- cleaning out some dark, scary corners and working on some enhancements. There's already interest from the Vancouver.rb, pdx.rb (Portland), and even a Ruby Hacker from Yakima.

Ryan also talked about MetaRuby and Ruby2C. The work that he and Eric have been doing is incredible. If you're interested, take a look at Polishing Ruby (Ryan's blog).

Once Ryan finished up, I botched a quick preview/presentation of r43, my new library for the 43 Things API. Ryan pitched in and helped me mock out the live site for testing. The coolest part was probably seeing Chad playing around with it even in it's pre-alpha state. Now that people know about it, I'm under the gun to get a formal release out the door on Monday.

Eric finished the evening off with a working tour through Rails. He took a cemetary information application (which will be open sourced and a hosted version available soon), worked on adding some functionality and tests. A lot of the people at the meeting were there just to look at Rails, so this was the biggest (and most appreciated) part of the evening.

Another Ruby book announced

Pro Ruby by Andrew Patzer from Apress. This looks like it's fast becoming a crowded field.

I loved it!

Beowulf is a great read. It’s very different from the Latin/Greek poetry (and the poetry influenced by them). My favorite translation is this one by Seamus Heaney.

See more progress on: read beowulf

Train Station Scenery

dscn0006_5,
originally uploaded by pate.

Last year, my son and I went out to shoot some photo's to help him fulfill a Webelos requirement. We spent the morning down at the Sounder commuter rail station in Kent. I always thought this was a cool looking building, and his picture of it is great. Digital cameras and kids seem like a wonderful combination.

When I finally get around to building my dream N-scale railroad, this building is going to be a part of it.

Busy week

It looks like the coming week is going to be a busy one. In addition to the YW broadcast and general conference, I'm headed down to Salt Lake City on Wednesday on a one-day business trip, then heading over to the Seattle.rb meeting on Thursday.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to sit down to some smothered burritos with cheese and onions at La Frontera while I'm in Salt Lake -- they are one of the things I've really missed from the time I spent there.

The Seattle.rb meeting should be really cool. We're going to do an advanced session on Ruby on Rails and try to build a web application for storing and searching information (including inscriptions, data, and photos) from cemetaries.

a bit of a change

I've been semi-maintaining two separate blogs (a technical one, and this one) for a while. Since I keep falling behind on both of them, I've decided to bring them together under one umbrella and add some toys from flickr and 43 things, two sites that I've also been playing with. I'll be trying to clean things up a bit over the next week or so, but hopefully this will help me be a bit more 'engaged' in keeping both kinds of blog entries up to date.

Priesthood Preparation -- Lesson 1

Here's my draft outline for the first Priesthood Preparation lesson.

I Gaining a testimony of Jesus Christ (Alma 32)
A Why does it matter?
B How can I do it?
1 Personal and family scripture study
2 Personal and family prayer
3 Regular attendance at meetings
4 Giving service
II Priesthood Organization
A Aaronic
1 Role
2 Offices and duties
B Melchezidek
1 Role
2 Offices and duties
C Quorums
1 Purposes of
2 Membership in
3 Activities of
III Keeping Covenants
A Many kinds of covenants
B Basic principles
1 Understanding the covenant
2 Having a testimony
3 Having integrity
4 Making a daily effort
IV The Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood
A Group reading of D & C 84:33-41
B Discuss individual application
C Magnifying callings


Does this look reasonable to everyone? What would you add/change?

Priesthood Advancement

In my stake, there used to be a 'Priesthood Preparation' class taught by the High Council. They've recently set this aside and asked each ward to put together something similar on their own. (They did provide their materials, but several of the leaders in my ward felt we could improve on them.) I've started to put together my ideas for such a class and wanted to share them here where I could get feedback on them.

I'm hoping to keep the class to five sessions of one hour. Each lesson will be built around one or two recent conference talks, supplemented with scriptures, and topped of with (a lot of) discussion. I expect that the talks and scriptures referenced in the lesson plan/handout will more than fill a one hour lesson, and hope that it will provide study material for the paricipants. I also intend to pass out each lesson plan at least one week ahead to allow people to read over and think about the material before we meet.

Lesson one will cover the importance and development of a testimony of Jesus Christ and the importance of being ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood. I'm thinking about using The Key of the Knowledge of God for one of the talks for this one.

Lesson two will cover Perfecting the Saints (our roles as husbands and fathers, service, and performing ordinances). I haven't settled on any talks yet for this one.

Lesson three will cover Proclaiming the Gospel (being a member missionary and doing home teaching). No talks yet for this one.

Lesson four will cover Redeeming the Dead (the importance of temple ordinances for ourselves and our families). No talks yet for this one either.

Lesson five will cover enduring to the end. I'm thinking about using Press On for this one.

I'm not committed to either of the talks above, but they both seemed to fit well with the theme of that lesson.

How can you help? I'd love feedback about the basic ideas, suggestions for talks that I might use, or specific recommendations for the individual lessons. As I get feedback, and work through my own thoughts, I'll post outlines for each of the lessons.

Comment away. Please.

Also looking at language in the Book of Mormon

Over on Millenial Star, Bryan Pocock is also taking a look at language in the Book of Mormon. He's focusing on phrases not often found in English, like the 'the something of Person' instead of 'Person's something'. A nice read.

Alessia and Adelbert Denaux

There's a very important discussion aboutAlessia and Adelbert Denaux over on Times & Seasons. If you've not already gone to look at it, you should now.

Wortschatz -- harrow

And in a quick second post, the second of two words: harrow.

This one is used outside of the Book of Mormon, but only in materials that should have been part of the plates of brass. It's use is also a bit more diverse.

The first uses are in 2 Sam 12:31 & 1 Chron 20:3. In these cases it is used to describe the implement. David is described as using harrows and other tools to put the people of Rabbah and the other cities of the children of Ammon to death.

In Job 39:10, the term is used strictly in the agricultural sense.

In 2 Ne 9:47 Jacob uses the term in a spiritual context as part of a triplet:

awake you
harrow up your souls
be plain unto you

The term is used to describe Zeezrom by Mormon (who may have been quoting Alma the Younger, see my discussion of tribulation) in Alma 14:6 and Alma 15:3. The first of these also looks like a triplet to me:

Zeezrom was astonished
his soul was harrowed up
he was encircled by the pains of hell

Ammon used the term in his missionary discourse in Alma 26:6. He describes the converts as being safe from being harrowed up by the whirlwind because they are safely gathered. This seems to be a different, more physical usage than the previous Book of Mormon uses of 'harrow'.

Alma the Younger also uses the term in his missionary sermone. In Alma 29:9, he is concerned that he is harrowed up in his desire -- like Ammon's use this seems to be more of an active, physical use rather than the spiritual meaning used by Jacob and about Zeezrom.

Alma uses the word four times in his second telling of his conversion story; Alma 36:12,17,19. The usage in verse 12 looks like a triplet again:

I was racked with torment
my soul was harrowed up
[I] was racked with all my sins

Alma also uses the word in teaching his son, Corianton. In Alma 39:7, he uses the term in a Jacobean sense.

Mormon makes the last use of the term that I could find in Mormon 5:8. In this case he is apologizing for bringing the awful vision of carnage before us.

I was especially interested at seeing how often Alma the Younger and Ammon used the terms 'harrow' and 'rack' together.

Wortschatz -- racked

Next up is the first of two words: racked.

I could only find it used in 4 places in the scriptures; twice by Alma, once by Ammon, and once by Moroni.

It first appears in Mosiah 27:29, where Alma is giving the first version of his great penitential discourse. Alma uses the term to describe the state of his soul while encumbered by sin.

Ammon uses it next, in Alma 26:9 he describes the Lamanites as being racked with hatred were it not for his (and his brothers') teaching the gospel.

Alma pickes the term up again in his second penitential discourse (Alma 36:12,14,16-17), given to his son Helamen. Again, he uses it to describe the guilt and suffering he experiences as a result of sin.

The last reference is found in Momon 9:3 where Moroni uses the term in the same context as Alma.

Keeping Our Covenants

For teachings for our times this week, our ward is studying Elder Maynes' talk Keeping Our Covenants. Since we've had problems in the past with instructors not showing up, I've started preparing a lesson each week 'just in case' -- the worst case is that I've studied the lesson more deeply than I would have otherwise. I'm not entirely sure of where to take this weeks lesson, so I thought I'd share some of my ideas, and see what feedback I could glean.

1) (an implicit theme for the lesson) We need to do more than just attend conference and/or browse through the conference report. We need to internalize the messages, write them on the fleshy tables of our hearts.

2) (a minor theme) We can learn more by likening the scriptures unto ourselves. As we move through the lesson, I'd like to focus on the example of the Ammonites (Alma 53:9,12,155,16-18,20-22; 56:45,47; 57:21,25-26) and draw parallels between the perilous times that the Nephites were experiencing and those we face as a community, a country and as families.

3) (the main theme) By making and keeping covenants, we can become the Captain Moronis and Helamens needed to guide and protect our community, country and families. I thought it was very interesting that Elder Mayne's first example was not of temple or baptismal covenant, but of contrasting, additional covenants made by the Ammonite fathers and their sons. What role should these additional covenants play in our lives?

Beyond the scriptures from Alma (above), I'd like to include:
Joshua 14:15
James 1:22
Mosiah 5:5-8
D & C 42:29

And to tie things up, I'd like to go back to the idea that we can stand as Captain Moroni and Helamen with Alma 48:7-20

Wortschatz -- To Sing Redeeming Love

Another term (well, phrase) that caught my attention is to sing redeeming love. While the concepts of redemption and love suffuse the scriptures, they are not often brought together. In fact, Alma the Younger and Ammon are the only to speakers to conjoin the terms -- and both of them refer to singing redeeming love.

Love and Redemption are used together in Deut. 7:8 and Isa. 63:9. In both cases, love is given as the reason for the Lord's redemption of His people.

The terms are used together in 2 Ne 1:15. In this case Lehi recognizes of God's love after he testifies of His redemptive power.

Alma the Younger speaks of singing redeeming love in Alma 5:9 and Alma 5:26. In the first instance, he's talking about the fathers of his audience (by context, it seems like he's talking about the people Alma the Elder led in the wilderness). After they've been saved from the bands of death and the chains of hell (physical death and sin) by the Lord's hand, they sing redeeming love. He goes on to ask his audience if they've experienced this change in their own lives, if they have felt to sing the song of redeeming love.

Ammon uses the term in Alma 26:12, applying it to the Lamanites who have experienced conversion through the preaching of the gospel.

The terms are also used together in D & C 133:53 (which quotes Isaiah 63:9).

Alma the Younger and Ammon use the term so similarly that it seems formulaic. But there's no prior use (that I can find). Perhaps (warning -- speculation alert), it was used by Alma the Elder and/or Abinadi but edited out of Mormon's text.

Nice post on the New Cool Thang

Geoff posted a nice piece on The parable of the sower. While I'd written about this previously, he took it in a different direction comparing the three failing kinds of seeds to three classifications of sin: Greed, Popularity, and Appetites. Having read his post, I think that Lehi's vision and the parable of the sower parallel Satan's temptation of the Savior in Matt. 4:3-10 to some degree.

In verse 3, the Savior is asked to turn stones into bread -- appealing to His physical appetite. Compare to Matt 13:4,9 or 1 Ne 8:31

In verse 7, the savior is asked to leap from a building so that the angels might bear him up -- appealing to His desire for popularity (His vanity). Compare to Matt13:5-6,20-21 or 1 Ne 8:23

In verses 8 and 9, the savior is asked to worship Satan in return for worldly wealth -- appealing to his greed. Compare to Matt 13:7,22 or 1 Ne 8:26-28

I think that the first and third parallels are fairly clear. The second is a stretch for Lehi's vision to match up to, although the angel explained to Nephi that ". . .the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil, which blindeth the eyes, and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men, and leadeth them away into broad roads, that they perish and are lost" (not a bad description of vanity and its fruits), so maybe it's not too far off.

(I've tried to follow Geoff's Greed-Popularity-Appetites-Appetites-Popularity-Greed chiasm ...)