Victor Font

Snow, Snow, Snowhere to Go

Growing up in the Northeast teaches you at least one thing, how to get around in the snow. When a good winter nor’easter blows through New Jersey or Connecticut, it could dump several feet of snow on the ground. Of course, just as you finish shoveling out your driveway, the snow plow comes down the street and blocks it right up again. I miss those good ol’ days!

That’s what I thought anyway until we got 5” of snow in Raleigh today. We’ve been living here for 3 years and this is the first time we’ve had any accumulation. We had a light dusting in the past and even in a light dusting, the state virtually shuts down. There are 870 closings and delays listed on www.wral.com, the local news channel website. Almost all of the churches cancelled both services tomorrow. I’ve never seen anything like it.

In New Jersey, I worked outside in blizzards when I was a paramedic. Snow never stopped us. In Connecticut, closing a church on Sunday because of the snow is unheard of, even if the Pastor preaches to an empty congregation.

Here in North Carolina it’s different. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a snow plow. I’m sure they have them, but I’ve never seen one. Maintenance crews begin spraying brine to prevent icing on the roads in the face of a winter storm warning. Spraying brine? I’m sure that’s really effective considering most of the roads are iced over.

Listening to the weather report a little while ago, the meteorologist said this mess is going to be with us for a few days. The temperatures are going to warm up Monday and we’re going to have rain on Tuesday. I suppose the hope is that the snow will all wash away.

What was the nature of Adam and Eve’s Relationship Before the Fall?

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True Love — Image Courtesy of Rafael Marchesini.

On our way home from church last night, our nearly 15 year old daughter asked me a thought provoking question she pondered as she was doing her personal devotions at school. She posed the question to her two small group Bible study teachers earlier in the evening during youth group. Both of them were stumped to respond. The question is the title of this post, “What was the nature of Adam and Eve’s relationship before the fall?”

She’s reading the book of Genesis and got to chapter 3 verse 16 which says,

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.—(Genesis 3:16)

This struck her like lightening as she considered what she had always been taught in school, Sunday school class, from the pulpit and at home, that dad is the head of the home. But after meditating on Genesis 3:16, she questioned whether the familial hierarchy we understand today was always God’s design for the family.

She went back to Genesis 2:18 and read,

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.—(Genesis 2:18)

The term “help meet” is defined in the Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon as “one who is a companion and helper especially: wife.” When God formed Eve out of Adam’s rib, he created a companion, friend, and spouse. But nowhere beyond Eve’s creation does the Bible indicate a hierarchical relationship until after the fall of man. The hierarchical relationship was established by God as part of the curse pronounced upon mankind because of our disobedience to Him.

Since the Bible doesn’t specify, I’ve personally come to believe that Adam and Eve were created as co-equals, but I really don’t know for sure. What I do know for sure is that I am proud of my daughter for studying God’s Word so thoughtfully and sharing her insight with others.

Side Effect of the Job Loss, New HP DV8T Laptop

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One of the side effects of losing my job is that I also lost the use of a laptop. I’ve been in IT for 25 years and have never owned my own laptop. My daughter has one. It’s a small ASUS EEE PC that she uses for school work. But I‘ve I never had my own personal laptop until yesterday. As a writer and public speaker, I need the flexibility of a laptop so that I can capture my thoughts as soon as possible. It’s difficult going to events and making speeches and presentations without one. Two weeks ago, I ordered a DV8T from Hewlett Packard. It isn’t top of the line, but it is spec’d out pretty nicely. The computer shipped last Friday. It made its way from Shanghai China to Raleigh North Carolina by way of Anchorage Alaska, Newark New Jersey, and Memphis Tennessee. It arrived at my home yesterday afternoon, no worse for the wear. When I first saw the box, I did have some concern for it’s health. The corner of the box was crushed pretty badly. It looked like it had taken a pretty good jolt. I began filming an unboxing video to document its condition. I wanted to make sure that if there was anything wrong with the computer, I had a record of it. I may post the unboxing video on YouTube later this week.

The computer has an Intel Core i7-820QM processor operating at 1.73GHz with TurboBoost capability up to 3.06GHz. It has 8Gb of memory and 1Tb of disk space. The video processor is a little lightweight. That’s a Nvidia GT 230M with 48 Cuda cores. I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit as the operating system. For those of you who think I just spoke in Latin, let me translate. It’s pretty fast and can store a lot of data.

The screen is huge. It’s an 18.4” 1920 x 1080p high definition display. It comes with a blu-ray drive and two earphone receptacles. I am so looking forward to watching videos with my wife or daughter. Before I forget, it has a built-in high-def digital TV tuner. It is really a nice computer. I even have it lo-jacked in case someone decides to walk off with it when I’m not looking. In the unlikely event that it does get stolen, the first time the thief attempts to turn it on and connect to the net, law enforcement will be notified of their location. Lo-jack is built into the BIOS and cannot be circumvented.

I was up until 2am last night setting it up the way I want it. Like most companies, HP loads their laptop with bloat-ware, partner sales information and software that you never wanted or will never buy. I took all of that garbage off. When I was finished, I made the recovery disk set. I’m blogging from the laptop right now.

As nice as it is, it does have some quirks, but what PC doesn’t? Prior to making my decision for this machine, I spent a lot of time reading the posts from other DV8T owners on http://forum.notebookreview.com in the Official HP DV8 Owner’s Lounge. The forum has over 2,100 posts. I read a lot of complaints about the video drivers. The video drivers that come native on the laptop are buggy. They frequently stop working. The screen goes black for a moment as they reload into memory. It happened to me within 10 minutes of opening the box. If you go to the Nvidia site and download the latest drivers, they won’t install on the computer. This is because HP modified the original Nvidia drivers to work with their sleep button. The owners forum describes a little hack on page 161 that allows you to work around the Nvidia install issues. I performed that hack last night and the newest drivers installed without consequence. I have had no problem since. You will have problems if you use sleep mode, which I don’t. The real Nvidia drivers don’t have HP’s customization.

HP’s tech support denies there’s a problem with the video drivers even though the issue has been reported since the computer first came out last October. It’s hard to understand how a company of the size and reputation of HP can deploy a machine with faulty drivers. Maybe it’s going to take someone filing a class action law suit to drive a better quality assurance process.

Of Rainbows and Hope

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We turned out of our subdivision onto Rock Service Station Road on our way to evening service and hadn’t even driven more than a quarter of a mile when my wife suddenly gasped. It was the type of gasp that set me on alert thinking she saw something startling. Then she says, “That’s the most beautiful rainbow I’ve ever seen.” I wasn’t in a position to see what she was looking at without taking my eyes off the road. I thought, “A rainbow has another end doesn’t it?” Then I saw it! Looking out my front windshield at about the 2 o’clock position and I almost gasped. It is the largest, most beautiful, and breathtaking rainbow I had ever seen in my entire life.

The colors are so bright and beautiful. Shades of red, blue, yellow, and violet sparkled against the darkened rain heavy skies. It is so broad I can’t begin to estimate its width. Its brightness is almost blinding. I had to avert my gaze and saw an after image everywhere I looked. You’ll know what I mean if you ever kept your eyes open while someone took your picture with a flash. You look around and see the flash. You close your eyes and see the flash. This time I look around and I see the rainbow. It is gorgeous.

I think of God’s covenant with Noah on behalf of all humanity in Genesis 9:12-16:

And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

I thanked God for allowing us to see His beautiful creation, a colorful painting on a canvas of clouds placed there by His gentle Word. For me, the rainbow is a sign of His goodness and grace toward us, a symbol of hope. In this time of transition, not knowing where I’ll find a job or when I’ll get my next paycheck, the rainbow reminds me of this verse from Psalm 71:5,

“For thou art my hope, O Lord God: Thou art my trust from my youth.”

As beautiful as the rainbow is, it pales in comparison to His Glory.

Catching Up on the Week

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It sure has been a demanding week. I am busier now since I lost my job than when I was working. I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with my posting. It didn’t help any either that earlier in the week my sinuses seriously troubled me. I’ve been living on Zyrtec since moving to North Carolina almost 3 years ago. I’ve decided to write all of my blog posts over the weekend and then edit and post one each day during the week. I’m taking Sundays off for family and worship time.

Monday the Colonial JobSeekers was time well spent and richly rewarding. Dr. David Marsh, a psychologist with the Wake County Human Health Services, gave a very enlightening speech on “Keeping It Real.” It’s a message about sustaining a realistically optimistic outlook during the transitional period. You are more likely to get hired if you maintain a positive attitude. He discussed self-efficacy which has been described as the belief that we are capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals. It is a belief that we have the capabilities to accomplish the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations. I’ve always believed this.

Tuesday I heard from my editor. She loves my concise proposal. She said it is “excellent,” and that’s a quote. She asked for additional bullet points highlighting the business benefit of my book. In her email she said she’d be out of the office for the balance of the week and wouldn’t be able to respond right away. I sent her the business benefits later in the day. I also had to work on my wife’s computer. It crashed during an upgrade to Windows 7 and I had to restore it back to Windows XP. Even though the Windows 7 upgrade advisor said everything was fine and I could move forward, I suppose at 8 years old, the computer’s too old to learn new tricks. I hate blue screens!

Wednesday I helped my friend Rick Trollinger. Rick is the owner of Agape Cruise Travels. He is one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet and he does one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen at providing customer service to his client base. He came over to our house and I spent the morning with him helping to jumpstart his network on Linkedin. By Thursday morning, he already had 645 contacts, 5 leads from individuals wanting to book a cruise and 1 lead from a sales organization in Pensacola that wants to book their group for a sales seminar at sea.

Rick specializes in group cruises and meetings at sea. Have you ever thought about having a sales meeting or training class on a cruise ship? If not, you haven’t “missed the boat.” Cruise ship meetings are very convenient and affordable. If you travel to a land destination for multi-day meetings or training sessions, you could be spending way too much money. In these days of scarce funds and fiscal conservatism, a meeting at sea can save you up to 33%. And cruise ships offer amenities that land based meeting venues don’t. There are free meeting spaces and receptions, all inclusive food, free entertainment, and much, much more. Give Rick a shout if you’ve ever thought about this. Now is the time to act. Rick’s email is rick@agapecruisetravel.com.

Thursday I worked on my book. It was the first time I’ve worked on it in about a week. I read through the introductory chapter, didn’t like what I had written and trashed most of it and started over. It flows much better now and I’m almost happy with it.

Thursday evening I attended the Raleigh Chapter meeting of the Association of Information Technology Professionals. I’m booked to speak there on March 18th. My topic is Authentic Leadership. I am so pleased with what I experienced, I joined the association and will be a regular participant in their monthly meetings. My next blog post will be all about the AITP.

Yesterday was all about social networking and building relationships. Oh yes, I finally opened a facebook account. I’ve done my best to resist facebook but caved earlier this week. It reminds me of the Borg on Star Trek, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” In less than one full week I have 349 friends. Won’t you please by my friend, too?

Great Expectations!

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Imagine losing your job during the worst global recession since the Great Depression. That’s what happened to me. I knew it was going to happen. I sensed it coming for several months. No, I’m not psychic or anything like that. I’ve been in this position before.

Three years ago, I was working for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals’ R&D Division in New London, CT. After two very large mergers over a 5-year period, my position was eliminated in their “Adapting to Scale” initiative. That’s just a fancy way of saying “RIF,” reduction in force. I was one of an estimated 40,000 world-wide who learned to adapt. This time, I was working as the Director of IT Process Improvement for CARQUEST Technologies, LLC, the IT group supporting one of the largest automotive aftermarket parts distributors in North America. The CIO walked into my office on December 9th and said my position was being eliminated in the 2010 budget cycle due to continuing economic concerns. Instead of feeling upset or fearful, a sense of relief warmed me as I responded, I’ve been anticipating this. I asked him to keep this quiet.

Dec. 9th was the one year anniversary of a 2008 RIF where we lost 200 on the corporate campus. It was the first time in the 40 year history of the company people got laid off. It was a bad day and it was still fresh in the minds of those who survived. The last thing I wanted to do is cause a panic. If my colleagues saw me packing my desk and leaving, there’s no telling how they may have responded. So, we kept it quiet and I want to publicly apologize to all of my friends there for not saying a proper “so long.” Keeping things quiet was needful. Please understand my motives.

After our discussion, I filed everything I was working on, packed my office and left the following day. When I got home, I said to my wife Praise the Lord! God is moving in our life and I’m expecting great things. Today, 12/30, is officially my last day with the company.