Fourteen Days

In fourteen days, I will be married. So unbelievable. It wasn’t that long ago that I thought marriage was for all those “grown-ups” who were done being young and having fun but wanted to raise kids.

Alas, here we are.  After a near-two-year-long engagement, Natalie and I are getting married in weeks’ time, in Indy.  I cannot wait – both for the ceremony itself and the beginning of the marriage.  (Additionally, I’m just ready to “move on” to a new chapter of my life.)

Natalie and I have both grown so much the past few years, and I am certain now that we are ready to get married.  Two years ago when I proposed, I knew we weren’t yet ready to get married right then, but I was confident that we would be, and confident that it was Natalie I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, share everything with, and, yes, raise children with.  But I’m happy to say the Lord has worked in us in so many ways, through several important people, particularly over the last two years.

I’m also very much looking forward to becoming an official resident of Fishers.  Don’t get me wrong – Muncie’s been great to me the last five years.  In fact, I actually have grown quite accustomed to the “small town” feel (yes, people from truly small towns: it’s a “small town” compared to what I grew up in).  I feel that I have made as much of my home as possible, particularly in the past three years since I moved into my house off campus.

But I really like the Town of Fishers. It’s located just across the county line from where I grew up (we lived literally six blocks due south of Fishers), so it’s pretty familiar. Our apartment seems nice and quite large, and I cannot wait to set up our home.

I move in six days; I have already packed most of my stuff. These next six days cannot pass quickly enough!

Ten Steps for Resolving Couple Conflict

So, let me explain… truly, don’t read too much into this.  Basically, I had this laying around my house, wanted to keep it but wanted to throw the piece of paper away, and don’t have a scanner.  Thus, I’m posting it here to save it digitally, in a sense… in the cloud, I suppose.

At the same time, it is a bit interesting, and perhaps thought-provoking.  Feel free to read and comment, as I guess I am posting this for a *little* more than just the purpose of it serving as my online backup, haha… anyway, it’s from the “PREPARE/ENRICH Program” Natalie and I did as a part of pre-marital counseling through East 91st Street Christian Church.

Ten Steps for Resolving Couple Conflict:

1. Set a time and place for discussion.
2. Define the problem or issue of disagreement.
3. How do you each contribute to the problem?
4. List past attempts to resolve the issue that were not successful.
5. Brainstorm.  List all possible solutions.
6. Discuss and evaluate these possible solutions.
7. Agree on one solution to try.
8. Agree on how each individual will work toward this solution.
9. Set up another meeting.  Discuss your progress.
10. Reward each other as you each contribute toward the solution.

Windows Computing

Okay, it’s no secret I’ve been a “PC,” a Windows user, for my whole life. I voluntarily prolonged the condition upon purchasing 3 computers for myself in the past 5 years – and building myself a fourth.  Since October 2008, I’ve been evaluating a pre-beta release of Windows 7, the upcoming major OS release from Microsoft.  Now, for about the past week, I’ve been running the official beta release of Windows 7 (build 7000) on two of my three active machines (the other is just a media center, so I feel the upgrade there is less exciting).

It rocks.  It just does.  Sure, Apple fanboys may draw comparisons to the Mac OS in a few places (the new taskbar, the Aero Peek feature, and the jump lists, to name three), but the origin of some of the design features are neither here nor there.  They are (nearly all) beautifully integrated, and almost all of the new UI features actually improve the user’s experience on a functional level – in other words, it’s mostly more than just mere eye-candy.

And yet, it’s the stuff you can’t see that really makes Windows 7 the significant improvement that it is.  The kernel has been cleaned up, from the lowest levels, and it runs much more smoothly.  It is quicker upon boot-up, and most tasks seem to run faster and more effortlessly.  Hardware recognition is even better than in Windows Vista.

While it may not be 100% perfect quite yet, Windows 7 has found itself sitting among a surprising amount of praise, including specific improvements such as its ability to run on lower-level machine better than Vista and the inclusion of an awesome, troubleshooting “Problem Steps Recorder.”  When the production version of Windows 7 comes out, as with Vista when it was new, I don’t necessarily recommend everyone plop down the $200-300 to buy themselves a brand-new copy.  But for anyone upgrading a PC or buying a new one, Windows 7 is sure to improve their computing experience a lot.

Musings on the Electoral College

Since last night I have been planning on writing a post regarding the electoral college.  First, I should clarify that I am not writing this as a frustrated McCain voter or something; I’m well aware that Obama won both the popular vote and the projected electoral college vote.  So this is not at all based on my feelings on the outcome of the election.  Instead, it is based on some conversations I’ve had with friends in recent weeks about what might happen should the popular vote once again be very close, particularly if the electoral count should also be very close (or tied).

However, I’ll admit that I’m not writing what I had generally been planning on writing. My thoughts lately have been that the electoral college system is antiquated and needs to be done away with.  But, in order to be fair and accurate in my writing, I did some research before beginning to write.  I now have a renewed confidence in our Founding Fathers and the work they put into crafting our Constitution and the wonderful federation that we call the United States of America.

The electoral college (which was not originally given that now-common name) was chosen to solve several problems, a few of which I will enumerate.

1. Around 4 million people were spread sparsely throughout the eastern seaboard, and the communication methods of the day made it very difficult for a candidate to be truly known by all voters.
2. Candidates did not run campaigns as we know them.
3. The USA is a federation, under the concept of federalism; thus, the Framers were wary of anything that would risk a national mindset superceding that of the individual states.
4. Also due to the small number of original states and their sparse populations and lack of communication, it was feared that each state’s voters would only vote for a local candidate; they feared, potentially, 13 different candidates each receiving a small portion of the popular vote, which would cause a useless outcome with no majority.
5. Additionally, many voters did not feel that they were qualified or knowledgeable enough to effectively vote, so it was felt that it would be better to elect a small number of knowledgeable, trustworthy people to then gather and select a president.

These reasons all make much sense, but all of them except number 3 are now irrelevant, as we now have a very different population and population spread, and the candidate and campaign situations are entirely different.  So why shouldn’t we get rid of the electoral college system and just go to a popular vote-based election?  Here are some common arguments for doing just that.

1. If we’re electing the federal president, not a state representative, then why don’t we just use the popular vote tally?
2. We no longer have a lack of communication nationwide.
3. The two-party system, for better or for worse, has made it such that, in reality, only two candidates have a real shot of winning on election day, so there’s essentially no chance that each state’s voters will just vote for their state’s person and no majority will be reached.
4. Because we are a more connected society than 200 years ago, where we frequently cross state lines for commerce and pleasure, state delineations seem to have less importance.

These were some of my own arguments.  I basically said, “the electoral college made sense 200 years ago when communication and campaigns were very different, but there’s no reason we can’t directly elect our president.”

Nonetheless, after my research today, I was reminded of the place of federalism in all this.  We are taught far too little about federalism in school, so many are not familiar with what federalism is and why our Constitution is based on entirely on the ideas of federalism.

Everything in our government is set up as a balance between state and federal power.  The Congress is half based on states (Senate) and population (House).  Likewise, our presidential elections are also a combination: a popular vote in each state (rather than by county or city or such) determines the candidate for whom the proportionate number of electors are named (based upon a combination of the number of seats in the House and the Senate, and three in the case of the District of Columbia).

All said, the electoral college needs to stay.  It’s not perfect; it’s government.  However, it’s the best compromise that will continue to allow our government to be most effectively selected.  By its citizens and its states, both of which are equally important.

For a much more thorough explanation of the electoral college, read the excellent article I read through the Federal Election Commission website: http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf

Pride is a Killer

So, this has been a bit of a tough week for me... for so many reasons.  It's also been a great week, for some of the same reasons, frankly.  All details aside, let's just say I've had a couple significant blows to my ego.

I have no great thoughts to impart here, but just allow me to say, pride can be a killer, and it can be so easily a problem without even realizing it.  If you had asked me two weeks ago if I had a problem with pride, I would have said no way; sure, I can be a little arrogant on a small thing or two here or there, but I have no significant problem.  Unfortunately, I have learned that's not the case.  Actually, though it's unfortunate that it's been the case, I'm very glad that I found it out now, before any more time went by.