Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

Yesterday afternoon, the boy wanted a “popcircle” (Popsicle). We’ve been working on getting him to say “please” and “thank you” when asking for something, so when he came up and said “I wanna popcircle”, we said “say please”. Now, you or I would simply turn around and without really thinking about it say “I want a popsicle, please” and we’d get one. Not the boy, no way, no how was he going to say please. “I don’t wanna say please!”, “I wanna popcircle!”, accompanied by screaming, collapsing on the floor and just generally throwing a fit. And every time he’d scream “I wanna popcircle!”, we’d calmly tell him, “say please”, at which point a fresh round of screaming and flailing would ensue. This went on for a couple of hours (being a horrible father, I took video of him for a couple of minutes) and he never did say please. He also never got his “popcircle”.

The point of this is, I wonder if sometimes God doesn’t feel like Kara and I did. He wants to give us good gifts and to bless us, but we just won’t ask in the right way. We refuse to say please (figuratively) and scream and throw ourselves on the floor when He doesn’t do things our way, right away. Maybe if we took to heart James 4:3 and stopped asking for things with the wrong motives, God would be willing to cheerfully grant our requests. So, the next time you’re asking God for something, examine your heart and determine why you’re really asking. And always say please.

I’ve been trying to put together a new mix CD for Kara each year with an assortment of love songs and such. And trying to do it without repeating more than one or two songs from the previous year.

This year’s Valentine playlist (try to pin down my musical tastes from THIS list..):

1. Wished For You – Squirrel Nut Zippers
2. And I Love Her – Beatles
3. Can’t Get Enough of You, Baby – Smashmouth
4. What I like About You – Romantics
5. The Promise – When In Rome
6. My Girl – The Mamas & The Poppas
7. I Will Be There – Phil Keaggy
8. L.O.V.E. – Nat “King” Cole
9. MonsterTruck 2000 – This Train
10. (Tell Me) Everything About You – Undercover
11. I Want To Hold Your Hand – Beatles
12. I Love You – Pep Squad
13. Together – Bon Voyage
14. I Will Be Here – Steven Curtis Chapman
15. You Are Mine – Mute Math
16. Take My Hand – Dido
17. Truly Madly Deeply – Savage Garden
18. Kiss Me – Sixpence, None the Richer
19. Then I Met You – The Proclaimers
20. Let’s Face The Music – Taco
21. You Are Everything – The Stylistics
22. Anniversary Song – Cowboy Junkies

I don’t really do a lot of reviews (actually lately, haven’t been writing much of anything here, need to change that), but decided that since the Twikini folks are offering a free copy of their software (which isn’t all that expensive anyway, $4.95 for individual use or $9.95 for businesses) in exchange for reviews, good or bad, I thought I’d give it a shot. Twikini is a Twitter client, if you don’t know what Twitter is, just go ahead and skip the rest of this, because it won’t mean anything to you. Ok, now that the non-twitter literate people have left the room, on to the review.

I’ve tried nearly all the Windows Mobile Twitter clients, PockeTwit, TinyTwitter, and of course, Twikini and Twikini is the only one I keep coming back to. It’s not any one feature that does it, but rather a combination of things. It’s fast, frugal with memory and pleasant to look at, a nearly unbeatable combination. It has all the standard features of a normal twitter client: friends timeline, reply timeline, favorites, public timeline. It doesn’t support search as far as I’ve been able to divine. It has the fairly unique feature of allowing you to tweet the current song playing in Windows Media Player, not useful to me, but I’m sure it is to someone. The geolocation feature is the only one that’s ever gotten my address right based on my GPS coordinates. When tweeting it supports shortening URLs and posting pictures via TwitPic as well as adding your location from the GPS.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s fast, stable and doesn’t take up a ton of memory, three things that are important on a WinMo device.

And no, it’s not that we eat Irish babies. It’s more along the lines of a solution to the whole same sex marriage conundrum. It’s actually very simple: separate the sacred and the secular. Essentially you would end up with the secular “domestic partnership” and the sacred “marriage”. Existing marriages would be grandfathered in, but all new marriages, as performed by a religious organization, would require a separate domestic partnership agreement to be executed by the couple and filed with a government official. This would not involve any ceremony, merely the signing and filing of a document with a local government (county clerk or equivalent), much the same as a marriage license currently. Upon execution of this document, a couple would be legally considered domestic partners. If they then choose to formalize this partnership into a marriage, that would be the responsibility of the religious organization of their choice. By separating the sacred and secular aspects of the marriage, it makes clear that a church could not be forced to perform a marriage that goes against their beliefs. It also answers the problem of special treatment for male/female couples by treating all couples wishing to establish a domestic partnership in exactly the same way.

A lake without an outlet dies, think of the Dead Sea, Great Salt Lake or the Salton Sea. All that pours into it remains even as the water evaporates away, leaving only pollution and corruption fit for nothing. Even so a Christian must constantly pour themselves out to others and accept an inflow from God to cleanse the pollution of the world from their hearts.

IMAGE_040.jpg

Originally uploaded by Jim Nutt

He’s getting to be such a big boy now. This is his second haircut and it definitely makes him look like a toddler, not a baby. It’s fun to watch him walk (unsteadily) around the house, chasing whatever animal is in front of him at any given time.

It hardly seems possible, but Kara and I just celebrated our third anniversary yesterday (July 21st). It seems as we’ve known each other forever, but also as though we’ve only been together for months. I suppose that’s the mark of a good relationship, eh? And now we have a beautiful 14 month old son who keeps us very busy as well. I took the day off work and we had a picnic and went geocaching. Kara had never been and it was fun, even in the rain. Timothy certainly enjoyed being out in the woods and we found some local parks we didn’t know about. It was just a nice relaxing day and we’re looking forward to many more anniversaries in the future.

I’ve had a very frustrating few months at work. My current project is WCF and WSE 3.0 interoperability using SAML tokens for authentication (if you don’t know what any of those are, just skip those post). The initial problem was that WCF was failing to load the SAML token from the messsage, I discovered that the SAML tokens issued by WSE aren’t quite standard and was able to adjust. Next, it couldn’t validate the digital signature on the token. This turned out to be a configuration problem, again, make adjustments and move on. Now we’re onto the real problem, WCF won’t validate a message signature when the message is signed using a SAML token. It knows about the SAML token, it’s decrypted the key information embedded in the token, it just won’t use it for message signature validation. The one useful response I’ve gotten to the problem on the MSDN forums is that WCF is treating the SAML token as a secondary token and therefore won’t use it for signature validation. The question I have is “Why?”, why would the SAML token be considered the secondary token when it’s the only token in the message!? So, if anybody out there stumbles across this post and has an answer, please let me know in the comments!

Out for a Ride

Originally uploaded by Jim Nutt

They grow up so fast. We had pictures taken for Easter on Friday and this is one of the shots. He’s really enjoying that horse! What you don’t see is Daddy standing very close to make sure he doesn’t ride the horse right off the table he’s standing on. Looking at this picture, it’s hard to believe that only 10 months ago he was utterly helpless and dependent on us for everything. Now we’re lucky if he’ll let us cuddle with him before we put him to bed at night.

Our ‘new’ car, a 2002 Buick Rendezvous. More precisely it’s Kara’s new car, I don’t get to drive it much….

The site may be a bit flakey this weekend as we’re going to be changing our hosting. Things should be back to normal by Monday.

Update 2008-07-05: We actually did do the host move this weekend, other things intervened until then.

Sourdough Bread

Originally uploaded by Jim Nutt

It’s been a bit since I’ve baked bread. When I moved to NY from Boston (and got married… and bought a house… and had a kid…) the starter got neglected and eventually was thrown out (basically, it starved to death). So, a few weeks ago I decided it was time to get a new starter going and I decided to “kick start” it with some scrapings from my proofing cloths. Lo and behold it worked wonderfully and the starter kicked off in record time. And here are the results, some lovely, very tasty, sourdough boules and a small loaf (there were two loaves, but…). It’s really easy to make sourdough bread, it just takes some time and I’ve found that the key to a really good crust is to put a quarter sheet pan of water on the lowest rack in the oven. Keep water in the pan so that the oven is nice and steamy. I bake at 500 degrees (F) and it only takes about 25 minutes per boule. The recipe is pretty straightforward as well, nothing but flour, starter, a pinch or two of salt and a bit of olive oil on the hands as I knead the dough.

It’s been a long month and we covered a lot of miles (more than 5800 in fact), but we’re finally home! All the animals are healthy (if a bit peeved by our long absence) and the house is still standing. It’s good to be home, the trip was fun, but it was beginning to get a bit old. I think we want to try and find a motor home before we do this again.

Here’s roughly the route we’ve taken (and will be taking) on this trip. It’s a long way, but we’ve had fun so far and TJ has done very well.

Well, we’ve survived two weeks on the road with a three month old, only two more to go. We’re currently in Colorado, enroute to Phoenix after spending time in Rapid City, we’re taking our time across Colorado, enjoying the trip and not pushing too hard.

One of the things I love about my job is that I can do it pretty much from anywhere. So, today I’m sitting in a Panera bread in Sioux Falls, SD about 1300 miles from where I live. And I’m getting quite a bit done! Tuesday I was actually working whilst traveling down I-90 at about 70 mph (and no, I wasn’t driving!), modern technology is a wonderful thing. On the downside, it tends to mean that I’m available to work 24/7/365 and that I sometimes let work escape its cage and interfere with the rest of my life. But I try to keep that the exception and not the rule. In any case, we’ve just about finished week one of Baby Tour 2007 and I’m happy to report that things are going well, TJ is becoming a seasoned traveler and, while he doesn’t necessarily enjoy the car seat, doesn’t seem to mind it too much (unless he has a dirty diaper, in which case, find an exit fast!). We’ve made the Nutt family reunion in Monroe, visited cousins in Wisconsin and now are visiting friends in Sioux Falls, next stop is Rapid City, then off to Phoenix to see my family. From there, things get a bit fuzzy as the itinerary isn’t set in stone yet, but it involves Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Pennsylvania and possibly Kentucky (whew!).

Timothy @ 3 Months

Originally uploaded by Jim Nutt

It’s amazing the difference 3 months can make. He’s gone from being completely helpless to only mostly helpless! We’re getting ready to take him on the road tomorrow and will be gone nearly a month, so it should be interesting to see how he changes in that period.

Daddy’s Hand

Originally uploaded by Jim Nutt.

This is how I want to clutch onto God’s hand, always knowing that He’s there protecting and watching over me, even when I’m oblivious to His presence. I truly believe that the relationship between a parent and child is just a pale reflection of our relationship with God, we can never love as deeply as He, but He gives us children so that we have some basic understanding of His heart for us.

Timothy James Nutt

Originally uploaded by Jim Nutt.

was born by c section today at 4:19 pm. He weighed in at 8lbs 4oz. Baby is great, but Mom is a bit groggy.

Well, we’re at the hospital serving an eviction notice on the kid. Since he’s showing no inclination to come out on his own, we’ve called in the sheriff (ob/gyn) to get him out. So, hopefully, we’ll have a baby tomorrow.