I am a weak Christian, who attends a large Church of Christ (liberal branch). I pray every night with my children, whenever I feel desperate, and occasionally when the wonder of life overwhelms me. I worship most Sundays, unless there is an emergency or an implementation at work. I have ranged from a devout Catholic, to an agnostic, to an atheistic, to a devout Protestant, back through agnosticism and atheism to where I am today. Like Thomas, I doubt. Unlike Thomas I have not seen the holes in His hands, so I still doubt. I am not asking for a miracle, but I would not be offended to witness one. In this blog I hope to mention God every so often.
I am a husband to my wife.
I am a father to my daughters.
I am a son to my parents.
I am a brother to my brother and my youngest sister, and will be to my oldest sister if she ever ends her self-imposed exile.
I am a friend to my friends, although you wouldn't know it considering how much time I spend at work lately. Luckily I've made some new friends at work.
I read compulsively.
I provide Production Support for a small part of a large software system.
I believe in objective truth.
I believe opinions are easy, but truth is hard.
I think rusty barges are beautiful.
I am an American citizen.
I am a Republican, but I used to be a Democrat. I was a liberal, but then they changed what liberal means.
I supported the war in Iraq after a long bout of indecisiveness. Stephen Den Beste helped me decide the war was a good idea. Jerry Pournelle made me worry it was not.
I believe in human rights.
I believe that the right to bear arms is a human right. I used to believe in gun-control because I was worried about crime, but I worried about it because I always believed that self-defense was a basic human right. Now I know that gun control is wrong, my worries were right, and that disarming responsible people does not decrease crime, it increases it.
I like to target shoot, especially with pistols.
I believe Bill Maher is wrong about many things, but not Political Correctness.
I believe Social Security is a ponzi scheme which would have worked fine (other than the socialism) if we had kept having lots of kids and stopped improving our health care system. Now it is the main way for people to vote themselves more money.
I believe in fiscal responsibility.
I believe the welfare system had the unfortunate side-effect of keeping at least some people down and poor, but I know that it has helped some folks. I believe that Capitalism is the worst system imaginable for the poor, ecology and the human race, except for all the others we've tried.
I am a sports fan.
I love to write, which is the main reason I blog. I do hope people read this stuff, though. I want my wife to read it, my children to read it someday, my parents to read it, my siblings to read it, my other relatives and my friends to read it. I hope that some of the people who write the blogs I love will read it. I trust that God has read and is reading it. That worries me a little, especially with a piece as egotistical as this one.
I think it was Annika who said she wouldn't read a blog without an "About Me" section. Well now I have one.
