All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Finished w/ the LotR books!

Purdy on 2002-01-28T17:13:02

In the middle of last week, I finally finished all of the LotR books, starting off with the Hobbit and ending the Return of the King (I didn't read the last third of the RotK book, which is wholly comprised of Appendices).

Now I'm reading Grendel, by John Gardner, which is the tale of Beowolf from the perspective of Grendel (the monster). A co-worker recommended it and it's an easy read, but so far, I find it very carnal and not very entertaining. May switch back to reading the rest of the C.S. Lewis books.

In other news, Casey & I found a church! After two years of searching, we've finally found a "home base". It really makes a lot of difference, we've found and I look forward to participating more & more.

Our home is coming along - it's passed the halfway point now - only about 2 more months to go! They're right at the point of insulating the house. After that, it's sheet-rock time and then after that, the 45-day countdown starts and I can FINALLY lock into those awesome mortgage rates! :)

Jason

UT & S

jhi on 2002-01-28T18:32:03

I would suggest reading next the Unfinished Tales, and then the Silmarillion. Silmarillion may be hard reading, it's rather different in tone and style, but then you'll get sense of the whole vast canvas. UT is fascinating background essays.

I Liked Grendel

chaoticset on 2002-01-28T20:19:36

It was all right. Not something I'd pick up and re-read for fun, but worth going through once.

churches and more

geoff on 2002-01-28T21:06:24

about the only thing more difficult than finding a church that you are comfortable with is finding another theist in our little sphere of programmers :)

Re:churches and more

Purdy on 2002-01-29T13:52:05

*LOL* - yeah, I hold out hope that there are others with my Christian beliefs. Failing that, I hope that I can serve others in answering their questions about Christianity and such. Granted, I'm not that experienced, but over time, that will change. :)

Why are theists (or more specifically, Christians) so rare amongst programmers? A lot of folks on this journal system are in the UK, which as a country has more than half (maybe even three-quarters) of its population agnostic or atheist.

Another way to look at it would be that programming is simply logic and those who love logic can easily come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist by applying their own sense of logic ("I don't have a relationship with God, so therefore he doesn't exist." [which some of your own family/friends may be striken to find out that you don't exist then, either - since you & I don't {really} have a relationship and therefore, you must not exist]).

Don't really want to start a "crusade" or anything, especially since I don't have the answers, but rest assured that I don't look down or judge anyone that doesn't hold my own beliefs - I'm a little more open-minded than that. ;)

Jason