After flying through Newark rush hour traffic and weaving through the parking lot that is Route 80, Dahlia was born in Denville today at 7:34 PM, weighing in at 7lbs, 8oz and was 19 and a quarter inches long. Both mom and baby are doing just fine. Pictures, soon. 
Update: Pictures here.
Well, there’s probably not much time now, but I did find a fantastic Wordpress “plugin for polls”:http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/ online and just _had_ to post a baby poll.
So, what do you think? Boy or girl (or, um, other)? Register your answer at right!
So, Sarah’s been having light contractions this morning. Could be nothing, or could be the big day — not sure yet. I’ve put our Twitter feed up front and center, and I’ll be sending updates via my cell. Pretty exciting!
*Update:* Because Kyleen asked, and the initial adrenaline rush has died down a bit, a Twitter is a text message sent to “this website”:http://twitter.com. Actually, technically they call it a Tweet, but whatever. Anyway: that text message gets updated on “my profile page”:http://twitter.com/kenwalker, and we can pull it into this site through some RSS magic. Oh, and, if you _really_ want to-the-minute updates, you can create a Twitter account and make me a “friend.” Then my messages will go straight to your cell phone.
I wonder if we’re the first to ever Twitter a birth…
We’ve officially launched a few new features at The Village Church site. Specifically:
* *Comments and pingbacks!* Taking question authority online — make your voice heard
* *Ratings!* Similar to rating movies on “Netflix”:http://netflix.com or digging a news article on “Digg”:http://digg.com — tell us what you like
* *Manuscripts!* All of the wit and wisdom of ??Sam Andreades?? in print — our podcast is now much more Google-friendly
I’m hoping we can overhaul some of the sermon and news archives in the near future. And, we’re also launching a secret project in April. Stay tuned.
Last night’s fortune cookie, and I kid you not:
A friend will bring you a big surprise soon.
How do they _do_ that?
*Him:* (comes through the door, singing) She _blinded_ me with science!
*Her:* …
*Him:* You know, I love that you’re so unimpressed with me.
*Her:* Really?
*Him:* Sure. It keeps me honest.
We’re on the verge of a 1.0 release. Hours of planning, designing and coding over the past few weeks have produced a usable product, and we’ll be launching this week. Along with the _other_ priority I’ve had over the past nine months, it’s been, uh, a bit of a tough go. Deadlines and constraints have a funny way of eliciting a sort of desperate creativity. As they say in the business, “shipping a 1.0 product isn’t going to kill you, but it will try.”:http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/04/20/10.html
Writing code for the first time is usually a painfully clumsy experience — sketchy objects, redundant variables, wantonly inefficient loops. I’m keenly aware that there are thousands of people who can code better than I can; I imagine them standing over my shoulder, quietly shaking their heads. As I started writing significant portions of the code, I heard these words bubble up from the back of my mind:
Give yourself permission to do it wrong the first time.
So I did. One ugly portion at a time: design, build, test, demo, refine. Once it was good enough (read: _barely working_), move on to the next piece: design, build, test, demo, refine. After a while, it became test, demo, refine, refine, refine. Then: refine, refine, refine, refine, refine. Suddenly it occurs to you in the middle of a demo: wow, everything just worked.
That’s how we did it. We didn’t write any requirements-gathering documents. We didn’t build out a massive infrastructure. There were no draconian change processes or review committee meetings. Just a few clever ideas and a lot of “getting real”:http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php.
Doing it all wrong — that’s exactly how we’re going to ship on Friday.
Sometimes, it’s like this:
People in this town drink too much
coffee. They’re jumpy all the time. You
see them drinking out of their big plastic
mugs while they’re driving. They cut in
front of you, they steal your parking places.
Teenagers in the cemeteries knocking over
tombstones are slurping café au lait.
Recycling men hanging onto their trucks are
sipping espresso. Dogcatchers running down
the street with their nets are savoring
their cups of mocha java. The holdup man
entering a convenience store first pours
himself a nice warm cup of coffee. Down
the funeral parlor driveway a boy on a
skateboard is spilling his. They’re so
serious about their coffee, it’s all they
can think about, nothing else matters.
Everyone’s wide awake but looks incredibly
tired.— “A New Lifestyle” by ??James Tate??
Hear ??Garrison Keillor?? “read it here”:http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/02/26/. Reprinted in anticipation of a cease & desist from the publisher.
??Jode Poley?? (“Existential Stillborn”:http://existential-stillborn.net/) and ??Darin Pesnell?? (“Peznet”:http://peznet.net) join me for a discussion about what makes a successful small group ministry (Ironworks 1.0 was our college small group back in the day). Big ups to Vessel for use of the intro.
*Ironworks Gang Drinking Game*: Do a shot for every time we use the phrase “There’s a sense where…”
We’re still playing with the format. The next podcast will likely include more awkward silences. And I won’t talk, I’ll just tell horrible jokes. And laugh at them. The whole time.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
