SilentGap

Ok, as you may know, I’ve been really interested in my shed project this year. One thing that’s been on my mind (well, at least I’ve been thinking about it) is electricity, more specifically, how do I get electricity out to my shed. I do have a 220 outlet already routed outside from an old hot tub (cue SNL’s hot tub skit – classic), installed by the previous owner. But where’s the fun in that, for me that involves more digging, which isn’t exactly what I would call a good time.

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Ok, so i came across this site in a magazine (yeah, that’s right, i was reading something that wasn’t online – it had ton’s of art and pictures in it) called http://www.mono-1.com/monoface. If you’ve never been there before, i suggest you stop by when you get a break in the action. You can spend an endless amount of time trying to come up with different faces. Below is a screenshot of one that i came up with.

Tim Schoffelman of SilentGap

What will it take? Are we going to continue to fly by the seat of our pants?

Too many times in the church i’ve seen people, pastors, lay personnel, Christians, opt to take the shorter route to success. And and too many times i’ve seen that route (really it’s a mentality), fail. fail. fail.

How desperately we need competent people in the Body of Christ, but more importantly, how desperately we need the leadership to understand it won’t come without sacrifice in training. I’ve heard many say thing’s like, “we just need to believe that God will send us the right person who will just get it” (with IT (not to confuse IT with I.T.) being whatever the need happens to be at the time).

At first, when involved with the ministry, I heard my mentors say these things and I would get a check in my conscience about it, but i’d dismiss it and tell myself “Well, they’re anointed by God, they also must be wise” (Hmmmm – this statement can easily be misinterpreted as something other than being honest, be careful you don’t).

I would think to myself “Well, fine, let’s pray that the good Lord send us those people & not only pray but believe. However, until that time, we have a perfect opportunity to train the people God has give us”.

Well, 15 or so years have passed since I first heard this statement and i’ve seen no one come through the door that meet’s the leaderships expectations. But, I have seen many many people walk through the door of the church, wanting to be plugged in, wanting to be guided, directed, trained and equipped. Yet, the statements from the leadership have continued.

One could say, “Well, we’re still standing by faith”. And I think to myself, “If we wouldn’t of been waisting time complaining that God hasn’t sent us anyone, and instead spent that time training people, where would we be”? Well, we’d at least have a few people equipped and ready.

What conclusions can we draw from this? We, we can certainly jump to conclusions (insert movie line from Office Space – Jump to Conclusions mat), but we need something a little more concrete than conclusions.

#1. Admit we’ve dropped the ball and be honest with ourselves and with others
#2. Don’t dwell on the past but move on towards progress
#3. We could use a plan of action & a belief and hope that we’ll be led by the Lord
#4. We need the leadership to teach, train and quip, not tell, manipulate and then complain when there’s no results
#5. We need not fear failure, but embrace the lessons learned with what doesn’t work

Now, this post purposefully leaves out the practical steps, and instead is meant to bring awareness to step #1.

The issue is not that one person is dropping the ball, but rather that many are choosing to not step up to the plate. We then lie to ourselves about why we’re not stepping up, why we’re not taking responsibilities for our actions (or rather in-actions).

Even if you think I’m off my rocker, let me know. I rather be corrected and move towards the right direction, then just sit, complain and never try anything.

Scriptures: Matthew9:9-12, 35-38 && Matt 10:1 && Matt 13:1-9 && Matt 17:14-20
I’ve got more, but I figured Book of Matthew would be a good start & you can look for the rest yourself.

Tim Schoffelman of SilentGap

Alright, so at work, what started out as a conversation about getting internet access on dial-up with a windows ‘98 machine (sorry Karla, for having to endure the pain of messing with Win ‘98, much less Win ‘98 on dialup), ended up with the subject of a “cantenna“.

A cantenna is a directional waveguide antenna for long-range Wi-Fi used to increase the range of (or snoop on) a wireless network.

What would be fun is to have a competition to build one of these things and see how far away you could be away from a wireless access point and still load a page like Google. Build one you say? Yes – check out the “How to build a tin can waveguide WiFi antenna” for a blueprint of sorts.

The problem I run into is justifying breaking into my WiFi card, and voiding the warranty. Esp. when my home mac already has a wireless card built into it. Anyone have a cheap laptop and WiFi card I could ruin for this experiment (my boy and I (when old enough) will have a lot of fun building things like this (well at least I imagine we will))?

Tim Schoffelman of SilentGap