Almost no progress on my program yesterday but I am grateful that after a day of struggles, some progress was made at the end and the way seems clear to moving forward today.
Grateful for a beautiful wife.
Happy I can work today. Who wants to retire anyway?
Reading Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan and it has convinced me to start my own journal.
Doug Simpson had a stroke and died Saturday, so I am the last survivor of Peterson and Simpson and just grateful to be alive.
Mitt Romney voted to convict Donald Trump last week so I am grateful that there are still a few in the world who act upon their principles.
I am very proud of all my children and grandchildren.
This last week we saw the Tom Hanks movie about Fred Rogers called A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The movie was not so much entertainment as an argument for the proposition that all God’s children have value. This is surprising on at least two fronts: first because it has been a long standing principle that good literature should not be didactic and second because our culture is based on the principle of survival of the fittest. Nietzsche taught that the mass of humans were merely the pot of mush out of which the übermensch occasionally bubbled. We honor this doctrine everywhere in our society by our quest to be the best.
Fred Rogers was portrayed as a meek and unlikely hero for believing and teaching children and adults of all kinds to value themselves and others.
Mathew 11:
28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
I am back from Oracle Open World. My favorite key note speaker was Dr. Kirk Borne who spoke about data analysis. He emphasized the practically infinite potential open to programmers. He also talked about the iterative process which is programming, comparing it to life itself. Fail fast and move forward. A corollary to this I learned from my own recent experience: you must not obsess about the failures. It stifles further progress. Past perfection is not the goal.
In preparation for my upcoming trip to Open World I thought I would say hello. My employment with Peterson and Nykamp will be ending in a form of retirement on October 1, 2019. From that date forward I will devote myself to marketing the marvelous case management program that I have been developing for the last 30 years.
I celebrated my 74th birthday on August 2nd. Some two years have lapsed since my last post. I have been busy programming, among other things. My skills with SQL, WebLogic Application Server and Oracle JDeveloper have improved. I can no longer run for exercise because of arthritis in my knee, but I am still alive and hope to be able to remember to post occasionally.
Last night my wife, the Edingtons and I saw a movie called “The Man Who Knew Infinity.” It was a biopic about the Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, who got his mathematics by direct revelation, and his mentor at Trinity College, England, G. H. Hardy, who got his by shear plod. The impression I got from the movie was that Hardy was playing to his peers and saw as the highpoint the elevation of Ramanujan to the Trinity College Fellowship, while Ramanujan saw as his purpose the bringing of something new and beautiful into the world. It caused me to reflect on how the progress of knowledge is often hindered by peer review, rather than advanced. The other case that comes to mind is the failure of scholars to decipher the Mayan language until the death of the leading scholar in the field, whose prevailing theories were all wrong.
I would have posted from our hotels in Jericho and Jerusalem, but the internet connections were very bad. Obviously there were many sights and events to comment on during our visits to the Jordan River, Masada, the Dead Sea, and the many sites in Jerusalem. I will comment on only one here: In Jerusalem, we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is built on the traditional site of Jesus’ burial. The Church is administered by at least three different Christian religions and is very old, although it has been destroyed and restored several times. The grave site has been chiseled away and replaced by an enclosed shrine in the middle of the church. The only part of the original grave remaining is the stone floor. The inside of the shrine is very small, accommodating only four persons at a time. The walls are covered with pictures and icons from the middle ages. To enter the shrine, you had to wait in a long line. In front of us in the line were several ladies who were obviously devout and appeared to be from an eastern European county.
The reason I mention all of this, even though I tend to agree with those who hold that this is not the site of the actual sepulcher where Jesus was buried, is to reflect admiringly on the priest who sat at the opening to the shrine, admitting only four persons at a time. He had the unenviable task of encouraging the four persons in the shine to leave after what I estimated to be about twenty seconds. The next four could not enter until the last four had left. Devout ladies who have traveled a long distance and endured a long wait and who are finally worshiping prostrate before the stone floor must be convinced to leave the shrine. The priest carried out his office with the perfect blend of authority and kindness. I could imagine him there hour after hour, day after day, maintaining that perfect tone for an everlasting line of visitors who are perfect strangers to him. A miracle for which any who wish to visit the shrine in the future should be grateful.
We sailed on the sea of Galilee this morning. One of our passengers jumped in. We visited Magdela where a tall attractive woman minister showed us the recently discovered synagogue where Jesus undoubtedly taught and enacted for us the reading of the verse from Isiah where Isaiah describes the Messiah as one who frees the captives. She sang it is Hebrew. She was standing’s in the remains of the synagogue where Jesus taught and singing the verse. It was marvelous. She also described the alter where the chariots of fire are depicted as four wheels. But the best thing she did was show us the ancient Mikvah where the Jews were ritually cleansed by immersing in water. She said that this pre-christian ritual was described by the ancients as a tomb and a womb, and was common long before john the Baptist. No Mormon could have preached a better baptism by immersion sermon.
We then visited Capernaum where Peter and Jesus lived. Dan Peterson described it as the headquarters of the Church in its small provincial beginnings, much like the latter-day Church. We talked about Peter’s transformation from a small town fisherman to a world force as a testimony of Peter’s conviction that Jesus truly was the Savior of the world. I couldn’t help comparing it to the transformation that Brigham Young experienced.
We are now in a Hotel in Jericho which is in the sector controlled by the Palestinian authority. I remember the day in New York where I invited the Palestinian representative to the UN to come as our guest to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular and the Iranian Ambassador, who was standing there saying that he too would like to come, which I then also arranged and they both came.
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