My CMS The View from a New City

At Doug’s funeral, yesterday, we heard a lot about golf, which was Doug’s favorite pastime. Doug’s sons praised him for the amount of time he was willing to spend with them, but a lot was said about the time he spent playing golf. Death puts things in perspective, so I wondered what the total of Doug’s golf scores amounted to now. The same thing can be said about almost every human activity.

The phrase at the conclusion of the Lord’s prayer, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” reminds me that temporal success is like building sand castles on the beach. Real progress lies elsewhere.

I am grateful for some perspective.

After two or more days of frustration, today was one of progress. I connected Visual Builder to my always free database, created five applications, initialized Developer Cloud Service and saved all the applications to github.

75 and still alive.

Not just grateful, but grateful to God.

Saw the movie tonight. Hard to see a moral in that story. Too many villains. Not enough purpose.

Still struggling with program. One of these day there will be a breakthrough.

Grateful for my conviction that the world’s story will end with a reckoning and justice for all.

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.

https://www.oracle.com/code-one/

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.