I still don't see how any kind of bailout will help the
situation. I'm willing to take the loss in value of my house so that my kids
can afford a house near us. It's a great time to consider buying a new house in Happy Valley.
Tuesday, I went to a computer meeting and ended up talking about God's law and post-millennialism with an old co-worker.
Wednesday, I went to Salem to attend an Oregon State Board of Education Online Learning Subcommittee meeting.
Wednesday night I meet with some guys and got to share the beauty of our worship of God and the privilege it is to come to the Table and commune with the God of the universe.
Thursday, I went to an OCEANetwork Web Team meeting and also talked about post-millennialism and God's eventual victory and how bad the "end times" doctrine is.
Friday, I got to do projects around the house with Nathaniel.
Saturday, we had my cousin and his family over and we talked about homeschooling, which they are excited about despite our extended family being so pro government school. We also talked about the Covenant, infant baptism and God's kingdom.
7/8/08 - Steptoe Butte, Washington
7/24/08 - Joel Building, Spokane, Washington
7/12/08 - Newt Gingrich isn't painting a pretty picture...
7/8/08 - Our Forth of July Trip
- Thursday work till midnight
- Friday up at 5 AM, pack and leave for Garfield, WA
- Friday picnic at park
- Friday bar-b-q at Donna's
- Friday mortars
- Friday fireside
- Saturday breakfast
- Saturday Steptoe Butte, Car Farm, Kamiac Butte
- Grandpa visit
- Drive to Spokane, WA
- Grandma visit
- Jo visit till 12:30 AM
- The Four Square church
- Church bar-b-q
- Keith family visit
- Arrive home at 10:30 PM
5/3/08 - The Lyons Family, Spring 2008
In early May we took a family vacation to the Oregon Coast. Eli, Amanda, Joshua and Lucy got to come with us.
3/26/08 - Court of Appeal Grants Petition for Re-hearing
While this is a great first step homeschool freedom in California still needs to be protected. A Re-hearing means homeschooling in California is still in
jeopardy. If you haven't joined HSLDA you should.
Join now.
3/14/08 - Sign Petition to Support Homeschool Freedom in California
Home School Legal Defense Association is collecting signatures about the homeschooling decision in California. Please sign the HSLDA petition. It could affect the future rights for homeschoolers across the U.S.
They are hoping that the California Supreme Court will just declare the decision invalid.
I would also urge you to become a member of HSLDA for the following reasons:
HSLDA is a great cause to support.
HSLDA will represent any member homeschooling family. We never know when we may need representation.
The higher the number of member families the more influence they will have.
Government actions against any homeschooling family affects all homeschooling families.
The Court Report is a great resource for what is happening across the nation.
2/9/08 - New Math: Miles Per Dollar
I came across this article and was intrigued
with the idea. Instead of measuring fuel economy in Mile Per Gallon (MPG),
we should use Miles Per Dollar, or MPD. For example, if your car gets 20 MPG
that will translate into 7 MPD when gas is $3/gallon. When gas prices go up,
our MPD goes down. Our van (and most SUV's) get about 4 MPD. If we travel
about 20,000 miles per year that means we spent $5000 just in fuel for the
year just for one vehicle. That can be a significant portion of our incomes.
Read the full article
here.
1/21/08 - The Lyons Family, Winter 2008
8/29/07 - The Lyons Family, Summer 2007
6/23/07 - A late night meditation
For some reason God saves us then leaves us to contend with all the evil and wickedness in this world. It really doesn't seem right to me. But that is the way it is and we press on to know the truth more and more and apply it to our lives little by little, day after day. But even with all the evil, wickedness and death in the world there is peace, joy and life from God. God is love and somehow He uses sinful people to express His perfect love to one another. Somehow, in a seemingly imperfect world God is here working out His salvation in people and working to transform this world into peaceable
communities. A place where God walks with man. I can only see signs of His presence now, but someday we will see the glory of His face and the splendor of His full Kingdom. Oh what a beautiful sight that will be. Until then we struggle with the flesh to put on the righteousness of Christ and trust that He loves us and His Holy Spirit is at work in us so that we know the love of God and practice loving one another.
Oh may that day come soon!
See Part 1 and
Part 2. I came across these videos and thought I'd pass them on. In 1977 two 747's collided on the ground and 583 people died. The cause was one of the pilots attempted to
take off without permission. We have rules and laws for a reason. If we obey
the laws (God's and man's) we will live and have peace. If we as a people do
not obey the laws death and chaos will reign. James 1:25 says "But he who
looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a
forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he
does." Romans 6:23 says "the wages of sin is death." Sin is not keeping the
law of God, which brings death. God's law is liberty because it is freedom
from that which enslaves, sin. If the airplane pilot had obeyed the laws of
his trade he would have acted in love toward those on his plane and those
who were in the other plane. Certainly the pressures were unbearable to the
pilot, but the point is, we all have pressures and are tested how we will
respond. So the next time you are tested, respond in love and obey the law.
It is there for our good.
11/22/06 - Have a Very Blessed Thanksgiving!
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Matt 6:11-13 (NKJ)
11/17/06 - Restore America Conference
I went to a Post Election Pastor's and Business Leaders
Breakfast this morning (and took my pastor) and it was encouraging. My
pastor said twenty years ago there was nothing like this movement going on.
We all know the Left of our society has done a great deal to silence the
Right and make our arguments seem immaterial. We all know the problems in
our society keep getting worse. Those on the Right have just as much a right
to voice our opinions as those on the Left. We will not understand them and
they will not understand us. But that doesn't mean we pull back. It's time
to get educated with what is going on and voice our opinion at the ballot
box, in Salem, and in Washington D.C.
I received a great email from
Restore America called Voting and...The "Lesser of Two Evils". In
the email David Crowe quoted Gary Cass, the Director of Reclaiming America,
that makes a lot of sense. I always wondered how to reconcile voting for a
less preferred candidate over a preferred candidate. Cass said, “Some
Christians run for office who we love, have no money, and want us to vote
for them. They have no chance of winning, and a vote for them would have
been a vote for the worst candidate.” In other words, it's okay to support
and vote for a candidate who is not necessarily the best or preferred
choice. I have to admin, it is difficult to follow what goes on in politics
let alone get involved and actively campaign for someone who doesn't even
come close to what is my preference. But if we do not get involved
and at least be aware of what the arguments are then will continue to see
our state and nation decline. If the majority of people become irresponsible
who knows what we'll get. I'm just now beginning to realize just how high
the stakes are.
10/20/06 - House Offer
Yes, we made an offer on a house - and it was accepted! But - we were a
day too late. Turns out this house that had been on the market for over two
months just had another offer on it. Since the beat us by a day our offer
could only be accepted as a back up offer. So if you know of a 4 bedroom
house in Oregon City please let us know.
Also, from now on technical issues will be posted on my URmy.Net website
at http://www.urmy.net/.
Happy Birthday Zachary! (he's older than Google too)
9/27/06 - Happy Birthday Google!
For those of you who complain about spam, popups, spyware,
limits on the sizes of file attachments, viruses, browser vulnerabilities,
blah, blah, blah -- remember, the internet has only been available to the
general public for 10 years (in
1997 only 18% of population had access to the internet). Google is now a whopping 8 years old! It is truly
amazing how our lives are being transformed by the internet in such a short
time. I say this with great gratitude even though I lost my internet
connection for a few hours yesterday. Thankfully I could still respond to
emails on my phone and the cable guy came the same day (thanks
Comcast!). But how much more "instant
everything" do we really need?
Happy birthday Lindsey, too! (she's older than Google)
9/22/06 - I'm an eBay'r!
It's official, I'm now an eBay'r. Not wanting to sign up for a 2 year
contract with a cell phone provider I bought a phone off eBay. What a racket
eBay is, but more on that later. My plan was to take the sim card out of my
old phone and put it into the new phone. Sounds easy right? I'm not changing
providers or service plans, just phones. Okay, so I look around for where to
buy a phone without a service plan and eBay is the only place I see to buy
the phone I want. Hmm. Buying a $400 phone from who knows who and from who
knows where? I've heard the stories and I've see the weird Al eBay video.
People do this all the time though so what the heck I'll give it a try. Ah,
I see the phone I want at eBay Express, a "Buy it now" feature of eBay. I
like that. But now the seller is saying if you have zero feedback to contact
him first. Well, that is me so I send him an message. I ask why does it say
the phone comes in a "white box"? I asked because someone selling a phone
for $80 more says theirs is not a "white box" phone. The guy sends me a
message back saying "that is what it is so that is what I describe". By the
time I get back to this someone else bought the phone. So now I look at
bidding. I know how auctions work so I research who is selling the phone I
want. I check their feedback carefully. Everyone has a couple of negative
feedbacks. But most people get what they bought. Ah, finally, someone who
has less than 2% negative feedback (but also sells handbags and other items)
is coming close to the end. I wait until just a few minutes to the end and
place my bid. Boy was I excited. I bid. I bid some more. someone beats my
bid. I bid some more. With just seconds left I got out bid! Argg. By then
the phone was over $400 and after I settle down I realize I didn't want to
buy a new "as is" phone from someone who sells accessories. After spending a
day or two trying to figure all this out I buy the phone from the "Buy it
now" guy for $80 more. That's cheap compared the lost billable time!
Besides, he has a real website and offers a 14 day return policy. The return
policy could come in handy because I have an AT&T phone and service plan
which was bought by Cingular. In the off chance my AT&T sim card doesn't
work I can return the phone. Besides, they offer "free shipping". The buying
process was very straight forward. PayPal is pretty cool. Then I got a FexEx
tracking number and I could sign up for free tracking notifications. I
actually received an SMS message on my (old) phone before the FedEx guy left
Postal Annex (very cool feature). Okay, I got my phone. Charge the battery.
Put in the AT&T sim card. Argg. I get a message "Network is locked". Okay
there went a couple more days looking at service plans and contracts or
trying to get the phone unlocked. Yes, I even bought some unlocking tools
off eBay. It didn't work but the guy offered pretty good support for $2. He
probably installed some trojan or keysroke logger or something though (how
do I know?). I really wanted this phone so I called my mothers phone guy and
he had an unlocking tool that "really works". After he was through laughing
at me for spending so much time on this he took my $30 and gave me an
unlocking code. Wahoo! Now I am very happy with my
Cingular 8125 phone. I
even have 100% positive feedback on eBay!
I received my mini PEERS test results today from the
Nehemiah Institute. I didn't
do as well as I hoped I would have but at least I received a certificate
"beholding a Biblical Theistic Worldview".
The PEERS test consists of a series of statements carefully
structured to identify a person's worldview in five categories: Politics,
Economics, Education, Religion, and Social Issues (PEERS). Each statement is
framed to either agree or disagree with a biblical principle. I encourage
you to take the free mini PEERS test and let me know what your score is
(I'll tell you if you tell me!). Sorry, I don't see where the free mini
PEERS test is now. It's worth paying the $10 to know your world view bias.
So do it now!
I'm on Jury Duty this week. Yesterday was my first day as a juror. Boy,
what a learning experience.
First off, I had deferred my jury duty to the first week in September
thinking a holiday week would be shorter. What I didn't know was they also
pick the Grand Jury from the pool of jurors on the first Monday of the
month. Grand jurors serve for the entire month. At first it sounded like a
cool job assisting law enforcement and the judicial process with decisions
about whether they have enough evidence to go forward with prosecutions and
trials. But then the judge said since our county was growing (hopefully just
in numbers and not in criminal activity) that a grand juror would be needed
pretty much every day all month long. Yikes, who has that kind of
availability? Only one gal got out of that due to the financial hardship it
would cause her and her family. There was another gal who I think was a
paralegal (at least in the judicial system as a career) who tried really
hard to get out of this civic responsibility. The judge responded with the
law firm she was involved with should understand the importance of this role
and be understanding to her involvement as a grand juror. She was not able
to plead her way out.
Next (after a two hour lunch break), was jury selection for a felony
trial that would likely go through the rest of the week. After the first
round of excuses, I was number 8 outside the box. That meant that there had
to be eight people excused before I would be one of "the twelve". The
defense lawyer then spent about two hours asking all 45 jurors probing and
even very personal questions about how they might react to what amounted to
her defense of her client. It was essentially, could you believe a 14 year
old girl would lie to get some kind of gain. Maybe I should have just nodded
and said "yes, I can see that children could lie to get some kind of gain"
like everyone else. But I said we do not tolerate lying in my family. If you
allow lies you have no credibility. You have no more trust. So we make a big
deal about lying. That in itself was probably enough to get me excused, but
there were even more reasons I could not be a juror in this case. Indeed,
when the names started to be called there were eight people excused and it
was my turn to be one of "the twelve". Not surprising, my name was called
next to be excused. So I was a juror for about 30 seconds.
If our judicial system is failing it is because good people are not
involved. Besides being a civic responsibility, being a juror is a
privilege. What other country has its intent of involving the citizenry in
judicial decision making. We don't have to look far to see renegade
countries and dictators that can be accused of doing all kinds of evil and
get away with it. We, the people, have a moral responsibility to be involved
in our government, to make sure the right leaders are elected, to make sure
laws are fair and just and to make sure criminals are properly punished.
When we, the people, tolerate evil, evil will win the day. But if we, the
people, stand up and say we will not tolerate evil behavior guess what?
People would not put themselves in a position where they might get accused
of doing evil. If enough good people were there as jurors to say we do not
tolerate lying then the defense lawyer would have to go through two sets of
potential jurors making it that much more obvious she is skewing the jury to
be predisposed toward her client. This is where the jury system is failing.
I am just as much a member of our society as the next guy and if my number
gets called then that should be the jury selection. The defense should have
to live with me and my "impartiality". Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying
this guy is guilty. The other tenant of our judicial system is "innocent
until proven guilty." The prosecution will have to make its case so that the
jury decides he is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt". Just don't stack the
jury with those that doubt the words of a 14 year old girl from the start.
The Dahlin's gave Jonny a 1000 piece 'Flags of the World' puzzle. We
finished it in about a week!
8/31/06 - Birthday Celebration at Olive Garden
When a restaurant does something pleasantly unexpected its worthy of a
comment. On my birthday we went to
Olive Garden with some friends, the Dahlin's. We were just enjoying our
time of discussion, finishing up our soup and salad, when the manager came
to our table and said our dinners were going to be delayed and that they
would take care of us with some complimentary deserts. I had realized we
were pretty much done with our soup and salad and at prior visits our
dinners would have been there by then. But it didn't seem terrible delayed
at the time. Maybe we were just having too good a time talking. It was very
nice of the manager, however, to offer the desserts before we got impatient
- not that we would have anyway. It was just a really nice gesture that
added to a great evening and worthy of a comment. THANKS, Olive Garden!
Thanks to everyone (Blackman's, Cone's, Dahlin's, Roach's,
Unger's, Wilson's) who came to my "surprise" birthday party!
THANKS, Dear, for your hard work putting it on!
8/27/06 - Birthday Celebrations at Our Church
Every week our church celebrates each persons birthday by giving them an
opportunity to praise God and then we sing two birthday songs to them (as a
group). This is what I had to say today:
I have three things I'd like to say...
1) I am very thankful for my wife and my kids and friends to confide in.
This year has been an interesting year of struggles for me, not near as
much as some of you, but the nature of struggles is that they are
difficult. God is good and has used these circumstances to mature me, or
at least that is the hope.
2) It's happy birthday to me! I've been sung the birthday songs to about
10 times now. I hope these songs don't get monotonous or mundane. We
sing to celebrate each persons birthday and give them an opportunity to
express thanks, give praise, or give others an opportunity to praise
them. Our birthday time is very unique. I have gone to Florida and back
and have never heard of another church celebrating each persons birthday
like we do. We could be the only church in the world that does this! So
when we sign these songs, be sure to sing them to each person!
3) Today is my surprise birthday party! You all are still invited - we
have lots of food and the only presents I desire is your presences, so
surprise me!
We just got back from the 12th Annual Oregon Christian Home Education Conference. Oh, it was so great! We are so glad for the
Ocean Network folks and all the work they put into this conference.
This year the speakers were
Rick Boyer,
Dr. Brian Ray, and
Dr. Jay Wyle.
It's always good to get encouragement and meet new people. I'm beginning to
pick up on the theme that we are doing more than home schooling. We are
doing home based discipleship. There is more to education than doing school
- we are training our children for life. There is so much we learned and are
looking forward to putting what we can into practice. That means I have to
cut this update short and spend time with the kids! What a blessing they
are.
~
matt@lyonscom.com
8/12/06 - THD Website Updates
This week I worked quite a bit on The House Designers
(www.thehousedesigners.com) website. Some of the features we've added are
home building related articles, a blog, more house plan information on
search results, and a better house plan styles listing. We've also added the
three latest blog posts as part of the footer of every page. This is for
content related to search engine optimization. We are currently number 16 in
Google (out of over 2 billion!) for "home plans." I would love to hear any
comment you have about The House Designers website (via email: matt@lyonscom.com).
8/4/06 - Busy Week
Okay, time for a bit of rambling. This week has been a really busy week. I listened to a Doug Wilson talk on Tuesday. He said we Christians should be overwhelmed and at the same time greatly encouraged. We should be working hard at our many tasks such that we get so overwhelm that we have to trust and rely on the grace of God. We can't do all of this on our own. Then when we rely on God He will see us through and we see glimpses of his Hand working through us. There is no greater joy than knowing He is with us to guide our steps and things will get done. That is where we are greatly encouraged and God is glorified. That thinking was helpful to get through the week.
7/26/06 - Weird FTP Problem
A customer emailed me today with an FTP connection problem. FTP'ing a
large amount of files (my test of 47.7 Megs) would get between 24% or 75%
done then never finish. A reboot didn't fix it. More testing found that the
Windows Firewall was dropping the connection between the FTP service and the
client connection. After spending all day on this I finally found this forum
post. Someone
there suggested stopping the Application Layer Gateway Service with the
command 'net stop alg'. I did this and now the FTP is working properly.
Weird. If anyone knows why this is a problem, please email me (matt@lyonscom.com).
7/25/06 - No More Softball
Today was our last game of the church softball league we played in this
year. Karen pitched every inning of every game. For not doing to well (3-9)
our team did a great job of keeping a good attitude (good job Jesse!). This
league had some odd rules. Some of them were if a guy walks he takes two
bases, there must be 5 girls out on the field and if there is a fifth girl
missing there is an automatic out when she (doesn't) comes up in the batting
order. That is all minor and we can deal with that. What gets me most on
this league was the fierce competition. Zach, Chris and I umpired a game and
I was surprised at the grumbling over "bad calls". Toward the end of the
game I asked the catcher what the score was and she said it was 10-15 due to
some "bad calls" and nodded toward Christopher. That really thru me since I
thought Chris was going a great job and I didn't see anything that was even
close. I did see the short stop jump up and down on one call but even that
one was clear to even me. Then there was the prolific use of illegal bats by
many teams. Composite bats make the ball go much farther when hit and are
illegal for safety sake. I would have thought players on a Christian
softball league would be more willing to play by the rules. Oh well, we
still had fun.
7/21/06 - Break Time!
Okay, it's time for a break from the busy work and summer schedule to
update our site. I promise, updates will be more frequent from here on out.
Here are some of the activities we have done this summer.
We have spent a week at the Oregon Coast for our
church's annual
family camp.
Lindsey and Friends Sand Castle
Grandma and Joshua
Chris
Jonny and Nathaniel
Zachary and the Mikado
We have taken a day trip to Silver Creek Falls.
We have take a trip to Spokane with our grandson to visit my
grandparents. Five generations!
- Thursday work till midnight
