The Darth Tater Saga

Among the things that occupy my cubicle at work is a Darth Tater. What's a Darth Tater, you ask? Well, crawl out from under the rock you've been under for the last several months and pay attention. This:

is a Darth Tater. Brought to you, of course, by the folks that make Mr. Potato Head, in honor of Star Wars Episode III. Now then...

A little background to my saga here. There's a contractor that I work with here. His name is Charly, and he sits just a few cubes down from me. Before I left for vacation at the end of June (for Cornerstone), I was chatting with Charly and mentioned that I knew they would miss me while I was on vacation. Then he asked me what I was giving them to remember me while I was gone. He suggested that Darth Tater would be lonely and could use a new home while I was gone. So while I was on vacation, Charly was potato-sitting.

Back to present day...

I was sick this Monday and stayed home from work. When I got back on Tuesday, Darth Tater was missing and there was a note on my desk:

Dear Sheryl,

I'm tired of waiting here alone while you are out playing hooky. I've gone out to see some friends. I'll be home late. Please don't wait up for me.

Darth Tater

Interesting, huh? Well, later on in the day, Charly and I and another co-worker, Wong, stopped by to visit my friend Kelli in her cube down the hall. She wasn't in yet that day, but Darth Tater was there, apparently "visiting" the Star Wars toys from Burger King that she has sitting on her desk, including Darth Maul. There was a note sitting next to him that started out something like, "Please don't tell Sheryl where I am. I'm tired of her playing hooky..."

The next day at work, Wednesday, I worked a half day because I had a paper to finish before class that night. But before I left, I received the following email at my work account:

Sheryl,

Heard that you're playing hooky again. I guess that I won't be coming home today. I wanted to e-mail you so that you got my new e-mail address. I also wanted you to know that I'm doing well and having fun partying with my friends. I'm hanging out with a Martian dude right now, but will be moving on soon. He's a little boring if you want to know the truth.

I've decided to travel the galaxy in search of weak minded people that I can bring over to the Dark Side. I'll send you some updates to let you know where I am, and how I'm doing. Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any concerns or just want to chat. If you want to see me home, I would suggest that you stop playing hooky and start giving in to the Dark Side a little more often. (Oh and dusting me once in awhile wouldn't hurt either).

Your Darth Overlord,

Darth T

Here was my response:

Darth T,

Well, thanks at least for letting me know how to reach you. I'm glad that you've found something that makes you happy while I'm gone. And it's good to hear that you're making new friends.

Good luck with your search. I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding weak minded people. Have you evaluated some of the contractors around here? Please keep up the updates, and send pictures!

Just so you know, after August 8, I won't be playing hooky as often. But I will be gone on vacation the following week after that. Maybe you can go visit Charly again while I'm gone?

I miss you!

-Sheryl

That was Wednesday. I was sick again yesterday (Thursday) and wasn't at work. Today I'm back, and Darth T still has not made it back home yet. He's departed from Kelli's cube now. He left a note for her, however:

I have visited with my friends and have moved on my way. I was disappointed that I was unable to say goodbye because you were playing hooky! I wanted an opportunity to bring you to the Dark Side. I may stop back and try again. Thanks for your hospitality.

Darth Tater

P.S. Darth Maul wants to be dusted more often.

Charly's told me that Darth T stops by to visit him two or three times a day. He has yet to make it by to see me since he left. I hope he's ok.

To be continued...

More of the same

If you pray, could you pray for me please? I know that I've complained SO much that all of you will be really glad, I'm sure, when my summer classes are over. But right now... I've got a 5+ page paper due tonight of which I still have at least 1.5 pages left to write. Plus a take-home quiz due tonight in the same class that I haven't done yet. I also have a writing assignment due in my online class tonight at midnight. Tomorrow I have a reading assignment due in that class. Friday, another writing assignment. Sunday night is the usual chat session for that class, and then Monday there's another writing assignment and Tuesday a reading assignment. Plus, all I'd really like to do at this point is be home in bed because I'm still sick. My illness over the weekend has turned from a sore throat/fever into a sore throat/cold/cough. And of course, there's work, which just goes without saying. This would be where I am right now, sitting here coughing my brains out. Which isn't good, considering I might be needing those brains later on today...

Thanks for your prayers.

Ode to Womanhood

Girls: you'll like this.

Guys: some of you could learn something from this.

Ode to Womanhood

My crappy weekend

This weekend was pretty crappy. Sure, it kind of had it's high points, but overall... yeah, crappy. Friday night was actually good, I guess. I went to USOM with Maurice, Sally, Lauren, Ro, and Jon. And we met up with Ian and Doug and my friend Byron there. I hadn't seen Byron in a while, and I got a chance to talk to him for a bit, so that was cool. It was nice to hang out with everyone else too.

Saturday pretty much sucked. I had several things I should've done, but because I've been so busy during the week, Saturday was like my only free day and I had a really hard time getting motivated to do anything. I did manage to run some errands as intended, but laundry, homework, etc. went undone. I'm a huge slacker. *sigh*

My Saturday night plans fell through because the person I had plans with got sick. Which is fine (not that they were sick, just that the plans fell through) because I wasn't in the greatest of moods anyway, and probably would've been kind of anti-social. So I ended up staying home and renting movies instead.

Sunday I woke up feeling crappy. I had a sore throat that really just came out of nowhere. (I'd felt fine on Saturday.) I did go to church, however, but then Sunday afternoon I started running a fever, and by Sunday night I seriously thought I might have to go to the hospital. I slept a lot, and finally the fever broke late on Sunday night and I started feeling somewhat better. Oddly enough, my neighbor, Josh, came over after that and asked me if I would go and apartment-sit for him for a few minutes. He'd flown to Washington, D.C. over the weekend and ended up leaving his keys there. His car was at the airport, but he didn't have keys to get into it, so his mom had given him a ride back to his apartment, which he'd had to break into. He got a car key, and his mom was waiting to take him back to the airport to get his car. But he didn't have any way to lock his apartment while he was gone, and didn't want to have to break in again, so he needed someone to babysit it while he was gone. So being the nice person I am, I obliged.

Today I am home from work even though I have about a million things to get done there, because while my fever is gone, I still feel like crap. Just a slightly less vile form of crap. I think I'll be sufficiently well by tomorrow though, so that I can go back into the world of the living and working. At least I hope so.

And have I mentioned how glad I will be when August 8 finally gets here? I know I've complained about this a LOT already, but seriously... the combination of school and working is stressing me out right now.

Hoping your weekend was better than mine...

Pointless geeky ranting

So I submitted my very first database change order the other day. What exactly is a database change order, you ask? Well, when programmers are creating an application, they generally have a database they are using. And they end up needing to create new tables and fields in that database to accomodate the application they're building. Such is the case with the project that I'm working on.

Now, as I've mentioned before, up until a couple of weeks ago, there was another programmer helping me with this project. And since he has way more experience than I do with SQL, he's been the one creating most of the tables, fields, etc. for our project in the database. He knows most of the database naming standards that we have to follow here. (Standards = rules on how we have to name tables and fields and stuff in the database) And he's kept a pretty good list of all the changes he's made.

Here's the kicker. All of the changes he's made are to the DEV (development) database. This is fine while we're developing the application, but eventually all of these changes need to be incorporated into the QA (quality assurance) and PROD (production) databases as well. These are the more "official" databases that will eventually be used with our application. DEV is just for us to use while the application's in development. And here's where that database change order comes in.

A database change order is a form I have to fill out that lists all the changes that I want incorporated into QA and PROD from DEV. So I filled one out and sent it in to our database modeler the other day. Keep in mind that almost all of these changes are ones that the programmer that is now gone had made, not me. And while I use some of them for the screens that I'm working on, so I know what they do... others I have no clue. I just know that they (usually) work.

So yesterday I get my change order back again from the modeler, basically wanting a lot more explanation for some of the fields/tables and what they're for. Ok, that's fine. So I fill in better descriptions of them. Then today I get the change order back AGAIN. This time since she has descriptions now... she lets me know what doesn't follow the standards. Here's an example:

We have a phase here called "Requirements Definition". We NEVER call it that. It's simply "RD". Which is why I have a field called RD_MS_DT - RD Milestone Date. Apparently MS is too short, so it must be MLST. Fine, whatever. But she wants to change the field to RQMT_DEF_MLST_DT. *sigh* A little bit irritating, since we always just call it RD. Some of the other fields like that I had to even go back and look up what the acronym stood for, because I didn't remember.

And then there's the field that she wants to take out of one of the tables completely. I can't wait to see what that will break...

As one coworker put it: "database design by those that won't even use it. Isn't it grand?" Oh, and have I mentioned that I hate having to fix what other people created that's broken?

Ok, end of rant. And yes, I realize that this entire post just made me look like a huge nerd and it's probably way more than you EVER wanted to know about my job. But it's my blog, my outlet. Deal with it.

Brian McLaren

Ok, so I decided to finally go into detail about what was probably my favorite part of Cornerstone: meeting Brian McLaren. To really get the full effect of how cool this was to me, you really do have to know the whole story.

If you haven't read Brian's book (and yes, I'm calling him Brian. I met the guy, talked to him at length, he introduced himself as Brian... so I'm calling him that.) A New Kind of Christian, I highly recommend it. I first heard about it from Maurice, who was doing a book study on it a few months ago. I had heard of the book, but didn't really know much about it until I started attending the book study. So I got a copy of the book from Maurice and started reading it. It was really easy to read, hard to put down, and a lot of the ideas in the book really hit me because they were things that I had thought for a long time but never really knew how to put into words. After talking with others who have read it, I think that's the case for a lot of them as well.

Maybe to really get a better understanding, you have to know where I was when I started reading A New Kind of Christian. I was at an interesting place in my spiritual walk, a place where I had never really felt the need to venture before. I had started to become closer to a friend of mine who is an atheist, and we'd had some interesting discussions. He'd had so many debates with other Christian friends of his that I really felt no need to get into apologetics or anything like that with him, but we did have some interesting discussions. And he really got me to thinking about my faith and why I believed what I believed and lived what I lived. For the first time since becoming a Christian, I got to the place where I honestly considered what it would be like to NOT be one. I was questioning and digging into and under my faith more than I ever had before. I stripped back layer after layer of religion and church beliefs and got all the way down to myself and why I believed, and whether or not I should believe. And in the end... I still chose to believe. [NOTE: I won't go into the whole process of this, because it's not what this post is about and not really pertinent to the story. If you want to know more, engage me in conversation about it sometime.]

And somewhere around this time was when I started taking part in the book study and reading A New Kind of Christian. This book really clicked with the whole process I had went through of breaking down my faith. It encouraged me, as well as being a stepping stone to a level of spiritual community that I hadn't had in quite a while.

So then we get back to Cornerstone and Brian McLaren. This was my fifth year there, and I don't know that I was even that excited about going. I think I go through phases with Cornerstone, of being excited about it and then not being excited about it. In the end though, it's usually all good. So a few weeks or months or so before the time for it rolled around, I decided I had better take a look at the bands that were playing and try to get some sort of tentative schedule together. I also decided to check out the seminars. And I saw that Brian was speaking, which I got pretty excited about. I had really liked his book and thought he'd be interesting to hear, and Maurice and Shane had heard him speak earlier this year, and I knew they liked the guy. So I started looking forward to Cornerstone a bit more in light of this.

This was my third year to volunteer at Cornerstone as well, and the first year I was able to volunteer for transportation (you have to be 25). I wasn't exactly sure what all that entailed, but gRegor said it was fun and easy, so I was all for it. Turns out it usually consists of one of two things: 1) driving passengers back and forth from the grounds to the hotel (half hour away) or 2) picking up or dropping passengers off at the airport (hour and a half away). My first day of volunteering I only went to the hotel and back. Interesting note... for some reason I started thinking later that day about how it would be really cool if I got to drive Brian McLaren at some point during the fest. And very strangely... the next morning I woke up basically knowing that I would get to drive him that day. I just knew it would happen. So anyway, I'm in the volunteer trailer that morning talking to the other two ladies working during my shift, and we're talking about getting to drive popular bands around. I happened to mention that there was one of the speakers that I would really love to get the chance to talk to, and told them who it was. A bit later we were deciding that this one lady was going to be making a trip to the airport that morning. She happened to remember what I had said about how I would like the opportunity to drive one of the speakers and mentioned that to our crew chief. He's like "that's who you're picking up at the airport". Since I'd never been to the airport yet, they ended up letting me tag along. And that's how that all ended up happening.

So I met him at the Peoria airport, and Sue (other driver) and I got the chance to have a really good conversation with each other on the way there that really just turned into a continuation of the same conversation joined by Brian on the way back. Later on that day, I attended his seminar, as well as a few others before the festival was over. The last day of the fest, after his morning seminar, he had a bunch of people that came up and wanted to talk to him. There was another speaker up next in the tent he'd been in, so we moved out to a hill nearby overlooking the lake. (There were, of course, some "sermon on the mount" jokes regarding this.) Everyone just hung out and talked. Sometimes the questions were directed for Brian, but other times he listened while we answered each others' questions. It really was similar to how I would imagine Jesus and the disciples hanging out and talking.

I'm not putting Brian on a pedestal, enlikening him to Jesus or anything like that. But the man really did make an impact on me. He has a really gentle spirit about him, very humble, and seems very wise. He was enjoyable to be around, to listen to, and to converse with. I respect him a lot more after spending time with him, and I look forward to hopefully talking to him again soon (although probably not at length this time). He's speaking in Indianapolis in September, and you can bet I plan on being there. I also got the opportunity to drive him back to the airport along with two other speakers. It was fun listening to their conversations on the way there, and I was a bit lonely without them on the drive back.

Heh... it's kind of sad when you meet someone, well, famous, and you know that you really can't have like a normal friendship with them exactly. But the experience was good and one that I appreciated God allowing me to have (because I do believe this experience was a gift from God, not just coincidence). I have so many blessings in my life that to believe they're just coincidences seems a bit absurd to me. So instead... I'll just give the glory to my Maker.

Sorry this post is so long. Just wanted to tell the story, and I know I'm a bit wordy. But, if you made it this far, here's the visual aid (click it for a bigger picture):

Hotel Rwanda

Ok, I'm not going to say "run out and see this movie right now". But do put it on your list, and see it when you get a chance. It's eye-opening... and scary. Scary at what we as human beings have become. Scary at how little we value human life. What the hell happened to "all men are created equal"?

I'll try to talk about this without spoiling the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it. But if you've heard of it, you probably know what it's about--the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. That's the gist of it. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the definition of genocide: "Genocide has been defined as the deliberate killing of people based on their ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, or (sometimes) politics, as well as other deliberate action(s) leading to the physical elimination of any of the above categories." It's sad that we even need a word for such a thing.

"All men are created equal." One of the principles that America was supposedly founded on. Note that it doesn't say "all Americans are created equal", but all men. And the same country that has pride in this statement as one of their principles separated themselves as somewhere around a million people died because of something they couldn't control. Children died so that they wouldn't produce more like them. How can we sit by and say that we believe all men are created equal while making people feel lower than worthless?

I'm not perfect. I know I don't affect the world enough. I don't even keep up with what's going on in the bigger picture much. I don't really watch the news. And sometimes I'm sure that my scope of vision doesn't seem to get much bigger than just myself. It's good to be reminded of my worth compared to others. I'M THE SAME. I am not any more or less important than any of the people in Rwanda, or the people that I work with, or the President of the United States. Why should I be so self-involved?

I guess to me it all just goes back to my previous post. I think I really believe that. I believe that we're all of supernatural value. And a price will be paid for that value you allowed to be wasted.

People

This is a cross-post. I originally posted it on Maurice's message board, but thought it was interesting enough to share here as well. To see the original message board thread and mine and others' follow-up comments, click here.

This is about people. We're told that we're all made in the image of God, right? But how can that be? We all look different, act different, think different, etc. Well, my thought is that maybe we all have qualities and characteristics of God. God is... God. So I mean, there's practically infinite different parts of him. I think maybe we're all like him in some different way.

So, wouldn't it make sense then, that if you take every different person that's ever been made or will be made and put them all together somehow, you'd have a complete image of God? I think that would also make sense given the fact that God loves all of us so much and wants to be with us. Why wouldn't he, if we're all kind of like some "part" of him?

Then we come into play. As Christians, we're always saying how we want to "know God more" and learn more about him. And we try to find ways to do that through prayer, Bible reading, worship, etc. Which are all good, definitely, and can help us know him more. I don't know about all of you, but I've sometimes gotten frustrated because I do want to know God more and it sometimes seems hard because he isn't physically visible right here in front of me to talk to and be with. Sure, he's spiritually here and I can talk to him through prayer, but you know what I mean. But while he himself isn't physically here, he has given us a physical IMAGE of himself, if you look at this the way I do. Look around you at all the people. If you really want to know God more, get to know the people he created in his image.

And if you look at it this way, I think it gives you a reason to try to get to know all the people that you have the opportunity to. Each one of them is like God in some way, so if you do get know them, you're getting to know some new "piece" of God. And actually, the "piece" of God that they are is unlike any other piece out there. So if you don't make an effort to know them... well then, you're kind of missing out on knowing more of God, a piece of him that you wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

I don't know... to me this just goes to show how valuable each of us really are.

New site, new blog

Well, here it is. Sherylhugill.com. A new domain name, new website (coming eventually!), and a new blog to go along with it all. But it's kind of anticlimactic, really. It's all a facade. Underneath the decoration... I'm still just me.

My (very tentative) 3-year plan

So my boss talked to me yesterday, and it sounds very likely I will get a job at Sallie Mae in a few months. Plan A is for my internship to end sometime in September and then for me to become a full-time employee in PMO (the dept I currently am an intern for) in September/October. Other alternative plans in case Plan A doesn't work out for some reason are:

1) PMO doesn't have budget to hire me for October-December, but can hire me in January. This would probably mean the end of my internship in September and would very possibly involve me going back to my job at IUPUI for the rest of the year, then being hired in PMO at Sallie Mae in January.

2) PMO can't hire me. My boss said that he could then probably easily get me a job in another dept in Sallie Mae, possibly OpenNet, where he used to work, which develops what you see on the salliemae.com website.

So the hope is that I will have a full-time job here when October rolls around. Please keep that in your prayers, if you would.

I have full-time summer classes until August 8. I'd appreciate prayers for that too, that I wouldn't be so stressed with that. It is a lot, what with working full-time as well. Then the fall semester starts August 24. So I get a couple of weeks break before it's back to the grind. Another bit of a side note about this next month... at work, the project that I'm working on, the contractor that was helping me with it (he and I have been the only ones currently working on the construction of this web application) left today. He found a full-time job elsewhere. So starting next week, I will kind of have a lot on my shoulders. I will be the only one that's been in this project since the beginning that's actually working on the construction of it. I will have help from some others to finish it, of course, but I'm kind of the only one coding it that knows what's going on right now. And the person that will probably join in helping me has been on vacation for the last week and a half and doesn't get back until Tuesday, so he'll be needing to get up to speed. All this and I'm only an intern! So if seems I'm not "around" (email, message boards, blogs, etc) much during the day, you know why. Pray for me with that too, please.

So here's the (very) tentative plan. Make it through summer classes. Finish internship. Get hired full-time at Sallie Mae. Likely move closer to Sallie Mae in November, when my lease is up. Take last class at IUPUI this fall and graduate in December. Oh, and BTW, because of all this stuff going on and keeping me busy (being at work so many hours because it's a bit of a drive there and back, being at class on campus, doing homework at home when not on campus, etc), I decided it would be better for my dog to be with someone who can spend more time with him right now. So he's pretty much in joint temporary custody w/ my parents and my brother until likely December when I graduate. Then I won't have classes and homework anymore to worry about, and I won't have to drive so far to work if I move, so I won't be gone quite as long during the day. I'm thinking then will be a better time for me to be a "mommy" to him again.
Anyway, that's the plan for the next few months. Then what, you ask? Well, then I will have more time and brain power to do/think about the things I have wanted to do/think about, but haven't had the time/energy to do so because of school. This involves, among other things, spending time with friends, reading, spending time with my dog, and traveling. So right now my plan is kind of to spend these next couple of years just enjoying being out of school and having a job that requires a degree and that pays like it requires a degree.

Another thing I plan on doing over the next couple of years is traveling more, for a couple of reasons. One is simply that I love to travel and see new places. Another is that I don't plan on just living in Indiana for the rest of my life. I want to see what it's like to live somewhere else. And, in fact, I plan on doing just that after working for (give or take) a couple of years. Right now, the only real reason for wanting to move is really just to see what it's like to live somewhere other than Indiana. I don't even know where. Who knows, when that time gets here, I could very well have better reasons for wanting to move. But I do know that I don't want to live out my entire life here in Indiana and not know what it's like to live elsewhere. So I figure that I'll do some traveling and see some places in the next couple of years and figure out where I want to head to for a while. And then go from there.

So that's my (around) 3-year plan. Obviously there are a lot of things that could change it, it's only tentative. It could change just because I changed my mind, or who knows, it might even change because I meet someone I want to live out my life with. (Hopefully if this happens, they will not want to plant roots in Indiana either.) Oh yeah, and one of the next places I plan on visiting in my travels is Washington, D.C., which looks like a very good possibility by (or possibly even before) at least next spring. Not visiting to live there, necessarily (although who knows?), but I do want to see it.

Sorry this post was so long. I hope you made it through the whole thing without getting bored or falling asleep. But this has been on my mind a bit lately, so I just thought I'd share and get feedback, if you have it.

10 Things I Learned at Cornerstone

The Ohio people are all doing this, so I thought I would make a list too.

10. Sharing a tent with ants is rather annoying.

9. Alliance World Coffees makes fabulous chai.

8. Transportation is the best volunteer job to have.

7. Brian McLaren is every bit as great as the books he writes.

6. It is possible to see your breath in the middle of the summer.

5. The farther you get into the week of C-stone, the sillier people get.

4. People make friends a lot faster when you take away the distractions that get in the way of community.

3. When you're packing up your tent, first make sure the tent bag is not inside the tent.

2. Cornerstone is not all about the bands.

1. It is possible to get attached to people after only spending a few days with them.

Post-Cornerstone Musings

First of all, here are the pictures.

I really should be going to bed right now, because I'm dead tired and I have to work tomorrow, but I'm going to at least post a few things about Cornerstone first. I think this might have been the best year yet. It's like every year I say "this will be my last", and then I end up going again. And I'm always glad I do. This time I might have started out the first couple of days saying "this will be my last", but I know I ended up telling someone that I very well might be back next year.
I thought about posting a list of the good things and bad things about C-stone, but the good one would be so much longer than the bad. I think really the only bad thing would be that I shared my tent with some ants for the whole week. Everything else was really good. I don't even really mind the sunburn much.

We had awesome weather, cooler than usual. One night I actually just about froze sitting down at main stage watching The Passion. But it was worth it for it to be cooler in the daytime instead of dripping in sweat the whole day.

A big high point of the trip was that I lucked out with my volunteer job. I did transportation, and ended up getting to both pick up Brian McLaren at the airport and drop him off. I was excited just that he was speaking there... didn't imagine that I would actually get to talk with him at length and actually kind of become friends with the guy. And now I respect him even more after meeting him. He seems really wise, totally has this gentle spirit about him, and is really humble as well. I really enjoyed engaging in conversation with him. I was really blessed to have the opportunity to do that. God's cool like that.

Other than that, Cornerstone was pretty typical, I guess. But typical does not equal bad. The Cornerstone experience (and that's really what it is, a total experience) is a great one. Meet cool people, see good bands, hear some good seminars, enjoy camping, etc. One of the best things about C-stone is that it takes you away from some of the typical distractions of life, like the Internet, work, busyness, etc. It forces you to live out community, really. You can either choose to like it and benefit from it, or withdraw and be alone the whole time. I actually did a little bit of both. I think I was needing some alone time, but I didn't pass up the opportunity to get to know some cool new people as well. And leaving Cornerstone is so bittersweet. Sure, you're going back to friends and family, but you feel like you're leaving your Cornerstone family. Cheesy, I guess, but C-stone is really its own world. One that only exists for a week each year.

But now... I get the pleasure of trying to keep up with the lives of Jason, Katie, A.J., Amy, Cory, Sarah and Justin.

Oh yeah, and I got some new shoes.