As people have learned we’re moving to Colorado they’ve naturally asked what has motivated this decision.
Rather than explain it as many times as I’m asked I thought I’d write this, which may (or may not) help people understand.
I’d like to first explain that our motivation is not in a normal money, job kind of move that is typical in many moving situations.
And, as is often the theme of this site, it is rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ.

We moved to Texas so that we could grow spiritually and learn God’s Word in seminary.
The thing that motivated us then is the same thing now.
We want to do what is best for our family in respect to our development as Christians.
This is not popular and may lend some to think, “Religious nuts.”
Maybe nuts, but hopefully not too religious 😉

The church, Holly Hills Bible Church”, is an incredible church where like minded brothers and sisters gather together.
We have not been able to find a church that is near our house in Texas that we agree with doctrinally (in layman’s terms we disagree with the way they teach the Bible, or apply the principles, even if their doctrinal statement looks good on paper), and that has been hard.
It has been like a spiritual drought for over two years.
There are good churches in some parts of the metroplex, but there is also a second reason: family.

Family is tough for us, since we’ve had Abigail it has been a lot harder to go visit family, as well as being more expensive to do so.
By moving to Denver we’ll remove one long travel to see grandparents and have a good church home.
On top of that Frontier Airlines runs really good specials for round trip tickets so we’ll most likely be able to visit the other grandparents and aunts and uncles more often.
These two reasons are the major parts of our decision.

This may or may not make sense to all and I do welcome questions, but I do hope that this helps fill in some of the details.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

So yesterday my boss sent out a message here at work announcing that we’re moving to Colorado.
Within minutes I was chatting with 4 people with a fifth person knocking at my office door and getting lots of email.
It was a surprise announcement for most of the staff I’m sure.
Alt-N rocks and I’ll be glad to continue working for them as a consultant because I believe in our programs and the staff here.
We make a pretty mean mail server.

The move is coming up pretty quick, this morning I dropped Linda off at the airport and realized that we’ve got a little over a month to pack up before Jessica leaves (she’s going ahead of me).
We’ll be in Austin for 5 days while I go to SXSW, and so that cuts nearly a week off from things.
I’m hoping that Abby will not be too much of a busy-body while we are packing, I don’t want her to get hurt, or to make a worse mess.

The Passion

I was thinking on the way to work this morning how hypocritical the public is being about this new movie on the life of Christ (which I haven’t seen yet).
There are folks screaming their heads off that this is bigoted in some way or another.
Idiots.
Turn off your TV’s.
Don’t watch any movies.
Turn off the radio.
Stop reading my blog, the rest of the web and the news paper.
Put your books down.
All of those mediums can potentially carry anti-Semitic material.
All of those mediums can potentially carry messages of hate, murder and deceit.

If you’ve ever seen The Italian Job, Entrapment, The Cat in the Hat then you’ve seen movies about deceit and thievery – all from the perspective of the better bad guy.
In other words, unless you’re going to really clean up Hollywood and become truly innocent in your actions, don’t get all hissy about a historical epic.
One that is documented well.
I don’t think I recall seeing anyone out in the streets about Gladiator because of incest (not actually presented, but implied).
People were not on the TV talking about how, “Hobbits are the only characters in Middle-Earth that can endure the ring. That is so bigoted. And why didn’t female Hobbitses {gollum} carry our precious?”

If Cold Mountain is art then lets let The Passion be art.
Unless of course The Passion is about truth.
Unless of course Jesus did really die on the cross to pay for the sins of the world – giving salvation to those who would receive it.
Then we can really talk.
Otherwise – lets all just move on and wait for The Incredibles to come out.

Resting in Jesus,

Randy “Impassioned” Peterman

Dallas World Aquarium

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Dallas World Aquarium.
This is my favorite thing in Dallas because it has Sea Dragons.
Sea Dragons are an amazing kind of animal, and if I could I’d have one as a pet.
I’d actually have a lot as pets if I could because they’re very endangered.

The Cheesecake Factory

After the aquarium we went to the Cheesecake Factory.
Which is a good place to go if you want to suffer from lengthy indecision.
I think they’ve got hundreds of menu items to choose from.
I finally picked the peppered shrimp and contributed to the over-fishing of the world’s oceans.
It was a tasty meal, but now I live with guilt that tiny crustaceans all over the world hate me.

Abby, like a shrimp scavenged and ate from Linda and Jessica’s plate, and since my shrimp would have hurt her mouth or caused her gastro-intestinal pane, we passed on feeding it to her.
Linda and Jessica got pork chops which Linda had been raving about like a pork chop nut.
They liked the pork chops, which was good.
They also really liked the Toblerone Cheesecake that they ordered.
Jessica said it was the bets cheesecake flavor that she’d ordered there.

After a noon-dinner at the Cheesecake Factory we went to The Container Store.
This is a store filled completely with things you most likely never needed but really want.
You can box up and organize all of the things that Clean Sweep would make you get rid of.
I bought a really neat measuring cup.

At Barnes & Noble we looked at various books (Surprise!) and I bought a book on Mozilla Rapid Application Development (Amazon).
Then, Abby had a potty – which needed to be taken care of lest the store ask us to leave.
Linda kindly changed it, and then we left and went to yet another book store: Half Price Books.

After the books we ventured back home in the post-rush-hour traffic and then played Cribbage after Abby went to bed.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Busy Guy” Peterman

So I tried this beverage.
It is poorly named.
It should have been named Diet Coke that tastes like Sprite.
It is not lime, it is Sprite (more like a soda suicide, where you mix different sodas to create new flavors).
That being said I finished it because I wanted to have some sort of libation.

We went to the zoo today for over 4 hours and Abby was great.
In fact most of today she was excellent.
This evening after we put her to bed she woke up and cried because we were laughing loudly whilst playing cribbage and I went into her room, gave her her plug, rocked her in her rocking chair and she fell back to sleep in less than two minutes.
What a precious girl!

Resting in Him,

Randy “Monkey’s Uncle” Peterman

OK, I got the server moved over, the database information moved over, and now, if all goes well my old data from the old account should be deleted.
Small children in third world countries will not be able to eat because of… Oh, well they’ll be able to eat because people contribute to organizations that help them. However, my site is up, and if all goes well I’ll be able to help them too – with more than just mentioning www.givetwice.org.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Philanthropist” Peterman

Not that you’ll notice much, but my site’s on a new server now.
As soon as I get the database all moved over, it’ll be even quicker.
The new server offers me more room.
How much more room?
5 Megabytes.
Not a lot, but more.
How much am I using right now?
15 Megabytes – mostly from pictures and old files I should probably dump.

You probably don’t care about this, but I thought I’d let you know in case there was a disruption of service.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Server Hopper” Peterman

No, I’m not referring to stolen kids drinks.
In fact, I’m not even referring to Kool-aid.
I’m referring to tea.
Fruity tea that would make some British tea drinkers spew their strong, strip the paint off of your car, tea out their nose.
Tea with honey in it.
Not just some honey, but probably more than you would normally put in your tea.

You see, when you put a lot of honey in a cup of hot water, let a tea bag soak in the honey water you get a warm drink that is quite tasty and would probably pass as punch if you let it cool down.
I love it.
Tony likes chocolate milk, his wife Erin likes Dr. Pepper.
Jessica’s cousin Amanda lives on Dr. Pepper.
Me, I seem to like hot Kool-aid.
I’m sorry, but I just had to get that out in the open.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Spot of Tea” Peterman

Late nights are getting more and more normal.
Unfortunately, I’m starting to get warn out.
The upside is that it’s still not as bad as when Abby was born in which case I was at the complete point of exhaustian.
Any more exhaustian and I’d have been hallucinating (at some points I may have been).

Doug and Amanda came down and we had dinner with our two families and then I went to help them load up a huge aquarium into their van.
When I say huge, I think it was as big as a casket, but without the dead person.
The thing was about 6 feet long (maybe longer) and about 18 inches deep, I think it held 120 gallons, but don’t quote me on that, it could have been bigger.
That’s a lot of salt, that’s a lot of water, that’s a lot of fish and most of all: that’s a lot of money (to keep up).
That’s also why I don’t have any pets.

OK, it’s night-night time.

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

Been busy since we got back from Austin.
Jess’ mom, Linda, came into town and so we’ve been having fun, Abby enjoys her grandma.
Work is good, but we’re coming up to a release, so hopefully all will be done and ready quite soon.

Pray for my nephew Brennan who was bit by a dog – some stitches apparently took care of things, but we hope his healing will leave no scars.

Oh, and this is the 151st article in my database – Cool!

Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

Frozen in time, or at least in time to hit the ground as snow the rain fell from the clouds, turned into little ice crystals and then sold itself on Ebay.
Actually, it didn’t sell itself, we helped.
Tony (with my help at the end) made a large snowball out of the 1 inch or snow in his frontyard.
Then, we took some pictures and put it for sale on Ebay (picture).
We actually got some bids.

Anyway, it was fun, it was funny, it was only part of the day.
But hey, don’t interupt my time with my buddy Tony 😉

Randy “Round Rock Rebel” Peterman