bryanjeffrey (ABOUT)

Over the coming days, you may notice some of my old posts disappearing; specifically those in geek-speak. A couple of years ago, I realized that however holistically I wish to approach life, it’s not fair to force anyone who would like to follow my personal journey to endure, along with it, the techiness inherent in my daily life. With that in mind, I registered another domain, and diligently parked it for future use. At long last, I have blown the dust off of that domain and launched my geekdom blog.

From now on, the less technically inclined should be safe venturing here. That’s not to say that thoughts I share will make any more sense, but at least they should be–in the majority–based in the English language. As for my fellow geeks, the rants on software architecture, system administration, disaster recovery, and what have you will be found at nonparametrics.com.

No promises, but I’m hoping that this separation will make it easier for me to communicate well in both arenas. My ambition is that this blog would provide a window into my story with whatever value that can provide to the blogosphere at large.

~ cheers

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I know, I know…. I tease you all with a new blog, and promptly forget about it for several months. For those of you who know me well, this is pretty much right on par. I get a great idea and start after it with the best of intentions, only to drop the ball for some other shinny one–or a bigger and more important one. I really do hope to maintain this someday, but no promises of consistency just yet.

At the moment we are still juggling a monster remodel of our duplex ( not nearly as monster as it might have been with out the wisdom of my wife =), a blossoming young company, growing involvement in a church that is busting at the seams, and family spread all over the northwest. The crazy part is that we still pretend that we have a life most of the time, and we go out with people now and then.

Our business really is going well, and we’re excited to see where it takes us as it grows and takes shape. The time investment is still quite significant, but we hope that it pays off, and not at too high a price. We have a great team and the privilege of serving some exceptional clients. My travel has tapered down a bit as our Spokane office is off and running now and I can focus on developing our services and improving our current offerings.

Aside from work, Alyssa and I were able to sneak away for a weekend in the Great North. Although it was a whirlwind trip, the timing could not have been better. We spent a little over a day and a half wandering around Victoria BC, shopping, talking, and just leaving all of our cares at the airport. If you ever have the chance, tea at the Empress is well worth the time. It is an architectural marvel–not to mention the first-class teas and fare. The Irish Times pub was also a great stop. I may be a bit biased in that, given our great love of most Irish pubs (Kell’s is one of our favorite Portland haunts).

Hopefully I won’t be six months in writing the next post, but only time will tell. Feel free to chide me over not keeping this up; there is no motivator like a good public taunting, and it doesn’t get too much more public. Cheers!

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Alyssa and I moved to Portland in June of ’06, ready for a fresh start and a new city. Our reasons for coming here specifically included Portland State’s great programs in System Science (for me) and English (for her). While I don’t plan to attend for another couple of years, Alyssa is already well on her way to a masters in English literature. She is absolutely brilliant and is doing much better in her progam than she will ever admit. There has also been a romantic pull for us, since we both have loved Portland as long as we could remember and the idea of being only two hours from Canon Beach was more than a little appealing.

With my employment being fairly flexible (if not light on the work load), we were able to move down without the weight of a job search. Our first affair–after a hasty remodel of our duplex unit (thank you Avery and Geanna!)–was to find a church body. We had both decided that smaller was better. Three to four hundred would be ideal. Unfortunately, Portland has few churches of that size. They tend to be either mega (1000+) or micro (30-) gatherings with little in the moderate range.

After trying a few of the smaller churches, a friend convinced us to try out Imago Dei. It sounded a bit daunting, having some 1500 in attendance on a weekend, but we thought we could at least give it a shot. It was home at first service. We were amazed at the cultural relevance and sense of community paired with very direct and scriptural teaching. Eight weeks and one membership class later, we became full fledged members (something neither of us had done at any other church). We now attend a Home Community on Mondays and are getting more and more rooted in the body at Imago. I can only pray that everyone else has somewhere to be so connected and fed.

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