Arch Linux & Startup Engineering

Background

I've been taking classes on Coursera recently. I started with Equine Nutrition by the University of Edinburgh. I followed up with Pattern-Oriented Software Architectures for Concurrent and Network Software from Vanderbilt. Both were cool and I learned some interesting things that I'm not blogging about in this post.

I'm currently taking "Startup Engineering", where I've mostly learned some basic javascript so far. For the class, we're using virtual machines hosted by Amazon Web Services.

Goal

AWS costs money eventually, so I thought that I could make my own virtual machine to run stuff. Ubuntu and I have had some rough times in our relationship because of Unity, Gnome3, and the fact that it's really laggy on my Windows box in a VM. I've also wanted to install Arch Linux for a while.

Step 1 - Install Arch

They have a beginner's guide. It's pretty good. I messed up my partitioning (using GPT) on the first go-round and had to do it again. Oh well.

Step 2 - Firewall

I followed this guide to configure iptables on my new virtual machine.

Step 3 - Install stuff for startup engineering

The heroku packages for pacman (Arch's package repository) are a little confusing. They have heroku-client and heroku-toolbox. Both are in the AUR, which means you can't actually use pacman to install them and have to run some command line tools.

The heroku website actually has its own script for wgetting and installing the tarballs. This seemed to work fine, except I also needed to install ruby. No big deal - that's in pacman.

After heroku it was on to nodejs, which is also in pacman, and was therefore really easy.

Results

I'm on my way to independence from AWS. I'd like to get some Dynamic DNS resolution going so I can ssh to this virtual machine from anywhere, but I'm not sure how that will work given that the machine is A) virtual and B) I think you need to pay for DDNS.

Good One

We lost a good one tonight.

Ace, you'd been at CHC for years before I got there, and you were a great horse. I remember riding you around a course in one of Javier's lessons and having a blast.

You had your quirks, of course. The cow-kicks. Your sensitive back that usually kept you safely out of lessons once the weather turned cold. You could be kind of a jerk, and I know you didn't like spurs much.

I will try to treasure my memory of you in a hunter class in one of the schooling shows. You did a beautiful course, and you knew it. As soon as you'd finished, you threw in a little cow-kick/buck for fun, showing off your energy and exuberance. You weren't full of yourself at all...

I hope your last couple of hours weren't too painful. You will be missed.

Psalm 130 Continued

I mentioned two thoughts I had about Psalm 130. One was about the contrast between 'fear' and 'revere', which is a contrast I struggle with. I'm never sure what the proper reverence is. A struggle for another day, I think.

The other thought was about the word 'iniquity'. In verse 3 (NKJV) "If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?" Because I read too much fantasy, I actually know what the word mark means in this context. Yay. The NIV uses the phrase "keep a record of sins", which means more or less the same thing, but "mark iniquities" sounds so much cooler. HCSB - "considered sins", which is deeply meaningful in its own way, but not as poetic. The next time someone does something that annoys me I'm going to tell them (jokingly) that I've marked their iniquity.

My concordance on my phone tells me that 'mark' is a Hebrew word meaning "to hedge about (as with thorns)", which is really interesting. This word (Strongs H8104) also means "regard, observe, attend to", which is more of what I think of when I think of the word 'mark' or 'consider'. So I'd kind of mentally translated this as "Lord, if you weighed our sins against us, who could stand before you", which is of course the general idea. I really like the mental image of H8104 though, "Lord, if you used our iniquities as thorns to hem us in, who could stand/continue/abide/endure".

This brings me to 'iniquity', which actually is the word I wanted to consider (not 'mark'). According to the NKJV I have which has the concordance notes, it comes from a word meaning "bent or distorted". So in this case, the iniquity thing is like the fallen state of man, in the same sense as "if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but it is the sin (noun) that lives in me" (Romans 7:20 - HCSB, except for the 'noun', which I added).

Anyway, the whole point of this blog post, which I've only partly arrived at through a very wandering path, is the gospel, which is to say that because of Jesus, God doesn't hem us in, using our fallen state to make it so that we cannot endure. I feel like it's worth blogging about whenever I come to something that brings me to that realization.

Introduction to Word Notes

The first time I heard Winnie Banov talk about her different translations, I'll admit that I was skeptical. It seemed to me that by examining different translations of verses, you would eventually just settle on the one you liked best, which might distort the meaning of the actual verse. People do this all the time to bible verses because it's very easy to do.

After going to Nicaragua with Georgian and Winnie, I've changed my mind. On the trip, Winnie spoke about how different translations often provide different lenses for viewing scriptures. You might find one translation of a verse that's particularly touching, but you can use the rest of the translations to verify your interpretation of the verse. Having more reference material is always good, so I've recently started doing some cross-referencing of my own.

I currently have an NIV bible (from my mother), an HCSB bible (which I bought because I like the HCSB), and a NKJV bible (from a friend who I haven't seen in quite some time). The NKJV bible has some notes from Strong's concordance, which I re-discovered this morning when comparing Psalm 130 in each of the three.

Two interesting notes. The NIV and NKJV both translate verse 4 along the lines of "there is forgiveness in You, therefore You are feared". This makes no sense to me. The HCSB has a much more helpful translation "But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be revered".

I'm out of time for the other interesting note, so it will have to wait. It's too long for this post anyway.

It didn't go

That's really all there is to say. It didn't go.

I became busy, and stopped updating this blog (as is obvious). Less obvious were other unforeseen circumstances.

I began working at my riding barn under the agreement that I would be working with a woman who was serving as 'Head Instructor' at the time. Unfortunately, she was fired (somewhat abruptly, I gather) the week after I began my part time arrangement.

This put me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I was still learning some things. I learned about deworming. I learned about all the little things that go on the the background of running a large equine business. I learned how to administer vaccines. I removed stitches from a horse lip.

I worked with a lovely little paint pony named Lakota, who is now (sadly) a decent school horse. I liked her better before, when she was more fiery and less malicious.

On the other hand, I was not learning what I had desired to learn. I had wanted to learn about schooling horses, either improving their ground manners or making them safer to ride. Instead, I was spending the vast majority of my 25-or-so barn hours a week tacking horses for lessons.

It wasn't all bad. I rode almost every day. I enjoyed being outside in the sun, and being able to work with other people. Programming is a solitary profession. Even so, my situation was that of a contractor who had agreed to work for a fee, then discovered that the payment was not what had previously been agreed.

Towards the beginning of June, my programming boss's boss asked me if I would consider going back to work full time. I accepted.

I still ride, and am trying to get out to the barn to ride more often. I still work at the barn two evenings a week, and sometimes on Saturday. I'm not perfectly happy with the way things turned out, but I'm glad I took the opportunity to try working part-time at the barn.

So I've let this blog linger, but I am still 'hunting for elsewhere'. I am thinking, probably too much. I wish to send my thoughts out into the world, to mingle with the thoughts of others, and then to return to me, hopefully strengthened. I am reading, and I want to write about what I am reading, mostly just to help me process.

Anyway, I hope to keep updating sporadically about thoughts and things I've read and things I'm reading. And maybe horses sometimes too.

Working Students 2

Today I am comparing my job with a 'real' working student job (as I imagine it) based on a summary of job postings. I'm focusing on the type of working student job that I would be looking for, and getting my job postings from Yard and Groom.

Most working student jobs require some experience with barn work and riding. Often this experience is just mucking, grooming, and basic riding. Some postings include details: “Minimum, dressage basics and jumping Level 2”. Barns sometimes want more experience with different tasks – things like lunging horses, experience working with green (or largely untrained) horses, and recognizing various types of equine disease.

Most of the more serious working student positions offer a stipend of about $100 a week. This is obviously not enough to pay for rent, so these barns provide places for the working student to live on the barn property. Some barns allow working students to board their horses for free, many don't. Usually, riding lessons of some sort are offered in addition the stipend as compensation.

In contrast to my 20 hours a week, live-in working students will work five and a half or six days a week. They are long days, and usually involve the normal barn chores I mentioned last time (mucking, watering, turning horses in and out). A working student at a training barn would hope to be actually training one or more horses as an additional daily duty. I spend considerable time tacking horses for lessons. At a training barn, the time I spend tacking would ideally be used to work with horses.

Were I looking for a full-time working student job, the above description would be more or less ideal. I would expect to do some mucking, but would also hope to be learning a lot about horses.

Anyway, I hope this post and its predecessor clear up confusion about what I'm doing and my alternatives.

Working Students

Well folks, it looks like we're looking at updates once a week. Maybe. I am, by nature, lazy and unmotivated. Because I'm having trouble getting some photos from my phone to my computer, I'm going to write a series of posts about Working Student jobs. This one talks about my current working student job and duties. The next one will talk about some working student job posts and discuss more about what 'real' working students do.

Horse barns are established for different purposes. The Barn is a lesson barn. It owns many of its own horses, and also allows customers to board their horses for a monthly fee. There are barns that focus on breeding horses, and barns that focus on training horses, and probably more different types besides.

Many lesson barns are willing to barter riding time of some sort for work. The Barn (my barn) has a fairly well-defined working student program. Working Students at The Barn can exchange hours worked for practice rides, group lessons, and some show and clinic fees.

Working student duties at The Barn are mostly simple tasks that can be necessary to barn operations or just helpful. There are regular tasks, and tasks that are done seasonally. Working students give hay and feed to horses at feeding times. They groom and tack horses for lessons, and help less experienced riders bridle their horses. We have an automatic watering system, but we have to turn it off during the winter because the pipes will freeze, so the working students fill up water buckets. Working students may help turn the horses out to paddocks and to retrieve them later. Seasonal tasks include things like checking tack for safety and helping to prepare horses for horse shows.

I work in the neighborhood of twenty hours a week doing mostly the above tasks and sometimes tasks where I learn new things. I ride a lot, and I learn many things about riding and horse care just from listening to people at the barn. Some time in the future I will compare my job with what I can glean from other job postings.