Author: Dennis A. Gray

Welcome!

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Well friends, this is it!

20080406-043This post marks the official opening of the new location of Myriad Shades of Gray.  Feel free to look around and comment on what you do and do not like. There a few things here you wouldn’t have found at the previous location. There will be additional features added in the future I’m sure.

One thing that will be familiar is the scope of the content.  Namely, just about anything that catches my attention. From Achilles Heels to Zingers, from Antiquity to the Future;  all of it with an eye to how it impacts my spiritual walk.

All the posts from the old site have been imported here. I will catalog and tag them as time permits.  The old site will be deleted at the end of March 2009.  My other blog – Java and Jesus – will stay where it is for the time being; and yes, new posts are coming. I haven’t made up my mind about the History Blog yet.  Only time will tell.

So once again welcome – and please drop by often.

Until next time…  Enjoy!

Dennis Gray

A Last Minute Invite

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So, what are you doing on Sunday morning?

If you’re going to be in the Guelph area then I’d like to invite you to drop around to Westminister-St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church. The regular Sunday service starts at 10:30am.

If you do you’ll get a chance to hear yours truly give a little presentation called “At the Marriage Feast with Mordecai .”  What is it? I’ll let the church bulletin explain…

The presentation Dennis will do, offers a midrash (a Jewish story amplifying a biblical text) on the text of John 2: 1-11 (the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus performs his first miracle – turning water into wine).  The story is told from the perspective of a participant at the marriage feast, specifically one, Mordecai, uncle of the groom.  This original presentation, researched, written and recounted by Dennis Gray, fills in much of the cultural detail around Jewish marriage that John’s first readers would, of course, have known, but which most readers of John’s gospel today do not.

I’m not a big fan of blowing my own horn, but hey, one needs to get the word out somehow. Besides, I’d like to get the chance to meet some of you and that’s only going to happen if you know where I’ll be. So please, drop on by and introduce yourself. 

 Here’s a map showing where to find WSP.
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Until next time…  see you in church.

Give It a Second…

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Came across this video today at The Long Now Foundation.  It is a great commentary of increasing impatience with technology.

I’ll be the first to admit I have an obsession with technology.  There is little that gives me more satisfaction than finding the right technology to simplify a task.  But as Louis CK points out, I think my fascination is born out of the fact that I remember when we had the dial phones. I remember my aunt who was on a party line and I had to wait until the neighbour was finished before I could make my call. I remember going to Malton Airport in Toronto for an afternoon to do nothing other than watch the planes come and go, amazed that something that big and heavy could actually fly.

Yeah. I know. I’m showing my age. But that’s okay. I’ve waited a long time to be this old and experienced and I’m going to relish every minute of it. So have a little patience, it wasn’t all that long ago the cell phone in your hand was the stuff of science fiction.
Till next time… give it a second!

My Left Foot – the Saga Continues…

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For those of you who are interested, the progress on my left foot is going well. I am now walking freely in the AirCast® (Das Boot), only using the cane for uneven or slippery terrain (winter is not a great season for crutches).

I have also been given permission to start putting a little weight on the foot when I’m not wearing Das Boot. This means I need to use my crutches so that the bulk of my weight is shifted off my left foot. We are still working on range of motion development – strength building will come later.

The best part about this is that I can now start thinking about the bicycle again. I’ve been doing 20 minute, resistance free sessions on the exercise bike during my physio sessions (wearing Das Boot). Today, Laurie (my physio-therapist) asked me if I have an exercise bike at home I could use.

I don’t, but rather than getting one I have decided to pick up a trainer to use with my Trek 7100. For those who don’t know, a trainer lifts the back wheel a few inches off the ground so that you can ‘train’ on the bike indoors during the winter. With variable resistance settings it should do the job quite nicely. I’m thinking of a magnetic trainer, tire drive, with or without the remote cable; probably a Blackburn® or a Cycleops®. (Blackburn pictured at right)

Here’s the pitch, always looking to save a dollar or two, and being a firm believer in reuse/recycle, I’m wondering if there’s anyone out there (in the Guelph, Ontario area) that has a trainer in the garage or the basement that you’d be willing to sell for a fair price?

Yes, I know all about Craiglist and eBay, but not everyone posts to sites such as these, and it would be nice to see if I can deal with someone I know. So I’m putting out the feelers to see what comes back. So if you have such a beast kicking around (or know someone who does) and you or they are more likely to go cycling with Barack Obama than use the trainer any time soon, please give me a shout in the comments section and we’ll talk.

Until next time…. Keep on pedalin’

Why Did 1234567890 Day Matter?

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As the title of this post implies some of you have been asking, “Who cares if the Unix Epoch Clock reaches 1234567890? It doesn’t really affect anything.” And to be fair, that’s true, it doesn’t. But, it does provide an opportunity to gain a little numerical perspective.

Like most of you I’ve been listening to all the numbers being bandied about regarding the stimulus/bailout/please-keep-our-collective-asses-out-of-the-fire package. It always strikes me odd the way people talk about $300 billion or $750 billion and most of us really have little concept about just how much money that is. We know it’ s a immensely huge amount of money, but can any of us in the everyday world relate to these kind of numbers.

Well, consider this: Let’s say that back on January 1st, 1970 you and a few buds were asked to count out the $350 billion the government was planning to give the auto industry. So the lot of you started counting, working in shifts 24 hours a day seven days a week, every day of the year including leap year, counting at a rate of 1 dollar per second non-stop.

That means that yesterday at 6:31:30pm EST you would have only counted $1.2 billion dollars!! that just 0.34% of the entire $350,000,000,000. It will be 4:30 am EST on May18th, 2033 before you finish counting the second billion! With that in mind try to imagine for a second what a trillion dollars looks like because that’s what some are suggesting the stimulus package will be in total when all is said and done. (BTW – You’ll finish counting a trillion somewhere around the year 33670. yeah, that’s right – 5 digits!)

I have often thought that when we stopped doing accounting by hand, with the endless hours of spreadsheet tabulations and the tickida-tickida-tickida of the adding machines ringing in our ears, and let the computers do it for us in the blink of an eye, we lost our sense of perspective on just how much we were spending. The quick flash of numbers on a screen does not compare to miles of paper tape rolling out of a desktop calculator to make us turn to the powers that be and cry, “Oh my GOD! Are you insane?” There’s just something about doing things manually that helps keep the universe in perspective.

Until next time … hopefully sometime before 1266207752…

Shalom.

Image Credit: Life Magazine