So, Who Is Slartibartfast?

I am a 40 41 42 43 year old father of two. I’m happily married, happy in my job. I hate confrontation.

I live in Nashville, TN – and have lived here my entire life. I work for a very large Nashville company: the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. I am a .Net developer specializing in intranet web development, and writing small programs to handle Big problems. I was a VB developer for years, till my company adopted C# . Now that I’m proficient in C#, it’s my favorite programming language, but I’ve been known to put together a VB app, just for the nostalgia.

I was a DES baby. This caused the next several facts about me:

I was rejected by Uncle Sam to serve in his army in 1983. This fact gives me “checkenhawk immunity”I have slightly higher estrogen levels than most men, which means I get weepy watching movies and Extreme Makeover, Home Edition, I write oh-so-sensitive poetry, and I actually enjoy cooking and housework. Do NOT get the wrong impression, however. I also like football, Nascar, hockey, heterosexual sex, Salma Hayek in a pushup bra, and war movies. I guess that makes me hormonally ambidextriuous!One label I will never have is “Babymaker”. This, in the end, turned out to be a blessing.

I am an optimist. An EXTREME optimist. This colors everything else about me. When I became a Christian, it only enhanced my optimism. This is a little strange, considering on one level, Christianity is the most pessimistic of all worldviews (humanity is hopeless and is incapable of curing what ails it). But since I’ve met Jesus and learned what people are capable of doing through Him, I believe there’s nothing anyone can’t do. Thus, my sometimes annoying optimism.

I, like my Lord, believe in the micro instead of the macro. I may have general discussions about social and political issues, but you will find that I will eventually bring the conversation down to the personal. This is because THAT’s how you save the world. Anything else is busywork.

I’ve played music since I was 15. In 1984, I started playing with a kid that worked with me at a dinner theater in far western Nashville. Together, with my brother we formed a band called Gray Matter. Later, we corrupted a high school kid and pulled him into our musical madness. We were together for over 10 years, playing anywhere they would let us in mddle Tennessee. Our heyday was when we were going by the name “Blue Collar”, in which we were a big hairband. Yes, we had big hair, but what I mean is that we were, for the time a BIG band (6 people).

Later, after I had married, settled down, and adopted two kids, my friend called me up and asked if I’d like to start playing again. He played in a praise band at a local church, and they needed a keyboard player. I gave it a try, got hooked, and eventually joined the church.

On this blog, 2001/2002 must be refered to as The Year From Hell. Starting with the fall of 2001, here is what happened

9/11
My mother-in-law’s cancer diagnosis.
My mother-in-law’s death on Christmas Eve (right after watching her grandhildren open presents)
My wife got the human parvo virus.
I contracted Bell’s Palsy.
My children got the human parvo virus from my wife.
My wife’s favorite cousin died.
My wife’s last remaining aunt died.
We lost everything we owned in a house fire.

Without my church, I don’t think we could have survived this time as an intact family. Because of this, I had a lot of forgiveness in my heart for what happened later.

Early in 2006, there was a dustup at my church. I don’t know why these things happen, except that churches are made up of fallen, yet forgiven people. The best way to describe what happened was that the church experienced something akin to a mid-life crisis. The Powers that Be decided that there needed to be a change in the contemporary service. They weren’t sure what they wanted, they just knew they didn’t want the current praise band anymore. We were, in effect, fired. Which is weird, because except for the Worship Leader (he was a part-time paid staff member), we were all volunteers. We had given countless hours, our hearts, our tears to that church service. So needless to say, we were extremely hurt. But the church, nor that service, was not our “property”, and God had other plans anyway.

After the shock wore off, we got up, shook off the dust, and asked God what He wanted us to do. He led us in an interesting direction: we formed a traveling music troupe, one that primarily played music as an ourtreach mission. To this day, we play our own band of Christian music in churches, coffeehouses, prisons, nursing homes, and anywhere else folks want to hear music that praises the Lord.

I am a political conservative (have been all my life), but of the “bleeding heart” variety.

I never turn away an offer of friendship. My circle of friends is quite a collection: liberals, conservatives, Christians, Buddhists, atheists, old, young.

Won’t you be my friend?