And so we begin

The station welcoming committee greeted me this morning: four adult geese and sixteen babies. At their rate of procreation and elimination, you won't be able to see the building in a few years. Already, crossing the parking lot is an exercise in careful footwork. The adults hissed and gave chase; the babies bumbled around eating gravel and mulch.

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I'm starting the week a bit tired: the weekend was busy. A seminar at church Friday night and Saturday morning, the usual Sunday activities, plus a most unusual business meeting last night. Northside's attendance has roughly tripled in the last five years or so, and we have outgrown the addition that was finished only a couple of years ago. So last night we voted to approve another expansion that will give us more space for services and additional rooms for classes and children's ministry. It will also dramatically improve access and traffic flow, which is rather claustrophobic right how.

It was not so much the scale of the decision that impressed me; it was how the decision was made. I have been through countless meetings in other churches that get bogged down in minutiae to the point of evoking outright hostility; the first half hour would be consumed in a debate over what color to paint the front door. By the time the meeting finishes, everyone is exhausted and bolts for their car as soon as the motion to adjourn is seconded. In contrast, less than ten minutes elapsed between the motion and the final vote. It was so easy that after the motion was overwhelmingly carried, we all looked around at each other as if to say, "is that all?"

The process demonstrated something I increasingly see and value about Northside: they find trustworthy people who know their stuff and turn them loose. The building committee has phenomenal expertise in a wide range of architectural, construction, and engineering specialties, but keeps the focus that the ultimate goal isn't to build a building, but to build up people. The initial presentation was so clear and comprehensive that the few questions that came up were easily answered. It also demonstrated a generally shared set of values that allowed people to set aside personal preferences for the sake of the best overall outcome. The project should be completed by the end of this autumn; it will be an exciting summer.

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Another circuit board designed, etched and drilled today. It's an amazing process, though it takes a bit of playing around to get right. In short, it involves laser printing the circuit traces on a special paper, fusing the paper to the copper surface of the board with a heat laminator, then soaking it in water for a minute. The coating on the paper dissolves away, leaving the toner on the copper. An additional sealer is then fused into the toner, and the result is a mask that resists the etching chemical. After about ten minutes in this nasty stuff, the unwanted copper is dissolved away, except for the areas with toner and sealant.

The instructions aren't always as plain or detailed as they should be, and at some point I will probably write them more clearly, once I get all of the kinks out. But now I can create a highly involved device in very little time, and it looks far superior to the breadboarding I used to do.

One tip I will pass along now: when you drill the holes for the components, make a point of missing your finger.