I spent the past week as a counselor at the inaugural session of Camp St. Joseph of Damascus.
My experience there was absolutely grace-filled and I made strong connections with fellow Orthodox Christians that I know will last a life time.
We were blessed to have Fr. Joseph Kimmett as our session priest and to have visits from Sayidna John and Fr. Bogdan Bucur.
This session’s focus was on the Theotokos and on her Dormition in particular.
We particpated in orthros, vespers, and paraklesis services throughout the week as well as fun activities, sports, and Christian education classes.
These activities and services prepared us for — and culminated in — the celebration of the divine liturgy on the feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.
My family and I flew up to Bozeman for my sister’s graduation last week.
I got to spend some time innawoods at our cabin and I also visited the local OCA parish.
There’s also a wonderful monastery in Harrison that’s tightly knit with the surrounding parishes, but unfortunately I didn’t get an opportunity to visit.
Given the time of year, the weather was outstanding — it hit 80 degrees despite snowing nearly two weeks ago!
We also got to spend some time in yellowstone.
It’s always great, but this time I had my iPhone’s 48MP camera with me.
The photos are pretty spectacular.
I hope everyone had a prayerful Holy Week and a wonderful Pascha!
I was very fortunate to be able to fit my term projects into the service schedule at my parish in Albany.
Although one class has some upcoming deadlines, the warm weather and blooming flowers are welcoming in the end of the school year.
This semester was a doozy and my head is still spinning from the amount of work I’ve had to turn in, but by God’s grace I’ve been able to get everything done.
I’m looking forward to some post-master’s vacation time and to Bright season cookouts.
God bless!
Last spring, in the beginning of my masters’ program, I challenged myself to use OpenBSD on an ThinkPad X200 from 2008 for the duration of the semester.
OpenBSD did not have drivers for my Atheros wifi card to authenticate to my university’s PEAP wireless network, so I was basically consigned to only having internet if I could find an ethernet outlet.
(On a modern campus they are not so common.)
Even with internet access, however, the dated hardware couldn’t reliably play video (at least on OpenBSD) and it’s not like watching youtube or movies on the tiny, dim CCFL screen was that enjoyable anyway.
In December I resurrected my Spotify and Instagram accounts after deleting them in 2020.
After two and a half months of using them both (and deleting them again) here are my observations:
Instagram
Initially things were pretty great.
I was able to reconnect with some friends I hadn’t been in touch with since high school.
Instagram also has a really great format for sharing trip and event photos.
Nevertheless, 99.9% of what you see on Instagram is Tiktok-adjacent shortform content and ads.
Even though you can add accounts to “Favorites” and “Close Friends”, there is no easy way to cut out all the cruft.
