The Week in Review (January 22, 2024)

1. I missed Saturday's post, mostly because I was rushing to finish a draft of a psychology course for my work. One of the fun aspects of my job is helping various subject matter experts create courses on various subjects. I think I am uniquely suited for this role because I have such eclectic interests. Currently, I'm facilitating the creation of a psychology, advanced writing, and biology course. 

I finished the draft this morning. Now of course the subject expert will make it into his own likeness. Whenever I finish a course like this one, I think, "I should create a pastor's guide to psychology," just like I created a Pastor's Brief Guide to Business last year. Maybe someday.

2. I am scrambling to write two books because of the initiative I started in the fall. One is Ten Secrets about Jesus. I ran some marketing headlines by Twitter and Facebook. "Which headline would make you want to click?" The responses were all over the place but it seems like "What they don't want you to know about Jesus" got the most with "Was Jesus a troublemaker?" probably second. Other candidates were "Jesus was a conservative... and a liberal." Do any of those pique your curiosity? 

Technically, I'm supposed to run a market test on Facebook but I'm bogged down with getting my Facebook "pixel" to work for good tracking.

The other book is Hanging on to Faith by a Thread. It is an old idea but with new impetus because of a phone conversation I had last week with someone struggling with faith. I did a poll on Facebook for what chapter items should be included in this one as well.

3. The past week was not without its unique challenges because of the weather. Sub-zero weather had us strategizing keeping the chickens alive. Then we are down to one car for various reasons, and its battery died because of the cold. Today it looks like we will be back up to two working cars by the end of the week. So far all the chickens have survived, but now it's supposed to rain all week. Sucks for them!

Sometimes life just sucks almost everything out of you. But somehow we make it, thank the Lord!

Two Weeks in Review (January 13, 2023)

1. As I write, strong gusts of wind blow across the vacant corn fields around me as the temperature plunges. We're expecting temperatures in the single digits positive and perhaps negative this week. We've brought a number of the chickens into the garage in preparation, although the big coop has a heater in it. Quite the party.

Somehow I missed last week's week in review. I think I was scrambling to finish Steve Deneff's micro-course on holiness. This weekend a misunderstanding has me giving a fair amount of time to a course called Writing to Convince. I do enjoy being part of these course creations. Once psychology and biology are finished, we will have the full panoply of gen ed courses on offer.

The way it works is that a college adopts our courses and takes on our faculty as adjuncts. We administer the dual-enrollment program for them with their complete involvement. They give us names and connect us to (potentially) feeder high schools. There are other streams of students, including college students, that feed into the same classes. Because we administer it, a good deal of the friction of the traditional academy is bypassed. 

So there is a growing army of associated high schools (currently around 25) and a growing number of colleges from which the student can opt to receive the credit. 

It is so hard to get anything done in the traditional academy system. It's no wonder so many colleges and universities are struggling. Friction. Friction. Friction. If someone has a great idea on a high level, sometimes they are ground to a halt in the hands of infrastructure people who have lost the plot or never knew it. Or maybe a middle-level director has the vision but can't get buy-in from someone on a higher level. Courses are created that are never used because of politics or systems that they don't fit neatly into. Lots of places in the traditional system for good ideas to fail or be ground to a pulp.

It's frankly maddening. We used to wonder if we should just buy a failing college ourselves. But the goal was always to create an Amazon of college courses, a network of the best of the best of the best. We are in a really good place.

2. On New Year's Eve, I decided to go ahead and self-publish a Spanish version of my ethics. No one buys my books anyway. The reason it is iffy is that I used AI to translate it and didn't pay someone to proofread it. But that's hardly worth it. It would cost well over $1000 to have it proofed and I wouldn't see that much money from it for the rest of my life. Something is better than nothing. If no one uses it, so be it. AI translations are getting better and better. They will prevail soon.

Over the last couple months, I've been generating an AI paraphrase of John. I wasn't satisfied with what AI initially came up with, so I did a lot of paraphrasing myself beyond its raw output. You can tell me if you like the result.

Other projects in the works, as always.

Wishing you all electricity and heat this next week.

New Years Resolutions (2024)

It's time again to write a bunch of stuff about this coming year. Since I typically write a bunch of stuff that I hardly finish, I'll try to stay reasonable here.

Personal

• Run five times a week
• Read a chapter of the Bible a day
• Read 20 pages of something each week

Udemy

• Put a New Testament Greek course up

YouTube

• Hebrew of the Week on Wednesdays
• Through the Bible on Sundays

Self-Publishing

• The Antichrist
• Explanatory Notes on Passion Week
• Twenty-Five Years Teaching Philosophy

Real Publishing

• Science and Scripture

Probably the biggest goal I have is to set up my self-published books on Shopify and to market them to an interested list. We'll see.

Happy New Year!