Posted 7:25 PM by Blah blah

Thou Shalt be Christian Mothers (LA Times):

"I do not blame Andrea Yates. Although I don't purport to understand all the pressures she felt, I do know what it feels like to believe that you are a bad mother.

There was a time in my life that I, too, believed I was a bad mother to my four children. As a young 20-something, I married. I wanted nothing more than to please God and my husband, not necessarily in that order.

We joined a small church: Jesus was preached, God was glorified, pastor and wife modeled familial propriety and righteousness. I left my job and rose to a higher calling: Christian mother. One baby came, then two, then three, then four. Blessed rewards! I kneaded and baked bread; soaked and simmered refried beans; blended mayonnaise from oil and egg with just a dash of dried mustard; purchased flats of half-rotten strawberries and plucked stems, pared away soft spots, mashed, mixed, boiled and "put up" jar after jar of strawberry preserves, with my toddlers at my elbow.

We--my husband and I--were 'in' but not 'of' a materialistic world, covenanted before God to thrive on one income, to share one car....

But instead of feeling fulfilled, following 15 years of never 'getting it right,' I felt frustrated: four shabbily dressed siblings bickered, tract-home paint peeled off finger-printed walls, the ceiling lining in the car drooped and the dichondra lawn resembled a wasteland."

I found this fantastic contest from Sun's Java page:

TopCoder: structured a bit like Yahoo Games, this is an international online collegiate programming contest that tries to find the top programmers in the nation. You are presented with a set of problems you try to program in the fastest and most accurate way possible. Getting points increases your rating. You also may "challenge" your fellow competitors' code. Finding bugs or inefficiencies in it will boost your rating. Jason Woolever, a senior at MIT, won last year's first ever TopCoder Collegiate Challenge. He won a grand prize of $100,000!

For all coders and aspiring coders---this is a must-see! Intellectual challenge, sport, money, and professional connections. You can't beat that!