Before you graduate…

Well, I’ve graduated. Now what? I guess it’s time to move on to the real world. But I wanted to take some time and reflect back on my past college years.

Towards the end of my final fall semester, I’ve met up with some of the freshmen and some of them have asked for some “words of wisdom,” as it were. And I’ll manage to squeeze out a random few that I can think off the top of my head, such as not studying too hard and making time for friends, but I thought I would elaborate on it here.

CentOS 7 with Mdadm Software RAID and UEFI Boot

This post isn’t like some of my other ones, but I’m still posting it here for both my reference and the reference of others. Hence, I did not post it to Facebook. If you’re following through WordPress and you’re thinking “What is this??,” sorry. They’ll be other more interesting posts too! We’ll stick this under the ‘sysadmin’ or ‘linuxadmin’ category or something.

Dash Cam Setup

A few people have asked me about my dashcam setup, so I thought I would write about it.

After two hit-and-runs on my car, I decided I would get cameras. However, my setup only works while the car is on, and thus, doesn’t address the hit-and-run issue. Despite this, I felt that maybe cameras would still be a nice asset to have in the event of accident where fault may be ambiguous (after all, I’m in a college town).

Stinky Car A/C

Here’s yet another one for that DIY category, this time, for cars.

My Honda Accord’s air conditioning recently started smelling bad, and it was the same smell that my mom’s Honda Odyssey had for a very long time. It was a musty, mildewy/moldy smell, and it was especially unpleasant when the air conditioning was first turned on.

Just a little background on why this happens: When your car’s air conditioning runs, the evaporator coil gets cold and the blower pushes air through this cold evaporator. The result? Cold air. However, water condensates on this evaporator coil and this becomes an excellent breeding ground for mold and mildew. This stuff eventually starts smelling bad and making things unpleasant.

Rather than using a bunch of air fresheners to mask the odor, I decided I would go directly to the source.

I broke my lamp…

I like to fix things, so I figured I would post such adventures here as well as my more thoughtful blog posts.

So a few days ago, I knocked my bedside lamp off of my dresser and it broke, I figured I would fix it.

Ministry On a Budget

Disclaimer: This views expressed in this post are strictly personal and do not represent the views of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Asian American InterVarsity, or its leaders.

One of the hardest aspects of running any ministry, in my opinion, is the budget. In many churches, this often means that the size of the budget and the distribution of the budget relies heavily upon the tithes and offerings that the congregation makes. In the context of a Christian fellowship at a university, though, this means that the budget would be nearly nil, and rightfully so–College students often rely either heavily on their parents for support or they rely on themselves, which leads to small amounts of leftover money that is often used towards leisurely activity.

AAIV has been blessed to have the opportunity to earn profits at concessions. Kyle Field is among the top 25 ranked football stadiums in the nation (Whoop!), which meant that in the past, we’ve been able to make nearly $1000 in profits at each of the really big games. This past year, however, concessions ownership was outsourced and we have made less than half of the usual.

You could probably say that we’ve been spoiled; for the previous retreats/conferences we’ve been able to hand out at least $2000 in scholarships each, with more to spare for the new semester–the majority all from concessions profits. We started January 2014 with more than $5000 in our account and we were able to hand out nearly $3500 in scholarships at Recweek 2014. Unfortunately, we started out January 2015 with only $650 in the bank.

At the beginning of this year, we spent nearly $1000 on New Student Outreach. We spent nearly $2700 at our annual Fall Retreat. For the first time, we started printing all of our flyers in color. We paid for our own prints instead of using student printing accounts. For the first time, we had to pay to reserve our room at our largest NSO event–AWOK.

Here we are, Spring 2015, with only enough money to fund one more NSO. Unlike the past, we are no longer able to provide scholarships to Recweek using the AAIV account. People are upset because even though they worked concessions, they are unable to receive a cut for scholarships to Recweek. Some people question whether we should be expending so much into NSO.

I disagree with them, and I don’t regret our expenditure in NSO. I’m not going to try and present a really compelling argument, but here’s some food for thought:

• You may have noticed that we don’t charge a membership fee. And that’s true. And I don’t think charging a fee is the way we should be addressing our budget issue. The Gospel is a free gift to all. There’s no reason why we should charge a membership fee for an organization that builds its foundation upon the Gospel. If people are able, and feel compelled to give, then that’s great! But it’s not something we should be expecting as a college ministry.
• Scholarships for retreats and conferences are important. They are helpful for new member retention and they also support the financially needy. However, we seem to treat scholarships as a way to make the retreat “cheaper.” Not because it’s actually needed, but because scholarships makes it “cheaper.”
  • Some people are legitimately financially needy. Requesting scholarships just because it seems “too expensive” while not suffering any real financial issues hurts people who are unable to attend due to actual financial problems. Consider your recent purchases, and evaluate whether you really need that scholarship.
  • If you are not a new member, and not financially needy, then you shouldn’t really have a reason to be upset that our budget is low and that you are unable to get scholarships.
  • Working concessions shouldn’t entitle you to receiving scholarships. What we do should be to the glory of God, and if that means that the money we earned in concessions can be used to further our ministry, then maybe not getting your scholarship (if you’re not financially needy) would be a good sacrifice.
• NSO is expensive, and we shouldn’t expect any different. There are many ways to cut corners. We could skip the free food events. We could do without the color flyers. We could ditch the table and banner at open house. We can advertise using word of mouth. However, I think this is neglect of our demographic and their interests. Most of our incoming freshmen learn about AAIV from these events, outreaches, and tables, so we shouldn’t treat them simply as expenses. Instead, they should be opportunities that we can further develop and use to reach the campus.
  • We shouldn’t be discouraged that retention is only a small percentage of attendance at our outreach events. We should view it as just one of the many opportunities to bring in newcomers, and seek to improve.
• We seem to neglect the power of fundraising and support letters (and admittedly, I do too). We’re probably the only InterVarsity chapter in the Red River region that doesn’t rely heavily on fundraising, and that’s an opportunity we shouldn’t miss.
• If you’ve been blessed with being financially well off, consider supporting the ministries that have reached out to you–college fellowship, church, etc. After all, that’s how most ministries are supported; Gifts from people like you!

Lastly, the inspiration for this post sounded a lot better in my head. In text, though, it seems really convoluted and I don’t think I reached my intended conclusion. Oh well.

Let me know what you think!