A little Humor

These are some pictures I have collected over the last few weeks while stumbling around the internet.

Mac users will appreciate this one.

Self-Explanatory

Highly Ironic

Is Your Computer On?

Of course it's on. You're reading this.

Do you leave your computer(s) on all night?

Read this.

I'm guilty. Four computers under my control in a day's work. I usually leave them all on. All protected, but all on--all night.

Maybe I should reconsider.

What would you do with $800?

I awoke this morning to news of the potential of an economic stimulus plan that would involve sending money our way. It could be as much as $800 for a single person, or up to $1600 for a couple.

Of course the details still need to be worked out. The political parties need to come together. There has to be some agreement. But hey, we could get a little tax refund, and then a tax refund advance. Cool!

OK, so what could we spend it on? We can't just save it. We've got to spend it. After all, it's an economic stimulus plan!

Maybe we could get a nice HD TV with it. That would help stimulate the economy.
Or how about a new iMac?

We need to do some little things around the house. Maybe a new garbage disposal. Oh yeah!

Paint. We need to paint some stuff around the house.

Curriculum. There's always something one of our kids could use to further their education.

A vacation. YES. We could make a nice trip with that! Now THAT would help the economy, wouldn't it?

But wait.

Is this a good idea? Not the vacation, the dispersion of dollars on families throughout the land. On the one hand, yeah, we wouldn't mind a little financial windfall (is there any other kind?) for our family. But from a macro-economic perspective, is this a good idea? What will be the long-term consequences?

This is probably like what a child must feel like when they fall and hurt themselves very badly or something and we attempt to pacify them with a lolly-pop. We can name more things that a wrong with the country's economic state than we can name that are right: The weakening dollar; The sub-prime mortgage crash; The lowest housing starts in years; The imbalanced trade deficit; The rising federal debt; The insurmountable consumer debt, etc, etc.

So does anybody really think handing out a few dollars to people is really gonna help? Proponents would argue that this same action in 2001 is exactly what it took to pull us out of a rising recession. But the circumstances this time around are quite different.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake said "Fiscal stimulus that comes too late will not help support economic activity in the near term, and it could be actively destabilizing if it comes at a time when growth is already improving," Who has the wisdom to discern if this short-term solution to an economic downturn is timed correctly, will yield the desired results, or even substantial enough to matter?

Thank you, I would like some cash, but no thank you, I don't think this is going to do our country any good. Are most Americans going to feel the same way or will they just thank Uncle Sam for the "gift." We'll pay for it one way or another.

Let it Snow

Yesterday we were to wake up to a "Wintry Mix." We got much-needed rain, but no snow...that all ended up in the Mountains and mostly north of us. But wait, maybe more? I'll believe it when I see it. It is January. But it is North Carolina! This is from the News and Observer:

I'm more better than you--evidently

From MacDailyNews, a study of some 7,500 Mac users suggest that Mac enthusiasts are "...more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large." And, "...receptive to their own inner feelings and may feel both happiness and unhappiness more intensely than others."

Yup, that's me.

Twitter

For some reason (it's Matt's fault, really), I've signed up for a Twitter account. You can follow me here. It also syncs with my Facebook status. I'm following far more people than are following me. Probably because I haven't gotten the word out.

Word is out. What's your Twitter handle?

More computer problems

Everything's back to normal. It's ok. This news is a couple weeks old. My laptop's hard drive died. This was not as big of a crisis as the home computer discussed in previous posts. The reasons for that are these:

1. All my financial data is on my home computer. When that went down, I almost didn't know how to pay a bill, or even what money I had (not much, I assure you)
2. I use iDisk. This is a really cool service through .Mac that keeps my data syncronized between my laptop and my desktop at work. All my finale files, word docs, pdf files, and everything are kept on an Apple server somewhere, plus the files are kept locally on my desktop hard drive and my laptop hard drive so I can work off line if I want to, then when I reconnect, the data is synchronized.
3. I back up fairly regularly. I have been using SuperDuper for some time, though when I went to Leopard, it no longer functioned. I am now trying out Time Machine, however, which is very cool.
4. I use the Google Browser Sync firefox extension. This is cool because any computer that I use keeps all of my bookmarks, passwords, cache, history, everything syncronized between my browsers. After installing Firefox on this machine, then installing that extension, all my settings came back and I was at home again.
5. Applecare. I walked in to the Apple store, they tested the computer, determined the hard drive failed, and replaced my hard drive for "free." Plus my fold hard drive was discontinued for this model laptop and they had to replace it with the next model up. I went from 100GB to 120GB. Cool! If you have a Mac, Applecare is worth the extra bucks. I didn't have to do anything except tell them the machine doesn't work and they took care of it.

Computer crashes are very inconvenient, no question, but as hard drive crashes go, this was far more manageable!

Computer Crash Update

I've been away from the interweb for a while, but while I was gone typed this update for all concerned about the restoration of our home desktop:



I know you've all been wondering.

The answer is that the computer of my "crash!" post is back and running. However, I had to go through a multi-step process to see it restored. And it's honestly not fully restored, but the important data has been recovered.

After running SpinRite, I was still unable to get the computer to boot. I got further along than I had previously, but still not able to boot. A disk error was encountered in the process.

By this time, I had taken the hard drive down to my other computer and was able to retrieve important info off of it. Mostly my Quicken data. I could retreive pictures from the "my pictures" folder too, so I knew the drive was not totally lost, even though it wouldn't boot.

This began another very irritating process. The re-installation of Windows XP.

I have a hollographic XP Home Edition install disc. After getting about 50% through the installation process (did I mention I purchased a new hard drive from TigerDirect on Capitol? A Seagate 250GB for $80!), I encountered a "cyclic redundancy error." A WHAT?

Apparently a Cyclic Redundancy Error is a fancy way of saying that an error has been encountered in reading the disk, and really what is going on is that the software suspects that the disk is not authentic. I restarted and tried again, and again. Every time I got to the screen that said "39 minutes to finish the install," I got this error. VERY very frustrating.

Let me just pause and say that a few weeks prior to this incident, I received a new copy of mace os 10.5 "Leopard." My installation on this laptop took about 3 hours total time. I went from 10.4 to 10.5 and had absolutely no trouble. All my data was maintained and the OS upgrade was flawless.

Back to the Windows machine. Thom tried to help me resolve this issue. He attempted to assist me with this issue, babysitting my machine during the week of dress rehearsals and trying to get it to go. But in spite of cleaning the lens on the DVD drive, cleaning the disk itself, it became clear that the error was not able to be overcome. Either a much deeper issue existed in the hard ware, or there really was a simple error on the disk. (Neither of us had an extra home XP disk lying around).

Thom recommended I take the computer to Intrex, where for $50 I could have them run a diagnostic on the memory, CPU, HD (new HD), and motherboard. They did, and they found now trouble.

Once they began to install XP however, they encountered the same error I encountered. HA! I feel a little vindicated. The solution? They simply swapped my install disk with theirs and it worked like a charm. Stupid.

So now I have windows machine up and running again on a fresh hard drive AND my old HD in the computer primarily to retrieve my old data when needed.

I've also tried something I've never done before. I'm running everything as a user rather than as admin. I have a password protected "admin" account, a "Janet" account and a "Brian" account. Since I like to use Google's firefox bookmark plugin, keeping seperate accounts between Janet and me will allow us to bookmark our browsing separately.

Computer crashes, life goes on. Computers are becoming like cars. We're very dependent on them to the point that if they crash we almost don't know what to do!

Alternative Sunday School

As you get ready for church tomorrow (or today, or next week depending on when you read this!), consider what some parents are doing to educate their kids:

An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It's important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it's O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

I am very curious to know what the basis of these "morals and values" are for those who don't believe in a Moral Law-Giver.

Read more in this article.

Time for Lord of the Rings

This is the time of year that I get the irresistible urge to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love these movies. I love the story, I love the grand scale of the movies, I love the acting, I love detail of the smallest minutia. I love the sound track. And I love the extended edtion DVDs (thanks, Jason!) with all the behind the scenes interviews and commentary. I appreciate the vision of Peter Jackson and I'm really excited that he is now going to be directing "The Hobbit." Rumors are that he'll be filming it in 3D as well!

Why do I get the urge to watch these movies this time of year? I guess because this is the time when the movies were released both theatrically and when the extended DVDs were released.

So far, I've watched the first disc of The Fellowship and I am nearing the end of the second disc. Right now, Boromir is trying to take the ring from Frodo. I'll probably watch the rest of the trilogy over the next couple of weeks.

CRASH!

"Crash" fortunately is not the sound of a bone-breaking fall, or the collision of vehicles hitting each other at high speeds.

And I'm not referring to the movie "Crash," one of my all-time favorites.

It's the sound of a hard drive. My hard drive.

Don't you just love that?

After a great time visiting family at Thanksgiving, covering parts of Pennsylvania, while passing through Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and of course, North Carolina in one four-day period, the last thing I wanted to come home to was a hard drive that was unresponsive.

But I did. And it was.

We have two computers at our house. The primary computer is the one that has the hot-running "Prescott" Intel P-IV chip in it. (and by "hot," I don't necessarily mean it is fast, I mean it runs very very hot! warms up the whole room!) It is also the machine that holds our itunes library, Picasa photos over the last four or five years, Quicken, email, etc., etc. This is not a hard drive I can afford to lose, but clearly there are some bad sectors.

Even though I had turned both the machines off while we were gone (which may have caused the problem, who knows? I leave my computers on 24/7), when we fired it up, it didn't take long for the error to reveal itself.

Well, I am attempting to recover my hard drive data with a little piece of software called Spinrite. I learned of this program because I am a regular listener of the fairly geeky Security Now podcast. This software is interesting. It is a svelte, compact little piece of machine-language software that boots from either your floppy drive or your CD-Rom drive. Once you buy it, you run it to create a little .iso file that that it runs from either source (including even a USB flash drive, though I couldn't get my computer to boot to that). My computer doesn't have a floppy drive, only a DVD drive so I knew I was going to have to get this little program onto a CD.

If I didn't have the other computer, commonly referred to as "the kid's computer," I don't think this would have worked. Fortunately, though it is several years old, it has a little 4X CDRW burner. After downloading some freeware that allows you to install .iso files to the boot sector (this is very important, otherwise the bios will not see this disc as a bootable disc, but only as a disc with an .iso file on it!), I got the Prescott computer to load the software and start working on the drive. It found the bad sectors right away and started trying to recover the data.

As I understand it, the software works literally bit by bit, flipping each bit from what it is to the the opposite, then back again (0 to 1, back to 0). If the sector is bad, it saves that bit to another part of the drive that is healthy. My drive is 160 GB. Spinrite has been running now for six days, non-stop. It is 80% finished with the drive. After this week's long investment, I hope it can salvage the drive long enough for me to copy it to a new hard drive! I'll keep anyone interested posted in this exciting saga.

I'm Dreaming of No Christmas Music - not now anyway

File this one under "Puh-leeze!"

I don't often listen to the radio. I've become a podcast junkie. But yesterday I was without my iPod and decided to not listen to talk radio. I was shocked to flip around the dial and hear a Christmas song (if Rod Stewart's "Favorite Things" counts as a Christmas song). But then I pushed the scan button and heard Elvis singing "Blue Christmas." I kept flipping. More Christmas music.

Why? Why must we endure this? I like Christmas. I even like Christmas music. But I like it only between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Really radio stations in Raleigh? Really?

We're a week away from Thanksgiving! Let us enjoy THAT first.

Oh--and the decorations. I couldn't believe as I walked into a Home Depot before Halloween that all the Christmas trees and lights were up.

Get ready for Christmas after Labor Day next year.

The only word you'll ever need

Sheila and Abe

It's funny how YouTube intuitively links videos from one to the next. I guess it's based on the tagging system. Well, I had posted a video of Tommy Walker doing "To God Be The Glory" for the benefit of our team here and after reading a comment someone had left there, I noticed a link was made to this Abe Laboriel and Friends video below.

This video was made this past summer at the Saddleback worship conference. Not only was I there, but the person who shot this video had have been sitting almost next to me as this was the exact perspective I had on that little mini-concert. Sheila E, who some of you may remember from the 80's, is now following Christ and is playing at the drums. You can see her come down and grab her father out of the crowd to come up and play some of the Latin instruments with her. It's ashame the audio isn't better. We miss all the goodness and deep pockets of Abraham on the bass. It was fun though a little crazy.

Here's a picture I took of Sheila playing her trademark white-with-butterflies latin percussion.

An esoteric funny

While checking the web on compatibility issues between Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and Finale, I stumbled upon this post from a user on a Finale message board that made me laugh out loud:

I got Leopard today too. It was a gift from my son because his pit bull ate my 10.4 system discs. The dog runs fine on 10.4.

Like Bart, I will install it on a non-essential Mac and check it out.

Bill

Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

Much attention has been given to the problem of students relying on Wikipedia as a source of information, but one professor has turned that problem on its head: instead of term papers, her students now write Wikipedia entries. [Link]

This is awesome! Yes, there are still entries in Wikipedia that need to be filled. Maybe once Wikipedia gets filled up, the prof can turn her attention toward Mahalo!

Blogged with Flock

Seeking a theology of NT music.

I thought it would be interesting to repost a portion of comments I made on a church music blog/discussion board concerning the analysis of a contemporary piece of music. It was late as I typed this initially, but for some reason I was able to crystallize my yet unanswered questions into concise form.

First, the OT idea of doing something skillfully related to music always has to do with performance. The musicians were skillful in the way they played or sang. Never [to my knowledge] is there a mention of the songs played or sung being written skillfully. Yeah, it may be splitting hairs, but isn't it interesting that the text goes out of its way sometimes to describe the skill of the musicians while saying very little about the music itself?

Second, and this may have been thoroughly covered elsewhere in previous discussions, so I apologize for bring it up, but how do we derive a New Testament theology of musical practice from Old Testament descriptions where the New Testament is curiously silent? What are we to conclude about the absolute qualifications of music and musicians from the Jewish/Chosen setting of the Old Testament to the Church/Gentile setting of the comparatively silent (on music) setting of the New Testament?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Productive Day?

I sometimes find myself measuring the productivity of my day by how much trash ends up in my trash can. I don't know if that is a useful tool or not, but at least I feel good about having done something!

I can't WAIT!!

Looking forward to a great game tonight:

Young People Rejecting Christianity, Seeing it as Homophobic

A study released last week by the Barna Group found that under-30s -- both Christian and non-Christian -- are strikingly more critical of Christianity than their peers were just a decade ago.Ten years ago, "the vast majority" of non-Christians had generally favorable views of Christianity. Now, that number stands at just 16%.

From the article:

There's a surprisingly unified sense between young adults, both inside and outside the faith, that the divisive, judgmental authoritarianism that's dominated Evangelical Christianity for the past 30 years has run its course. Furthermore: the "insiders" (as Barna terms Christians) see the same issues and agree with many of the criticisms as those on the outside -- and are openly talking about taking their theology in some new directions. There's an emerging sense that it's time to let go of the harsh legalism that's defined American Protestantism for the past three decades, and return to something more like the Social Gospel that demanded more of Christians than merely passing judgment on the details of other people's lives.

read more | digg story