Confessions of a Shiftless Mind

Sporadic blogging, the bane of my existence.

Once more, I have realized I have a mountain of writing I must complete for finish off my courses. This looming disaster is guilting me to avoid idle writing. I thought I’d just mention this to my limited readership, so you know what is up. I have not fallen off the face of the earth, though it would be interesting to see what’s down there.

You may notice a few more password-protected posts. I am supposed to journal on the mentoring I am receiving for this course, weekly. I’ll probably do it here, as then I can pretend I am blogging while actually doing my homework.

Bah. Who cares, given the dreck Hollywood has been producing lately?

Start producing films that we want to see and I might care.

I found this amusing.

Wheee Firefox | Send To Friends | Flash Animation Movies at JibJab

This will be my first geekery post here at the new haunt. I can’t remember where I heard of it before, but somewhere I stumbled across the latest and greatest “user-friendly” Linux. It is called Ubuntu. They have a number of cool things about them that appealed to me.

• You don’t need to download and burn the OS. They will ship it to you for free on CD/DVD! (I received 5 disks today and some stickers to “spread the word” with.)
• The OS comes bundled with a pile of software, everything the average computer user needs, from Openoffice to Gimp (an image program akin to Photoshop) to a bunch of other useful goodies.
• It comes on a bootable disk, so you don’t need to install it and kill your hard drive to try it.

So, with much anticipation, I will give Ubuntu a whirl over the next couple of days. I’ll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE: Well, the CD wouldn’t play itself in my Acer laptop. It crapped out into BASH-world, which is unsurprising as Linux is by-and-large built by volunteers. They tend to take a little time to get every single driver for every single hardware configuration up and going, and it is a new laptop.

I was going to try it on our second computer which went down with a virus a few months ago, but turns out sometime between the virus and now, the motherboard’s onboard video pooched. So, I ripped the hard drive and a stick of RAM out and slapped it into Hulk (my other desktop), enjoyed the boosted speed, then commenced a program of scanning for virus repeatedly.

Ubuntu is going to have to wait for now… until the virus(es) has(ave) been DESTROYED!

In the meantime, enjoy the linkage from Susanna in the comments, to 3 Dead Trolls In A Baggie’s smash hit, “Every OS Sucks“.

I am trying to figure out why so many “Christian” nations or nations that are predominantly Christian are passing “religious defamation” laws. Is this pushed by Muslim minorities? Historically, Christian churches has not really cared about defamation of its symbols - maybe it is the teachings of Christ that inform us all bluntly that we will be persecuted, we will be hated. No point in getting upset over offense towards symbols. It will come regardless. Plus, the iconoclastic nature of much of the church (Catholicism and Orthodoxy excepted) means we don’t attach much value to symbols for fear of them becoming idols.

Maybe that is it. In the case of Romania, if they aren’t Orthodox, they are Catholic. Unfortunately, they will reap the whirlwind when the Muslim minority begins to use that law to defend Islam and Mohammed.

So yesterday I went and helped out with Alpha. It was stretching. I was out of my comfort zone, but I consider it a training ground. I am determined to be a more effective witness for Christ, and I think the best way to do that is to be in opportunities, and to be in position to observer others.

I had an opportunity to see some of the leaders of the church really put on a show. It amazes me how some people just seem to know everyone. The woman I was with at the nametag table, she knew fully 50% of the people who came to the table by name before they wrote their name tags. These were for the most part people who had never EVER been to church regularly.

I am trying to figure another guy out. He has a huge heart for the lost and the poor. But when I see him sitting at a table, I see him just sitting there quietly. He hardly says anything. I think to myself, how does he connect with people if he never talks and just stares at his plate? But he does. I must investigate further.

So that was the good. The bad? I heard from a good friend of mine that there is GOSSIP being passed around concerning their family. I think she asked me to see if I might be the originator of it. I wasn’t surprised, I have at times opened my mouth wider than I realized - sometimes I don’t realize the ramifications of what I say. It is something I am dealing with - I am sure there are a few proverbs about guarding one’s tongue. However, in this case, I am sure it did not originate with me.

1 Timothy 5:13, people!

I work in a call center, so this list of best and worst call centers was entertaining. I especially enjoyed one man’s effort to cancel his AOL account…

A guy tried for the better part of a week to cancel his AOL. He talked to six or seven different people on six different days. Each time he was thwarted. Finally, weary of the runaround, he went into a “chat room” (presumably an AOL one - ed.) and started threatening to kill people in the room. His AOL account was cancelled in three minutes.

I have a call center horror story of my own to tell. Be warned, this is long. Continue Reading »

Carpet cleaning is not fun.

As hard for me to say this as it is, I think Greg may be right.

I am NOT staying late at work today. Why?

It is Martin Luther King, Jr. day today. I watched a video of his “I have a dream” speech a week ago. I found it strange that he, a Christian evangelical pastor, was speaking with about 15 men behind him wearing what appear to be white Islamic tunics and little white Islamic caps. Is that what they were or am I misunderstanding?

Sorry for absence from posting for the last few days. I had my last couple of class days for a course on Friday and Saturday. This seemed to completely pre-empt every thing I committed to.

No Men’s Breakfast… mmm… $2 for AYCE breakfast…

No orders for my PBEM Diplomacy builds… d’oh!

So the next course I have will be 3 days next week. Then I’ll be officially mentored for 8 hours a week. I’ll have to do weekly journal entries on that. That’ll be interesting. I wonder if I should just put them here.

I have to mail away for Windows Vista. But at least it’s almost free…

Gotta get that stupid laptop fixed. Stupid laptop.

I am spoiling unseen episodes of Battlestar Galactica by reading on Wikipedia.

It’s such a good show.

It is pretty much the only reason I wish I had digital cable.

Of course, now I am on the brink of cancelling cable - I expect to find at least one passably intelligent or entertaining show on TV on a Saturday night. There wasn’t a single one. I ain’t paying $50 a month to watch Entertainment Tonight and the odd hockey game. I am done with cable. I’ll watch the DVDs.

I don’t think anyone who goes to my church reads this blog, so you probably don’t know who this guy is, but he is our worship pastor.

Yesterday, I went to church. It felt like an ordinary day, but for some reason God had other plans. The worship set didn’t seem to be particularly inspired, but then Jason set up “Agnus Dei” (I believe originally written by Michael W Smith, but I know it best by Third Day), followed by Chris Tomlin’s “Holy is the Lord, God Almighty“.

I was transported.

Never happened before.

I was in another place. A place of utter joy. A place where all I was, all I felt, was indescribable joy.

I felt like Exodus 34:29.

I felt like Revelation 4.

It was awesome.

I can’t say this was because of a particularly amazing performance by the Worship Team. I don’t want this to be taken wrongly, but they were not better or worse than they ever are. It was something else.

I think Jason felt it too. He had a grin almost as big and stupid as mine while he played. He was bopping like a Beatle. He was having more fun up there than I have seen from him in a while. It was 8:30am, and usually the first service is the slowest as most are still waking up.

It was my privelege to worship. Thanks, God, for that taste of heaven.