Reflections on Christmas

As any reader of this blog can tell (if, indeed, there are any), I am a Christian.

This time of year is special to me, as it is the time of year we celebrate the birth of our savior, Jesus the Christ (by the way, Christ isn't Jesus' last name, but his title. Christ is the Greek version of the word Messiah.)

Truth
This time of year was celebrated by pagans long before the birth of the Christ. December 21st or 22nd marks the winter solstice, the time of year in which the sun appears to stand still. It marks the beginning of winter.

Jesus was not born in December. From hints in the text, we can assume he was born between August and October.

The reason we celebrate the birth of Jesus in December is that the Catholics super-imposed the birth of the Christ on top of the existing pagan celebrations.

Christmas is a secular and commercial holiday for 95% of the population of this country.

I know all that. Here are some other facts to consider.

2,000 years ago, an angel appeared to a virgin and told her she was going to have a child. This virgin's future husband knew that he hadn't had sex with her, she's pregnant. Logically, he thinks that she cheated on him, and was going to call everything off. An angel talked to him, and convinced him that she had not.

I know that this poor couple had a baby in a smelly barn, laying the baby in an animal's food trough. I know that angels appeared to shepherds in the fields and announced the birth.

I know that God himself came to Earth to redeem man. I know that keeping this monumental fact fresh in my mind is extremely important.

It doesn't matter if I mark the anniversary of Jesus' birth on December 25th, October 16th, or May 3rd. The important thing is that I mark it.

In the old testament, God created feast days that the Jews were to follow. The passover season is to remind them how God delivered them out of slavery. The feast of tabernacles reminded them of the provisions and protection of God while they wondered in the wilderness.

In the new testament, Jesus asked his followers to partake of the Lord's supper (communion) 'in remembrance of me'

A common theme is a formal remembrance of the blessings of God in our lives. It is vitally important for us humans to set aside a time to change our focus and make God our center of attention.

I choose to celebrate the birth of my savior and Christmas is a good of a time as any.

An ode to the Cellphone Camera

I hate the camera in my cellphone.  It's very low resolution (640X480), most of the time the pictures are blurry, and sometimes the lighting is such the pictures look stupid.

Even so, I love having a camera in my cellphone.   Every now and then, I see something unexpected, and I can capture it with my camera.

Sometimes, it's amusing, sometimes it's disturbing, and sometimes it's one of those indelible, iconic moments that turn to cherished memories .  

Today, I saw this car parked in fr

ont of our building.  It was rather unusual and amusing.

Especially, if you have kids, you need to have a cell phone camera, because you never know  when the 'cutest' moments will occur.

Case in point is Benny eating an ice cream cone at Little Huskies

Or the expression on his face while eating a tomatoe at Maw Maw Di's.

Camera phones rock. 

Nothingness

While doing some reading for school, I came across a reference to a philisophical world-view known as nihilism.

A good summation is " Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itself--all action, suffering, and feeling--is ultimately senseless and empty." (emphasis mine)

Let me sum it up.

• There is no God, no devil, no angles, no heaven, no hell, and no life after death
• We're nothing more than a cosmic accident
• We're nothing more than animals
• There is no higher authority than mere human contrivance.
• Right and wrong are abstractions created by the human mind. There is no right and wrong.
  
• There is no meaning to life
• There is no purpose in existence.
• We are born, we live, we die and there is nothing more than that
• All values, all goals, all accomplishments are, in the end, meaningless and temporary. Humanity's greatest achievements will not last.
  
• The ends justify the means.

This mindset, mixed with marxist dogma, explans where most liberals come from in their perspective of the world. They are steeped in this and conflict theory.

Since all that exists is now, and evil isn't real, we are to live our lives to maximize our pleasure and enjoyment in life. Whatever flips your switch is ok, as long as you don't bother me.

So all that is in the world is materialism and sensuality.

Also, since there is no objective right and wrong, the ends justifies the means.

No hope, no real joy, no meaning, no purpose, nothing that lasts. Nobody really matters.

These poor people don't know how deluded they are! Folks, there is a God!

Therefore I have a purpose. I have joy, meaning, and hope. I know that what I do matters. I know I matter, and I'm more than just an animal. There is a future, and right and wrong are not matters of opinion but fact.

Conformity

There are different types of conformity.  

Conformity is usually viewed as an evil.  It is not universally so.  

Conformity allows us to live in a society.  In order to live in peace together, we must conform our behavior to the norms of society, such as not killing people, not stealing, not abusing people, following the rules of the road, etc.

Conformity also identifies our membership in peer groups.  Every group has its own standards to which  its members must conform, and the group is identified by the those standards.  From the glee club to the Hell's Angels, each has its uniform and code of conduct.

Conformity also shows respect.  If I bow to a Japanese man, I am not materially conforming, just honoring the custom of the society.  If I wear a tie to a job interview, I am not 'putting on airs', but rather saying , "I respect you and your business and so I am conforming to your idea of how an interviewee is supposed to look"

Conformity, however has a bad side.  We are pressured by others to conform to their ways, in order to "fit in"  This conformity usually involves sacrificing our principals, morals or deeply held beliefs.

Basically, there are two types of conformity  internal and external conformity, or rather  immateriall and material conformity.  However you wish to define them, the basics are these.

Material conformity is conformity that requires you to concede a core principal, moral or standard, while immaterial conformity does not.

• If conforming requires you to change who you are, it's material.  
• If conforming requires you to change what you stand for, it's material.
• If conforming requires you to change your beliefs, then it's material.
• If conforming requires you to act in a way you feel is wrong, it's material.
• If conforming requires you to mistreat others, it's material.

Material conformity is usually wrong (unless, you're value system is way off base)

Immaterial conformity is a natural part of human society, and society couldn't function without it.  A smoker is conforming when he does not smoke in my house.

I say this because I know too many people who are see non-conformity of all stripes as honorable and right.   They confuse the two types.

Funny Video

This is a funny video I ran across on YouTube. It is a news pariody about Obama supporters after the election.

Worst President?

Guessing game. Which president am I talking about?

• Admitted to spending money on military items without Congressional approval ( a felony)
• Suppressed an armed uprising in Haiti with US Marines, at the cost of over 2000 Haitians
• Pursued homosexuals in the naval service, even using entrapment as a method of investigation. (Actually had sailors pursue homosexuals to drum them out of the service)
• Withheld from the public serious medical conditions that could effect his judgement as commander and chief
• Campaigned on a promise to balance the Federal budget, and then increased governmental spending by some 80%
• Tried to appoint radicals to the Supreme Court to allow his radical legislation to pass Judaical review. This attempt was rebuffed by congress.
• Promised to keep the US out of war, but secretly pursued a path to involve the US in a war.
• Violated international law by supplying by selling munitions to belligerents (nations at war. This is ok as long as the selling was open to both parties. It wasn't, however. It was one-sided, and thus was an act of war)
• Used the IRS to investigate his enemies
• Pulled FBI files of political opponents.
• Raised the effective tax rate by 700%
• Propped up a foreign dictator who brutally suppressed his own people.
• Imposed programs to redistribute wealth
• Imposed more government programs on the nation than any other president.
• Locked up people with no trial in military camps, some of whom where American citizens who did nothing.
• Actively supported secrete nuclear weapon research do develop a weapon to use against other nations.
• Is known to have cheated on his wife with more than one woman, at least one of whom worked for him.

Who are you thinking? Reagan? Bush? Clinton? Carter? Nixon?

Nope. It's liberalism's iconic leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is praised as one of the best presidents of all time, and Bush is repudiated as one of the worst.

Food for thought.

I think Bush was a mediocre president.

• In foreign policy, he didn't attempt to persuade our allies on many issues (such as removal of North Korea from the list of terrorist nations, without talking to South Korea).
• He failed to communicate his core beliefs and reasoning to the American people.
• He allowed the news media to set the agenda
• His frequent blunders in speaking will brand him among the lower third of presidents.
• Iraq is really iffy. If it turns out ok (read no dictator worse than Saddam taking over when we leave) then it might be worth the cost (in gold and blood). But it is a big gamble.
• Bush's stance on illegals was laughable and pathetic.
• He was a big spender

Even so, Bush had some good qualities

• He had the courage to stand for what he believed in, even when he knew the media would distort and ridicule him for it.
• I believe that his actions were to protect this country from further attacks.
• Bush tried his best to do the best job possible.

Distinctive Christian Doctrines

The Last Blog I did on the idiots from Westboro made me wish to discuss the 'real' doctrines of Christianity.


Total Depravity - Man is not 'good' in any sense of the word. Man (and to the woman out there, man is used as in 'mankind'. It is inclusive of you) fall far short of God's standards (Romans 3:23, 5:12, 6:23). Our thoughts are evil, and our hearts aren't pure (Gen 6:5, Jer 17:9). There is nothing good in us that God says, "Hey look! I've gotta have him for my child.


Justice-God is just. He cannot wink at our sin. There has to be a payment for the sin. We have a similar sense to us. When we see those who commit crimes turned loose by our farce of a legal system, we feel the burning indignation in our hearts that injustice was done.


Love-The bible says that there is no greater love than a man lay down his life for his friend. Since God's love for us is so great, he came up with a way to appease his sense of justice and take care of the punishment for our sins himself.



Grace-God, in his love for us, gives us grace. Grace means unmerited favor. It means getting what I don't deserve. It's like mercy on steroids. Mercy is not getting what you deserve (the cop letting you go with a warning when you deserve a ticket). Grace is getting much more than you deserve (the cop in the example above, not giving you a ticket, but giving you $100,000 because he wanted to.) God's plan is based on grace. It's not about how good of a boy I can be (thank you Jesus. I'd not have a chance). It's about how good Jesus was. It was about Jesus paying for what I did by his death on the cross.



Forgiveness-By grace, we get forgivenes. The bible says that our sins are as far from us as the east is from the west. When God looks at us (once we accept the gift God paid for, that is) he doesn't see me and my sinful self. He sees Jesus. My sins are covered by the blood Jesus shed.

Westboro Baptist Church, aka "God Hates Fags"

About the Wesboro people.


There is a "church" in Topeka, Kansas that protests funerals. They've done the funerals of soliders, homosexuals, even the Sago Miners who died in an accident.

Here's an interview with them.


They state "God Hates Fags" and that "God Loves Everyone, the greatest lie ever told"


These people are so wrong for so many reasons. Let me list a few.

1. God doesn't hate fags. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.." Folks, this includes all sinners, including homosexuals. God hates sin. He hates mine, he hates the sin of the homosexual, he hates the sin of the adulter, the fornicator, the liar, and the thief. Romans 5:8 says, "but God Commedeth his love towards us that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us"
2. It is one thing to say "homosexuality is a sin" (It is, by the way, and that is not "hate speech" no matter how loudly the liberals scream it.) It's quite another to be mean, hateful, and spiteful and try to cause pain to those who lost someone they loved. There are only two commandments in the Bible. First, love God with all your heart, mind soul and spirit, and to love your neghbor as yoruself. The golden rule, so oft repeated, is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I doubt that they would like someone causing them additional pain when saying goodbye to a loved one.
3. The Bible says to "Speak the truth in love". Telling a soldier's family that he's burning in Hell right now at his funeral is as far from love as I can fathom. Let's assume that they're right (although I doubt they do any research to see if the person whose funeral they're picketing was a Christian). Let's assume that the solider did died in his sins. Millions fall into hell every day. Why protest this one? What do they gain by causing even more suffering to the family? I doubt that they'd have anyone jump up and say, "Gee, I realize now that I need Christ because you're making a butt of yourselves!" What they gain is publication and notaritiy. I would never condone lying to family members about what the scripture says about salvation, but when someones heart is broken it is not Christ-like to ground glass into it. Speak the truth in love. There is no love there.
4. They say "The only lawful sexual connection is the marriage bed. All other sex activity is whoremongery and adultery, which will damn the soul forever in Hell" They are right about the only lawful sexuality. But they are wrong about damning the soul. Salvation is not by works but by Grace. God saves use because of what JESUS ALREADY DID. Any sin, not under the blood of Jesus Christ is enough to damn the soul to hell. That includes little white lies, or cold-blooded murder.

In Defense

I was in class on Thursday (11/6) when my teacher started to go on about Obama's victory in the polls, and what it meant for us.


I don't have a problem with the sharing of political or religious ideas in college. I discuss both topics often and with great vigor. Furthermore, it is quite normal and expected for teachers to share their personal feelings and ideas with their classes.


This was not the simple sharing of personal feelings, but rather a leftist rant that was way over the top. It had no relevance to the subject matter (economics), was at least 20 minutes long if not longer, and was completely one-sided.


The teacher lambasted Republicans in general, and Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan in specific. She let the class know that she had a special place of loathing for fundamentalist Christians in her heart. She accused all the above groups of spreading hate and strife.


She talked of her days in the sixties when she thought that any differences due to race, gender and sexual orientation would fade away, and everyone would love and help one another. She repeatedly implied that to disagree with her interpretation of reality was either disingenuous, stupid, or mis-informed.

She talked about crying when McCain gave his concession speech, and crying again when Opera cried. She told us that we now have an opportunity to change the world (I'm assuming that the opportunity to change the world only exists when a Democrat is in the White House) by being the change. The final point, I guess, was that Democrats should be gracious in their victory, not evil like the Republicans.

During most of this, I kept quiet. Really. I knew that by speaking up, I'd only turn the monologue into a discussion, and I had to get home to help Laura (my nine-year-old daughter) with a school project.


I wasn't really angry. Obama won, I expected gloating. Aggravated, that the gloat kept going and the topics covered kept widening. Frustrated that she'd use her position and abuse the trust between student and teacher in such a partisan manner. But, I'm a big boy, no sweat.

She went on to say that Jesus wasn't a Christian, and that she was afraid of fundamentalists, and brought up the killing of abortion doctors by Fundamentalists as if doctors were falling victim every day to the hands of the deranged. At this point, I had to speak up.

After all, there have five, maybe six abortion doctors murdered. At least one or two of which were not done by fundamentalists.


Branding every Christian who believes in the literal interpretation of the Bible (which is a defining characteristic of "Fundamentalists"), is as fair as saying every member of PETA is a murder because some animal rights nuts kill scientists who use animals in their experiments. It's about as fair as saying all gays want to kill Christians because Christians voted for the Constitutional Amendment in Calif.


I made several points. I don't know if any got through.

• I explained that I was a fundamentalist Christian, who taught each Sunday. Since it is obvious that my knuckles don't drag the ground, nor is there a puddle of drool around my seat, I hoped that I could be an example what Christan's really are, instead of the fear-mongering image portrayed in the media.
• I said that I can believe that a behavior is a sin without hating the person doing it.
• I said that two people can look at the same data and draw two different opinions from it, without one being brainwashed or ignorant.
• I am not ignorant, stupid or misinformed just because I don't happen to agree with her

Sometime during the discussion, Lisa Ramey came in. Lisa and I go to church together, about the teacher was talking about about me being a fundamentalist, and Lisa says "We go to church together".

A little later, the teacher started to chide Baptists because of the complete morons at Westboro baptist church (aka. the "God Hates Fags" groups who picket funerals. )


Lisa says "We go to a baptist church". It was almost funny.

Regular Expressions, and strong coffee

It has been awhile since last I wrote. In the inerviening time, I have graduated from school with an applied associates in Computer Science, joined a gospel group (playing bass and not singing...yet), and have started back to school to get my BA (I wanted a BS, but I have kids who are growing up too quick to spend the time it would take)

So, while swilling a large cup of strong coffee (to stay awake since I've started back to school, it's up every morning at 4:30AM, work at 6am) I stumbled across something sweet. VB dot net 2005 has built in support for regular expressions!

For those who are not aware of this very handy but weird language, regular expressions are a way to search for patterns in text. A simple exaple, [0-9] would return a match of any number 0 to 9. Regular expressions are extremely useful for pattern matching. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression for more information.

I've been working on a manual for our heirloom management system I wrote. I am working to move heirloom production from me to our customer service unit. I'm trying to be concise, but I am up to 27 pages, and I still have at least two sections left.

I've been using Gimp's screen shot feature for creating diagrams and illistrations for the manual. The screen shot features is found under the file menu, then aquire. It's easier than using the printscreen feature of Windows.

Refugees

Something interesting happened to us (the family) Tuesday. We came home from work, like normal. My thoughts were of accounting homework that needed to be done that evening.  Instead, we were surprised to see several of Kanawa County Sheriff deputies.

When I asked what was going on, I was told that they had just busted our neighbor for operating a clandestine meth lab. http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=34479

So we loaded up the family and stayed down at the in-laws.

Cooking meth is dangerous. They blow up, they poison children, and just isn't a good thing to do. I have two kids. You want to kill yourself, go ahead. When you bring my family into it, that's something else.

Divided Minds

The Bible says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. I'm tettering right now. There is a couple of major decisions that MUST be made in the next few weeks.

I should be graduating in May with my AS in Computer science. Now, I work as a programmer, and an AS degree would be useful. My wonderful and loving wife has put up with about four years now of me being a part-time husband, since school demands so much attention. I am also tired of homework, tired of working 40 hours a week, coming home and helping with housework, and then having to stay up all night studying.

On the other hand, a bachlor's degree would be more useful, and to be honest, more respected. If I say, "I have an associeates of science..." most "educated" people say, "oh, so what" It's like saying "I finished the 8th grade, and it only took five tries!"

A bachlors is the minimum for most State jobs. Should I continue in school, and put my family out, or continue on to help out my family's financial situation?

One is intensly personal, intensly private and the details of which I'm not going to share. I've been asked to do something that, while I understand and agree with the rational arguments for doing so, my heart says something else. Basically, it's a decision between what I want and what would be better for someone else.

These decisions must be made soon (within a month or so), and I must live with the consequences for the rest of my life.

Busy time, new baby

Well, it has been quite a while since I last wrote. To be honest, I had forgotten both my user name and password. An update would be warrented to the one or two people who may stumble across my rantings.

In Feb. 2007, we found out that we were going to be parents again. A little later, we found that we were having a son. On October 19th, Benjamin was born. Check out the link to the online birth announcement I posted. Ben is a healthy, happy, BIG Boy. His big sister thinks that he is simply the greatest

Work is still busy. I have been given (temporarily) the responsibility to make the Heirloom Birth Certificates until I finish the Heirloom order entry system. I'm doing it in VB 2005 (every time I mention the term "VB" my wife snickers as she says it sounds like I'm saying "VD")

Funny thing about programming is that you have to continually update your skill set, and the most effective way to do so is to write the software in a new language. This is both fun and frustrating. Fun because you learn new stuff, but frustrating because the thing that you can do in ten seconds in the old language takes you days to figure out how to do in the new. In VB NET, Microsoft decided that all database access should be done through a disconnected data set.

Yes, I know, the data reader object allows forward-only connections and SQL commands can be issued over the COMMAND objects. The problem is that they went from easy rs.fields("fieldname").value = myString to parsing a SQL command string. In DAO, I could connect to the database in four statements. In ADO, I could do so in three. In ADO.NET, I'm into five statements just to open a database for read only, and reading values is a pain in the butt.

Anyway, if you're programming over the net, this makes perfect sense, but did they forget that VB is primarily used to design database front ends for a client server architecture? I have two main gripes with Microsoft. First is that they work to make money first, even if it screws the end users, and second, they think were all stupid.

They don't care. Just like they broke compatibility with VB 6 when the dot net stuff came out. The dismissed the idea that many companies have invested tens of thousands of dollars in a custom code bases and are reluctant to throw away the investment.

Just like the stupid tool bar(aka ribbon bar) that the microsofties foisted upon Office 2007 users. There are several degrees of computer users. Some users adapt to changes easily, and love to learn new ways of doing things. Some view computers as the devil's work, and interact with them the same way you interact with a plague victim, as little as possible. Companies have invested lots of money in user training. From Office 97 until 2003, the user interface remained mostly stable, allowing folks to take what they've learned from older versions and apply it to newer versions with little headache. Now I understand the desire to improve user interfaces, and I don't fault Microsoft's attempt to make things easier, but come on folks! How hard is it to provide a menu system in addition to the bar? I am not a novice user by any means, and I struggle to find where they hid the option that I need, when I knew exactly where it was in the menu.