neorants

I don’t frequently log my dreams, but this one was just so bizarre.
Continue reading ‘Strange Dream’ »

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
–Romans 8:28 (NASB)

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
–Romans 11:33 (NASB)

We’ve all been there. “Why is this happening to me?” “Why now?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

God doesn’t always let us in on the “whys” — and He doesn’t really owe us the answers (see Job 38-42 for more on this). Still, every so often, I believe He enjoys letting us in on His ways. Yesterday was one of those days for my family.

Continue reading ‘Unfathomable’ »

It’s been a rough year, but I was just thinking to myself how nice it is to know that I’m loved, by God and by family and friends. If you’re reading this, tell someone you love how you feel. Maybe it’s a friend or a family member who you just don’t say it to — maybe they know already. Say it anyway. There’s no better feeling in the world than to know you’re loved.

I wrote this on a message board today, because of someone’s response to my comment about how I thought I Am Second wasn’t religious, but was definitely Christian. I thought I’d put it here as well.

Well, I think people confuse Christian with “religious” too often. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t really their fault — a lot of Christians don’t do a whole lot to differentiate themselves.

When most people think about someone who is “religious,” they think of someone who subscribes to a certain set of rules. Christianity is foremost about relationship. That relationship, if diligently pursued, leads to changes over time — but somehow they don’t feel like rule-following anymore. They feel like loving someone back.

I could share some personal stories here about how that has worked in my life, but I’m not really so sure they’d be well received by all parties. If you’re interested in hearing more, get in touch.

Back to my point. You can be a religious Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, or Satanist, or yeah, Christian. But just because many Christians get bogged down in legalism doesn’t mean there isn’t a difference between being religious and being a Christian.

So I couldn’t sleep last night. Kept waking up every hour or two, and was having weird dreams. They’re sort of a jumble, but the thing I remember most clearly is that all of my wife’s friends and family were calling my parents to “diss” me. No specifics, just “I was calling to diss your son.” I remember this so clearly because I don’t know of anyone who would actually use the term “diss” in 2008.

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede. This is horrible. This is exactly the kind of mass hysteria that I avoid every year, when I choose to work the day after Thanksgiving instead of shop. The nice thing about working the day after Thanksgiving is that unless one works in retail, nothing ever happens, because everyone else is off work. It’s just a mellow day, in comparison to a day of insanity if one braves the shopping experience.

So, it almost pains me to say it, but I’m actually getting used to them, now that I’ve made some space on my desk to shift their position a bit. So long as one monitor is directly in front of me instead of the gap between the two screens, I can cope, and am growing to appreciate the extra space. However, I still miss the extra height, and would have much preferred two 24″ monitors to avoid going below 1200px vertical resolution.

In any case, it’s certainly not the end of the world, and it’s pretty nifty to fire up a full-screen Ubuntu VM in VirtualBox on the second monitor, to work with a real OS for any serious development.

So, my employer recently gave me a new laptop, which is great. They talked about getting us “a couple of monitors” to hook up, as well. At the time, I mentioned that I would much prefer one large widescreen to two monitors. A couple weeks went by, no new monitors, I was happily working away in my 20″, 1600×1200 world. Until today. Below, see my new setup. Now I have two 1680×1050 desktops instead. I feel like some poor lab rat in an experiment where they’re trying to induce a split personality or something. The multiple desktop thing always has annoyed me. I never grew fond of virtual desktops in *nix, either. I just don’t work that way. I’ve promised myself to give it a few days to see if I can adjust, but so far, it’s not looking good. As you can see in the photo, I’m still gravitating toward one display.

And yes, before anyone says anything, I know that’s insane.

New Work Setup

[Update: I'm coping.]

You know who you are.

I just got back from seeing Fireproof. It’s my sincere prayer that all those who are in a marriage that is hurting see this film. It was phenomenal.