Logos Bible Software is giving away thousands of dollars of prizes to celebrate the launch of Logos Bible Software 4 Mac on October 1. Prizes include an iMac, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, an iPod Touch, and more than 100 other prizes!
They’re also having a special limited-time sale on their Mac and PC base packages and upgrades. Check it out!
I’m not sure that this is a real return to the blogging world. It’s more or less an attempt at an attempt. I’m pretty confident of my failure. But I’ve thought of writing at least fifty different times and have just never taken the time from work (that usually pays bills) to stop and do so. So here’s to not paying bills!
There are several things I’ve been thinking about lately: relationships, sin, transgenerational stuff (it’s not a bad thing, sicko!), and of course, technology…in no particular order.
Relationships – everything seems to hinge on them. When life is good, it’s because relationships are good. When relationships are good, life is. Even when bad things in life creep in the front door…or even mow down the stinkin’ door and barrage the whole house, we can still enjoy the morsels of sweetness that our found in good relationships. It’s often during such times that the best of relationship are revealed. And God seems to leave a lot of evidence in His working through relationships. I’m reading through Exodus, and continually wonder why God sent Moses to Pharaoh instead of just the plagues. Wouldn’t Pharaoh have gotten the message just as clearly? Even more so, I think of how God honed Moses through his having to confront Pharaoh over and over. Instead of telling Mo, “I’m going to send a bunch of plagues, and keep hardening the guys heart. You just wait right here and when he finally relents, I’ll let you know so can lead my folks northward.” Then there’s the whole wilderness thing. Lots of relationship issues there, and I’m not even thinking of the ones that recorded. I can only imagine my kids, “I got the manna yesterday. Today it’s your turn.” Anyway, my thoughts lately are how when relationships go south (and I’m not talking about the Israelites now). When relationships fail because of our sin, it’s the depth of those relationships that bring the severity of hurt. When I sin, it’s those who I am closest too who I hurt the most. May we be mindful, moment by moment, of how our sin affects our relationships.
And that’s a nice segue to sin, isn’t it? This past week during our staff meeting at work, our boss reminded us from Psalm 137 of how we shouldn’t be surprised by sin. It’s true of others when they sin against others, and it’s true of our own sin. After all, we sin because we’re sinners. I regularly think of a book I read some years back, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. In this book, the author shows how shalom is the way things ought to be, and sin is really everything that is contrary to shalom. Sin robs us of peace, contentment, and fulfillment. If nothing else, this increases my longing for the day that our salvation is complete and sin will be no more.
Another thing on my mind lately is the issues surrounding our generations. I’m coming to the place in my life where I’m realizing more and more how much living it takes to get real clarity. That is, our perspective when we are young is shrouded by our naivety. Yet, naivety is something that protects us from things like callousness and often bitterness. The compelling thing that stands out to me in light of these things is how we need input from old and young. In our early years we need to listen to the wisdom of those beyond us, and as we grow we need to listen to the optimism and ideas of those younger than us. Wisdom is found somewhere in the middle, often times. The practical advice of those older than us, applied to the reality of the changing world around us which is often best revealed by those younger, can bring us to the place of true understanding. This is especially true in the development of leadership. I wrote some of my ideas in an article about this recently.
I’ll wrap saying that I’ve had some real fun this past week bridging the generational gap with Leslie’s grandfather, Poppie. He was one of the first people I know who got an iPhone, and he and I have always enjoyed discussing, and being amazed by, this little piece of technology. I have to fight the lust factor with this device. This past week, his new iMac arrived, which he had me order for him. The past two evenings we have spent time together getting it up and running and doing some training and discovering together. I just made the PC to Mac switch in January, so I am still learning. It’s been a lot of fun, and I have to resist becoming a Mac-snob. These machines really are breathtaking, both to look at and to use. And I’ve also enjoyed the Wii with McGrooter this past week. We rented a baseball game to play while he was quarantined with the chicken pox (and strep throat). Actually, all three kids had both at the same time. What’s astounding to me about these machines is the interactivity between user and platform, as well as between the users. While he was quarantined, he mastered the basic skills of this game so that when we played, he pretty much stomped me in the ground. That brought a whole new challenge to our relationship! How do I celebrate his knack and persistence, while maintaining my dignity? I have no idea. But it’s been fun, and I will add that I have apologized at least once. Speaking of McGrooter, I’m really proud of his progress on the real baseball field. At the beginning of the season he experienced more than a few strikeouts. His last 5-6 games, he hit the ball at every at-bat! And on another non-techno note, he is really getting into our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia…almost as much as me!
“If you need to use any of my skills, I can do whatever you want.” – Napoleon Dynamite
Napoleon has many skills, the greatest of which may be dancing, or maybe picking up chicks. But if you really want to be WOWed, check out the calculator and conversion functions in Google. I didn’t know until recently that you could type mathmatical functions into Google and get the answer. For example, you can type 468 X 191 = and see that it is 89388. But even cooler, you can type things like 42000 feet to miles and see that it is 7.854 miles. Or, if you’re in the kitchen, try 16 ounces to teaspoons and see that it is 96 teaspoons. You can convert currency, metric to standard, do math, and so on. It’s great when you’re find out that a missionary in Ethiopia is sending you 200 kg of coffee divided up into 1600 bags, and you want to know how big the bags are (this really happened). Here are some other examples from Google:
Now that is some skills!
Here are some coupons from Dell you can use to save some dough. The coupons are good for the dates above or until supplies run out or the maximum number of coupons are used.
Okay, so I already made this clear a few days ago. But now I like Fred even more. After actually reading some of the transcript from his appearance on Fox News Sunday, I find that no one can legitimately level the title “moderate” at this guy. I so appreciate the fact that this guy is a straight-shooter, a truth-teller. If you didn’t see it or haven’t read the transcript, click here and read it now.
On another note, I installed Vista on one of my computers today. So far it’s working (I’m typing on it now). I can notice a bit of a slow down, but I do like the interface. I think the improvements are worth it, but I’d still recommend waiting for more fixes to come out. I got this one free, otherwise I would have waited. I’m still not pleased with Outlook ’07. The rest of the Office ’07 suite seems great, but Outlook is running really slow. It seems it’s doing a little better under Vista than it was under XP though.
