Chris' Blog

I passed a bilboard tonight that seemed rather vague but church-related. It held the words "What If Texas?" They were designed to drive people to a website which holds some very good questions. I'd recommend you read it (yes, even if you don't live in Texas). Here is one:

What if the Bible never says, “Ask Jesus to come into your heart and you will be saved”?

Read the rest >>

Got this from my grandmother:

Obviously rigged but still funny.

I haven't posted anything of worth in the last couple weeks. Most of you have me on Facebook and know at least one reason for that.

In the next few weeks most people in the United States will receive census questionaires. As you might have already heard, they want a lot more information than many people are comfortable with. This video by Jerry Day is a little presumptive but it does make some very good points:

The Census Bureau derives its power from the United States Constitution. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 states:

So I did something stupid today. An e-mail arrived in my inbox that claimed to be from Facebook and it said that my password had to be reset "for safety to our clients." They wanted me to check the attached .zip file for my new password. Obvious virus.

Since I maraud as a geek, I decided to take a look at it before pressing the "Delete" button. After saving "Facebook_password_3444.zip" (3444 is *NOT* my FB ID, which should be another tip-off), I opened the zip file. Then I double-clicked "Facebook_password_3444.exe" instead of using the "Extract" button (for use with OllyDbg or one of a couple disassemblers I have). Oops.

Ordinarily a Windows virus would not run on Linux (my desktop OS, for anyone who does not know already). Unfortunately I have Wine installed. After a couple seconds, here is what popped up:

As I flipped through my Bible, I came across a hand-written note next to I Kings 17:9. Here is the verse, which was spoken by God to Elijah:

Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.

The note is a reference to Matthew 22:30:

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

Let me try to explain if the connection is not immediately clear. Whenever any man, whether Christian or secular, lives with a woman we assume that sex is involved. In I Kings, God commands one of his servants to live with an unmarried woman. Doesn't God know this is a recipe for disaster? Or did Elijah have his eyes on God where they belonged?

Marriage is not bad. In fact, as many people are fond of pointing out, God designed it (ie. see Genesis 2 and Song of Solomon). For all of how good it is, there is more to life than sex. Marriage itself is more than just sex.

I've had another blog post planned for the last two weeks, but the abundance of work has kept me from doing the research that is still required for it. In lieue of that serious post, here is one about today.

After a short night, I woke up to get started early. Some time later I looked at the bathroom curtains and realized they were much brighter than they should be for an overcast day. Cue someone opening the curtains. Moments later I strode outside (barefoot) to take a picture of my truck:

But this was only the beginning! I had four places to go in the afternoon, and it kept snowing.

Each stop took longer than it should have so I got back around 11 PM. It turns out to be a great time to be driving on icy roads because there are fewer people to hit. Only kidding. My truck hardly slid at all. The bridge was nice and smooth.

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence—

as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
and that the nations might tremble at your presence!

When you did awesome things that we did not look for,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.

— Isaiah 64:1-3, ESV

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

— I Corinthians 2:1-5, ESV

While reviewing a PHP function for a website that I am working on, I came across this codified version of Rambo (as a replacement for unset()):

Unfortunately I can't use it on $_SESSION, which was the reason for the research. From the session_unset() notes:

Do NOT unset the whole $_SESSION with unset($_SESSION) as this will disable the registering of session variables through the $_SESSION superglobal.

I could modify the function but it is simply easier to use session_unset().

The search for a quote's source lead me to an article from 1904 by "The Bachelor Girl." The author had a longer excerpt of the quote:

By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house.
In childhood, a woman must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
[...]
No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women apart from their husbands; if a wife obeys her husband, she will for that reason alone be exalted in heaven.
A faithful wife, who desires to dwell after death with her husband, must never do anything that might displease him whether be be alive or dead.
[...]
Day and night women must be kept in dependence by the males of their families.

The clipped portions are arguments against the wife leaving her husband over various issues. You can read those from the full article if you are so inclined.

It does not seem that I will be getting out of it this year. Too many people in too many places are reminding me.

So for the record, I am not 25. I'm 24.99. Got it? Good. ^_^

There is one expletive and a brief (~1 second) clip that in rather indecent. Please pardon those. Actually, please pardon the entire video.

Let's see, in the past we've had women "marry" a dolphin, a lion, a German Shepherd. Oh, there was also the woman who married the Eiffel tower. And we can't forget the dead boyfriend:

The groom, a former policeman identified as Eric, was killed by a drunk driver in September 2002.

Demichel told LCI television she understood "it could seem shocking to marry someone who is dead," but her feelings for him had not dimmed. His body was not present for the ceremony.

Now we add Laptop to the list of other things.

Some of you already know that my pastor of the last two years has returned to his work overseas. An evangelist and long-time friend of the church has taken over the pastorate. He said this morning that he knew we loved him since we asked him to pastor for us even though the last time he was here, he had called us hypocrites.

This morning he also made a couple comments about suicide and I had briefly mentioned the topic in my last post on Anger. He spoke about the kind of darkness that pushes people to commit suicide. Then he contrasted it with the darkness that we face as Christians.

That wasn't even the introduction for his sermon, so I'm going to insert some of my own thoughts. C. S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, said this:

When you are younger, everything seems much bigger than it really is. Dad is the best dad in the world and can beat any other dad in town (or even Chuck Norris). You absolutely loathe broccoli. Ice cream can make your day. As you grow older, those emotions tend to mellow out. Some of them hide and wait to catch you off guard.

During those younger years, my parents used to gently remind me that I couldn't be angry forever. They sometimes quoted the second part of Ephesians 4:26 (paraphrase):

Don't let the sun go down on your anger.

I always knew that meant I only had a couple hours to forgive, and I knew that I couldn't hold a grudge much beyond that anyway. Yeah, it was almost as bad as teenage girls. But suppose that the verse was intended that you should forgive yourself as well.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), Jesus said:

All of you have probably heard about the special election in Massachusetts to cover Kennedy's vacant seat in the Senate. It is quite literally all over the news and is being taken as a backlash against the infamous health care bill.

The latest news is that Obama and other Democrat leaders are thinking about downsizing the bill:

Shorn by Massachusetts voters of their pivotal 60th Senate vote and much of their political momentum, the White House and congressional leaders are considering a more modest version of Obama's top legislative priority. It could focus on curbing insurance company practices like denying coverage to sick people and on helping low-earning people and small businesses afford coverage, officials said.

That is a little better, really, except that Obama chalks it up to less communication with his countrymen:

I've been told that Twilight gets worse as the series progresses. I'll read the rest of the series as I have time. Anyway, after reading the first book in that series I turned to Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass.

There were several waves made in 2007 from conservative reviewers when this book was turned into a movie. The production attracted several very big-name actors and actresses. The movie itself has been changed to make it more marketable and those reviewers worried about the effect that the book would have on young minds.

Philip Pullman wrote The Golden Compass as the first book in a series called His Dark Materials. It was intended to be a reply to C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia from an atheist's perspective. Pardon the lack of references for right now, but a couple of the interviews that I read with Pullman at the time seemed to indicate he was more of an agnostic.