Thursday 24 September 2009

No Risk...No Reward?

The other evening a friend of mine and I were having a discussion. He is 1 of 2 pals I have that have been interested in the faith for a long time, but are still having some trouble taking that step to give their lives to Christ. The long and short of it was that he didn't know who to believe (though the conversation lasted the better part of an hour and I was off-shift at the time...that's essentially what it came down to). He had tried reading the Bible but kept saying that it did not make sense. This was interesting food for thought, but I wasn't surprised. The Word itself says in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

This is one thing in particular I am fearful of. Non-Christians reading the Word in isolation don't know what to believe because they do not take the crucial step of believing in God first. It's like trying to come into contact with God without commitment. If your heart isn't geared towards truly understanding the character of God, how can you try to seek Him? Psalms 34:8 says "Taste and see that the LORD is good". God is and always will be a personal God.

Listening in on part 2 of "Stop Acting Like a Christian, Just Be One" at LifeChurch.tv provided some fresh insight on the matter. I have always held to the tenet that people make what they want of their lives. They'll advance all reasons for avoiding situations that they think might cause them harm, and advance all the benefits for the situations that they think might being them well-being (even if it really doesn't). In fact, it is often perceived that living the life of a Christian is "hard". The world says this and it's commonly believed so as a result many people will try to investigate the lifestyle while being on the outside. But what many people don't know is that...you don't change yourself when you become a Christian. Christ changes you. If you could change yourself--you wouldn't need Christ. The Word itself says:

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:2)

The most difficult part of the process is surrendering control of one's life to Jesus. Draw closer to God and He will draw closer to You. Stay far from Him--stay on the other side of the street, look through the window or binoculars or whatever--and you're doing nothing but wasting time. We all have choices to make...and all of them involve a measure of risk. You can give up the world's carnality to save your life--or you can give up your life to embrace the world's point of view. Many of us avoid this because we don't deem it as a decision that needs to be made. But quite frankly, not taking this seriously means you've already made a decision--and it's one that won't benefit you in eternity. The time is ever closer. Where does your fealty lie?

Blessings.

Josh

Thursday 17 September 2009

Where the Grass is Greener...

I was over at LifeChurch.Tv two mornings ago listening in on the series "5 Ways to Wreck Your Life". Adultery was the focus of the topic under discussion (I mean it's in the Ten Commandments as a big "DO NOT"--so you know it's pretty serious). This is pretty pertinent IMHO especially since studies show that 65% of husbands and (interestingly enough) 55% of wives cheat. This is not how God intended us to live. The Word itself considers marriage to be both becoming "one flesh". How can a husband and wife who should live as one be so divided? As an old Jamaican proverb says, that would be "Two patty inna one different bag". In short, living that way makes no sense.

"When the grass starts to look greener..."

Craig (the pastor) made some pretty valid points all in all, but the one that stuck with me the most was essentially that of neglecting one's marriage. "When the grass starts to look greener on the other side...it's time to start watering your own yard!" When what's outside starts looking might fine, it's definitely time to start paying attention to what's yours. Being covetous will not solve the issue. Only a recommitment and recognition of the true worth of what you have and what the Lord saw fit to grace you with will make the difference. As Solomon said "Rejoice in the wife of your youth!" How many husbands delight in their wives and vice versa? Sure there will be the points of annoyance, but one must do well to remember that people in closed spaces will ALWAYS rub each other the wrong way at least some of the time. What's important is that you love one another enough to forgive and heal (I don't like saying "forget" because that's idealistic) when conflict presents itself.

Be joyful always. The vows you took to each other under God are real. The covenant is yours to keep--work at it, pray about it, do all that you can so that you may not be "disqualified" (to paraphrase Paul). You'll be surprised how the small things...an opening of the door, a love note, an embrace, just..a little more time alone...can help.

Blessings till next time.

Josh

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Windows 7 RC1 -- week in review



Been running for a quite a while on the RC of Win7 but it wasn't until last week that I finally completed my migration (email, productivity suites, vendor apps, etc). The specs for the laptop I use for work:

Dell Latitude D620
Intel Centrino Duo (1.8 GHz)
1 GB DDR RAM
Intel GMA vid card (shared mem)

Personally, I don't much like M$, especially since the release of Vista. ....well, let me rephrase that. Things can't really get worse than ME (which was a bug masquerading as an OS) so I guess I must give them some props. They've come a long way despite the fact that they've sometimes dropped some commitments. I mean, I'm sure we all heard that WinFS was on it's way...where's that gone :S...? ZFS would probably knock it out of the water anyway (provided Sun doesn't get bitten by that patent infringement fiasco) because it works so well. But I digress...let's move on to the grading.

Aesthetics: 8/10
- Had to give it an 8 because while Aero is pretty and all it doesn't give me the bouncy goodness such as what one would experience with...say...Compiz for Linux. However, I am pleased that it runs so well with limited resources :) Oh by the way, there are now desktop slideshows available within. I was hoping I could see some Dream/animated backgrounds but oh well...can't have it perfect.

Ease of Use & Utility: 7/10
- M$ has striven to make the interface as consistent as possible with that of Vista while introducing some new features. There seems to be a Snipper tool but I have yet to really see a use for that. The Control Panel (which I STILL think didn't need to be changed from that of XP) isn't so bad but still required a bit of digging before I could find what I wanted. The Wi-Fi radio is pretty nifty and convenient as well.

Stability: 8/10
- No BSODs just yet, thankfully enough. Sometimes when it's paging the system locks up and your windows might do some interesting antics (going transparent and switching without intervention) but that's about the limit of any kookiness observed. I should mention that this happens whenever I open Outlook -_-. Otherwise, it's a wiz at memory management is supersedes its predecessor many times over.

Compatibility: 9/10
- No issues thus far...except with FireFox 3.x which seems to crash fairly often--even with nothing but a few tabs open. I didn't even have to look for drivers in order to run it...it dealt with almost everything straight out of the box. I should say here that some of Dell's utility apps didn't work normally upon installation (eg Quickset's little visuals no longer appear) but those weren't show-stoppers. I guess it's just important to keep in mind that unless your PC/laptop is made to be compatible with a Win7 upgrade, it's likely that your vendor's preinstalled apps may act a bit funky.

Other Comments:
- It's pretty hard on my battery--I guess it's because my D620 isn't a "newer system" so I won't get the benefit of the power savings touted by M$. No skin off my back though, I'm perfectly content.

Overall Goodness: 8/10
- Not bad at all, I'd actually recommend this to any Windows user out there (especially those tortured by Vista).

And that's about it for the week in review. See y'all next time.

Josh.

Sunday 13 September 2009

My Time with an Asus F8SP-X1



So it's almost been a year since I shelled out a hefty sum for this tidy little device. So far I can't say I've regretted it. NewEgg has it as a "deactivated item" -- not sure why...but all I can say is this was definitely one of my better decisions in life (yay!). So far it's handled everything I can throw at it (even Street Fighter IV!), and has withstood every test. I thank God I had the money to purchase it at the time ^^. Let's get down to business...

Aesthetics: Not extremely great but I do like the glossy finish (shows up fingerprints though).

CPU: It's one of those Core 2's (T5750)with reduced L1/L2 cache...but otherwise it works fairly well. If it's a bottleneck I can't say I've noticed it o_o

Memory: 3 Gigs of DDR2@667 MHz is pretty nice and comfortably covers both my leisure and academic needs.

Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650...sweet card. Runs HOT though--teh exhaust for this baby is on the right side so sometimes your mouse hand will get a little warm, but that's no problem. At work the AC is set so low that I sometimes actually use this to warm my hands ^_^

Sound: Not the best and can be somewhat tinny. Doesn't bother me though, we all can't have it perfect on a low budget.

All in all, it's a pretty sweet machine--faithfully chugging along. Gotta love it.

Josh.