Life is not a Competition.

About a week ago or so--I can't recall exactly how long ago it was.

Anyway, an event happened that I believe I got a bit of wisdom out of that would benefit a lot of people, nonchristians and Christians alike.

A group of people I didn't know all that well--fairly well--were in the discussion of school dances. For some reason I ended up in the conversation and I ended up saying that I didn't plan on going to any school dances. I don't remember how I ended up saying it because it was in the natural way that things come up in conversation, either I got asked or that's how the talking drifted.

"Even your Senior Prom?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I don't feel like paying money to go somewhere I'm going to end up walking right of in two seconds... because of the stuff they do that isn't actually 'dancing'. If "school dances" were actually "dances" without the bad stuff I'd go."

Then someone said something that was a bit mocking of me, I can't remember what it was. Perhaps I victimized myself or mistook what they said. But the important part is that I felt that I was being mocked... and then I'd see how I'd react to it. I could have responded by getting angry, but instead I revealed the truth that it hurt me by saying

"I don't get it. I'm not trying to force anything on anyone."

Their reaction was that they felt bad about it, and no one left feeling like they'd been made fun of. Okay, maybe just a little, but I noticed something. People, including me, fear being even a little bit vulnerable. But if we'd be our true selves, and realize that life is not a competition, we'd realize that we actually do care about each other.

And instead of tension between us, there is respect.

Sure, there's been one really stinging time I'm recalling right now in my memory where I didn't join into another person's "competition of existing" and they kept going with it and I was torn up inside by it, but maybe I made a positive impact on the other person... or at least the bystanders of it.

And about the whole School Dance thing, I find other places to dance at, and I probably dance more often than people who go to School Dances, so don't feel sorry for me!

Politically Correct

I don't want to try to always be politically correct.

What I mean is more important than the words I use. Being sincere is more important than appearing to be sincere.

That being the case, I would never intentionally be politically incorrect just to be politically incorrect. Just as I would never intentionally try to offend someone. I'm just going to try my best not to but if it ends up happening, it probably wasn't on purpose.

The danger is going too far in thought about this. Just like how sometimes I think I should not go to a store at a certain time because I think I won't be able to find a parking spot... but then I think that other people will think that and then no one will be there so I should go... but then I think that people will think that too and it will be crowded... you see where I'm going with this?

I'm just going to blog, talk, and write and be myself.

Current Seattle Mariners or Former Mariners

There is a statement that used to pass from my lips without any second thoughts, but at this very moment, it is causing me to ponder if it resembles a paradox.

"I am a Mariners fan."

Now, I still love the Mariners, but I started thinking about something. Since I love the Mariners, that means that I want them to win and the other team to lose, but here's where we come into a bit of a fix.


If the Mariners are playing a team that has more players from what used to be "the Mariners," who do I root for?

Watching baseball in recent seasons and seeing former Mariners on The Yankees' team had led me to mistakenly believe that the Yankees are currently comprised very much of the players that I cheered for when they were Mariners a few years ago. One example is John Olerud, but he isn't on the Yankees anymore.

So, the question becomes, "which is more important to me?" The players... or the name of the team they play under?

I don't recognize the players who are the Mariners now except for Ichiro, Raul Ibanez, and Jose Guillen, and it might be that I am recognizing some of them just from earlier this year.

Since other teams have many players who were former Mariners, I wonder if it is like a reunion when they play against each other, or like an Alumni game or something. The old Mariners versus the new Mariners.

So I want the Mariners to win, but which ones? I used to be completely anti-"teams that aren't the Mariners", and I never thought I would say this, so I'm going to say it in a roundabout way. Maybe I'd root for the ones that I first became a fan of.

Afterthought: If you randomly stumbled on this blog and were looking for a Mariners blog, here's one: http://marinerds.blogspot.com/

Ice Blocking, it's like sledding in the summer

Yesterday I went with a group of guys from church do something called "ice blocking." I had never heard of it before. It was a lot of fun!

My small group leader didn't tell us what we were doing when he called to invite us, only that I needed four dollars and clothes that I wouldn't be afraid to get dirt on. My guess was paintball, but he said that I would never guess what it was, and I didn't! The four dollars paid for pizza and for the blocks of ice.

Now, ice blocking is lots of fun, it's like sledding in the summer. It's just dangerous enough without being too dangerous; it's safe enough that I would be okay with taking a girl on an ice-blocking date, depending on the girl.

When my small group leader told me what we were doing, I thought he was just making something up. What you do is buy a block of ice for each person, then you go to the top of a long and steep hill covered in short grass. Then you fold a towel and put it on top of the ice block. Then you sit on the towel which is on the ice block, grip the towel on the back of the ice block (or wherever), and you push forward with your feet and slide down the hill feet-first and try to keep your balance on the ice block.

It is really cheap fun, $1.50 cheap. And the ice block lasts a long time on grass.

There were five us all going at once, doing races, trying to go down different ways. The best way is just to sit on it. Other competitions we did involved seeing who could go the furthest without falling or slowing down, mostly it was just walking up the hill and sledding down continuously, and at the end we had a contest to see who could throw their ice block the furthest, and surprisingly I won!

Ice blocking, it rocks the mullet.

Halo 2 Maps: A Happy Change of Policy for Microsoft?

I used to play Halo 2 on my Xbox 1 on LIVE. I find it really ironic that one of the reasons why I didn't renew my Xbox LIVE subscription turned out to not happen. It was announced some time ago that two new maps for Halo 2 would be Xbox 360-exclusive, which was "the straw that broke the camel's back" and turned me away from Microsoft gaming, because Bungie (the company that makes Halo) said that Microsoft was the one who made the decision. So don't blame Bungie!

This is the funny part: I found out that the Halo 2 maps are actually going to release for both consoles. This makes a whole lotta more sense since Halo 2 was not only made for, but runs better on, Xbox 1.

Well at least I don't have to deal with deciding whether to use to Xbox communicator headset today or not: (link to post about the unmoderated choice words that are prevalent on LIVE)

Even though I have left the online part of Xbox gaming, and don't foresee myself ever valuing a console at 400 dollars, I still care about all the folks I left behind on LIVE, so the news that Microsoft are showing in some way that they care about their customers enough did make me happy! Here's why:

I was glad to see this unexpected turnaround for Microsoft. Little things like how they did the "premium/core" packaging scam, the "let's release maps for an Xbox 1 game except only release it for the Xbox 360"... as good as money is, there were things that made it too obvious that they were out for MORE money.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I believe that money is a good thing. I'm fine with a company trying hard to get me to pay them money, because in order to do that, they'll have to impress me with a solid product and not have any motives to trick me out of more cash. If I am ever buying a refrigerator at a store and the seller tries to get me to buy a warranty on the fridge, I would say, "Oh, you're expecting it to break down? It must not be that good then, see you later!"

What is taking it too far is when a company makes it too blatantly obvious. Some friends that I knew were into Halo 2 may have said, "this thing with only releasing the maps for Xbox 360, it's a marketing scheme." Yes, but I never saw how something can become okay just because it'll make someone money.

This thing with the newest Halo 2 maps being released for both consoles, that made me happy and made me say, "this is a good thing they're doing. I am happy for all my friends who are fans of Microsoft games."

Recently, I found out, from a visit to one of my old favorite Halo 2 communities, that Microsoft is running advertisements on their Xbox 360 Dashboards! Even this is way below Microsoft's standard. The money for the console, game, and LIVE weren't enough? That's too bad.

Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft is going to push their consumers to the limit. If this is a bandwagon, then I would try to stop its course, but I already jumped off a couple miles back and I'm waving at it through binoculars.

How to Attract More Visitors to your Blog

• Leave a comment on every story that you like by other bloggers. It makes everybody feel good and they may click on your name and view your website.
• If a story fits, if the story is sort of journalistic and it is about a specific thing or on modern events, submit it to Digg
• Link to other blogs
• Respond to visitor comments (I don't know if this attracts more readers but actually do this just for fun!)
• Post once a day if you can! And when you feel like blogging a LOT, then just save them as drafts and post them on other days. This very post that I'm posting I originally started on April 3rd, 2007, and today it is the 18th. If you have a few backup posts then you can publish on a regular basis more. I know that I don't do this much myself, I even call it a "monthly blog" in the description because of this!
• Have a link to your blog in the signatures of forums and in your email address.
• Write out the address of your blog on little pieces of paper and hand them out to your friends!
• Blogger has an article about this very subject at this very long URL: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42377&query=attract%20visitors&topic=&type=f

Bored? here's Ten Internet Timewasters.

1. Google Yourself
2. Wikipedia Article-hopping
3. See what websites used to look like.
4. See how many blogs you can leave a comment on in 15 minutes, go!
5. Read some books!
6. Dogpile Joke of the Day
7. Do some Digg-ing
8. Keep a Pixelated Tire in the air
9. If you have a blog, make sure you've responded to comments, if you've done that, fiddle with the design and sidebar content, if you've done that, read your archives, if you don't have a blog, then if you're reading this then you have time to spare, so start one! If you don't know what to blog about, you could link to this post as the one that convinced you start blogging!
10. Draw a Sledding Slope Note: If you want to play the game without a moving ad next to it (as I do), simply press the "Refresh" browser button and then the "Stop" browser button as soon as the actual game box loads. The order of the loading stuff on the site is: Left Ad, Game box, Right Ad. If you stop it before the right ad, you can scroll to the right and voila! no ad. You might wonder why I do all this work in order to play a game. Well, they got me hooked before the major Car and Travel ads came onto their site.

Cards and Gambling, where do you stand?

Something I love and enjoy is playing the classic card game, Poker. I like all forms of it. I can play your classic 5-draw, and, if you can refresh me of the rules, I can play a game called "Omaha Hold'em." Now, some aficionados might be saying, "It's Texas Hold'em, silly g00se!", but they are two separate "Hold'ems" and I enjoy them both. I actually haven't played Omaha Hold'em that much, only once or twice. If there was only one kind of "Hold'em", would it be necessary to say "Texas... Hold'em"?

The beauty of Texas Hold'em is that you can play it with a lot more people than you can other forms of Poker. 52 cards, after a certain amount of people, you're gonna run outta cards. Fact of life.

In this, something that I never do is bet money. For me, it is morally wrong. You can draw your own conclusions. I wouldn't play at a Casino, because then that's just saying "Goodbye" to my money even if I didn't get attached/addicted to the danger and thrill of winning.

I want to someday go to some sort of Poker tournament though. My question is "would this be bad?" I want to, by the time I'm done writing this post, develop an idea of where I stand on this.

Here is something I considered and discussed with one of my friends; Let's say a race car driver enters a race and pays an entry fee. If he wins, then he gets a monetary reward that is made up of a part of all the race car drivers' entry fees. If he loses, then he goes home with the good memory of doing something he loves, and doesn't feel like he threw his money away with the entry fee.

Now, technically, could someone say that this is gambling? Most people, I believe, would not say that, because of the fact that he's just paying money to see how his skills line up with other competitors, and then as an afterthought there's the chance that he'll win more than what he paid if he does well.

If there was a Poker Tournament, where people paid a certain fee to enter and weren't able to buy more chips as they went, very similar to the race car scenario two paragraphs ago, then would it be bad to enter? If the only difference between the race car scenario and this here Poker Scenario (Poker makes me want to talk like I'm in the Wild West), is that the skill being tested is playing cards instead of racing.

(This next sentence is pushing it) arguably, because race car driving could be more dangerous than playing cards, wouldn't there be a little more at stake in that contest than in a Poker Tournament?

Again, if the contender leave the event without taking home a prize, neither the race car driver nor the Poker player feels that he has wasted money.

Imagine with me if you will, I have a line with a dot on each end. One of the dots represents what I know to be gambling, and the other one represents what I know to not be gambling... I just have to decide where I draw my line in the gray area.

For now, I'm content with holding poker parties with my friends and defeating my College age brother and his friends when they play poker. I see your bet and I raise you 10.

Stand up to Bullies

Today at lunch I was sexually harassed. By a stranger. A fellow student, a relative of a friend, someone I never met.

But this wasn't one of those situations where I'd be a victim who ends up feeling less powerful. No, I've had that before, this time was going to be different. I pretty much got right back in the person's face (not literally, but with my words), and I basically said that this is wrong and I wasn't afraid to tell the principal about it and get him in trouble. I also referenced a previous time that I threatened to tell on someone and that this wasn't anything that I hadn't fought against before and I wasn't going to be intimidated or afraid.

I said those words, and I got mad and left the lunch room and went to my next class 15 minutes early.

Halfway through the class period, I realized that I was really mad, rightly so, and that if I didn't forgive the person in my heart that it would rob me of my joy and ruin my day, which could turn into a week, which could turn into a month, a year, and so on. What I did was I walked to the bathroom, (our art rooms have one-person bathrooms in the art studio buildings), and I prayed that I hated what he did to me. I want nothing to do with him. It's wrong. It hurt me, and I don't plan to say "I forgive you" to his face (I'll probably never see him again and he'll probably never ask for forgiveness). So I said, "I forgive him" and I prayed that God would bless him and that he wouldn't try to do that to anyone anymore.

At the same time, I had realized that I had been sexually harassed before in my life, about once every three years or so, and that doesn't just happen randomly. No. I don't think that other people get that kind of treatment. Understand that I believe in God and Satan and Angels and Demons and I believe that they have assignments on people. Call it superstitious if you want. Could it be possible that there was an assignment against me in which evil spirits attempted to get people to treat me that way?

Know that I don't blame God or Satan for everything, a lot of things are just life. But it just can't always be random and it can't always be just life. Based on what I believe to be true, and I don't accept things at face value... I can vouch for times when someone would pray for me and it would change how people treated me or my emotions in a positive way, and some of those positive changes have stuck with me ever since those instances of praying to this day.

This, I have finally come to realize, could not be one of those things that are "just life". Not logically likely. So I also broke off all evil spirits and any assignments against me. Yeah, I believe in curses. I broke those off too, and God did. I don't know how someone can go living on Earth without believing in those things, but then again not everyone has seen and experienced what I've seen, many have seen more and many have seen less.

I hope that anyone reading this realizes that that sort of thing is wrong and no one should ever do that. And if you ever get harassed--I pray that that would never happen to anyone reading this--, but if it does happen... just get really mad, quick. Clench your fists, speak to their consciences, get away quickly, threaten to tell the authorities. If they call you a tattletale, I would not care about a creep's opinion. Don't take it. You don't have to take it.

I also find it strange that this happened at a time when I was beginning to enjoy living again. I was really happy. Demons don't like that. Now they're writhing in pain.

I've felt closer to God lately than I have in a long time. I ended up enjoying the rest of the day. We win.

Idea: Class President Campaign (drift to) too-expensive Calculators

I was thinking about thinking about running for class president next year at school. The thing is that right now we have a really solid class president which we've had for two years and I expect him to run again. I'm not sure what my campaign would be like. Maybe all I have to do is merely tell the truth about me?

I could talk about how in the lunch room last year no one could hear the lunch bell signaling the end of lunch. What happened was that every class that was after lunch had a lot of tardies, which makes sense because there was nothing to signal the end of lunch. I got a detention from those tardies, me! So, what I did was I wrote a letter to the principal about how no one could ever hear the bell at lunch, that it is good to punish people who went against the school rules, but we also needed the ability to follow them! So, I talked to the principal, and now we can hear the lunch bell and we know when the end of lunch is, a big problem solved.

Most people don't know that it was me who said something, but that's good because then I'll get a better reward for it someday, but now that I am publishing this in a blog, well I guess that I've lost the reward because I've announced the good deed like a trumpeting Pharisee.

I wonder how it works, because my real name isn't attached to this post or blog or anywhere on the Internet. Maybe I'll get half the reward. We'll find out someday, it will be fun.

So I could maybe run with a campaign that addresses issues that I'd like to see solved in our school. Like maybe let's have one of the dances be way different from the other dances. Like we could do a Swing Dance theme and (I don't know) actually play Swing Music, then maybe the school dance would be more like a (hmm...) dance! We would have to market and be clear that if you like how school dances have been, then you don't want to come this one because it will be way different. But that's not as a serious issue, though definitely important.

Another important issue is that students must do a certain amount of hours of community service in order to graduate, which I think is a great thing! (But) the problem is that students are not allowed to get started on the community service until their Junior year, and by this time, quite a number of students have jobs that take up their time. A student who is planning to work starting the Summer before his Junior Year may want to get the community service done before the end of the school year, but can't because of the rule. I believe that a rule that says "you can't start working on a graduate requirement until a certain time" is not motivating.

Maybe that doesn't seem so bad, but there are even worse results of this problem. In some other school districts, students can do their community service any time they want, as early as Ninth grade. Some students in those school districts do. Further, some of those students come to our school and discover that their community service does not count and they have to do it all over again! Some of my friends have to. My opinion is that they should at least allow students from these other school districts who've done their community service already to have it count.

Another thing I'd like to see in place is some way to ease the cost of those 100 dollar calculators. Maybe that's easy for you, but for me, I almost dropped the course because I did not want to waste money on something overpriced. I believe that the calculator makers are price-gouging. Don't believe me? Here's why. In the marked of graphing calculators, there are basically two ways to go: "Texas Instruments" and "Casio" brands. One costs more than the other. The one that the general public is most efficient in, the one that the books and teachers teach you how to use, is the one that costs most. Both calculators do the same things, just in different ways, and it can be tough to adjust if you have the one that no one else has. (Maybe) a far cry from being like Mac and PC.

Is it possible that this brand knows that it is endorsed and more needed and therefore can charge more? I suppose that my guess could be simply proven by someone who lives in an area where Casio's are endorsed and telling me which one costs more... maybe this is just me and my typical anti-high-price deal.

Anyway, back to the pointizzle. There might actually be a program in there to help to ease the cost of overpriced graphing calculators. I fortunately did not get to the point of checking that because, fortunately, a friend of mine who is a Senior did not need his calculator anymore so he gave it to me!

And that is the way our topics drift early in the evening!

Subscribe to your own Blog feed

There is this cool thing where you can get all (most) of the websites that publish articles to have their content delivered to one spot where you can browse all of it from there. It's nifty and, as many blog readers know, it is called a feed reader. I currently use Google Reader, but there are lots of different ones.

For fun, I decided to subscribe to my own blog in my feed reader. Yes, it is silly, akin to someone carrying a camera around and constantly taking pictures of himself. The benefit of this silliness is that I got to see what feed subscribers might be seeing when they subscribe to my blog!

For some reason, in the feed reader, a post that I posted a long time ago entitled "Never Delete Your Blog" came up as the newest blog post. My first thought was that I had accidentally given it a new date or republished it, but on the blog it didn't appear under the new date, (of course the posts appear by the date you give them, which can be different than the day you actually published if you wish.). I believe that I may have edited that post and for sure I at least added a tag/label. This leads me to believe that maybe either feed readers or feeds change when an old story is relabeled.

I hope this isn't the case as I will be taking the advice of a good Blog tips website (with non-distracting ads by the way) and continuing to add updates to old posts and things that say "This is a link to a more current post I recently wrote." The site I'm talking about is Daily Blog Tips dot com.

The point of this post is to advise bloggers to rock the mullet, but more importantly to subscribe to your own blogs' feed if you use a feed reader. This way, if your feed is glitching, at least you'll know about it. For team blog owners, this is an easy way to check if a team member has put a new post on your blog---while you are feed reading. If this problem continues, I will consult the Blogger Help Group and maybe get a different type of feed. Until then, my blog readers who read via feed will occasionally get to enjoy some classics! (if that's what you call them)

Me, not another Anti Global Warming, Ecofriendly Extremist?

I believe that the focus on how pollution might be causing a rise in worldwide temperatures can lead people to believe that the only effect of pollution could be Global Warming. Basically "if I don't believe in Global Warming, then why should I care about being friendly to the environment?" is a seemingly legitimate question nowadays.

My opinion is that whether or not humans are causing Global Warming and no matter if we can stop it or not, there are more reasons about supporting efforts to lower pollution and to be more beneficial to the world we live in. First off is that I don't want to have to pay so much for gas as supply, demand, and possibly price-gouging, are driving up the price. I am not sure if biofuel would cost less, especially at first, but if it doesn't, the existence of another method to fuel a car means more competetion which hopefully leads to better prices. This is a selfish reason, but nonetheless I am a big fan of people finding other ways to power cars.

A clearer argument: In some places the air gets so polluted that people have to stay in their house and not go outside because it would be hazardous to their health on certain days. I know that the population is growing. I don't know about you, but I don't want to grow to be an old man who can't go for a walk outside because of all the smog.

Call me what you want but I don't think that anyone likes the beauty of the Earth being destroyed, like ponds being polluted, etc.

Ultimately I feel I have to address my stance on Global Warming and Climate Change. Actually I probably don't need to, and I secretly want to, so it's not too hard to force myself, and I like the sound of the reading voice in my head so I want to create more for it to say. At the end of the post, one thing will be clear; I say "I" too much.

I want to first say that I am personally far from concrete in my views about it and I am not sure if I'm right. I didn't think much about Global Warming until I picked it as a topic for my English paper and I had to take a stance on it somehow in order to write the paper. Originally I was going to say that humans are causing there to be Global Warming; the problem was that the articles that I read that said this were all about the bad effects of it but did not focus chiefly on connecting human works on the environment to rising temperatures. The articles that I read that were against this claim, in contrast, focused on disconnecting human 'works' from it and connecting other things to it. I suppose it is a bit by chance that it ended up that way.

I found myself reading one piece that proved it one view and another piece that proved a different view and ended up going back and forth, piece after piece. I'm still lost!

My conclusion came to be that the world is warming, but the readings are exaggerated, and solar magnetism it what is causing it. I can't go into much detail here because I turned in my paper on it. Right now I'm in the clear, my paper is original and cites sources when paraphrased and quoted. There is nothing on the internet about Global Warming that contains my syntax. If I into detail, then that would change as I would blog myself into plagiarism. If the teacher checks for plagiarism and finds a lot of stuff being worded the same way on some website (http://sdtektiv.blogspot.com), I might be accused of plagiarism and would have to, I guess, prove my innocence by making a blog post saying "it's me!" But when I finally get my paper back seven weeks from now I will be sure to go into detail!

That is if I remember.

Third Round of Planet Earth was Awesome

I'm talking about the TV show on Discovery Channel that has been airing on Sunday nights. In my last Monday post (link at bottom of this post) I talked about how the plentiful commercials ruined and distracted from the experience. It was to such a profound extent that I forgot about the show last night and only caught ten minutes of the first segment on "Shallow Seas", but I did get to see the whole second segment on "Great Plains." This time, this part of the miniseries was amazing and has regained a great status in my heart as one of the great shows on Television.

I enjoyed the herds of Caribou and the white birds nesting, and the conflict between the lions and Elephants. My favorite part of it was this brief second where a sort of bouncy, hoppy bird appeared above the tall grass, hovered for a split second, fell back down to the ground and disappeared into the grass, then bounced back up into view again. It was quite humorous!

I enjoyed it. Look forward to a future post on what exactly my stance is on being beneficial to the environment with a mention of Global Warming/Climate Change.

Link to the post about the previous time I watched Planet Earth

I'll just say that last night I had a lot of breakthrough and it was amazing. The change of tone of my writing in the future will probably show this. I don't know if I am supposed to be real personal in a blog, but I feel amazing. This church that I am going to now is finally a place where I am accepted for who I am. My life in the past has been marked by a lot of rejection, whether it came up in my face or very subtly. There's a lot of wounds in old youth groups and old friends. I glad to forgive them in my heart and move on.

I must be a pretty big threat to Satan.

God has answered my prayers.

Sharing Christ as a way of Changing the World

I find that a lot of people around me and the general Christian societal outlook on the state of America is that it is going downhill down a course that all societies of the past have gone at a certain point of success and that there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. (*takes a breath) I used to think that way too, it doesn't have to be this way.

Many of these people seem to have the idea that this is supposed to happen as if it has something to do with the end of the world. I however, see no connection. Every generation since Jesus ascended has claimed that Jesus would come back in their lifetime.

If everyone sits on their hands because they believe that it is inevitable that it will get worse, all the crap that is displayed everywhere, then perhaps it is not fate that is causing all the junk to be more accepted, maybe it is only because no one spoke up.

It is the passivity of, or maybe the disbelief (in their own influence and power) of, previous generations that has caused all the junk to be everywhere and for it all to gain momentum. The very least we could do for future generations is stop it where it is at so that the next generations can roll it back up the hill. I am sick of people just accepting the hell that America is turning into, because they think that the world will end soon. The end of the world could be a thousand years from now. The end of the world would mean massive torture and then eventually hell for all our unsaved friends and family members, therefore, the end of the world coming could never be an excuse to not evangelize.

All it depends on is if this generation and the next will become nearly entirely disciples of Christ. The generation that is running the media and all the junk will be gone, then we'll be old, and our children will be running the show. I don't know any other way to change society than for followers of Christ to uh... follow Christ, and when I say that, I mean actually spreading it.

I have not done enough to tell my friends about Christ, and only because I'm afraid of what they'll think of me. That isn't a good reason. There's an anvil about to fall on their heads and the least I can do is warn them. If I don't warn them, would it not be my fault?

At one time, the world was without morals as it is now, even more so. Then there was an age where morals were spread, and it was pretty bad for those trying to spread it, they'd be forced to fight lions as entertainment, but it couldn't be stopped. If so few under horrible circumstances were able to do it, so can we.

I was thinking about the children I will have when I am grown up; I don't know how I would feel about knowingly raising a child in a world where he or she would be treated as "less mature" for not being immature. I would hate seeing my children in a society where all the crap in the world is labeled as if it is something you're supposed to grow into. At one point I came to this idea that I would never have a child as I couldn't live with the guilt of bringing someone into a world so twisted, but this hope that I have that society will be changed gives me a reason to live.

Many people pray "God's will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven," but they don't believe it is possible. I say that when it comes down to it, the biggest way to change America would be for followers of Jesus to invite others to have God transform them as He has many people. If that happened, then wouldn't our society be better off?

UPDATE: April 9, 2007: Actually if we focus on society it would not be as
effective than if we focused on our own relationships with God and other people
and in the process left major marks on society; but of course we want to see God
save our friends, and that is a part of it.

Banished Words of 2007 Published

I did not hear about it, so chances are that you did not, but you want to.

The Lake Superior State University yearly banished words list for 2007 has made its appearance (http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php)

I am not sure that I agree with a lot of the words being banished, such as they want to banish the use of the word "PWN" and "awesome", but the submitters do give their reasons and a lot of them are pretty funny and rationalized, and generally are on the side of rantingly outrageous.

I should mention that the list is compiled of peoples' submissions, so if a word came into your mind that you loathe, you can already submit words for the 2008 list. My advice is to be both rational and funny in your reason, because then you might get your quote with it.

C. S. Lewis Complete Signature Classics

A few days ago at Costco I saw a book that interested me. It was blue, and the title was something to the effect of "The Complete Signature Classics of C. S. Lewis." I didn't know that much about C. S. Lewis and I thought it would be just another boring book but I picked it up and read through the first few pages and it wasn't what I expected, I liked it. In it is what appears to be many of the "not-novels" pieces by him all put into one book. The usual downside that you might notice, of a "Complete Works of Author" book is that they try to cram it all in and make the text so small you can barely read it, but this one had a really comfortable and good-sized font.

The style of it was as if he was talking... This is probably because the first book is compiled of transcripts of a radio show he did in college. He goes into a lot of logic but explains it in a way that you aren't overwhelmed. It makes you think, makes you want to. You might be thinking that you wouldn't like it, but I did not think I would like it at all because I don't expect those sort of books to appeal to me.

The cost was around 15 dollars and I suspect that it would cost a lot more buying each of the "signature classics" separately, and I wanted to read more, so I got it.

I am curious to see what the writer's style is when he is writing as writing and how it compares to what I'm reading through now.

TV Show "Planet Earth" Dissappoints in Second Round

A week back from Sunday, I tuned into an awesome show about the wildlife around the world. It truly rocked my socks. I would recommend what I saw that time to anyone.

Unfortunately, yesterday's edition of Planet Earth was lacking. I liked all the filming of animals and all of that, but it is hard to get immersed in the environments when it is interrupted every ten minutes with the same Volvo commercial. To make matters worse, the new Volvos included features I'm not sure I am excited about existing.

One of the new safety features that were pushed was how if you aren't paying attention and are about to run into someone in front of you, a red light flashes and beeps to alert you. I wouldn't mind this because then people might tailgate less.

The other feature that was presented was that if someone was in your blind spot, a little red light on the side mirrors came on to let you know. But, the thing is that the last thing you are supposed to do before you change lanes is glance over your shoulder to look at the blind spot. Does this mean that people will stop checking because the car will do it for them? What if people become too needy or reliant on these features? I know that a year from now I don't want to be traveling down the road in the blind spot of someone who used to drive a Volvo. I am worried about people saying "it's not my fault, the car didn't tell me you were there!"

People who used to own cars that chime when you left your lights on, but now have a car that doesn't have this feature, have trouble remembering to turn the lights off on their own. All I'm saying is, "okay, I understand a car turning into a portable bounce house in the event of a crash, but this idea that a car is supposed to take care of you while driving, instead of vice-versa, really gets me off track when I'm trying to enjoy the Penguins!"

Yes! I brought it back! The show yesterday had battling Ibexes (ram-like animals) and Arctic birds, and locusts and it wasn't bad... just not as good as the first round of episodes that aired. The first round of episodes did not have as many commerical breaks too.

Now, viewers or makers of the show might think that I am against the show this time because it talked about Global Warming, but I haven't even mentioned the show's mention of Global Warming until this point. I can see how some people would be put off by it because anytime someone starts with something that appears to be completely non-challenging and segues (seg-ways) into something even a teensy bit challenging, you see reactions of people thinking "How dare you! I thought this was just your own thoughts, but you're one of them!"

Just like if I were to, say, randomly start talking about Christianity right here... I'm not going to, but look! I know that some readers may have started the thought process of, "Oh, another religious mouth, I thought this was just a plain long review of TV show with a seeming unrelated tangent on Volvos! That coniving little blogger!"

Even the challenge of the last paragraph may have been enough for someone to stop reading, but if you didn't leave and you are reading this, I commend you for it. That's some serious open-mindedness in this day and age. Then again, you may have left because what this post wasn't going where you thought it would go, because of off-topic-ness or something else, and it had nothing to do with the fact that it was a sort-of challenging statement. It is for a similar reason that I didn't like the second episode of Planet Earth (there's a method to my tangent-to-topic madness)

In conclusion, the first episodes of Planet Earth that I saw featured lots of landscapes, views of predator chasing prey from a bird's eye-view, (speaking of birds...) wild and kooky-looking rain forest birds, monkeys who live on rock walls, and I would recommend that to anyone. This week's show had too many commercials and just didn't really compare.

UPDATE: April 9, 2007: Third Round of 'Planet Earth' was very good and had less commercials, Link to blog post

Throw the Strudel at the can with the Red Dot and Win an Internet filled with annoying advertisments!

Blogger, Google Reader, Gmail, now Google Homepage.

It seems that Google is taking over what I do on the internet more and more. I am surprised that it ended up this way, as I was never really a Google fan or a fan of monopolies. But these aren't services that I am paying for. To be honest, I don't understand it. I don't understand why Google Reader was made... for fun? All I know is that I like it. What I am not comprehending here is in this day and age of everything being about profits and money, is that there is not anything on Google Reader that leads me to believe that there is any profit for Google in it. There's no ads.

Sure, many other Google services have ads of some sort, like how Gmail has text ads way off to the side (of which I have found a way around, more on that later), and there is even a service of Google centered on supplying (right word?) ads.

However, the ads in Gmail did not bother me when they were there, and it is probably due to the existince of more annoying ads like those with animations, and "Throw the strudel at the can with the red dot to win an iPod", or worse, Pop-ups! I don't visit websites with Pop-ups and I don't support businesses that use Pop-ups to advertise themselves. Actually, I'm not sure which I detest more, Pop-ups or the mini-game ads... I'm torn. Of course now, whenever I visit a site that has lots of ads, I simply refresh the page and then click the stop function (the browser button that is a red X) as soon as the text loads and before the ads load.

Of course, that can be a bit of a challenge, some sites are more complicated than others. It can be a bit of a game, really, to try to click the stop button in that millisecond window where the text is loaded and the ads load. When a site has ads down the right margin, like on the stories of the Wiire, I simply click "Restore" in the upper-right of the browser, then I move the right edge of the browser window to the left so that I don't see the ads. If a site has ads down the left margin, I don't bother with the site.

What I used to do with annoying ad sites that I wanted to read a story from, was that I would subscribe to the site with Google Reader so that I could read without ads. Then, I started "sharing items" on REPriiSENT, and because I didn't want to mistakenly link REPriiSENT readers to a site with annoying ads, I stopped following those website's stories altogether.

It is a shame really, seeing as a lot of those sites with the annoying ads are "professional journalism sites" like New York Times or MSN. Nothing screams "professional journalism" to me or spurs me to read a story like being assaulted and distracted by shiny ads, even ones within the text of the story, "story continues below." Like reading a story turns into some sort of early Easter Egg hunt with lasers and blinding strobe lights.

I guess it is these things that make the Google Ads on Gmail seem so much more acceptable. Now, I don't even have to deal with Google Ads on Gmail. If you add a Gmail Inbox Preview "Gadget" to your personalized Google Homepage, you can see the latest 5 to 15 items, and if you click on the title of the Email, the email message will pop up with no ads on the side or nothin'. Yeah, that's beating the system.

Awhile ago, long before I started blogging, free Blogger blogs used to have required banner ads on the sites to support Blogger. Now, with the advent of Google purchasing Blogger, and those ads going bye-bye, (here it comes) some bloggers have chosen to pepper their blogs with text-based ads!

In a post I made some time ago, I talked about how I was glad that those people chose to put Google Ads on their blogs, because now, with all the revenue Google is getting from having people choose to put those ads on their blogs for a profit, I do not think they will ever go back to the old system!

I don't want there to be ads all over the internet, so I don't visit/support websites with annoying ads. I like shiny and flashy lights at concerts, but not while reading an article.