The opening talk by President Monson was inspiring.  I love how he talked about his wife, the stories of them meeting, and the fact that her parents were converted to the Gospel by his grandfather's brother.  (I'm amazed he knew that, by looking at his photo!)... Also..  When Pte. Monson said that the presidency loves all those of t...

When I began reading this chapter, I was pretty anxious, internally - for unrelated reasons.  Now, having finished this chapter, I feel very calm and peaceful.  What a great story this chapter tells. While reading, I saw some curious verses, but all of those questions feel relatively meaningless right now.  The thing that matters t...

Hmm....  Another war started by another group of dissenters.  Man alive...  Seems like the story is all the same.  People who want to rule another nation end up being sparked and fed by dissenters of the nation they want to rule (think of Amalickiah)...  *sigh* The latter half of this chapter is a great reminder of what h...

It seems that this chapter is just a informational chapter on the goings on over a space of quite a few years.  Heh... That's pretty general, but there's really not any story-line, or analogy, or deep doctrine here... I did find it interesting how they spoke of using cement, and the sparseness of timber, and such like that.  I wonder wh...

Ya know...  I sure would like to know what the politics of the time were back then.  Helaman's guard was able to single-handedly save the newly-appointed chief judge, by disguise, intellect, and ultimately a firm blade straight through the heart.  Yet, the account says nothing of telling anyone what was happening during the incident....

Interesting that, again, the pride of one man seemed to be the reason of much wickedness and death.  If Paanchi would have just accepted the rule of his own brother because he was voted in by the majority, I'll bet the whole war with Coriantumr wouldn't have happened. That being bad enough, doesn't hold a candle to what happened with Kishkum...

Okay... I forgot that Alma had 63 chapters. This chapter has always just kind of made me raise an eyebrow while reading it.  I must say, I felt the Spirit while reading it, and I know it's true, but I wonder why it was written. Why did Mormon dedicate half a chapter to people "going northward"?  And what about the ships?&nbs...

Reading through Alma 60 and 61, I can vividly imagine what it would be like to live in times like those.  I imagine the cry for freedom being heard through the streets, as neighbors and friends decide to take up arms in defense of our right to worship how we want, and for the protection of our families, traditions, and way of life.  Putti...

Although I probably will never own one of these, it's just awesome that the pony cars are gettin' revved up again.  Ford is definitely gonna bring up the competition with this beast.  Bye-bye imports! http://www.thefordstory.com/smart-technology/the-mustang-5-0-is-back/ Buyah!...

Okay...  I rarely ....  well..  I never have posted something like this before in my blog, but this is getting RIDICULOUS.  This is not getting REDICULOUS.  It is getting R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S It seems like when ever I see that word spelled anywhere on the Internet, it's spelled consistently wrong, and I can't for the life ...

I've been working on this entry for days, and I think I'm finally ready to get it out there. But first, let me say that this is quite possibly the most rewarding programming job I've done to date. I was hired on at Nature's Way last year in June.  I was hired on with the understanding that I was to completely re-develop the public Nature...

Well.. Yesterday, I rode home in an airplane for the whole day, but everything was cool.. I rode by David and Sharon that have a 19 year old daughter, Mormon, and single. I didn't get her phone number - just ask me why, I could kick myself. Anyway.. I listened to my music for most of the way home and just enjoyed myself. I actually like flying,...

This entry begins the documenting of my studies of the Book of Mormon in my "journal".  One of my new year's resolutions for 2008 is to read, study, and write about every chapter in the Book of Mormon.  I figured today was as good a time as any to begin. And so I begin with the Introduction of the Book of Mormon. --- I nev...

 So, before I even begin reading this chapter, I've gotta say that this is one of those chapters which is seriously deep in doctrine.  I could probably spend the better portion of 2 or 3 days studying this one.  That said, I don't have much time to spend now, so I'll get as far as I can. Verse 1 : An "exceedingly high mountai...

Okay...  So three days ago (that would be Saturday morning), I found that my server was having weird problems.  I was getting an I/O error when I tried to start a movie for my daughter.  Yeah, that can't be good.  I'd seen that problem before when LVM got out of sync somehow (after about 6 months of uptime), and decided to reboo...

About a year ago, I wrote about some feelings I have toward caffeine.  Since then, my feelings haven't changed much. I try to limit the amount of caffeine consumption in which I partake.  You know, the whole "moderation in all things" crud... Well...  Through this year, I've tried quite a few different caffeinated bev...

I recently bought a Toshiba Laptop (a Satellite A305-S6916), and with it, came Vista Home Premium. I, of course, immediately wiped the hard drive clean, took a shower for having touched a computer with Vista pre-installed on it, then proceeded to partition it, and install gentoo Linux on it. The compatibility with Linux of the peripherals on th...

Yesterday at church, I had a couple of thoughts which I neglected to write down.  I think I'll write them down now. Something I might have written down in my previous scripture studies is my question as to why Lehi's family didn't think about getting the plates of brass / Ishmael's family before they left for the wilderness?  I would th...

I am by no means a "versatile programmer" in the general sense of the word.  I know of many programmers who are much more well versed in various languages and best practices methodology.  In fact, I am not even a computer science graduate, and I don't have a masters degree in anything. *BUT* I do have a lot of experience i...

This talk really got me thinking about where my heart is. As I've grown older, my pet sins are still doing their best to have their portion of my heart dedicated to them.  I'm still doing my best to assure they don't. Often, I wonder how my life will differ in this aspect 5 or 10 years from now.  Will I still struggle with the same si...

 So, I used to use the -dumpaudio switch in mplayer to get audio extracted from random videos, but now that seems to do not much of anything.  I found this site which had a great explanation of how to get it done a different way, but was a bit out of date.  The newer version is found below: mplayer -vo null -ao pcm:file=audio_file_...

Okay...  This sucks.  I just spent the last 10 minutes typing up a nice novel on how today was spent, and I then proceeded to accidentally delete it.  How unfortunate.  Let's see if I can do it again. ....nope.  Sorry...  I'm tired, and it's late (it's now 12:30am), and I've got to get up tomorrow morning. Suffic...

In chatting with my friend Steve, I realized I haven't yet given any details as to my trip to Green Bay this week, so, before this weekend comes, I figured I had better write something. Day 3 (Wednesday) went pretty smooth.  I woke up with a high level of sleep deficiency (surprise, surprise), and went out to the office for the last time.&n...

I got down here to my studio tonight, after playing with the kids, putting Sam to bed, and taking care of a few other odds 'n' ends, and I got to feeling like I should write in my journal.  Not entirely sure about what, but it's been months, if not a few years since I have just sat down to write, with nothing in mind beforehand.  Some of ...

I'm still kind of in awe of it all, but ....  holy cow..  Samuel Jason Jones has arrived! We got into the car around 4:30pm after Sarah had been in labor since around 6:00am.  Wow... What a trooper. We arrived here at the hospital at 5:00pm anticipating his arrival around 10:00pm or so...  Yeah right...  Samuel had ot...

Tired of the same old colors?  Try customizing the color scheme of your ILMJ blog!  Here's how to do it: First, make sure you go to your blog home page.  If you're not sure how to get there, simply click on "Blog", and choose your blog.  You will then be at the home page of your blog.  From there, you will noti...

I just got done reading about and listening to a wonderful audio-bite from good ol' Steve Ballmer.  Honestly, I don't understand why Microsoft keeps him employed. Anyway...  According to Mr. Ballmer, Linux is no longer free.  So, with that in mind, please do not try to download Linux from here, or here, or here, or here, or here, o...

 So, I haven't been one to get on the 31 days of Thanks in November, just because I generally think it's shallow to do such a thing only in November, as we should be doing it all year round, but that, in itself, is even more shallow, because I've never ended up actually doing anyhting of the sort, ever.  So, this November, in the Spirit o...

Well.. I got to verse 3, when a concept which, for some reason, has been pounded into my spirit throughout pretty much my whole life, came ringing true and clear.  What is that concept, you ask? Don't assume to know anything about the effect you may have on others.  Sometimes you can tell, but sometimes you can't. Because of the honesty...

Growing up, I'd have to say that I was a bit of a pious punk religiously, but I was so due, in large amount, to my being incredibly naive. To demonstrate my naive-ness, I really thought that being emotional was pretty much the same as being spiritual.  Yes...  Believe it.  I was naive. One other bit of heretical doctrine I beli...