This talk was wonderful!  It brought many memories of my adolescence to mind, along with quite a few ponderous questions which I had never before contemplated. I'm not sure if it's my current mood, or the Spirit or what, but this talk was wonderful. It brought back memories of my own childhood, when I made decisions which would bring on ma...

Okay, I was watching the latest Miss Universe the other day and it was kind of like watching a train wreck.  You don't want to look, but you can't bring yourself to turn away.  The interesting part about it was the question and answer portion which is supposed to be the most important part of the competition (yeah right!).  They had ...

Hmm.... I enjoyed this talk, but I'm not entirely sure what to write about it. The three aspects of gaining a burning testimony of light and truth given are completely true: Learn True Doctrine Gain Pure Testimony Live Gospel Courageously I remember something my mission president said about the first one.  He said som...

Ya know...  I really liked this talk.  There were points in it where I found his words coming through my mind's eye of the past. While growing up, I was probably on the extreme of what Elder Zwick was trying to convey.  Instead of being tempted to go along with the crowd, I thought the crowd was stupid, and I didn't need them. ...

I just got done reading, listening to, and watching the general conference talk "Ask In Faith", by Elder David A. Bednar. I must say, having missed the original broadcasting of this conference, I heard all the hype about this talk in the ensuing weeks and months.  It seemed that this talk was all the rage about learning how to &quo...

This morning I woke up and just was in a good mood...  Feeling very grateful for lots of things...  So, I decided to make a video of it all, and I think it turned out okay. Just a jumble of thoughts and emotions from yours truly. Enjoy.  ...

This time through Mosiah 3, I had a few interruptions, so I wasn't able to concentrate as much as I would have liked, but family really does come first, so, ya gotta do what ya gotta do... Anyway..  Mosiah 3, to me, this time rang loudly of what the Atonement of Jesus Christ is all about.  It speaks of who needs the Atonement, who is c...

I just spent the last three hours trying to figure out why my OpenFire 3.5.2 instance was installing just fine, saying that it was running just fine, but in reality was not running at all. Neither port 9090, nor 9091 was open, both ports 9090, and 9091 were closed. ps -A | grep openfire returned nothing - at all. Yet, /etc/init.d/openfire sta...

It's been a long time since I have read the Book of Mormon.  Well, I decided to repent tonight and read where I left off at Mosiah. One scripture which always stands out to me in this chapter is the latter portion of verse 9.  King Benjamin is telling people how they should prepare themselves to hear his message, and thus he says: ...

When I'm not listening to music, I love listening to a few AM talk radio programs.  Well, about six months ago, one of my favorite radio stations, KNRS 570 AM radio, changed their streaming program that let people use the Internet to hear their content. This change effectively shut-out all Linux users.  I chatted with 4 other Linux use...

So, in the business of audio recording, it doesn't get much more fundamental than 1. Room Acoustics, 2. Sound Source, and 3. Microphones. One of those three basics is about to get a serious upgrade here at Advanced Budget Studios. Today, Michael Joly of OktavaMod is modifying two Apex 205 ribbon microphones, and will be shipping them back ear...

I've been fighting with my computer for the past hour to get gentoo to import the contents of an SD card in a card reader (announces itself through USB as "07cc:0500 Carry Computer Eng., Co., Ltd"), and was unsuccessful. As such, I have lost all motivation and energy to work on getting the journal entries for the 3 days of Rat Fink (Ed ...

For those of you who don't know, in addition to running ILoveMyJournal.com, I also run an inspirational website called LDSCompanion.org. Today when I arrived at work, I had an email from someone who had pressed the "contact us" button. The message I recieved encapsulates the entire reason I created that site, and caused tears to well ...

Wow... It's been a long, long time since I updated anything about my life on here.  Mostly because stuff got really busy, and really interesting about April of this year.  I've documented all the crud that we've gone through, so no need to rehash that. What I would like to say is that music is more a part of my life now than it ever has...

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...

Something which I've never even tried to verabalize, let alone write down is the subject for today's blog. I've always thought there must be something wrong with me, since I've always been almost at the point of being tormented spiritually.  That may seem a bit harsh, and surprising to those who know me, but it's true.  Never actually ...

Seems like chapter 29 is all about "spurning", and to be honest, I really don't know what that means.  The word is used 4 times in 3 verses, and is used no where else in scripture.  It's definitely something we shouldn't do, and may be related to "hissing" or "making game".  Very interesting. I believe...

Okay... So, since I began this journey of becoming a better recording engineer, I knew there was a lot to learn. I have a degree in Digital Media with an emphasis on audio recording, and thanks to a great teacher, Mike Wizland, I quickly began to get a good grasp on the basics. The early success of the studio has enabled me to get a few great m...

I'm not even sure if that's spelled right. Ohwell.. Two things: I love the smell of new leather. I went into my car to get my laptop to blog, and the smell of new Mustang GT leather came to greet me. I love it. I don't appreciate enough the fact that my wife is so emotionally stable. She really is. Serious. Whenever I see someone who...

Once, after inquiring the reasons why he believed Mormonism was wrong, a good Baptist friend of mine began telling me about Satan and his desire to take the throne of God before the world was. Everything he told me was true and accurate, as far as my knowledge goes.  Satan did try to take the throne of God and was thusly cast out of heaven ...

Let Isaiah begin! This chapter is a great pre-cursor to the chapters to follow.  Nephi explains why he like the words of Isaiah, as well as the fact that he likes to bring people to Christ. Interesting in verse 3, Nephi says he'll send the words of Jacob to his children for the purpose of reinforcing his own words.  The reason being b...

Well...  Our pumpkins this year were just so darned cute, I had to blog about em' - I mean, after all, this is my journal! So, without further ado, here are a few photos of the 2007 Jones Family Halloween Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza! ...

Sitting here pondering what to write. I could write about a synopsis of 1st Nephi, which I finished last night, or I could just dive into 2nd Nephi.  I think I'll do the latter. Verse 6 could be quite the controversial verse, for people who didn't like the Spanish conquest, or Christopher Colombus.  Yet, the verse still is what the ...

 So, the month of June has been a great one for Advanced Budget Studios.  Being a young company, we still have a long road before us to get where we want to be, but during the last 3 years we've been in business, I can tell you something important I've learned. If you would have asked me when starting out, "What's the main point of ...

The majority of my coding life has been spent with two tools. PHP MySQL I don't claim to be a guru programmer, but the various professional problems which have been presented to me have always found their solution using these two tools. They're great tools. *sigh* Recently I've found out that Oracle owns both sleepy cat's db en...

This chapter was interesting.  The first thing I noticed is that Samuel had some serious insight as to things of God.  He prophesied of the destruction of the entire Nephite nation in the last chapter, and in this chapter, he details quite specifically, events which were to occur at both the birth and the death of Christ.  Interestin...

This might be the only "current events" post I ever do, but something has been puzzling me for the past 6-12 months. Last night, I watched the last half of the democratic candidates' debate on TV, and although it wasn't mentioned much, there were still a couple of references to a "downward economy", and the need for "job...

The studio has been busy as ever, and some improvements are coming down the pipeline, but before we get to that, let me say that I had the privilege of working with another wonderful young lady last week. Kaelynn Allred's new song, "Back To Love" is about as cute as they come.  Tying sweet themes from nursery rhymes into a smile-in...

I'm so disappointed in the way things played out this last April.  I just finished reading President Monson's talk, and thus concluded the Priesthood session, and I so would loved to have been there.  But the past is the past, and I should consider myself grateful to be able to read the words after-the-fact. One paragraph of this talk ...

So, again, something kind of odd.  Mormon was 16 when he was commissioned to be the leader of the entire Nephite army.  Is that not insane?  Seriously.  Every 16-year-old I know barely has the sense to tie their shoes in the morning!  Okay, not really, but - wow.  Mormon was 16 years old when he was put in charge of th...