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...

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...

I find it interesting the way they referred to Nehor in verse 1:  a man "after the order of the man that slew Gideon by the sword, who was executed according to the law".  Why didn't they just say "Nehor"?  Especially seeing that writing in plates was so hard. In verse 10, Mormon notes the intent with which Aml...

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 ...

Hmm.... Today was pretty good. Stake Conference was surprisingly good, although I don't remember much of what was said. The Spirit was strong, and I guess that's all that really matters, if ya don't remember anything, that is. :) Anyway... I wonder how next week is gonna be with my new job. I'm really going to have to figure out how to set up...

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 ...

All the other times I've read this chapter, it's been mostly about the whole baptism thing.  Now, I don't discredit the sermon given about Christ being baptised, and the necessity for our being baptized to make it to heaven... ...But this time, something else struck me. Ya know...  I love having chats with people about the Gospel.&nbs...

We've done it.  We've hit the mother load.  The golden goose has landed. I had the opportunity yesterday to work with one of the most talented musicians I've ever met.  It's somebody I've highly respected the past few years, and have wanted to work with ever since I heard him play.  He's largely unknown, and has requested me om...

With the new design of ILMJ, I thought it fitting for people to be able to add their own static links on their blogs...  Doing so is very easy. A "page" in your blog is simply an entry which stays in the left-hand column on both your main blog site, and each individual entry, as is illustrated below: So, as you can see,...

Ya know, sometimes in this business, you've gotta use ingenuity.  And then there are other times you've just got to call it quits.  I'm really glad we didn't choose that option for last night's session, because it turned out just fine... Well.. That is, after we spent hours trying to figure out how in the world we were going to accompli...

Lately, I've been struggling with readaing my scriptures.  I'm not entirely sure why, but lately, instead of just hunkering down and doing it because I know it needs to be done (and then reaping the Spirit due to my obedience), I've just had the hardest time sitting down and actually doing it. Well.. Today I did.  I opened to 3rd Nephi ...

In the beginning of this chapter, I didn't realize that the book to which the verses were referring was the Book of Mormon. I guess this chapter answers the question, "What is in the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon?".  The answer is quite simply found in verse 10:  "...for behold, they reveal all things from the foun...

 This was a good chapter.  Starts out stating that worthiness is necessary in order for baptism into the Lord's church: bringing forth fruit of worthiness (not entirely sure what this means, specifically) having a broken heart and contrite spirit, showing a witness of true repentance taking upon yourself the name of Chris...

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...

Sadly, lots of problems exist with the world today.  I guess it's human nature to create problems, and ya know...?  I'm alright with that.  Problems need to exist in order for life to be life, right?  Yup...  The eternal struggle for self-improvement, or whatever. Anyway...  One thing that irks me quite a bit, and a...

Man...  Isaiah sure is here.... I didn't understand much of anything I read tonight.  I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to write about, but my resolution is to write something about each and every chapter of the Book of Mormon, so I'm gonna write something.  These next few days might be tough. The first three verses are the one...

Very interesting that they took the time to tell us that Ammon not only rehearsed what King Benjamin said to the Nephites, but that he then explained it to them that they might understand it.  Not sure why that struck me this time, but it did. (verse 3) According to verse 13, a man who can look into and see (and translate), is a seer.  ...