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 ...

Recently I was reading from scriptures.lds.org and decided it could be improved to make it easier to read. Here is what it looks like normally. A couple things bugged me. Narrow text is generally easier to read. So, I made it more narrow. Also, the superscript letters that signify a footnote throw off the line spacing. I figured out a cool l...

I'm kind of distracted now due to external crud, but one of the verses jumped out at me.  Verses 7 and 8... I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the Spanish conquest, as it came to the Americas.  I have combating feelings toward the whole history of what happened. The "Indians" found here in America were the posterity...

I think that most of this chapter is talking about the gathering of the tribes of Israel, although I could be completely and totally offbase.  This is one of the chapters which I probably wouldn't write about had I not made a resolution to write about each and every chapter from the Book of Mormon. Pretty difficult to understand right now. ...

I've often wondered why Nephi included the portions of scripture containing the writings of Isaiah. I remember one time during my mission when I was reading the stuff in 2nd Nephi and it actually made sense, but I didn't write any of it down, so.... it still makes no sense to me. Only one verse out of this chapter gave me any inspiration at all...

A few minutes ago, I visited my favorite weather-forecasting website and I saw something I thought I should document, just because it doesn't happen very often.  I saw a 7-day forcast that looked like this: I think it may snow tonight! :) Anyway... My mustang isn't liking life very much right now.  It's so freakin' dirty.  ...

Ya know, I love verse 6, and verses like it (2nd Nephi 4, for example).  The reason is quite simple. Sometimes it's hard to remember that prophets are people, too.  They're just subject to Satan's temptations and mistakes and errors and such as we are.  Verses like this remind me that they aren't perfect, and it brings them down to...

I don't think that ever you will find any words of righteousness associated with Laman and Lemuel, not once, but twice, within 4 verses more than in this chapter alone. Not sure why that stood out at me this time, but once in verse 1 and again in verse 4, Nephi said that Laman and Lemuel were on good behavior.  I thought I'd take time to suc...

I find it so interesting that Nephi, in all cases I can think of, when stating how hard things can get, always follows it up with how blessed they are.  I believe Nephi was how I would like to, and am trying to be like.  He recognizes things are bad, yet always finishes on an optimistic note.  Personally, I beleve grounded optimism c...

I just got up from a nap I was taking due to my going to bed at 4:00am this morning and the first words my wife told me after coming up stairs was "President Hinckley died a few hours ago." I'm not one to get upset at death.  For some reason, I've never had a problem with people dying.  The one thought which makes this even ea...

 Woo, baby, am I tired! One thing that I often think about while pondering the Gospel is how blessed I am to live in a time where the fulness of the Gospel is available - and not only available, but I was born into a practicing family, and have made the life choices necessary for me to continue worthy to obtain the blessings given to God's c...

Those who know me will find this post a bit ... unlike my typical post. This is mainly because I have a pretty passionate stance on DRM, OSS, Microsoft, Linux, and religion.  (I hate DRM, love OSS, hate Microsoft, love Linux, and I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Anyway...  I have a few words to say ab...

My wife left this morning for Girls' Camp (she's a leader), and so my mom came down to help with the chil'lins.  It's been good to spend some time with her. We watched The Eagle's Concert "Hell Frozen Over", and she not only watched the whole thing, but she *really* enjoyed it.  It was great. We then talked about this site I...

I know I'm WAY out of the loop on this one, but I thought I'd blog about it to possibly help others who didn't know about this quite wonderful program. For years I've been using amd64 processors and have loved them.  Ever since there has been a 32-bit firefox on gentoo, I've been using it to view all the youtube goodness out there. However...

Okay.... Yes.. Collin knows he's cool.  Actually, he's just happy to be on his way to Monterey to enjoy the various wonderful goings-on there. Anyway...  I thought I'd list the reasons I love Monterey while I'm waiting for everyone to get ready for the day.  So... Here goes: By far the best reason to come to Monterey Califo...

I've often wondered why Nephi included the portions of scripture containing the writings of Isaiah. I remember one time during my mission when I was reading the stuff in 2nd Nephi and it actually made sense, but I didn't write any of it down, so.... it still makes no sense to me. Only one verse out of this chapter gave me any inspiration at all...

I just thought I'd jot down an experience which may be of some benefit to others, even if only to provide a few laughs. About 3 years ago, I built my brother a computer and he was just as sick of Microsoft as I was, so I told him about Linux.  He wanted it, so I installed gentoo on his box for him.   I updated it probably 2 or 3 ti...

I thought I had to substitute teach the 15-16 year old class today, so I prepared it this morning, only to find out I didn't. That's okay, because the gospel doctrine teacher we have is amazing, and I got to sit in his class! Omni.... One of the best lines of this chapter is in verse 2.  "I myself am a wicked man".  I'm...

Growing up, I used to have a mis-conception that those who erred against God in their ways were best suited for rebuke the way God gives it in the scriptures.  I was ignorantly judgemental, and for a long time, couldn't understand why people tended to shy away from my tactics. Reading the beginning of this chapter brings back a lot of those ...

The new lamp for my projector arrived today and much rejoicing was heard among the land. Since our lamp burned out 5-8 months ago, we've been using a TV to entertain our kids, providing them with movies and TV cartoons and all the other goodness with which MythTV blesses our lives. With the return of our lamp, I wanted a way to extend the life ...

Ya know...  I think this little line from this chapter (verse 5) which, I believe could apply to anyone, anywhere, and would be a great little line to post on your wall, and look at every day. "And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression" ...

I think that most of this chapter is talking about the gathering of the tribes of Israel, although I could be completely and totally offbase.  This is one of the chapters which I probably wouldn't write about had I not made a resolution to write about each and every chapter from the Book of Mormon. Pretty difficult to understand right now. ...

I just got back from a wonderful evening spent with my wife, Shaun, Tiffy, Shane, and Becca.  We went to Weber State to see the annual drum core competition. Let me just say....  Amazing.  Yup...  Amazing....  That's what it was. It also got me to thinking about a lot of things.  For some reason lots of normal things...

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...

I upgraded all of my boxen yesterday, including my main server (which now has successfully become my slowest machine).  As you probably know, I run gentoo on everything. When I built my mythtv-based home-theater in my basement about 2 years ago, I spent about 2 months configuring my server to handle everything I needed it to.  I didn't d...

I've been debating writing this down for quite some time now, but I think it's time now to write it. What I am penning is a more detailed account of what happened this day during my mission. It was April of 1996, two months before I would return home from my 2-year service as a missionary for our Lord Jesus Christ. I was serving in a leade...

 So, this chapter seems to be about the rise and fall of the people, and the rulers who ruled both in righteousness and wickedness. It seems to mow through a genration with each verse that goes by - very quickly.  I guess this chapter would be a good one to illustrate the Lord's prophets making promises, and then keeping them through la...

Okay..  I've never thought of this before, but, how convenient do you think it was for Samuel to climb up on a wall, built around a city most likely to keep people out?  Yeah, I don't think it could have been that easy.  How often do we find any reason at all to get out of doing what God wants us to do?  Well, God told Samuel he...

Concerning world events, I'll be the first to say that I'm a pretty naive guy.  I keep up on stuff that's important to me, but not too much more.  I realize that this is somewhat of a flaw, so I am trying to involve myself much more with the world. That said, on the morning of Sept 10, 2001 - if you asked me what the "world trade ...

Well... I just spent the last 3 hours re-vamping around 300 lines of code for ilovemyjournal.com.  Hopefully, I've made it a lot more search-engine friendly for people who want to share their blogs, without compromising security any security. Being that this is also the 24th of July, I'm also very grateful for the pioneers, and everything the...