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...

"Remnant of this people".  Talking straight to the American Indians.  heh..  I love the foresight. Guiltless...  I love that word.  He that is found guiltless.  Please note it does not say "sinless". To be found guiltless.  What would that entail?  Continual repentance would probably b...

So I've been working on a lot of projects lately, but one I thought to be of particular note was the song "Blind World" by Lucid 8.  The song is well-made on a variety of levels, but one of the coolest aspects of this song is the way they presented it to me. Jonny (drummer for Lucid 8) came to me and asked if could incorporate an ...

               I'm in CA!  So far I'm not sure how to judge this place.  My ward is really nice.  That's a big plus.  I can't judge them just yet though.  I'll get a better view of the youth on Wednesday at Mutual.  My leaders are really nice (you ca...

Okay...  So, this isn't gonna be the rant that you thought it was by the title.  With the little time I have, I couldn't come up with a better one... So, the story is - I had just eaten a delicious burger at Coney's, when on my way home, I happened to turn on Rush Limbaugh.  He was talking about this new "cloud" technolog...

Yesterday, we received a new shipment. Aren't they pretty?  Our new KRK RP-8 G2 Monitors not only look great, but they sound completely awesome. The instant I put the project at hand through them, it was instantly obvious what needed to be done to enhance the sound - and that is what good monitors are supposed to do. Can't wait to use...

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 ...

Verses 5 and 6 are cause for simple reinforcement that external events do not necessarily cause internal changes.  Yes, they had a horrific war which caused the death of so many husbands, fathers, sons, etc...  And yes, that caused a lot of people to become baptized.... but, that didn't seem to matter much.  The very next year, it se...

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, about 4 or 5 years ago, I met a guy named Jesse Crowley, and we played music together.  At first we played music that other people wrote, but then Jesse got bored with that, and decided to write Christmas music instead.  We recorded a few Christmas albums, and I think they turned out pretty good. So, Jesse decided that wasn't enough...

 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...

 Not sure why I'm writing about this now, because I usually just finish the thing and then announce it at the same time as I share it. I guess this song is a complete deviation from anything I've done in the past.  Heh... Just now I'm realizing that I don't even have a name for this song yet.  I could call it "My Friend",...

Okay...  I know it's a little bit late, but I thought I needed to write about my B-day anyway.  It was the 14th, and evidently, the 16th, too. So, the 14th began with a great time eating lots of great food.  Pancakes for breakfast, my best friend Scott took me to my all-time favorite Thai restaurant and we got some insanely delicio...

Heh....  If you know me at all, you probably know a couple of things about me (in no particular order): I love Linux and gentoo I own a 2007 Mustang GT I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I really loathe the idea of DRM. Now, before I get into the details,  DRM just makes me sick.  I ha...

Holy cow, there's some weird crap on the Internet. I was just sifting through Youtube for some comic relief from the daily grind when I wondered where in the world Marilyn Manson had gone.  When I was younger, I was pretty much disgusted and amazed at the slim amount of MM media I was exposed to.  I haven't heard anything about him for y...

 It's quite obvious that this chapter is speaking to anyone and everyone (throughout all time) who lives on this land.  Verses 9,10, and 12 are especially insightful. "What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?" I love that question.  I never noticed outright that right after the Lord poses th...

Today I had an interesting thought.  It's a question that possibly has thousands of answers, but, since I'm on a pensive streak, I thought I'd write down some of what I came up with. The thought was "How do you tell if someone cares for you?", which also spawned the thought, "How do I tell if I care for someone else?", whi...

Today I needed to encode a movie I bought on Friday (Fearless), and I wanted to encode it in its native language, but have english subtitles.  The command I ended up using was this: transcode -a 0 -i Fearless.dump -M 2 -w 2200,250,100 -A -N 0x2000 -y xvid -o Fearless.avi -Z 854x480 -J extsub=2:0:0:0:0:100:255:2:3 The "a" takes care...

I just got done preparing my message for my home-teaching visit tonight, and after reading through the matieral the 2nd time, a thought came to my head, although I'm not sure how I'm gonna get it out.  Here goes nothing. As I was thinking of home-teaching in general, the thought came that "love" is pretty much the strongest power o...

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...

Due to recent events in my life, I've been feeling a little like the waves constantly lapping at the shore - in motion or at unrest.  I know the sounds of the ocean usually bring a feeling of peace, but .... not if you're in the water.... :) Anyway...  This feeling of unrest has brought on a bunch of thoughts and ponderings to me as I'...