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...

 Figuring out the mood and temprament of Moroni while he writes this is tough.  The things he writes about are horrific.  The Lamanites have killed his entire race, his family, and his father.  The "state of the union", as it were, was "continual warefare, bloodshed, and violence."   He had to be depress...

At the beginning of this year, one of the things I wanted to accomplish by next year was to write enough songs to create an album.  So far I have 3 songs I reallly like, and one which I think should be destroyed by fire.  Not too shabby, considering it's only the beginning of February. When I was 26, 1 day after I had broken up with my...

Okay...  It had to happen, and it happened today.  Since this is a public entry, and I really don't want to throw a negative light on the situation, I'll do my best to filter out my emotions.  If I have to vomit emotions, I'll do it in private.  Anyway... This morning, I woke up and Kim (my dear mother-in-law) decided to make ...

Today I needed to sync a file on two servers using ssh, and I needed to do it automatically.  I knew that ssh could use key-pairs to enable a secure authentication system without requiring passwords, but I couldn't remember how to do it.  I googled a bit and found this gem of a tutorial on how to do precisely what I needed:  I'll pos...

This chapter, to me, is all about following the Spirit. Verses 3 and 5 are among the most potent in all of scripture. "Feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do." "...the Holy Ghost ... will show unto you all things what ye should do." Doesn't get any clear...

Okay... I can't write a lot, but I've *got* to write something. My good friend Steve and I have been wanting to find a good place to race our new cars. He has a 2006 Cobalt SS (sweet ride), and I just got a 2007 Mustang GT (which, unfortunately, I really don't know how to drive well yet). So, today we decided to just head out west and end u...

I was sifting through my various RSS feeds a couple of minutes ago, and one popped up from TomsHardware which I thought might be interesting.  So I opened it up in my browser, and before I could even read the title, my eyes were drawn to this ad by Microsoft.  The image itself isn't very funny, but man-oh-man, the captions which came to m...

Me and my good friend Scott chatted for far too long today about a very interesting subject.  The subject was brought about by this article, which, in essence is just a conversation between an aethiestic professor and two of his students. In a nutshell, the professor makes the claim of God creating Satan, and thus creating evil, and thereby ...

Sorry I couldn't write yesterday, I got a little preoccupied. My sister is going to camp with my mother (she wrote about it in HER journal) WITHOUT ME. They left at about 1:00pm and got there at 3:00pm.They're coming back on Sunday and will be home by about 8:00pm. I was mad, but then I remembered I get to go with the whole Young Women gr...

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...

 So, on last chapter's post, someone left a wonderful comment.  Thank you, whoever you are.  That is precisely why I do this. Now... Ether 4.   This chapter starts out with an interesting verse.  I guess Mosiah would have had several channels whereby he could have known he should not let the book of Ether out of the bag u...

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...

All I've gotta say is - don't get on the wrong side of God.  The wrath of God shown in chapter 9 really is quite astounding. Then, in chapter 10, it's almost as if God's words were pleading to the people...  Almost as if God were remorseful of the things He had to do...  Claiming, "If ye only had kept my commandments, these th...

 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...

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'...

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...

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...

I watched this talk about 2 months ago and was very impressed by what Elder Jeffrey R. Holland proclaimed. Down to its essence, Elder Holland simply states case after case as to why it makes no sense the claim that God has ceased speaking to us. Quite frankly, I believe him.  With overwhelming evidence given, it's hard not to see the clear...

I love mythtv. Thank heavens for the wonderful, altruistic people who created such a fantastic program. I also love transcode and mplayer. Equally fantastic programs. Put em' all together and what do you get? An encoded library of your DVDs ready for viewing straight from your hard drive. Here's some tips I've found out. (actually, I'm w...