I'm not entirely sure where to even begin with this chapter.  So many good stories are found in this one, which can easily be likened to our own lives and our own times.  Various lessons come to mind.... For example, verses 1 through 3 are a magnificent litmus test of personal righteousness.  When someone comes at you and truthfull...

Ya know... Chatting with good friends has its benefits.  Just like think-tanks and collegeate consortiums are good for concerted cognation, a good conversation with a concerned cohort can be just as contenting. I think I've mentioned this before in my journal, but in talking with a good friend of mine, I hadn't made the connection with just...

After reading this chapter for no more than 30 seconds, I simply must type. I love verse 3. Many, many times have I been in a doctrinal discussion with someone and the other person just can't "get" what a scripture or principle means.  Verse 3 could explain why that happens to us. Some things we just can't understand without th...

When I sit and think about what I just read, the 14th chapter of 1st Nephi is pretty crazy. Just a few points... The majority of the chapter is all about the "mother of abominations" and the "whore of all the earth". I believe it's written here to clarify the impact this (these) church(es) has (have) had upon the plain and...

No, seriously, people...  Microsoft really does care....  loads and loads of caring! They care so much ABOUT MONEY it makes me sick. I just got done reading this article and I'm left with a feeling of sickening "awe" at how greedy Microsoft really is. Lately, I've been following a story about a group of people in a project...

Where do I even begin with this chapter? I remember reading it and understanding it for the first time during my mission.  It was really cool realizing that all of this stuff in this chapter is written about in history books!  It talks about Christopher Columbus discovering America, the Revolutionary War, the Bible, the coming of the Bo...

I had forgotten that in this chapter, Nephi sees the Lord descend from heaven to the people who would be born from Nephi. I put myself in his situation, and quite honestly , I have no idea how I would react.  It would be so supremely surreal - seeing your kids' kids' kids' kids, and then seeing the Savior of the world show himself unto them....

As soon as the angel of God knew Nephi's purpose and desire, the first question he asked him was "Do you believe?". I think that's a fairly important question, which we should ask ourselves each day.  If we are being tempted and we ask ourselves that question, to which we already know the answer, I can promise you the tempter's pow...

First Nephi Ten... I'm not really in a spiritual mood right now, which really is unfortunate because I know this chapter has some spiritual meat to it. One thing I can write, is when I read this chapter during my mission, and even before, I always found myself focusing on Nephi's desire to see the things his father did (in verse 17). He didn'...

Two things for tonight's study: I believe the purpose of this chapter is the same as chapter 6:  To give purpose behind the Book of Mormon.  The things Nephi is writing are things of God - things pertaining to the ministry of the people in those days. I love verse 5.  It reminds me of when Adam was commanded to build an alter and...

Hi.  I'm trying out this new journaling website. It really rocks because my husband built it and he's like ... super smart.... and super cool... and super AWESOME. I'm really tired right now so....  I'm gonna end this now....

Whenever I do credit card checking, I always end up searching for longer than it would take me to create it myself, so...  without further ado, here's the Luhn, or "Mod 10" algorithm for validating credit card numbers. function mod_10($cc) {     $reversed_string = strrev($cc);     $string_array = str_sp...

Sorry for the long haitus I've taken from blogging, guys.  I guess it doesn't really matter since nobody reads my blog, anyway.. Man...  This new job is really taking me for a loop.  Right now, the only way I can survive without seriously considering other alternatives is to take it a day at a time.  This in no way should sugg...

So, I haven't written for awhile - mostly because I enjoy writing after a project has been completed.  Well - right now Advanced Budget Studios has quite a few bands in the works, who are going after multi-track demos.  My guess is - we'll be fishing them up around the same time, and let me tell you now - all of em' are going to be awesom...

Today, an audio file was sent to me in an email.  This audio was compressed and encoded using the aac codec for compression and wrapped in m4a.  In order to use it, I had to convert this file to a wav format.  Usually, I receive files in mp3, ogg, or flac file types, and use lame, oggdec, or flac to decode them back to wav.  Wit...

I just thought I'd write a little something.... Since about a year ago, Collin's elbow has been easily pulled out of joint, and thus, has had issues with what is known as a nursemaid elbow. Today, his elbow got pulled out of the socket again, and my wife called me with another appointment to the doctor's office. Well, this time, I got to t...

I thought that today I'd be enjoying conference, but instead I'm playing Mr. Mom, as Sarah is trying to control her contractions. I woke up around 7:30 this morning to the tune of my wife exclaiming that she was sure today was the day.  Due to her body's signals, I believed it. So, we've been patiently waiting for her body to get a bit mor...

I am by no means a "versatile programmer" in the general sense of the word.  I know of many programmers who are much more well versed in various languages and best practices methodology.  In fact, I am not even a computer science graduate, and I don't have a masters degree in anything. *BUT* I do have a lot of experience i...

We've been contemplating how to best improve the studio with all the business we've been getting lately, and the votes are in! Please welcome our newest addition to the studio, a nice shiny new red GOLDEN AGE PRE 73 PRE-AMP!  We spent a good deal of time looking into the best preamps for the money, and it came down to two main contenders. ...

Any web developer who has been in the craft for more than a couple of days realizes how often forms are used in web development.  Well...  Where forms are used, form methods are used, and one of the crazily irritating problems with forms using a "POST" method is the fact that when the "back" button is pressed after lea...

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...

Happy 4th of July to everyone! We finally finished mixing and mastering Ear Candy's debut single, Tell Me Why, and quite frankly, we've loved working on it here in the studio.  The finished copy can be heard in our samples section, and Ear Candy has made it freely available to anyone and everyone who would like a copy. Just let them know h...

Lately, I've been feeling quite the spiritual outpouring from heaven upon me.  It happened about ....  Let's say last Friday (the 10th).  I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I've been happier, more settled emotionally, more productive at work, and ....  Just really anxious to be about a good cause. I think now would be a...

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...

This past Thursday, we finally decided to rip it up.  I mean, literally - rip it up. Then, we decided to take it out the backyard to see what the heck was clogging it all up. It was just as we suspected.  Collin had flushed a freaking toy cell-phone down our toilet! and yes, we took the toilet out in the backyard, twisted it, turned it...

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 ...

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...

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...

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.  ...

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...