Yesterday at church, I had a couple of thoughts which I neglected to write down.  I think I'll write them down now. Something I might have written down in my previous scripture studies is my question as to why Lehi's family didn't think about getting the plates of brass / Ishmael's family before they left for the wilderness?  I would th...

I'm not in the mood to write much, but since it's a goal, I'll keep it. One thing I noticed and had a question about was why Nephi, Sariah, and Sam didn't know where to go in Lehi's dream.  Verse 14 lays it out quite plainly. The first thing that came to mind was Lehi was the leader of the family.  He was the director and it was his d...

Something I've never really ever thought of, and maybe simply because it's so obvious, but... When Nephi goes on in his rant toward those who were desirous to go to Jerusalem, he keeps saying "How could you forget?".  Things like "How have you forgotten the great things the Lord hath done for us" makes an incredible assum...

I just got done reading a wonderful article in which the author tries to describe the core differences between the "open source" mentality and the proprietary one.  He does a great job of being objective and is generally well-thought out. Since I began using Linux, being myself a capitalist, I've battled the idea that the open sour...

I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I lost the post I just wrote about chapter 6. I didn't realize how short it was, so I wrote about the importance of scriptures spoken of in verse 5.  If we didn't have scriptures, our kids would eventually lose the commandments of God (unless, of course, it was revealed again). Also, it's good to not...

I just got done reading an excerpt on Sony's new "open", "non-DRM" solution to downloading their music legally. As I understand it, you have to go to a store, buy some sort of card for $12.99 which has a magic code on it, get the code, go to a website, enter the code, and then you are able to download one of their whole 37 alb...

Man... I'm just tired.  Today was weird..  So... Studying chapter 5 right now, I'm brought to another realization that even the families of Prophets aren't perfect (hello, Lehi was a prophet, and he managed to have Laman and Lemuel...) The specifics to which I refer is Sariah's murmuring, and reaction when she saw her 4 boys return fr...

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...

One way I really enjoy reading the scriptures is from a very empathetic point of view.  I find I learn more when I study, if I try to imagine what would *really* be going on if I were actually within the scripture. Chapter 4 is perfect for this.  Reading somewhat between the lines of the first part of this chapter allows us to imagine ...

Within the first 5 verses of this chapter, I'm reminded again of how a person works who is truly interested in God's commandments. Lehi was commanded of the Lord to have his sons return to Jerusalem to get the plates of brass from Laban. Telling Laman and Lemuel would most certainly have some consequences in that they would automatically assu...

It feels quite refreshing to be able to understand more than just a couple of verses again.  As I was reading tonight, I realized how much could be written about this chapter.  It's quite full of good doctrine. Here's what I noticed tonight: From verse 1 until 6, Nephi seems to be trying to explain the "hard to understand" n...

About a month ago, our bishop told us that the fast offering fund for the poor people in our ward is running low, and that we should consider giving a generous offering. I thought we should definitely consider doing so, but in the end, I forgot all about it. Today, however, our Bishop dedicated the entire sacrament meeting to the topic of sacri...

Hmm...  I really like when prophets, like Alma, quote other prophets to make a point.  The best way to keep the doctrine pure is to look the reference up.  Otherwise, it inevitably will be diluted down.  Ain't no doctrine like pure doctrine. Interesting that the quote from Zenos in verses 4-11 is paraphrased beautifully in Alm...

So, I was on my way to work today, when my phone rang - displaying an unfamiliar number.  With everything going on in my life, I decided it would be a good idea to answer it anyway. Turned out to be a really good idea. Last week, I decided to take the time to draw out plans for the studio and turn them in to the city for approval.  I ...

I just got done lightly scanning over this article before I shook my head in disgust and decided to write this entry. Let me say this first.  I've been professionally employed in web development now for 6 years, and am by no means a genius on the subject, but I think I may have a clue or two. I have absolutely no idea why Bluefish seems to...

Okay, so Jason left yesterday afternoon for a trip to Green Bay.  I have been gearing up for this for a few weeks.  Preparing  myself to be without my beloved for a few days.  I figured this is no big deal, I can get through this no problem.  Well, it looks like the kids had a different idea about that for me.  I t...

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...

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'm not entirely sure about the east coast or any other coast, but the clam chowder from the west coast at the Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey California is ....  is....  well...  it's clam chowder the way it was meant to be. Today was a day full of driving in rush-hour-esque conditions, getting the hotel arranged at Monterey, CA. ...

Today was pretty laid back.  We watched one session of conference (Annie and Craig were gracious enough to let us watch it on their TV), played a lot of Brandon's new Wii, and went to a park which was pretty cool. Other than that, today was .... average. Here are some pics of the park. Collin found some guy who was quite nice, flying ...

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...

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...

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.  ...

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...

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 ...

 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...

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 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...

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...

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...