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...

Okay...  So ABS mixed a song from a band I was in called EnZign a couple of years ago, and the song hasn't been touched since.  Well, I opened it up about a week ago, and found it a bit grating on my ears.  Here, take a listen and tell me what you think of that snare drum.  Talk about piercing. Anyway...  We decided to se...

So, I spent a few minutes today seeing how bare-bones I could get my xorg.conf.  My configuration is 2 23-inch Acer monitors, which are side-by-side using a Radeon HD4850 video card.  I'm using gentoo.  make.conf : VIDEO_CARDS="radeon". Also, I've got one big desktop from the 2 monitors.  Here's the config. ...

My brother and I are really close with each other. We usually go out of town with our parents. Since we only have each other (because we are the only children that our parents has), we see to it that we will have many happy memories with together. We have different likes and dislikes when it comes to having a fun time. He loves swimming and I don&r...

The beginning of this talk was set by talking about the experience President Gordon B. Hinckley had as a deacon.  He spoke of the moving power of the men singing "Praise To The Man", at a Stake Priesthood Meeting. While reading that experience, my mind immediately turned back to a very similar experience I had when beginning my mis...

Some projects are just worth the wait.  Four months ago, we started working with a group named Lucid 8, and quite honestly, I've been itching to get their demo finished.  Well, we're heading down that road now, and it feels great.  We have one song finished, with 5 more quickly getting wrapped up.  Can't wait to see where these ...

Okay... I just got back from an absolutely wonderful place.  This place is called: Jump On It and it's seriously a wonderful place. My wife is addicted to this game called "Bunko" which she plays once a month with about 12 other women, so I get to play "Let's Go Babysit!" for 2-3 hours while she plays Bunko. Any...

Well, people....  Most of yesterday (until this morning around 12:30am) I spent trying to figure out what to do about my email situation. Here's my situation:  I get so much friggin' spam, I can't stand it.  This shouldn't be news to anyone.  The person who receives no spam is a person who doesn't have an inbox. So, I decided ...

I was just looking at the timestamp on these chapters, and realized that Amalickiah went from being a Nephite citizen, to the king over the entire Lamanite nation in approximately 1.5 years.  How freaking crazy is that? Also, one thing I failed to mention about chapter 47 is the last verse.  A very interesting verse, that is.  Once...

I read Alma 34 two days ago, and haven't written about it.  I hate it when I don't have time to write about the scriptures when I read them, because each time I read them, I feel something different about different portions of the scripture.  Ah, well..  I'll read it again and see what happens this time. Right out of the gate, Amul...

Continuing in the tradition of weekly fasting, church this week was very enlightening.  Sarah and I decided to go to a new "marriage and family" class instead of the usual gospel doctrine lesson, and I'm quite glad we made that decision. Lately, temple worthiness hasn't meant much to me.  There's more to that story, but that's...

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...

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...

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...

Interesting how verse 3 is pretty much an exact parallel with the light of Christ in our lives. Verse 4 is yet another example of taking a pretty huge risk in the name of God.  Getting into ships, the likes of which none of them had ever seen before, being built by the blueprints of God.  Closing the doors, with all your family inside, ...

 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...

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...

Okay...  I keep on runing into these people who have learned what I want to learn. About a year ago, I met a guy named Rick Koerber and he seemed like a normal guy.  About 6 months later, I find out he's a freaking multi-millionarie.  I also find out that he teaches how he did it, and so I learn about it.  It seems really legit...

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...

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...

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 ...