Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Paradox of Birth Control
LJ posted over at Lux Venit about an article on MInTheGap today. The article is about birth control, and whether or not it is a sin. Check out the article here. I have posted a few comments there as well, and rather than trying to rehash it here, just go check it out.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The Great Commission and the Holy Spirit
This Sunday, the pastor at the church we attended spoke on missions, using Acts 13:1-4 as the basis for his sermon. He talked about how the church at Antioch commissioned Saul (Paul) and Barnabas as missionaries, and discuss how he felt that his own church had failed to raise up missionaries from the congregation from baptism to commissioning. He also explained that he felt that Christians who were waiting on a specific call from the Holy Spirit to serve as missionaries had already received the only call that they really need - the Great Commission.
Now for those of you who might need refreshing, the Great Commission as recorded in Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV) says, "19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." In this context, I agree with the pastor that we are all called to make disciples as we go through our daily walk. However, I would distinguish this from a call into full-time missionary work. The Great Commission was delivered, in my opinion, to all believers. Yet, the church at Antioch did not close the doors and send every one of its members out to be full-time missionaries, they only sent Saul and Barnabas, as far as we can tell from the passage, so there appears to me to be a special calling from the Holy Spirit on these men that set them apart from the others.
That goes to the heart of what I thought the pastor failed to emphasize in his sermon, namely the first part of verse 2 - "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said..." Now the passage doesn't explain how the Holy Spirit said that these two men were called to be missionaries, but I don't think that that is important to us. What is important here is that the men of the church were worshiping and fasting, and God, through His Holy Spirit, told them something specific about these two men. Now, when things were tough for Saul and Barnabas down the road, which they undoubtedly were, they both had a specific calling that they could cling to as evidence that God meant for them to be doing what they were doing. That's not to say that we too don't have a specific calling from God to be His witnesses - we do. But the calling for Saul and Barnabas went beyond that. I am sure that it was something that they both felt, but it was also confirmed to a larger group through other means than just Jesus's final words.
Now again, I don't think that there would necessarily be anything wrong with a believer going out and serving on the mission field without any other calling other than the Great Commission. However, when doubts and fear arise, and times are hard, it seems to me that a firm calling from the Holy Spirit, confirmed by your church leaders, would be a strong point on which he (or she) could cling. I know from our experience with the church plant that the lack of a clear calling from God (for both of us) was the source of many hours of confusion and doubt for LJ and me once things got truly hard. I imagine that the same is true for many pastors as well. Am I off base here?
Now for those of you who might need refreshing, the Great Commission as recorded in Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV) says, "19
That goes to the heart of what I thought the pastor failed to emphasize in his sermon, namely the first part of verse 2 - "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said..." Now the passage doesn't explain how the Holy Spirit said that these two men were called to be missionaries, but I don't think that that is important to us. What is important here is that the men of the church were worshiping and fasting, and God, through His Holy Spirit, told them something specific about these two men. Now, when things were tough for Saul and Barnabas down the road, which they undoubtedly were, they both had a specific calling that they could cling to as evidence that God meant for them to be doing what they were doing. That's not to say that we too don't have a specific calling from God to be His witnesses - we do. But the calling for Saul and Barnabas went beyond that. I am sure that it was something that they both felt, but it was also confirmed to a larger group through other means than just Jesus's final words.
Now again, I don't think that there would necessarily be anything wrong with a believer going out and serving on the mission field without any other calling other than the Great Commission. However, when doubts and fear arise, and times are hard, it seems to me that a firm calling from the Holy Spirit, confirmed by your church leaders, would be a strong point on which he (or she) could cling. I know from our experience with the church plant that the lack of a clear calling from God (for both of us) was the source of many hours of confusion and doubt for LJ and me once things got truly hard. I imagine that the same is true for many pastors as well. Am I off base here?
Friday, September 01, 2006
Triple Digits!!!
Whoo-hoo! I have had 100 visitors in the two weeks since I've started blogging! Thank you to all of you who sought my blog out to find out what LJ's husband was like, or who came over to see what I am all about from a comment, or who just tripped over it. My next goal is to accumulate more visitors than there are buyers for Paris Hilton's CD. That shouldn't be too hard.
Star Wars Action Scene - I
Remember how I said that I collect Star Wars action figures? Well, since I have so many of them, and I really am too old to play with them (except with the kids), I don't get to see them too much. LJ only allows me one area to keep them out, which is my dresser in our bedroom. So every couple of weeks I set up a different scene with some of my figures. This week's scene is from the Battle of Hoth (Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back). It features an Imperial walker (AT-AT) and a scout walker wreaking havoc on the Rebel front lines. Luke Skywalker is hanging from the walker and has ignited his lightsaber in preparation for planting an explosive on the AT-AT's belly. Here's another angle:
If this is a popular-enough feature (that means if you folks comment positively), then I'll post photos whenever I change it.
Find a church or leave town?
Paul Martin over at kerux noemata has posted about finding a church where God is. Basically he says that if you aren't finding a church where God is present and Jesus is Lord then you should move somewhere that you can. Here's the comment I left on his site:
If Paul responds, I'll post it here.
"I definitely can understand where you are coming from. My wife and I have despaired of finding a place where the gospel is preached and the members of the body are spiritually alive. My question though is how do you find a church where God is at work if the church is in another city (or state)? I have found that the opinions of people I know and trust on other matters are not terribly helpful when it comes to their own churches, so I think it would be hard to find a place that I was sure of without spending time there myself. I don't see how that's practical without quitting my job and going church-hunting full time. Which would work for about two weeks. "
If Paul responds, I'll post it here.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Forced conversion
Catez over at allthings2all recently posted on his blog about the release of two Fox News reporters by terrorists in Gaza. As you may have heard, the two reporters "converted" to Islam as part of the agreement to release them. This got me and Catez thinking about what we would do if faced with the same situation. Check out the post here.
I'm not going to debate whether Wiig and Centanni made a bad decision for themselves, because I don't know whether either of them is a Christian. I started wondering what I would do in the same situation, and whether it would be wrong to falsely claim that I had converted to Islam to escape death. I agree with Catez that the ability to stand up and say, "NO" would only be possible through the Holy Spirit. The early Christians faced the same dilemma in the Coliseum though - renounce your faith and bow to Caesar and go free, or be torn apart by lions. Whether or not those early believers would have truly abandoned their faith in their hearts had they capitulated could be a matter of debate, but there was no debate in their minds over whether bowing to Caesar was a sin. I am afraid that publicly declaring one's conversion to Islam, forced or not, to escape terrorists would be a sin for a believer as well.
I'm not going to debate whether Wiig and Centanni made a bad decision for themselves, because I don't know whether either of them is a Christian. I started wondering what I would do in the same situation, and whether it would be wrong to falsely claim that I had converted to Islam to escape death. I agree with Catez that the ability to stand up and say, "NO" would only be possible through the Holy Spirit. The early Christians faced the same dilemma in the Coliseum though - renounce your faith and bow to Caesar and go free, or be torn apart by lions. Whether or not those early believers would have truly abandoned their faith in their hearts had they capitulated could be a matter of debate, but there was no debate in their minds over whether bowing to Caesar was a sin. I am afraid that publicly declaring one's conversion to Islam, forced or not, to escape terrorists would be a sin for a believer as well.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
My Favorite Albums - Number 6
Free-For-All - Michael Penn (1992)
This album was released at about the same time that I was starting as a freshman in college. My brother had bought Penn's debut album March back in 1989 on the basis of the minor radio/MTV hit "No Myth." I liked the original album moderately, but it wasn't necessarily something I listened to very much. I didn't even have a copy of it, and we always copied each others tapes at the time if we wanted a copy to listen to ourselves. Anyway, my brother had bought the new tape and offered to let me take it back with me to school (2.5 hours away) and listen to it. I still remember that because I listened to the album over and over again on the way back to Tuscaloosa. With only ten songs and a running time of slightly under 40 minutes, that's nearly four times through. It was so interesting, different, and enjoyable, I didn't want to stop listening to it.
This album features some fine acoustic guitar playing, lyrical complexity, dark themes, and catchy, singable tunes. At the time of his debut, Michael Penn seemed poised to take the mantle of poet singer from the likes of Bob Dylan. However, the grunge revolution led by groups like Nirvana changed the music world by the time this album came around, and Penn's career has never reached the popular heights of his first release. Free-For-All is an example then of what might have been, and is perhaps Penn's finest effort.
My favorite track on the album is "Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)," which features a pure, clean acoustic guitar that sounds like Penn is in the room with you and a biting, cynical lyric about the girl he loves who is returning from a night on the town without him. There are other acoustic gems in "Coal" and "By the Book" with fast-paced rockers like "Free Time" and "Seen the Doctor" to liven the pace. This album is highly underrated, and gets better with every hearing. And it looks like Amazon has it for 1 cent, so how can you beat that?
This album was released at about the same time that I was starting as a freshman in college. My brother had bought Penn's debut album March back in 1989 on the basis of the minor radio/MTV hit "No Myth." I liked the original album moderately, but it wasn't necessarily something I listened to very much. I didn't even have a copy of it, and we always copied each others tapes at the time if we wanted a copy to listen to ourselves. Anyway, my brother had bought the new tape and offered to let me take it back with me to school (2.5 hours away) and listen to it. I still remember that because I listened to the album over and over again on the way back to Tuscaloosa. With only ten songs and a running time of slightly under 40 minutes, that's nearly four times through. It was so interesting, different, and enjoyable, I didn't want to stop listening to it.
This album features some fine acoustic guitar playing, lyrical complexity, dark themes, and catchy, singable tunes. At the time of his debut, Michael Penn seemed poised to take the mantle of poet singer from the likes of Bob Dylan. However, the grunge revolution led by groups like Nirvana changed the music world by the time this album came around, and Penn's career has never reached the popular heights of his first release. Free-For-All is an example then of what might have been, and is perhaps Penn's finest effort.
My favorite track on the album is "Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)," which features a pure, clean acoustic guitar that sounds like Penn is in the room with you and a biting, cynical lyric about the girl he loves who is returning from a night on the town without him. There are other acoustic gems in "Coal" and "By the Book" with fast-paced rockers like "Free Time" and "Seen the Doctor" to liven the pace. This album is highly underrated, and gets better with every hearing. And it looks like Amazon has it for 1 cent, so how can you beat that?
"Painter of Light" in trouble
Apparently Thomas Kinkade's greatest crime may not be painting cheesy, overpriced works of art.
The Article
The Article
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
The Church Search
I am 32 years old. I have been a member of seven churches in my life - one briefly as a young child and new Christian, one for the next 11 years until I went to college, two during college, another after LJ and I married and moved, the sixth when we attempted to help plant a church, and the seventh and final one after the church plant failed. Our family left that church a little more than a year ago after some serious consideration and prayer when our problems with the pastor's leadership style finally came to a head (the pastor has since left that church). We have been without a church home for a year and have visited 20 churches in that time, four of them at least twice. We live in Alabama in a county of 160,000 people. In this county, there are over 100 Southern Baptist churches alone! So why is it so hard to find the right place?
I guess part of the problem is that we have high expectations. LJ and I expect the people to be friendly, the worship to be vibrant and glorifying to God, and the prayer to be fervent. We homeschool our children, so we'd like to find other homeschooling parents. We believe in evangelism, so we want to see Christians who are enthusiastic about reaching others. And we long for Christian fellowship, so we'd like to make friends that share at least some of our interests. We originally thought we'd like to find a place that had not had a major split at some point due to infighting, but had to rule that out because we couldn't find any. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we want to locate a pastor that preaches the Bible, not a verse or two and a couple of good stories. We've had all the purpose-driven, seeker-sensitive nonsense we could stomach.
It's amazing to me how so many churches that we've visited have been cookie-cutter images of each other. Oh sure, the buildings are different and the styles of dress may vary some, but when you look beyond the surface you find the same repetitive "praise music," the same cold, disinterested parishoners, the same three points and a poem feel-good sermons, and the same feeling of a wasted hour (or two) when you walk away.
What is the purpose of a church? The second chapter of Acts says that the early church was "continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Acts 11:26-30 indicates that the church is designed for teaching and for providing relief to other Christians in need. In Romans, Paul reminds the church to be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Does this sound like your church?
To my shame, I have gone to church for years with people I have barely known, some of whom I couldn't name if my life depended on it. LJ and I tried to conduct a Precept Bible study in our last church. The pastor would only allow it to happen on Sunday nights during the worship services. By the time the study concluded, only two or three other members were even attending the meetings, and none of them had gotten anywhere near completing the study. We visited one church for four or five months at a stretch during our search (by far the most time we've given a church - we had family there). Not once did a member of that church visit us (there was one "formal" church visit), or invite our family to visit them. Not once were we ever asked to go to lunch at someone's home or even to meet at a restaurant. Not once were we ever called to see how we were doing or just to talk. Not once was LJ or I ever invited to do anything with anyone outside the church building. At another church we visited, my Bible was stolen right off the pew next to me. Is this what the writer of Hebrews warned us not to give up doing?
I have a great fear that God looks down on our tired Sunday rituals and desires to spit our lukewarm Christianity out of his mouth. How I pray that God would direct us to a church where his gospel is preached, his love is proclaimed, and his Spirit is at work. I have begun to despair that there is such a place where we live.
I guess part of the problem is that we have high expectations. LJ and I expect the people to be friendly, the worship to be vibrant and glorifying to God, and the prayer to be fervent. We homeschool our children, so we'd like to find other homeschooling parents. We believe in evangelism, so we want to see Christians who are enthusiastic about reaching others. And we long for Christian fellowship, so we'd like to make friends that share at least some of our interests. We originally thought we'd like to find a place that had not had a major split at some point due to infighting, but had to rule that out because we couldn't find any. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we want to locate a pastor that preaches the Bible, not a verse or two and a couple of good stories. We've had all the purpose-driven, seeker-sensitive nonsense we could stomach.
It's amazing to me how so many churches that we've visited have been cookie-cutter images of each other. Oh sure, the buildings are different and the styles of dress may vary some, but when you look beyond the surface you find the same repetitive "praise music," the same cold, disinterested parishoners, the same three points and a poem feel-good sermons, and the same feeling of a wasted hour (or two) when you walk away.
What is the purpose of a church? The second chapter of Acts says that the early church was "continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Acts 11:26-30 indicates that the church is designed for teaching and for providing relief to other Christians in need. In Romans, Paul reminds the church to be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Does this sound like your church?
To my shame, I have gone to church for years with people I have barely known, some of whom I couldn't name if my life depended on it. LJ and I tried to conduct a Precept Bible study in our last church. The pastor would only allow it to happen on Sunday nights during the worship services. By the time the study concluded, only two or three other members were even attending the meetings, and none of them had gotten anywhere near completing the study. We visited one church for four or five months at a stretch during our search (by far the most time we've given a church - we had family there). Not once did a member of that church visit us (there was one "formal" church visit), or invite our family to visit them. Not once were we ever asked to go to lunch at someone's home or even to meet at a restaurant. Not once were we ever called to see how we were doing or just to talk. Not once was LJ or I ever invited to do anything with anyone outside the church building. At another church we visited, my Bible was stolen right off the pew next to me. Is this what the writer of Hebrews warned us not to give up doing?
I have a great fear that God looks down on our tired Sunday rituals and desires to spit our lukewarm Christianity out of his mouth. How I pray that God would direct us to a church where his gospel is preached, his love is proclaimed, and his Spirit is at work. I have begun to despair that there is such a place where we live.
Why is Christian Music so boring?
What is the deal with Christian music? I know I am probably going to offend some of you out there, but according to my exacting standards for good music (write your own music, play at least one instrument, have talent, and be an innovator), a vast majority of "contemporary Christian" music does not qualify. Pop music today is a vacuous wasteland, so if your musical style apes the pop music of today, like most Christian music, you're already in deep trouble.
Now I realize that pop music, by definition, is the most-purchased music out there. But check out the top 10 artists on the current Billboard Hot 100 list (Fergie, Gnarls Barkley, Nelly Furtado, Sean Paul, The Pussycat Dolls, Cassie, Ciara, Christina Aguilera, Ne-Yo, and Panic! At the Disco) . Are you kidding me? There's only two of these supposed "artists" that I have even heard of, and whether or not they can sing or are even a great singer is beside the point. Will anybody be listening to these songs twenty years from now? Is any one of them doing something interesting with their music? Are any of them virtually interchangable with each other, or a thousand other singers out there? What are Christian artists doing trying to sound like them, or worse, trying to sound like pop music that's 10 (or more) years out of date.
I think musical giftedness is a talent from God. I sing and play a little bit of guitar, and I have written music, but I have no illusions about my talent level. I have heard artists in many churches that greatly exceed my musical abilities, and yet still have no business with a recording contract. So why is one of the most obvious of God's gifts seemingly missing from the pool of his servants? Where are the innovators in Christian music? Where are the artists who are masters of their instruments, who worship God with their amazing talents? Where are the Mozarts and The Beatles? The Beethovens and the Bob Dylans? Where are the bands who are creating music that truly glorifies God rather than sounding like a cheap knockoff of Celine Dion or Nickelback? Is God really pleased with music that couldn't make it among the likes of Josh Turner and Rihanna?
My favorite Christian band - well, the only one I listen to anyway - is Third Day. I like Mac Powell's voice and I think some of their songs are pretty good. But as far as innovation goes, they are probably 30 years behind the rock bands they sound like (Lynnyrd Skynnyrd or the Allman Brothers). What has happened to the talented and interesting performers? Is there nothing new to play or sing?
In my opinion, Christian music should be better than pop music. The singers should have better voices, the instrumentalists should have more prowess. Can it really be the case that none of the most talented musicians in the world are Christians? I hear music on our three local Christian stations that would not have been interesting on Top 40 radio in 1986, much less 2006. And don't even get me into the theology of Christian music. Most of it is either lightweight "Jesus is my girlfriend" type nonsense, or simple and repetitive praise music (or both). When was the last time you heard a confessional song along the lines of Psalm 51 ("Against Thee, Thee only, I have sinned, and done what is evil in Thy sight")? Or a lament like Psalm 79 ("They have given the dead bodies of Thy servants for food to the birds of the heavens, The flesh of Thy godly ones to the beasts of the earth.") Where are the Christian artists who sing out about our country's struggle against Islamofascists or the moral issues of the day (abortion, crime, poverty, personal debt, etc.) and cry out to God for help? Instead we get man-centered songs that are so innocuous that they can crossover to the pop charts and be inoffensive to everyone (see MercyMe's "I Can Only Imagine" for a recent example). Something is very wrong here.
Now I realize that pop music, by definition, is the most-purchased music out there. But check out the top 10 artists on the current Billboard Hot 100 list (Fergie, Gnarls Barkley, Nelly Furtado, Sean Paul, The Pussycat Dolls, Cassie, Ciara, Christina Aguilera, Ne-Yo, and Panic! At the Disco) . Are you kidding me? There's only two of these supposed "artists" that I have even heard of, and whether or not they can sing or are even a great singer is beside the point. Will anybody be listening to these songs twenty years from now? Is any one of them doing something interesting with their music? Are any of them virtually interchangable with each other, or a thousand other singers out there? What are Christian artists doing trying to sound like them, or worse, trying to sound like pop music that's 10 (or more) years out of date.
I think musical giftedness is a talent from God. I sing and play a little bit of guitar, and I have written music, but I have no illusions about my talent level. I have heard artists in many churches that greatly exceed my musical abilities, and yet still have no business with a recording contract. So why is one of the most obvious of God's gifts seemingly missing from the pool of his servants? Where are the innovators in Christian music? Where are the artists who are masters of their instruments, who worship God with their amazing talents? Where are the Mozarts and The Beatles? The Beethovens and the Bob Dylans? Where are the bands who are creating music that truly glorifies God rather than sounding like a cheap knockoff of Celine Dion or Nickelback? Is God really pleased with music that couldn't make it among the likes of Josh Turner and Rihanna?
My favorite Christian band - well, the only one I listen to anyway - is Third Day. I like Mac Powell's voice and I think some of their songs are pretty good. But as far as innovation goes, they are probably 30 years behind the rock bands they sound like (Lynnyrd Skynnyrd or the Allman Brothers). What has happened to the talented and interesting performers? Is there nothing new to play or sing?
In my opinion, Christian music should be better than pop music. The singers should have better voices, the instrumentalists should have more prowess. Can it really be the case that none of the most talented musicians in the world are Christians? I hear music on our three local Christian stations that would not have been interesting on Top 40 radio in 1986, much less 2006. And don't even get me into the theology of Christian music. Most of it is either lightweight "Jesus is my girlfriend" type nonsense, or simple and repetitive praise music (or both). When was the last time you heard a confessional song along the lines of Psalm 51 ("Against Thee, Thee only, I have sinned, and done what is evil in Thy sight")? Or a lament like Psalm 79 ("They have given the dead bodies of Thy servants for food to the birds of the heavens, The flesh of Thy godly ones to the beasts of the earth.") Where are the Christian artists who sing out about our country's struggle against Islamofascists or the moral issues of the day (abortion, crime, poverty, personal debt, etc.) and cry out to God for help? Instead we get man-centered songs that are so innocuous that they can crossover to the pop charts and be inoffensive to everyone (see MercyMe's "I Can Only Imagine" for a recent example). Something is very wrong here.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
I just took "The Politics Test"
| You are a (18% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (75% permissive) You are best described as a: You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.
|
Well, I have to say I think this one works. Try it.
Friday, August 25, 2006
PET PEEVE!!! (WARNING--RANT AHEAD)
I work in IT and I've been a user of internet e-mail since 1991, so maybe the novelty of it has worn off. I get between 50-100 e-mails a day, every day. This only refers to the e-mail that passes through the multiple spam and virus filters that we employ to block the folks who are hawking V1@gr@ and porn and low mortgage rates. I realize that there are people out there who get four or five e-mails from their friends in a week's time, and they're happy to get every piece of it, so I realize that not everybody feels about it the way I do. But I have one big e-mail pet peeve. I'll give it to you in a nutshell. If your e-mail looks like this:
I DON'T WANT IT!!! Don't you people have something better to do than forward this crap to me? Half the time whatever is in the e-mail is some urban legend or hoax that has little basis in fact, and the other half of the time it's some sappy shmaltz that I can't believe I wasted two minutes of my life reading. I'm not getting that time back, people!
It's getting to the point when I see an e-mail from certain people that I know, I can just go ahead and delete it without review because I know it is totally worthless. My company gets around one million e-mails a week. We have less than 500 employees. That's over 2000 e-mails a week for the average worker, and you know what? Ninety-eight percent of it literally is garbage. We filter that crap out before it even gets inside the firewall. Junk like this message makes up another half a percent. Okay, you say, half a percent isn't so much. Well, that's 5000 e-mails in a week. If it takes a person thirty seconds during their workday to read those messages, that's 41 person-hours wasted. That's a work week wasted for Pete's sake! And that's just one small company out of thousands. If you are sending these messages (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), FREAKING STOP IT ALREADY!!! I don't need to get an e-mail to convince me that God loves me, that we should support our soldiers or that illegal immigration is a problem. No one has signed a law prohibiting us from going to church, 9/11 wasn't staged by the government, and there is no secret e-mail program that Bill Gates' is going to pay me $1000 to beta test for him. Viruses ARE a problem, but sending an e-mail to warn me about one is not the best way to handle it, especially since many viruses are spread by e-mail, and most likely we're going to catch those anyway. There's hardly anything you can send me in an e-mail that I haven't already learned somewhere else, unless it's personal, and in that case I'm all ears. I would love to get a personal note telling me how you are doing and asking about my family. But DON'T SEND ME ANY MORE OF THIS CRAP!
I mean it.
[numerous e-mail addresses]
FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: [some stupid crap]
[numerous e-mail addresses]
FW: FW: FW: FW: [some stupid
crap]
[numerous e-mail addresses]
FW: FW: FW: [some stupid
crap]
[numerous e-mail addresses]
FW: FW: [some stupid crap]
[numerous e-mail addresses]
FW: [some stupid crap]
[blah blah blah blah blah]
Please pass this onto your friends even if you don't usually
take time to forward mail...do it this time! If this touched you as much
as it touched me, please forward it on.
I DON'T WANT IT!!! Don't you people have something better to do than forward this crap to me? Half the time whatever is in the e-mail is some urban legend or hoax that has little basis in fact, and the other half of the time it's some sappy shmaltz that I can't believe I wasted two minutes of my life reading. I'm not getting that time back, people!
It's getting to the point when I see an e-mail from certain people that I know, I can just go ahead and delete it without review because I know it is totally worthless. My company gets around one million e-mails a week. We have less than 500 employees. That's over 2000 e-mails a week for the average worker, and you know what? Ninety-eight percent of it literally is garbage. We filter that crap out before it even gets inside the firewall. Junk like this message makes up another half a percent. Okay, you say, half a percent isn't so much. Well, that's 5000 e-mails in a week. If it takes a person thirty seconds during their workday to read those messages, that's 41 person-hours wasted. That's a work week wasted for Pete's sake! And that's just one small company out of thousands. If you are sending these messages (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), FREAKING STOP IT ALREADY!!! I don't need to get an e-mail to convince me that God loves me, that we should support our soldiers or that illegal immigration is a problem. No one has signed a law prohibiting us from going to church, 9/11 wasn't staged by the government, and there is no secret e-mail program that Bill Gates' is going to pay me $1000 to beta test for him. Viruses ARE a problem, but sending an e-mail to warn me about one is not the best way to handle it, especially since many viruses are spread by e-mail, and most likely we're going to catch those anyway. There's hardly anything you can send me in an e-mail that I haven't already learned somewhere else, unless it's personal, and in that case I'm all ears. I would love to get a personal note telling me how you are doing and asking about my family. But DON'T SEND ME ANY MORE OF THIS CRAP!
I mean it.
Oracle problems
I started out working as a Microsoft SQL Server DBA (database administrator) about six and a half years ago, and even though I'm a manager now, I still do a good bit of work with the company database servers. We have, oh 9-10 SQL Servers, a MySQL server and a couple of Oracle servers (one in production, one development). The production Oracle server is the back-end for our web portal. We're running Oracle Database 8i on the server, which is no longer being supported by Oracle, so I have been working on a project to upgrade this system to Oracle Database 10gR2, which is the current version.
Here's where the problem comes in. The web portal that uses Oracle is no cash cow, and given the fact that no other system in our company runs on Oracle, there's no money available for training. On top of that is the fact that the system works perfectly fine with Oracle 8i, thank you very much, so I've been trying to get this project underway for over a year. Something else always takes precedence. After doing some testing a few months back, we determined that upgrading to 10gR2 wouldn't break our site, so I've been trying to squeeze in some time to upgrade the development server (as a test) and then the production server. Well, this week I finally had a few hours to work through it. Unfortunately, it didn't quite go as planned.
After downloading the latest patches, I ran through the 10gR2 install, but once I got it in place, I realized that the new system would have to have a different database name, which was okay for the dev environment but wouldn't be for production. So I uninstalled the software. Next I tried to run the install and do the upgrade wizard as part of the installation. The upgrade wizard apparently couldn't communicate with the 8i database, even though I could still connect to it with the 8i tools, so I cancelled the 10gR2 installation and deleted all the services and related files from the initial install. I stopped all the 8i services and ran the installation and upgrade again, and after a couple of hours, the upgrade had completed successfully. Great! So then I went ahead and tried to run the latest patchset installation over the upgraded database. For some reason the installation would not replace a particular .dll file. I looked on the Oracle support site and couldn't find any reference to this error, so I cancelled the installation. Bad mistake.
So now the database isn't responding and the services won't start. I ran the patchset installation again, and still got the .dll error, but I ignored it and progressed through the install. Still the services wouldn't start. So I deleted the Oracle 8i folder and rebooted the computer. Then I installed the patchset again and it installed successfully, so I thought, "Now it's going to work!" I rebooted the system, and was able to start the services and mount the database, but it wouldn't open. When I dug into the logs, I realized that the database was looking for some of the custom database files that no longer existed, having been conveniently deleted by yours truly when I dropped the Oracle 8i folder. Now I had an upgraded system that was totally broken with no way to recover. So then I uninstalled all the Oracle software, deleted the files and services and reinstalled Oracle 8i and the patches to bring it up to our current version. So I'm almost ready to start all over again, after I import all of our data from production. Keep in mind that this has taken me a week, and I'm not any closer to getting the upgrade completed than when I started. It's a good thing I don't need Oracle training.
Here's where the problem comes in. The web portal that uses Oracle is no cash cow, and given the fact that no other system in our company runs on Oracle, there's no money available for training. On top of that is the fact that the system works perfectly fine with Oracle 8i, thank you very much, so I've been trying to get this project underway for over a year. Something else always takes precedence. After doing some testing a few months back, we determined that upgrading to 10gR2 wouldn't break our site, so I've been trying to squeeze in some time to upgrade the development server (as a test) and then the production server. Well, this week I finally had a few hours to work through it. Unfortunately, it didn't quite go as planned.
After downloading the latest patches, I ran through the 10gR2 install, but once I got it in place, I realized that the new system would have to have a different database name, which was okay for the dev environment but wouldn't be for production. So I uninstalled the software. Next I tried to run the install and do the upgrade wizard as part of the installation. The upgrade wizard apparently couldn't communicate with the 8i database, even though I could still connect to it with the 8i tools, so I cancelled the 10gR2 installation and deleted all the services and related files from the initial install. I stopped all the 8i services and ran the installation and upgrade again, and after a couple of hours, the upgrade had completed successfully. Great! So then I went ahead and tried to run the latest patchset installation over the upgraded database. For some reason the installation would not replace a particular .dll file. I looked on the Oracle support site and couldn't find any reference to this error, so I cancelled the installation. Bad mistake.
So now the database isn't responding and the services won't start. I ran the patchset installation again, and still got the .dll error, but I ignored it and progressed through the install. Still the services wouldn't start. So I deleted the Oracle 8i folder and rebooted the computer. Then I installed the patchset again and it installed successfully, so I thought, "Now it's going to work!" I rebooted the system, and was able to start the services and mount the database, but it wouldn't open. When I dug into the logs, I realized that the database was looking for some of the custom database files that no longer existed, having been conveniently deleted by yours truly when I dropped the Oracle 8i folder. Now I had an upgraded system that was totally broken with no way to recover. So then I uninstalled all the Oracle software, deleted the files and services and reinstalled Oracle 8i and the patches to bring it up to our current version. So I'm almost ready to start all over again, after I import all of our data from production. Keep in mind that this has taken me a week, and I'm not any closer to getting the upgrade completed than when I started. It's a good thing I don't need Oracle training.
My Favorite Albums - Number 7
Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix (1967)
There were originally two versions of this album - the U.K. version, which did not include the previously released singles "Hey Joe"/"Stone Free," "Purple Haze"/"51st Anniversary," and "The Wind Cries Mary"/"Highway Chile" - and the U.S. version, released six months later, which had the A-sides of the three singles but dropped "Remember," "Red House," and "Can You See Me." My preferred rendition of the album, only available as the CD format came into being, combines both versions in a 17-track homage to one of the greatest, and probably most-talented, guitar-slingers of all time.
This album is widely regarded as perhaps the best debut album of the rock era, and it's a testament to the artist that many of the tracks sound as fresh today as they did in the Summer of Love. Compared to the other "great" album of 1967, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is interesting as a snapshot of the times but sounds dated, Are You Experienced? blazed a trail that, whether they know it or not, every rock guitar band since has followed.
Considering the fact that Hendrix's recording career barely lasted four years, and that he was a black American musician in the 1960s that had to move to England to get noticed, his lasting influence and continued commercial success is truly astounding. His amazing instrumental virtuosity and creativity have been rarely duplicated.
There were originally two versions of this album - the U.K. version, which did not include the previously released singles "Hey Joe"/"Stone Free," "Purple Haze"/"51st Anniversary," and "The Wind Cries Mary"/"Highway Chile" - and the U.S. version, released six months later, which had the A-sides of the three singles but dropped "Remember," "Red House," and "Can You See Me." My preferred rendition of the album, only available as the CD format came into being, combines both versions in a 17-track homage to one of the greatest, and probably most-talented, guitar-slingers of all time.
This album is widely regarded as perhaps the best debut album of the rock era, and it's a testament to the artist that many of the tracks sound as fresh today as they did in the Summer of Love. Compared to the other "great" album of 1967, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is interesting as a snapshot of the times but sounds dated, Are You Experienced? blazed a trail that, whether they know it or not, every rock guitar band since has followed.
Considering the fact that Hendrix's recording career barely lasted four years, and that he was a black American musician in the 1960s that had to move to England to get noticed, his lasting influence and continued commercial success is truly astounding. His amazing instrumental virtuosity and creativity have been rarely duplicated.
My Favorite Albums - Number 8
Odelay - Beck (1996)
Beck Hansen's major label debut, Mellow Gold, and the ubiquitous MTV single "Loser" introduced him to the world, but the quirky nature of his slacker poet lyrics and bizarre instrumentation led many to assume that Beck was a flash-in-the-pan one-hit wonder. Odelay proved them wrong, winning two Grammies, garnering rarely-awarded perfect reviews from Rolling Stone and Spin magazines, and selling over two million records. Beck has been compared to Prince for his instrumental proficiency and to Bob Dylan (think "Subterranean Homesick Blues") for his stream-of-consciousness nonsense lyrics, but the truth is that Beck is unique in that he just really doesn't sound like anyone else. Equally at home with rock and rap, jazz and blues, hip-hop and bossa nova, there is no style of music that is off limits, and no limit to where he will go to explore his musical art. I remember watching Beck at the Grammies singing/rapping his hit "Where It's At" in a powder blue suit and asking myself if he was serious. The truth is that all of Beck's music is serious and none of it is.
What does it mean to have "a devil's haircut in my mind?" My favorite thing about Beck is that you can read as much or as little into his lyrics as you want and still enjoy the music. Odelay is in my opinion the only Beck album that seems to have a blend of musical styles in equal proportion, so you can rock out on "Devil's Haircut" and "Novacane," mellow out on the smooth, quiet tones of "Jack-Ass" and "Ramshackle," or get your groove on with "Where It's At," "The New Pollution" or "Sissyneck."
Then of course, there's my personal favorite "Lord Only Knows," which has the great singalong chorus "Lord only knows it's getting late/Your senses are gone so don't you hesitate/Give yourself a call/Let your bottom dollars fall/Throwing your two-bit cares down the drain." At the time that Odelay came out I was a college student working something like 35 hours a week and my girlfriend and I had just broken up, so I had a lot of two-bit cares. This album helped me take my mind off my problems for a while and just enjoy some really unique music, and it still has a special place in my collection because of that.
Oh, and by the way, my girlfriend and I got back together eventually. We've been married eight years.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
My Favorite Albums - Number 9
Nevermind - Nirvana (1991)
I was the last guy on the Nirvana bandwagon. Well, not really the last guy. I was 17 when this album first came out, and I saw the video for "Smells like Teen Spirit" on MTV and I just didn't get it. I didn't listen to music like this on the radio - although in Montgomery, Alabama, none of the radio stations were playing anything like this anyway. I didn't have a whole lot of teenage "I hate the world and everything in it" angst, and I just couldn't get where they were coming from.
Then, I remember shopping at a music store in a mall somewhere (ah, the days before the Internet), and hearing virtually the entire album on the store sound system. When it got to the intro of "Territorial Pissings" and Krist Novoselic hollers out the line from "Everybody Get Together" and then Kurt Cobain goes into a guitar riff that sounds like the guitar and amp and soundboard are held together with duck tape (and knowing what I know now, it might have been), it all made sense to me. Nirvana was the anti-John Denver. The music of the "Make Love, Not War" era - the 1960s - had devolved into the feel-good but disillusioned 1970s, which had devolved into the lightweight, synthetic 1980s. Nirvana kicked in the door to the 1990s and dethroned Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts with an attitude that said "the world sucks, and we don't care." Nirvana almost singlehandedly destroyed hair bands like Poison and Cinderella, who suddenly looked woefully out of touch. Here was a band with no gimmick, no makeup, no costume, stringy hair, and out of tune instruments playing a style of music that was raw, angry, and yet melodic and catchy too.
Aside from the fact that the album is a milestone in rock music, it is actually an easier listen than you might expect, being the most polished and "produced" of Nirvana's albums. Many of the songs - "In Bloom," "Come as You Are," and "Lithium" come to mind - have a genuine singalong quality. There are even a couple of quieter numbers; the dark "Polly" and the emotive, autobiographical "Something in the Way," where Cobain sings about living underneath a bridge, as he did for a brief stint in Aberdeen, WA.
It's hard to listen to Nirvana today without thinking about the sorry end of Kurt Cobain, who couldn't tame the addictions and self-destructive behavior that brought about his untimely demise at the end of a shotgun in April 1994. But in this album you can hear the voice of a band that changed the music world in its prime.
I was the last guy on the Nirvana bandwagon. Well, not really the last guy. I was 17 when this album first came out, and I saw the video for "Smells like Teen Spirit" on MTV and I just didn't get it. I didn't listen to music like this on the radio - although in Montgomery, Alabama, none of the radio stations were playing anything like this anyway. I didn't have a whole lot of teenage "I hate the world and everything in it" angst, and I just couldn't get where they were coming from.
Then, I remember shopping at a music store in a mall somewhere (ah, the days before the Internet), and hearing virtually the entire album on the store sound system. When it got to the intro of "Territorial Pissings" and Krist Novoselic hollers out the line from "Everybody Get Together" and then Kurt Cobain goes into a guitar riff that sounds like the guitar and amp and soundboard are held together with duck tape (and knowing what I know now, it might have been), it all made sense to me. Nirvana was the anti-John Denver. The music of the "Make Love, Not War" era - the 1960s - had devolved into the feel-good but disillusioned 1970s, which had devolved into the lightweight, synthetic 1980s. Nirvana kicked in the door to the 1990s and dethroned Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts with an attitude that said "the world sucks, and we don't care." Nirvana almost singlehandedly destroyed hair bands like Poison and Cinderella, who suddenly looked woefully out of touch. Here was a band with no gimmick, no makeup, no costume, stringy hair, and out of tune instruments playing a style of music that was raw, angry, and yet melodic and catchy too.
Aside from the fact that the album is a milestone in rock music, it is actually an easier listen than you might expect, being the most polished and "produced" of Nirvana's albums. Many of the songs - "In Bloom," "Come as You Are," and "Lithium" come to mind - have a genuine singalong quality. There are even a couple of quieter numbers; the dark "Polly" and the emotive, autobiographical "Something in the Way," where Cobain sings about living underneath a bridge, as he did for a brief stint in Aberdeen, WA.
It's hard to listen to Nirvana today without thinking about the sorry end of Kurt Cobain, who couldn't tame the addictions and self-destructive behavior that brought about his untimely demise at the end of a shotgun in April 1994. But in this album you can hear the voice of a band that changed the music world in its prime.
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