floydius

29 Goals

It occurs to me that in five days, I will turn 29. I’ve been looking forward to 29 for awhile now; I have a weird obsession with prime numbers, and I always feel like it’s going to be a great year when my age is prime. In honor of that, (and also the fact that this will be the last year of my 20s), I’ve set 29 personal goals I’d like to achieve before the big 3-0.

These are just presented in the order I wrote them down:

1. Read the Bible all the way through.
2. Translate one of the shorter books of the New Testament from Greek.
3. Get my weight down to 175lbs.
4. Run a 7:30 mile.
5. Bench my own weight.
6. Have at least one immediate neighbor visit my apartment.
7. Visit Japan.
8. Take the GRE.
9. Read twelve books.
10. Host a single day LOTR movie marathon.
11. Write a short story.
12. Write a song.
13. Take a road trip somewhere west of Texas.
14. Play at an open mic night.
15. Cook a legitimate three course meal for someone(s).
16. Ride the city bus for at least an hour.
17. Complete a two-day solo hike.
18. Wake up to see the sun rise once a month.
19. Take care of/keep from killing a plant for at least three months.
20. See the Grand Canyon.
21. Spend a night sleeping on my porch.
22. Convince someone to walk around with me in the pouring rain.
23. See a big college football or NFL game.
24. Pay off my credit card (and thereby be debt-free).
25. Perform fifty consecutive push-ups.
26. Sing karaoke solo.
27. Have lunch with a professor from my alma mater.
28. Enter a ping pong tournament.
29. Learn all the words to “Ice Ice Baby”.

So that’s it, folks. If you’ve got any better suggestions and think one of mine should be replaced, you’d better get it in before Tuesday. : )

food chains

Last year, I experimented with a vegetarian diet for six weeks, just to try it. I have no ethical problem with eating animals; my foray was inspired by a desire to eat more healthily as much as by a curiosity of how difficult it would be. I abstained from beef, poultry, pork, eggs, fish, and even foods containing animal broth — I wanted to make sure no animals died as a direct result of my diet. It was not nearly so difficult as I anticipated, since there are plenty of tasty substitutes for animal meat available these days.

An unexpected side effect was that I started paying attention (for awhile, anyway) to the fact that I was taking an animal’s life when I ate meat. This is not intuitive for Americans. Our food is highly processed, and we are psychologically removed from that fact by the very design of our advertising. Not all cultures suffer this indifference, though. For instance, before eating a meal in Japan, one usually says “Itadakimasu” (いただきます for Hiragana readers). Literally, it means “I will receive,” but it is understood that what will be received is two-fold: On the one hand, you are receiving a meal from a host who has prepared it. On the other, you are receiving nourishment from an animal that has given its life, or spirit.

I was reminded of this on Saturday night, when I had the opportunity to see Disney’s new nature documentary, Oceans. Several scenes feature our oceans’ complex food chains. Gargantuan Blue Whales swallow tiny Krill by the thousands. Bigger fish eat smaller fish, and smaller fish eat plants or even smaller fish.

Watching a Dolphin chase down a Tuna was not particularly disturbing to me. I noticed something, though: witnessing a Great White Shark hunt a Sea Lion was uncomfortable… and eating popcorn as baby sea turtles were carried off and eaten by seagulls just felt wrong. What’s the reason for this disparity?

Maybe seeing lots of animals die at one time keeps me from viewing them as individuals and making a connection. Perhaps it’s more difficult to identify with a fish than with a mammal. Definitely, it seems unfair that baby Turtles don’t even make it to the water before they’re subjected to the maw of a hungry sky rat Seagull.

It seems that I pick favorites (unconsciously) among animals based solely on how I can identify with them, and that thought is disturbing. However, it is symptomatic of a much more serious problem if it also describes how I relate to my fellow humans.

A close friend of mine shared with me recently that she looks at how humans value one another in terms of fractions. For instance, I might look at the guy who sells me a burrito at Taco Bell as 1/4 of a person. He is only valuable to me insofar as he will hand me with food that I request. I might feel superior to him if I think I am paid more for my job or if I think it requires more expertise to perform. Maybe I wouldn’t take much effort in being polite to him or considering how his day has been. On the other hand, I might treat a good looking celebrity as 7/4 of a person if she needed something from me. Perhaps I would listen carefully to everything she said in hopes of making her happy.

If we don’t automatically identify with someone because they are like us or because they can fill some need of ours, we have a tendency to treat them as less of a person and to be less concerned with their needs.

As it is in the ocean, so it is in life. Everyone suffers and is subject to the merciless nature of this world. Young children, the old and sick, the good looking and the undesirable will experience pain, loss, and death. Some go before they ever have a chance to build up their defenses, and parents are not there to provide protection. Some are hunted down in the prime of their lives by a calculated and merciless enemy. Some find themselves dying alone and friendless when age has taken a toll on their bodies.

It’s easy for me to have more sympathy for children, or good-looking people, or those who it seems are making some sort of contribution to society. That thought worries me, and more so because I don’t feel like it’s one I have consciously developed. Perhaps if I notice this in myself, others may be in that situation, too.

For those of us who follow Jesus of Nazareth, we are called to a different Way:

As Jesus was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging. Now hearing a crowd going by, he began to inquire what this was. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he called out, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who led the way were sternly telling him to be quiet; but he kept crying out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded that he be brought to Him; and when he came near, He questioned him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” And he said, “Lord, I want to regain my sight!” And Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God; and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.

My friend who talked about fractions said she thought Jesus never viewed people that way. Everyone else tells the blind and the hurting and the forgotten to be quiet and to leave Jesus alone, but He looks at things differently. As His followers, should we not try and do the same?

In the end, we still live in a dog-eat-dog world. People are going to suffer and get knocked down by the world… but if every follower of Jesus tries a little more to love the unloved and to treat them like Jesus would, the ocean will become a little less scary.

Mara

I’ve been working with a congregation in Mesquite, TX for the last few months. We’re studying through a series in Ruth, and this past Sunday, I talked about some of Naomi’s suffering.

The truth, though, is that I feel like teaching on suffering is pretty pointless for me. Pointless because it’s been taught and explored by people far more intelligent and studied than myself. Pointless because to teach about suffering, you have to know of suffering. No matter how much I might feel I’m hurting at some particular point in time, I know that mine is merely a speck of sand compared to the mountains others have faced.

But perhaps more significant than any of those reasons, it feels pointless because I don’t know why God doesn’t intervene to stop it. Why doesn’t He sit down and warn us Himself before we walk into worlds of pain? If His final plan is to wipe away every tear from our eyes, why is He letting us cry so many now? And I’ll give you a heads up, this isn’t one of those posts where I have some solution waiting in the wings. I’ve got nothing. I don’t understand it. I have no answers.

Naomi lived in Israel with her husband and two sons. There was a famine, though, and so they moved to a different country to try and make ends meet. But Naomi’s husband died; so she was left with two children and no husband. She could have moved back, but what good would that do with no food to eat? So she took care of her sons, and they married women in the foreign land. After living ten years in this new place, some of which she spent alone and sad because of her husband’s death, her sons died too. That was the last straw. She was now an older widow taking care of two younger widows, neither of them even from her own country.

When she heard there was food back home, she found no more reason to stay. She told her daughters-in-law that they’d be better off staying where they were, to find new husbands, and to move on with their lives. One stayed, and the other refused; her name was Ruth.

When Naomi made it back to her home in Israel, it had been over ten years. When her people greeted her, she had some interesting things to say:

“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because El Shaddai has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; El Shaddai has brought misfortune upon me.”

Naomi is a Hebrew word that means ‘pleasant’. Coming home minus two sons and a husband, Naomi didn’t feel very pleasant. Mara means ‘bitter’ — and that is how she felt. That seems fair. She had been on a very hard road. What strikes me as odd, though, is that she attributed her hurt to God. Both El Shaddai and LORD refer to the God of Israel. So, “God has made my life very bitter. God has brought me back empty. God has afflicted me. God has brought misfortune upon me.” She never says God did anything wrong here, but she believes He is responsible. By far, the most interesting thing to me is that never once, in the entire remainder of the book, does God or the author reject that claim.

I’m usually pretty reticent to lay any of my suffering on God’s shoulders, because it could be Satan, right? Or maybe someone else made choices that were wrong and it’s affecting me? Or maybe I made choices and I’m facing the consequences. Sometimes things happen for which no instigating party can be given credit. But when I hear Naomi’s assertion, I can’t help but think of Job:

Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.

I remember that nowhere in the text of Job does God deny responsibility for taking away Job’s wealth and family. Here, we have more details than we do for Naomi; God actually allowed Satan to hurt Job and those he loved. In the end, it was Satan who instigated the pain, but God clearly let it happen. In fact, Satan had to ask God’s permission, so in this case, is God not ultimately responsible? Apparently, Job did not sin in thinking so.

For a moment, let me just assume that Naomi and Job were right… that God is responsible for your suffering and for mine. What God gives only departs when He takes it away, and when those we love are hurt, it is not without God’s permission. I’ve thought about whether that assumption makes God no longer good, or whether it makes Him too unpredictable or scary to serve. In the end, I think it really just means my assumptions about Him were wrong. The idea that a good and just and loving God could simultaneously be responsible for bad and unjust and hate-inspired suffering — that is a hard pill to swallow. Of course, it’s easier to leave that pill in its academic bottle when you, or those you truly love, are not suffering.

When it really hits home, though, when you are hurting, or when it’s someone you love (and you’ll know you love them when you truly wish you could take their place), then that hard pill grows jagged edges and lodges itself right in your throat. And how do you breathe like that, much less function? How do you keep putting one foot in front of the other without falling over?

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I do know this, though: whether or not I love God, whether I do good deeds or evil, I will suffer in this life. If I had to choose one entity to be responsible for that suffering, it would be the God who gave his Son.

King David, the sinner, the adulterer, the murderer, the man after God’s own heart, once found his people in trouble with God.

By the text’s own admission, God influenced David to do something that would cause Israel to suffer. David commanded his armies and fighting men to be counted, which was forbidden in the law. This count resulted in a punishment for Israel, and David was offered three possible options for that punishment: Either there would be seven years of famine, or three months of military defeat, or three days of pestilence in the land.

David did not try to get out of the punishment, but rather reasoned that if the suffering was to come from any source, He would rather it come from God and not from man, “for His mercies are great.”

In the end, that is what I choose. If I must suffer, I’d rather it be at the command of a loving God, rather than at the remorseless hands of man or Satan. If God gives, I will praise Him, and be glad. If God takes away, I will praise Him, and not be afraid to cry out in pain. God’s mercies are great, and I will trust Him to do what is best.

How I fix your (windows) computer

It’s a new decade, but some things never change. Over the course of the last ten years, I’ve built (and fixed) more than a few computers. Amazingly, I’ve never had to fix anything but a windows machine. (Of course, Macs don’t break (usually), and people who run Linux are used to finding answers on their own. : ) In any case, I thought I’d put down in writing why computers become slow, and what I do to fix it. So get ready to be the envy of your friends, neighbors, and even impress your girlfriend (let’s face it, if you know how to do all of this already, you probably don’t have one).

Why is my computer so slow?

Yeah, I know. When you bought your computer it was all speedy, but now it’s not. What’s the deal?

Your computer is slow because of one or more of the following three reasons:

• You have too many applications running simultaneously with not enough RAM (memory) to support them.

• You have some sort of spyware bogging down your computer. This is actually just a subtype of #1.
• You have a virus designed specifically to slow down your computer, or designed to do other things in the background without being detected. This is also a subtype of #1.

So now that we’ve identified the problem, let me tell you exactly what I do, almost every time, to fix it:

1. I run msconfig. Just go to your Start menu and click on “Run”. Then type in msconfig.exe and hit ‘enter’. If you’re on Windows 7, just type msconfig in the start menu search box, and hit ‘enter’.

2. I go to the tab that says ‘startup’. This tab shows you what programs are slated to begin running as soon as you boot your computer, before you get a chance to do anything, and they are the main reason your computer takes so long to boot in the first place. Some of them are important, and some are not. I usually un-click them all, unless I know for sure that I want it running at bootup. You will not break anything here, even if you un-click every single one. If it’s a necessary program, it will just start up again at next boot anyway. If you’re still confused, here’s a handy dandy website to help you.
3. I reboot. You will probably notice that your desktop loads a lot quicker this time than it usually does. When the little box comes up warning you that you used msconfig, just check the box saying not to show it again, and be done with it.
4. I uninstall all the programs that are either unnecessary or that the person whose computer I’m fixing doesn’t even know are there. Go to your Start menu, choose ‘Control Panel’, and then ‘Add or Remove Programs’. Then find the ones you don’t need, and get rid of them. If you’re unsure about a particular program, put the name of said program in a search engine and see what comes up. That’s how I decide when I don’t know.
5. I get rid of Norton Antivirus. I cannot stress this enough, and there are plenty of people who still won’t listen to me, but Norton is terrible. Yes, it may help keep viruses off of your computer. However, if it brings your computer to a cripplingly slow pace in the process, what good is it? If you cannot seem to remove Norton (or Symantec, same thing) from your computer via the control panel or an uninstall program in the Norton/Symantec folder, then consult your nearest geek for help, or just google the word “uninstall” and the name of your particular brand of Norton product.
6. I get rid of IE. Stop using Internet Explorer. It’s bad… stop it. Find some other browser to use. I recommend Firefox, but there are many others. Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari are also good choices if you’re looking for alternatives.
7. On my new non-IE browser, I download and run Spybot S&D. This is going to find and help you remove any spyware that may still be on your computer.
8. I download and run Clamwin AV. This will help you identify and remove any viruses that may still be on your computer.
9. I reboot, and I’m good to go.

Optionally, you can run a registry cleaner like Ccleaner to clean up your registry (in case you have old entries remaining from previously installed programs, corrupted entries, or other problems). Some people like to defragment their hard drive as well, but it’s not as necessary in the NTFS file system that has been in place since Windows NT/XP, since that file system doesn’t fragment as much as Fat32 did.

Hopefully this will help some of you better understand and solve your slow PC problems. I still think you should try Ubuntu, or get a Mac though. : )

dating well

I’m interested in knowing from some of my married friends the answer to the following question:

What did you do when you were dating that has made your marriage better as a result? Conversely, you could tell me: what do you wish you had done when you were dating that might have helped make your marriage easier?

I’m wanting to hear from couples that have been married just recently, couples who have been married longer than I’ve been alive, and anyone in between.

Of course, if you’re not married (whether you have been in the past or not), and want to throw in on this conversation, feel free.