Category: Signs Of Life

Have you ever gotten a gift you wanted to return?

Maybe it was one of those horrendous Christmas sweaters. Or a pair of jeans that were two sizes too small. But at some point, you realized the gift wasn’t practical.

Have you ever given someone a gift that wasn’t practical? Did it offend you to find out that the precious silver gravy boat you gave them for their wedding shower was sold on Ebay to afford their first car? Did it shock you to find out that the kittens t-shirt you gave your brother ended up being a shop towel? You have expectations on how you feel your gift should be appreciated and used.

What about when we give a gift of money to a church, charity, or person? We put expectations on how we think that should be used, and there’s some reasoning to that. But if we specify how the money is to be used, can we honestly say it’s a gift? No, that’s not a gift… there are strings attached.

What about when we give our lives to God? When we decide, for better or worse, to give our lives over to Him. What usually happens (at least I know it did in my life) is that we give our lives as an offering but with strings attached. We want God to be in control, except when it’s inconvenient. Or something bad happens. Or I get sick, or hurt, or offended, or any other number of things.

If you find yourself trying to live for God, but are always finding that there’s strings attached, I’ve got news for you:

You don’t get to choose how that offering is poured out. Once you give it to God, it’s by definition out of your hands. You don’t get to dictate to God how He gets to use you.

⁵ But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. ⁶ For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. ⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; ⁸ in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

2 Timothy 4:5-8

Sorry I haven’t been posting as often as I’d like. My work schedule has fired back up, and I’m working on the shop floor for another 3-4 weeks. Until then, I won’t be able to get much writing done… most of my energy will be used for resting, and required family things. At this point, I’ve pulled a whole week of 11-hour days on my feet, so I’m pretty tired.

However, I’ve got lots of material in the queue for the near future. I want to fire up my next “Retro Game of the Month” feature. I’d like to do a hands-on review of the Adrenalinn III pedal, which will take more than one post. I’ve got some good theological ideas I want to flesh out and share with you, my loyal readers. I’ve also got a few pieces I want to write on Christianity, Magic, and Role Playing Games (which is something I’ve been wanting to write on for quite some time). I also want to do some more work on highlighting Linux-based guitar software, and I’ve even got a domain name set up for that… just haven’t gotten to it yet.

All in all, there’s plenty of writing to keep me busy, but it will take some effort for me to get around to it all. Please be patient, and I will try to make the best quality content for you I can. Believe me, I want to write it all. It’s just more time-consuming than I’d like.

And if I haven’t said it before now, I want to thank each and every one of you for reading. It really means a lot to me, and I appreciate the time you spend reading my thoughts. It really does motivate me to do more, and to do it better.

So thanks, and stay tuned.

After a particularly good day of relaxing, I found myself feeling bad about not spending enough face time with my wife. There’s of course a limit to that, but my Attention Defecit will not allow me to just sit for any significant length of time. This causes all sorts of relationship problems for me. Because people talk small talk, and I just tune out. I’d rather be blowing up aliens, or hacking the Matrix, or skydiving, or… something. Not fixing a broken shower head or remembering to feed the cats.

But we are happier when we have face-to-face interaction with people. Isolation draws us inwards, and if you stare inwards _too_ long, you won’t like what you see. The reason for this is that we’re our own worst critic. We are intimately familiar with our own failures and shortcomings, and we know exactly where they are. We put on a facade of “cool” to convince people we’re not as messed up as we are, but the truth is, everybody’s messed up- and we know it all too well. Continue reading “Relationships In The Age Of Social Media”

This past November (2014) was the lowest month for page views I’ve had in more than two and a half years. I’ve had to look through my logs and see why, but I think I’ve finally figured it out: I hosted several photos here that I linked to from discussion forums (mostly computers, bikes, cars, music). These count as “hits” without people actually visiting the blog, which throws the numbers off quite a bit. Going through my 404 logs, I can see where people are still linking to photos I used, and in some cases, someone linked to it from somewhere I didn’t even know existed. This might be part of the cause. (Taking three weeks off to write a major article didn’t help, either!)

I need to go through and clean these loose links up. It will 1. help clean up the traffic stats, and 2. ease some of the load on the server.

There are also plenty more things I have in development, but they will have to wait until Christmas break, when I have time to devote to them. Hopefully you’ll think they will be worth the wait! I’m also going to be working on setting up a new website for musicians using Linux, which sadly, there are far too few of (people using Linux, and websites for them).

I’ll also try to incorporate a Twitter feed in the sidebar, which I’ve tried previously, but dropped because 1. the embed code sucked, and 2. I didn’t use Twitter that much back then. Both have changed now, so I will give it another shot. I’ve had this website up and running going on TEN YEARS at this point, so there’s nowhere to go but upwards!

I got more in me. Let’s do this.