Puzzle
“There are thirty books of the Bible in this paragraph. Can you find them? This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat pocket, on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for hours. He enjoyed it so much, he passed it on to some friends. One friend from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his john boat. Another friend studied it while playing his banjo. Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly newspaper column. Another friend judges the job of solving this puzzle so involving, she brews a cup of tea to help her nerves. There will be some names that are really easy to spot. That's a fact. Some people, however, will soon find themselves in a jam, especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized. Truthfully, from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or scholar to see some of them at the worst. Research has shown that something in our genes is responsible for the difficulty we have in seeing the books in this paragraph. During a recent fund raising event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Phi lemonade booth set a new sales record. The local paper, The Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who reported that this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever seen. As Daniel Humana humbly puts it, “the books are all right here in plain view hidden from sight.” Those able to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who have to be shown. One revelation that may help is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur without their numbers. Also, keep in mind, that punctuation and spaces in the middle are normal. A chipper attitude will help you compete really well against those who claim to know the answers. Remember, there is no need for a mad exodus, there really are 30 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found.” —Received via e-mail, author unknown.
Okay, so how many did you find?
So there were these two boys...
“Absolutely nothing,” answered the Protestant boy.
Compromise and Christianity
Its main goal, it would seem, is to find problems with Christian musicians and pick them apart. Supposedly “compromised” artists include Michael W. Smith, Nichole Nordeman, Chris Rice, MercyMe and Sixpence None the Richer (that's a nice part of my music playlist there!). Their sins? Well, it varies, but MWS, MercyMe, Darlene Zschech and Sixpence all had at least one common sin: people in the secular world like them! <sarcasm>Isn't that a shame.</sarcasm>
Yikes! I mean, since we're Christians, that means were suppose to make ourselves unlikable, right (I'm not suggesting we conform to the world, but when the world likes stuff about Christianity, is that a problem)? I guess you could say that they are liked because they aren't bold enough, but that isn't necessarily it. MercyMe's I Can Only Imagine doesn't seem to be an attempt to hide their faith (although the site attacks it since it suggests eternal security — I'm assuming the site probably wouldn't like John Calvin then, either).
Michael W. Smith is often attacked on the issue of selling out, and it's rather unfortunate, since he actually has written about the issue. In the companion book to Live the Life (I can't remember the name of the book at the moment), he talked about his early work. He talks about how in the late 80's he tried to make a “cross over” hit. He went light on the message to try to make it appeal — and failed. Badly. After that, he realized how mistaken he was and rededicated himself before starting the next album. That album contained a song that did crossover, My Place in This World. Point of the story: when MWS stayed faithful to God, what he thought he could only do by compromising happened without doing so.
The site also attacks MercyMe and Sixpence for a really ghastly thing: they like — I can barely stand to say it — C.S. Lewis!!! Can you believe it? Seriously, that is one of the points they make. The site attacks C.S. Lewis and his fellow Inklings, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, for using and writing mythology. The site overlooks the fact that C.S. Lewis used his fictional mythology in writings such as the Chronicles of Narnia to illustrate the truth of the Gospel. I'll admit Lewis had some potentially dangerous, neo-liberal beliefs — especially about his interpretation of the Old Testament. Still, Lewis was also clearly used by God (in my opinion) and created some of the best, most concise, most important works of the 20th century (Mere Christianity, in particular).
The site also leveled attacks at Smith for starting a ministry that used a night club-like atmosphere, complete with a dance floor and live music. This is “evil” for two reasons apparently. (1) Smith shouldn't create an atmosphere like that of the world — even if it avoids the evil things, if it sortof kinda looks like something people might like about the world — it's evil. (2) Smith is targeting this toward teens — Jesus, we are told by the site, never ever targeted a certain age group, He only spoke to everyone. Is it just me, or does it actually make sense to try to use different means to appeal to different people, since a 70 year old will most likely be drawn by different types of outreach than a 16 year old? The site also attacks Smith for claiming that if Jesus was around today he'd probably be ministering in bars and other such places claiming he would not (then why was he always hanging around tax collectors and prostitutes — He, as he told the Pharisees, was on the earth to minister to the sick).
The author also attacks Smith for his past (which, before accepting Jesus as his savior) in which he was addicted to drugs (in the late 70's, IIRC). Rather than focus on the fact that Smith has repented of these actions, the author wonders how Smith will explain this to his children and points out that saying “don't do this” was what caused Adam and Eve to sin. Okay, so what does this guy want? No one can undo their past, all you can do is try to do your best from this day forward. “For there is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10).
The Pharisaic author levels many other attacks. The author accuses, without any information as to why, Chris Rice and Darlene Zschech (of Hillsongs Australia) of being compromisers, as well. Maybe Rice is a compromiser since he is signed up with Smith's record company, which in turn is another reason why Smith is a compromiser — his Christian music label. So Smith is a compromiser because Rice is a compromiser because… Cyclic reasoning makes it true, right?
Sixpence gets in trouble for quoting scripture too. One song is based on 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul writes about the importance of love. The author of the site quotes the song out of context to make it look like an attack on God's love or some such. In reality, it is a song that shows the singer as someone who appears to be in the middle of realizing they are just a “clanging symbol” or a “noisy gong” (those phrases are used by Paul and used in the song). Sixpence also gets in trouble for referring to wisdom personally (metaphorically, of course), even though Proverbs does the same. “Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.” (Proverbs 4:6)
Sixpence and Smith also get attacked for something that has been a big bugaboo of mine. They don't have enough Christian keywords.™ Overlooking the ironic that Sixpence also gets in trouble for some of their songs being based on Scripture, let's consider this attack. Not everyone of their songs mentions the word “God.” One song that encounters the site's wrath is Love Me Good by Smith, an admittedly somewhat strange song — IIRC, it even says it's somewhat strange in the cover booklet in MWS's Live the Life album. It isn't Christian because it doesn't have the word God in it. Never mind that it includes the lyric “Let us take a moment now, to bow our heads and pray,” that isn't good enough.
And this is the thing that really inspired me to write this. I'm tired of people insisting on the requirement of certain keywords or phrases needing to be said to be “Christian.” Including the word “God” in a song just to meet the world's requirements seems to be treading close to taking God's name in vain.
This week's chapters in the Purpose Driven Life fit in here. God doesn't desire our empty worship that has the right words and phrases. God desires our heart, mind and strength. If I can't worship God through even things that aren't “religious” then I'm not really having a personal relationship with God. The person (or persons) who wrote that site fails to realize I can worship God just by doing a good job at the things he created me to do.
As a writer, according to the logic this site applies (and really, many people apply) to Christian music, I'm a sellout if I write about GNU/Linux or other “secular” matters. Really, if you apply that standard to most people, they are sellouts, since very few people spend most of their time working on “religious” (in the world's view) things. Not that I wouldn't love the chance to devote my work to ministry, but if, for the moment, it is God's will for me to do a good job doing something else, that isn't selling out.
Wow. I never thought I'd manage to tie this rant to anything and yet I was able to relate it to the 40 Days of Purpose… not bad, huh?
Night of Panther!
Well, tonight's the night. Just hours ago, Mac OS X Panther premiered. It should be really quite nice, especially with the built in X11 Server based on XFree86 4.3. It also includes Safari 1.0 (based on KDE's KHTML) and a lot of other goodies. I'm told by Apple that my copy should be in the mail — now I just have to wait for it. sigh
Anyone else reading this planning to give Panther a spin, or perhaps you already have it? I'd love to hear your experience with it.
Spam Bill
What do you think? Today, the possibility of having a federal law enacted on spam became a lot more likely — is this a good thing? A bad thing? Something in between? I kind of have mixed feelings. It's good to crack down on spam, but at the same time, the government often creates a regulatory mess when it tries stuff like this…
Whirlwind Continued
Well, I'm just taking a very momentary break. I'm still pretty far behind due to the problems mentioned in my last post, so I must get back to work, but I thought I'd stop by and say “hi” first.
I'm just hoping tomorrow I can post a few good things at WIT!?!?!?! and also get to visit the 40 Days of Purpose board that Christopher set up….
Yikes!
What a whirlwind the last few days have been. I've been meaning to head over to Christopher's 40 Days of Purpose internet small group for two days but haven't ever had the chance. I've had several “planned” irons in the fire, plus the continued onslaught of the DoS attack against my host that has kept me busy keeping my clients informed as to what's going on (and trying to keep them calm).
Additionally, my Charter Pipeline internet service has been down more than it has been up lately, so I've been offline a lot over the last week or so. sigh Just hoping things calm down a bit later this week…
Having a WITty Day
Well, Christopher is busy this week, so he invited me (as well as some really great bloggers, a few of which are on my blogroll) to “sub” for him. I just put up my first post; it's about reading blogs. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, so why not stop by and give your comments, here.
The Path to GNU/Linux
Seriously, it was mostly curiosity, as well as my desire at the time (in late 1997 and early 1998) for a good Perl development environment, since WinPerl left something to be desired. I do not believe ActivePerl was available at the time; if it had been, I may not have ventured into the exciting territory of the penguins.
At any rate, I had read in early-1998 in Byte Magazine about GNU/Linux becoming friendlier with the new "GNU Network Object Model Environment" (that'd be GNOME), and I thought that sounded really interesting. GNOME stayed in the back of my mind, but for a number of months I didn't look into it anymore.
It was about this time I noticed that Best Buy had several different distributions — SuSE, Red Hat and Caldera. I knew my previous web host had used Red Hat (at the time I was using a FreeBSD powered web host; these days I'm back to an RH-powered hosting provider) and I'd heard good things about it, so I decided to give it a try.
Red Hat still had a deal with MacMillan Software at the time, and BestBuy carried this special version rather than the "official" boxed set. For some reason (I can't remember what), I decided to do a big search for an "official" pack (I was told this was the best way to get started), and found an Official Red Hat Linux 5.1 boxed set for $40 at a small computer shop. I didn't know anything about LILO, etc., so I also went and bought System Commander Deluxe for handling switching between Windows and GNU/Linux.
At any rate, after three attempts I finally got Red Hat installed onto my 500 meg hard disk and tried to figure out what to do with it. My modem wasn't configured, my printer wouldn't print and the pre-installed FVWM95 desktop wasn't anything like the "friendly" system I had read about.
So I rebooted into Windows, wondering if I'd just tossed a hundred bucks out the window (heh), and started reading. I got some tips on modems, although it took me awhile to get that going, but I also located some GNOME rpm's on the second CD of the Red Hat distribution. Red Hat didn't install GNOME at the time because it was at something like version 0.16 (alpha quality).
I fought with GNOME for hours, but couldn't get the silly thing to install. Worse, and here is where I should have "read the fine manual," I couldn't figure out why "del" wouldn't delete files and why "move" wouldn't move them (I was pretty good at getting around MS-DOS, so I was comfortable at the GNU/Linux prompt, but…). All of this made me wonder exactly what I was even hoping to accomplish.
At about this time, two things happen that set me on a collision course with using GNU/Linux seriously. First, while looking for documentation, I ran across the Free Software Foundation and thought this "GPL" thingy sounded kinda neat. So I fired off an e-mail to ask about using the license on my own code. Just a short time later Richard M. Stallman wrote back, which got my attention, since I had read enough of the GNU.org site to realize that he had founded it. I didn't appreciate just how important the Free Software Foundation was, nor all that Stallman had done, but it was still kind of neat.
The second key, ironically, since it was non-free at the time, was that I ran into the KDE Project. I had found a site with all kinds of window managers, and had tried some, but none of them worked that well. Then I stopped by KDE's site. They had just hit 1.0 a few days before and they had this really nice looking desktop. So, I downloaded some src.rpm's (since there weren't any pre-compiled rpm's for Red Hat 5.1), and then went into GNU/Linux and copied them onto my Linux partition from Windows' partition.
The next week or two, I almost went crazy. I had never compiled anything more complex than a Visual Basic application before, and so this whole "./configure; make; make install;" process mystified me somewhat. The real problem, however, was dependencies. Configure couldn't find qt-devel and so I went and searched for that. But then that wouldn't install due to some x11 "header" files missing. I said to myself, "Self, what is that?" Unfortunately, I couldn't answer myself, even after many hours.
Well, I finally gave up and asked, and once someone explained what I needed to get off my Red Hat CD, I finally started the long, arduous process of compiling KDE on a Pentium 100. Finally, it got done, and… it didn't work. It turned out I needed to set the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH for /opt/kde.
Finally, the KDE wallpaper appeared, then the desktop icons, and then the kpanel (the thing that kicker replaced in KDE 2.0). It was something to behold. Perhaps not so much because of how wonderful KDE 1.0 was, but after hours and hours of fighting with it, it felt like I'd accomplished something pretty good.
However, I quickly ended up leaving the GNU/Linux community. It was about this time that I bought a new system — a Dell Dimension XPS 450. At the time the Pentium II 450 had just come out and so I was pretty nervous about fooling with the system too much. The Dell techs really didn't know much about Linux but noted that repartitioning my hard disk for it would erase the restore partition. So I just gave up on Linux; I didn't want to mess up my restore partition, and it still wasn't working that well for me.
Then, in November of 1998, Windows 98 died. You know how Windows is, it was just hopelessly messed up. So I fired up the restore utility, only to find the restore partition missing. Sigh. That was bad news, but after I thought about it for a bit, it was also good news — I finally felt free to repartition and get GNU/Linux back on.
Over the next few years I'd go into GNU/Linux and play around, but I still wasn't happy with it. Netscape 4.7 was horrible, KMail wasn't very good compared to Outlook at the time (not considering worm vulnerability, of course), etc. I tried SuSE Linux 6.1 in May of 1999, and liked it, but it was still buggy and it was really hard to get X11 working. I did help beta test KDE 2.0 over the summer of 2000, but things still weren't quite right. Over the early spring of 1999, I also spent endless hours fighting with xfstt to get TrueType fonts to work (finally did, then lost how I did it and had to relearn it two or three months later).
I bought SuSE 6.4 and it had a nice new GUI installer, but KDE 1.2.1 still didn't meet my needs and I still didn't get this whole "freedom" concept. So I got it all working but barely ever used it.
Finally, in early 2001, I bought SuSE 7.1 Professional. It was great. KDE 2.0.1 was still kinda clunky, but KDE 2.1 had just come out and it was, in my opinion, the release that made the GNU/Linux desktop a serious reality. It was stunning. Konqueror's web browser worked well. KMail was multithreaded. Everything worked beautifully. I knew I should switch and get away from the bug-infested Windows operating system. But, inertia is a powerful force, and everything was still working alright in my new Windows 2000 install, so I just stuck to the status quo.
Then it hit. Outlook died for the second time in three months at about 9:00 p.m. one Tuesday after Bible Study Fellowship and I knew a complete reinstall of Windows was the only way I was going to get it fixed easily. I was tired. I was cranky. I just wanted to check my e-mail.
So I did the most logical thing: I exported my Outlook mail to Outlook Express, rebooted the computer into GNU/Linux and imported everything into KMail. That was that, I had made the first major step toward actually jumping over to the GNU/Linux desktop.
Since then, I've learned to stop calling GNU/Linux just "Linux." I also learned to say Linux correctly and not just the Americanized way — it's properly pronounced Lynn-ucks not Lie-nicks (the confusion enters in that the American pronunciation of Linus is different than the Scandinavian pronunciation that Linus Torvalds uses). But, that's another story.
Later in November of 2001 I got tired of SuSE's non-free installer/configurator and some bugginess in it and made the jump to Mandrake Linux 8.1. After a brief jump to Debian 3.0 "Woody" in February 2002, I went back to Mandrake Linux for 8.2, then 9.0, 9.1, and I'm getting ready to switch to 9.2 (which is great, but I haven't had time to move my main stuff to it yet). After using Debian, I was able to appreciate not only apt-get but also the power of Mandrake's apt-get clone, urpmi, and now I can't imagine how anyone lives without powerful dependency resolution and software upgrade tools like these.
It was on October 5, 2001 that I launched Open for Business (www.ofb.biz), and since then I've had the opportunity to try pretty much every major distribution.
In all, I've used:
Red Hat 5.1*, 8.0, 9.0
SuSE 6.1*, 6.4*, 7.1*, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2
Caldera Linux Technology Preview (2001)
Lycoris Desktop/LX Amethyst
LindowsOS 3.0
Debian GNU/Linux "Woody" (pre* and post release)
KNOPPIX 3.0 (and KNOPPIX KDE 3.1 Edition)
Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8
Xandros Linux 1.0
Mandrake Linux 8.1 (DL)*, 8.2 Betas, 8.2 (DL* and PowerPack), 9.0 Betas, 9.0 (DL)*, 9.1 Betas, 9.1 (DL* and ProSuite), 9.2 Betas, 9.2(Discovery Edition).
FVWM95*
KDE 1.0*, 1.1*, 1.2.1*, 1.9x*, 2.0*, 2.0.1*, 2.1.x*, 2.2.x*, 3.0*, 3.1.x*.
GNOME 0.16, 0.90, 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 2.0, 2.2
And numerous others, though not as seriously
[A * denotes a distribution or desktop I used as my default in GNU/Linux for a period of time.]
Bzip2: Ubercompressor for Everyone
I realized I had filled up my hosting quota (ouch!) and so I logged onto ssh and started to clean up my account. I found asisaid.com's logs were about 20 megabytes and FaithTree.com's were taking up a pretty good amount too (although I had started those over about two months ago), so I compressed 'em to start fresh. Thanks to the powerful bzip2 compression tool, I was able to take about 30 total megs of logs and shrink them to about 2 megabytes using bzip2's best compression mode.
So that leads to two points: (1) If you tried to post here and couldn't, please try again — there's room now. I think this may have been the problem with CS-FSLUG too, so CS members should try reposting as well. (2) Try bzip2 if you haven't previously.
And the moral of the story: watch out for runaway log files!
