Hope in Afghanistan

As kind of a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to share some more thoughts about hope.  On the way home from church, I was listening to NPR and heard some reporter talking with the wife of the Ambassador to the United States from Afghanistan.  They were with a cook making a traditional Afghani dish, and interspersed in the food talk was discussion about the state of Afghanistan as well as what it was for her growing up.

Towards the end, the reporter asked her how the current state compares to what it was 30 years ago when she was growing up (which she had described as ideal, before Russia invaded).  She responded with this quote:  “I just think it is so unfair when you hear the media just criticizing everything.  You don’t see the positive side. […] We have major accomplishments.  Why don’t you talk about that?”  In the middle of that quote she cited several indications of positive change and progress in Afghanistan, but she’s right, you hear nothing of this in the media.  It is just about suicide bomber this, dead American troops that.  Those are important, but without the positive things, you lose HOPE.

Isn’t that what Barack Obama wants?  Then why is it that he never mentions these signs of progress.  It shows that “hope”, that is supposed to be his message, is in fact not contained in his message, just empty promises that he can fix the world.  As one commenter just noted (thanks Jillian), we have to individually fix our world.  No one man or woman or administration can do that.  Let’s get to work!

Here’s the link to the story.  You’ll need to listen to it to hear what I’ve talked about as it hasn’t been fully transcribed.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91710829 [npr.org]

Misguided Hope

Just a quick vent. Obama: Candidate of Hope. Hope? As in “I promise the world will be a better place because of my work”? Shouldn’t you need serious credentials to say something like that? Obama has 8 years in a state senate and a little less than 4 years in the U.S. Senate. State Senates are valuable learning opportunities, no doubt, but hardly enough to qualify as proving grounds. That leaves him with less than one full term as a U.S. Senator. This is our evidence of his ability to make significant, positive change in the world? I have no doubt he will try hard, and I’m sure he could do at least a passable job as President (supporting his ideals, not mine to be sure), but offer a promise of hope? No, I don’t believe he has any right to offer that. He needs to prove he is capable first.

Yet, the slogan works for him because it resonates with American voters. The voting mentality of the general American populous right now is “Life is hard for me. I need someone to blame. Must be the President. Let’s get someone different.” Because they are “uncomfortable” right now, the fickle American people want change. Enter Barack Obama – Hope-mongerer. He plays off people’s baseless desire for change with empty words. I think we would all benefit if he just called his campaign what it really is. Obama: Candidate of Something Probably Different from the Current President Even Though It Will Still Be Just As Criticized in Four Years and We’ll Want Someone Different Again. I guess he didn’t figure that would fit on the yard signs.

My Little Experiment

I’ve needed to eat less for a while now. A few months ago, I decided to do a multi-day fast after hearing some co-workers describe its positive effects on the mind and body. I was most desirous for the effect of reconditioning my mind to know what it really needs to survive (in terms of food). I knew I ate too much, and I knew I should change my ways. Heck, I even wanted to change my ways, but it just wasn’t happening.

Enter the fast. It made sense that not eating for several days and still feeling ok and being able to function normally would help improve my chances of being able to curb my appetites. My only obstacle was that I felt I needed to go to the doctor to get his input on it; unfortunately, I procrastinate few things more than visiting my physician.

Well, the good news is that I went to him last week, and I started my fast yesterday! The last time I ate was Sunday night, and I will not eat again until Friday morning. Each day I will drink LOTS of water, about 24 ounces of juice, and a very little bit of low calorie Gatorade for electrolytes. I will try to live my life in a normal fashion to prove my original point.

I was going to wait until after the fast to post an entry so that I could sum up all I learned and felt, but I had an interesting insight that I didn’t expect: I really LOVE eating good tasting things! Obvious, I know, but I miss tasting all the things I take for granted every day. Forget the nourishment, I miss the taste! Hopefully, after this is over, I’ll take a little more time to enjoy my food instead of “horking it down”. Besides, I’d probably eat less.

Feeling Like a Criminal

I haven’t had many chances to feel as if I am offensive to the law, but I was recently put in such a position. We had to go to the bank recently to deposit some checks. Normally, we go through the drive-through or ATM, but we needed to meet some people inside. While waiting in line, I kept the checks in my coat pocket so as not to appear pretentious.

When my turn arrived, I reached my hand towards the checks (in the inner pocket next to my left breast). As I was making that motion, the teller, very subtly, lowered his hand from the level of the bottom of his ribs to his hips, just below the rim of his counter. As I pulled my hand out of my pocket unarmed and holding only checks, he, just as subtly brought his left hand back to its original position, away from what I can only presume was an alarm button that surely would have ruined my day.

It didn’t bother me too much in the moment, but in reflecting on the situation after we left, I felt deeply troubled that I had been viewed as someone capable of committing such a crime. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone. If nothing else, it left me having a greater resolve to give others the benefit of the doubt and see them in the nest light possible.

Good Insights Through Oversights

While working on a new project, I saw an opportunity to use an old piece of code I’d written several months ago.  I knew basically what it did and put it in without remembering specifically how it accomplished this task.  I usually look into those things to make sure I’m familiar with their inner workings, but I didn’t feel the need to this time.

Well, after moving on and doing some testing, I noticed that my implementation of the code was causing the whole thing to break, so I pulled it open and compared my implementation of the code I had imported to the code itself.  To my surprise, I noticed some other problem completely unrelated that I would have missed completely if not viewing this particular error in this particular context.

I felt very grateful that I had ran into some trouble early on because it showed me problems that I couldn’t have identified any other way. I couldn’t help but think that the Lord has designed this life in a similar way. If nothing else, our trials, adversities, etc. can help us identify our weaknesses such that we can correct them earlier rather than later and grow in the process.

Haven’t Written in a While

Not a lot to report, but we are doing ok…now. Jessica is just finishing getting over a bad bout of bronchitis. We’ve been staying busy, and a little too much at that.

Jessica just finished her Weight Loss Challenge at work, and she got 3rd place! Congratulations Jessica! They gave her $50 for doing so well.

In other exciting news, we are going on a cruise again this year. We enjoyed it so much last year that we couldn’t pass it up again. Might as well while we can, right? We got our brand new passports and everything, so we’re counting down the days. We’ll be leaving out of Fort Lauderdale and stopping by Jamaica, Bahamas, Cozumel, and a Princess Cruise Line private island. Check it out below and stay tuned in a couple months or so for pictures/video!

Continue This Story!

I was just doing some browsing around and came around something Jessica and I did a while ago and thought I’d share. It’s at a site called “Continue This Story!” by designer Hal Gatewood.

The site lets you start writing a story and then pass it off to someone else to continue it (hence the name). You send them a code that they enter in at the site, and it lets them continue it. They can then send a code back to you or to somebody else, and well, you get the idea.

Anyway, Jessica and I wrote a story there a couple years ago, and I still laugh a little when I read it. Click.

uTorrent in VMWare Fusion

Ok, so we got a new iMac. Hooray for us! Now what do I do? Start tinkering of course. I’d read a lot about VMWare Fusion (virtualization software for running virtual computers inside a running OS), so I installed it and started my 30-day evaluation, and one of the first things I wanted to do in it was install uTorrent (my favorite torrent client) because I was sick of Tomato Torrent (a Mac client) not responding to the trackers, and I didn’t want to have to reboot into XP everytime I wanted to start a download.

Anyway…after installing uTorrent in the virtual machine (XP), it occurred to me that I was going to have problems with port forwarding. I didn’t know how Fusion handled port forwarding and networking in general between my host machine (the iMac) and the virtual machine. Read on for the walkthrough of my solution…

Different Times, These Are

I was at dinner with my wife and her Grandma tonight, and something was said that made me realize that these days and those to come are much different than the ones I grew up in. For example, if you needed to discuss something with someone across town, you used to pick up the telephone and have an actual conversation (gasp!). Now, the phones grow dusty as our fingers peck away our conversations through email, IM, and blogging.

It seems logical that as technology entrenches itself in our personal lives more and more, we should grow further and further apart. Reading text in the same font and in the same little boxes regardless of who sends them should eventually overcome the experience of hearing a human voice, right?

Well, one thing is the same yesterday, today, and forever: Logic does not always prevail.

Not In Iraq = Not Supporting Troops

It looks like sound-minded liberals have made another excellent point for hating Mitt Romney:

“It is alright if they ” (referring to Mitt’s sons) “want to stay out of the military but they should not support this war and claim they support our military.” (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/8/124251/9472)

Following the lead of our far-more-intelligent, left-wing friends, I will now stop supporting our troops because I really don’t want to get shot at. We obviously shouldn’t be supporting people who are stupid enough to go into such dangerous situations (oh wait, that’s John Kerry’s position).

Seriously, though, do liberals really believe