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Sunday, 3 June 2001
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No entry.
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Monday, 4 June 2001
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No entry.
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Tuesday, 5 June 2001
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No entry.
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Wednesday, 6 June 2001
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Sorry about the long silence. The things that have been going on in my life have been both too draining to leave me much mental energy for writing, and too dramatic to write about in this kind of casual forum. I've been trying to help a friend in another city make some terrifying decisions. As we have corresponded over the last few months, she has come to the conclusion that she had been lied to all her life by people that she trusted, and that the religion she grew up in from infancy meets most of the standard conditions for being considered a cult, in the normal negative sense of the word. And all I can do is pray for her. It's rather as if she had grown up in Germany in the 1930s, and has just discovered that not only is the Nazi government evil and destructive, but that she herself turns out to have Jewish ancestry. So not only are the people she trusted now found to be faithless, but as soon as they discover that she no longer believes, they will do everything they can to hurt her. She's afraid for her life, in a very literal sense.
Warning: Christianity ahead... Those easily offended should click their browser's Back button at this point.
Few people today, including nominal Christians, really believe that the world is as the Bible describes it. Much of Christianity today believes in a "social gospel" of helping the poor, and forming political action committees to push for social reform. But the Bible actually describes, in both the Old and New Testaments, a world that is a spiritual battlefield, where spiritual forces clash continually, and the lives of men hang in the balance. The gospels describe the ministry of Jesus as including a constant stream of people coming to Him to be delivered from powers that were described as "evil spirits." Jesus treated these matter-of-factly, and commanded the spirits to leave the people alone. There are many instances where before being cast out, the spirits were reported to have spoken through the mouths of the people whom they were inhabiting, telling Jesus "I know who You are — the Son of God. Why can't you just leave me alone? Please don't send me to the pit!" And after the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, when the brand new church was beginning to send messengers out to share the news about Jesus, these people too are recorded as having encounters with evil spirits.
Nowadays, of course, even most Christians believe that modern medical science has explained away all of those "old-fashioned" beliefs, and we have nice, safe, clinical pigeonholes for things that were formerly thought to be caused be the activity of evil spirits. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, epilepsy, and so forth. But if Christians want to keep using the Bible as a reference point for their faith, then perhaps they need to keep in mind that Jesus, who Christians believe was and is God, acted as if He believed in evil spirits, as well as in angels, and in life after death. In fact, since the powerful Jewish sect of the Saducees is recorded as disbelieving in all these things, this clash of beliefs was one of the prime causes for the Jewish political and religious leaders to have Jesus arrested and executed.
Why do I bring this up? Well, I was going to talk a bit more about my friend, but I don't think I can say much else without increasing whatever danger actually threatens her as she prepares to find a way out of her current situation. So I think that instead, I'll simply comment on the bizarre twists of fate that can bring people together over the internet, and lead them to have meaningful relationships and even deep friendships, without ever meeting face to face. It's an interesting phenomenon.
We met in a Christian chat room, when she asked a question that I was able to answer. We chatted a few more times, and then shared aliases to begin chatting more personally using instant messaging software. At no time did either of us have any desire for a romantic involvement, and that's still true today. But we gradually dropped more and more barriers, and shared more and more of our inner thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, experiences... We began to care deeply about the things that went on in each other's lives. We talked about life and death, God, children, relationships, food, church, friendship. Without ever meeting, we became intimate parts of each other's lives. This is a Good Thing.
Of course, it can be a Very Bad Thing, as husbands and wives idle away the spare moment in "find-somebody-to-fool-around-with" chat rooms. But it doesn't have to be that way. As in my case. I'm not sure it's possible to have too many friends. Having people really like you and care about you, or even genuinely love you, isn't all that frequent in today's disjointed, hectic, fragmented world. Me, I'll take my blessings where I find 'em.
And if you happen to be the praying type, you might consider praying that God will keep my friend safe, and lead her out of the trap she's in now. Thanks.
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Thursday, 7 June 2001
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Today I have a meeting with a client to talk about linking three offices together in a minimal way via pcAnywhere, so that they can run a proprietary office management program remotely. This is the same type of situation that I encountered before
with two offices using Road Runner. This time we're going to go incrementally, suggesting to them that they start off just using modems. Since their office program is a compiled Foxpro for DOS program, it's run in text mode, and doesn't put that much of a load on a remote modem connection. Then, if they decide that's too slow, they can consider going to Road Runner. But the cost of a new phone line to each office is minimal (maybe $20 a month?) compared to Road Runner (I think $100 per month per office), especially considering that they would need a static IP address at each location (another $30 per month per office).
I'm betting they'll decide to go with the modems, and probably that'll actually be good enough for their needs. But if not, they can always switch to Road Runner. We'll see.
We'll probably try to get them to dedicate a PC at each office to be hosting the program and the remote control host. That keeps things simpler. Even a Windows 98 box would suffice. Speaking of which, I'm kind of missing NT 4 now that it's more or less gone. I mean, it's still installed on literally millions of PCs and servers, and that won't go away that quickly, but it's pretty hard to buy a new copy these days. The Borg of course no longer admits it exists, since it's a full two generations behind their current product. But for some things NT just works. Ah, well...
On another subject, a coworker showed me Ubid, another auction site rather similar to eBay. The thing that caught my eye at Ubid was the number of brand-name products for sale. You can get things like all-SCSI Compaq Professional Workstations at good discounts. Lots of factory refurbs, which I'll go on record as saying that I have no problem buying or recommending, provided that you also get the same warranty as a new unit. If that costs extra, factor it into the cost of the purchase, but Get The Warranty. If that makes it a crummy deal, ok. Go buy something else. But in my experience, generally refurbs are fine. And saving a chunk of change is fine, too.
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Friday, 8 June 2001
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My brother tells me he has a new windscreen for my old (old!) Yahama Vision 550. Now he just has to get it up to me. And we drill the proper mounting holes, fasten it to the fairing with nylon nuts and bolts so it doesn't crack, and then go. Actually, even at my advanced age, I'm a novice biker, with no pretensions to either expertise or style. I just want a bit of fun. I know middle-aged men are supposed to buy a motorcycle, divorce their wife, and date teenage girls for a while. Fortunately I got that out of my system in my late twenties, via a '68 Camaro with a Corvette motor and a Rock Crusher 4-speed. Teenage girls loved it. I never crashed that car (unlike some others... one crash made the local paper, with a photograph of the twisted remnants), but I crashed my life. It took a lot of years to put that back together.
Speaking of crashing, I just heard that my sister's friend lost her 17-year-old son in a car crash overnight. It makes me pause and reflect. I've been close to death from my own stupidity more than a couple of times, but the Lord was kind enough to preserve my life. In the wreck I mentioned above, I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and went out of control when I locked up the brakes. Somebody was coming in the opposite lane, and we were both driving at 55 mph. I was going sideways by this time, with half of my car on either side of the yellow line, and she plowed into me right in front of the firewall on the passenger side. Fortunately for me, my car (a hot Plymouth Duster 340) simply sheared in half almost surgically. I spun around 360 degrees and ended up in the left-hand ditch, facing in my original direction. I still remember seeing my floor shifter disappear through the floor as it followed the front half of my car into the right-hand ditch. The whole thing was over in something like two seconds, and I wasn't even scratched. The other car was sitting on the shoulder still running, with its front end somewhat mashed, but nowhere near what you might expect, considering the violence it had just sustained. The other driver, a pregnant woman, was also unhurt, though extremely shaken up.
When the state troopers got there, one looked at me, shook his head disbelievingly (and not a little disapprovingly), and said "It's a miracle you're alive." Then he locked me in the back of his squad car and made police noises with his radio for a while. I was ticketed for an overdue inspection, and for crossing the median. The officer explained to me that it wouldn't matter legally if I had crossed it upside down ten feet in the air, the point was that I had crossed it.
Nowadays I drive pretty conservatively for the most part. I know what my cars will and won't do, and what I can and can't get away with. And on a motorcycle, I'm even more careful, because I know I'm noit very good at it. Once I saw a picture on the web (I forget where) of a guy that must have had a motorcycle accident without a full-face helmet on. His entire lower jaw was just gone, leaving a raw, red horror that could never be repaired. In the picture he was sitting at a table glancing over at the camera with a look of utter agony and disbelief — a pure animal suffering, with no rational reflection in it. I'm very careful now. When I was preparing to buy my bike, I asked my brother, a very experienced biker, how much I should pay for a helmet. Without a pause, he replied "How much is your head worth to you?"
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Saturday, 9 June 2001
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No entry.