Entries in Life

Glory to God for All Things; I Really Wasn’t Kidding – There’s Another Gospel Out There:

I will be bold, very bold indeed, and say that if this doctrine of Christ Descent into Hades is not known, then the most essential doctrines of our salvation are misunderstood and incorrectly taught. This is not to create an argument about whose Church is more correct, but to state a simple and plain fact of theology. If the primary story of our salvation is not a matter of agreement, then the conversation regarding the faith has barely begun. [...] But I return to my earlier contention, which experience is simply bearing out: another gospel is replacing the gospel of Christ – the primary metaphors of our salvation are being forgotten and set aside for a later, less Scriptural account.

Jim has mentioned before that the Trinity is neglected in many churches.  Perhaps it is just a sign of bigger problems?

dvfmama recently took a part time job working the third shift in a group home for the elderly and mentally ill.  She claims it isn’t that hard and she gets to nap on the job, so I’m not too worried. But I’m sure that she is only going to be working temporarily.  A few months ago I found this interview with the author of The Two-Income Trap in Mother Jones:

More and more families today are sending both parents into the workforce — it’s become the norm, it’s what we now expect. The overwhelming majority of us do it because we think it will make our families more secure. But that’s not how things have worked out. By the end of this decade, one in seven families with children will go bankrupt. Having a child is now the single best predictor of bankruptcy, and this holds true even for families with two incomes.

Most poignant for me was this prodding point from the MJ interviewer:

In the past, it seems like a stay-at-home mom could act as an insurance policy for the family if the dad was laid off or whatnot. But today two-income families have nothing to fall back on in the event of a disaster.

I remember when I first tried to prop up her self-esteem a bit when she was feeling low because she wasn’t working.  “You’re our backup plan!” I told her.  Little did I know she would have a chance to use it against me. Tonight, I gave in to my reddit addiction and found this story on the two income trap, with a detailed explanation of the tax problems involved when you have two incomes in addition to the other, more mundane, problems like increased daycare expenses.  Money quote: When you throw two kids in the mix, … you would get to keep $8,000 a year of a $40k wage. (Of note, Teri Newton, the author of the bit, writes that it is her husband who stays at home with the kids.)

Finding out how much my blood pressure could peak to was a shock because two people I know under 40 had heart attacks this past year.  My grandfather had a bypass surgery. Last year, I told a friend I would race him to lose 50 pounds.  Both of us slacked, but in the mean time, I lost 10 pounds by just thinking about it (and cutting back on the donuts). Seeing damog’s confession of obesity (with nifty by-country comparison) reminded me that the last time I checked, I was technically obese.  I did the calculation again and discovered that those 10 pounds saved me from the label. From now until I can drop those other pounds, I’m no longer obese.  just fat.

This past weekend I bought a car from Eric’s wife, Shana, and spent some time hanging out with Eric, Nate and Patrick.  I won’t be doing that again! Just before I left, Eric brought out his Sphygmomanometer and let Nate use it.  He and Patrick both got readings that neither found out of line, so I decided to try it.  On the first try, my blood pressure measured something like 186/101.  Shocked, I quickly took another reading.  160/101.  Hrm… Maybe I wasn’t using it right.  I adjusted the fit and tried again.  Back up above 180. Now, I know I am overweight, don’t get enough exercise and probably inherited a tendency to high blood pressure, but this was ridiculous.  The three other guys took turns giving me advice on getting it down and telling me not too worry, I couldn’t be that bad off.  Just before I left, I half jokingly said I’d try the sphygmomanometer at my local Wal-Mart. I had enough time on the drive back home to mull it over that I drove straight to the Wal-Mart.  When I got there, I took a couple of readings that hovered around 140/90.  Not great, but much better than 180! Today, I tried again.  127/73 (pulse under 60).  Phew!  It must be the company I was keeping. I’ll try again tomorrow on yet another sphygmomanometer.  I’ll get this thing below 100, yet!

After I first saw libnotify with ircII, I thought “I can do that in Emacs!” This past weekend, I finally got around to doing it. (Note that for this demonstration, I send myself a stupid message from… ircII.) Here’s the magical bits:

(defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-last '(0 0 0))  (defvar mah/erc-nick-ntify-delay '(0 5 0))  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-cmd "notify-send")  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-icon    "/usr/share/icons/default.kde/48x48/apps/edu_languages.png")  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-timeout 10000)  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-urgency "low");  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-category "im.received");    (defun mah/erc-nick-notify ()    "Notify me when my nick shows up.  This function should be in  the insert-post-hook."    (let ((now (current-time)))      (when (time-less-p mah/erc-nick-notify-delay                         (time-since mah/erc-nick-notify-last))        (setq mah/erc-nick-notify-last now)        (goto-char (point-min))        (when (re-search-forward               (concat "^\\("                       "\\(<\\([^>]*\\)\>\\)" ; <someone>                       "\\|"                       ;; Don't match if we're saying something                       "\\(\\* " (regexp-quote (erc-current-nick)) "\\)"                       "\\)"                       "\\(.*"                       (regexp-quote (erc-current-nick)) ".*\\)")               nil t)          (let ((msg (concat                       (when (> (length (match-string-no-properties 2)) 0)                        (concat "<b>&lt;" (match-string-no-properties 3)                                "&gt;</b> "))                      (match-string-no-properties 5))))            (shell-command (concat mah/erc-nick-notify-cmd                                   " -i " mah/erc-nick-notify-icon                                   " -t " (int-to-string                                           mah/erc-nick-notify-timeout)                                   " -u " mah/erc-nick-notify-urgency                                   " -c " mah/erc-nick-notify-category                                   " -- "                                   "'" (buffer-name) "'"                                   " '" msg "'")))))))  

After reading so much about it, I finally learned that Ubuntu’s Feisty has kvm support built into the kernel.  I had to try it. My laptop is about a year old, so I was lucky enough to have one of the supported chips.  Strangely enough, when I tried to load the kvm-intel kernel module I got “kvm: disabled by bios”.  Urgh. Rebooting, sniffing around the bios found nothing.  I swear I just upgraded the bios last month, but it looks like they provided the bios upgrade to support this back in January. Anyway, I downloaded Debian’s businesscard netinst image (a favorite for me since it is under 40mb) and it is happily installing on my laptop. First impressions; the installer has the ability to create encrypted filesystems.  Nice!