Cfreak's Anti Blog

The Anti-Blog is now simulcast to my friends on Facebook. Read it here or read it there. On deadline today but look for new Anti-blog posts Real Soon Now

So now we've had the two major party conventions and we're gearing up for the final show-down. I honestly didn't want to talk about politics other than direct discussion of issues. However this wouldn't be a blog without the author's whiny opinion so I'll give mine. ("But Chris" you say, "this is the anti-blog " ... okay fine, I'll try to limit the whining). Now I know that the president doesn't really have as much power as people believe he does. However for better or worse president Bush has definitely given the office much more power than it used to have and so I think we should be careful who we put there. And by "careful" I mean sincerely voting on the issues you find important. Not because someone has an R or a D after their name. This "my team" before my country business has got to stop. Seriously people ... think for yourselves. If you want to pray to God and ask him who to vote for ... do it .. .but don...

Operating systems are much like religion. Everyone believes they have the right one and no one is willing to even listen to the other side's argument. Now before I begin I must acknowledge that I'm a multi OS guy. I run Ubuntu Linux on my desktop. Windows XP on my laptop, my wife's desktop also runs XP and she recently aquired a MacBook through her new school. All the servers for Fundi run CentOS (Linux). I prefer CentOS over all of them though Ubuntu is kind of nice for just getting everything going easily. That said I don't care if people use or even if they like windows. I recommend what I think is the most useful and less fuss. I also don't play a lot of games other than on my Wii so I can completely understand people wanting to use Windows from that standpoint. However one thing I often here is "Your grandmother (or mom, or sister or other random family member) will never learn Linux". Right ... well let me give you this: Your grandmother can'...

OMG!! An actual POST. (more on that later) So I'm playing with StumbleUpon earlier and I hit the button and suddenly a strange page. Full of code. To my surprise its actually their code ... more specifically it seems to be a configuration file for databases, and network topology and it includes the passwords. (and to answer everyone's question: I didn't use the information for evil, nor is the information available to anyone for evil or otherwise. As much as I wanted to keep it for posterity, I deleted it. No chance of someone using my computer and finding it, or my own temptations getting the better of me). A combination of PHP, inexperienced developers as well as the rise of cheap shared hosting have made this a wide-spread problem, not just for StumbleUpon. One thing I really like about Perl is the "use strict" pragma, which forces you to say "my included file is right here in this directory" ... otherwise it looks only in a specified path. PHP inc...

A note on the lack of updates. I was on vacation for a week at the beginning of the month. I had a wonderful time in Colorado with the trees and the mountains and fishing ... and no Interwebs. Somehow I survived! :) Check out our gallery for pictures ! Anyway I've been trying to do better about getting more updates in. I have a goal of one a week. Maybe someday I'll get there. :) On that note though I've thought about making some changes. Possibly submission of stories and commentary from other people, maybe moving the blog to one my own servers. Blogger is okay but its a bit limited. Of course if anyone is interested in writing feel free to contact me about it.

And for good measure, here's the whole passage: 17 Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? 19 Show Me the tax money.” So they brought Him a denarius. 20 And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” 21 They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Okay so I admit this is in regards to taxes ... but I believe the meaning is deeper. Certainly all good Baptist churches throughout time have used this verse for why we should follow the "laws of the land". I've heard it applied to even traffic laws ... by doing so we set an example more like Christ. I believe the meaning though is deeper than that: That Christ wants us to stop focusing on petty things and focus on Godly things. Politics is petty. Salvation ...

I came across this article today. Seriously people! What's wrong with you? Naming your kid after the made-up name of some stupid celebrity!

So one blog post a month is enough ... right? Or not, I suck at blogging. It *is* the anti-blog after-all though so in the end you shouldn't expect anything from me! :) In all honesty I've been very busy yet again. We made a couple of trips this past month. A quick trip to San Francisco for a friend's wedding and then to Abilene TX for an alumni board meeting at HSU that Jen and I are a part of. In addition I've been working as a consultant on several projects and Adam and I also wrapped up our latest interactive game Conspiracy Asylum If you're interested there are pics of our SF trip on our personal site . You'll also find pics of the trains there as well. But enough personal stuff. I haven't discussed a real wedge issue in a long time. Sad because there are so many flying around in this political season! So tonight we're talking about sex. That scary little three-letter word that makes mothers hold their children close and Christians wag their finger...

Blogging is great. I'm going to tell you about my whole day. I can't get enough of blogging. Blogging is so much fun! Check back here for lots of great blog updates!!! / happy April 1st everyone // its also my birthday (really!)

I don't often talk about stuff I do in real life ... that is the things I do away from the computer. Other than sinking money into my computer stuff and my business , I sink money into my N-scale model railroad. Way back when I was in elementary school my dad build me a small HO set on a table. That was great and I played with it a lot but didn't really know much about actually building the things. We had some of that 70s era green turf stuff for "grass" and some track and a station. Later on, after coming back from Africa I got involved with some serious model railroaders and I immediately wanted to learn how they did stuff. We moved again so I didn't get much experience (and I was still a kid) but I picked up a few things and throughout high-school I was determined to build a kick-butt layout. But things never really moved much past the planning stage. I had a table set up but it was outdoors on our back-porch. It was covered but just the moisture in the air and...

Ahh WorldNetDaily. That bastion of conservative news. New column by Joseph Farrah there today talks about "Red Letter Christians" a book by Tony Campolo. He's Bill Clinton's spiritual advisor and since Clinton sinned we all know that that makes Campolo guilty by association. From the article: " There's a movement afoot to seduce evangelical Christians into anti-biblical, socialist, tyrannical politics – the kind currently energizing Barack Obama's presidential campaign. " So let me get this straight. Inventing reasons to invade a foreign country, making laws that restrict freedoms, spying on your own citizens .... none of these things are tyrannical politics ... but messages of hope are. Got it. There are some other gems that I'll skip over because then Joe proceeds to tell us what these evil heretics believe: Let me give you a rundown on what Red Letter Christians believe: Capital punishment is wrong, despite the clear, unequivocal biblical com...

I hadn't talked about the baby in a long while. I suck because I put all the stuff about him on Facebook because I like the photo app there. I've discovered that's the only thing I like about Facebook. (For the love of PETE stop sending me so many Pirate vs Ninja requests, "gifts" and "Rate my movies/photos/lolcat/etc! I don't care. ) ahem ... I digress. Anyway! Jen made a little vid of the little guy. Here he is:

Okay so today I'm going to basically break all my stated rules and post basically about what I believe as a Christian and why. I've discovered that many people who read my blog aren't believers even though the blog is really aimed at people who are. Most of them have been really nice about it, I did get a somewhat hostile comment in response to my last post. I published it anyway and my response is there as well. I will never take hostility personally, especially on the Internet. I'm posting this because I don't want anyone to be under any illusions. There are some tough pills to swallow in Christianity that many people (sometimes me included!) would rather not discuss. I also realized that I spend a lot of time talking about what I don't believe and there should probably be a good counter. So to begin: I have a very mixed world view that I think accounts for my atypical views as a Christian. My parents were both missionaries and my father was a pastor in seve...

Okay so I've been gone quite awhile, busy with the little one and the business and a million other things that have been going on. I've heard from a few of you in the past months and I must say I'm surprised that there are a number of people who actually care what I rant about. :) Today is something I've had on my mind for awhile as a wedge issue but I haven't been so sure how to approach it. "The End of the World" (i'll get to the prophesies and signs in a moment). Now I know you may be thinking "why this?" when there is so much else going on in the world, elections, recessions, lots of other teeth grinding stupidity to rant about, and I agree: this may not be a real "wedge issue" in the classic sense. However, even though the Christian establishment isn't pushing this one on the public with some sort of political agenda, there are discussions of it among even mostly rational people both in the Christian community and the gene...