God is amazing. Let me tell you why. Before Christmas, money was tight. We were planning on going home for Christmas, and I knew we didn’t have the money to do it. I said ‘God, you gotta do something.’ By the time we came home, we had received over $300 from different family members.
The other day, I was trying to figure out what to talk about for Sunday School. God gave me a theme, and then our pastor confirmed it with both messages on Sunday.
My wife and I have been trying to figure out if we should stay here for a few years, or if we should find a church elsewhere. For a while we prayed and sought God. He answered us both within minutes of each other. We made the decision, and now all the right doors are opening up.
Category: Shane
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collage
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drm
Greed never gets you anywhere good (except rich, which I wouldn’t want for nothing). Sony put Copy-protection on a bunch of their albums a while back. Guess what happened? Someone found out it contained a security hole known as a rootkit. It was exploited, and after a huge series of blunders on the part of Sony, what did they end up with? Several class-action lawsuits, and a whole lot of angry customers (and bands). Tell me that isn’t justice.
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green
The RIAA is so greedy, it makes me sick. With the huge success of online music stores, specifically iTunes, they keep wanting to make more money off of it. First, they just flat out asked for more money. Steve Jobs said ‘Go suck your toes, idiots’. And apparently, they did, because their latest scheme is even raunchier. They want variable rate pricing. If a song sells more, it costs more. If it doesn’t sell so much, it costs less. Not only is this greedy, it’s completely backwards. If you go to a music store to buy something that is rare, imported, or a niche artist, it will usually cost more money. The more popular bands usually have cheaper prices, due to discounts and such. Not that I would be a fan of reversing the scheme either. It’s just dumb, either way. There is no way to guage what will sell better, until it actually sells. So then prices go up, and if you buy it right away, you get it cheap, but if you wait a couple days, you get ripped off. Will the price drop again, in proportion to declining sales? The price would be going up and down constantly. It all just goes to show you that the music industry values money more than anything else (even good plain logic).
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xmas
This is part informative, and part rant. Some people no doubt already wonder what sort of Christian I am for titling this entry ‘xmas’. Many people object to this practice, but have no idea where and how it actually originated. I’ll be brief for the sake of those who already know. The letter X is the first letter of the greek word for Christ. It was used frequently among Christians of earlier centuries as an abbreviation: Xians, Xianity, and Xmas. In fact, its use was so common, that it actually occurred in some manuscripts of the New Testament.
Now on to my rant. Christmas music, bah.
I wish people would put some effort into producing it, instead of simply grabbing a microphone, and chanting the same tired out tunes 84,000 times. I love Christmas music, but the problem is that we get stuck in this rut of singing the same songs, all the time, over and over again. Why can’t people write some new songs for us to sing? At the very least, we could come up with some new arrangements. Maybe it’s because we don’t care enough to expend the effort necessary for this endeavor, since it’s only ‘one day out of the year’. What??? Christmas is the day that our savior came to earth. Christmas is the day that God began his long awaited plan of redeeming mankind. It ought to be a day of hope and inspiration so incredible that new lyrics and tunes float out our ears. Well, that’s enough. You get the point. So go buy some original Xmas music, and blast it out for all to hear. -
clutch
Human potential, it is often said, is a vast untapped pool of resources. While this is true, what is it that keeps us from realizing our potential. I was inspired last night by the Aphid. I don’t even know if this is what he inteded, but it hit me like a ton of lollipops this morning. Our crutches are what keep us from our full potential. His character relied on several crutches: food, beer, and swearing. It is not that we need these crutches to make it through life. These are the things that hold us back. It is not their nature to hold us back, but it is our nature as humans to use them for that purpose. (more…)