It is hard to believe that it has been over a year since I last blogged here. Even harder to believe is that I used to update four sites every day but have now fallen back to one or two once a week or so. Blogging just doesn't seem to have that spark in my life anymore. A trip through the newest blogs at xanga the other revealed that most of the new blogs are from those in the 13-18 year old age range which leaves me quite a ways out of the "norm" if I can call it that. The old friendships have seemed to slip away as we have all found things to do that are more important. Has anyone else experienced this? I suppose that deep inside bloggin lost some of its luster once blogging became so mainstream and it seemed everyone was doing it. It just created too many to try and establish any new relationships with. I notice that a lot of the blogs seem to be groups of people who already know each other and it makes me wonder why they don't just use the phone or visit one another. Is it that they just have to have a good reason for buying a computer? After all, how many actual reasons have we found for using a computer that really are necessary? Well, after a whole year that's what's on my mind. God Bless.
Monday: I can’t believe it’s the 7th of July already! Where does the time go?
I returned to work today and it was just a routine day. It didn’t take long to clean up my mail, email and voice messages though I did find out that a job that looked like it wasn’t going to happen this year will now happen and I need to get it planned pretty quickly. I’m going to fall behind soon if I don’t get some ambition!!
Matt starts a new job tomorrow. Thanks to those of you who have been praying for this situation!
Tuesday: I took a sick day today and slept until close to noon. I then spent a couple of hours working on my xanga subscription list. I had a lot of subs that didn’t sub to me and a lot of subbers whom I didn’t subscribe to. I’ve been a quandary for some time over my subscription list and I finally decided to leave behind some of those I’ve been reading, who don’t seem to be interested in reading me, and beginning to read some of those I’ve ignored who have expressed an interest in reading me. I’ve avoided making subbing to me a “litmus” test preferring to visit those I felt lead to visit but now I’m feeling this is the right thing to do at this time as my SIRs are getting out of hand. Times change, circumstances change, and we need to flow with it lest we miss what God wants to do in our lives. For those of you He’s lead here, I’m here for you, for those of you who may miss my comments, it’s been fun but now I’m moving on!
Wednesday: Work was fairly routine today until the afternoon when I was asked to look at a couple of different problems in our shop. That made me “perk” up a bit, which is what I guess I’ve been missing for a while. I’m going to try and get out to one of the lock and dams on Friday so that will break the monotony also.
I thought I'd stop by here and update something different than on xanga. On Wednesday I decided to chase each of the fused circuits to their first outlet/junction box and then replaced the wiring between the fuse box and there with a new peiece of wire so I'd be sure to have enough length on each one for the new breaker panel. On Thursday I spent the biggest part of the day removing the fuse box and replacing it with the new panel. Most of the installation was fairly routine though it was a step by step time consuming chore in places. I was going to just reuse the old furnace circuit and leave hooking up the new one for later but in pulling the wire into the new box, which I had energized, I shorting the ground wire against one of the hot terminals and burned the wire off. God IS good though as I had already pulled the new wire and it was hanging there so I just had to take the few extra minutes to wire it into the furnace. The only other snag was the circuit to the garage would go on then off. I finally determined that one side of the 220 v on the 30A breaker was loose and not making contact. Praise God for bringing that to my attention before it caused heat, maybe damage to the new box, or possibly a fire. The #6 wire is just about as big as you can get into the 1/2 inch breakers and I'm thinking I may change that circuit to 1" breakers. I realize that all you non-electrical people are lost by now but suffice it to say I got the job completed. Now I need to start updating the wiring in the walls.
Yesterday was the parade in town but my wife and I decided we weren't going (you see one fire truck, you've seen them all) and instead went to Ikea in the A.M. In the afternoon it was to the in-laws for a cookout and a party for the July birthdays. In the P.M. we returned home and went out into the front lawn around 10 PM to watch the fireworks from the park up over the hill.
Today is church day. I go to worship band practice from 4:00PM to around 5:45PM then the church service is from 6 PM to around 7:15-7:30PM.
Well, once again, I'm here to blog as xanga seems to have disappeared. I tried numerous times throughout yesterday and now this morning to get in but can't. I received reports from them for yesterday but it appears only a couple of people were able to get in. I guess xanga's loss is blogger's gain.
We found the fans yesterday and I bought a couple of pparts for the new electric panel, which I may start on today. I ran a new wire over to the furnace so I can install that when I'm ready to change things over. As I stated yesterday, I'm loath to get started on the actual switch over as you never know what problems you may encounter.
So, it's been a fairly boring start to my week off of work. If I could update my xanga sites I'd at least feel like I was doing part of my "ministry." I know there are probably none of my readers coming here to read my blogs. Oh well, take care and God Bless!
Apparently xanga must be under another DDOS attack as I haven't been able to get in there since yesterday afternoon. It used to make me upset but as they grow I wonder if another blog company could be behind the attacks?
Yesterday we got the shelving put together, one daughter did some painting, and then we did a bit of cleaning around the house. After that we ate and then my daughters rented "The Emporer's Club" DVD and we watched it. Not a great movie but not entirely bad either. On today's agenda is going out to look for those small fans with clips on them. They like to put them at the headboard of their beds. I also want to look at the new electric panel I bought and see if I'm ready to change our one fuse box over to a breaker box. Not a huge job, but one I'm still loath to take on.
Start of "editorial" for today! I've been reading some pretty disturbing things about how google, the new owners of blogger, are keeping some pretty serious records on all of us that use their search engine and, probably, that use these blogs. Invasion of privacy is a pretty serious thing and if what I've read is true, I wonder when the government is going to step in. They have the best search engine and have been my choice for a long time and the fact that they cache all web pages makes them a fount of information, but does this all come at the price of a complete loss of privacy? Does someone need to keep a database of every web site I visit? Check your "cookies" and you'll find the google tracking cookie there. In fact, if you run Ad Aware and Spybot on your computer you'll find alot of intrusive cookies are planted in your system and relaying your every move on the net back to databases. And you thought this was all free? This is beginning to look like the classic big brother syndrom and though it's now being run by big business trying to exploit you for a quick buck, how long before the government makes use of all that info they have on you? End of "editorial" for today!
The meeting was short and I was only ½ hour late getting home! On my way out of the meeting though I got a call that one of the electricians who had gone to another site to look at a problem had been trying to get hold of me. I tried calling but kept getting a busy signal so I ended up calling from my cell phone on the way home. It really wasn’t a problem and he could have told me what he wanted to tell me tomorrow.
I had a comment yesterday (At xanga) that disagreed (in a nice way, thanks!) with my statement about the motives behind the church’s works. I will still stand on my statement based on the fact that God allowed me to be part of four different churches in a twenty year period before bringing me back to the one I am now attending. I was able to observe much and though I never want to tell anyone, one of my gifts is discernment. If you do a search on the Barna report, you’ll find out that the six largest churches in America spend about $50 billion a year on outreach and evangelism yet the number of Americans claiming to be Christians hasn’t changed for several decades. In fact, if you take into account that the population has grown, then the percentage of Americans claiming to be Christians has declined! Now what does that seem to indicate about the church and their efforts to evangelize? They are spending money on their own ideas and whims and have excluded the power of God from the equation. Their financial record doesn’t seem much different than the government, does it?
“To have Christ’s attitude in ourselves is to possess the motive of the Redeemer of the world; it is to be infused with the compassion of the One who prayer for those who crucified Him, ‘Father, forgive them’ (Luke 23:34). Such characteristics are simply unfamiliar with to us. To attain Christ’s mind, God calls us to a realignment of our thoughts, attitudes, and motives until we think and act in perfect synchrony with Christ’s nature. We will not arrive at this overnight; it is a lifetime pursuit. Still, it means we must set our goal not to be judgmental but redemptive in our motives.
“We have been granted access to, or possession of, the very mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16)! To think as Christ Himself is not merely a doctrinally based mind-set or a religious outlook, but a perspective shaped by a motive to bring redemption. If you truly desire Christlikeness, you will measure yourself by how aggressively you work to see mercy triumph over judgment.”
