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  • flickr’d photo: from an airplane window



    DSCN3508, originally uploaded by insidious_plots.

    an old one, taken on a little piece of junk camera, but, it would have been nearly impossible to screw up these shots…
    this is one of many shots i took of a sunrise on a flight from albuquerque to l.a. – if you click on the pic it will take you to where you can see more of them… this shot is one of my favorites – i love the surreal feeling…

    meh, i just typed a bunch of stuff, deleted and started over and then again a couple times, so, i think i’ll stop trying and just let the photo do the talking 😛

    though i will add that, when i first took these photos, i dunno’ maybe three years ago, this was probably the most popular of all of them and no less than five people had this one as the wallpaper on their computer…

  • flickr’d photo: dad dying at home



    DSCI5464_1.jpg, originally uploaded by insidious_plots.

    since i brought up dad in the last pic, i wanted to show another that means a lot to me…

    that is cheryl, a nurse with hospice… hospice nurses are amazing people – dad didn’t like anyone much but he liked cheryl… she did so much to help him and take care of him in his last days… she and the other nurses (but especially her) did so much to help us…

    this pic was taken as discreetly as i could, trying to keep the camera semi-concealed, or at least not calling attention to it so i could get a genuine moment… i am shocked it came out as good as it did, but, focus, etc. is far from perfect… but, the moment is captured and that’s all that matters to me…

    i love the accidental composition of mom looking so concerned yet distant – evocative to me of helplessness or powerlessness – we often felt that way… just watching his life drain away and not in a hospital, surrounded by disconcerting devices and ominous terminology where you expect sickness, but here at home where he hangs all his hats, in his living room, in his favorite chair, the place he probably felt safest for many years… while home i’m sure is a more pleasant place to die, my point is one doesn’t associate home with death… i’m not coming up with the words to fully express what i mean, but if i could always SAY what i felt about what i see or experience, i doubt i would have the desire to do photography…

    so, just look at the picture again with all i said in mind…
    as i said, it’s one that means a lot to me…

  • flickr’d photo: old hands

    old hands

    old hands, originally uploaded by insidious_plots.

    ok, let’s see how this works…

    i love this pic and all but it needs some tweaking…
    we were in cloudcroft and got in the car and, in front of us was this old guy leaning against a post with his hands behind the post, as you can see… i scrambled for my cam and only got a couple shots before he moved and this one is the most acceptable…
    i really wish i’d had time to get better, but at least i got something…
    btw, i DID do some gimp work on this, but i seem to have lost that version 🙁

  • MY movies ratings

    i was just complaining on twitter a couple weeks ago (one, two) about the netflix rating system being very restrictive…  one star = hated it, two = didn’t like, three = liked, four – really liked, and five = loved…
    there are SO FEW films i want to give a five-star rating, but, according to their system, if you love it, give it five stars…  and, since you are doing this for the social aspect of finding like-minded people, it only really works if you abide by their system…

    so, it got me to thinking about what i WISH i could change them to and i came up with a couple ways of looking at it:

    since i have a large movie collection, one way i thought was in terms of what i might say about a film as a collector:
    5 = “I own every release ever put out on LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray”
    4 = “I have the Criterion DVD, is there a Blu-Ray release date yet?”
    3 = “I’m waiting to come across it on sale”
    2 = “I have a badly compressed file i downloaded off BitTorrent sitting on my media server, but that’s good enough”
    1 = “It’s been on my NetFlix queue for months…  Near the bottom.”

    and, being a home theater enthusiast and loving to watch movies with people, i was also thinking of how i might rate movies as a host, so to speak, if someone were to suggest watching a certain movie:
    5 = “Great idea!  Here, have the best seat!”
    4 = “Sure, it’s been too long since I saw that one”
    3 = “Um, ok, that’s cool, but make sure you’ve looked at everything else first”
    2 = “Hmm, well it’s in the sell stack, but, I could dig it out if you really want to see it”
    1 = “WHAT???!!!  NO I DON’T OWN THAT!!  WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?!  GET THE HELL OUTTA MY HOUSE!!”

    Blogged with the Flock Browser

  • my “attitude toward homosexuals”

        i was invited to blog my “attitude toward homosexuals”, so here i go and much of this is responding to his questions and expanding on answers i had already given, so, other readers please forgive what seems improperly segued 😛

        yes, the bible clearly says that homosexuality is a sin…  the bible also lists adultery, fornication, and christ went as far as to say that if you look upon a woman  with lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your mind…  overeating is also listed as a sin, as is disrespect to parents…  the bible makes it clear that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of god” and that no sin is worse than any other but that sin is that which keeps us from a relationship with god…
        while the bible clearly says that sin is not to be taken lightly, it also says that we cannot outright avoid everyone who sins because, again, all have sinned and continue to…  nor do i see the bible commanding me to feel or think a certain way about sinners (except myself, to whom it gives much instruction and wisdom) and certainly not to condemn them…  the bible records that jesus had occasion to eat with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other people whom much of society shunned and, if he had openly condemned them, i don’t think he would have been welcome at their table for long…
        and i said i have had many gay friends and that my best friend in albuquerque was gay…  she and i spent a lot of time together…  and, if it had been a ploy to get her to convert, she would have known it…  and she was not my only gay friend in albuquerque and they were friends – people i valued and shared much with and they with me – not people i was subtly trying to make converts of…  i said that i am firm and outspoken in my faith – well, she knew that i believe what the bible says and that the bible says she commits sin and that i do, too…  i believe the bible and am compelled to live my life according to it…  she does not…  there were times she asked me questions about what the bible says, but, mostly it didn’t come up…  we were both film snobs and art snobs and music snobs and most of our time was spent persuing those things…  i was in leadership in the church back home and i would talk about things going on in my life and she would ask questions about why things were done a certain way and sometimes she might think it was a bit silly to feel compelled to do what the bible said, but, i thought some things she did were silly and we could both talk about it light-heartedly…
        i have never been a “manly man” (i have no interest in football or cars and, right this very moment, my toenails are painted) and rarely fit in well with my peers and spent my youth with those that also didn’t quite fit in with the “normal” people of the world…  so, i may be the wrong christian to address this issue…  i don’t see gay people as a separate category of human…  i have biases and prejudices that i endeavor to work out in my life, like anyone else, this just isn’t one of mine…

        now, i said that no sin affects my relationship with people and i made a caveat and i just want to clarify…  there are people who take part in activities the bible calls sin that i am tempted by…  as a former drug addict, it would probably be a mistake for me to hang out with drug users, as i may very well get weak…

        so, the last question you asked me was if i thought being gay was a sin…
        you already know i will say what i think doesn’t matter, it is what scripture says that matters…  so, do i think it is sin?  i KNOW it is sin, according to the bible, as is many things i have done/do/will do…  and, as i said, the bible doesn’t tell me i have to treat anyone any different because of their sin…  i had no opinion on the gay marriage issue…  when i heard the ruling, i neither smiled nor frowned…  i think christians waste a lot of time and make a bad name for themselves when they get involved in certain issues…
        so, perhaps you meant to ask if i am at all repulsed by gays and i use a religious dogma to justify it and i think i have answered that…

        my view on gays does ruffle some feathers in christian circles…  i am used to “them” while most others still see them as some distorted kind of person that they cannot relate to and are even disgusted by…  i think that is a prejudice or perhaps a distorted attempt at morality… and i take some ribbing or even complete disapproval of my relationships with “them”…  even this post will get me some comments, i’m sure…  i bring this up because you certainly are not getting a fair sample of the popular christian consensus on this issue when asking me…  but, no one has yet to show me scripture that clearly proves me to be in the wrong in my view and scripture is the final court of arbitration…

       i also want to point out that, in another sense, i do represent the current christian worldview…  i pastored the addiction recovery ministry back home for several months, hosted a devotion in my apartment every weekday morning at 6am for a year or so, taught bible studies, did work with the homeless – all under the leadership of and accountability to calvary chapel rio rancho, and the worldwide calvary chapel movement is one that most christians would agree is a solid bible-believing church, and has been since its start in the 1960s…  they believe what c.s. lewis called “mere christianity” – the essentials of which have been believed by most christians, most of the time, since the time of christ and, as he puts it “is what it is and was what it was long before i was born and whether i like it or not”…  there are secondary issues i disagree with them about and they with me, but, my point is they are not renegade or radical and they did not consider me to be… 

        so, anyway, there you have it…  there are many kinds of “christianity” and the wild ones make the news and there is an unfortunate prevalence of what i can only see as unbiblical christianty and that is where the problem is…  my friend did not want me to know she was gay because i was christian and she expected me to judge her…  it gave her a whole new view of christ and the bible and those who follow him and it to know me…
        and perhaps i have similarly put you at some ease that not all christians are the same…

  • 2Timothy 3:16-17

    i wrote this on february 27, 2005 and just came across it on my psion the other day and thought i’d post it here so i can point people to it since i have been referring to the things mentioned in it lately…

    here is the original word document for those who want it…

    “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” — NASB95

    Theopneustos is the Greek word translated “inspired by God” — literally “God-breathed“. And this sets the Bible apart from any other document. Indeed, an ‘extra-terrestrial message’ sent to us from outside time and space, written by the One who created time and space and all that is in it. Everything else this passage says is because of those first few words; that Scripture is God-breathed. The same breath that He blew into the nostrils of Adam to cause him to have life causes the word of God to be alive (Hebrews 4:12).
    However, there are many Scriptures that refer to God’s breath in terms of judgment. In Nave’s Topical Bible alone, I find several passages to this effect. Like 2 Samuel 22:16 (quoted in Psalm 18:15) where David seems to equate the breath of God as “the rebuke of the Lord”. In Job, Eliphaz speaks in 4:9 and 15:30 of people perishing by the breath of God, yet interestingly, in 32:8, Elihu speaks of the breath of God giving man understanding.
    So, with the facets of God’s breath I have referred to so far, it is no surprise that we are told that His word is profitable for teaching, reproof and correction. And Elihu was obviously onto something, as in 2 Timothy 3:15, we are told that these sacred writings are able to give “the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus“. As has been well said, we must first know “the bad news” of man’s guilt and the penalty of sin if “the good news” of the Gospel is to mean anything to us.

    Now, since the Bible is from The Creator of All Things, it is most certainly the only truly accurate manual for the human condition and the Christian walk. As the summary of divine revelation, it contains everything we need to know to for “training in righteousness” and to be “equipped for every good work” that God will call us to do. As Matthew Henry put it, “whatever duty we have to do, whatever service is required of us, we find enough in the Scriptures to furnish us for it“.

    All of this being the case, we as Christians, ought to fill our minds with the Word. Through prayerful reading, devotions, study, and memorization, we “renew our minds” (Romans 12:2) and conform it to His will that we may be “doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Ephesians 6:17 speaks of the word of God as the sword of the spirit, the only offensive weapon in the Christian armory, and we need to practice our swordsmanship so that we may battle the enemy the way christ did with “it is written” until the devil flees (Matthew 4:1-11, et. al.).
    Since the Bible is how we learn the will of God and equip ourselves for spiritual battle, the Scriptures need to be our obsession, our hobby, spending the rest of our lives searching them, learning them, studying them. There is no pastime more worthy of our attention. As one of my favorite passages on the subject says “…commit yourselves completely to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 11:18-20). If we spent every moment of the rest of our lives in the Scriptures, we still would not know all there is to know, so, we should fill as much time as we can with our minds on the Scriptures, “making the most of your time, because the days are evil“, endeavoring to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (excerpted from Ephesians 5:16-17).

  • the whole “Ebert on games” thing

    just a few links, not a comprehensive list… i was just going to add these links to the sidebar “looking at” list, but, they are scattered and there seems to be no one gateway point to get to all of them, so, i’ll put them together here…

    most people know what i have to say on this subject, but, i will point out that it is important to remember that “video games” (i prefer something more like “the current generation of popular interactive entertainment“) are still growing up and the truly great artists are yet to emerge, even if we see a few pioneers… this is much like film was in the 40s and 50s, where many movies out there were trying to capture the stage experience on film, bringing broadway shows to those who could not go to broadway shows, for example… few people yet knew what to do with this “new artform”… but, flash forward to the late 1970s and we enter the age of the blockbuster… and today, there is no shortage of cinematic visionaries…
    we will someday be at this point with interactive entertainment… and, even in the present, if one hears the phrase “video game” and think of a joystick, some bleeping, shooting aliens, or maybe munching blinking dots, they are at least twenty years behind in their understanding of the subject…

    and i am now going to digress and move onto the links before i start getting into lists of examples 😛

    04 December 2005 – Next Generation – Why Ebert Was Right

    rogerebert.com :: commentary
    Dec6,2005 :: Gamers fire flaming posts, e-mails…
    Dec8, 2005 :: The Art of the Game 2
    Dec14, 2005 :: The Game of Art 3

    blog: scanners :: Jim Emerson / January 23, 2006 > Kojima: ‘Games are not art’

  • thanksgiving pics up

    so, this is the second year the church has had the “Broken Home Thanksgiving”… this year it was at the Lockmans’ and it was quite an event, the drive-in totals are 59 pics, 3 vids, somewhere between 80 and 100 people, 1 football game, deep fryer fu, electric carving knife fu, and i think the final count was 9 dead turkeys…
    people are already asking for these, so, they’re up, and the rest of my november pics will be up in the next few days…

    i once again used the BluPlusPlus album skin, i have found a winner and am sticking with it… comments can be left on any pic, videos will play right there in your browser, the slideshow mode is pretty darned good, and i used an autumn theme on this album, just to see what it would look like to try something different…

    so, enjoy the pics from The Second Annual Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho Broken Home Thanksgiving…

    all right, roll it…

    (…and we do it all again for christmas!)

  • wow, the end of Ch@b

    karl sent me the news…

    99% of the readers of this post have no idea what i’m talking about, but, to those of you that do, this is truly the end of an era, even if that era ended for us long ago…
    no more Ch@bTalk, URL Chat, and, if i read it right, no more MyRooms… all those things we spent so many late frustrating hours for months trying to figure out… i remember clearly Curtis announcing he had finally figured out how to get it to work, even making a long-distance phone call to japan (jeez, that was almost five years ago)… then, months later, after everyone had given up on it, Vegitto figured out the way to open Ch@bTalk to the masses… the controversy over the selling of ISAO ID’s, people stumbling through the programs to create them for everyone… and, speaking of frustrating, trying to teach people how to use it… they were certainly our most used guides… then came DreamPassport Premier Ch@bTalk and all the amazing features and having to feel around in the dark all over again to work out all the buttons (the definitive exhaustive guide created by the guy at this keyboard)… JavaCh@b and then DPPC and no one believing Danny that he got it to work until he finally posted a screenshot of it running on his machine… hours spent on the URL Chat at ISAO, trying to get someone who could translate for our guides… months of trying to carry on conversations with people who spoke little to no english, but, needing their knowledge so continuing to try… and several times that it was declared that it was now impossible to create new ID’s, yet, someone always found a way… and, of course, several Ch@b directories, just so you could actually find people to chat with…
    Drobb was the first person to Ch@b us… minutes after posting our number in the original DCBG Ch@b listing…
    when i installed ICQ on my psion, i even switched out all the sound files with Ch@b sounds… and, here a few months ago, i dusted off my old generation 0 dreamcast and logged into Ch@b to check my messages and just see who might be on…
    man, i can hear that god-awful music that played on DP3 when the client would open and close when you went in and out of the email client… sometimes blaringly loud because you turned the volume way up to hear the quiet VoiceCh@b someone sent you…
    and who can forget “HALLO! HALLO!”, no matter how bad we want to…

    those glory days were great while they lasted… and now, one more piece of those days is about to expire…
    glad i was there for it… we really did make a bit of history, even if no one knows but us…

  • random email to the future

    F u t u r e M e . o r g » Public » Random

    in my links on the sidebar, i have a special section just for random links… click on them to visit a random weblog, a random homepage, a random webcam, even a random page on wikipedia… i love random links and don’t come across them too often, but, now i have a new addition to the list…

    do you know FutureMe?
    it is a site that lets you send an email to the future… the link at the top of this post and soon to be on my randoms list allows you to see emails people have sent (they have been anonymized), with the date they wrote it and the date it will be sent…
    i hit it a few times and there is some fascinating stuff… a parent’s email to their daughter for her 18th birthday, a guy entering medical school sending himself a message to be received after he graduates, someone on their first day quitting smoking, a wife on her 5-year wedding anniversary sending a message to her hubby for their 10-year anniversary, and of course, mundane things like reminders for a doctor’s appointment, and many many many that are not easily described…

    they are small pieces of stories of dreams and wishes, hope after regret, breaking of cycles, escapes from the past, beginnings and endings and new beginnings… and you can’t help but imagine these people and their situations, and the more vague the message, the more interesting it is…

    so, go check it out, and btw, this is the best kind of random link, the url itself has the command to randomize, so, you can go there and just keep hitting reload…