GreenfieLDS project

Ada Rachel Clark Smith
http://bit.ly/WIaL7k
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith_III#Family_chart

Wife of Joseph Smith III. That would be the son of the famous Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion. Now there's not a lot of information floating around on the internet about this woman besides the half page blurb in the google book. You might have, however, noticed the last name of Clark. I'm not sure of the exact details but she is a distant relation of mine(something like a great great aunt). The Clarks historically had been heavily involved in the LDS church, up until my grandfather anyways. He left his faith around the same time that he married my grandmother but still maintains an interest in theology and the early workings of the church. I've enjoyed many conversations with him on my bible reading and the workings of religion. Over Xmas he gave me something that I'm very excited to have and am looking forward to reading.

My Grandfather's copy of The Book of Mormon. Published 1944 in Independence, Missouri. 

By Joseph Smith

Coming soon, Let's Read: The Book Of Mormon

Portrait of Facebook Friend Unknown

Scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed today I happened upon a post from a fellow member of the 2006 St. Joseph High School graduating class. The post invited me to check out her blog and being a fellow blogger and general snoop of people I barely know I gladly accepted the invitation. What I found was a strange bizzaro version of my own blog. The central concept of the blog is her journey with the "new testament challenge," a call from her church to the congregation to read the entirety of the new testament. She writes about each verse she finds interesting and explains how it only affirms her faith in every possible way.

Some excerpts:

"I found encouragement when it said in Acts, "...they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah."  Can you imagine never stopping teaching and proclaiming the good news?!  That is so awesome."

"I learned that our God, my God, is awesome.  Simply put - he is awesome.  There is so much in just those short eleven pages that I learned today and that is in God's love letter to me!  How many religions and beliefs have a whole love letter written directly to them?  None that I'm aware of. "

It's a strange bubble of someone else's life and how God plays an integral role in it. I have thus far resisted posting a comment giving me views of the same verses. Though I very much liked hearing the Christian perspective on my posts I'm not sure if the reverse would be well appreciated, especially when it's a person you haven't interacted with over 6 years. The blog is not poorly written though, and if Facebook tells me when the next entry is I'll probably read it.

Career Oriented Individual

At my company, I work in a product that was bought by my current employer. Before we bought them they had a smallish development staff of 6 employees. 2 of these employees were let go upon the acquisition, 1 moved to Cleveland and the remaining 3 worked remotely from New Hampshire. 2 weeks ago we had an end of day Friday meeting and were told that the New Hampshire employees were being let go since having remote employees 'hurt the process.' It's hard for me to say if that's true or not. It's true that many things have gotten a fair amount smoother, but the knowledge base we've lost is incredibly immense and who knows how that will affect us in the coming months.

As a result, many of my peers have been tidying up the old resume and I'd be lying if I didn't say I was among them. Due to a lack of vacation days I'm not really looking until I can afford to travel on weekdays for interviews. I did, however, speak with my boss about whether there's anything resembling a promotion/raise on the horizon. He told me I was ready and he's fighting for me and that's the most that can happen for the time being.

Now, my friend did actually receive an offer another company that was roughly an 8k raise. He looked like he was going to leave but my company counter offerred and now it appears he's going to stay on. Now that sucks. He was well deserving of such a thing due to the work he did there but was only offerred anything after threatening to leave. With my department in the state it's in with so few people left with any idea of how this purchased product functions all the members are somewhat crucial for it to remain functioning. Does this mean I have to threaten to leave before I can actually get anything legitimate here? I do not like the precedent set here and I really do not like anyone getting picked for career bumps based on their claims of leaving. Overall I'm getting rather sick of this company and the career games they're playing. I'm tired of seeing echoes of "the bottom line" all over the place.

Bible Wrap Up

Let's start at the end. Revelations is the worst part of the bible. Yeah a lot of crazy shit happens but it ends up sounding like a drug trip more than anything. Everything in the book seems to be done by weird animal hybrids. Even Jesus described as a "lamb with seven horns and seven eyes." This is a reference to some of the visions interpreted by Samuel in the old testament but that doesn't make it any less bizarre. Revelations might mean to be a prophecy, or it might be referring to contemporary events (I'm sure most of you know that '666' is referring to Emperor Nero) All in all though, one of the books I was looking forward to the most ended up being kinda worthless.

Between revelations and the gospels lies a bunch of letters written mostly by Paul. It's an interesting glimpse into the workings and persecutions of early Christians but doesn't offer much substance beyond that. Paul reaffirms that Jesus rose from the dead and that you don't need to circumcise yourself. He makes an awful lot of comments about how women should obey their husbands. One of the most important takeaways from Pauls letters is that it's apparent that these Christians believed Jesus' return was imminent. Nobody ever mentions a date but one part that stands out to me is that Paul tells his single followers not to get married. This advice seems to be a "why bother? the end is coming" kind of deal.

The timing of the new testament is pretty interesting to me. It's placed in chronological order, but the Gospels were written after Pauls letters and preaching. Mark was the first of the Gospels and used as source material for the other three and anything that was put into Mark would have already been influenced by the teachings of Paul. Paul never mentions anything about Jesus' life aside from the crucification and resurrection so it's hard to tell what was invented about Jesus' life by the Gospels. It's interesting to note that Mark doesn't mention the virgin birth. Biblical scholars pretty much universally accept that the virgin birth is a later addition. Mark starts with the Baptizing of Jesus at which point God opens the sky and claims Jesus as his son. There are some early views that Jesus was 'adopted' by God at this point.

Mark's ending is also one of the most disputed parts of the bible. Certain stylistic changes suggest that Mark originally ended at Mark 16:8. Conveniently this is right before any mention of sightings of Jesus after the resurrection. Mark 16:8 ends with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb which is definitely abrupt. It could be Mark (or whoever wrote this) died before he finished and an apprentice finished the work. A later scholar might have removed an ending and replaced it with the resurrection, too.  Or maybe Mark really did just want to finish the work there. This is just lost to history.

The whole New Testament is an interesting contrast to the Old. One of the biggest themes, as Sara pointed out to me, is the creation of a new covenant. This is especially apparent in Paul's letters. To me it seems as though Paul was very concerned with converting the Gentiles AKA non-jews. I can only imagine the difficulties of convincing others they need to follow Jewish law, not to mention circumcision. The new covenant seems like a convenient way to circumvent all those troublesome rules about not eating pigs and genital mutilation.

In that sense Christianity is definitely an easier religion to follow than Judaism since the only real rule is believe in Jesus. Judaism is also anything but inclusive, these are the chosen people after all. Others' faith seems to be appreciated but you never seem to have the same status. Christianity on the other hand  is willing to accept any believer and anyone can be saved. Unfortunately with Christianity you get a lot more lake of fire.

Speaking of the lake of fire, I find it really difficult to get any straight information about the Christian interpretation of hell. Of course that may just be because there is no agreed upon definition. It seems to be an even split between a disconnection from God and, y'know, mental and physical torture forever. The bible is pretty vague but Jesus definitely mentions fire. According to wiki though this might have been referring to a trash pile outside of town where they threw the bodies of sinners, so who knows.




So Bible is complete. My interest in holy books though is still well piqued and I'll probably give the Qur'an a go in the near future. I'll give you guys a break on these heavy religion blogs though. I probably find this stuff more interesting than anyone else. It was definitely a great read and I'd seriously recommend the Bible to anyone interested.

Still atheist though, sorry Jesus.

Feeling the spirits

A bottle of wine and 2 bible chapters can turn an otherwise lame Saturday into a good time.


John 19:34
 One of the soldiers stuck his spear into Jesus' side, and blood and water came out. ³⁵ We know this is true, because it was told by someone who saw it happen. Now you can have faith too.

WELL FUCK, now I know it to be true. A friend of a friend says it happened. 


John keeps bringing up "Jesus' favorite disciple" AKA (via King James) "the beloved disciple" which sounds an awful lot to me like jesus had a fuck buddy. I'm not alone here either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved

They're described as laying on jesus' bosom at the last supper. (John 13:23) Who might that be?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Damiane._Jesus_Christ_and_St._John_the_Apostle..jpg

oh Jesus...

The Bible: Out with the Old, in with the New

One testament down, one to go and boy I'll tell you they didn't make those last books a walk in the park. The old testament seems to be made up of four different kinds of content:

1. Crazy stories
2. Informative instructions
3. Historical accounts
4. "Beautiful Hebrew poetry"

1 and 3 are by far the most interesting parts, 2 can be kind of funny but whenever I run into a book that's prefaced by "Book x is regarded as some of the best Hebrew poetry" I know I'm in for a snore. You know what does not translate well to English? Hebrew poetry. These last few books are full of it too. The poetry just comes of as a mess of words describing some vague prophecies. 'Israel will be destroyed because it is so sinful. Then the LORD god will build it up again because he's such a peach.' x 50. These prophets are all crazy doomsayers. Those people who stand at street corners preaching the end of the world were born at the wrong time. Back in ancient Israel they named a book after you.

Jonah is the only prophet worth mentioning. I liked that he didn't want to be a prophet plus there was a little bit of content 1 with the whole eaten by a whale thing. There's some bizarre metaphor about gourds at the end that just left me kind of confused but that aside it was a pretty good story. There was even some actual examples of god being a forgiving guy instead of the usual jerk.

Proverbs was one of my favorite book. It's essentially just a list of advice [supposedly] from King Solomon.
It ranged from good and useful:
"If you stop learning you will forget what you already know"

"The start of an argument

    is like a water leak—

    so stop it before

    real trouble breaks out."

to ridiculous:

'Don’t be so lazy that you say,

    “If I go to work,

    a lion will eat me!”'

...but at least still somewhat relevant

Song of Solomon was a weird one. It was like someone just wanted to stick their love poem in the middle of the bible. The version I'm reading justified it by saying the whole thing was a metaphor for the love God has for his people. You can be the judge of that

SoS 4:5

Your breasts are perfect; they are twin deer feeding among the lilies

SoS 8:10

I am a wall around a city, my breasts are towers

Read a little bit into the New Testament but only half way through the first book. Jesus contradicts a lot of the stuff in the OT but is constantly claiming to be reinforcing it. 

"You know that you have been taught, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you. When someone slaps your right cheek,^[i] turn and let that person slap your other cheek."

That eye for an eye stuff was straight from Moses. Ned Flanders once said "I've done everything the Bible says — even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!"  You really can't win here, what parts of the bible are you really supposed to follow. Does Jesus trump everything in OT? Ah well, NT is pretty interesting so far. This is probably the best approximation out there

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1tg46ScP8w&t=1m47s

As you may or may not have read on my Facebook, last weekend I won a Magic tournament. Well actually I split first with another player. After 7 hours of magic you're just about ready to mentally collapse and splitting first and second place prizes up between the finalists can be a welcome event. I beat the other guy earlier in the tournament but I was ready to go home.
Between first and second the prizes were:
$250
3 SCG Open points
24 booster packs
1 entry to an SCG Invitational in Atlanta or LA

Now Atlanta and LA are a long ways away and neither of us were really planning on going. I offered him $150 of the $250 if I got the invite/extra point and he agreed. 25 bucks for a unique prize like that seemed worth it even if I was iffy about going.

This is what I'm getting myself into by the way
http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/open_series/#invitational

Now I'm here with that invite burning a hole through my magic bag and I have to wonder how I could not go? As yet I haven't gone to a giant tournament like that and I've been putting off the experience due to work and other commitments. Now I have more excuses than ever: money, time, vacation days but more than ever this seems like one of those cases where you can do nothing or you can do something. I doubt that nothing is ever the correct action.

I'd like to book my ticket soon but I do have one thing holding me back. I don't want to do all this by myself. An all day magic event like this is draining and it'd be really nice to have an ally there with me. I'm fairly sure I can get Brendan to go but I've yet to get a firm commitment.

64th place is $250 which is probably enough to cover the trip. I might as well just win if I'm going to make the trip though, y'know? 1st place is $15000, if I win it all I might be able to justify all the money I've spent on this game up until this point. Sounds good.

The Bible: When Animals Attack!

Just finished up Samuel 2 and Kings 1 & 2. For those unfamiliar, these books tend to focus on David and Solomon's rule over the nation of Israel. Kings goes on to describe the rule of all kings of Israel/Judah up until Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon conquers the area and sends the jews into exile. The books are mostly filled with wars against Syria, Egypt, and every other surrounding area you can think of. Sometimes when not at war against another nation they're at war with themselves. All in all the whole thing was fairly ridiculous. It comes off like a history text that people stuffed the LORD into. Oh the the Israelites got conquered? They must have pissed off God. They got back their land? The king must have done some serious Yahweh ass kissing. The prophets Elisha and Elijah were the most interesting part to me. They had a little more mystique than the list of kings.

I'm about a quarter of the way through now and I'm going to skip Chronicles since it looks like it's basically a clip show. I guess I'll be checking out Ezra next

Favorite Quotes:

2 Kings 17:25

"When they first lived there, they did not worship the Lord; so he sent lions among them and they killed some of the people."

1 Kings 20:35

"By the word of the Lord one of the sons of the prophets said to his companion, “Strike me with your weapon,” but the man refused.

So the prophet said, “Because you have not obeyed the Lord, as soon as you leave me a lion will kill you.” And after the man went away, a lion found him and killed him."

2 Kings 2:23-24

"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys."

This conversation is 4-leaf over

JOB:
Still looking for a new job. I've had some good leads though a recruiter in the SE Michigan area. A company called Helm in Plymouth is apparently fairly interested in my background. I got a Linkedin message last week from a Google recruiter and after a quick phone screen it sounds like an interview is in the works. Once again, I have to ask where all these guys were when I was jobless a year ago? I guess a year of experience makes all the difference. Only problem with Google is location, it'd either be Chi-town or out Californy way. Given a choice between an AA job and a company like Google I have no idea what I'd pick.


OKC:
People on OKC can be off putting sometimes. I received this message after a little bit of back and forth.

"That's your goal by the week's end. You've gotta get yourself away from the computers sometime! I'd say there's more than "some" importance in looking around a little- it's critical. Whats so hustley and bustley about your life that you can't take a moment to go outside? A lunch break perhaps? I'll tell ya, if you can find a 4-leaf clover, bring it to a nice girl-- that's a sure fire way to impress, and a great way to start a conversation."


Ugh I can't even put my finger on it, this message is just really annoying to me. Thanks for the nag, Message you never.

ANDROID:
Going with the job search, I have to start doing more programming outside of work again. This might a be a programming exclusive thing but all recruiters I've met can't get enough of personal projects. I think I've got a decent idea for a mtg app and I know a couple of stores that might be interested in that sort of thing which would be a pretty cool in depth project. It's weird looking more at mobile again after having been off it for so long. My head is filled with SQL and whatever the hell powerbuilder is at work and it's refreshing to be back in the world of JAVA. As always, if you have a good app idea hit me up!

WEEKEND:
Last weekend I braved a walmart for the first time in over a year. I completely hated it in there (something about the lighting just makes me feel weird) but somehow I emerged unscathed with AA batteries, trash bags and a yoga mat. The mat came from a desire to exercise without stomping up and down on the floors and pissing off my so far understanding neighbour. Shit is tough, mostly I swear at the screen in poses that aren't terribly close to what the instructor is doing. I end up real sore the day after but it's definitely fun. I also played a lot of guitar over the weekend and learned some new songs. Mike, Ian, I seriously miss the jamming. Wherever hamreunion ends up, we must bring instruments.


BALTIMORA:
At work we have a quote board and after HamFrance I had to put up the quote "Jungle life, I'm far away from nowhere. On my own like Tarzan Boy." Somehow this lead to the in-office meme of answering all questions matter-of-factly with Baltimora. "Hey do you know where you run a recertification?" "Oh yes, I believe that would be Baltimora." "No way! Baltimora?!" "Baltimora!"

Get off my lawn

In the M:TG group I frequent on Facebook, people often ask if anyone has a card they're looking for up for trade. This guy wanted the card 'Genesis' so I decided to make a video game system pun.

What's my age again?

With a donkey’s jawbone

Quick bible update, I've cruised through Joshua and Judges now. Here's some of my favorites:

"Then Samson said,

   'With a donkey’s jawbone
   I have made donkeys of them.
With a donkey’s jawbone
   I have killed a thousand men.'"

Judges 15:16

"Then Joshua said to Achan, "Why have you brought trouble on us? The LORD will now bring trouble on you." And all the Israelites stoned Achan and his family and burned their bodies."

Joshua 7:25

"Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the LORD’s house."

Joshua 6:24

"They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys."
Joshua 6:21




For comparison, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfevBIsVG1o