I disagree with holding your nose and voting. That is why this year I voted for Ron Paul. Did I agree with Paul on all counts? Nope, not even a little bit. What I wanted the current society to see is that there is a group of us out there who are not happy with things the way they are. My subset (Catholic Minded Votes) has no voice in the current political market. I am glad that the Church does not get involved with politics and does not endorse politicians but I wish someone would step forward with a Knights of Columbus pin on their lapel.

What are we to do? It seems that voting with your nose plugged simply allows politicians to continue with the current trends. Why would they change their ways if you as a voter continue to support the paradigm of lesser evils. It is my recommendation that we vote for a true politician that supports us. The argument that the democrats or republicans will win depending on your leanings doesn’t matter. Can you tell the difference between the two? What does it matter if Obama or McCain wins? Outcome is the same…

I swear to it as I rode the lawn mower today, swerving back and forth dodging chipmunks and snakes, it occurred to me that my last girlfriends father was OBSESSED with my lawn mower arsenal. From the day I moved onto this beautiful 2.8 acre plot his first question was “How you going to mow it?” To be honest I hadn’t thought about it. Scientific discussions of the validity of caring for a weed resulted in nothing. It was settled, I had to mow.

There in lies the problem, mowing that is. You see I hate mowing. With every fiber of my being I hate the very idea of cutting down a weed. For the past few months I have had a condo in Arizona and it is there I was first introduced to rocks. Out there people have smartened up and rather than planting grass they simply throw down some rocks. Biggest yard utensil you are purchasing there is a rake.

Back to the ex-girlfriend’s father…he GAVE me a lawn mower. Then to top it off her grandfather gave me one too. I simply had no excuse now as to why I couldn’t mow the lawn, heck I could use both at the same time to truly display my yard capabilities. What I didn’t realize when I moved in was that mowing this much land is an all day affair. You don’t wake up for a morning run and do your cool down around the yard. No, you wake up early in the morning and fall off the darn lawn mower that night.

A guy that travels like I do simply does not have time for this marathon mowing activity. I eagerly await the day a kid knocks on my door and offers for a small fee to trim my jungle. Crap, I will fricken relish that day. Unfortunately the kids around me are still too young. I keep my eyes open though, kid across the street mows the lawn with his kiddie mower while dad uses the real one. There is a kid with some aspirations. One day I will employ him. And one day he will have no problem picking up a southern gal, why? Because he is a guy who can mow.

What stemmed all of this is a desire to create something. From the earliest of days watching TV and reading newspapers we are marketed to. For some reason, to this day if I hear the ninja turtle theme song I still have a strong desire to do my cool dance and go out and buy pizza. Why? It was marketed to me as a youngster.

With marketing so prevalent in our society it is no wonder that we place ourselves in a similar situation as single people. We market ourselves. “I think I will pick a little sweet guy, pinch of living life on the edge, dab of outdoorsy, and a ounce of crazy hair.” It is just a formula now that we throw out to the world as a face to what is really us.

So lately I figured out what it is I am marketing to the world. The conclusion I came to is that I was marketing the exact opposite to the man I really am. I am a geek, Gregorian Chant is on my iPod, Theology books are more interesting than TV, I love running, fast motorcycles make me smile, I don’t watch TV, and most of all, I am happy. There I said it. You see I think the trap we all fall into as young Christians (or fallen Christians) is that we market ourselves to the world around.

It is time to stop playing dress up and move beyond the superficialness we showcase. Stop making yourself “the one” and instead be someone’s “one.”  I have a great hope in my heart that somewhere there is a young lady who would be loving some goofy, geeky, guy like me. I am going to stretch my “being Nick” muscles and workout more with God. Being devoted to Our Lord is happiness enough for me. Showing Him the devotion is showing me that marketing is like fishing with a boot. You might catch something but it isn’t anything you would want.

1. We believe in Infant Baptism
2. Confirmation

Imagine my surprise from today’s Liturgy (Readings):

Now when the apostles in Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God,
they sent them Peter and John,
who went down and prayed for them,
that they might receive the Holy Spirit,
for it had not yet fallen upon any of them;
they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

The bold is my emphasis, but I really wanted to focus in on that line. So a little background on Confirmation is that the Bishop (apostolic line, shepherd, etc) comes to the parish and lays hands on the confirmation candidates. It is very beautiful and stems from this very scripture from Acts 5:14-17. This is where a big part of confusion comes from when we baptize our infants. Baptism to a Catholic is simply washing away of the sin Adam and Eve left us. We are not expecting at that moment that the infant has accepted Christ, rather we are welcoming this child to the Body of Christ. At a Catholic Baptism the congregation raises a hand and promises to help raise this child in the fullness of the faith.

As scripture directs, a child will grow up being taught the faith. When they are old enough to be “born of water and Spirit,” they can receive their marching orders. It is at the time a young adult is confirmed that they are saying (or confirming) that they truly believe the teachings of Christ and the Church. Nifty eh?

I hope this clears up something, had to share after reading it.

The tidbit that jumped out at me tonight was about Genesis. The discussion of if it was a scientific recount of creation or not is irrelevant:

Consider the difference for a woman when her optometrist looks in her eyes and when her husband looks in her eyes. The scientist is looking at her cornea and records the scientific facts. The love is looking into her soul and proclaims something more poetic and inspired. Does the scientist disprove the lover? No. These are simply two perspectives on the same reality. The author of Genesis wasn’t a scientist, but a lover inspired by God to proclaim the spiritual mysteries at the origin of the world.

Did you brain just explode? Mine did just typing it

Hello from my IIci. The machine is fresh from the original boxes with the original manuals. WHAT A STEAL!? My mom’s one comment when it arrived was that it

1. Looked heavy with all those boxes
2. Makes a funny noise when that floppy is writing

There was a time in cable television when channel names insinuated content. Take for example the Military Channel, it is a safe bet there is going to be planes, guns, or other things blowing up from the military viewpoint. 

I can safely turn there after a long day and see my stress melt away with the tonnage of bombs dropped from B-52s. The History Channel used to be an escape for my other secret hobby, history. It has come to my attention after being sick this week that no longer can I depend on the name of History Channel to mean that I will learn some history. Rather new programming  that appeals to the masses of fringe culture (an oxymoron in itself) is plastered from day to day. Alan Jones (or Airman Jones as I knew him long ago) put together a list that truly reflects the programming schedule:

1. Bigfoot - Sasquatch or Man with Hirsutism
2. UFO’s - Discovering classified Air Force planes for 50 years
3. Jesus and the Da Vinci Code - We all know it has been disproved for years, but we are going to show it anyways
4. Area 51 and the Mystery of Champ - How a large, water-dwelling, reptilian creature was spotted flying over the desert in Nevada and strangely looks a lot like a weather balloon in one fuzzy Polaroid.

Now playing at 3, 6, 9, 1030, and a marathon on Sunday

No truer words Jones, no truer words

I remember reading with such excitement about this amazing new Linux (yes I pronouced it wrong, I was a geek living in Germany) and how it was free. Free you say!? I had just spent the past year lusting for Windows NT for no other reason that it was enterprise ready. I had no clue what that meant but I knew it was something I couldn’t learn. Much in the same way as I would look with much glee on the SGI pictures in magazines with no hope of ever affording the 12,000 dollar machine. Such was life for a youngster.

That is what made Linux so exciting for me. It looked kind of like those funny Sun boxes and it was what HACKERS used so it had to be cool. With no understanding of what installing Linux met I dropped that CD in and used rawrite for the first time to create the boot floppy.

Then it died. My perfectly working Windows 95b edition machine died. Well I thought it had died when really all I did was blank the partition table attempting to do an install. All of this came back vividly today as I retraced that install on my MacBook Pro in vmware.

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The first thing that struck me was how much I remember watching the screen rush by in a flurry of kernel messages. I was amazed at the vast complexity of a free operating system. At the age of 12 I had no understanding of cfdisk and setting up partitions. This go around I flew through it knowing there was no Windows 95 install to blank on accident. When you compare this install process to the one of Debian 3.1 it is hard to believe that in those 8 years the routine was the same. While comfortable it all but symbolizes the troubles Debian has had facing the Ubuntu folks.

After the LILO issues being cleared up (THANK GOD FOR GRUB) I rebooted removing the virtual floppy. The virtual-BIOS beeped and there came a 2.0 Linux Kernel. I had played with Linux around the 1.8 days with Slackware but never could get the machine to boot. Watching the Virtual Machine boot gave me the same joy as it did all those years ago.

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login:

By far the most daunting task from those days for my non-Unix mind was dselect. All I could think back then was how many choices there were. The amount of software avalibale was daunting and I had no clue what too pick. This go around was similar but with a different perspective. It was daunting to see the version numbers. XFree86 3.3. Netscape 3.01. You have to remember this was before KDE/Gnome. Forgetting the time-frame I was working with I jumped to a virtual console to setup my apt configuration. Apt wasn’t there. I freaked out looking desperatly for the package online before remembering that Apt didn’t release until the 2 series of Debian. Due to there being no ISO images for the install anymore began the process of mirroring the deb’s to my NFS server and using it for the rest of the afternoon. It was a learning process to remember such a raw and unpolished build and how the install process for packages occurred.

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Time passes and technology moves. My fascination with Vintage computers and Operating Systems stems from the era of change. In today’s computing world the players are condensed and the technology owned by large companies. The install screen mentions donating (no paypal link either) to the project of 200 volunteers. 200! Debian has grown into the basis for some of the greatest free software projects ever. Perens and Murdock are staples of the technology world now. Deep down the kid inside of me will never die, the excitement for seeing great people do great things never changes. I recommend you go find your first Operating System and take a walk down memory lane. Who knows, maybe it will help you remember just how far things have come.

I am not sure how many times I have had to correct the Unix-like versus UNIX debate.Where this all leads to is the recent OpenSolaris elections. I am not sure if this is the Ian Murdock influences, but a board is formed to govern the code and direction of the project. Within the OpenSolaris community there is a great deal of expertise and knowledge coming in from outside sources. Yet, Sun in all its infinite wisdom has killed any hope it had.

The board is now made up entirely of Sun employees. I am sure these employees are great experts in their respective fields. This is in no way a jab at the excellent work Sun has done over the past 20 years. Rather this is a plea to the company, let the community work! I have run out of headstone space in the back yard to bury yet another UNIX.