Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

I am only one month into my read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year program and I am already enjoying it much more than the last program. The one I did last year had me reading a passage in the Torah on Sunday, a passage in an Old Testament history book on Monday, a passage in Poetry on Tuesday, Wisdom on Wednesday, a passage in the prophets on Thursday, a passage in the Gospels/Acts on Friday, and a passage in the Epistles on Saturday. This had me reading the entire Bible but there was no way I could establish any type of continuity and follow the story lines - especially in the OT history books. This year I have a reading program that has me reading a passage in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms every day. Although this is not exactly what I was looking for it is much more to my liking than last year's. I guess I am one that would like to read the Bible straight through. I don't need passages in the NT to keep my interest as I am familiar enough with the OT such that the ...

After sleeping with the devil you'd love to close the book but you gotta wonder how the baby's gonna look Tale O' the Twister - Chagall Guevara More eloquently (much more) than the assertion that I often make that if I commit good or evil I set into motion things that I cannot control. Yet I sin. How frail I am. Powered by ScribeFire .

From what I know about Satan, he seems to be very patient. He is probably the most patient being in this universe apart from God. It seems that he is more than happy to get a foul ball here, a ground out there, then...there it is...a double! Pretty soon he'll be hitting singles quite regularly with an occasional triple or two. The home run is what he is after, but he is patient. He has my whole life to get it done. I guess that is why the sin that so easily entangles me is such an issue. The more contact I make with the ball the more confident I will be that I could get away with a single here or a double there. Maybe a triple this one time won't be such an issue...maybe. Then it happens and I have gone and done it. There will be no question how I would have arrived at this place. But there would also be no question that his patience was what did me in. I have to be so careful and it takes a lot of energy. But His grace is sufficient for me. And He has covered me with His grace...

Where the sun shines bright and I don't have to lock my door Where the moon is full and I'm not tired, anymore Where angels carry me along the way Where I can close my eyes at night and pray Where angels sit and watch me while I look up to the sky Where angels carry me along the way - Angels, MxPx So...where to begin on this one... I forgot to put air in my tire over the weekend (we were busy painting the dining room) so I was delayed getting to work this morning. And it seems like it was a good thing I was. Early in my commute this morning I noticed that the yellow lights were flashing above the sign that indicated that I should tune into 1610 AM for traffic information so, right there, I knew things weren't good. The commute was a bit slow North to South which is not unusual and when I got past the accident that was causing the slowdown it was time to merge onto the West to East route. I did just that and noticed another accident on the other side of the expressway...and ...

I would really like to have time to study this, but I am involved in too many other things as it is so I am just going to articulate it and see if there is someone else out there who could shed some light on it. After listening to "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" for one and a half hours straight I noticed something. The way the fiddle and the guitar is played is vaguely similar to the way the various instruments are played on another album I have from the Baltimore Consort called "On the Banks of the Helicon: Early Music of Scotland" especially the songs "Kathren Oggie", "Scotch Cap", and to a lesser extent "I Will Not Go To Bed Till I Suld Die". I think the similarities are too striking to be coincidental and I doubt that the early country music pioneers studied the music of early Scotland and Ireland for their influence, but I could be wrong. Yet, there is an influence there and it can even be picked out by an untrained ear such as ...

When the work's all done and the sun's settlin' low I pull out my fiddle and I rosin up the bow The kids are asleep so I keep it kinda low Thank God I'm a country boy I'd play "Sally Goodin" all day if I could But the Lord and my wife wouldn't take it very good So I fiddle when I can, work when I should Thank God I'm a country boy Well I got me a fine wife I got me old fiddle When the sun's comin' up I got cakes on the griddle Life ain't nothin' but a funny funny riddle Thank God I'm a country boy! Thank God for my iPod. Powered by ScribeFire .

There have been some recent events at work that have driven me to examine encryption so that sensitive information that I keep on portable hard drives and my laptop is not compromised. With that I thought that I would download, install, and attempt to use TrueCrypt on my Windows (XP) and Linux (Ubuntu 7.10) boxes. It works really well and I even found a nice GUI for the Linux distribution as the command line was frustrating me a fair bit. It looks like the 5.0 version of TrueCrypt is going to be distributed with a GUI so that the second step would be unnecessary. Of course the release date is January 2008 so if the team putting the package together is anything like me it will be out on January 31, 2008 at 11:59:59 pm. Powered by ScribeFire .