Site last updated 11 Jan 2020
In the interests of discussion, “Comment Moderation” has been lifted. However, I reserve the right to delete comments that are abusive, vulgar, or offensive to decency and off-topic. Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
If comments become egregious, as they have before, then “Comment Moderation” will be re-enabled without warning.
I do not like comment moderation, but will invoke if it becomes necessary.
Well, last week was quite the week, with the worst ice storm I have ever experienced. And, according to several lifelong residents of this area, the absolute worst they have ever seen in this area. Generally speaking, Northwest Arkansas does not get bad ice storms, and when one does occur, it happens so infrequently that a 60 year old resident has only experienced three bad ice storms during his lifetime.
Thus, everything ground to a virtual halt last week, and is in recovery mode this week, and will be for some time to come. I was without power for almost 3 full days, which is not bad considering some folks are still without power, and may be for another week or two.
Over 90% of the trees were damaged, and at least 50% of them will require downing as they are totally ruined and will not recover. Quite a number of them were uprooted from the weight of the ice. There were many telephone lines, cable lines and electric lines down last Wednesday morning, and the scene was ghastly to look at in the early morning light. The blessing of the LORD was that our temperatures on Tuesday (27 Jan.) hovered right around 32 deg. F. while all the heavy rain was falling. Had it been 2 to 3 degrees colder, it would have far, far worse than it was.
With that, I leave you with some pictures, and a thanks to the LORD that we were spared what could have been.
[portfolio_slideshow]
And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, is his name. (Amos 4:6-13)
It wasn’t really intentional that I took a break. Rather, due to a friend’s court hearing and preparatory work for that hearing, and then playing catch-up from it, meant that I had no time to write a post worth reading.
That should be largely resolved at this point.
Will be traveling over the next few days. So probably not much posting.
Unfortunately, the last several days have been consumed with assisting with a Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court. I say that it is unfortunate, because it should not be required to put forth to the highest court in the land that the following words mean exactly what they state:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
I will probably repeat myself ten thousand times over:
The problem is not the arms an individual possesses or carries. The problem lies in the heart of the individual.
Let’s put it this way:
If men had the nature of angels (and not the fallen ones), then every person could have their own nuclear weapon and keep it personally, and no one would ever be in danger.
Strange, the founders of the United States of America knew this:
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” (Federalist 51)
The problem is, men are not, neither do they have the nature of angels. No, the truth of every person of the race of man is this:
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)
And so it is that “gun control” will ever and always be an utter failure. Until the hearts of men change, and that will only happen in Christ, the idea that somehow we can control bad behavior by controlling the objects individuals have access to, is doomed to total failure.
I should be able to return to writing and posting, among other things, more regularly — saving that I have another interruption coming up soon.
My home church, Faith Baptist Church of Spokane, Missouri, is holding its annual Missions Conference the 22nd through the 26th of October (Wed. through Sun.). Services will be held every evening, with dinner and an afternoon service on Sunday. Each day there will be a different missionary presenting the field to which they are sent.
The purpose of the conference is to focus on missions and show different mission works. It is a strong reminder of why we are here that encourages the members to stay focused on mission work, both here and abroad.
The directions to the church are here.
If you are near the Springfield/Branson area (or even if you are not), or if you are passing through, you are most welcome to attend.
I will return to addressing Freemasonry very soon. I have had a couple of things come up that needed to be addressed, and I have had to play catch-up on some other things. At least I don’t have to work on an older Ford Escort anymore. That car is finally gone (in operable condition), and the young lady has a new car that is under warranty. Thus I get a break from working on her vehicle (and I’m owed a LOT of coffee).
However, interspersed with the Freemasonry articles will be other issues that I am very much moved to address. One of the things I desire to do is complete a work on the New Testament Church. Hardly anyone gets it right. The reason for that, is the fact that they generally go about quoting someone else to prove their assertion, instead of sticking strictly to the Scripture. This work will be (as usual) totally dependent upon what the Scripture states.
Oh, I am going to change the theme of the blog to more closely match the website. The header graphic will remain, but the new theme will be two column, elastic, and in the colors of the website. I know exactly what I want, I just have to get it coded. Until then . . .
Running and managing a blog is an interesting exercise in patience, particularly when that blog is in your own webspace and you are solely responsible for all the management, housekeeping and troubleshooting of the problems that can occur when it is upgraded, features are added, etc.
Recently, I upgraded the software that runs the blog, turned all the added features back on, and tried to post. The posting part went well, but the e-mail notifications of the posts didn’t occur like they were supposed to. After considerable troubleshooting, it was narrowed down to a server issue of indeterminate origin. The author of the feature (called a “plugin”) that allows the automatic e-mails, had developed a workaround as my problem is not that uncommon. Apparently there are quite a few web hosts that have interesting server configurations.
For now, the problem is resolved and the e-mailer is working. Some of you will have received a “test post” notification. Kindly delete it. Hopefully, I will not have to go through this again, but I kind of think that is like hoping the sun won’t rise tomorrow. But, for now, it’s fixed.
This last week has been utterly full, and I have been unable to post. However, I will return to the series on Freemasonry. The post “A Proper Interpretation” was necessary as it was moved by an all too common misinterpretation of Scripture.
I still have a ton of things to do, including getting a young lady’s car back on the road, and clearing a road for a older lady who cannot do it, or afford to hire someone to do it.
Fortunately, Ike spared us any real destruction. It did knock out power for several hours. Where I live fared better than most. Some in the area were without power for three days.
I don’t usually write evaluations about software that I use, but I am going to make an exception as this piece of software is, well, unusual in the way it was done. Last week, Google released the Beta version of its new browser, Chrome. Since I do web design, I wanted to see how it rendered a page, and see if what Google promised for robustness was actually true.
I downloaded Chrome using Google’s download manager, which I really didn’t care for, and installed Chrome. I then launched Chrome and discovered the Chrome interface to be — utterly minimal. Now, I am austere. I mean everybody that knows me knows that I am not fancy, or a gadgets kind of person. I like the simple, plain, no-frills approach to things. However, this interface is too minimal.
That was only the first of issues that I encountered. I went to look at the Options and found that a utterly minimalist approach was used there to. In short, I, the user, have little to no control in the way this browser is set up. I cannot tell it how to handle individual websites, I can’t pick and choose content on individual sites and how that content is handled. I can’t set varying levels of security for different sites, etc. etc. Moreover, if I can, it is not readily apparent just how to do that. On top of that, I cannot even control how a file is handled after it is downloaded. Yes, I know that the supposed option is there, but it is all grayed out and not selectable, and I can’t find where to change it easily.
I suspect that I am not the only person that is unhappy with this particular browser. After all, my son called me late last week and asked what I thought of Chrome. I told him and he echoed my sentiments. The only thing Chrome gives me that I don’t have elsewhere is a view of how much memory a particular website is using. Yes, I know that Chrome is supposed to be multi-process, where each tab runs a separate process. But in view of the total lack of control and utterly minimalist interface, I really don’t need the multi-process feature that much. After all, If the browser crashes, I’ll just relaunch it. If a site is that poorly coded, I really don’t care to be there anyway.
Will I like Chrome in the future? It depends totally upon whether Google improves the interface, and adds some meaningful user control.