Microsoft is bridging the gap to the Wizard of Oz

Ok people...check this out:

Click your heels three times boys and girls and the Microsoft fairy will make your computing dreams come true!

by the way...after following these instructions...it still didn't work.

Print screen in linux

this gives you 5 seconds to get everything out of the way so you can take a clean shot of the screen:

$ sleep 5; import -window root screenshot.png

regular print screen:

$ import -window root screenshot.png

this allows you to select a portion of the screen to take a screenshot of:

$ import screenshot.png

Obama vs. Bush: tips for Christians

Christians, don't get so excited.

Obama is just a different variation of the same overture. Obama is finishing what Bush started*.

If it wasn't so, then God would be a liar.

We have to be very careful when it comes to politics. If Christians modeled the behavior and attitude that Jesus had toward earthly government, we would be in much better shape than we are now.

Jesus did not get involved in Government.

Remember "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's?"

Jesus was careful to obey the laws of the land, whether or not the ministers of that law were corrupt or not. What he would not obey was a law that was in conflict with God's will.

It is obvious from various examples in the Bible that God's people obeyed various violent authorities, but not when it interfered with giving to God what was due Him. An easy example of this is in Daniel. The prophet Daniel refuses to stop worshiping God three times a day even though an edict has been passed by the King of Babylon forcing all his subjects to only worship him for a period of 30 days. He is thrown into the lion's den for this but is saved by God because in God's eyes, Daniel was innocent. The point is God's law/will is the highest law we can obey.

We need to recognize something. We are trying to make the government enact laws that prevent gays from marrying and people from having abortions. In effect, we are trying to force unbelievers act like believers. Big problem. We are just making them hate Christ and resent Christians. Please recognize this. Study any part of who Jesus was and you will see he is nothing like how we are.

This should frighten us the hell out of us.

* If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the news.

Enlightenment 17 and Carbon Theme

This is my desktop -enlightenment 17 window manager + the Carbon theme. Use Gnome desktop, not KDE.

Pretty soon I'm going to upgrade to the newest version of Mandriva 2009 on my laptop, which I already have on my desktop at work. It's great...very stable.

For those who have the latest version of Mandriva installed on their computer, downloading enlightenment and all its corresponding themes is very simple.

In the command line type:

$ sudo bash
# urpmi e17_themes

then press "y" to everything. To implement it; logout and change the session to the enlightenment session...the themes are available when you sign into enlightenment. You can manipulate them from there.

good stuff.

UCF is Microsoft's Pet

UCF, because of it's close affiliations to Microsoft, forces its students to use a hotmail based email address for all school communication. The only way to forward emails with Hotmail is to do with the ill-prepared Microsoft Outlook; which breaks after you start adding and mixing multi-email addresses on it.

Unfortunately that means I can't sync my email with my phone (G1) unless I go the browser way...which is inadequate and time consuming. This also means that I can't upload files to my school workspace while using Linux.

Here is the message I get:

To use Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, your computer must meet one of the following requirements:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Internet Explorer page.
  
• Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page.

• Safari running on Mac OS X 10.2.x and later.

To use Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, your computer must meet one of the following requirements:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Internet Explorer page.
  
• Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page.

• Safari running on Mac OS X 10.2.x and later.
  

Haters.

They should have stuck with the pegasus email that was linux based and forwardable, which hotmail isn't.

Microsoft. Inconvenience at your fingertips.

Windows breaks my wireless drivers yet again

Okay.

So this is about the third time that Windows has broken my laptop's ability to connect to the internet.

Currently, I have a dual partitioned laptop and desktop --both with Windows XP (which actually never gives me problems) and Mandriva (Linux) on it. At work I am using Mandriva only...for the sake of things actually working.

Windows Vista on my laptop is another story. I have about the same sentiment towards Vista as I do the piece of garbage that was Windows Millennium Edition. Whereas Windows ME was stupid outright due to the brilliant idea to make an OS with no drivers, Vista is garbage on a new level.

Vista combines an inability to do simple tasks such as copy files from a network directory to my desktop without administrator permission--which can't be accessed no matter how hard you try--with a series of slowdowns, irrational functionality, and updates that break things rather than fix them.

So my solution is to avoid Windows like the plague right now, though a current client is desperately insisting we program within a Microsoft environment rather than an Apache environment. Then I will have to face the beast again; superfluous code and all.

On a vain tip, I must confess that I really enjoy Microsoft Office 2007 for the aesthetic factor and increased functionality. This is great for classes--notetaking and all. If Openoffice were to develop the same look/capabilities, then I think I would be complete. Oh well, at least I have a stable OS to develop from. I'll count my blessings in that.

Anyway the proverb still stands: Linux-you have to break. Windows-breaks itself.

Change the default address bar search engine back to Google

If you are like me and need to get rid of spyware inflicted default search engines in your address bar (thanks Myspace!)...this is what you do:

in the address bar type: about:config

then in the filter search bar type: keyword.URL

double click on keyword.URL and in the box paste this in:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=

That's it.

And remember! Don't do drugs, yahoo, or myspace. They will mess your stuff up.

Creating a Custom Link or Ad in Joomla

In the backend of the site, go to module manager and at the top right hand side of the page click the "new" button.

Select the option that says; "custom html"

Position it on the left or the right hand side of the website, give it a title that you will remember and add code for the link with a picture to the edit code section.

Save the custom module.

Now go into the template manager section and select the default template, click edit. Then click the option to edit CSS files. Click the section of CSS that deals with modules...it should say "modules.css"

Scroll down until you see something that says div.moduletable:

div.moduletable {
width: auto;
margin:0 0 20px 0;
padding: 3px;
border:1px solid #ccc;
background:#fefefe;}

copy this code and paste it to notepad or similar, then adjust that code as you desire for your custom module's generic style.

rename it something like:

.moduletablecustom_ads

mine looks like this:

.moduletablecustom_ads {
width: auto;
margin:0 0 10px 0;
padding: 2px;
border:0px solid #fff;
background:#fefefe;}

Now go to where you can edit the template.css and paste that code in there. (This will ensure that the module reads the changes in case the modules section doesn't load...like mine wasn't.)

Now click save and go back to the module manager section. Click on your module that you created and in the Parameters section on the right hand side, where it says "Module Class Suffix" enter the suffix you named your div. For me this was what I entered:

custom_ads

click save and refresh your site's frontend and you should see your add or link with the custom changes! Now anytime you want a link on that site with those exact specifications, you can simply add a new module in the module manager and put in the module class suffix for the css you edited, and it will modify it accordingly. Voila.

Hijabs

I don't think they should be mandatory, because I know at least some women would be happy to go without them...but modesty is awesome.

Christianity Today

Right now the Christian faith is doing extremely poorly. There is a good reason for this. Christians have become people that nonbelievers identify by the things they are against; like abortion or gay marriage. Nonbelievers constantly comment that most of what they know about Christians is that they hate lots of things.

For a reason that escapes me, Christians in general either don't pay any attention to this, or they don't care--because they certainly are not changing their tune.

My question is, why are Christians so focused on trying to make nonbelievers act as if they are believers? Why are they not more focused on doing what Christ told them to do: preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God to all the nations, taking care of widows, orphans, fatherless, healing the sick, working miracles etc?

Christ said that they would know us by our love (John 13:35). Instead they know us by what we hate. There is a serious problem here.

But fortunately we have a prototype of this kind of behavior. The Pharisees in the Bible behaved in the exact same way that many modern Christians today behave. They were haters too. Interestingly enough, those were also the only people to whom Christ had anything negative to say.

My position on Gays and Abortions?

Abortions
Abortion is a very difficult thing to go through. Honestly, I feel like someone who goes through the process is in a fantastic position to receive the love of God and the revelation of God. A person going through an abortion, whether it be for a medical danger (endometriosis, etc.) or an unplanned pregnancy, will be in a position of needing great healing. That level of healing can only come from God.

The one thing that I learned about God after receiving salvation was that He was totally different from the majority Christians I had met in my life. All I knew of Him was an unconditional love; a supernatural love that enveloped me in total acceptance and encouragement. I never experienced that before. There was no condemnation; even though I did a lot of awful things in my life. The God that sent Christ is a God that has no reservations about pouring out his love on anyone...so long as they make a decision to want to know Him. He will reveal Himself to the person that is serious about wanting to know and follow Him.

Gays
Some people are born gay. Others are abused as children and as a result end up with homosexual tendencies. First of all, a Christian who was born gay put it very well when he said what God revealed to him about his struggle, "To God, the opposite of being gay is not being straight; it is being holy." Having homosexual tendencies is no different than a heterosexual man lusting after multiple women. Homosexuality is not some especially significant sin. Sin is sin. When somebody gets filled with the Holy Spirit, they are given supernatural power to overcome whatever sins they have. A gay person will not become straight. But if he reaches out to God and is willing to sacrifice his desires for God's, he will be given a supernatural power to be holy. Temptations will always come up here and there, but power will always be given to overcome those temptations. Ultimately, what God is looking for is holiness--from heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. God loves gays, lesbians, transsexuals, etc. no less than heterosexuals. Like the Bible says, "God is no respecter of persons" --he does not regard anyone higher or lower based on their status, race, blood, condition. But those who have a heart to love; He loves those people exceedingly.

It seems like gays have become the modern day lepers of the Christian church. Jesus was eager to bring freedom and healing to the groups that the Pharisees disregarded and hated, and God is just as eager to bring his all-consuming love to the ones Christians have turned their noses up to.

As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

John 9:1-3