Interesting how verse 3 is pretty much an exact parallel with the light of Christ in our lives. Verse 4 is yet another example of taking a pretty huge risk in the name of God.  Getting into ships, the likes of which none of them had ever seen before, being built by the blueprints of God.  Closing the doors, with all your family inside, ...

 So, I've been working on this PDF project for awhile, and I think it might be beneficial for me to add some notes which were somewhat elusive on the net. The FDF file which is generated by PDFTK generate is encoded in UTF-16 character set - and is very hard to work with.   I found this script which solves the problem, and allows the FD...

So... To be honest, this chapter is kind of confusing.  Verse 1 and 2 is like Moroni is talking directly to Joseph Smith, due to his referencing the ability to "translate".  That in itself is kind of cool.  I've often thought what it must have been like to be Joseph Smith receiving the plates and translating when he gets to...

 So, on last chapter's post, someone left a wonderful comment.  Thank you, whoever you are.  That is precisely why I do this. Now... Ether 4.   This chapter starts out with an interesting verse.  I guess Mosiah would have had several channels whereby he could have known he should not let the book of Ether out of the bag u...

 So, before I even begin reading this chapter, I've gotta say that this is one of those chapters which is seriously deep in doctrine.  I could probably spend the better portion of 2 or 3 days studying this one.  That said, I don't have much time to spend now, so I'll get as far as I can. Verse 1 : An "exceedingly high mountai...

 It's quite obvious that this chapter is speaking to anyone and everyone (throughout all time) who lives on this land.  Verses 9,10, and 12 are especially insightful. "What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?" I love that question.  I never noticed outright that right after the Lord poses th...

 Not too much to write about on this one.  I guess I could try to memorize all the relationships mentioned.  hehe. Genealogy must have been pretty important back then (pretty important now-a-days, too), because they mentioned that it would be possible for us to have the history of the entire world up to that time.  Interesting...

Growing up, I used to have a mis-conception that those who erred against God in their ways were best suited for rebuke the way God gives it in the scriptures.  I was ignorantly judgemental, and for a long time, couldn't understand why people tended to shy away from my tactics. Reading the beginning of this chapter brings back a lot of those ...

Okay...  So, this isn't gonna be the rant that you thought it was by the title.  With the little time I have, I couldn't come up with a better one... So, the story is - I had just eaten a delicious burger at Coney's, when on my way home, I happened to turn on Rush Limbaugh.  He was talking about this new "cloud" technolog...

 Figuring out the mood and temprament of Moroni while he writes this is tough.  The things he writes about are horrific.  The Lamanites have killed his entire race, his family, and his father.  The "state of the union", as it were, was "continual warefare, bloodshed, and violence."   He had to be depress...

In chatting with my friend Steve, I realized I haven't yet given any details as to my trip to Green Bay this week, so, before this weekend comes, I figured I had better write something. Day 3 (Wednesday) went pretty smooth.  I woke up with a high level of sleep deficiency (surprise, surprise), and went out to the office for the last time.&n...

I read Mosiah 6 quite a while ago, but didn't have the chance to write anything about it.  I re-read it again tonight, along with chapter 7. The last verse of chapter 7 hit me years ago, when I realized the bondage to which the Lord is referring is not only physical bondage, but easily can refer to addictions, beliefs, people, choices, anyt...

I'm not entirely sure how to begin this post, but I'm just sitting here kind of wagging my head back and forth in disbelief.  I hope this is at least exaggerating. With everyone blathering on about how wonderful Windows 7 is, Microsoft hasn't changed a bit. Before I begin, let me just say how wonderfully reassuring it is to be using Linux ...

Where do I even begin?  Well...  The craziness began on Thursday of last week, so I'll start there. *THURSDAY: Every year, my uncle Cloy and Evelyn Jones have a family reunion intended for their family.  I'm not entirely sure why, but my parent's family has been invited to this reunion for a long time.  Some years we go, som...

Oh, man...  I haven't had a day like yesterday in quite some time.  Possibly years. My day started at 6:00AM with about 4 hours of sleep in me.  Ah well...  Caffeine has its purpose, right? We started out thinking there would be 4-6 cars out there on the salt with us, but it ended up being just Steve and me.  As it tu...

Well... Nothing too exciting in my life, but I thought I'd tell everyone that I wrote a new song.  As you can probably guess, it's called Dance With Me.  It's nothing more than a bass-line I came up with and a few more instruments. I've gotta say though, Ryan Phillips, the guy on the guitar is awesome.  I love working with him, an...

On Friday, around 4:00pm, Bill Hoopes and I took our teachers quorum up to camp out up Hobble Creek canyon.  It was pretty fun.  (This is going to be rather dry because I'm so tired) Anyway...  We had a great time.  Kaiden, Jake, and Josh came with us to camp.  Bill brought his awesome dutch oven skills, and I brought, um...

Lately, I've been viewing a few Disney flicks on DVD.  I got Bolt and Bedtime Stories.  Because I usually rent them on redbox and can only have them for a day, I will rip them, and then when I get around to it, I'll watch em' then delete them.  No problems with that, as far as I can see.  I rent them to view them once, and that'...

*sigh*.....  Where do I ever begin?  I mean....  I shudder when I say this, but, I've been a Microsoft user longer than I've been a Linux user.  What have you done, Microsoft? I'm referring to this "new and improved" piece of software they've recently released called Vista.  In all honesty, I hoped it would fai...

Man...  Amalickiah... I'm more and more convinced that this guy is the epitome of evil in the flesh. I wonder what would have happened with the entire history of the Nephites had Captain Moroni caught Amalickiah, when he was chasing him and his armies last chapter. I really believe that had he been caught (and appropriately dealt with), much...

This morning I decided I'd start the traditional blogging of each general conference talk from the last general conference in October. As President Monson began this talk, a familiar spirit filtered in to my office at work and inevitably, my heart was opened to the inspired words of our wonderful prophet. I'm so grateful for our church.  I...

This post is mostly for my parents.  (Hi Mom).  I thought you'd enjoy hearing a night of FHE in the Jones residence. :) There should be a little "play" button right below the mood panel in the upper right-hand corner of the journal detail page. Enjoy....

So, I just got a new Logitech C910 web cam, and when trying to join or create google hangouts, I couldn't see myself in the stream at all, nor anyone else's.  I can hear everyone, and everyone can see me, but I can see nobody, nor myself.  I found this gem of a site with a very easy solution. I'm using gentoo Linux, and this simple tric...

Awhile back, I wrote a journal entry concerning the scientific method and knowing spiritual facts to be true. This talk seems to be hitting the same vein, but in a much wiser and broader sense. "Knowledge of outside temperature can be verified by scientific proof. Knowledge that we love our spouse is personal and subjective. While not capa...

Words could not have said it any better. Makes me smile every time I look at it....

Well...  I just spent about 2 hours writing a how-to on going from an Nvidia-based graphics system in gentoo Linux to an ATI one, but I accidentally erased the whole thing, so I'm going to try my best to be patient and do it again. When I originally got the box for my new ATI Radeon HD4850 video card this morning, I was impressed even in the ...

When will I ever learn to trust my wife, my brother, and my instinct?  Probably never. You see, Ryan, my brother, noted how bald the tires are on my Mustang GT about a month ago.  My wife also noted the same thing, as well as a pretty big storm coming this weekend.  Anyway...  I'll get on with the story. Sarah and I celebra...

Today I was commissioned to create an FTP server here at work.  Through persistent pestering of the hideously insecure nature of FTP in general, my boss let me dedicate an entire server just for the company's need to FTP.  This was to negate the possibility of any hacking of the web server, should the FTP server be compromised.  It's...

Journal entry is contained within the attached audio file....

So lately I haven't had any major projects going on involving programming, and I started to miss it, so I decided to act upon a thought I had about a month ago. That thought consisted of me wanting a definitive answer to my almost 10,000-photo collection of digital images which seems to keep growing, and staying totally unorganized. So, two day...