Yesterday at church, I had a couple of thoughts which I neglected to write down.  I think I'll write them down now. Something I might have written down in my previous scripture studies is my question as to why Lehi's family didn't think about getting the plates of brass / Ishmael's family before they left for the wilderness?  I would th...

I'm not in the mood to write much, but since it's a goal, I'll keep it. One thing I noticed and had a question about was why Nephi, Sariah, and Sam didn't know where to go in Lehi's dream.  Verse 14 lays it out quite plainly. The first thing that came to mind was Lehi was the leader of the family.  He was the director and it was his d...

Something I've never really ever thought of, and maybe simply because it's so obvious, but... When Nephi goes on in his rant toward those who were desirous to go to Jerusalem, he keeps saying "How could you forget?".  Things like "How have you forgotten the great things the Lord hath done for us" makes an incredible assum...

I just got done reading a wonderful article in which the author tries to describe the core differences between the "open source" mentality and the proprietary one.  He does a great job of being objective and is generally well-thought out. Since I began using Linux, being myself a capitalist, I've battled the idea that the open sour...

I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I lost the post I just wrote about chapter 6. I didn't realize how short it was, so I wrote about the importance of scriptures spoken of in verse 5.  If we didn't have scriptures, our kids would eventually lose the commandments of God (unless, of course, it was revealed again). Also, it's good to not...

I just got done reading an excerpt on Sony's new "open", "non-DRM" solution to downloading their music legally. As I understand it, you have to go to a store, buy some sort of card for $12.99 which has a magic code on it, get the code, go to a website, enter the code, and then you are able to download one of their whole 37 alb...

Man... I'm just tired.  Today was weird..  So... Studying chapter 5 right now, I'm brought to another realization that even the families of Prophets aren't perfect (hello, Lehi was a prophet, and he managed to have Laman and Lemuel...) The specifics to which I refer is Sariah's murmuring, and reaction when she saw her 4 boys return fr...

I was sifting through my various RSS feeds a couple of minutes ago, and one popped up from TomsHardware which I thought might be interesting.  So I opened it up in my browser, and before I could even read the title, my eyes were drawn to this ad by Microsoft.  The image itself isn't very funny, but man-oh-man, the captions which came to m...

One way I really enjoy reading the scriptures is from a very empathetic point of view.  I find I learn more when I study, if I try to imagine what would *really* be going on if I were actually within the scripture. Chapter 4 is perfect for this.  Reading somewhat between the lines of the first part of this chapter allows us to imagine ...

Within the first 5 verses of this chapter, I'm reminded again of how a person works who is truly interested in God's commandments. Lehi was commanded of the Lord to have his sons return to Jerusalem to get the plates of brass from Laban. Telling Laman and Lemuel would most certainly have some consequences in that they would automatically assu...

Wow...  Moroni doesn't mix words, does he...  Reading this through as much of an objective filter as possible, I'd say there's some serious judgements going on.  Moroni blatantly calls Ammoron a "child of hell", and tells him that his brother went to hell.  heh...  Pretty gutsy, if ya ask me.  Going off of wh...

I was wandering around the net to shake off the daily grind, when I came upon this site . The poem made me think, and thinking is a pretty good thing.  So, in response to his poem, I wrote the poem "To Write".  I was suprised at how fast it came, and pretty freely, too.  Anyway... It's always a treat to find good poetry....

To start, I must say that the video above was created using a very old digital camera.  It shoots at 15 fps, so, that is why the video quality is so horrible.  I'll see if I can't get a more decent video later on.  Now, on with the entry... I would have written about this yesterday evening, but I was dead-tired.  So... I'll wri...

Reading through Alma 60 and 61, I can vividly imagine what it would be like to live in times like those.  I imagine the cry for freedom being heard through the streets, as neighbors and friends decide to take up arms in defense of our right to worship how we want, and for the protection of our families, traditions, and way of life.  Putti...

Things that impressed me for this chapter were different than any time I've read it before (that I can remember), and that, being as simple as it is, is a testament to me as to why we should continue reading the Book of Mormon throughout our entire lives. Interesting how Laman and Lemuel consider the spiritual visions of Lehi to be "foolishn...

I was gonna read something spiritual tonight, but I got sidetracked by American Idol. I started surfing around and before long, I came upon this video which, to me, is both absolutely amazing and freaking hilarious at the same time. I had no idea (although I'm not surprised) that so many people were doing remixes of his song "We Are Brot...

Alright... So one of my hard drives failed in my backup server LVM array, and I received the new replacement disk today. So, I turn on my computer and even though the volume group isn't initialized (due to the missing disk), it still exists, and has all the other drives in the array still held captive. So, this is how to completely destroy your...

As a S197 Mustang GT owner, I never thought I'd write about this particular subject, but then again... ...I had never actually seen one on the road, either. All I have to say is - Wow. Dodge definitely did their research on this one.  Although it was all due to the success of the S197 mustang body style, of course, but man... That car ...

I just finished watching the Pixar movie, "Cars" for the 45th time.  Or maybe it was the 4500th time.  I don't know... I lost count. Anyway... During the movie, despite my having seen the movie more times than I've kissed my kids, and even though those kids were crawling all over me and generally trying their best to be a nui...

The majority of my coding life has been spent with two tools. PHP MySQL I don't claim to be a guru programmer, but the various professional problems which have been presented to me have always found their solution using these two tools. They're great tools. *sigh* Recently I've found out that Oracle owns both sleepy cat's db en...

Very interesting that they took the time to tell us that Ammon not only rehearsed what King Benjamin said to the Nephites, but that he then explained it to them that they might understand it.  Not sure why that struck me this time, but it did. (verse 3) According to verse 13, a man who can look into and see (and translate), is a seer.  ...

I just got done reading this article in which Dan Glickman states some figures on how the Hollywood box office did in 2007. With all of the cracking down and spazmic hooplah the RIAA / MPAA has been spewing, you'd think the figures quoted in this article would be something akin to "worst year ever, due to piracy!" or "box office s...

 Wow...  When I wrote this in March of 2009, "During this year, I both think and feel (logically and spiritually) I will be stretched more than I've been stretched in years.  This one's gonna be a toughy.  As for now, I feel anxiously optimistic.  Yup..  That about hits it on the head."  I had n...

Beginning this chapter, another testament to the correlation between peace and keeping God's commandments is apparent.  Giving "strict" heed to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel undoubtedly brings peace. Now, on a totally different note, I wonder where Korihor came from?  It just says that he came into the land.  Was ...

Ya know... I've now read this chapter twice, and I cannot remember a single thing I read.  I started journaling about the chapters of the Book of Mormon January 1, 2008 - as a resolution to write about each and every chapter of the book.  I'm not sure if I can make it through this chapter one more time!  I have no idea what's going o...

Well...  Our pumpkins this year were just so darned cute, I had to blog about em' - I mean, after all, this is my journal! So, without further ado, here are a few photos of the 2007 Jones Family Halloween Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza! ...

Ya know...  I sure would like to know what the politics of the time were back then.  Helaman's guard was able to single-handedly save the newly-appointed chief judge, by disguise, intellect, and ultimately a firm blade straight through the heart.  Yet, the account says nothing of telling anyone what was happening during the incident....

Ya know...  After reading this through, with the previous chapters I've read in mind, I think I'm understanding a bit more about what Abinadi is talking about. The wicked priests quote him the scripture in Isaiah which says that prophets are supposed to proclaim peace in order to basically tell Abinadi off, because he was definitely not proc...

The majority of my coding life has been spent with two tools. PHP MySQL I don't claim to be a guru programmer, but the various professional problems which have been presented to me have always found their solution using these two tools. They're great tools. *sigh* Recently I've found out that Oracle owns both sleepy cat's db en...

Okay...  So this chapter wasn't brimming with the deep doctrines of the Gospel, but it did have a few nuggets. I would absolutely love to see some sort of diagram of exactly what the Nephites did to build up their cities.  I have so many ideas in my head of what it could have been, but to what extent that's true, I have no idea.  I...