Okay..  I've never thought of this before, but, how convenient do you think it was for Samuel to climb up on a wall, built around a city most likely to keep people out?  Yeah, I don't think it could have been that easy.  How often do we find any reason at all to get out of doing what God wants us to do?  Well, God told Samuel he...

So two days ago, I found myself on the same stage with the same band I've been with for the past 5 (or so) years, playing pretty much the same songs. Except, this time, something was different.  As I walked around looking at all of the awesome vehicles on the grounds, there was just something wonderful.  I have no idea how to describe i...

Anyone who knows what Helaman 12 is all about is probably wondering how in the world I could label this chapter as "Happiness".  hehe... Yesterday, I was having a very interesting conversation about happiness with a dear friend of mine, and oddly enough, today's chapter was Helaman 12, which of course, talks all about the frailties...

Amazing...  It's almost unbelievable that in the space of less than 13 years, a whole nation can go from being wicked, to almost dying of hunger, to becoming incredibly righteous and prosperous, and then coming back to being so wicked that the combined armies of the Nephites and Lamanites can't defeat the wicked part of the people. I've bee...

So, a few weeks ago, the studio acquired a Jackson electric guitar and didn't really have any experience with it.  So a good friend and client of the studio came in and messed around a bit with it, and using a great dual-mic technique to get the most out of the amp, we managed to get a very, very nice guitar tone out of it. Soon, it will be ...

So, due to the success we've been having with the studio, we were able to upgrade our two in-studio guitars.  We bought a new black Crafter acoustic guitar, which sounds just awesome.  One of the new Herod The Fink tunes will feature the Crafter, and we're excited to get a final mix to see how it sits within the music. We also bought a ...

Amazing.  A couple of chapters ago, I was commenting on the sad state which Nephi found himself in, and the amazing faith he must have had to remain in a state of faithfulness to God, when everyone around him was wicked. I guess that's the way it goes.  God tries us to our breaking point, careful not to give us trials beyond our capabil...

Seems that the testimony of Nephi against the people of Zarahemlah was centered around their disbelief in Christ.  Interesting that, as soon a Satan has control over a people, Christ is the first doctrine which is attacked. Also the story of the finding of the murderer of Seezoram is interesting through the eyes of the foreknowledge of God.&...

Hey Guys, Okay so its been a really really long time since I last wrote anything.  I just recently remembered my password and that is a really big part of my reason for not writing.  I know this is suppose to be like a diary (right or wrong?), but I would perfer to think that its more of a letter to a best friend (hope that don't sound ...

So...  I remember Nephi coming back to his own people and seeing them in a state of wickedness, but I didn't remember that he had just been on a mission where everyone in the land northward rejected his word, too.  That would be an incredible test of faith in an of itself.  Only the most stalwart followers of God, in my view, could t...

Ever since I built my first computer with a K6-2 200MHZ processor back in 1998, I've never looked back.  I've been an AMD guy my whole computing career. Recently, AMD has been having some tough times with their processors, and understandably, people haven't been buying their stuff as much. For what it's worth, I definitely had my doubts ...

Hehe....  I love it when I learn new stuff about Springville. I had no idea that there existed a place in Springville that was absolutely perfect for racing.  Now we're talking 0-80 MPH racing in a straight line.  Nothing curvy or anything like that.  So... Anyway... My co-worker, Steve comes into my office (or rather, the...

I was recently reading this article about yet another virus which affects Microsoft.  In reading it, some of the comments below stated such things like, "The patch was already released, so just run your auto-updater and be done with it!".  Seems logical, right? Yeah... Actually, it does.  The exact same mechanism exists ...

So, the very first thing which came to mind this time around was from the first verse.  Ether seemed to be a fairly amazing person and a great prophet.  So... How did he get to be that way?  I'd love to hear the story of Ether's conversion - especially considering the environment he grew up in - being born in captivity.  Interes...

Before I even begin reading this one, I've gotta say that 2nd Nephi 2 is one of the power-doctrine chapters.  I'll be surprised if I can get through reading this today. Verse 2 contains an interesting phrase:  Consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.  This brings to mind quite a few cross-references, but can you imagine how much...

 So, this chapter was a bit like the last, only worse.  Blood, carnage, war, and death throughout pretty much every verse. One of the beginning verses, though, caught my attention.  The one that says that people couldn't go to sleep at night, without losing their treasures, even to the point where they had to sleep with weapons to ...

Today I anticipated changing the clutch on Ryan's 1995 Mustang GT for about 3 hours.  I got up at 7:30 to do it, and I'm writing this about 2 hours after we finished.  Needless to say, it was an all-day adventure - and holy cow, were we dirty. I didn't have the sense to take a picture of both of us before I took a shower, but I did of ...

I find it interesting how Satan is described throughout scripture. In this chapter, through verses 13 - 20, Satan is seemingly exposed as the weak fraudster he really is.  Verse 16 is quite potent, written from the standpoint of people who were tempted by him, when shown his actual person, are amazed at the frailness of Satan.  They say...

My mom Is the best mom in the world. My mom is a super woman to me. We used to live in the hood .I really loved it but now we are out of the hood im not mad but my mom tried.And Im so proud of her . Now we are moving on to bigger and better things. My mom is a beautician. I love you mom forever and ever. ...

 So, today's entry is going to be a bit less, but I still was able to see God's hand in my life quite a bit. I had a late studio session to tend to, but I had felt horrible all day long...  I prayed that I would be able to have a great session, and it went really well.  Everything that needed to happen, happened, and nothing too t...

Alright... This is insane. On Friday (2 days ago), we were here in California, and my cell phone was in the van. Unbeknownst to me, Andrea Clifford from Natures Way called around 11:00am, telling me that they were done with the 2nd-round interviews and wanted to talk to me concerning the web developer position. I got that message around 4:20....

I just got done making the video for this entry, so take a look if you've got a high speed Internet connection. Today was the 2nd day of the Ed Roth Memorial Reunion held in Manti, UT. There were finksters-a-plenty there on Friday, but even more on Saturday.  I lost count of how many Rat Finks I saw. So, because the days were packed, ...

I read Alma 34 two days ago, and haven't written about it.  I hate it when I don't have time to write about the scriptures when I read them, because each time I read them, I feel something different about different portions of the scripture.  Ah, well..  I'll read it again and see what happens this time. Right out of the gate, Amul...

Ya know...  I thought that with 4.5 hours of sleep last night, I'd feel a heckuva lot sleepier than I do.  I guess miracles do happen. Since our wonderful Samuel was born, my wife and I have been getting considerably less sleep than we otherwise would.  This is to be expected; it comes with the whole package of parenthood. I ha...

Three things stood out at me during tonight's study session: 1. I wonder where the translation of the plates of Lehi are right now?  I've never read the history of the Chuch, so I don't know if it's documented there, but Joseph Smith had them, and had them returned to him after he lost them.  Did he destroy them?  Are they somewhe...

 So, I used to use the -dumpaudio switch in mplayer to get audio extracted from random videos, but now that seems to do not much of anything.  I found this site which had a great explanation of how to get it done a different way, but was a bit out of date.  The newer version is found below: mplayer -vo null -ao pcm:file=audio_file_...

 So, if you don't know already, I have been one of two people obnoxiously pushing a kickstarter campaign for the last 3 weeks. The newly formed duo (Me, and Jesse Crowley) called "Tiny Boats" has been working on their debut album since early March of this year. Tiny Boats' music could be classified as the energetic...

Hmmm....  It's hard to write about something so wonderful when I'm not in the mood...  But I've found that when I feel like "blah", and I write about something wonderful, I usually am feeling closer to wonderful when I'm done... So, here goes. First off, I'm at work, so I don't have any pictures, but I'll update it when I get...

*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...

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...