Confrontation and contention has always been an interesting thing for me.  For one, I hate it and I don't know how to deal with it.  I'm a passionate person in every sense of the word.  The moment I feel like I'm being attacked, it's everything I have to do to keep my head level and my blood from boiling.  Unfortunately, this ke...

The first thing that stood out to me this time around was the anger of Lamoni's father.  Try to place yourself in the situation Lamoni found himself in.  There are so many variables in the situation, it's hard to imagine exactly what was going on with the family undercurrents, but holy cow.  Lamoni's father drew his freaking sword an...

One thing that comes to mind while reading the first verses of this chapter is, "If I were a queen, and my servants brought me my unconscious husband, I'd immediately want to know who did it." - and Ammon did it.  That doesn't make much sense to me.  Obviously the times of the Book of Mormon were , uh, different, so that could e...

It's been awhile since I continued on in my quest to read and write about each and every chapter in the Book of Mormon, but, I'm still at it!  I'm gonna finish!  Here's Alma 18: The first thing I notice this time around is something I don't think I've ever noticed before. In order to feel badly about doing something, you have to at le...

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'...

Lately, I've been getting a lot of feedback concerning lost entries from I Love My Journal.  Occasionally, I would even lose one myself. The session timer for ILoveMyJournal.com is set to 2 hours, which means that you can stay logged in to the stie for 2 hours without being logged out due to inactivity. I initially thought was long enough,...

I've been debating on whether or not to write about this, and if I write about it, whether or not to make it public. Well... As you can see, I decided to make it public.  and to write about it. I came to work two days ago with the intent on working on the last of the original PHP projects still having a chance on making it through the me...

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...

Well...  Yesterday, a friend of mine had told me he had the privilege of being formally taught how to tune a snare drum. I read what he had to say (he posted it on facebook, so if you're not his friend, I imagine you can't read it, but here's the link anyway) So, today, I went and investigated a bit of whether I could get the proper tool...

The beginning of this chapter is one of my favorites.  I love verse 2 and 3. True friendship, at least in my case, is always born of spiritual origin.  The friends I've had that have lasted have always had a solid spiritual foundation.  And yes... Finding that old friends have kept the faith and increased in the knowledge of the Lo...

It is quite refreshing to note the surety with which President Eyring states the following: "First, the very fact that you have been offered the oath and covenant is evidence that God has chosen you, knowing your power and capacity. He has known you since you were with Him in the spirit world. With His foreknowledge of your strength, He has ...

The first thing I thought of when I read this chapter, besides, "Holy moly, it's like almost midnight and I'm gonna dive into Jacob 5??", was the following: In Jacob 4:1, he states how hard it was for them to keep plates, due to the difficulty in engraving.  Well....  With that in mind, I asked myself, "How important is J...

IT IS SO CRAZY I LEFT HOME TODAY WITH NO REGRET AND NO BAD THOUGHTS EXCEPT THAT I LEFT MY BOYFRIEND AT HOME WITH MY GOOD FRIEND. I TRUST BOTH OF THEM SO I THINK EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. I AM REALLY LOVING THIS MONI VIE DRINK IT MAKES ME FEEL AWAKE EVERYMORNING. DEAR LORD BE WITH MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY, PRAY FOR THEIR WEALTH AND STRENGTH THROUGH ANY ...

The studio walls are up!  ... and they are ... HUGE!  Honestly the level of excitement I have for this studio build is right up there with the excitement of my marriage and the births of my children.  I can't believe this is actually happening! Anyway.... I'll be posting more random updates on Facebook (which will link to publi...

Interesting that in verse 7, the example he uses of an unrighteous king pretty much parallels what happened to the Nephites in the Land of Nephi under king Noah.  Couldn't have been many years since the people of Limhi had come to join Zarahemla, anyway.  I've never thought of that before. Verse 13 is always a fun one.  It's great ...

As I read this chapter, I found the question in my head, "why was Nephi prompted to put Isaiah in here?" One thing I'm noticing in this chapter and the last, is the writing style of Isaiah is quite starkly contrasted against the writing of Nephi.  It's wildly poetic. I enjoyed this chapter as much as I did the last.  I didn'...

This past Thursday, we finally decided to rip it up.  I mean, literally - rip it up. Then, we decided to take it out the backyard to see what the heck was clogging it all up. It was just as we suspected.  Collin had flushed a freaking toy cell-phone down our toilet! and yes, we took the toilet out in the backyard, twisted it, turned it...

It's chapters like these that get me thinking about the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ and the "end of the world".  Reason is, is that this chapter happens just a few years before the 1st coming of Christ.  For some reason I analyze these chapters to death, and each time I do, I find more things that seem to parallel what may (or ma...

Last spring, I modified my car - and then modified it again. The 2nd modifications entailed me re-programming (or flashing, or tuning) my car's computer.  One thing I didn't realize at the time was that evidently, a standard protocol for most tuners out there is to turn off the O2 sensors which monitor emissions after the catalytic converter...

I don't even know where to begin on this one.  Maybe I'll start by screaming in frustration due to Microsoft's complete incompetence.....  or is it incompetence?  Maybe, and more likely, it's completely calculated, thought-through, planned, and executed.... Apparently, Microsoft sent out an "automatic update" to all XP a...

Some quotes from the talk I found quite inspiring: Are we consciously creating righteous traditions, or is life just happening to us? Are our traditions being created in response to the loud voices of the world, or are they influenced by the still, small voice of the Spirit? Are the traditions that we are creating in our families going to make i...

 So, last weekend I had the pleasure of recording a few tunes for an upcoming independent film (more details to follow as the project continues, I'm sure), and in these situations, I just never know what to expect. In this case, I don't think I could have been more blessed.  I had the pleasure of meeting Kraig Jacobson, and recording an...

Today at work, I happened to stumble upon a blog which I've never read, or heard of.  This is a shame because this blog happens to belong to a person who is very important in my life.  A person I've never spoken to, met, seen, or otherwise had any contact with at all. His name is Daniel Robbins (drobbins). Daniel Robbins created gentoo ...

Someone of spiritual authority once told me that anyone who read the book of Enos, and marked his scriptures based on importance, would have the entire book of Enos highlighted. After reading it this morning, I can see why. The first thing that hit me was the phrase, and my father "taught me in his language".  If we read the fi...

So, last night we finished recording the first two songs from a band called Fatigi.  One of the best recording sessions ever. So, on Tuesday evening, Adam, Christian, and Robert came in, with drums in hand, ready to get to work. We tracked drums first, which, for my studio, is rare - mostly because drums can get monotonous with nothing b...

The first verse which caught me in the reading of the last half of 2nd Nephi 9 was verse 39. The question came to mind:  "Why would God need to have us "remember" the awfulness of sin?" ...  Well...  The answer is quite simple, really.  Because Satan laces all sorts of lies within the temptation of sin.&nbs...

I just finished putting my 5-year-old and my 3-year-old to bed. Earlier today, they both went to the dentist to have a check-up, and for Luci, it was a semi-traumatic experience.  She did really good, but at one point, she was seriously distraught about this gun-looking thing which sprayed water everywhere, and the vacuum they were going to ...

During last month's testimony meeting, our wonderful Luci whispered into Sarah's ear, as the church members were expressing their feelings about Christ, that she really didn't want to go up there.  It was totally unprovoked, but as she is somewhat frightened of unfamiliar situations, was totally understandable. We told her that it was okay ...

I just arrived home from a most splendid 3-hour church meeting. Yesterday morning I got a call from the elders' quorum president, in which he asked me to teach the priesthood lesson today.  I said yes, and got the information I needed to teach. The lesson was on "Obedience Born of Faith in God".  Well...  I spent about 5 ...

Man...  When, at the beginning of this year, I wrote that 2009 was gonna be a doozie, I didn't know the half of it. After having been employed for only a month, two days ago, Monday, at 5:00pm, my superior came in to my office and told me, with a red face, that they had to let me go.  The red face was undoubtedly due to the fact that nob...