It's raining outside. ...and I love it. Today was pretty much wonderful from the beginning to the end.  I don't have as much time as I would like to express myself here and now, so I pray my fingers will be fast! Amidst all the stress going on in my life right now, today was definitely a day given to me as a gift.  Possibly to do no...

Okay.  I've used various verses from this chapter to prove that we had agency in the pre-earth life, but now I'm questioning myself.  Here's the basis: Verse 3 says this: And this is the manner after which they were ordained—being acalled and bprepared from the cfoundation of the world according to the dforeknowledge of God, on ...

Well i just barely made my very first blog, and this is my very first entry.  So my day was school pretty much (sigh). And then i went onto my facebook account and invited myself over to my friend Jakes house. And what we did there was play a wicked game of Star Wars Battlefront Greatest Hits. I didnt do so well because i had a lot of stuff on...

I've recently become part of a cover band and we're getting to the point now where we need to choose a name.  None of us can agree, so we need your help.  We currently have a pool of about 100 possible names, and you can vote on any or all of them by clicking here. So far, our set list is the following: With or without you ...

Okay...  Since I had recently returned from my mission in 1996, I knew I wanted to learn how to record music.  Recording music swiftly turned into wanting to be able to record my drums.  A couple of years ago, I was able to put enough money away to buy a load of recording equipment for my drums. I've recorded quite a few diddies in...

I have written quite a bit about this chapter during previous years' studies.  To begin, I noticed this time that it is by the "spirit of prophecy" that Zeezrom's thoughts are made known to Alma and Amulek. I also noticed that during the buffeting these prophets delivered to Zeezrom, not one attack was personal.  They were sim...

Last night, the temperature dropped down to right around 0 degrees fahrenheit.  When I woke up and was almost to work, I almost hit the car in front of me.  No, I'm not a poor driver... It's just that with it being so cold, there was literally about a half an inch of frost which had gathered on.... pretty much anything left outside. ...

I've gotta ask.  Well, before I do, let me preface the question with the scripture found in 1st Nephi 19.  Nephi says he won't write anything unless he thinks it's sacred.  Assuming that the prophets after Mosiah thought the same thing, I've gotta ask.  Why are verses 1 through 19 even here?  I know the Book of Mormon is tr...

Interesting that in verses 22 and 23, Amulek states that if they got rid of the righteous, they would ultimately be destroyed.  That's a sad prophecy, which unfortunately comes true.  They not only got rid of the righteous, they killed them - and swift was the judgement of God upon this whole city. That's it for this chapter....

Okay...  I remember having read this awhile ago and cross-referencing Alma 16:10 about the destruction of the city of Ammonihah in one day, but I didn't remember that it wasn't a prophet who said that.  It was one of the non-believers.  One of the people who was trying to refute what Alma was talking about up and said, "yo,...

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...

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, ...

 So, I thought I'd write something down that happened today. For those of you who know me, I'm a pretty laid-back, easy-going type of guy. My wife and I went to sleep quite late, mostly because we couldn't stop talking and laughing with one another (not an uncommon occurrence, unfortunately), and also unfortunately, we were woken up early ...

Continuing in the tradition of weekly fasting, church this week was very enlightening.  Sarah and I decided to go to a new "marriage and family" class instead of the usual gospel doctrine lesson, and I'm quite glad we made that decision. Lately, temple worthiness hasn't meant much to me.  There's more to that story, but that's...

Man...  11 straight hours of tracking can sure be....... FUN!  Yup...  Herod the Fink is still on schedule, and after yesterday's session, I can say the end product is gonna be something you've never heard in a Christmas album before, guaranteed. To give you an idea of what was recorded yesterday, the title of one of the songs we ...

Ho hum. Yesterday I decided to go to Ryan's house to spend some quality time with my brother, and my wife had a cow about it.  I don't understand what the deal is, but whenever I need some "Jason" time, more often than not, I end up taking it at the expense of marrital comfort.  That irritates me.  However!  All is n...

I upgraded all of my boxen yesterday, including my main server (which now has successfully become my slowest machine).  As you probably know, I run gentoo on everything. When I built my mythtv-based home-theater in my basement about 2 years ago, I spent about 2 months configuring my server to handle everything I needed it to.  I didn't d...

Man, something must be up with the ward I attend, because even though I've been going to the same ward for the last 3 years, the past 6 weeks have been..... very spiritually nourishing. I'm not saying that until then, it wasn't wonderful, but I've never loved going to church as much as I have during the past 6 weeks.  It's weird.  I'm ...

Wow... Ok... On Saturday, I played hooky yet AGAIN from work. I know I shouldn't have, but I was going to miss an excursion up to a cave in Auburn, CA with 20 other awesome people. I gave it some thought, and I figured that this would probably be my only opportunity to get to go in this situation, so... I went. I had a WONDERFUL time.. I saw...

Chapter 22 was another toughy, but I figure I'm gonna better my life if I read and am only able to type a tiny bit, rather than not read at all. I guess my brain is still getting over this sickness, because I find it difficult to do any critical thinking.  Anyway... I found it interesting the bit about "more are the children of the de...

Hmm....  I can't help but contrast a note like this one being sent between friends today.  Holy cow. If I were to send a message like this to any one of my friends (Pahoran was a good man, and a friend to captain Moroni), I'm fairly sure I would at very least offend them to the point of damaging the friendship, and at most, cause them t...

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...

One sore spot of AdvancedBudgetStudios was the very, very cheap preamps we've been using.   Well, after much searching, digging, late nights, and crawling through the Internet on my hands and knees, I came upon the deal of a lifetime.  Yup..  I found a brand-spankin' new "Focusrite Octopre Platinum" which we will be ad...

I decided to get back into reading the scriptures now that I've finished the last conference talks. This has nothing to do with Mosiah 3, but one thing I neglected to write about was the last gospel doctrine class I attended.  Our wonderful teacher, Ryan Anderson taught again, and made a wonderful parallel out of Amalickiah and Satan. We...

Well, I'm happy to announce that after a month and a half of jumping through hoopes to get this thing off the ground, it has finally begun! The construction of the new home for Advanced Budget Studios has officially started, and I cannot tell you how excited I am. The only down part of this whole situation is - the waiting.  I anticipate t...

"How have you been changed by knowing the Godhead?" To be honest, I don't think I would recognize myself without the relationship I have with God, through prayer, with Christ through his atonement, and with the Holy Ghost's comfort and guidance. Knowing the Godhead,to me, means that I have an incredible force behind my righteous choic...

The golden rule seems to have come out of this chapter. The first thing that caught my attention in this chapter is the possible meaning of verses 4 and 5.  the "mote in thy brother's eye" verses.  Some people would interpret this as "live and let live", or "worry about yourself, not others".   To...

Man... I'm so tired right now, but I've just gotta write about this. Tonight was the first show Jesse and I put on in the little "House Concert" tour we're going on. It was very low-key, but when the time came to play, the people just kept pouring in.  At the end of the show was the only time I had the sense to count how many peo...

My last place of employment had a large amount of data being imported from multiple companies on a daily basis which was then imported into a database and processed throughout the company. I was the lucky guy who got to write the application which imported all of the data from as many as 10 different locations daily. Having never directly dealt...

Ya know...  I'm not the best coder in the world, and I'm not the geekiest of geeks, either.  I personally know quite a few people who would classify me as a "mutt coder", because I really don't care too much about code purity. I'm not quite sure what in me makes me that way, but it's true.  Maybe it's because I learned p...