20May

The Last Day?

May 21 is Coming.

"I am worried at the ways in which so many North American Christians are wedded to particular views of the second coming and find this so dominant a question, while other central and vital areas of Christian, and Gospel, thinking are marginalized."
Bishop NT Wright

This has been an issue I've been paying attention to ever since I saw a segment on 60 Minutes about Christian Zionism back in 2003.

Posted in Religion

02May

Cheering in the Streets

Osama is dead, but there's no reason to cheer just yet.

Bring our men and women in uniform home so they can defend our borders and not the borders of Korea, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the hundreds of other places we have bases, end the Patriot Act that tramples on our civil liberties, bring back full habeas corpus, return the necessity of probable cause before wiretapping American citizens, allow us to take picture of government buildings without being hassled, let us fly from one city to another without being sexually assaulted or exposed to harmful radiation, and then I'll be cheering "USA" in the streets.

Written by Winston Baccus, Posted in Politics

25April

Senior High 1, 2010 Programs - Wednesday

Part 4 of the series, see the end of the article for other installments.

Wednesday

One of the advantages to having done programs for several years is that if something really works, after 4 years you can use it again because the campers turn over after 4 years.

This program was a modified version of one we did back in 2006. Again, the overall theme for the summer camps in 2010 was Faith Alive. So I had this progression of things that brought to mind for me. What is it we really believe in, what's the story? Getting that down was important, but the next part was to move into how to be ready to listen for when God calls to you.

Written by Winston Baccus, Posted in Religion

21April

iPad 2

It's probably not a surprise to anyone who knows me that I got an iPad 2.

I actually wasn't planning on getting one, I was going to wait for the iPad 3, but Jamie decided to surprise me on my birthday. Of course, she had no idea that they aren't exactly easy to get at the moment, tough I think that it's down to a 1-2 week wait now.

I lucked out and picked up one on my birthday by using http://ipad2tracker.com/ to check Target's stock. The one close to work just happened to be the only one around with 2 32 GB WiFi models.

Yes, I went for the WiFi model again. Most of the time I'm either at work or at home and when I need access on the go, I'll just use MyWi on the iPhone to tether. It doesn't make sense to pay the extra to get the 3G Access.

So, on to my thoughts on it.

Posted in Technology

27March

My Favorite OSX Add-Ons

Back in the pre-OSX days, my Mac was loaded up with extensions and control panels. You'd see this long march of them across the screen every time it started up.

The original Mac OS was mature (as in nearing the end of its life) and there were all kinds of useful hacks and add-ons that you could install. Of course, these add-ons had a detrimental affect on the stability of the OS, though you could count on the original Mac OS to crash at least once a day without any help at all. Ah...the good old days. (?)

Now that Mac OSX is more mature I'm seeing a similar march of icons, but this time in my toolbar. Fortunately, protected memory in a modern OS means that one program crashing usually doesn't bring down the whole system. I thought I'd take some time to highlight some of the tools that I use that I couldn't imagine using a Mac without.

Written by Winston Baccus, Posted in Technology