Christian Service Brigade

I really liked the article “Never use a Warning When you Mean Undo”.  The author makes a strong argument for thinking rather than business as usual…

http://alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning

Check out this article from the Washington Post.  I think the author has pulled some good insights together about our technolust.  I’m thankful I don’t have $$ for the iPhone because though I’ve been cell phone free for approx 5 years now… I think I’d go back for this toy — er need.

Here’s another case where people don’t know about the root of a cultural AND religious practice.

Check out http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/18/circumcision.decline.ap/index.html

Have you ever tried to backup a trailer?? Especially if you don’t do it much?  It’s rather hard since you have to think opposite of the way you typically would.  When your brain automatically tells you to move the steering wheel right, you really should turn the steering wheel left!!!  It occurred to me the other day (while backing up a trailer) that this was very much like the Christian life.  The natural sinful man is used to sinning and acting without thought… the walk with Christ is very intentional and requires operating outside the norm.  Backing a trailer and walking with Christ get easier with practice.  Often both involve assistance of our brothers or sisters too.

Nothing deep but it was the latest “physical lesson that has an parrallel spiritual truth.”

Out of Ur blog has an interesting blog about the church.  Check it out… it made me think about my church and how we should act.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/03/no_transformati.html

So, the specs are great… I worked hard to justify a Tablet vs a standard Dell laptop.   Were my expectations met?  Well, yes and no.  The Tablet PC hardware is worth a premium since it helps me do my work efficiently.  On the positive side, this machine is worthy of a desktop replacement.  It is driving (thanks to a Matrox DualHead2Go box) a three monitor display (LCD Screen - Tablet and two external 19″ monitors).  The fingerprint reader is slick and works as advertised.  The layout of the buttons, ports, etc is pretty well thought out.

Ok Steve but what about the negatives… what aspects does it not live up to expectations?  For starters, I thought the day-to-day performance was going to be outstanding with a dual core processor and a Gig of  RAM.  I was disappointed that it was no faster than my previous desktop that had a Pentium 4 processor and 2GB RAM.

(I’m working on getting another GB of RAM.)

The thing that most bothers me about the performance though is the mysterious pauses.  I’m a fairly savvy user (at least I think I am) and know to watch the processes, cut out unnecessary processes and software and check out the Task Manager as issues arise.  What I’ve learned is that even when no CPU cycles are being utilized, Virtual Memory is constant, RAM memory usage is constant, and network utilization is low to non-existant that the computer still pauses or experiences interruptions.  It’s as if a pause button is being pressed by some funny prankster around me…

That’s not so fun… I’m not the only Toshiba Portege M400 user to experience these issues so something is definitely going on.

For today, the last item I’ll say is that if interested in a Tablet PC — you’ve got to check out or buy Michael Linenberger’s book “Seize the Work Day: Using the Tablet PC to Take Total Control of Your Work and Meeting Day”.  It is one of the few books that successfully marries practical business use and geeky how to instructions.  He’s done the real world testing to make life better.

I’ll also mention here that GottaBeMobile.com  is another excellent resource for Tablet enthusiasts.

In future posts, I’ll talk about my personal Tablet PC — the HP Compaq TC4200.  That’s a computer my wife bought for my birthday last year.  I’ll also talk about a GREAT Microsoft product — OneNote in the near future.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 86% Fundamentalist 79% Reformed Evangelical 68% Neo orthodox 57% Charismatic/Pentecostal 57% Emergent/Postmodern 54% Classical Liberal 46% Roman Catholic 32% Modern Liberal 14%

What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

My brother blogged about this quiz… I thought it was interesting. We both have the same overriding result. Take the quiz, although it might make you think.

Hey all,

I wanted to give my assessment of the Tablet PC. The platform is fantastic. I think the concept is great and I am a mostly normal office user. I write contracts/subcontracts for my daily job.

I have a Toshiba Portege M400-S4032. The specs are great for this laptop/Tablet computer… Dual Core Centrino 1.83Ghz; 1GB Ram; 100GB Hard Drive. It has built in wireless, bluetooth and an EV-DO card. It has a card reader, built in DVD writer and a fingerprint scanner for security.

My office bought this for my use… so naturally I had no issue with that.  I’ve had the use of this computer since August 2006.

I’ll write more about my experiences soon…

Check out this 11 page NY Times Magazine feature “Darwin’s God”:
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

Published: March 4, 2007

In the world of evolutionary biology, the question is not whether God exists but why we believe in him. Is belief a helpful adaptation or an evolutionary accident?

I like the qualified language “In the world of…”, God says — For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. AND “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ Psalm 53:1

I was on the phone a few minutes ago with a friend… a mentee.  I was also on my computer (typical).  Using Gmail.

Have you noticed (those that have gmail) that it tries to help you with certain things like mapping and calendaring from content of email??  If not, check it out on the right.

WELL… as I was telling my mentee about my devotions this week I noticed on the right:

How cool is that??  Why not I figured… so I added this appointment to my Google Calendar.