There are so many reasons to love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Earlier today I was reading an article by Bill Maher about climate change. Effectively he bashed anyone who doesn’t believe in climate change and went on a triad about what he assumed the intelligence levels were of anyone who disagreed with his opinions. Personally, there were things I agreed with him on, and things I disagreed with him on. But what I really disliked was the tone: anger, hate, fear.

Later I was reading the news on CNN.com. I was reading about the two men who were caught in New York trying to board a plane to join a terrorist organization. And I made the mistake of reading the comments. What an amazing range of hate an anger. There’s the people who hate Muslims, the people who hate Arabs, the people who hate the Jews, the people who hate Americans, the people who hate Christians, the people who hate the people who hate Muslims, the people who hat the people who hate Arabs, the people who hate the people who hate Jews…you get the idea.

Finally I was reading Julie B. Beck’s talk from the last LDS General Conference. I’ve been trying to make it a point of reading General Conference talks as part of my daily scripture study. She speaks about the struggles of women and the importance or receiving spiritual guidance. But really, the topic is almost irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make. The point is the feel of her message: understanding, hope, faith, perseverance. Pick a General Conference topic. What would it be like if everyone spoke like that? Less fear, more hope; less hate, more love, less badgering, more imploring. I’m sure there are many people out there who certainly do not associate religion with love and kindness. All I know is that when I look at the media today, I feel a sense of despair. But when I read Gospel messages I feel like there is always hope, and always more we can do. Just think what we could accomplish of people just tried being nice to each other.

So I went to Barnes & Noble to look at some books on personal finance and buying a home. I learned several good things from a glance through some of the home books, including that I was glad I went to the book store before I went to the bank. This week I’ll submit a request for my credit score and look it over, make sure everything is kosher before approaching a bank about financing.

In addition I (as usual) broke down and purchased two books. The first is Women & Money by Suze Orman. The second is Crash Profits. I’ve started reading Orman’s book and one of the initial exercises is to write your own definition of a rich life.

I approached it by thinking about what I wanted to have accomplished by the end of my life. By the time I’ve died I hope I’ve read most of the classics and a great many modern books. I hope to have covered subjects on philosophy, politics, history, mathematics and sciences, and a good chunk of fiction, science fiction, and fantasy.

I hope to have built a family with someone. I hope to have been a parent to my children before a friend. And I hope to have put my spouse first and foremost in my life. I hope to raise my family in a nice home. Not necessarily nice because it was a big house in a superb neighbourhood, but because I was able to fix up a nice place and work hard in the community to create a good environment.

I hope to have taken plenty of time to play, both outdoors, and indoors. I hope I was creative and learned about how the world works. I hope to have built things, not necessarily world-changing things. Just little things that help me understand how things work.

I hope I never stopped learning. I don’t necessarily want to retire early, but I hope I found a job that was enjoyable enough that I’d want to keep doing it. And if not, I hope I had the luxury of trying something new and enjoying that for many years.

As far as finances go, I don’t manage them very well now because I’m afraid of them. I don’t manage them very well because finances are boring. If I were interested in finances I’d have become an accountant. I don’t want to spend my life worrying about finances. I hope I can learn enough in my studies now so that I can set up my finances to largely take care of themselves, with a little nurturing on occasion, like my scorpions. I check in on them, and make sure they have food and water. I give then good hiding places and try and make sure they are kept somewhere that’s warm but not too hot.

I don’t want to spend my life worrying about little things that can become big things. I’ve had the luxury at this point of keeping things fairly under control. I’m not in debt, I have a stable job, I save a good amount of my paycheck, though not as much as I’d like to be saving. But I also sort of skid by. I haven’t taken the steps that would make things even easier. I don’t have any investments and my savings account gives me pennies each month.

Next chapter.

New Year’s resolutions are ultimately just goals. For me, the trickiest part about goals is keeping them realistic. And I doubt it will happen here. But one thing I’ve noticed: while many goals are hard to stick with, if I can manage just one day in a few to pull everything off, I still feel pretty good about myself.

Organization:

• Room gets thoroughly cleaned at least once a month
• Vacuum every two weeks
• Clean bathroom every two weeks
• Go through clothes and get rid of what I’m not wearing regularly
• Organize all the papers
• …AND the filing cabinet

Finances:

• Have taxes done by end of February
• Live off $600 per month (occasional large expenditures OK, like trip to Louisiana, and possible down payment on a house)
• Keep up with Tithing, check at the end of each month
• Take a personal Finance course, learn good investment and plan for retirement.
• Pay gas and Utilities at least a week before they are due
• Find checkbook.

Spiritual:

• Read scriptures daily
• Work on praying twice a day
• Sunday School lessons done a week in advance
• Read at least one gospel book every two months.
• Temple trip at least once a month (preferably every two weeks).
• Work toward being endowed.

Physical:

• Karate at least twice a week.
• Yoga at least once a week.
• Rock climbing at least once a month.
• More biking and roller-blading in the summer.

Social:

• Write to friends and family more often.
• Don’t neglect my friends in town.

Computers:

• Sort through the data. Organize it and get rid of old stuff (remember the filing cabinet).
• Make external backups of everything.
• Work towards Network + Certification.
• Work towards LPIC certification.
• Set up proper home network with Samba.
• Learn home network security.
• Finish soldering serial port to router.
• Read a chapter of a computer book a day (a week if it’s more than 20 pages).

Education:

• Figure out a path to finally graduating.
• Read 4 books a month
• Work on math or sciences at least once a week.
• Just be constantly learning.

Some of these goals are more inportant to me than others. And as a vague goal I want to find the things that need to be a priority and work out a schedule for keeping up with them. Essentailly, I want to learn how to put first things first in my day. But I also want one of those priorities to be having a bit of fun each day, and recognizing what fun is. So, here’s the list, today we’ll start with that bedroom…

http://imagechan.com/images/7d9a0b8f43f9318649e150e6a0f8d466.jpg I go to this when work gets a little too tedious.

The Media Codecs are installed and my movies are playing beautifully. Whenever I do a major install or upgrade these days I look for advice from people who have been there and done that. The following link points to the website that helped me get quite a few things I was looking for:

http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/f9-tips.php

I didn’t add everything, no IE for this little machine. And in other news, while I was out poking about, I discovered that Fedoda 10 should be released in 4 days.  That’s always the way of it. Still, I like to wait at least a few weeks after a release comes out before doing upgrades on my major machines. So the install on the server is still on.

Now, October is probably my favorite month anyway, but so far I’m having a particularly good time. For starters, my best friend Matthew flew down from Oregon to spend the weekend with me. He arrived Thursday afternoon and I spent most of the evening cooking up a good meal for him. I want him to remember me every time he goes to Taco Bell and gets so much less. But the big plans were for Friday and Saturday. So Friday we hiked up to Stewart Falls. It’s a fairly mild hike, and Matthew took dozens of pictures. Most of them can be found here: http://flickr.com/photos/mattheww/sets/72157608186637435/ We also had dinner and did a movie with Gina and Ryan that night.

Plans to go to Bryce on Saturday fell through when we realized it was a 4 hour drive instead of 3 hour. But we had a good time sitting around watching Battlestar Galactica and heckling Kristen over her date. Then it was dinner and a Star Trek movie. I pick good friends.

After dropping Matthew of at the airport Sunday it was home for church and sleep. But Monday I got up in the early afternoon and went to buy a piano. Kristen and I brought it home that night and set it up. It’s been a big hit here at the apartment. I think Victoria has played it more than I have, but we had fun this afternoon playing “Heart and Soul” together. And to top it all off, I finally received the complete series of ” The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” Throw in the fact that Halloween is coming up and it’s no wonder this is my favorite month.

The Five Love Languages "The founder of Christian faith wanted love to be the distinguishing characteristic of His followers." (The Five Love Languages, 19)

by Gary Chapman

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis: Gary Chapman, a well-respected marriage councilor looks at love and marriage and addresses the problems that couples frequently face as soon as the honeymoon is over. He identifies Five Love Languages and their role in an individual’s ability to believe that he or she is loved. The five languages are:

Words of affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch

While Chapman declares these to be the five primary love languages, he does acknowledge that there are several dialects within each. He discusses ways to show your partner love in a language he or she will recognize, and argues that a lot of marriages may be failing, not due to the fact that love isn’t being shown, but due to the fact that love is not being shown in a way that your partner understands. For each language he identifies several dialects and gives ideas and techniques on how to show love to your partner in that language (learning how to “speak” your partner’s love language). He also discusses way to discover both your partner’s primary love language, as well as your own.

Review: You have to appreciate Chapman’s ability to keep it short, sweet, and to the point. With all the self-help and marriage counseling books out there, is it nice to find one that you can get through quickly, while still receiving excellent advise on how to improve, or even save your marriage.

As someone who is not married yet, and has enough trouble just with dating, I was particularly interested in what he had to say about love and courtship. Chapman states that “falling in love is not real love because it is effortless.” During the falling in love stage we frequently become obsessed with the other person to the point where anything we are asked to do for that person becomes effortless. Chapman notes that falling in love is more of an instinct that often drives us to do what he calls, outlandish and unnatural things for each other. At some point we come down off the emotional high, and return to the real world. At this point love becomes a choice that is concerned with the emotional well-being of our mate.

While Chapman’s theories on the five love languages ring very true, I still have some reservations about what he says. For example, he notes that one partner may have Words of Affirmation as their primary language, and that a frustrated spouse who constantly criticizes may in fact be doing a great deal of damage since the person is being directly attacked on the front that matters to them the most. This bothers me a bit. According to Chapman, not everyone will have Words of Affirmation be their primary love language. But Psychology today recognizes that one of the major forms of abuse is verbal abuse. I don’t think Words of Affirmation needs to be someone’s primary love language in order for them to be severely damaged by negative words from their partner. Chapman argues that if both partners have a full love tank they will be kinder to each other, but I would be very much interested in hearing more from him about integrating all the love languages into a relationship. One might be more important that others, but I don’t think anyone likes to be torn down verbally, even if it’s the least of their love languages. I was just very concerned about the concept that a person might give a mate who’s primary language is Physical Touch lots of love and affirmation in that area, but might still be nagging or abusive on other areas. Champan touches on this a bit, but I would have appreciated another chapter on how to interact with your spouse in all areas after having found their love language.

Still, overall, this is a very good book that I’ve already recommended to several people. The subject of happy marriages can be a bit touchy in a society with so much divorce and anger. It’s perhaps a sad testemant to all that is going on that as I read this book, I feel both optimiztic and enlightened, and worried that this might just be another fad that can’t really save the marriages around me. Still, concerning the primary idea of finding out how to express your love to your partner and making that effort to let them know that they are loved, I do believe that is an important step in itself towards building happier marriages and closer families.

I’ve been frustrated lately, again with my lack of progress in many areas of my life. But this weekend I did finally start getting a few things together. My bedroom is significantly cleaner. More importantly, it’s getting organized. Frequently cleaning for me is taking stacks of papers and putting them in a neat, tidy pile in a corner to “look through later.” Later rarely comes. It also frequently involves putting a lot of things away in a half-hazard manner that makes them difficult to get out and put away again later.

But thanks to a generous donation of shoe boxes from Victoria, I was able to get a lot of things nicely contained and stacked. That mostly involves boxing up computer cables, but there’s always a handful of knick-knack type stuff lying around that I’m not quite willing to toss, but that I don’t really want sitting out. That’s everything from small flashlights, tools, candles, mini electronic toys and parts, and some random odd stuff. Those also were thrown into a shoebox. That means much cleaner bookshelves. And I certainly need the space for the books instead.

Speaking of books, Kristen and I have been going over plans for building another bookcase. I should have the necessary tools as long as Lowes or Home Depot are willing to do a few of the major cuts for me. The new bookcase will be almost 6′ tall, that will take a lot of pressure off my existing bookcase in my bedroom. I’m also moving my DVD stand out here, which will free up more space in my room. I’m going to need that space in order to expand my desk. I plan on attaching a large board to my small bookcase and a table to give myself more working room.

All this will hopefully allow me to concentrate enough on the other things I’m working on, like C, Python, and Ruby programming. The space will also allow me to start on the bookcase since it wouldn’t be fair to have the mess elsewhere in our small apartment before it is complete.

Other accomplishments include getting the oil changed in the car, backing up one of my machines for upgrade, and diving 40′ under water without the aid of SCUBA gear. That last part was during some down time on Friday when Tim and I went to visit The Crater in Midway. I like diving down and waving at the people in SCUBA lessons. The water is about 65 feet deep total. My goal is to make it all the way down one of these days. As it is, I had Tim a bit scared when I disappeared from view and didn’t come up for a moment.

So goals for this week include a temple trip, getting the mythbox back up and running in time for General Conference, having my desk expansion put together, homework and programming, and more progress on getting the room cleaned.

So I got into work tonight and noticed something right off. My login screen was different. Behind me, Brett called out a congratulations. The box was different, the prompt was different, and I was not happy. I tried to login but was denied. So I went to Brett and asked him what he’d done to my computer. At this he looked rather confused. I went back and rebooted the thing and sure enough, GRUB had nothing but Ubuntu. I was not happy at all, and getting vocal about it. About this time Craig poked his head around and also said, congratulations. I pointed out the splash screen and again noted that I was not happy. Arg! Slash screen, how useless is that?

About this time Tim came over to congratulate me. At this point I was finally cluing into the fact that they didn’t mean the computer. After all, Tim at least knows that I hate Ubuntu and love having root access on my Fedora box. Turns out I got a promotion at work, but seeing as how I couldn’t get to my email, I had no idea. So the sad thing is, I have increased in rank and yet, lost privileges. Apparently the Fedora box was acting up earlier today, and when my desk-mate complained to the admins, they brought in one of the test Ubuntu boxes. I not only lack root access, nothing works. Pidgin has a tendency to crash, I can’t customize my themes and desktop, and I even had trouble logging out. I had to open a terminal and run pkill to get rid of myself.

Still, I’m very happy about the promotion. It’s one step closer to doing what I really want to do, which is be an admin. And at long last I no longer need to go to an L2 to get a DNS change done.

I actually made these just before going to Hawaii. One of my co-workers was on a demotivator kick and I was a bit disappointed with most of the Doctor Who ones I saw. So I made my own.