Alligator, anyone?

I was just perusing the various Alabama licensing requirements and fees, possibly going to renew a fishing license, and noticed this (yes, I know the following "list" is poorly formatted; get over it- I'm in a hurry!):

• Alligator Farm: $1,000.00
  
• -- Allows residents to engage in business of raising alligators for restocking, propagation, and other commercial purposes.
• Alligator Parts Dealer: $100.00
• -- Allows residents to deal in alligator parts and to buy partsfrom an alligator farmer for the purpose of reselling or manufacturing.
• Alligator Retailer: $5.00
• -- Allows residents to purchase alligator parts and sell canned alligator parts and allows restaurant to sell alligator meat for consumption.

Ok then... never knew that.  Guess it's good information in case I want to start working in the Alligator farming/trading field, eh?

Weird: I already have a label for "alligators"... when did I post on that before?  I may have to go re-read some of my old blog posts!

Missing Post

I'd sent a post from my phone last night, but apparently it's lost in interneverland somewhere.

Oh well.

My wife just asked, "Are you so hungry that you'd rather have instant potatoes than having to wait on home-made mashed potatoes?"

Argh... an unanswerable question... 

Textual editing applications - and the problem with Christian radio

Ever notice that Christian radio stations (OK, how exactly a radio station becomes a follower of Christ I'm not quite sure... but that's what they're generally called, I think) is that they don't fit any particular genre of music other than (vaguely) Christian.  For instance, in four back-to-back songs you might run the gamut of hard rock, pop, country, and R&B/Hip-hop/rap (yeah, I may be grouping those last incorrectly).  What other radio station ever would play such a mix?  I dare say on a secular station you're not going to hear country, hip-hop, and hard rock in consecutive - or even well-spaced-out - blocks.  Yet we do it on our single "contemporary Christian music" station.

Weird.  And I don't really like most "country Christian music" (I'm not talking gospel or southern gospel - that's a different thing altogether).  Like, for instance, Natalie Grant... I have to say I'm not very fond of most things I've heard of hers.  It's all so depressing... and that's not quite what the Jesus I know wanted for us ("My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life" - Jesus, in John 10:10, NLT).  To me the song "Held" ... wait, I'm not going there.  I know that song means different things to different people, and I don't want to mess it up for you if you like it.  (If you want to know what I think about it, please ask me personally - my e-mail's around here somewhere.)  Anyway, in short, I'm not a Natalie Grant fan.  I'm also generally not a Christian Rap or hip-hop fan, although I do like Toby Mac and (the former) DC Talk.  And I did have a tape of the Rap-Sures once upon a time ("OT Rap" ... "Joseph's Coat of Many Colors" ... etc.).  But my point is this: why don't we have categorized Christian Radio?  (I think I can hear someone vaguely whispering "satellite radio... satellite radio...")

Now for the other portion of the title of this post.  I was regaling a coworker today of my distaste for Microsoft's Visual Studio's code editor's design which does NOT reposition the cursor to the point of undo/redo when CTRL+Z or CTRL+SHIFT+Z is pressed.  I mentioned how much I like to use that feature in other textual editing applications to restore my position to where I last was editing (by undoing and then re-doing whatever my last edit was in order to reposition the cursor... and Visual Studio's code editor doesn't do that - it does the undo/redo, but doesn't even bother to scroll you to where the undo/redo is taking place so you can see what's going on! and when you have hundreds or thousands of lines of code and have jumped to another place in the file in order to see what subroutine abc() does and then want to get back to where you were editing... well, it would be nice if the undo/redo trick worked).  He said, "textual editing application? really?"

Yes, really.  I explained myself: I wasn't talking about a simple text editor (such as Notepad), which is a textual editing application.  I typically was referring to something like Microsoft Word, which is a textual editing application, but it isn't a text editor.  In fact, the documents you are editing - while editing text - are usually not text documents, but Word documents.  And, in fact, if you ever took a look at the file in a real text editor, you'll see that it's not really text that you're editing.  Thus, the moniker "textual editing application" was, in fact, more accurate than "text editor" - even though it does sound a bit strange.  But I like it.  One of my favorite textual editing applications is the open-source Notepad++; it's a significant improvement over standard Notepad (although I do still use that often for quick things, usually stuff like copy/paste where I want to remove formatting from a web site before pasting into a blog post or for things like keeping track of something that I need to do - like a post-it note for my computer, it's much quicker (for me) than trying to get to the sticky notes included in Outlook - the Windows key + R opens the "run" dialog and then I type "notepad" and press enter... wala, it's there!).  Notepad++ is a great, extensible (means "you can extend it") editor that can handle formatting for a variety of languages/files (XML, various programming languages, SQL, HTML, etc.; it evens handles text files!).  But a "text editor" it isn't - it's so much more.

...

So, I guess I've caved on the American Idol thing.  It's in its 8th season, so it's about time that I started liking the show.  I rarely like anything when it first comes out, instead waiting usually until it's only in reruns before I start watching it (like I did with Star Trek: The Next Generation).  I doubt AI will resurface in reruns (well, on mainstream channels... with the advent of quadruple-digit numbers of channels in cable/satellite land, it's bound to end up in reruns somewhere, but what's the point?), so I'll have to start watching it now.  Sort of like Survivor - I skipped the first few seasons, but I like the show now.  On the other hand, Heroes is one I've liked since it premiered (Noah Bennet is my favorite character; Hiro Nakamura is second; Daphne is probably third, or possibly Sylar; my least favorite? Peter Petrelli, Claire Bennet, and probably Matt Parkman).

Ah, well, guess that's enough for this post.  Until later... a topato!

Thoughts. Real ones.

We were reading tonight in 1st Peter, chapter two (I've started a nightly Bible reading with the family... it's awesome! Not really a Bible study, although sometimes we discuss what we've read, instead just letting God's powerful, awesome Word do its thing in our family; we've been reading out of "The Message (Remix)" as it seems to be an easy-to-read version for the variety of ages of our family - almost "Word Light" so to speak).  Anyway... onto the thoughts.

Well, not specifically related to the sequential reading (warning: jumbled thoughts may be on the verge of escaping my cranium through my fingertips!), we discussed (over the last couple of nights) cups.  From an evening sermon illustration our pastor relayed, if your "cup" (that is you, your vessel) is filled with junk, like pens, it's awfully hard to fill it with God's spirit (like a cup full of pens or Mardi Gras beads is hard to FILL with water).  Further, if your cup is "bumped" by someone during the course of the day, what is it that spills out onto that person?  Is it flaming acid (I know, acid probably doesn't actually burn; or does it? been too long since I studied chemistry!), or is it the holy, refreshing water of God's spirit?  Further still, the "filling" of the cup isn't something you can do - you just empty the cup and then immerse it under the flowing stream of God's spirit until it overflows.  And you need to keep filling it daily so that you can keep overflowing onto everyone who bumps you each day.

And how do you know that you're filled with the Spirit?  Galatians 5:22-23.  Yep, the fruit of the spirit... that's the evidence that your vessel is filled with the Spirit.  And what if something else comes out when you're bumped?  Well, you can't really blame the person who bumped you for what you've put into your vessel.

Anyway... back to the reading of 1 Peter 2 (that's 1st Peter, chapter 2).  From vs 1-3:

"So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk."

Now, let's think a little further... like over in Romans 12:19-21:

 17-19Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

 20-21Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

So... if someone affronts you, and you "get even," guess what?  You're putting yourself in GOD's position!  Wow... self-idolatry.  Not so good, eh?  In fact, this is what got us all in trouble in the first place... the origin of sin: pride, wanting to put ourselves in the place of God.  It happened in Eden (silly woman! heh-heh, I know, I know...).  It happened in my life (yes, really), and it happened in yours (yes, really).  After all, the person affronting you isn't really sinning against you - (s)he's sinning against God.

Disagree?  What about David's confession in Psalm 51, where he says (in one way or another depending on your version), "Against you, you only, have I sinned" - that is, his sin was against God.  What sin?  Adultery, murder, lying, conspiracy... his sin affected him (his relationship with God, among other things), Bathsheba (the affair, murder of her husband), Uriah (he died, essentially - though not quite physically - by David's own hand), his entire nation (he had to lie to cover up the truth), Nathan the prophet (poor guy had to take time out of his day to go to visit the king and, after that, had to tell the king, the guy with all the power, "hey, dummy..." - yeah, yeah, I know, God's really the one with all the power - Nathan didn't fear David, but it still was time out of his day)... David's sin affected (in a negative way) lots of people, but the sin was against God alone.

So, when someone's sin affects you, that doesn't necessarily mean the sin is against you, and regardless, it's God's job to do the "getting even" - not yours.  In fact, it's actually sin when you do the getting even - sin of disobedience, sin of idolatry (you're putting yourself in God's place), sin of pride, sin of not loving your neighbor...

So, there you go... some thoughts.  I think I'd never thought about the "getting even" in this way, that you're putting yourself in God's place, which is (essentially) the root of all sin.

Wait... that's not all!  Stay tuned and you'll get even more thoughts!  About this whole "putting ourselves in God's place" thing... well, because we did that, then God had to put himself in our place (via coming in the form of a man, Jesus, and taking our place in terms of the punishment for our sins).  We put ourselves in God's place, and as a result he put himself in our place so that we can get back to him.  Pretty cool, eh?  And that's all.  For now.