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Wild at Heart impacted me several years ago when I read it as part of a
men’s group at my church, and this new version adds some clarifications
and stories to make the book even more compelling. While the message
could be construed that being “nice” is a detriment, I think that
reading deeper will help the reader realize that what John Eldredge
means is that being “nice” and passive at the expense of doing what
you’re called to do is the true danger. One of the things he points out
is that while Eve was decieved, Adam was standing right there beside
her, passive. Passivity is the silent killer of the plan that God has
for a man’s life and until men stop being passive, we will continue to
see problems in our families.

Eldredge also discusses men who have erred to the other end of the
spectrum and become overly aggressive and abusive and how it is just as
much an aberration of God’s design for men as passivity.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book as a part of Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program.

The premise of this book was to show how one can believe in God and believe in Darwin, however it fails miserably. The author confesses in his preface that he not a theologian and his sloppy handling of the Scriptures is proof of that. A few paragraphs later in his introduction he states that he is bothered by Genesis. Why write a book attempting to reconcile a belief in Scriptures and a belief in Darwin when you obviously have no commitment whatsoever to the veracity of the Scriptures?

I found the book painful to read, not because the subject matter was difficult to understand, but because the author’s message was so logically inconsistent with it’s premise.

I do not recommend this book to anyone as it is a complete waste of time.

Disclaimer: I received this book as a part of Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program.

I recently started receiving the error “The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user mapped section open” while attempting to commit large changes to my subversion repository. My server is a Windows 7 Ultimate installation with VisualSVN, and I never had this issue with my Linux server. After some researching, I found that the issue is the AVG Resident Shield that I have running on the server. Once the Resident Shield was disabled, viola! No more errors.

The account of the battle in opening paragraphs of The White Horse King could have been taken straight from the pages of The Lord of the Rings.

From there the book becomes more of a historical narrative, albeit a very interesting one. Alfred was the fifth son of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex. We learn about Alfred’s formative years as the Vikings begin to attack various nations that made up Britain in the early 900′s, specifically the nation of Wessex. It was during these years that Alfred made two pilgrimages to Rome with his family. He received confirmation from Pope Leo IV during his first visit.

Alfred became known as a fierce fighter in the battles with the Vikings and after the death of his four elder brothers, he became king of Wessex. The book chronicles many of the battles and an especially low time of his life when he was forced to flee and remain in hiding from the Danish invaders until he could muster enough troops to retake his throne. It was during these years that Alfred would lead bands of men in ambush of various Viking troops and he learned much of their tactics.

The Vikings were especially brutal to to the conquered king. They would offer the defeated king in various forms of sacrifice to their god Odin. However when Alfred defeated the Viking Guthram and his army, instead of killing him, he gave Guthram the option to be baptized as a Christian. Guthram accepted this offer and was baptized and never again attacked Alfred or the kingdom of Wessex.

When Alfred retook the throne, in his most significant and lasting achievement, he completely reorganized the military structure. Instead of a disorganized band of nobles and landowners called up to fight as needed, he instituted a professional, trained standing army.

Alfred also saw the need for the people to become literate, able to read and advance in Christian learning. He brought together the best scholars he could find to help him learn Latin and then assist him in translating many texts into the vernacular of the Anglo Saxons. He established schools for the children to start learning as soon as they were able. Literacy was required for anyone serving in any form of government office.

Lastly, Alfred instituted a reworking of the entire legal code. The legal system when Alfred became king was based more on the station of the claimants in a case than anything else. “[T]he composition of the [legal code] really constituted the culmination of Alfred’s work to rebuild the defenses of Wessex and to revive learning throughout the nation.” In doing so, Alfred established the framework for what would be known as “common law,” the foundation for the legal systems of England, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Pakistan. Interestingly enough, the code began with the Ten Commandments and included parts of Exodus 21-23 and the Sermon on the Mount all in the preface.

I read this as part of Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogger Program.

This book is a must-have for anyone who cares about America. Our country became great because of numerous people doing the best they could where they were. In this book you will read about patriots you’ve heard of, such as Andrew Jackson and George Washington, but also many that you have not, like Israel Putnam and William Carney.

Each day has a short entry about one patriot with brief details to whet your appetite for more research if you find yourself interested. You’ll also find a list of other historical events for the day. Interspersed between the months are various items too large for a single day, such as the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution to name a few.

I have really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone with any interest at all in the history of our nation.

I read this as part of Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogger Program.

I upgraded both my desktop and server to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala from 9.04 last week. Today I came across an error uploading a zip file to be extracted using PHP:

Abort pclzip.lib.php : Missing zlib extensions

After some searching around (remember, in cases such as this, Google is your friend), I found a link to an ongoing discussion regarding this issue.  Bottom line, there is a fix in the pipe to be released, but it’s still in “proposed” status.  To get it you need to edit your sources list:

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

Once you’ve opened the file, add the following two lines:

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-proposed main restricted universe multiverse

Save the file, then execute:

sudo aptitude update

Once you’ve done this, go to System->Administration->Update Manager, run the update, and viola, no more zlib error!

Whatever you may think of Glenn Beck, he offers a very insightful discussion on what we are facing here in the US. Not sure I agree with the last bit about what will eventually back our currency, but the rest is pretty good.

Perspective. This little book is all about how your perspective affects not only your outlook on life but the quality of your life. This fictional account of a character named “Jones” is full of little nuggets for various aspects of life that open the door to leave you wanting more about the subject, whether it’s different love languages or how you treat your coworkers. I would definitely recommend the book.

I read this as part of Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogger Program.

If you’re a prisoner user of Windows, now may be a good time to consider your options.  Windows 7, as the successor to Windows Vista is currently called, is in various stages of beta testing.  If you own new hardware, early tests indicate you should be able to upgrade with few problems from Vista to 7.  However, if you’re like most individuals and businesses these days, you don’t have brand new hardware.  You may even be like me, where most of your systems are still running XP.  Five of the six machines I have running windows are still on XP.  I do have one that’s stuck with Vista because it’s a cheap piece of trash laptop and the USB ports and DVD Rom no longer work due to heating issues.  But I digress.

What are our chances of upgrading from XP to 7?  Early tests indicate that they are not so good, regardless of Microsoft’s assurances that all will be ok.  The “preferred” upgrade path from XP to 7, per Microsoft, is through Vista.  Regardless of the obvious profit motivation for Microsoft to push this path, older hardware just doesn’t make the transition well.

So what do those of us with older hardware do?  In this economy, very few of us can afford to invest in new hardware just to be ready for the latest version of Windows, and if history is any indicator, support for XP will be going away.  We are either going to have to risk running an old (and soon to be) unpatched OS, or we’re going to have to invest in new hardware to run Windows 7.  At least, these are the only options Microsoft wants you to have.

If you have the ability to invest in new hardware, it’s time to look at a Mac.  I’ve never had the opportunity to own a Mac due to cost, but I have used one on occasion and it’s really nice.  The underlying OS is rock-solid and the interface is user-friendly.  If you can afford it, this is definitely the way to go.

But if you’re like me, new hardware just isn’t in the budget.  What to do?  In addition to the Windows machines, I also have two running Ubuntu Linux.  It used to be that if you used Linux you were definitely a computer geek, because of all the gymnastics you had to go through to get it running.  But these days it’s different.  You can (legally) download an installation CD for Ubuntu Linux (or another distro, if you want) and boot from the CD to see how well it works with your hardware.

I have installed linux on several machines over the years, and the latest installations setup everything I’ve needed out of the box.  Graphics cards, wireless, everything.  Not only that, you also get several choices of office software comparable to MS Office.  I sync my Blackberry Curve, watch movies, listen to music, basically everything I can do with Windows.  All for the cost of a blank CD.