I’m in Illinois looking for a house and a job, more house than job right now. Few prospects so far in my price range. However, I did see Spider-man with my wife and we both liked it. How’s that?

Well what do you know. Part 4 of Tristan Emanual’s two part series on Christian baptism has been published over at RazorMouth.com. What is really funny is that Tristan has apparently forgotten that he is a paedobaptist:

Rather, I am arguing that they [circumcision and baptism] are an outward, visible testimony and guarantee of an inward, spiritual truth.

But that is the Baptist argument for believers-only baptism! We baptize when we see evidence of that “inward, spiritual truth” not based upon lineage. Yea, I’ll be writing another paper to respond to this. Tristan and RazorMouth seem to have ignored my last one.

This is kind of creepy so I thought I’d blog it. I was riding my bike to work the other day. I cut across an open field on the way, it isn’t deep desert or anything, its only about 20 yards from some houses. Ahead of me on the trail is a crow hoping around and making a lot of noise. No big deal, those flying rats are everywhere. When I get closer, this small coyote stands up and looks at me. I could have reached over and patted it on the head. Something didn’t look right about it. Not mean, but scared and…wrong. If it had been dangerous, the crow wouldn’t have been making so much noise. As I peddled past I figured that the coyote was dying and the crow was asking it to hurry up. Crows usually get road kill rabbit but this fresh coyote would be a treat, I’m sure. Here was life and death playing it self out in front of me. Just like “Lion King” its the great circle of life.

Microsoft again. Sha! They crack me up. The Register is reporting on their new licensing system for schools. When counting up how many licenses you’re going to pay for, you have to count all PCs and Macs. “But Tim, Windows doesn’t run on an Apple computer!” I hear you say. True, true but Microsoft Office does and what Microsoft is making schools pay for is software packages. Here, I’ll let John Lettice explain it to you:

In School Agreement 3.0, you take your number of eligible PCs (inc Macs, of course), then you select at least one product which you license for all eligible PCs. One of these packages is presumably the most popular, as it’s the Desktop Package, which “Includes Office, Core CAL & Windows Upgrades,” and offers discounts beyond what you’d get if you bought the components individually. So that’s how you wind up buying Windows upgrades for Macs in the States.

See? Schools get to pay the same price for Office on their Macs as they do for Windows Upgrades and other software on the PCs. All I can say is that it is a good thing that Apple is the leader in supply computers to education. And at this rate, I don’t think that position will be challanged any time soon.

Then when I get home from work I find that the extra 256MB of memory and my cell phones have arrived. The hardest part of putting in the memory was finding my small phillips jewler’s screwdriver. The iBook is complete. 384MB of memory and an Airport card. On top of all of that, the Elders meeting finished at 10 PM. We usually go till midnight.

The new iBook is here! Yipee. I had to install OS X on it but that’s okay, it came with it. The entire thing is totally cool. Very small, very light, no dead pixels. I’m one happy Mac geek. :)

iBook update: I ordered the iBook and an Airport card at the same time. The Airport card shipped from CA but the iBook had to come from UT. Not a problem since I only had to pay tax on the Airport card. The card arrived this AM but not the iBook. In other words, I have nothing to plug the card in to. I doubt that the iBook will be here today so that means Monday. No word on the extra 256MB of memory yet. So close yet so far. :( Feel my pain!

Dale Meador has an excellent article at RazorMouth.com on worship. Check it out. A quote:

How often have I approached the Lord with a weary, lazy or distracted heart.I see this on Sunday mornings. One special day among seven, Sunday is the day that I am blessed to worship the Lord shoulder to shoulder with the brothers and sisters who comprise the body of Christ of which I am blessed to be part. Typically, we gather to worship the Lord in song, sacrament, and teaching. At the outset, we often are privileged to enjoy the gifts of saints uniquely gifted in music that is uniquely crafted to recall God’s attributes and glorify him accordingly.

And there I am, sprawled on the pavement. Yawning, distracted, oblivious. “I wonder when he got that new guitar?” “Shouldn’t we be standing up for this?” “Did I turn off the iron?”

How easily distracted we are from He who should ‘distract’ us.

Ratbots Summary: Scientists have placed electrodes inside rats’ brains to control them like robots.
Comment: Electrodes are placed in the portion of the brain that processes inputs from the whiskers and another in the reward center of the brain. A laptop sends a remote signal to stimulate the left whisker. The rat turns left and the reward center of the brain is stimulated. Simple. What is really cool is that since the rat is still in control, it can climb complicated structures without having to have the computer direct every step. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that this happens every day to billions of living beings around the world. Isn’t this exactly what TV does to us? Turn to the right channel and the pleasure center of the brain is stimulated by sex, action, drama, horror…whatever image excites you.

I’m so jazzed. I just fired off my order for a 500Mhz iBook with an Airport card. My family is buying it for me as a 40th birthday gift/retirement gift/starting seminary gift. :)