Waggle Dance

My family uses open source software almost exclusively. Everyone from the toddlers to the teen to the Mrs. have what they need to play games, chat with friends, manager emails, surf the web, keep busy schedules straight, do homeschooling, and pretty much anything they may want to do. (more…)

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I started using Linux as my primary desktop and operating system in 1998. After brief flirtations with FVWM 95 and Enlightenment, I settle on Gnome (with it’s various WMs over the years ) and Redhat/Fedora (until switching to Ubuntu last fall ). (more…)

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The last vestiges of my childhood sense of wonder have just died. The have become road-kill on the information superhighway under the wheels of Wikipedia. Let me explain…
My daughter just received a box of Sea-Monkeys for her birthday. The world became a bit wavy as I flashed back to my childhood. Memories of waiting anxiously for 24 hrs. while the “Water Purifier” packet prepared my soon-to-be new best friends’ home. Then peering intently into the Sea-Monkeys kingdom as they instantly sprank to life from the contents of the “Instant Life Eggs” packet. (more…)

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I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’m not so much against the January 1st resolutions to do better, it’s the January 2nd failure to follow through that I hate. But this year has to be different. The last year has been one of contestant changes and challenges, adding a new member to the family, new responsibilities at work, at church, at home, and on line. Without a concerted effort to get organized and better manage the little details, 2008 is shaping up to be a real cluster.

To that end, I’ve started to used a number of web services that should help:

1. Goggle Mail - I’ve been a gmail user for about two years, but just recently, I have begun to use their IMAP and POP3 services to consolidate a number of email accounts I have, including my home account. The search engine makes finding emails a breeze (what do you expect from Google?) and the ever growing list of add-on services and Firefox plugins make integrating gmail into the rest of my life easier and easier.
2. Google Calendar - another great Google service, makes a good central hub for managing my time and keeping other up to date on what I’m doing.
3. Remember The Milk - A very cool task list organizer with tons of options for reminders and integration with Google calendar.
4. Jott - I just stumbled on to this web 2.0 beta - call the “866″ number on my cell phone, leave a message, and it get transcribed into text and delivered to myself, a friend or even my Google calendar or RTM task lists.

Integrating these together, I can voice dial Jott, send a task to RTM, get reminders via my jabber account or SMS and view my calendar, a number of shared calendars, and my tasks all together on my Google calendar.
Of course, January 2nd hasn’t come yet, but 2008 is looking a little less chaotic from here…

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While this is a WebMD article, Math May Tell Which Marriages Last, about a book, The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models, written in 2002, the message is timeless: marriage is about the connection of two people being made one. According to the research, success or failure of a marriage can be predicted with a 94% accuracy based on the scoring of negative and positive cues displayed during an argument. Rolling your eyes or being dismissive gets negative points, using humor or a supportive nod results in positive points. Couples with a score of 5 positive to 1 negative points have a stable, lasting relationship, while a ratio of 1 to 1 or less is a fast track to divorce court.
The mathematics put concrete face on something most know intuitively; a marriage full of negative comments, self-interest and disrespect is an unhappy one. God’s Word is pretty clear:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:22-33

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