Month: January 2018

Celebration of life

My wife and I went to a memorial service for a 13-year old girl yesterday. No one was really talking about it, and you don’t really ask, but word was that she committed suicide as the result of bullying.

It was a nice service in that folks shared their memories of her. And I got a small glimpse into this young life of someone I did not know. By all accounts she was an amazing young woman. So very sad how her life ended.

There was a noticeable absence of any mention of Jesus or salvation… or God in general. There were two “clergy” there. I don’t know what kind of clergy they were but IMHO they were not deserving of that designation.

The service made me think a little of my own life, and what my memorial service would be like. Or perhaps my wife’s memorial service. What focus would it have? I have to admit… the current focus of my life is really not God. It would almost seem disingenuous to attempt to have a memorial service centered on God when one’s life clearly was not.

To be fair… I do toy around with the idea of God. I read a devotional on occasion. I try to think about right and wrong and doing the right thing. I definitely know and believe the truth of the Bible with regards to Jesus, His death and resurrection, etc. But my life is a far cry from what my honest idea of a committed Christian should be like. It’s possible that my idea is not accurate. After all, there is real life to deal with… working, eating, sleeping. Not everything is about God right?

In my experience, trying to make everything about God has a tendency to cause one to sort of go off the deep end. And yes, been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.

However, I do think that God’s idea of a committed Christian would be considered “off the deep end” by the world’s standards. So I would say, there is a good off-the-deep-end and a bad off-the-deep-end. I’m not sure I know how to tell the difference between the two.

And I have no doubt in my mind that the majority of people who are off the deep end in the bad kind of way honestly believe that they are walking in truth and right on track.

Christianity is nuts in a good way. But how do you know you’re not just nuts? Because many folks would probably think that you are. One of the tools I use to gauge the general acceptability of things I say or ideas I have is by people’s reaction to those things. That lets me know when I’m off track. However that doesn’t really work that well with Christianity. Because the indications would be highly misleading. I think that with Christianity, it’s totally possible to be perfectly in line with God’s will, and have others think you’re crazy… even other Christians.

So that’s leaves us without a good measurement gauge. Hmmm…

So much for that

My last blog entry explained how I was downsizing my computer gear. I had sold my iMac, my MacBook, and my iPad. All to be replaced by a newer MacBook.

The reasons for doing this are a little difficult to explain. First of all… I have a bit of a computer habit. I spend most my time in front of one, both at work and at home. I’ve been fighting this off and on for years (unsuccessfully I might add). Second, because my iMac was my best device (by a long shot), I spent most my free time basically chained to my desk where it sits, as opposed to using my other (more mobile) devices away from my desk.

I’ve actually gone to great lengths in the past to help curb my technology habit. I went so far as to go without internet at home. I figured I could take my laptop to where there was public wifi when I wanted to use the net. I suppose that was a little extreme. And it wasn’t because the of the cost either. It was because I felt it would be better for me not to have access at home. Something to literally force myself to do other things. Well, like most of my other attempts, that was short-lived.

With my latest downsizing I guess I kinda thought that the move to having the MacBook as my only computer would help free me from my desk. I would be completely mobile and free to geek out from anywhere.

This sounded attractive. But in reality, even after successfully getting rid of all my other gear… I still pretty much spent all my time at my desk. I went so far as to run my MacBook in closed-cover mode… with an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

That’s when it occurred to me. I actually paid a premium for this MacBook in two ways. One, it’s super small size and portability made it cost more. And two, there was also a significant performance sacrifice involved in getting it that small. Essentially, while a desktop machine was the most suitable tool for what I was doing, instead I was using an underpowered and overpriced laptop for a purpose it was not intended for.

Of course when I realized this, it kinda torqued me off. There were a few different times where I swapped back and forth between using the external monitor, keyboard, and mouse… and just using the MacBook as a normal laptop. While the external monitor, keyboard, and mouse gave me the best functionality. They caused me to miss out on the MacBook’s best selling point, which is the super high quality of it’s hardware.

Ok, I’ll acknowledge that this is definitely a first-world type of problem. But (luckily) my life is so boring that I am always trying to figure out ways to optimize my little existence.

After the above realizations, I started thinking iMac once again. I toyed with the idea of buying an iMac and selling my MacBook. I figure I could use my iPad for anything mobile (yes, I bought another iPad). But I do believe that I could be deemed certifiable if I were to sell my new MacBook only three months after purchasing it.

I did order a new iMac. I’m typing this on it now. This time I did a custom-build with an SSD instead of a fusion drive. It’s quite a bit quicker.

So this “experiment” in downsizing was a little expensive. However in the end, I ended up upgrading my MacBook, my iPad, and my iMac to newer models that were all significantly better than what they replaced.

My wife had a bit of wisdom. She said that perhaps I should just accept the fact that I like computers and stop trying to fight it. Hmmm…