Life on Snow Hill

Yes, I have an addiction. It’s not so bad, though. I hope.

Sudoku. The puzzle game has its origins in France, and in Indiana. There is a grid, 9 squares by 9 squares with 9 3×3 squares inside. Here’s the idea:

• Each 3×3 square of 9 will have all numbers 1-9
• Each vertical row of 9 will have all numbers 1-9
• Each horizontal row of 9 will have all numbers 1-9
• There are no duplicates

I play the game on my iPhone. It’s cleaner than paper, and it’s like an endless supply of puzzles. And it keeps my brain occupied. I’ve included a couple of pictures – one of what the board looks like in ‘expert’ mode (obviously the hardest available), and one of what my best times are so far.

Try it out! If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can find free Sudoku puzzles all over the internet.

I was amused this morning by a caller on the radio talk show I was listening to on the way in to work. This caller was a black man. He basically went on a rant and as a part of that rant, he called the black talk show host a racist towards blacks. Later on in some of the comments he made, the caller made blacks out to be dumb and couldn’t make their own choices as to what to listen to. The host called the caller a racist.

This caller is an instigator by self admission. He likes to argue. That said, he listens to the mostly conservative talk show so that he can call in regularly only to argue. This morning, the host played a clip of a song done by a private school that praised Obama and pushed his healthcare reform. I could write a whole other (short) post about that all by itself. But on the show, the host was talking about how in his own personal opinion (and I hold the same) the school shouldn’t be pushing political agenda, whether liberal or conservative. A school isn’t a political platform – it’s an educational institution. But I digress.

This caller called in as the first response to the comments made by the host. “Why are you guys on here EVERY DAY bashing Obama? Is it because he’s black??” (I put the words in quotes, but I admit I can’t remember his exact words – this is the gist of his comments though.) What this idiot failed to acknowledge is that every president has had the same ridicule and has lived under a microscope. Apparently he didn’t like it when the tables were turned and they started talking about his guy, and he made himself out to be an idiot when he began defending his views.

One other thing he said at the beginning of his call – the South is a dump. Yep, his own words: a dump. I can only assume, based on the rest of his comments, that he thinks it’s a dump because of its generally conservative views. I say to you, Dave, if it’s such a dump, leave. I happen to love it here.

Wow, where did the Summer go? It seems like just last week June bugs were flying all over my yard and I was trying to keep weeds out of the garden. I gave up on the weeds, by the way – they finally took over.

It’s nearing the end of September, and the weather is hinting at turning a little more cool. I’m finding myself surprisingly ready for cold weather. I usually dread it. But I’m looking forward to the fireplace being put to use again, and eating a nice hot bowl of chili while watching the Colts beat up on whoever their next victim happens to be.

I’m looking forward to working with the youth on the next Christmas program at church (We need to get rolling with that by the way!) and bringing in yet another new year. 2009 hasn’t quite gotten out of our grasp yet, but it’s quickly rolling on by. What will we do with the rest of this year?

Just this year in our great state of Tennessee, lawmakers passed a law making it illegal to text while driving. It’s really an unenforceable law, but I’m not going to get into all of that. It’s a common sense thing in the first place – if your attention is on your phone (this can include talking on the phone as well – I avoid it as much as possible while driving), you’re not nearly as focused as you need to be on your driving.

A coworker just showed me this video a few minutes ago. Before you click play, let me warn you that if you don’t like blood, you won’t want to see it. It’s not real, but it is graphic. It is a public service announcement put out in England about the risks taken when you take your attention off the road.

–update

Looks like the video was removed because it violated some part of YouTube’s terms of service. I’m not going to keep posting updated videos, but if you’d like, you can search for ‘texting while driving’ and it’ll turn up for you to see.

Seems like everyone is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon lately. I’ve been on it for a while, but haven’t done a lot with it. I’m a little more into it now that I’ve quit Facebook, but I’m not sure how long it will last.

I did have a twitter feed on this site back in the day when it was known as jdsnow.net, but had removed it until recent days.

One of the reasons I’ve gotten interested in it again is because there are a ton of iPhone Twitter apps. I’ve found one, Schmap GeoTweeter (iTunes Link), that will post a short URL which maps your location on a Google map. It gathers the information from the GPS locater in the phone.

If you look to the right of my page, you’ll see 4 posts from my recent tweets. Starting now, if I update from my iPhone, you’ll see a link (like this one: http://schmap.me/xkq3yy/) that if you click on, you’ll see my location at the time of the update.

Pretty cool, eh?

On my way to work this morning I saw a church sign with the words, “Truth Hurts”. I’ve actually been thinking along those same lines lately. There are several things over the past few months that have been brought up during preaching I’ve heard, as well as things I’ve been involved with personally, that when the truth has been spoken, it hurts.

I began asking myself, “Why does truth hurt? What makes it so harsh?” Mind you, I’m not questioning the validity or importance of truth at all. Truth is what is needed, rather than untruths or incomplete truths to make someone feel better about themselves or accepted in certain cliques.

The answer to the question of why truth hurts I believe is two-fold. First I’ll quote a verse:

Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.  -Psalm 119:165.

Back in February during our youth revival, I heard a message preached about the Great White Throne Judgment, and the reality of Hell. It was one of the roughest messages I’ve heard preached on Hell in a long time. It didn’t bother me at all though, for my own life (It did bother me for those that were present who were lost and didn’t respond). Not because I’ve grown cold or calloused to the subject, but because I have peace about my eternal destination because of what Jesus has done for me, and the fact that I’ve accepted Him as my Savior. So my point is that when you line up with the truth that is spoken, it doesn’t hurt. Which brings me to the first part of my answer.

Truth hurts because it exposes where you are wrong. It doesn’t necessarily expose it for all the world to see, but it will expose it to your conscience and your very soul. At the very least, it embarrasses you because you know that you’re not lining up with what is right.

The second part of my answer depends on a person’s willingness to respond to the truth they’ve been given. If they choose to correct where they’ve done wrong, it can hurt. An example can be where a person has done someone wrong, thinking they were right in doing whatever it was. When they were told the truth about the situation, it required them to humble themselves to go to that person and make things right with them. That’s a severe beating on a person’s pride!

The start of a healing process sometimes hurts. I’ll use an analogy here. I got into a little bit of poison ivy a little while back. It wasn’t bad – just a few small spots on both of my arms. I figured they were small enough and insignificant enough that if I left them alone, they’d heal on their own. On my left arm, a couple of those spots became bigger and were beginning to blister. I tried waiting a few more days, but they weren’t getting any better. I eventually had to pop those blisters and clean the wound really well so that it would heal properly. I didn’t look forward to beginning that healing process – popping those blisters didn’t hurt all that much, but cleaning them was a little painful. Rubbing alcohol was the best thing I could get my hands on for the job, and it burns on an open wound! However, it was a good thing to do, because those blisters are gone, and now you can barely tell there was any poison ivy there in the first place.

So there you have my reasons of why I believe truth hurts. It is only my opinion, but I think it’s right. Remember, though, that truth doesn’t have to hurt.

Feel free to leave your opinions on the topic on the comments section for this post. I could go on and on about it all, but I think most other ‘reasons’ could fall under the two I’ve listed here in one way or another. I’d be interested to see what others think about this all, though.

I have several reasons which have been getting stronger over the last several weeks. I quit for some of the same reasons before, but decided to come back after a short while. This time, however, I have a few more reasons, and they’re becoming more important reasons. Anyway, I’m not going to go into details for any of the reasons. What I will say, however, is that I didn’t quit for just one single reason, or because of any single person or group of people. The sum of all my reasons far outweighs the pros of keeping it.

The technical way I quit is that I changed my password first of all. You may ask how that would help anything if I’m the one that changed it? I opened a text editor and ran my fingers across the keyboard in random sequence. The letters and numbers that came out had no meaning to me. I copied that from the text editor to my password prompt and saved the new password. I then closed the text editor without saving the file. I couldn’t remember it now to save my life.

For photos, I’m going to see how Flickr does for me, and I’m going to try out Google’s Picasa also. If I have something I want to post about, I’ll put it here on my blog. Feel free to keep up with me here, and I’ll do my best to post more regularly.

Facebook is handy for a lot of things, but it isn’t worth it to me.

It’s been a beautiful (but hot) last several days, and that has allowed Becky to get outside and work in her flower beds. I’ve done a little bit in the evenings after I’ve gotten home from work, but this week has worn me out. We’re short one at work, and it’s been one of the most busy weeks we’ve had in a long time.

Hopefully today when I get home from work I’ll get outside and cut down another tree to use for firewood. I’ve been needing to do that all Spring, and Spring has gotten away from me. I really want to try to have enough this coming Winter to last us all Winter long so we don’t have to run our electric heat any more than we have to.

There’s always work to be done in the garden. I’m actually kind of proud of it this year. Becky and I have been able to get out and keep it pretty clean from weeds and everything this year, so it looks much nicer than it did last year. We’re already getting some squash and zucchini out of it, and Becky has eaten a few cucumbers that have come in. Soon we’re going to be covered up by a lot of this stuff and we’ll be scrambling to get it canned and/or frozen.

Yard work never ends either. It seems like the yard was just mowed yesterday, and it needs it again. Hopefully I’ll get some time to take care of that this weekend sometime as well.

Yep, we’re staying busy. I mostly enjoy it though. I don’t enjoy being worn out from it, but I do enjoy the good sleep I get as a result.

Everybody around the world knows who he was. He was a very popular entertainer and people around the world loved him. He had a lot of accomplishments, and all of the news media are talking about how great of a person he was and how much they will miss him. It would be comical if it wasn’t so serious, but everywhere I look, everyone is saying ‘rest in peace’.

Nowhere in Jackson’s life can I find that he ever came to know Christ. I won’t go so far as to say he lived completely for himself because he gave to charities and such, but even some of that was pretty controversial. What I will say is that he did nothing for the cause of Christ. According to my Bible, and according to his testimony, he is far from Heaven.

Hell is real. It is hot. Everything Jackson did here was temporal. Nothing lasted. Nothing he did will help him. Nothing. People will say that his influence lives on, and his spirit lives on in his music, etc. I don’t deny that. But it still will not help him. It will not help you, either.

Everyone, if all you live for is to satisfy the flesh, whether it be with music or anything else, it is all temporal. It has no lasting eternal benefit. I’m not against having fun, but if you’ve never been saved, you’ll end up with the same fate as this ‘great’ person.

If you are saved, our first priority ought to be to please God. I can’t think of much of anything about this person that pleased God. Especially his music.

I expect harsh comments, and will only censor vulgar or otherwise filthy language. Otherwise you may speak your mind. I reserve the right, however, to cut it off at any time. It’s my blog, my rules.

As much as I dislike him, he is the president of this great country. Because it is still a free country, and freedoms that I have are still protected, I’m going to voice my opinion.

Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t have the guts to stand up and be what he should be, and as elected, is supposed to be. Instead, he blames all of his problems on former president Bush. Now, I’m not going to get into the debate about whether or not Obama actually inherited problems from Bush. I wasn’t pleased with everything about Bush. I’ll leave it all at that.

However, nearly 5 months into the presidency, Obama is still blaming everything on Bush. Let’s recap a little bit, first looking at unemployment rates as an example.

During the first part of Bush’s presidency, unemployment was rising, and topped out at 6.5% in early 2003. Since then, it has gone down, bottoming out at 4.1% in October, 2006. Since January, 2007, the rate has been on a climb. Hmm…Isn’t that about the time when Democrats took over Congress? When Obama took office in January, 2009, unemployment was at 8.5%. For the month of May, it is at 9.1%.

Obama said earlier this year when he was pitching his stimulus package that if it wasn’t passed immediately that crisis would turn to catastrophe, the recession would last longer, millions more jobs would be lost and businesses would close.

That’s happened. But wait, wasn’t that stimulus package passed? It didn’t boost the economy, it made things worse. And he’s still blaming Bush. Man up, Obama.

Next up, Chrysler. Obama’s administration forced bankruptcy on them. Chrysler had made a deal with the UAW to freeze wages, promise no strikes and a few other things to save money and survive as a corporation. But no, they wouldn’t hear of it. Bankruptcy was demanded. A deal with Fiat was demanded. Chrysler wanted no part of it, but they were forced by our government.

Next up is healthcare. Obama is saying the same thing again – if we don’t act now, it’s gonna get real bad! Just like the stimulus package has rescued our economy from the pits of despair (Oh, wait. That was the fuzzy warm dreams the Obama supports had last November), and how our government has ruined social security, they’re going to save all of us from the insanely high healthcare costs. (Can you sense my sarcastic tone? It’s there in case you couldn’t tell.)

Imagine this – a government that controls healthcare. Say goodbye to most of the freedoms you enjoy today. Whatever the government decides is ‘risky behavior’, we will be banned from or our healthcare costs will be raised significantly. They’ll be telling us what kind of car we can drive, how far we can drive, what we can eat, and who knows what else. Do you jog frequently? Oops, might sprain an ankle – your rates go up. Do you eat out at restaurants? Oh, they use the wrong kind of oil – your rates go up. The businesses that will be mandated to provide this healthcare will be forced to fire people to save money and remain in business, contributing even more to the growing unemployment rate. By the way, the Obama administration saved or created 150,000 jobs over the last 100 days. I guess that would be cool, except there have been over 2 million jobs actually lost during that time.

Our government has already taken over a company (GM) and sold part of it to China. I’m anxious to see what all Obama and his administration can get their hands on before their time is up.

I haven’t even gotten into moral things like abortion and religious tolerance. Even without that, what I’ve talked about in this post sickens me to think Americans actually wanted this trash. I suppose you all still blame Bush too? Of course, he did make Katrina hit New Orleans. I forgot.