The Naked Green

I don’t have any orders to work on yet, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading on The Ooze. It is partially due to this and a “waking up” that’s happening aided by my distaste for apathy that I’m feeling the way I am. I have an obvious lack of direction after going to DTS which has led me to reiterate my goal: relationship with Jesus Christ.

There is a lot welling up inside of me, I can feel it. I don’t know what it is exactly. There are lots of ideas going through my head, but also muddled “what do I call thems”. There is this feeling (or feelings)…like something is about to happen, or needs to happen. Oh, that’s not quite right! how I wish I could understand or express my emotions sometimes.

God is certainly doing something in my life and I praise Him for it. He is drawing me to Himself even as I seek Him out and my desire to be with Him grows. It’s amazing to me how God’s Spirit is at work within us. Father, make me more like your Son, Jesus!

This post is one of those that doesn’t seem like it will make it. The fact that no one is reading this blog still doesn’t help me post something that seems so silly. The post lacks substance and I realize that, but I guess it does give the reader a glimpse of the emotional confusion that I regularly experience.

Firefox 1.0 is here and ready for download at mozilla.org and getfirefox.com! I’m in the process of downloading it here at work on my 28k connection and will get it at home as soon as possible.

Usefulness (utility) is a big deal to me (probably an obsession) and Firefox focuses on usability. Ben Goodger, the Lead Engineer of the Firefox development team said today:

Our goal for Firefox has always been to create a stylish, usable browser, making as few compromises has necessary - which was largely possible by being free from commercial constraint. When I design new features, I try to think about what people are trying to accomplish, and design the feature so that it helps them as best possible. This has not always been easy. I’ve been very demanding of myself and on others that I work with, trying to exact every last ounce of usability of a given scenario. Some tasks that we have worked on have taken a considerable amount of time, much of that time spent fussing over the tiniest of details, details that in the past (when working on the Netscape product line, for example), we would never have been allowed to fret so profusely over. The result is software that works for the most part exactly as you expect it. All your settings, favorites, passwords and other data are brought in from IE, downloading files is easy and free of superfluous prompting, your passwords are entered automatically and slickly managed, just to name a few. These things are not easy, but the quality bar has to be set high to be noticed, and in that department I think our focus on detail has paid dividends.
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Blake Ross blogged:

Our original manifesto for Phoenix set out a few key principles: make a product that just browses, and browses well; keep the team small and focused; and keep the focus on the user. I am proud to say that we have delivered on that today. Whatever your language, whatever your platform, download Firefox 1.0 now and let us know what you think. We’re listening.
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Congratulations to the Firefox team!

Thanks to Clint who posted this from Spurgeon’s Morning Devotional:

“I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.”
Isaiah 44:3

When a believer has fallen into a low, sad state of feeling, he often tries to lift himself out of it by chastening himself with dark and doleful fears. Such is not the way to rise from the dust, but to continue in it. As well chain the eagle’s wing to make it mount, as doubt in order to increase our grace. It is not the law, but the gospel which saves the seeking soul at first; and it is not a legal bondage, but gospel liberty which can restore the fainting believer afterwards. Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesus’ bosom. Are you this morning thirsting for the living God, and unhappy because you cannot find him to the delight of your heart? Have you lost the joy of religion, and is this your prayer, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation”? Are you conscious also that you are barren, like the dry ground; that you are not bringing forth the fruit unto God which he has a right to expect of you; that you are not so useful in the Church, or in the world, as your heart desires to be? Then here is exactly the promise which you need, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty.” You shall receive the grace you so much require, and you shall have it to the utmost reach of your needs. Water refreshes the thirsty: you shall be refreshed; your desires shall be gratified. Water quickens sleeping vegetable life: your life shall be quickened by fresh grace. Water swells the buds and makes the fruits ripen; you shall have fructifying grace: you shall be made fruitful in the ways of God. Whatever good quality there is in divine grace, you shall enjoy it to the full. All the riches of divine grace you shall receive in plenty; you shall be as it were drenched with it: and as sometimes the meadows become flooded by the bursting rivers, and the fields are turned into pools, so shall you be-the thirsty land shall be springs of water.

This is exactly how I have been feeling lately and just this morning as I prayed before breakfast, I cried out to God that I was hungry for Him just as I was feeling the physical hunger pangs. So often in the last months have I sung the Psalm:

I’m tired of trying to find what he want me to DO with my life. This is important, but only as an extension of a relationship with Jesus Christ. I feel like I don’t know Him at all to even know if it’s Him speaking to me or not. I truly am thirsty for a real relationship with Christ…for a fruitful walk as a disciple of His.

Thank you for the encouragement Clint, I really needed it today!

Computerworld Interviews Ben Goodger in Preparation for Mozilla Firefox 1.0 - MozillaZine Talkback

I’m excited about the official 1.0 release of Firefox tomorrow, 9 November! I am using the 1.0 Preview Release with great success, but look forward to a public ready release that’s polished up.

I should probably post here the answer to the question I often get from family: “Why Mozilla?” For many people it semms the answer to this is security. While security is important for me, I don’t know much about it and it is not the reason I switched to Mozilla (and Firefox) or really my primary concern (though maybe it should be). Is switched because it is much more functional to me in the following ways:

• Tabbed browsing!
  • This makes the desktop much more clean as I have many applications open and am researching some particular product and/or looking up help on some code I’m working on.
• You can add extensions to customize your browsing experience
  • The most important exstension to me is Tabbrowser Extensions which I don’t know that I can live without now as it offers almost complete customization to tabbed browsing.
  • Web Developer Toolbar is quite helpful for web design
  • I can sychronize bookmarks at work and home
  • Scribe allows me to actually save form data! No more timing out and losing everything.
  • There are many more great extensions for all kinds of functions that are freely available at extensionroom.mozdev.org!
• It’s Open Source so you can edit everything! A lot of things I can actually do without spending a lot of time.

With Firefox I can take charge of browsing, which takes up a lot of my time, and not just float around on the surf. I don’t have to deal with the internet in the way that some big company wants me to, but can really “take back the web” with functionality.

What a weekend! We spent most of Saturday morning sleeping and laying and the rest of the day getting ready to make this massive building for the cat to play on. Sunday, after church, we spent some time taking back all the materials for this building because it was going to cost about as much to build it than buy it online (although ours would have been much bigger). We then went home and took a long nap. I don’t know why I’ve been so tired lately, but it was nice to just relax and not do anything.

I finally finished The Idiot by: Fyodor Dostoyevsky after putting it down a while back. I basically hadn’t read much since we came back from England in early July. I don’t know why it’s hard for me to finish Dostoyevsky’s books, but I’m glad I did and even though I didn’t particularly “like” the ending much, it was certainly a good one. Now I’m going to have to go back and skim through the book to refresh myself to the prince’s adventures and separate them from all the Karamazov brothers in my hazy mind.

I got to sleep late last night because of the nap and the book and had vivid dreams again. They had to do something with protecting painted eggs with my life, a big wad of cash, carrying around my dad’s gun (9mm), selling our cat and meeting an old friend who is not doing so well. I don’t remember enough to go into it and don’t even want to try to analyze it.

Inspired by Nathan’s blog, I decided to share an unusually vivid dream I had this morning.

I have been waking up during the night in the past several days due to our cat, Caviar. We think that she is probably in heat and hope that getting her “fixed” later this month will help. The reason I mention it is because it may have something to do with the vividness of the dream and my remembering it.

The dream(s) that I remember started with me going shooting with my grandpa (never did that before) and the next thing I remember is the main plot line:

Jamie and I were at some friends’ house who had several children. My Mom was there and perhaps some others. Dinner was finished and we were sitting around downstairs talking in a living room area. My Mom began to talk about something spiritual (as if teaching a Sunday School class) and was reading excerpts from a book I believe. She suggested we all go outside for some object lesson with the kids. They started out the sliding glass door that was in the room and led out to the back yard.

Jamie and I had been needing to leave to get to work on time or something. [I couldn’t quite calculate the time as I do to figure the deadline for leaving, but knew we should do it soon]. This was a good opportunity, so we began saying our goodbyes and getting ready (don’t know what that entailed). Jamie was waiting in the car, but I was because intrigued with my Mom’s lesson.

Mom had all the kids up top near this ledge and I could hear her down below directing the adults to gather some leaves into a pile. I thought, “Oh, this is that faith thing where you fall into someone’s arms and they’re just adding leaves to make it safer”. [All this time I’m watching from a ways back because I was on my way to the car.] My Mom was then at the top giving one of the younger girls directions as she stood on the ledge with her back to the fall. As she fell, I ran over to the ledge to see what was happening. (more…)

Last night I read 2 Kings chapter 2 and was reminded of one fact I learned in DTS. One of our leaders, Sean pointed out that Elijah was not taken up in a fiery chariot as most people think. Read it for yourself:

“It happened, as they still went on, and talked, that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both apart; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.”
-2 Kings 2.11 [WEB]

It’s interesting how we have a certain idea of what the Bible says and even read a passage several times and not realize what it’s saying. There are other things like that as well. It reminds me that I would like to do an SBS (YWAM’s School of Biblical Studies) some time.

Holloween brought with it plenty of cold weather as usual here. I had a pretty good idea that we would be getting enough snow to plow, but didn’t know when I would get “the call”. It came shortly after 11.00pm when I was just about asleep. I drove through blinding snow in our Cutlass Cierra and made it to work a little before midnight. What a night…morning…day…whatever! There were only three of us and two trucks because Zach (the boss) is out hunting and didn’t bring all the equipment down.

I plowed in a beast of a truck and spent most of the night plowing one road because the snow kept coming down. Some time before sunrise (if you can call it that) I started feeling quite ill, but once it got light I felt better. I did call in to work to let them know I wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t show up which I ended up feeling bad about after I woke up at 3.00 that afternoon. At 8.30am I was relieved by someone fresh and went for breakfast (for some strange reason) where I tried to eat food when all I wanted was bed. The drive home was probably the worst and I nearly wrecked after I sloshed around on some slush without realizing I was speeding. Last night I was back at it for a couple hours cleaning up the parking lots.

Today, I’m feeling a bit ill and quite tired today in a sort of “what kind of drugs was I on last night” sort of way. I did have a good talk with Joe (my day job boss) and may be getting a night job that pays more than what I’m doing now. I told him why I called in and that it wouldn’t happen again because it’s importnant to me to be honest. Honesty, in my opinion, is more than not lying. It’s about telling someone truth that you think they want or need to know, not just truth that makes you look better.

At any rate, plowing was kind of fun, very tiring and pays nicely. I plan to try to keep it up for a while. The next time I plow and actually force myself to come into work may tell a different story, though.