!!! VOTE PITTMAN !!!

Lately I have been extremely busy and it is time that I make an addition to the blog. It seems that this years election is one of the most controversial that I can remember. I think everyone is having a hard time deciding who to vote for (for president that is). One thing is for sure, I’m not having a bit of trouble deciding who I am going to vote for for Murray City Council. For those of you that are locals and are eligible to vote for Murray City Council, make sure you vote for Sammy Jason Pittman. I’m thinking about writing him in for president. It’s not to often that you get to be freinds with a politician. I have this luxury, which means that for once I really do know who is the man for the job. If you would like to help with his campaign by putting a sign in your yard or car, visit votepittman.com and fill out the form in the contact section.

The Art of Justification

In my walk with Christ I commonly hear Christians give one answer to the question, “How do you know that what you believe is right?” The answer to that question is most often “I take it by faith.” I absolutely agree with this answer, but it seems that this answer is no longer good enough for the majority of the society we live in. It appears that trying to convince somebody that doesn’t believe in anything that Jesus was the Son of God and the way to salvation calls for proof beyond what anyone can conjure up. Why is it that most people accept elements of history as truth with little or no rebuttal? Never in my life have I seen a student stand up in the middle of history class to say, “I have no proof that this history book is correct and therefore I will not believe that Caesar Augustus really existed.” I am left only to assume that people do not question elements of history because believing in it doesn’t create any responsibilities or expectations to live up to. We live in a society in which the common man thinks that he can do a better job than the president. Respect for authority is a pastime and being a Christian means that you have to respect the authority of God.

Non-believer: “So what your saying is if Jesus is the Son of God, then I am going to be held responsible for my actions here on earth?”

Believer: Yes, it appears so.

Non-believer: (thinking to self: man that sucks, I’m going to have to quit doing all these things that are fun) Hmmm, Well, there is no proof that the bible or any of that stuff is true anyways.

I like to call this justifying our actions. We are all guilty of this one. There is always something that we do and enjoy, but for some reason we feel guilty for it. So we begin the justification process in which we come up with reasons why what we are doing is ok. This process continues until we convince our self that we have nothing to be guilty about and therefore we can continue to do as we please. People who refuse to believe that Jesus is the Son of God or that God even exists have all gone through the justification process. Most of them have gone through it more than once. The driving power behind all of this is that we only feel the need to justify our beliefs when we fear the consequences of being wrong. Where does this fear come from? Do men create it? Or does the actual existence of a higher power eventually take its toll on all of us? Unfortunately, I guess I will forever be a shallow minded Christian. If others would examine all facts as closely as they do the legitimacy of Christianity they would quickly find out that as you begin to dig, sooner or later the only evidence left is based on personal testimony. Your then put in a situation in which you believe the testimony or you don’t. Knowing that there is no way to actually prove that the testimony is right (assuming you didn’t see it with your own eyes), the question of, “How does this affect me?” comes in to play. This is why I am sure that I will have plenty of company in the shallow-minded section of society.

The Get Away!

It appears that my life has become excessively busy in the last year. As of now I’m working a full time job managing 300+ computers and 28 student workers coupled with being a youth minister and going to school full time. I feel like every moment that I am awake is spent doing something for somebody. There is nothing that I enjoy more than helping people, but occasionally it is just time to get away. My wife and I took a one night vacation to the big town of Clarksville last night. For the first time in my life I realized that one does not have to travel to the other side of the country to have a good time. We were gone just long enough to get a brief taste of freedom and it tasted great! We got back at noon today only to find out that one of my student workers was not able to come to work and I needed to fill in for him. Geeesshhh! Back to reality and back to work I went. That actually where I am out now and luckily one of my other student workers decided to work. I didn’t want to feel like my trip to town was pathetically wasted so I’m sitting down at one of the new IBM’s making another addition to the blog.

What do you think?

I think I have finally settled on a layout for the site. I tend to be long winded and this layout allows me to put a great deal of text in a small area. The colors are baby poop and mustard, but are subject to change. I’m looking for any input or suggestions beyond, “this sucks.” Comments are open!

A Tech Nerds Rebellion!

While looking back at my life, I never really considered myself a rebel. It appears that now I am. As some of you may know, there has been a lot of controversy revolving around SP2 for Windows XP. There have been numerous articles throughout all the tech pages revealing flaws and shortcomings of the new service pack. For those of you who don’t know, I am a General Access Lab Manger otherwise known as a GALM. I am over a fair amount of computers. I haven’t ever counted the exact amount, but I’m guessing it is around 300 or more. IS decided to block SP2 and ban the installation of the service pack campus wide. This is all good and gravy for them, but I haven’t got time to wait. For most of the people on campus, upgrading to SP2 will consist of downloading the patch and running it. For me it means re-imaging 300 computers after hours. After doing some research and probing a GALM listserv that I am a part of, I discovered that their were known issues between SP2 and the following Software/Hardware:

DeepFreeze Enterprise

Norton’s Ghost

Pharos Uniprint

IBM Computers

Greattttttttttttttt! That just about sums up 100% of the platforms that I have in place. So what did I do? I blasted them anyway despite all the negative vibes (that’s the rebellious part). This is the way I look at. The entire IT world right now is looking at SP2 as a bad dream that will eventually go away. Get real, SP2 is here to stay so everyone needs to suck it up, patch their computers, and learn to deal with the changes. OOOPS I said the “change” word. Anyway, after installing SP2 I quickly realized that it was fully compatible with the following software:

DeepFreeze Enterprise

Norton’s Ghost

Pharos Uniprint

IBM Computers

Wow, those look familiar. OK, so it appears that the Anti-Windows rebellion is going a little to far and it is my assumption that software manufactures such as Faronics are getting tired of the bad rap their products are getting due to SP2 incompatibility issues that don’t exist. To make a long story short, every lab I have is setting on SP2 with zero known issues. And with a little help from group policy in Active Directory, I have kept the new firewall enabled on each computer. I figure a little added client side security is something that will help the next time someone brings MMC behind the firewall on his or her laptop. I like being able to sleep at night knowing that my computers are UP TO DATE. The rest of campus awaits the GO AHEAD.

Comments are open on this one. Keep it clean and constructive.