Last week I decided that I wanted to set up my own testing network so I could experiment with various networking things in various operating systems. I figure this is the only way that I’m going to learn some things, and heck, it’s just cool anyway.

So I ordered:

5 x Dell Optiplex 240 - 2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD
1 x 8 port KVM switch
1 x 24 port Cisco 100 Mb Ethernet Switch
10 x 7″ Ethernet Cable
1 x PS2 Keyboard and Mouse

The grand total for all this, including shipping, was about $700.  Not too bad…that’s about the price of a cheap laptop.

So what I’m going to do is stack these computers in the corner of my UBL (Underground Basement Lair, pronounced “yoo-bull”), plug them into the KVM and the switch, and run a cable from my main computer to the switch so I can manage everything remotely once it’s set up.

Some of the things I want to try include:

• Windows Active Directory Domain
• MS SQL Server
• MS Exchange Server
• Clustering/Load Balancing
• Creating Firewalls and IP rules
• VPNs
• Linux Domains
• Web servers
• OpenVPN
• OpenExchange
• PostgresSQL Server
• Distributed Computing
• Anything else I can think of.

I’ll post a picture when I have everything set up, as I think it will look neat.  It’s been like Christmas every day this week with all the stuff arriving :)  The only think I’m still waiting for is the computers.  I feel sorry for the UPS guy though…the UPS tracking site says that the package weights 145 lbs.

I installed the beta version of Flash 10 awhile back to fix some crashing/freezing problems in Firefox on my Ubuntu laptop. Everything worked fine until yesterday, when I began having the same problems, so I removed Flash 10 and reinstalled Flash 9. I haven’t had any problems since.

How is it that a piece of software that does work stops working and the old software that didn’t work starts working?  I do not know.

…consists of two parties, each of which spends its time pointing out the flaws and vices of the opposing party while failing to mention any virtues of its own.

I checked this book out from the library the other day and started reading it last night. I’ve only read two chapters, but I think this is going to have to be a purchase. The author, Carla Schroder, has a very direct, to-the-point way of writing that makes it very easy to follow along. She doesn’t waste time over-explaining topics, but at the same time, she gives enough information to get you going. She also provides references to additional resources in case you want to know more about a particular topic.

As for organization, the book is organized, well, like a cookbook. This makes it an excellent reference if you are looking for how to do something very specific. Just look in the index for your topic, turn to it, and follow the clearly worded instructions. Not looking for anything in particular? I noticed that the book also can be used as a walkthrough for learning various facets of networking with Linux.

Although I’m just getting started with the book, I can already tell that it’s going to be an excellent resource. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s getting started with Linux and wants to get more acquainted with the operating system from a system/network administrator perspective.

Christianity has always seemed rather unique as a religion to me. This is going to sound cliche, but I think it’s because in every other religion you have man reaching out to God(s) or some kind of higher level existence or some ideal, while Christianity says that there’s no way people could have reached God, so He reached out to people.

It probably sounds a bit ridiculous at first, but just consider this. What was Jesus like? He wasn’t some powerful god-king who came and demanded to be worshiped and served. He didn’t have wealth, palaces, or conquering armies. Heck, the bible even says that he didn’t even have that great of looks. Instead, he was the carpenter son of a carpenter. When he started his ministry, he didn’t set up somewhere with his followers and wait for people to come to him; he went out and spent his days in the cities, towns, and temples. He went to the people. He spent all of his time with people, talking to them, healing them, caring for them.

Just think about that. The God who coordinates and keeps track of everything that happens in the universe cared enough about people to talk to them. He would just sit (or maybe stand) for hours with these huge crowds of people and just to talk. And he wasn’t just there to be heard, either. He compassionately saw them as people who needed loved and who had needs. When they were hungry, he provided food. When the sick and disabled were brought to him, he healed them. When children came to him, he held them and loved them.

He is not a god who wants someone to say the right magic words, or prove themselves with righteous and pious works.  He is the God that wants to know his children.

I’d also point out that Jesus’s answers to the world’s ills and suffering was not to transcend (aka, ignore) it or accept it as the status quo.  His answer was: if you want suffering to stop, stop causing others to suffer.  He wanted people to love and take care of each other.  He made this idea…this taste of heaven on earth…one of the central tenets of Christianity.

And that is what stands out about Christianity to me.

I downloaded Diablo II from the Blizzard Store a few weeks ago to use on my laptop that I have Ubuntu installed on. I attempted to install Diablo II with WINE (Windows compatibility for Linux) and I noticed that I could not get past the license agreement. The Accept button was grayed out and would not activate. I googled around, checked UbuntuForums.org, and could not find an answer to the problem. So I gave up and used an XP vm for awhile, which worked fine until I screwed up my XP vm a couple of days ago.

So I tried installing Diablo II with WINE again, and I don’t remember what I saw that tipped me off, but I realized that the License Agreement was trying to use Internet Explorer to render the form…but in WINE, the Mozilla Gecko engine was used instead. So I found some instructions on installing IE6 with WINE (If I can find the page again, I’ll post it) and what do you know, after I did that, Diablo II installed just fine.

Note, this only seems to affect the installers downloaded from the Blizzard Store.

I posted about this awhile back, but I want to get some more of my thoughts out on the subject. And seeing as how this is my blog, it sees like a good place to do it.

One of the things that really bothers me is that there are a good number of Christians who hold several peculiar beliefs that I disagree with:

1. The Bible is the infallible Word of God
2. Any part of the Bible can be used for instruction, or in other words, the entire Bible is scripture.
3. All parts of the Bible must be true, or the whole thing is false.

Here are my points that I have been thinking about that address those beliefs:

The Bible is almost entirely written as historical record. Why would God’s word be given to us in the third person perspective, or to phrase it another way, why isn’t the Bible directed at the reader? Everything is written from the perspective of a writer recording events that took place. Nothing is written down as a command to the reader. Even the Ten Commandments, when taken in context, are not commands given to the reader of the book of Exodus, but instead were written down as part of the history of what happened to Moses and the Israelites.

For the portions of the Bible not written as historical record, they are addressed to a specific person or group. For example, look at all the epistles. Each one is addressed to a specific church in a city, or to specific person. These letters are not written with the reader from 2000 years in the future in mind. My wife went to a Bible study group once, and when she asked who the book of Hebrews was written to, the group replied, “Us!” She explained that she meant the original recipient, and the group still replied, “Us!” No one there seemed to understand that these parts of the Bible were written to specific people at specific times in the past. My point is, they aren’t written to us today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the Bible has no significance or value. I am saying that it’s not the literal word of God…and there’s no reason why it has to be. Christianity does not lose anything by the Bible being a collection of historical records and letters instead of the word of God. The illustration of man’s sin and need for a savior is still there, and the account of Christ’s death and resurrection is still there. Whether or not God wrote/inspired the writings is inconsequential because the truth is still there.

A down side to viewing the Bible as the word of God is that a lot of people, Christians and non-Christians alike, think that if one part of the Bible is proven wrong, then the whole Bible is wrong. When you view the Bible as a collection of historical writings, that way of thinking makes no sense. For example, a lot of people get bent out of shape about evolution because they realize that there are some pretty big differences between the creation account and the evolutionary time line that make creation account somewhat questionable. That in turn makes the whole Bible suspect…unless you understand that the book of Genesis was written by a different person in a different time than the book of Matthew or John was written. That means that the accuracy of one book in the Bible has absolutely nothing to do with the accuracy of the rest.

And that makes sense. I wouldn’t think that my National Geographic is false because I found out an inaccuracy in Time Magazine. But years of Christians being conditioned to see the Bible as one big book has lead to people making that rather obvious mistake.

It comes down to this. The Bible is not the word of God, and it has no authority of it’s own. There is no place in the Bible where it A) collectively claims to be a anything, much less the word of God, or it B) claims any authority over the reader. The Bible presents the reader with the history of the Hebrew people, the account of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the account of what happened during the early Church, along with some letters written between early Christians. The reader of these things is never commanded to do anything…which is logical…the Bible is a book, it has no power, no authority of it’s own that it could command anyone to do anything. Instead, the reader must consider the information presented, and decide what his or her response will be.

There are so many things to learn in the world…I sometimes wish that I could stop time and just READ. Here’s a list of all things that fascinate me and I wish I has more time to learn about:

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Math
• Quantum mechanics
• Programming
• Hacking
• Networking
• Animals
• Jungles
• Deserts
• South Asia
• Scandinavia
• South America
• Africa
• Space
• Language
• Cooking
• Hunting
• Fishing
• History
• Mythology
• India
• Political Theory
• Religions
• God
• The universe
• Life
• Love
• Poetry

When I think of the sheer massive amounts of information out there, it is simply overwhelming. I mean, I could pick just one topic that I mentioned and spend the rest of my life learning about that one thing. Take programming for example. You can split that into different languages…like C, C#, C+, C++, Java, Javascript, VB, VBA, VBScript, VB .NET, VB .Net 2005, PHP, PHP4, PHP5, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Perl, SQL, etc etc etc. And that’s JUST A FEW of that languages that exist. Then I could pick just one of those languages and spend a very long time learning and mastering it.

Consider that one little piece of a single topic could take years to learn about, and expand that to cover all the pieces in that topic, and expand that even more to cover all topics…that’s hundreds, if not thousands of years of possible learning…and that’s if there were no new discoveries/developments. I find that exciting and yet depressing at the same time.

I’ve probably been thinking more about this as I think about what I want to do with my life…and the answer that I keep coming up with is EVERYTHING. I want to do everything that I can out of everything that there is. And when I stop to think about what “everything” actually is, it blows me away.