Feeling it

That’s no joke!  I’m feeling it big time.  What is it I’m feeling exactly?  It’s a bit of anxiety, some depression and a whole lot of loneliness.  It’s all my own fault, I blame no one for my lot in life.

In short; my alcohol and drug addiction has caused me to lose most everything I love.  I have lost the love of my life, she has moved on.  People tell me that it seems there is a chance we will get back together and I tell her I’ll never give up on my love for her, but I don’t know if I believe what I’m saying or if it’s me wishing.  I sure hope, but she deserves better than what I have given.  I used to be good for her, then I took a turn for the worst.

I have been clean for a while and that has caused me to start feeling a lot of things I have been able to escape such as guilt, shame, remorse and to face reality.  I have two DUIs in less than a year and can’t drive.

I have not seen my children in over thirty days.  I am wondering how I am going to be able to spend time with them.  I’m trying to figure that one out.  I love them more than anything and I know they love me so much too.  We have such an amazing relationship with each other.  One day in the not so distant future all of these horrible mistakes will be things of the past and I will be repaired and healed and it will all be life lessons that have steered me in the right direction.

I love my kids more than anything and it is this love for them that is driving me to change.  I have tried before but until I lost so much I did not have the strength.  My kids are the reason I am still here and still fighting.  I will fight until everything is right.  Then I will hold on tight, teach my children and do what is right until this life is over.

Coming clean about coming clean

The past two and a half years (actually a little more than that) have been an absolute mind bending amusement park ride of life for me and for those close to me.  I’ve been the one on the amusement park rides; those around me have been suffering as they have witnessed my erratic behavior, my inconsistencies and my being completely distracted from the important basics of responsibility while I have embraced my dreams and checked out into my own head.

I have placed blame on other people for the poor choices I’ve made.  I know now that doing that has created a bubble of comfort for me to live in turmoil and simply choose the most applicable excuse to justify my behavior.

But every choice I have made has resulted in a consequence; good or bad.  I have created my life by my choices, behavior and most importanly my attitude and my thinking on things.  Everything I have received or lost has been one hundred percent my own doing.  Just because I experienced divorce and agonizing loss does not give me license to blame anyone for what I choose to feel or how I choose to react or cope with my life’s experience.

“The Lord has given you the gift of agency and instructed you sufficiently to know good from evil.  You are free to choose and are permitted to act, but you are not free to choose the consequences.  With absolute certainty, choices of good and right lead to happiness and peace, while choices of sin and evil eventually lead to unhappiness, sorrow and misery.” ~ Joseph B Wirthlin

I would like to emphasise a couple of things from this quote.  First that we are free to choose but not free to choose the consequences.  Second, that choices of sin and evil eventually lead to unhappiness, sorrow and misery.

Choices of right and good may not pay off right away.  In fact, that is rarely if ever the case.  Often times the pay off for righteous living comes late in life and the consequences for sinful living likewise come later.  After all, if we received consequences for right or wrong immediately it would be a piece of cake to live righteously all the time.  We are given choice and expected to struggle, build character and prove ourselves.  Times of trial and suffering do not build character; they reveal it.  The time to build character is now and always so that when the hard times come we have fortified ourselves enough to weather the storms of life.

“And if you feel that you can’t go on and your will’s sinkin’ low, just believe and you can’t go wrong.  In the light you will find the road.  Though the winds of change may blow around you, but that will always be so.  When love is pain it can devour you, but you are never alone.”  ~ From ‘In the Light’ by Led Zeppelin

 

The Palestine Solidarity Movement

I found this blog post interesting.  It talks about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the fact that Palestinian Christians are more prosperous than Palestinian Muslims.  Food for thought.  You can read the entire blog at http://palestinesolidaritymovement.blogspot.com/

Friday, January 19, 2007

Palestine Solidarity Movement encourages Palestinian Muslims to convert to Christianity

While the Palestinian Solidarity Movement does not necessarily subscribe to evangelist Jack Chick’s theology, it recognizes that Christian culture–in terms of prescribing how people should behave toward one another–is totally superior to most forms of “Islam” that are practiced in Gaza and the West Bank. In addition, Lebanese Christians tend to have far better educations and far higher incomes than Lebanese Muslims, thus reinforcing the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s conclusion that Christianity leads to a far better way of life.As shown in Sky Lighter from Chick Publications, this is what militant “Islamic” mullahs and imams are teaching Palestinian children today. Note, of course, that the gray-bearded imam who is telling Palestinian children that they will go to Paradise to enjoy the services of 70 dark-eyed virgins did not get to be a gray-bearded imam by acting on the advice he is giving these boys.While mainstream Islam teaches the same lessons as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and all other mainstream religions–things like loving your neighbor, not doing violence to other people, and respecting the natural rights of all people–the militant “Islam” that is prevalent in Gaza and the West Bank teaches its followers to:

(1) Kill female family members for “adultery,” which includes being raped.

(2) Murder other people because of their religion or sexual orientation

(3) Commit suicide while murdering other people

(4) Engage in mindless violence that keeps Palestinians poor while their Judeo-Christian neighbors become rich through application of Judeo-Christian ethics and principles.

The Palestine Solidarity Movement accordingly concludes that conversion to Christianity and adoption of Christian principles would be in the best interests of the Palestinian people, and would result in an enormous improvement in their standard of living.

The Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) is an international movement committed to assisting peaceful Palestinians using legal and nonviolent public relations methods and principles. Founded by a small group of activists, PSM aims to support and strengthen Palestinian resistance against oppression by providing the Palestinian people with a voice to nonviolently resist terrorism and coercion.

posted by Winged Hussar 1683 at 11:30 AM

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Comments on my comments – The whole AC/end-of-the-world thing continued…

In response to my post about Obama being the Anti-Christ, I received a comment, posted below, from Doughlasjk Stambler, in the which he called me a racist.  Well, maybe he didn’t call me an outright rasicst, but he said my comments were not ‘Christian-like’ and that they were ‘racially motivated’.

I have posted those comments and my comments to them below, and have also included comments from another reader of my blog.  All of these can be found on my ‘about‘ page.  They were posted there originally for some reason, so I brought them here since they’re interesting food for thought.  They may be silly and sensational, but they’re thought provoking and entertaining nevertheless.

There is one last thing I’d like to add to this post.  It’s a comment to a post made at a blog about the possibility of Obama being the Anti-Christ.  It was referenced yesterday on time.com and cnn.com and there have been a lot of comments and traffic driven there since.  One person had some very interesting things to say and I wanted to add them here as well.

Ypsilon said…

Thank you from Europe for your good and interesting blog. May I add some of my thoughts on the subject?

I was brought up in Chirstian faith and know the book of Revelation and the varied interpretations of it concerning the Antichrist, though I have been an agnostic for many years. Indeed I did some intense research about the subject a few years ago when I was planning to write a sf short story, though I never thought the Antichrist could be real. I had problems to conclusively invent a person, beloved by all the different denominations on earth.

Obama fits everything.

When all this suddenly came to my mind some night I was really bewilderd and scared. When I heard and saw Obama on TV there was a feeling in my mind: “He reminds me of somebody, but I do not know of whom”. One night I woke up scared and knew: He has reminded me of the Antichrist.

Today I am no more sure whether the Antichrist exists or not. So I did Google search and found your blog, completely shocked that this idea (which I still considered my own craziness) ist shared by so many people.

To those who suggest, Bush being more evil and killing Iraqi children and the like … it is not (in the beginning!) about being evil but about being universally beloved, it is about a political leader who acts and is accepted like a cult leader or even a god. Bush (and other politicians) of course do have their voters and supporters, but they aren’t comparable to religious believers and either they are despised outside their own country or just not of any interest. All of this is different with Obama.

Additionally “Rome” is not mentioned in the Bible, people only thought it should be Rome because of the seven hills. But Honolulu is a city built on seven hills too. And it is in the middle of the Sea.

Obama fits everything so perfectly that I am absolutely sure it is not coincidence. Either he is the Antichrist or he performs to be the Antichrist for some reason.

Have you ever considered the second possibility?

He knows people think he is the Antichrist and he does not do anything to refute this notion, i.e. urging his followers not to hail him like a god. And McCain knows as well and jumps on the game as is proven by this ad. Maybe there is a web of deceit much larger than we can think.

Thank you again for your site.

A little clarification on this whole Anti-Christ deal

Alright, it’s getting pretty nutty with all the cross linking and political mumbo-jimbo going on and all the finger pointing and Obama being accused of being ‘The One’ or the ‘Anti-Christ’.  Even I said he’s the Anti-Christ spoken of in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, but that doesn’t mean I’m right.

The truth is, as far as what I can gather and understand, is that it looks like the AC seen in vision by these prophets, represented figuratively by the beast/dragon characters with the seven heads, ten horns, the wounded head that was healed, rising up from the sea, etc., is probably not so much an individual political figure so much as maybe the primary political world leader of the time, or a political ideology or the primary group of political strategists in the last days who make war and lead the world into so much calamity.

This makes a lot more sense to me.  But what do I know?  I’m just a guy watching the world news and reading the bible, trying to put this puzzle together because I have Internet access and a curious mind.  I could be wrong.  The one thing I am sure of though, what is coming is coming, and no matter what the AC, the beast, the 666 or any of that literally means, it is all here in some form or another and we are all watching it unfold and partaking in it.

These are exciting times, and being prepared for ourselves, knowing who we are, being right with God and our families and being watchful of these events is the only way we will be able to be safe from them.

I was accused by a reader of being a racist because I called Obama the AC.  That’s just silly.  That’s why he will probably win the presidency, because of that sort of attitude.  Just because he is an obvious target, the race card is being played all over the place and it’s going to be a great distraction.  Obama is slick, much slicker than the Clintons ever dreamed of being.  He has the best slight of hand act in political history.  He can get you watching his right hand while his left hand is left unwatched to do anything he pleases.  He distracts us with promises of change, promises of unity, he plays the race card, he says he’s not like those who have come before him, he says he will bring long needed peace to the nations around the world of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, peace between Israel and Palestine, he uses all sorts of rhetoric to distract us while he is working his bag of tricks with his other hand.

Pay attention to this guy, he is one slick mofo.  McCain isn’t exactly the greatest second choice but at least McCain isn’t hell bent on selling out American sovereignty for political glory under the guise of being some kind of world Messiah, healing nations, building bridges and tearing down walls.

The American melting pot is spilling over into all of the nations of the world and Obama is mixing it all up together, trying to make peace and sense out of the chaos.  He actually believes he can accomplish this.  Mankind can not live this way, it will not work out for Obama, and that’s why I see this playing out as the bible has foretold.  The parallels are too great to be ignored.

Watch and learn, be prepared.  But above all, be happy, keep doing the good work.  Make your neighbors happy, try to cheer up those around you, lend a helping hand wherever you get the chance.  Just because people like me and nut-job conspiracy theorists obsess over these hypothetical, end-times scenarios doesn’t mean we have given up hope and are standing idly by, waiting for the Savior to swoop down and carry us home.  Those are the kool-aid drinkers, the comet chasers and the loons of the world who go off together claiming to know the day or the hour of the coming of the Lord.

This nothing more than like getting caught up in the Rubic’s Cube craze, or losing yourself in Soduku.  It’s just something I find interesting, it doesn’t mean I’m a complete nut-job fanatic who is going to run out and stock up on ammunition and hide away in a bunker.  I know life goes on, I have to work, I have to raise my family and there are still a lot of things I want to accomplish before all this insanity plays out in reality.

So, just to summaraize, I’m not nuts, I’m not going to go all survivalist, I have no idea what Anti-Christ even literally means, but I do think Obama is a megalomaniac who will do far more harm than good, and he’s a pretty good charachter to look to if you want some Apocolyptic type drama to follow in your spare time.

Barack Obama and his budding Messiah complex

Barack Obama is being set up as the savior of the world.  It was kind of a joke, and is being played out in jest by the GOP but Obama and people around the world are embracing this as a sort of calling, a leader who will heal the wounded nations, bring us together and unite the world for peace.

If anyone has studied, really studied the prophesies in the book of Daniel, Isaiah and Revelation it would be much clearer and probably a little more real than some joke being portrayed by conspiracy theorists and GOP extremists.

Barack Obama is taking upon  himself a Messianic role.  Right now I’m sure he believes he has some great answers and solutions to the world’s problems, and there are a lot of people who are in support of his vision.  But he will become drunk with this vision of being the Savior of the world.

Israel will attack Iran and Obama will support Israel in stopping nuclear proliferation, thereby securing Israel as a soverign nation and solidifying its status in the eyes of the world and thereby thwarting the Palestinians’ desire for the destruction of Israel.  Israel will call him the Messiah, literally.  They will believe he is the one who has come to save them.

But then the political framework he has worked to build and that perceived peace he has achieved will begin to crumble, and Barack Obama will be forced once again to take sides.  This time he will side with the Palestinians, who will have valid arguments against Israel that Obama and other world leaders will support, and they will begin to fight against Israel, fulfilling the prophesy that the anti-christ will be seen as a  Messiah to Israel, and after 42 months will turn against them with the nations of the world to destroy them.

This will bring the battle of Armaggedon and usher in the Second Coming of the Savior, who will be the only one that can stop the destruction and mayhem being poured out up on mankind.

I have seen this coming for years.  Call me crazy, but watch it unfold before your eyes.

I’m also open to the possiblity that I could be entirely wrong.  Fortunately my future and salvation doesn’t depend on whether or not I’m right about this stuff.  I just need to be prepared every day in case it does happen, and I believe, as the scriptures tell us, that it will happen.

08.08.08

O ate O ate O ate

Oh eight Oh eight Oh eight

O wait O wait O wait

Sr. Chinese army officer says Islamic separatists are biggest danger to the Olympics – big surprise!

Extremist groups of The Religion of Peace are taking matters into their own hands again to spread their gospel message by blowing up 32 Chinese policemen at a border post in Xinjiang, China this week. The Turkestan Islamic Party in China has release a video entitled Our Blessed Jihad in Yunnan and has threatened the Olympics.

The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorist communications, has quoted Col Tian Yixiang of the Olympics security command centre as saying, “The Chinese have haughtily ignored our warnings [and]…the Turkestan Islamic Party volunteers…have started urgent actions.”

Wow, big surprise there.  The Chinese have ignored and denied these warnings.  I can’t believe the Olympic Committee has the balls to actually think holding the Olympics in China is a good idea.  China is the last country on Earth that is any sort of good-will standard and should be sanctioned to the gills if anything.  I’m just astounded at the arrogance and ignorance displayed by these groups and the willingness of others to put themselves in harm’s way just to execute another Olympic games.  God bless our athletes and may they be protected from this fanatacism.

Barack Obama is the Antichrist

OK, I said it.  I’m going to stand back now and watch what happens.  After his speech in Germany today, his promises of bringing unity and peace to everything and everyone under the sun…this guy really is drunk with a vision of changing the world.  He believes he is some sort of Messiah character to the world.  And people all around the world are eating out of his hand.

I read in Newsweek Magazine this article – http://www.newsweek.com/id/145971

Here is the one statement that made me realize that Obama doesn’t have any idea what he believes and that he is flying by the seat of his pants with his head in the clouds and dreams of fame and historical glory:

The story of Obama’s religious journey is a uniquely American tale. It’s one of a seeker, an intellectually curious young man trying to cobble together a religious identity out of myriad influences. Always drawn to life’s Big Questions, Obama embarked on a spiritual quest in which he tried to reconcile his rational side with his yearning for transcendence. He found Christ—but that hasn’t stopped him from asking questions. “I’m on my own faith journey and I’m searching,” he says. “I leave open the possibility that I’m entirely wrong.”

A guy that is supposedly so smart, so bright, so intellectual, a man with such vision, with the audacity of hope, he leaves open the possibility that his belief in god is entirely wrong.  He is a political figure standing up to all that is before us in this new millenium, that he is going to be the one to bring about change, to bring unity and peace to the world, to stop nuclear proliferation, to bring peace to Darfur and settle wars around the world, and he doesn’t even know who his god is.

I bet he will be our next president.  Will he be the one to secure Israel?  Will he be the one who, after three and a half years, turns on Israel to fight against them, ushering in the Second Coming of Christ?

I’m going to get a big fat tub of popcorn, the most comfy barcalounger money can buy, turn on cable news and watch it all unfold.  This is gonna be good!

The paper MCSE – A success Story

Well the cutbacks have hit me and it’s time to find a new job.  I got laid off a couple of months ago and it has been an interesting experience from the one I had eight years earlier when I landed what I thought was the job that would carry me on through into retirement.

I’ll backtrack a little and start in 1997.  I picked up this big fat techie book called ‘Networking Essentials’ and basically devoured it, committing to memory everything I could, all the acronyms, the ISO/OSI Network Model, etc.  I could talk tech but the truth was, I had no clue what I was talking about.  I was on the road to becoming one of those paper MCSE guys.

So, I got through the book, learned the terms enough to be able to fake my way through a couple of job interviews and wound up landing a job doing tech support for 3Com’s new PCMCIA fast Ethernet laptop NIC.  I was about as familiar with computers as Liberace was at pleasing women and there I was with a headset and phone calls coming in for support of OS2, Banyan Vines, Novell, I had no idea what I was doing but I read the scripts, got as familiar with things as I could and actually I turned out to be one of the best support guys there.  I picked up on things pretty quickly and I have to tell you, my feet were held to the fire at times and I scrambled for answers to things I had no clue what to do with.  I walked people through autoexec.bat files, config.sys files they taught me while we were troubleshooting and they had no idea it was my education they were paying for while we were trying to figure out how to browse their Network Neighborhood.

Seriously, I was new to all this stuff and I was the guy supposedly, the expert, supporting it on the other side of the phone.  It blew my mind that I was able to actually succeed by just RTFM and nobody had a clue around me that I was completely ignorant to what was going on.

So I figured, if I can pull this off I could probably do that MSCE thing I heard about on the radio and make $60,000 after finishing four weeks of intensive training classes and testing.  So I hit my relatives up for a good $12,000 loan, I took the MCSE back in the NT days with my emphasis on TCP/IP and Exchange Server.  I had no idea how good an idea that was at the time, it just sounded like the right thing to do.  I sat in those classes while the instructor talked about network protocols, domains, NTFS, shares, NetBEUI, etc.  I memorized everything I could and had no freaking idea what it all meant.  All I knew was that this mumbo jumbo was going to get me a big fat salary and a brand new career.  This actually happened.  I’m not making it up!

I went through the entire MCSE education, spent all that money on those silly classes that promised me that big fat salary, and one day while still doing 3Com tech support I decided to put together a resume that looked like an entry level network admin.

I found a trucking company in Portland, Oregon that needed an admin.  They had a T1 with no firewall (yikes!), they had just tried this new email thing called Exchange Server and they had Netware 4.11 running with an AS400 behind a sliding glass door.  The cables were everywhere, running to dumb terminals throughout the building.  It was ugly.  So I interviewed with a guy they called the IT director who was an RPG programmer and knew very little about networking, and also interviewed with the CFO.  Why the CFO I’ll never know, but I made an impression, talked the tech talk out my arse, throwing acronyms around the room and baffling them with everything I had been inundated with through those training classes.  Still, no hands on training and these guys hired me to manage their network operations.

So, In a six month period I actually went from knowing jack about computers to becoming a for real network admin.  My salary at that trucking company was $43,000 to start but it gets better.  Remember the promise of $60,000 after taking all those classes?  Well, while I was at the trucking company I actually completed all the testing, actually got my MCSE and CNA certs, used those guys as my education lab, learned a buttload of good stuff including Cisco PIX, Netware, Exchange, etc. and went out one day to Computer Associates to see if they would hire me to help test their AV products.

Well, with all my new found knowledge and having actually had some real world experience finally with all those acronyms and protocols they made me an offer of $80,000.  I kid you not!  The catch was that I would have to have worked like 15 hour days to make that money.

So, I took that offer back to my boss and told him what that I would stick around if he would give me $60,000 a year.  He went to the CEO the next day and whammo!  I was the paper MCSE making $60,000 a year.

I stuck around, learned more, actually got certified with Novell also, learned some HTML & java script, built the corporate website and then got bored.  They could see I was unimpressed with things because I basically built them a textbook infrastructure while I learned and it was pretty much on auto pilot.  So, they saw that $60,000 as a big liability and brought in some flunkie who was raised on computers unlike myself but who didn’t have all that textbook knowledge.  His salary was $20,000 less than mine and they had me train him then laid me off.  It was a weird situation.  I think they finally caught on to me that I was using them as an education lab.

I had convinced them that they needed to buy Cold Fusion Pro to build their website, which could have been written in notepad, because I wanted to get into web dev stuff.  So the boss kind of saw what was going on finally and brought me into his office one day and pretty much just said, “Look, I know this place isn’t really where you want to be and I see you wanting to move on to bigger things so we’re gonna have to let you go”.

Long story short, I moved to Utah and found a job making the magic number of $60,000 as a network admin and helped build that infrastructure from five little tower PC servers in 2000 to a fully redundant, world class data center in 2008 with an EMC SAN, redundant ASA firewalls, HSRP failover, Cisco 6500 core switches, all Proliant server racked up in the most beautiful configuration.  I mean it was pure IT porn at the end of my tenure.

Through the years from 2000 to now I had hired a couple of brilliant Linux admins, a Cisco engineer we pulled from the TAC team to manage our core and a bright young kid to do all the internal support with a shiny new diploma from the University of Utah in Information Management.

Then the company brought in a new CTO and promptly lost a couple of their biggest clients, putting them in a financial bind.  Well, the new CTO came in a saw things as they were, not knowing all the blood, sweat and 36 hour days I had put into building this rock solid infrastructure, looked around, saw my salary, saw the guys I had hired, saw my duties, saw their abilities and logic told him that I was the one to cut.

So I’m looking for a job!  Thanks for indulging me, I feel now that it’s time for me to go become some IT visionary or maybe just write a screenplay of my life and see if can win some independent film awards. If anyone has a lead for me I’m looking for work in SLC, Utah.  It’s time to crack the books again and get that Windows 2008 stuff in my head so I can go run somebody else’s infrastructure.