Pop-up Blocker

Uncle Johnny -- There are a number of pop-up blockers out there, but I prefer to use the Google Toolbar. It works well, it's free, it's stable, and it includes a really easy way to search the web with my favorite search engine -- Google. To install the Toolbar, go to the link below and follow the instructions on the screen.

Google Toolbar

Attika

When I was in Colorado Springs last week, a co-worker and I went to several gaming stores in town. At one really nice one downtown, I found a game I had been looking for -- Attika. It's set in the time of the Greek city-states, and the goal is to either build your entire city or build enough to connect two shrines. The game has been elements similar to Settlers of Catan, so if you like that game, you'll probably like Attika. It plays well with 2, 3, and 4, as there is no trading element to the game.

Boardgamegeek's Info on Attika

Breckinridge

I was in Colorado Springs last week for a business trip, so while in the neighborhood I took a day off to go skiing. Some guys from the MITRE office took me to Breck and showed me around. What a blast! Way better than Snowshoe, hands down. There were so many more runs, and the runs were much longer. Plus they had a bunch of ungroomed stuff way on the top of the bottom, which was really hard but a blast to ski through. Of course at 12,000 feet I was gasping for breath much of the time, but it was all worth it. Hopefully I can find a way to go next year.

Info on Breckenridge

Building my own computer

I'm in the process of building my own desktop again, the third one I've built. I have never had so many problems! First the BIOS was set for an 8X AGP video card, so my 4X card wouldn't work. I had to borrow an old PCI video card just to get to the BIOS. Then I couldn't get the BIOS to see my 40 GB hard drive. I finally had to borrow a drive with a newer interface, and then the BIOS was happy. (Thanks, Allen, for swapping hard drives with me!) Finally, while installing Windows, I kept getting Blue Screens of Death. After talking with MWave's tech support (where I bought the motherboard, processor, and memory), I think I have a bad stick of RAM. When I took one out, everything works fine. Anyhow, I now have my new computer up, and I'm in the process of installing the software. Whew!

Spring has sprung

Ah, the flowers are blooming! I love this time of year. The daffodils are blooming and the hyacinths and anemone have started as well. God's creation is a magnificent testimony to His creative power and artistry.

The Passion

Ann and I saw the movie today, so I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on it.

The bad: The only part of the movie I didn't like was extra emphasis it placed upon Mary, the mother of Jesus. In one scene she supernaturally knows where Jesus is, and John repeatedly refers to her as Mother with a capital 'M' (oddly enough, Jesus still refers to her as woman with a lowercase 'w'). This emphasis is consistent with the Roman Catholic church's teachings of Mary, claiming she is sinless and a mediator between man and a wrathful Jesus. This view is heretical. Although Mary trusted God and most likely understood who her Son was, Mary was still a sinner like the rest of us. Nothing in the Bible suggests that she was without sin; she needed the salvation her Son provided, just as all humanity does. Furthermore Mary is never depicted as a mediator in the Bible; that role is expressly given to Jesus, who mediates on our behalf before God.

1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

The unecessary: A Satan character appears in various scenes, motivating various characters to sin and generally making sure things are going his way. Although I have no doubt that Satan worked mightily to accomplish the death of Christ, thinking to thwart God's plan, the portrayal of him in the movie was not strictly necessary and a bit theatrical for my tastes.

The good: By and large the movie was good. It was Scripturally accurate. It used flashbacks well to recall various points in Christ's life and teaching. It placed a high emphasis on how Jesus related to people; He was always interested in people, even while dying. The scourging, the crown of thorns, and the crucifixion were all done very well. [Too well done, perhaps; be careful taking small children to the movie.]

I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. What was my personal response to this movie? In the class I am teaching at my church, we are studying Philippians 2, which describes the descent of Christ, the steps He went through that led Him to the cross. As I watched this movie and cried, I could not help but thank God for the love I saw demonstrated before my eyes -- Jesus died for me. Here are two quotes from commentator Gordon Fee on this passage:

"What is thus being urged upon the Philippians is not a new view of Jesus, but a reinforcement, on the basis of Paul's view of the crucifixion that in the cross God's true character, his outlandish, lavish expression of love, was fully manifested."

"Here is where the one who as 'equal with God' has most fully revealed the truth about God: that God is love and that his love expresses itself in self-sacrifice - cruel, humiliating death on a cross - for the sake of those he love."

So what response could someone have who is not a disciple of Jesus Christ? Can they come to a saving knowledge of Jesus just from watching this movie? The movie is certainly not a study of systematic theology or soteriology; it did not end with someone telling the Roman's road. Despite this, yes, I think someone could be saved. In the flashbacks to the Last Supper, Jesus makes two key statements.

John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Matthew 26:28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I believe this verses are sufficient for someone to understand that they need to be saved, why Jesus died on the cross, and perhaps how to be saved. At the very least it should cause people to ask more questions, which is an opportunity for additional explanation from the Bible.

Would you like more information on why Jesus died? First, read this:

God's Plan

Then call me or email me at james @ garriss.org.

Guillotine

Whenever I'm in DC, I try to stop by one of my favorite gaming stores to pick up a new game to play. I found Guillotine on sale, so I picked it up. It's a card game, and Ann and I figured out how to play in less than 5 minutes. It's not a really difficult strategy game, certainly simpler than Settlers or Carcassonne. Nearly all the rules are on the cards, so there's very little to remember. We played it several times and enjoyed it immensely. It played well with 2 and 3 players; we'll try with 5 tonight. If you're looking for a simple game for those times you don't want to think too hard, Guillotine's a good choice.

Guillotine Game Review



PS: Uh, I know you're not going to believe this, but I didn't really plan it so that my review of Guillotine came in the same post where the picture is of me chopping firewood. Honestly.

PT Cruiser

I had a business meeting in DC last week, so I rented a car from National at the airport. One of the cars available was a PT Cruiser, and since I had never driven one before, I took it. On the outside, the car is kinda neat. It's got a distinctive, retroish sorta look. But the inside left me wanting. It was surprisingly not comfortable. It was square, it was boring, and it didn't have much room. And it was way underpowered. Maybe this was the super-cheap version for rental companies, but the engine was pitiful compared to the normal mid-size cars I rent. Wimpy. Anyhow, cool to look at, but I wouldn't buy one myself.

Skiing

I took Jacen skiing on Snowshoe in West Virginia last week. We drove there Wed afternoon (did you know a 6 hour trip takes 7 hours with a 5 year old?). I put him in ski school Thurs morning, while I attempted to remember how to ski. When I came back, he could get up on the skis and go down the hill, but he couldn't stop or steer. I decided more schooling was in order, so I paid for ski school for Thurs afternoon and Fri morning. I hit the black diamonds Thurs afternoon, then went to pick him up. He could sorta stop, but not real well, and he still couldn't go where he wanted. I dropped him off one last time Fri morning, while I tried a few jumps on their terrain park (I'm lousy at jumping). When I got back, he was much improved. After 3 trips with me down the bunny slopes, he could mostly stop and mostly steer. Good enough -- we headed off to the greens. What a blast! For the first few trips, he held onto one of my ski poles while he worked on his stopping (we used to call this snow-plowing; they call it making the pizza wedge in his school). Then I turned him loose, trying to get him to zigzag down the mountain. He could do it, but most of the time he wanted to point his skis south, go fast, and then crash. I rewarded his crashes by stopping hard and showering him with snow. He loved it! It was really a lot of fun to ski with Jacen. A few more years of ski school and I'm sure he'll be better than I am. This will become an annual event.

Next stop -- Breck in March.

New Room

I painted two weekends ago, and last weekend Emmy's new furniture came. It does fill up the room, but it fills it vertically, giving Emmy 12 drawers and 6 shelves -- space she needs in her small bedroom. The furniture is from Trendwood; it's not real fancy, but it's solid. Grandpa Garriss came over to help take down the ceiling fan and replace it with a simple light. The fan was too close to her bed, and we thought it was a safety hazard. There's still a little bit more work to do, but it's mostly done.



Admit it. You are jealous of the green walls, aren't you?

Small World

One member of my ABF class (ABF stands for Adult Bible Fellowship; it's what we call Sunday School in my church) printed nice-looking business cards for our class and gave them to all the members. The idea is to use them as a tool to invite people to church and to our class. One day last week, my wife got a phone call. Someone had found a briefcase with a Bible in it, but there was no indication who they belonged to. The only clue was one of these business cards for our class, so the lady called asking if we were missing a briefcase and Bible. It wasn't ours, so Ann sent an email to our class, expecting it belonged to one of our members. On Sunday, we found out the truth. A member of our class found them in road two Sundays ago. It looked like someone had put them on top of their car and drove off. So she collected the briefcase and Bible, put the business card inside, and then put them back politely near the edge of the road the following week. We still don't know whose stuff this is, but if you're missing a briefcase...

Multiplayer Fun

What do you get when you mixes 4 XBoxes, 4 TVs, 4 copies of Halo, 10 controllers, 65 feet of network cables, 1 router, and 10 not-entirely-sane people pumped up on pizza, chips, and soda? You get 7 hours of multiplayer fun! I invited friends from work, church, and the neighborhood bring their XBoxes over last night and have some fun. And did we ever! It was super simple to connect everything together; you certainly didn't need to be a network engineer. We put 2 in the living room and 2 in Jacen's room, then ran cables down the hall. This allowed us to play 5-on-5 team games like capture the flag. We started around 6pm and finally quit around 1am. We'll have to do this again.

Good Help

To help break up all the green in Emmy's room, I'm painting a small bookshelf white to match the trim. Jacen and Emmy decided they wanted to help, so I found a way to get them involved.

Brighter Is Better

We've been wanting to redecorate Emmy's room for a while in a ladybug pattern, as "ladybug" is my pet name for her. The holdup has been finding the right furniture to buy. Most kid's furniture is just cheap junk, or it costs over a $1,000. We finally found a Trendwood set, very similar to what we got for Jacen's room. So that meant it was time to paint, which is what I did this weekend. You can get a sense of the color we chose from the picture below.

Blue Screen of Death

I've been getting blue screens for quite a while on my desktop computer, an Athlon 1400. I tried a number of things, but couldn't get it to stop. I suspected that my memory had gone bad, but I didn't want to spend $150 on more memory to swap it out and test it. A friend recommended that I try some memory testing software, so I found a free one called Memtest86 on the Net. I used Easy CD Creator to burn the ISO image, popped it into my desktop, and turned it on. It started running the tests, and sure enough it found over 640,000 errors. I have two DIMMs, so I re-ran the tests one at a time. One of them had the errors; the other did not. I left the good one in, and the computer hasn't blue screened for a couple days. Very handy software.

Memtest86 homepage
ISO images suitable for creating a bootable Memtest86 CDROM