Palm: Conclusion

I spent the weekend doing an e-mail tango with support at Palm. The last e-mail I got from them was that I wouldn't have to pay the $35 to get the replacement CD but I would have to buy the CD. Well, the first thing out of the guy's mouth on the phone was $35 fee.

In a last ditch effort to get a real answer I got a hold of support at the Palmone store and got a better answer:

I am very sorry, but the 3rd party software provided on the Software
Essentials CD is only licensed for purchase with a new handheld.

We do not have that item available separately.

I am sorry we cannot be of more assistance.

Why couldn't someone have said that to me from the start? The Palm support people are telling me they can get it for me but I'm not impressed with their knowledge of what is actually going on.

On a positive note, I found the CD set for sale at another place and ordered it. Shew.

Palm: The (T/D)rama

I bought my Palm Tungsten T second hand from eBay last year. I know the risks of buying second-hand but I was willing to take them. I got the Tungsten for a good price and the only thing missing was the CDs that come with it. No problem, I downloaded Palm Desktop 4.1 and was syncing my heart out.

Recently I bought a Bluetooth dongle for my iBook and started syncing via Bluetooth. This is really cool. In the last week I found that I can get my Tungsten on the internet via Bluetooth. This was cooler.

As I started reading up I found that my Tungsten originally came with e-mail and web browser software on those mystical missing CDs. Rats. No fear, I decided to contact Palm to see about getting a replacement. I send them an e-mail in which I was unfortunately not as specific as I should have been. They pointed me to Palm Desktop 4.1 for the Mac. Okay, I replied with more clarity. They pointed me to the Palmone Store and told me to look for the Tungsten T Installation CD. Sorry, none can be found at the fabled store. I replied to the e-mail explaining that problem and included the original dialogue. I'd learned my lesson the first time. They once more pointed me to the Palm Desktop 4.1 for the Mac software. Now I'm getting frustrated. I replied once again with a quote of my explanation from my second e-mail to them. They told me to call the store.

Now that phone call, or series of phone calls were just as much fun as the e-mail exchange. Typical voicemail menus, leading in the wrong direction. The one I really liked was when I called Customer Care (a misnomer). Press 1 for Technical Support, press 2 for Customer Care...I pressed 2. Press 1 for Customer Care, press pound to return to the previous menu. I laughed carelessly at the little joke and pressed 1. The guy I talked to was nice and professional. He took my information (except for that little bit about what I was actually looking for) and put me on hold. When he came back he said that my Tungsten was out of warranty and it would cost me $35 to get an answer!

I didn't need technical help. My Tungsten is working perfectly fine. What I needed was to order a replacement CD. I wasn't going to pay $35 for that privilege!

I e-mailed them with a pretty sardonic "thank you" for the runaround. If I get a reply that points me to Palm Desktop 4.1 I'm going to very carefully consider switching to Pocket PC.

Fun with Spam

I got spam at my spam magnet e-mail address. Big surprise. Here's the subject line: "repulsion cornbread driveway mort incommunicable" I'm sure it is designed to overcome the spam filters out there and it did but why on earth would I ever read it with a subject like that? Oh yea, curiosity.

Here's what it said:

I just heard of this new drµg called ©iális and I thought you might be interested in it. Cìális is the new ríval to vïágra and is better known as sûpér vïagrá or dubbed the "weekénd viagrá" by the prêss.

I just found a place ónl¡ne that has the gënerìc version for a lot chéáper than getting it from a US phârmâcy. No préscrìptions needed or nécessâry.

Yep, trying to get around that spam filtering software, notice all the special characters that filtering software isn't supposed to recognize. And checkout the link:

http://appetite.bare.chicagoan.chug.inalienable.antler.bisect.heath.wholeproduct**less[dot]*iz

I blotted out some of the characters since I don't want to advertise for those slime balls. Throw in a bunch of legitimate words and confuse the filter. While the spammers may think they've overcome the filters, what you see happening is the filters actually winning. Spam must become more and more difficult to read in oder to get past the filters. Eventually, it will be so cryptic no one will respond because they won't be able to read it. Hopefully we can regain the proper use of this digital media. I still can't understand why people respond to spam and thereby make it a profitable enterprise. Just stop and let it die.

The Ladykillers Review

I went to see The Ladykillers last night. Don't bother, it wasn't that good. If you must see it, wait till it comes out on video.

That isn't to say that it didn't have some good points. Tom Hanks' performance was great. He was charming to the end. But that was about it. The story didn't contain any surprises for me. However, it was done by the Coen brothers and they always seem to have more going on in their movies than meets the eye. I think that is what happened in Ladykillers. Consider the assembled team. The Intellectual: Goldthwait Higgenson Dorr PhD, the Fascist: The General (Pol Pot with a Hitler mustache), the Liberal: Garth Pancake (significant other named Mountain Girl), the Gangster: Gawain MacSam (Marlon Waynans constantly spewed vulgarities), and John Q. Public: Lump Hudson (who actually did nothing the entire time and was very stupid).

WARNING: Spoilers follow. Don't read any more if you don't want to know.









I think the old woman, Marva Munson, is intended to represent faith. Faith in God. There is evil taking place in her basement of which she seems unaware. The police (government) ignore her or at least don't take her seriously. When the gangster approaches to kill her he is reduced to a scared little boy and is accidentally killed by the liberal. When the fascist goes after her, he chokes and the falls down the stairs. The liberal, who delivered a passionate speech to the gangster about his participation in the freedom marches in the '60s then tries to steal all the money and leaves the team with a box full of Mother Earth News magazines. It seems fitting that the Fascist would be the one to kill him. When Lump tries to put his foot down and do the right thing, he accidentally kills himself. The Intellectual is of course hit on the head and dies. In turn their bodies are dumped on to a garbage barge that I think symbolizes hell (Gehanna, which was used as a metaphor for hell, was a garbage dump for Jerusalem). Even Pancake's finger which had been blown off is, in the end, cast on the barge.

When Marva discovers what they've done, she demands that they return the money and go to church with her. She remains unscathed through the entire thing. The juxtaposition of the gospel music from her church and Wayans' filthy mouth is arresting. And the silent painting of her departed husband, which changes expressions throughout the film, has its own candle filled shrine and may represent God. When she speaks of him being disturbed, the police sort of chuckle at her like she's nuts.

I'm sure if I saw it again, which I won't, there would be other things that stand out, the Coen boys are very good at that.

Jesus & Moses

The first six verses of Hebrews 3 really caught my attention this morning. The comparison is between Moses and Jesus. It goes like this:

Moses - faithful (v 2)
Jesus - faithful (v 2)
Moses - Servant in house (v5)
Jesus - Son over house (v 6)
Moses - part of the house (v 3)
Jesus - builder of the house (v 3)
God - builder of everything (v 4)
Moses - worthy of honor (v 3)
Jesus - worthy of greater honor (v 3)

The phrase that really tweaked my attention though was "we are his house". The implications of that are pretty significant. "We" is arguably referring to the church. That means that Moses was in the church, that he was a faithful servant (or minister) in the church and that Jesus was the head (or builder) of that church Moses served in just as he is the one we are part of today.

This says a great deal about continuity between the Old Covenant and the New. Can't wait till Dr. Carson gets to Hebrews in class.

He Ain't Representin'!

You know about that court case before the Supreme Court about the Pledge of Allegiance? I actually agree that "under God" should not be in there because of atheists. The guy is arguing the case on behalf of his daughter, he doesn't think that she should be made to say that in school. He doesn't want it to say that there is no God either (fair enough). BUT, and it is a big but, something I didn't know was that he doesn't have custody of his daughter, his wife does and she is an evangelical Christian raising the girl as a Christian. On those grounds I think the case should be tossed! It is also tragic that schools are once again being used as a political battle ground.

Modernist Passions

Remember that other controversial film about Jesus, the Last Temptation of Christ? Well, the screenwriter of that one, Paul Schrader, has some very interesting comments about The Passion. For example:

My guess is that Mel has a problem with the Enlightenment because his film really does go back to the visceral blood cult origins of Christianity, and the fervour it's created is more akin to a Gospel tent meeting than it is to a motion picture.

Well, Schrader, not surprisingly, is very modernist. Notice the notion that his version of Christianity is better than even the original. But wait, there's more!

The Gospels were rigged for political reasons from the get-go. They were written 30-40 years after the fact to curry favour with the Romans and separate the Christians from the Jews. So the Pharisees were made to seem much worse than they were and Pilate was shown to be more agonised.

So where, one wonders, does Schrader get any reliable information about the origins of Christianity? How can he determine that anything anyone says about it is true? To the point, how can he be sure that his view is the correct one? A good thing that he says is that the gospels were written 30-40 years after the fact. There are critics who claim they were written 100 year later, especially the Gospel of John which is sometimes pushed to 250 AD or so. At least liberal theology has allowed the Gospels to move back a bit. What is really curious is that the Gospels were slanted for political favor and yet that move utterly failed. The Christians faced persecution first in Jerusalem but later from local governors and later by Roman Emperors. Furthermore, if the Gospels were "rigged for political reasons from the get-go" why not rig them even better? Why not make Jesus into a Roman apologist and have him persecuted and killed by the Jews for being too Roman? That would have really scored points with Rome especially after the destruction of Jerusalem in 72 AD (when Schrader claims they were written.)

Modernism isn't an answer to this. It proceeds based on disbelief in the trustworthyness of the Bible and then try to prove their case. If you look at modernism since the 1870s it has repeatedly gotten black eye after black eye. It is amazing that it survives to this day.

Apostolic Succession Via Faithful Men

Rome's doctrine of the infallibility of the pope stems not from the man who occupies the office, but the office itself. God so superintends that teaching office so that regardless of the man, he cannot pronounce error in matters of doctrine and morales (when speaking ex cathedra, and the other numerous qualifications.)

Yet, Paul told Timothy "what you heard from me...entrust to faithful men" (2Ti 2:2). If it were impossible for those in that office to err in those things, why would Paul tell Timothy this? Those who were in the line of Apostolic Succession would be "faithful" (in those things) because of the office, so why would Timothy have to find faithful men?

Also, a brief history of the papacy would reveal that the church did not entrust these things to faithful men, there were many rogues and reprobates in that line. So even if there were such a thing as apostolic succession, the church squandered that long ago. I'm sure the Eastern Church would disagree with that, they'd say that God preserved it through them. That's another story. And another blog entry. Some other day. Along with the answer of how that works for Protestants. And Baptists.

Good Theology

I've been listening to John Piper on the Internet lately. Man, that is some excellent preaching. Fortunatley his MP3s are free downloads so I'm filling up my iPod. :) His theme music is Be Thou My Vision, my favorite hymn. It is my cellphone ringtone. John is raising money to get his show on the radio across the nation. I think this would be a great thing for the Church in America. I'm going to try to contribute some money to get that program off the ground and on the air.

I've also been listening to R. C. Sproul. He's going through the attributes of God. Thrilling stuff. RC is on in my area but he comes on at 9AM and that's when I'm in class so I have to listen on the Internet. What is really cool is that I can use iTunes to play the program and even with my 56K dial-up it doesn't stall. Can't say the same with Real One or Windows Media Player.

So, why do I study theology? Because it deepens my worship. Why should sermons be rich theologically and not only practical? To intensify worship and further godliness:

His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. - 2Pt 1:3

Know Snow

It is snowing. This is the second day in a row that it snowed. It is supposed to snow again. What is up with that?

Polling Data Are Useless

Fascinating program on This American Life on political polling. Sounds like pretty much what I thought: fraught with errors and mostly useless information.

Genuine Act of Contrition

I am a sinner. I have sinned. What do I do? Do I beat myself? Do I run and hide from God until he gets over it? Do I sink in to depression and despair? Or worse, do I blow it off and act as if it is okay, no one got hurt and I had a good time so what's the harm?

No, I am a Christian and so none of these responses is appropriate. But neither is the response that says that Christ has atoned for my sins so it is no big deal. God hates sin. Christ has atoned for my sins. Those two things go together and must stay together. I can't punish myself, either physically or emotionally, and expect God to be happy with me. He hates sin but he loves his son and his son took the punishment I was due. If I try to inflict myself then I am saying that Jesus' work wasn't good enough. I can't "claim the blood", laugh it off and walk away. God hates sin so much that he sent his own son to the cross because of it.

My attitude to my sin, and indeed sin in general, should mirror God's attitude. I must hate my sin, reject it, turn from it but I must also flee to Christ not away from him. In Jesus God has reconciled me to himself. I need to avail myself of the means of his grace. Prayer, confession, the Lord's Table, Bible study, fasting, preaching or teaching of God's word, all these things repeat the gospel to me anew. I need to be reminded of both God's hatred of sin and his mercy in Christ.

The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe for their salvation, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts. It is ordinarily brought about by the preaching of the word. By baptism, the Lord's Supper, prayer and other means appointed by God that grace is strengthened and increased. – 1689BCF 14.1 (modernized)

I need to have that faith by which I first believed strengthened. When I first turned to Jesus I believed he was sufficient and I need to be reminded of that again.

German theologian Martin Luther was once asked by a member of his congregation why he preached the Gospel to them week after week, thinking that surely they were ready to move on to some deeper, more spiritual teaching. Luther’s reply was, “Because beloved, week after week you forget it.” – Derek Webb (http://www.derekwebb.com)

As has been said in the past, we currently live in the now and not yet. Now: Jesus has come, salvation has dawned, atonement has been made. Not yet: we're only 1/2 saved, our spirits are renewed, we are new creatures but our flesh is the same old stuff that lived in sin.

So I have sinned. I am a sinner. I hate my sin and am ashamed that I still commit it. But I am a Christian. I don't dwell on my sin morbidly, I flee to the cross because of my revulsion and I seek to be set free. I don't want to be alienated from God.