Lofland bLOG

Currently Listening to Hi God! An Ecumenical Program Based on the Human Growth and Development of Children and All Who Are Open to Love

Ok, the arachnophobic reverse Nazi got it right. I am a goof!

As for Mad Hatter’s comment, it does not fit my agenda, so I am going to ignore it.

Here is my answer.

We all know the story of Job. Job loved God and followed God very closely. One day Satan asked God if he could mess with Job to try to get him to leave God, and God let him.

So Satan did a lot of bad things to Job, right? But the last time Satan is mentioned in Job is in Chapter 2. What happened after that? Did Job carry on about how “God didn’t cause this, he just allows us to suffer the results of a cursed world?” Did Job’s friends tell him that he was “under attack” from “the enemy?”

No, Job never mentions Satan. In fact, Job specifically attributes what has happened to him to God. “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Even his wife told him to “Curse God and die!” Curse God?!?! Why not Satan, didn’t he do it?

No, and that is just my point. God is in charge here. Satan is not an independent actor. Whether we dig into the deep mire of logic about how God created Satan and knew what he would do, or if we just examine the fact that Satan had to ask God before he could do anything, the bottom line is that God is in charge.

We are not “under attack,” nor do things “just happen.” God is in charge. God is the primary mover in our lives. Hurricane Katrina was part of God’s plan, and so is every event in the life of every one of His children.

I know it does not play well for most apologists to have to say, “Yes, God causes really nasty things to happen to people,” but He does. A lot of people seem to work hard to get God “off the hook” for a lot of things, but God never tried that.

So next time you wonder why? Don’t try to get God off the hook. Instead, ask God. Better yet, try yelling at Him. It is ok, He’s a really big guy, and He can take it. In fact, my bet is that He will like it.

The honest truth is that there are times in my life when I love God, but I do not like Him. I don’t like what He does, and I don’t really care for His tactics. That is ok though. He is in charge, and I love and follow Him anyway. It is human nature for us to try to apologize for those we love, but really, don’t apologize for God. He’s the man. He can take it.

Posted 6/29/2006 3:02 PM

6 Comments:

“Who’s in charge?” “YOU are!!”
Sometimes we have less confidence in God than backslidden Israel had in their idols (Judges 6:31):
But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself…”
Posted 6/30/2006 6:15 PM by ThoughtForFood

Try this one for size:
“And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul’s hand. 1 Samuel 18:10″
Posted 7/7/2006 2:53 PM by novisigothsorkangaroos

So what you are saying is that when Saul took the javelin and trew it at David, Saul was moved by God, and since David was a man of God, in effect:
God took a pot shot at Himself and missed.
Interesting . . .
Posted 7/8/2006 9:03 PM by ThinkingOnTheEdge

How ’bout this one?
“So now the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.” 1 Kings 22:23
Refering to Ahab’s prophets before he went and got killed.
Posted 7/12/2006 12:38 AM by madhatterb78

that is so true. God did not give us yelling voices for nothing. alot of people think if they yell at God he will smite them or something when it is the oposite he will give you life and knowledge if you would only ask!. have a good week. later
Posted 8/11/2006 2:39 PM by mynameischrisandimbored

Not very many people address that one. Good for you.
Posted 8/17/2006 9:59 PM by missionarym

This is straight out of the forums at www.oesf.org

Use the following command:
xwd -display :0.0 -root -out screenshot.xwd
this will take a screenshot right away - so often its better to use:
sleep 5;xwd -display :0.0 -root -out screenshot.xwd
then use gimp to convert.

If you install Imagemagick you can convert it directly, I use a simple script I like this to take the screenshot, convert and name it with a unique name. Adjust the sleep command and the location of where the files go to your liking.
CODE

sleep 10

if test -z “$1″; then
let i=1
f=”/mnt/card/screen$i.png”
echo $f
while test -f $f; do
let i=1+$i
f=”/mnt/card/screen$i.png”
done

else
f=”$1″
fi

xwd -display :0.0 -root -out “$f”.xwd
convert “$f”.xwd “$f”
rm “$f”.xwd

Currently Listening to The Live Set by Michael W. Smith

Today’s Bible study is on the “law of first mention.”

The first mention of the word “Satan” in the NIV bible is here:
1 Chronicles 21:1
Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

And just to be sure we understand who Satan is, here is the identical passage in Samuel:

2 Samuel 24:1
Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

From this we can learn that, umm, well you tell me. It is one of my favorite passages.

I’ll save my take on it for another entry though.
Posted 6/25/2006 12:11 AM

5 Comments:

You’re a goof.
Posted 6/25/2006 10:39 PM by novisigothsorkangaroos

I’ll be interested to hear your take on it.
Posted 6/26/2006 9:59 AM by midwifebethany

Sounds like “Yin and Yang” to me!
Posted 6/26/2006 3:12 PM by Krash2Fly

Let’s see… That God lets Satan do His dirty work?
Posted 6/26/2006 3:13 PM by ThoughtForFood

You’ll notice from the passages that God incited David against Israel, while satan incited him to take the sensus .
Posted 6/26/2006 11:28 PM by madhatterb78

Douglass Adams created a video game called Starship Titanic. It is a must-see for any fan of his work.

However, it does not work properly on Windows XP. I used to run it on Windows 98, but my most recent computer has a video card that has no drivers for Windows 98.

What happens on XP, is that the game runs fine, but there are “blank” spots in the game. What those are is places where the program uses AVI files to play video clips.

The culprit is the iccvid.dll file. The latest version just does not work for this game. The file, in XP, is in c:\windows\system32

The solution: Just copy iccvid.dll from an older system into Starship Titanic’s directory! I am told that the file from XP SP1 works. I haven’t tried that yet. I used a file from Windows 98, and it works great!
So, if you want to run Starship Titanic on XP, just get an old version of iccvid.dll and put it in C:\program Files\The Digital Village\Starship Titanic\ You do not need to bother the non-working dll in c:\windows\system32\ , because the program will look in the local directory FIRST for the dll and then in the system32 directory later.

If you do not have an old copy of iccvid.dll, I have put a copy of it here on my web site. iccvid.dll This is from Windows 98 SE. It is version 1.10.0.6

Here is a newer version of ICCVID.DLL that I found on the web here. It is version 1.10.0.11 I think it might work slightly smoother than the Windows 98 file.

Note the version in XP that does NOT work is 1.10.0.12, so the above is apparently the most recent that will work. I also find it interesting that the files get smaller as the versions get newer.

Again, please do not risk putting this this file in c:\windows\system32, instead just put it in the directory with the ST.exe file (the Starship Titanic executable). It will use the copy that is in the folder with it. It searches there first.

(BTW, I found this out by using FileMon from SysTernals. That is an awesome troubleshooting program!)

Currently Listening to Life by Andy Hunter

I’m back!
Actually, I never went anywhere, so I can’t be back . . . umm, so where am I?

A lot of my friends, close, distant, and some that I just really care for deeply but otherwise don’t know from Adam are here on Xanga, so I thought I’d dive in and start one of these things.

Besides, Xanga is a cool place to goof off on the web!
Posted 6/17/2006 9:26 PM

3 Comments:

hey dude. I have a tracker on my xanga and I saw that you came to mine. well I c you just made one and It looks awesome. How do you know nathan?
chris
Posted 6/18/2006 1:08 PM by mynameischrisandimbored

oh ha ha ha yea we should do another puppet show. later
chris
Posted 6/22/2006 1:53 PM by mynameischrisandimbored

random props…….whats thy name????
mines Brittany……but my close friends call me ZANNY
g2g
Posted 6/22/2006 7:07 PM by fall_out_boy_rox_my_sox_off

In the old days when /usr was a separate file system, making your shell /bin/ksh was not a good thing, because /bin was a link to /usr/bin and if /usr didn’t mount you had no shell. However, /sbin is part of root so you always had /sbin.

At least here, the way our filesystem is normally laid out today, /usr is part of / so this isn’t an issue.

I always change the shell to /bin/ksh, make sure you make it /bin and not /sbin or you will lock your self out of the box.

So, in short, make sure your shell will be available if ONLY / mounts.

Also, it is a good idea to test that you can log into the box again before terminating the connection you used to make the change.