Perhaps on the shallower and less important end of the spectrum, we’ve made the switch to high definition (HD) at home — but little did we realize the headache that ensued from switching from a standard analog/digital signal to high definition.

Like many others, we started out with just the TV, buying a nice Samsung 26″ HD flat screen LCD — the price wasn’t too bad and the customer reviews have been generally favorable, too. Now if we could settle for over-the-air, local programming, we could have just bought an antennae and would have been done with it. End of story, nothing more to worry about.

Well, we have DirecTV — and to get HD programming, that meant getting a new receiver (leased at the cost of $99 and $9.95/month for HD service). What I didn’t plan on, however, was that now our Tivo unit would be incompatible with the new HD receiver from DirecTV.

I looked into what Tivo had for HD-compatible digital video recorders (DVR), but found out after talking with a Tivo rep, that they could not strike an agreement with satellite providers and thus their devices were not build to support ANY HD satellite programming. That meant our only option for a DVR was through DirecTV, where you had your choice to lease ($199 plus $5.95/month for DVR service) or to outright purchase the device for $499 — but in the end, I don’t think you truly “own” the device. After talking with someone from Best Buy, he said you still have to turn over your DVR unit to DirecTV in the end when you decide to cancel.

To make the HD conversion even more painful, we had no option and were forced to sign a two-year agreement if we wanted HD service. Not only am I being asked to lease the device with a $200 fee and a monthly fee for DVR and HD service, they’ve got to kick me in the groin with a two-year service agreement.

The one fortunate thing about having upgraded, we will have a nice picture and our DVD-R device is capable of up-converting standard DVD’s to help them display nicely.

And for those that may be considering Comcast, don’t expect things to be any better necessarily. While your service might start out at $99 a month for the first year, that price goes up and up, and your fees also add up as well. We used to have standard cable through Comcast with phone service and long distance, but it was cheaper in the long-run to bundle everything through Qwest. The one downside is the DirecTV service — they’re criminals for charging as much as they do along with the unnecessary groin-kicking, that is their two-year agreement for HD service.

Hindsight, if it were not for the programming options available to us with satellite, we might have just canceled our satellite service and gone with the new digital programming options over the airwaves. In the Twin Cities we have quite a few channels available to us as it is. But with all the great channels like the Discovery network and the Travel Channel, it’s hard to go back to just local programming only.

Our HD installation is tomorrow, so it’ll be nice to see the upgrade in place.

Filed under: General
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As of late, my desire to pursue the roots of our faith, Orthodoxy, has grown quite substantially — even if I don’t fully understand it yet nor know of all of the practices involved in living that way. But after the numerous things I’ve read, the podcasts I’ve listened to, and the few that I have spoken with, I feel I am ready to start the path towards becoming a member of the Orthodox Christian Church.

Last Sunday was the first time I’ve been back to Saint George in some time, and today upon my second time back in nearly a half a year, they were announcing new catechumens and the start of their introduction to Orthodoxy class coming this Saturday. It’s hard to describe the feeling inside, but it was a combination of excitement, urgency, and hunger that drove me to ask Father Tom about attending the class and being added to the list of catechumens that will begin the road to Orthodox Christianity.

For me, this isn’t another phase of my life or a passing fad, but a deep-seated conviction about where I feel God is leading me. I have no idea how long the process is from going from catechumen, to communicant, to full-fledged member — but it finally feels like I’m getting closer to answers to questions I’ve long had, and finding peace for the discontentment and hunger that’s been consuming me.

I’ll be sure to log my journey along the way.

Filed under: Orthodoxy
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I think that I have outdone myself with perhaps the longest entries that I’ve ever entered into my blog — but when you’re reflecting on over thirty years of personal music history, you ought not expect a short essay. But I promise that this will be the last part of this three-part series.

It was such a simple thing that really sparked this whole reflection, seeing my music out on last.fm and wondering why it is that I just cannot seem to pick up my guitar these days or pour myself into creating new music in GarageBand. The reality is, I’ve been thinking about this for the past few months and just have not nearly the same enthusiasm or drive to create new music like I have over a year ago.

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Filed under: General, Music, Orthodoxy, Performance, Recording, Spirituality
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If you survived my previous lengthy post about some of my music history, then you should have the fortitude to withstand this one — but then again, I’ve only just begun to type and have no clue as to its length. But take heart, I’m already half-way through my life’s history as it pertains to music.

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I was chatting briefly with my friend Wes, and he was asking if I had used Last.FM before — not able to recall all that memorable an experience with them, I couldn’t answer for certain. Curious, I visited last.fm (a site about music essentially — listening to it, sharing it, and recommending it) and of course couldn’t resist searching to see if they were carrying any of my music through my connection in CDBaby. And sure enough, I have tracks up there. Which of course, prompted me to think about my music, where I’ve come from and where I may or may not go with it some day. I’m contemplative that way.

Music has always been an integral part of my life, past and present, and has often been a sustaining force for me when all other things failed. It has been inspiring, motivating, heart-sobering, enlightening, and even at times an amplifier for some of the most emotional times in my life. And like my friend Jamison has shared, there have been albums, songs, artists, and musical experiences that have become hallmarks in my life — things that will always remain framed and hung in my memories.

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Filed under: General, Music, Recording
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One thing that has been certain as I move slowly away from my Evangelical™ past and towards an Orthodox world view, many of the things I have once believed are being put to the test, refined, and sometimes altogether discarded. These days, my perceptions of salvation are under fire and are undergoing radical transformation.

I had once been taught and believed, that salvation came to you (and stuck around for good) when you pray “the prayer,” asking Jesus to come into your life, to be your Lord and Savior, and asking for the forgiveness of sins. Transaction done, now just go to church and be a good Christian, tithing your 10%, and participate in church programs, etc.

I also recall dozens of times throughout my days as a charismatic evangelical, wondering about my salvation, and wondering if I was really going to “go to heaven” and wondering if I was truly forgiven and “saved” as they’d call it. I was commonly reassured of my salvation and told not to worry about it, saying in essence, the deed was done. Or, “it is finished,” to put a verse out of context.

But now looking back, I can see those concerns as being valid promptings of my spirit or my heart, which may have been put there by design. As I learn more about the Orthodox way, I see that salvation is not a one-time transaction in the front of the church for all to see, but a life-long journey [that may begin at that altar] that must be maintained and worked into your life with fear and trembling. These days, being outside of the Orthodox Church and still trying to find my way, I’d say there’s plenty of fear and trembling to go around, as I look to God to lead me back to a way of faith, being right by Him, and learning to love and forgive as He actively does.

Two pieces of the Lord’s Prayer come to mind: “on earth as it is in heaven” and “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” after having listened to a recent podcast [mp3 file] from Fr. Stephen. He had some very interesting things to say about time, especially as it relates to forgiveness:

The act of forgiveness is a true eschatological triumph. Trapped in history, modern man sees no way forward but to fight for domination. “To the victor goes the spoils,” he says. “Forgiveness is weakness and a good way to lose tomorrow, what we gained today.”

However, in radical obedience to the Gospel of Christ, Christians behave in an eschatological manner. We forgive our enemies because we have already seen the outcome of history in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And thus, we do not need to force the behavior of our enemies in order to create a desired outcome.

In the light of Christ’s triumph, we may forgive those who hurt us, because we know of the forgiveness that is and will be ours. The forgiveness of enemies is a proclamation of the victory of Christ, both now and forever. The resurrection itself is the great sign of our forgiveness. Having obtained death as the outcome of our disobedience, we obtain the forgiveness of death in our resurrection.

In a thousand ways which the life of the church is made manifest in this world, it shows not a linear progression through history, but an in-breaking of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is never something we work for to build up. The Kingdom is always something that breaks in on us. You cannot stop the coming of the Kingdom.

As I contemplate working out my salvation and entering into the journey towards becoming saved and resurrected someday, I see that forgiveness is both an act (or discipline) that helps work out that salvation, AND is also a fruit or bi-product of being on that road.

Orthodoxy seems to teach about this notion of time not as being a linear thing, but that because God transcends time, we are able to participate both in the here and now and in the future. We participate in the here and now by actively loving and forgiving and living as Christ commands (or doing our best to, anyway) and participating in the future by looking to the resurrection for encouragement, hope, and guidance. Jesus has already defeated death and made provision for redemption for those that would follow Him, and because of that, we have freedom to forgive and not hold any grudges or grievances, because as we forgive others, Christ will forgive and already has forgiven us.

What is drastically different about this way of thinking from how I used to live, is that I am a steward of the hope of salvation that is being offered to me, and that it requires me to lay down my own life and desires, follow Christ, and work that salvation out and into my life in all areas. As a Westerner, it’s easy to compartmentalize my life, segregating everything into pieces of my life — even on a linear time scale (e.g., “well, that was yesterday” or “well, that’s down the road”) — and to make everything just a transaction. But what is so different, is that salvation is a journey, and one that requires me to pay attention to the road, where I’m walking, and being careful not to wander away from the leading of Christ. For unlike how Western Christianity seems to be taught in many circles, salvation is something that can be “lost” — or probably more accurately, we can so easily become lost and wander away from the road towards salvation. I think the latter of the two seems more accurate.

At any rate, I still feel I have a long way to go — in understanding, in knowledge, and in walking out this life — I am still very much “me” and my own keeper, and am all-too-accustomed to just doing things my way. So mustering up the discipline to attend Sunday mornings at St. George Antioch Orthodox Church, bring my life more in conformity to the way of Christ, and weaning myself off the ways of being an ordinary human, is going to take some time and will certainly be a road of refinement for me. For unlike how Western Christianity teaches, and as Fr. Stephen presents in this podcast on getting saved in the church [mp3 file], salvation is not an instantaneous thing and requires time.

Anyway, it’s been a lot to think about, and only scratches the surface of all the changes that are occurring inside my mind, my thinking, and my world view. Perhaps sometime next week I’ll share a bit more about some of the other beginnings of transformations that are taking place.

Filed under: Orthodoxy, Spirituality
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So I just happened to glance up at this link in Gmail:

CNN.com Recently Published/Updated - Bush predicts Mideast peace pact by 2009

This would be the SAME Bush who declared “Mission: accomplished” years ago. My prediction? The Middle East will not see peace (let alone a pact towards peace) as long as you have people of such widely diverse world views and packed together in such a compacted region. If various sects of Muslims can’t even live amongst each other without killing one another, how can we expect peace between the Hindus, the Israelis, and the Muslims in Middle East?

I just don’t see it happening. And for Bush to be toting empty predictions at the end of his term, he’s just blowing smoke up our asses and wasting hot air on an audience that won’t believe him, let alone listening at all.

Filed under: Politics
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Even after having updated all five of my blogs’ WordPress installations to version 2.3.2, I was still getting comment spam sent to me, asking me to moderate. While I’m thankful that it was held for moderation, it’s irritating to have to log into WordPress to mark the items as spam (which I’m convinced does nothing at all) and then delete them from my inbox. So I decided to add a few layers of protection to my WordPress installations, two of them being transparent, and one additional layer for proving the end-user to be a real person.

I added two behind-the-scenes layers of protection — Bad Behavior and Akismet — and have to say that they were VERY easy to install. Simply upload the files into your /wp-content/plugins/ folder and then activate them in WordPress. That’s it.

Bad Behavior analyzes the HTTP request information to determine the origin and nature of the request (and process accordingly) whereas Akismet is a web service API that tests comments, trackbacks and pingbacks against their API. Apparently it runs hundreds of tests against the post/request to test for spam. We’ll see how effective these two are.

And because three is not only a holy number, but heck it’s one extra layer of protection [mom always said dress in layers] I added a third layer. I added Pete’s Custom Anti-Spam Image plug-in, which allows me to set up a custom word image that my end-users have to type in, verifying that they are indeed a human being. Customizing the plug-in isn’t terribly difficult; simply do the following:

1. Look for the file custom_anti_spam.php in the folder /wp-content/plugins/peters-custom-anti-spam-image/. You can do one of two things: modify in WordPress or edit the file in a text editor and upload the modified file. If you want to modify the file in WordPress, change the permissions on the file to 777, edit the file in WP, then change the permissions to 755 when you’re done.
2. The only real edits you need to make to the file (if you want to select the words that people will have to enter to prove their humanity), is changing the word value (between the quotes) around line 34 to 43. Example:

   The first line contains: $cas_text[] = “snow”;
   I might modify it to: $cas_text[] = “spamhate”;

   Have fun with your words and make it custom to your site’s content, too. Makes it a bit more fun.

That’s all there really was to it. Now only time will tell how my sites stand up to the onslaught of spambots that plague my blogs on a DAILY basis. I was seriously tired of getting about a half dozen or more comment spams a day and had enough of it. Hopefully this triple protection will do the trick.

Filed under: General, Websites, Wordpress
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