Celtic Odyssey

My favorite Linux distribution, PCLinuxOS , has been taking the linux desktop community by storm.  It has been in the #2 spot on Distrowatch for a while now.  But some of the community members don't want to stop there.  They want to bring the PCLOS experience to the small office or home office (SOHO).  That's right.  They want to take the 'radically simple' -ness of PCLOS and bring it to the workplace.  On June 27th, they were one step closer in making that a reality.  The PCLinuxOS Business Edition released their first candidate for Server Basic. This is extremely exciting in that it gives small businesses an opportunity to implement new technologies in their growing business without spending a lot of money.  And we all know why that is, right?  Yep!  Server Basic is free!   Now people can bring more organization to their business.  The Server comes with a number of items that make setting up and maintaining a network environment a lot easier.  Some of these items are...

I have been a little busy today so I apologize for the late post.  Working around the house (I'm a house husband a lot of the time), cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, sweeping the floors, making the beds, etc.  I'm also working through a call list for my business, Odyssey Computing .  And I'm converting my music on my PCLinuxOS laptop from AAC to OGG. And I'm loving it! 'I will rejoice and be glad in it!' Peace be with you. + OD

I know that I will probably catch some flack for this post, but I gotta say it. In the murder of Jessie Davis, the media is quick to point out that she was pregnant and would have delivered any time.  But the fact that they point this out begs the question, 'Is it a baby or not'?  It seems to me, at least, that this issue of 'life' and when is some 'thing' a person, is questionable by the mainstream media.  We all know that women can choose to terminate their pregnancy at almost any point they choose.  And this is not considered 'murder'.  However, in the Jessie Davis case, Bobby Cutts, Jr. is arrested for the murder of Jessie and 'her unborn baby'.  Does any of this makes sense?  How can we pick and choose when a baby is a baby?  Who gets to decide that?  We can't just pick when we want a baby to be a baby.  A pregnant woman has another human being inside her.  Period.  No matter what stage she is in. I can hear the cries alread...

O God of all the nations of the earth: Remember the multitudes who have been created in your image but have not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus Christ; and grant that, by the prayers and labors of your holy Church, they may be brought to know and worship you as you have been revealed in your Son; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

1Samuel 2.12-26. Psalm 119.97-120. Acts 2.1-21. Luke 20.27-40. Todays Old Testament (OT) reading had a verse that is used a lot in the Calvinist view of God's sovereignty. 1Samuel 2.23-25 (NRSV). [Eli] said to [his sons], ‘Why do you do such things?  For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people.  No, my sons; it is not a good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad.  If one person sins against another, someone can intercede for the sinner with the Lord ; but if someone sins against the Lord , who can make intercession?’  But they would not listen to the voice of their father; for it was the will of the Lord to kill them. '...it was the will of the Lord to kill them'.  Is this right?  Is this how we are to understand God?  Or is this how the OT people understood God?  How does this line up with God's incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth? Now, I'm all for understanding that 'good' and 'perfect things' come ...

As some of you have noticed, I smoke a pipe (there is at least one picture around here that shows that). I have been smoking a pipe for several years now. My Grandfather smoked a pipe. My good friend Jeff, who had been smoking a pipe for awhile, started me smoking a pipe. It's an interesting story. When leaving one night, Jeff asked if he could through away some of his pipe paraphernalia. The sliding rear window in his pickup had broken and it had rained and got his pipe bag wet. He felt that some of the stuff had ruined because they had gotten soaked. After he left, I looked through the thrown out stash and found a pipe that wasn't too bad. It was a Dr Grabow bent pipe with a 9mm paper filter. I let it dry out and the next time he came over I took it out and asked him how to smoke it.  Later, I went to a local tobacconist and asked them if they had any pointers.  They handed me some 8.5"x11" sheets of paper on how to smoke a briar pipe and how to care for it...

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Colossians 3.12-17.   Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you.  Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts.  For as members of one body you are called to live in peace.  And always be thankful. Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.  Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives.  Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.  And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. To me, this should be the passage that exemplifies people who profess to follow Jesus the King.  If we want to know what t...

This is a really interesting issue.  And frankly, I don't care what you call it (but I prefer Eucharist).  What gets me is that it is the one issue that should unite us who follow Jesus and yet, sadly, it divides us.  And that is wrong. The reason for the division, as you know, is the answer to the question 'What is it?'.  That is, is the Eucharist just a memorial, just symbolic, or is it that actual body and blood of Jesus?  Well, being an Episcopalian, it think it is a little of both and neither at the same time.  And my take on it (and we must remember, this debate has been going on for a long, long time) is just that, my small understanding. My daughter Sumi had a friend come over and visit us Saturday night and she went to church with us on Sunday morning.  Her friend, being Catholic, asked me very specifically about how we viewed the Eucharist.  'What do you mean', I replied.  'Well, do you believe that it is the real body and blood of Jesus or j...

The worlds best browser has just been given new life -- on the PC.  That's right!  Now you can run Safari , the native web browser from Apple, right on your Windows XP or Vista OS.  As most of you know, I am an Apple user.  I really love the whole thing -- the very latest hardware ( iMac , MacBook , Mac mini , iPod , and the soon to be released iPhone ), and the coolest, most advanced OS in the world, Mac OS X (current build, 10.4 Tiger and the next generation, due out in October, 10.5 Leopard).  As you also know, this isn't the first time Apple has released an app for Windows.  Apple's iTunes is downloaded almost one million times a day by Windows users.  So, they aren't too worried about this not being picked up by the Windows world. Why would people want to do that?  A number of reasons: ease of use, eligance of the interface, but mostly -- speed.  Safari is roughly twice as fast as IE 7 and roughly 1.6 times faster than Firefox.  And these are speeds th...

On Friday night, 06.08.07, Mahina and I went to an annual cocktail party some of our friends host.  Earlier in the week we both received text messages stating that this would be a 'little black dress' affair. 'I don't have a "little black dress" to wear', exclaimed Mahina. 'Neither do I', was my reply. However, I did want to get dressed up for it.  In fact, I wanted to wear a bow tie. 'What?  Why?  Last year none of the guys were dressed up', she said. 'So?' 'You know how this event goes', she said.  'All the gals dress up and the guys just wear shorts and Hawaiian shirts'. 'But why should the girls be the only ones who get to dress up?' Now, I like a good suit.  In fact, I like the whole dress up thing.  My favorite era was the 40's-60's Rat Pack era.  You know the era where people used to dress up to go out to dinner?  The time in American history where casual wear for men was still a sport...

In Part 1 we looked at various passages of Scripture and discovered our working definition of reconciliation -- 'To work through actions and words as a servant (of God) in restoring the harmony between God and creation to form one connected whole.' In Part 2 we saw that, in the beginning, all creation, the whole cosmos, was in harmony with each other and God. We saw how people rebelled and the whole thing was spun out of control (from our perspective) and how God set in place a plan, in the call of Abraham and the nation of Israel, to bring the whole thing back together. We saw how this was ultimately accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus. As St Paul put it, '[God] made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of [Jesus’] blood on the cross' ( Col. 1.19-20 ). In other words, God has done God's part. But, as we saw, we still need to do our part. You see, in reconciling things, all parties concerned have to work for reconciliat...

This is a test of the new web browser Flock . It is a Mozilla creation (who isn't these days!) and is geared toward web sharing. That is, pictures, news, etc. One of the features is blogging. If you have an account with Wordpress, Typepad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, or Blogger, you can have an editor that includes everything that the usual suspects need from a toolbar, or you can change to the source tab and do all of the stuff yourself through HTML. While the editor toolbar doesn't have all the added features as the Wordpress extra toolbar, the basics are there. As you can see in the screen shot, it looks fairly simple. This post was created using the blog feature within Flock. Peace be with you. + OD

A few months ago, I wrote about our Community Garden .  Well, I thought I would take a few moments and give you an update to what has been going on around here.  The picture on the left is of our native plant bed.  All of these plants are native to Oklahoma. This is a picture of one of our potato plants. Here are some of the potatoes we harvested.  We have been harvesting for a few days now. These tomato plants have a few very small (marble sized) tomatoes on them.  Can't wait! Our HUGE sqash plants. Our peas and cucumbers bed. We have been pulling peas off of here for a little bit now.  They sure are tasty! Here is a picture of our lettuce bed that I took in April.  Now, it's empty.  We already ate most of it. Well, that's about it!  Until next time... O gracious Father, who opens your hand and fills all things living with plenteousness: Bless the lands and waters, and multiply the harvests of the world; let your Spirit go forth, ...