I have finished chetmancini.com. I figured it was probably important to register my own dotcom, but I was having issues about what to place there. I decided to create a ‘landing’ page with a sort of development resume. I’ll throw up my projects, interests, and education there.
It’s definitely in the first iteration right now, but a one page site is easy to maintain.
“The idea that God, if there is a force of Logic and Love in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in s*** and straw…a child… I just thought: “Wow!” Just the poetry … Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable. There it was. I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came streaming down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.” – Bono
(via http://creationproject.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/bono-on-christmas-3/)
I have strong dislike for the trite phrase “hustle and bustle.” It seems everyone who says anything in church–whether that be the pastor, music leader, person praying, or person sharing testimony, tries to have us reflect on how we need to get away from the “hustle and bustle” of Christmas business and think about the true meaning of Christmas.
My challenge: go deeper this Christmas in two ways.
First, let’s not only reflect on the baby, but on Christ the person, God became man, now reigning in Glory beside the Father interceding as our High Priest. Lets consider the depth of our transgression and the power–and sacrifice of the atonement.
Second, let’s go deeper into the nuance of the English language. Try using another word or phrase to describe the stress in this season. Try some of these on: hasten, whisk, rush, scuttle, scamper, commotion, or liveliness.
I am done with final exams for fall semester of my senior year. Classes went really well in general I think. My favorite class was Philosophy, and we finished with a 2 hour in class essay on Descartes’ argument for God’s existance in his third meditation. Sometimes the hardest classes are the best. I like having a high bar to jump. The feeling after surmounting it is so good.
Regardless here is a photo of Blanchard on a beautiful chilly Wednesday morning here in Wheaton.
Bread of the world, in mercy broken,
Wine of the soul, in mercy shed,
By Whom the words of life were spoken,
And in Whose death our sins are dead.Look on the heart by sorrow broken,
Look on the tears by sinners shed;
And be Thy feast to us the token,
That by Thy grace our souls are fed.
Words: Reginald Heber, 1827
Google Chrome is available for Mac OSX in Beta as of today. I think my primary browser on my macbook will remain Safari, but browser competition is always a good thing and I’m pleased to see Chrome coming out. It is a very good, very snappy browser than looks to be a good alternative to Mozilla’s choices for the Mac platform.
I ran across this disturbing site in my twitter feed the other day:
http://www.wpacracker.com/
For a little background on network security, networks are very insecure. With freely available software, anyone on the network can read the data packets of everyone else on the network. You should be extremely careful about what passes unencrypted in hotel networks and the like (for instance, logging into Gmail or shopping is probably safe, but signing into your blog might not be). This is not a big problem with wired networks, as obviously a hacker would need physical access to your network. However, with the advent of wireless networks this becomes a problem.
Wireless routers usually fall into three security camps. The first are unprotected. Anyone can join, and consequently, they are more susceptible to data eavesdropping than wired networks.
The second are WEP networks. WEP security is very basic. It essentially inhibits casual visitors, but it has no strength against anyone with a little know-how interested in viewing traffic. With freely available software someone can hack a WEP network in minutes.
The third group are WPA networks. The deal with WPA is that to steal the password you have to try them all. This can take a long time, but this new product allows you to put hundreds of computers to the task to run through a whole dictionary of passwords quickly for the low price of $17.
So what should you do to protect your network? If you live in the country, you’re probably safe. If you live in a populated are you should definitely use WPA encryption and pick a password that is NOT in the dictionary–that is, a combination of letters and numbers longer than 6 characters that do not spell a word or phrase, even in 1337 speak. For instance, “pa55w0rd” is not safe. That should thwart most cracking attempts.
There’s been a recent study that today’s teenagers believe in God but not in a true Christianity sense but rather with a religion of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. That is, that God exists but remains separated from our world and doesn’t care about our day to day interactions very much (Deism). He really wants us to be happy, rich, and live comfortable lives without pain, poverty, suffering, or inconvenience. He is simply loving and wants to give everyone a big hug (Therapeutic). Finally, he would really like us to be decent people: people who don’t murder or rape, people who give blood, people who sign the line saying they’ll donate organs on their driver’s license, people who aren’t racist or sexist, people who buy (RED) and put “Free the Dalit” bumper stickers on their Prius, and on the moralism goes.
This is all very sad. Recently I was thinking about the person of Santa Claus and his place in our culture, and humorously remarked recently that he is the perfect Moralistic Therapeutic Deity. He remains separated from our lives in general, only arriving once a year. He really wants everyone to be jolly and have lots of happiness at Christmas by giving us material gifts. He is round and laughs a lot in a jovial lifestyle. Finally, his whole love of people is hinging upon the recipient being naughty or nice. Its flat out moralism. Be good and you’ll get toys. Be bad and you’ll get nothing (or worse).
I’ve thought a lot about whether I’ll tell my children about Santa. I think some belief in a supernatural is a healthy thing. I don’t think skepticism and rationalism are healthy to cultivate from an early age. However, I’m beginning to have misgivings about the whole thing being an excuse to get kids to be good. I’m not sure moralism is the answer to bring therapy to our lives being lived apart from God. Lets make the God who literally, actually came to us to bring the ultimate therapy so we wouldn’t have to be moralists the centerpiece this Christmas.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers. God has blessed all of us in ways we may not even notice now, and it is not a meaningless exercise to allot some time to consider these many gifts. Traditionally the ancients would celebrate by feasting for days or all week in some cases. Our culture frowns on that kind of gluttony, but feasts do form a unique type of celebration. Our God is a god of celebration. For an amazing Thanksgiving sermon, I’d recommend listening to Tim Keller’s free sermon called “Lord of the Wine.”
Lord of the Wine, John 2:1-11
Here are a few photos of our meal:
We don’t make much Jello at our house, and my mom recently bought some really nice molds. It took a little creativity to get it out (you have to put the mold in warm water for about ten seconds), but it came out very orange and very tasty.
I had my dad put the turkey on the table for the photo before we carved it up. Also, my mom’s pecan pie is second to none. Most pecan pies are made of cheap filling with a thin layer of pecans on top. Not this one: it is made of pecans all the way through with the syrup filling in the cracks.
Sweet potatoes before baking.
Closeup of turkey.
Our dining room.
The table is set.
Time to eat.
