a broken mold

This discussion is provoked by and expands a little on what Nathaniel wrote in the last post. He related how we often respond, “Fine,” in answer to “How are you doing?” and how we tend in this way to hide behind a mask and fail to cultivate the sort of beneficial relationship and care for others that is healthy and biblical. So how do we be honest?

I just wrote a paper on Christians and deception, so I’ve thought this over a bit recently. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying “Fine,” in response to “How’re you doing?” especially when asked by, say, the grocery store clerk. Most people don’t expect any more than a one-word courtesy answer. But as of late, when any of my friends or acquaintances asks me how I’m doing, I tend to respond more thoughtfully. It may be “I’m pretty tired and unproductive. Hopefully today will be better. How are you?” Or, depending on the person and their interest in encouraging and exhorting me, I might share my struggles and ask for prayer.

There are two basic truths here: speak appropriately to the situation, and be concerned for the welfare of others. In my paper, I came to the conclusion that (shocker) it comes down to heart motives. For example, some falsehoods actually convey a more important truth, as God’s deception of his enemies communicates His justice and truth. When you say that you’d love to have someone over for dinner even though you inwardly chafe at the inconvenience, it communicates that you value their company and wish to bless them; this is as it should be, and there is no need to let them know about your moment of ungodly selfishness. You know better, deal with it, and prepare dinner in the right spirit.

That was rather long-winded, but I’m tired. What I’m trying to say is that the radical honesty approach has its good applications, and its flaws as well. Sometimes we most certainly should not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As to the second point, let us return to the grocery store example. Or coffee shop. As I mentioned, I have been being more thoughtful in my communications with others, say, when in line for coffee at Bucer’s. (Bucer’s is a Moscow coffee shop, where I get lots of schoolwork done. Really, I do.) But sometimes they weren’t really looking for more than “I’m good,” and sometimes it’s just inconsiderate to dump your stress on someone else. The point is, in your openness and communication, be sure you are seeking to “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4:29).

Which brings us to what Nat said about finding out what’s happening with others. It can be difficult when they think you’re asking a trite question, but I’ve witnessed many examples of friends showing a sincere interest in the other’s welfare, and it really isn’t that hard to do. When you respond honestly and show an interest in others in your daily conversations, others notice and it benefits everyone. Encourage and sharpen one another (Prov. 27:17).

To wrap up: parents, messy lives, and God. As painful as it can be, I believe it is always best to talk to your parents and work things out. It makes your relationship stronger and enables growth as Christians. Parents are the first sphere of authority set in place by God, and they love you. And life is short. Don’t let relationships fall apart and erode. Don’t let the distance grow. Lives are messy, both ours and others’. Paul wrote as the “chief of sinners” to some new-Testament Christians with terribly messy lives, but God draws straight with crooked lines. Within covenant and communion, we have already overcome the wicked one. Sanctification is a process, but the battle is, in one sense, over.

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” — 1 Peter 5:6-11

I watched To Save a Life tonight with some friends at the theatre. It was a very good movie. Not watered down. Plenty of what-the-hell moments for me.

And then when we got home, Ashley, Joella, Elliot and I sat in the car and had some honest discussion.

Which has got me thinking. You know how when everything is wrong in your life and someone asks how you’re doing and you say ‘fine’? You know how you get sick of that lie over and over again and wish you would just say ‘terrible’ when someone asks you?

So what if your life is utterly chaos and despair and you hide it all behind a mask? What then? Where do you begin to recover? How do you break out?

My best guess is just starting with one person and telling them the truth when they ask. But my fear is that when you’d tell one person, you’d have to tell everybody the truth. And then what happens? They tell your parents and your world comes crashing down in a painful talk? That’s not something I want to do.

Or what if you or I started being a lot more honest to everybody? I know there are books about this. “Radical honesty”, I’ve heard the term. I distrust it because I guess it’s psychobabble. But I think there is some power in the truth whether they’re right or wrong. What if we knew what was happening in our friends’ and families’ lives instead of giving trite answers and asking questions we don’t really want to have answered? What if we actually considered that the lives of everybody around us might be just as complicated and messy as ours or even more so?

I know I’m generalizing here, but consider the questions nonetheless, I ask. I know they’re just questions, but hopefully our lives will change, even if little by little, hopefully we’ll slowly find answers to these questions. Maybe there will be different answers. I don’t know. But I do know that I’ve heard that people pay more attention when questions are answered that they already asked, so ask the questions and then we’ll try to find the answers, God help us.

Hello everyone! I’m Anna Hurley, most commonly known as “Matthew’s sister.” I just recently joined this blog, and, being rather technologically impaired, I’ll leave the tech part to other writers and stick with stuff I understand. Without intending to be typical girl here my first post is actually about Jane Austen…I know…surprise! But it may be a bit different take than you might expect so bear me out.

Thoughts on this subject have been mulling around for some while in the deep recesses of my brain, but they really came to a head this weekend. I was up in Moscow visiting my brother hanging out in Bucer’s (of course) and I got in to a discussion with Matthew’s roommate, friend, and Austen-lover Isaac Madsen. Through the course of the discussion he pointed out how much he disliked authors like Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, but loved Jane Austen. Perhaps his reasons for disliking them are different than mine, but I know that I have always enjoyed Austen better as well. (I don’t as strongly dislike Dickens though, and I actually enjoy Gaskell). In my opinion, the greatest difference is one of flavor.

Dickens and Gaskell (to a lesser degree) flavor their works with tragedy, sorrow, pain, suffering, despair and overall bleakness. Austen, while tinting her pieces with hints of grief, really has a much more positive and upbeat view of life to the point of possibly bordering on the sentimental. Sentimentalism is something which I have come to strongly dislike. Whether it be manifested in the flowery artwork of Thomas Kinkade or the cheesy WWJD bracelets I just can’t stand it.

Here, I think is Austen’s pitfall. She tends to write in a rather fanciful style. Pleasant, enjoyable, romantic, sweet? Yes. Realistic? Not so much. I do not mean to discredit her as a writer and I fully admit to being a Jane Austen fan. BUT, I can get too much of her. I can overdose on her dream-like fairy tales. When the characters have to face no worse tragedy than being uninvited to a ball, being snubbed by the prideful rich, being forced to endure the ridiculous proposals of men they do not love…what is there to relate to? Granted there are occasionally real difficulties to overcome, but nonetheless, one cannot help feeling there is something lacking to her “reality.” Every once in a while, one can enjoy getting away from the mundane routines of life, forget the petty trials of the day and immerse oneself in the romantic world of Jane Austen, but it is not without fault (despite what Isaac may say).

However, back to the original subject: why is Austen better than Charles Dickens? Dickens tends to fall into the other ditch…and not just a little bit. He plunges whole-heartedly, almost gleefully into misery and despair. He delights to portray the lowest strata of life in their worst garments. He paints characters in such bleakness and sorrow as to destroy any fanciful notion of hope remaining in his poor reader. Is this just? To be sure, the world is a fallen place and it has it’s share of tragedy, sin and darkness, but such despairing and tragic stories are not what I consider pleasure reading. I will admit to Dickens having his moments of light, just as Austen had her flashes of reality. I can honestly say that I enjoy “A Christmas Carol” and some parts of his other works, but on the whole, one cannot help feeling oppressed and depressed by the gloom which characterizes the greater part of his books.

All this to say, Austen is a phenomenal writer, but with a tendency to slight sentimentalism, which in too large a dose can be overbearing. Dickens, probably a good enough writer in his own way, is too much gloom, depression and darkness to be seriously healthy reading. So, is there a middle ground?

In my own opinion, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is an excellent example of reality mixed with romanticism, despair and tragedy mingled with hope, goodness and beauty. Elizabeth Gaskell is far nearer this medium than Dickens, especially in her excellent book Wives and Daughters. Austen is only slightly misplaced and there are many other authors who strike a good balance.

The purpose of this post is not to tell you not to read certain books or to read other ones, but really, my point is that to be a really good work of art (in any sense of the word; book, painting, etc) there must be an expression of sadness, sin and evil…otherwise the observer has nothing to relate to. But there must also be an element of hope and redemption which Dickens missed in so much of his work. This is necessary to the good piece of art work, because it tells our story to us. It does not deny sin and suffering, but declares to a fallen world that there is hope. Even a picture or a book with no intentional Christian message, by portraying this dichotomy of sin and redemption, paints the gospel story with more clarity than a Precious Moments “love your neighbor” scene or a plastic Jesus nightlight.

Running DOS games is hardcore. Not, admittedly, as hardcore as text-based games, but up there. Unfortunately, in the last several iterations of the Windows operating system, DOS support has been provided only by emulation, and not at all on 64-bit systems.¹ Your hardware configuration also determines how choppy/way-too-fast your game will render. How then, shall we play DOS games? Enter DOSBox.

You can check it out and get the link from our Recommended Software List. Once you’ve installed it, this is to help you how to customize DOSBox so it doesn’t have an annoying console window running in the background, and set it up for your DOS games folder, so you don’t have to mount it every time.

Simply create a shortcut to the .exe file, and then right-click on the shortcut, select ‘Properties,’ and edit the end of the ‘Target’ entry to include -noconsole -c “mount c ‘c:\DOS Games\’”. Replace C:\DOS Games with whatever directory is your games folder.

Note that you will still need to mount C: first by typing “C:” without quotes and hitting Enter. It should already be in your DOS directory due to our above hack. To install a game, open the zip archive or folder and run setup.exe or any other setup file if there is one. If everything is already extracted and ready to rock, you can simply navigate to that folder from within DOSBox, and run the game executable (e.g. keen4.exe).

To control the game speed, Ctrl+F7/8 lowers and raises the Cpu Cycles, and Ctrl+F11/12 lowers and raises the Frameskip. For more help getting things running and learning commands, type “intro” without quotes into the prompt and hit Enter.

Happy DOS gaming!

We are looking for a few more writers to join us. One or two right now would be great.

Our goal is to pick up the publication pace a bit—hopefully eventually up to at least one post a week (more would be cool, too). I think taking on a couple more writers would ease this task, but I also think Matthew and I would need to step up contributing a bit, too (which may become easier in the summer after I’ve graduated high school). In the long run, our goal is to get some notice. Not really to get famous, but more to have conversations and a small community and also just to get out what comes out of our fingers and toes. It’s also a personal blog, and I want it to stay that way. It’s just some friends who like to write.

So, on to the meat of the thing. Seriously, we don’t mind people that are different than us, in fact having someone who differs somewhat from our opinions might be quite cool. We do have a few basic requirements, though:

• You are a true Christian; you believe the Gospel and don’t have any beliefs that altogether contradict it
• You are a competent writer; you don’t have to be extra stupendous, just able and willing to be creative
• You don’t mind our particular Christian beliefs, like Covenant theology
• You are willing and able to contribute regularly (take a look at the dates of previous posts to get an idea of what ‘regularly’ is right now)
• You are currently between 12 and 32 years of age. It’s not that we don’t like you if you’re older than that, it’s just that we want to run a blog written by young men and women.

Interested? Contact us. Tell us a bit about yourself if we don’t really know you. After that, probably as long as you meet the requirements and we’re all comfortable, you join us. If it’s all good after a month-and-a-half, you’re official. Think of it as an internship (LOL).

Six months after you’re officially on, you can become a partial blog administrator, if you so wish (and we’ll leave the opportunity open for any time). After maybe, say, a year and a half, we might offer you full adminship, which gives you a whole lot of power, which means we trust you a whole lot. And if you don’t want to become an admin, that’s fine too. Just offering.

Yeah, I know frequent short to medium sized posts about your life have a great potential to be boring. But I wasn’t quite considering that. Rather, I’m becoming rather enamored of short to medium sized posts that just throw a thought, question, or reflection out. It’s a form that rather compliments honesty.

I want to say my inspiration comes from Jason Kottke and Seth Godin. There’s probably some other stuff in there, too. I know Jason’s mostly an editor now in the sense that he doesn’t create most of his content, but rather points it out and comments on it. But some of his earlier stuff was more personal. And he points out such interesting stuff.

Seth Godin is a marketer. A genius, I’d say. He seems to spout a continuous stream of good stuff on his blog. And it’s not cheesy. I don’t know that he’s a Christian, but he has an ethic that really appeals to me as a Christian: hard work, innovation, courage, and that sort of thing. And his posts usually aren’t all that long.

So, I think I have some stuff to say worth saying here that I could put in a somewhat similar format. The question is, with Matthew not posting an equivalent amount (not necessarily a bad thing), am I going to be posting too much? (For what? Fairness? Equality? My own good?). That’s the question I wish to ask Matthew and all you who read this.

What say you?

Useful Tips

Change XP Start Menu Text

Follow these steps to change your start menu text from the default ’start’ to whatsoever you may desire. First you’ll need to download and run Resource Hacker.

1. Within Resource Hacker, navigate to C:\Windows\explorer.exe and open it.

2. Expand the String Table folder and you should see a bunch of numbered folders.

3. Expand number 37 (or 38 for Windows Classic theme) and click on 1033 with the little gear next to it. In the right panel, replace the text ’start’ with anything you want. I changed mine to ’stop.’

4. Click on the ‘Compile Script’ button.

5. If you want to change the text that appears when you hover over the start button, expand folder 34 and change the default ‘Click here to begin’ to something like ‘Click here to get real!’ Compile changes.

6. You can also change the Windows icon on the start button to something else while you’re at it. First, collapse the String Table folder and expand Bitmaps at the top of the list.

7. Open 143 and click on 1033, where you’ll find the default Windows icon. To replace this you will need a 25×20 image with a .bmp extension.

8. Go to ‘Actions’ in the file menu and click on ‘Replace bitmap,’ then browse to your replacement file. Select it and hit ‘Replace.’

9. You are now ready to save your work. Go to ‘File’ and select ‘Save as’. Save it as something other than explorer.exe, such as hammertime.exe (mine) or explorerhack.exe.

10. Now to modify the Registry so your system uses the hacked file instead of the default explorer.exe. Open the Run dialogue (Win+R) and type ‘regedit’ without quotes. Hit Enter.

11. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, and in the right pane you should see the entry ‘Shell.’ Double click on this and replace the text ‘explorer.exe’ with the name of your hacked file.

12. Close the Registry Editor and log out. Log back in and you should be set! Enjoy.

Here’s my end result:

N.B. from TheElderGeek.com:

A number of users have written to say that when the text on the Start Button is changed, the Search function from the Start Button (right click) context menu ceases to function. That’s true, it does, and if I ever used that particular function I’d have been aware of the problem. I don’t use it, so I wasn’t aware, but now you’ve been warned. As far as I know there are no other caveats associated with the modification.

(Re)Enable Task Manager

If for some reason, virus or otherwise, your Task Manager has been disabled, open ‘regedit’ in the Run dialogue (Win+R). Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableTaskMgr, and make sure it’s set to 0.

Lock Workstation Shortcut

Sometimes you don’t want to have to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and click ‘Lock Computer’ in order to lock your workstation. Sure, you could use Win+L, but maybe those features are disabled on your *cough* school network. At any rate, here’s a cool way to make a shortcut on your desktop that does just that.

1. Right-click on your desktop, select New and Shortcut.

2. In the location field, type “rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation” without quotes.

3. Name it whatever you want (Lock Workstation, for example) , and you can give it a cool lock icon from shell32.dll (see below).

shell32.dll

Speaking of which, shell32.dll may be copied between Windows versions (rename as shell32xp.dll or something to distinguish it), allowing you to use the XP icon resources for Vista, or some other combination. To use one of these icons for a shortcut, just right-click, go to Properties and Shortcut, then Change Icon. Click on Browse and navigate to C:\Windows\system32\shell32.dll, or shell32xp.dll for your new icons.

Fun Pranks

Change Icon to Shutdown

This simple prank changes an icon so it shuts down the computer. This can of course be useful, but is best for changing an icon someone usually uses to surprise them (lol). Right-click on the desktop, select New>Shortcut, and type C:\Windows\system32\shutdown.exe -s -t 60 -c “A deadly virus has taken control of your computer.” The 60 denotes seconds until shutdown, and can be replaced with a different value. The text in quotes is a message that accompanies the shutdown command, and it can also be replaced with something of your choice, like “kthxbai.” Alternatively, you can omit the -c parameter and text and set the -t value to 0 for a clean, instant shutdown. Very effective. Oh yeah, and if you should need to cancel the shutdown, hit Win+R and type “shutdown -a” without quotes.

Remove Shutdown from Start Menu

If someone uses the Shutdown option from the Start Menu to shut down their computer, you can throw them for a loop by removing it with a simple registry edit. Open the Registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and double click on the ‘NoClose’ entry in the right pane. If it’s not there, right-click and select New>DWORD Value, naming it NoClose. Set the value to 1 to disable the Shutdown button. It doesn’t actually remove it, but it won’t work – even more frustrating. To re-enable, change the value back to 0.

Print Screen Desktop Prank

The classic old standby.

1. Take a print screen (Prnt Scrn key) of the plain desktop and save it in an image editor such as MS Paint. Then set it as the desktop background.

2. Right-click on the desktop, select ‘Arrange icons by,’ and uncheck ‘Show desktop icons.’

3. Finally, right-click on the Taskbar and uncheck ‘Lock the Taskbar’ (if it’s checked). Click on the top edge and drag the Taskbar down as far as it will go. The desktop now looks normal, but is quite unusable.

Virus.bat

Simply type “start virus.bat” without quotes in a text file. Save it as virus.bat. Opening this will start an endless loop that will bog down and basically crash the computer. You can, however, try to kill the processes in Task Manager or log out to recover your system.