myblog -november '11

annoyed that openoffice calc does not use the $ sign when you are multiplying a cell with a dollar amount to another cell with no sign? dont know how to fix it in a time-effective way? well, select the cell (or cells) you want to have $ signs for, and then click on the little yellow bars icon (i think those are supposed to be stacks of coins -- seriously, they couldnt just use a dollar sign?) as below (the "currency format" button):



also, it is possible to select multiple cells not just by holding the shift key to select contiguous rows, but you can also hold the ctrl key to select individual rows, and ctrl+shift to add contiguous selections to the selected set. yes, this principle applies to tons of other instances of item selection, and not just in linux.

before i get on with the more useful part of the day's work, let me just write about the dream i had today and the dream i had a couple days ago (or was it yesterday? and ps, i now have a theory as to why my memory is so terrible.. stay tuned) today i dreamt that i was with my dad, sister and brother trying to get into one of those country clubs. i had with me a flag of greece (i think) and we were trying to get our sailboats in, but we werent being able to get in, for some reason. in my dream i was still on bad terms with my brother (who, as you know is not talking to me because "i evangelize him") i think in the dream my dad was upset at me too.. as he was not helping me with my sailboat (by the way, these werent toy sailboats, and they werent full-size sailboats.. these mightve been 8 to 10 footers.. so, they could be carried with some effort in my dream.) in any case, my dad was able to get in, and so was my brother, but when i tried to go back and grab my sailboat, (i keep trying to remember the relevance of that greek flag, or if there were other flags in the dream) i stubbed my bare foot on something in the ground, and when i looked down, there was a skewer going through my foot!!! it entered at the mid part of the heel, exited at the inner heel, then re-entered at the inner part of the ball of my foot, and exited at the outer part.. my foot had been skewered!! foot-kebab! it was a thin wooden (probably bamboo) stick that had somehow gone through my foot like that. i remember thinking in the dream that the stick was too blunt to have been able to do that, especially since the force that had been applied by my foot was not enough.

my sister saw this and we tried to get my dads help. although, again, he was for some reason upset at me. and my limping did not immediately give away my condition until i showed him my foot and he acknowledged it. so i figured i would not be able to do the things i had to do with this pain, so i sat on the grass (now inside the club.. yeah, somehow i got in after getting my foot skewered) and just tried to gently but swiftly pull it out. on the first attempt i only pulled about one third of it out (in my dream there was the prospect of pain, but apparently it didnt hurt that much to pull it out, though the limping was a result of the pain), and the second attempt pulled the rest of it out. my dad had been watching the whole time, but did not help, i cant remember if it was because i started pulling it out before he saw the injury, but i think that was why. so i finally pulled it out, which left two big holes on my foot, so i was concerned as to how this injury (which for some reason wasnt really bleeding) would be affected by the dirty water of the canals we would be floating along in our sailboats. haha. i didnt want to ruin everyone's day, so i figured we would just go on as planned

now here's where i ruin the fun for you, since i dont remember properly what happened next exactly, but there was some floating down the canal, and then the entering of an old 1800's style lively home, and some people arriving, but i cant remember much of what happened, at least not enough to make for an interesting read.

so let me tell you about the dream i had a couple days ago now. i was somewhere close to the beach (lots of water references in these dreams, eh?), in some form of frantic search. apparently, there had been a flood, and i had died, so i wanted to go find my body. yes, you read that right. i dreamt that i was looking for myself, as if there were two of me, and yet only one. i was asking some of the people in the area what had happened and where "i" was, where was my dead body. it was so strange. if you are having trouble understanding the concept, think of it this way: imagine you traveled in time, to even just a couple seconds away, and there is you. (there you "are"?) so now theres two of you. and then theres a flood and one of you dies. so you have to go find yourself. yep, that explains the concept perfectly, except for the fact that in my dream there was no time travel, just two of me. for whatever reason.

again, this is the part where my memory of the dream goes fuzzy, but i entered some building that had an internal balcony type structure surrounding a wide circular area. sort of like how you have a building that it basically a round wall surrounding an open hall, and extending from the wall is a balcony. think beauty and the beast, the dance hall scene.. something like that. and now i cant remember if in my dream i ever found myself. (whoa, that sounds really deep and new-agey)

so no time-travel in that dream, but a week or so ago, i did dream that i found a portal at my former university to travel back to the time when the university was just starting out. it was a super interesting dream. really long too. joelie was in it for the first part. but anyways, gotta get back to my daily grind. if i remember the dream i will post as much as i can later. but now, i gotsta roll

just watched a video where some atheist guy thinks he's so smart because he asks "if God created everything, who created God?" as if it was a stumper. in any case, here's my response:

the problem is that the universe is made up of matter. God isnt, by definition. the existence of matter, being finite and bound by time, requires an origin. if God (by definition) is infinite and eternal, therefore not bound by time or space, He therefore requires no (and cannot have an) origin. the question "who created God" is misleading because it changes the definition of "god" to that of something physical, limited, finite and temporal.

never forget, scientists are under NO obligation to publish papers that yield conclusions they do not like

have i mentioned that i hate technology

sermon-athon.. my first conrad mbewe (i couldnt find the one i wanted to hear.. i'll have that one up when i find it) followed by a two parter from steve lawson

Conrad Mbewe: Does Calvinism Kill Evangelism?
"The answer to the question is yes and no. Yes, it will kill unbiblical man-centered evangelism and some of the carnal unbiblical methods employed in man-centered evangelism.

No, it will not kill God-centered evangelism where biblical methods are employed in the great work of carrying out our Lord's clearest command." [Charles C. Reisinger, Will Calvinism kill Evangelism?]
+ view video

Who is Jesus Christ Part 1 (Dr. Steven J. Lawson)
C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity writes the following: "I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus Christ]: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to."
+ view video

Who is Jesus Christ Part 2 (Dr. Steven J. Lawson)
+ view video

agh, so awesome. my goodness.

mmmmmyeehhuup...



in my case, just older... oh well..

how to find processor usage from command line:

mpstat

for all processors:

mpstat -P ALL

use is is the plural for ur

"If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him. For you are far worse than he thinks you to be." - Charles H. Spurgeon

whether i like it or not, its the truth. sigh. Lord, crush my pride, i dont need it. its just not useful for anything.

“The greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has stood so much bad preaching. “ -A. T. Robertson

haha.. this is great: hyperbole and a half: the party



a funny story of that blogger's childhood, with equally funny crude drawings.

greeeeeeat.. so the blog tags script was broken.. i guess nobody really uses it to have noticed.. heh.

God help us.

You're all equal here: Swedish school bans 'him' and 'her' in bid to stop children falling into gender stereotypes

A pre-school in Sweden has decided to stop calling children 'him' or 'her' in a bid to avoid gender stereotypes.

The Egalia preschool, in the Sodermalm district of Stockholm, has made the decision as part of the country efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood.

As well as the decision to stop using the words, the taxpayer-funded school also carefully plans the colour and placement of toys and the choice of books to assure they do not fall into stereotypes.

The school opened last year and is on a mission to break down gender roles - a core mission in the national curriculum for Swedish pre-schools.

The option to implement the rules is underpinned by a theory that society gives boys an unfair edge.

speechless..

'Society expects girls to be girlie, nice and pretty and boys to be manly, rough and outgoing,' says Jenny Johnsson, a 31-year-old teacher.

'Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.'

[...]

Meanwhile, nearly all the children's books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no 'Snow White,' 'Cinderella' or other fairy tales.

Director Lotta Rajalin notes that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Rajalin says the staff also try to help the children discover new ideas when they play.

'A concrete example could be when they're playing 'house' and the role of the mom already is taken and they start to squabble,' she says. 'Then we suggest two moms or three moms and so on.'

yeah, no joke. it seems promoting polygamy is also a part of the gay agenda. so, remove all form of normal gendering, but (contradictorily enough) at the same time expose these same kids to sexual content (in case you didnt already know, removing the age of consent is also part of the gay agenda), telling them its more acceptable to have a sexual partner of the same sex than for men to be manly and for women to be feminine. even by rod serling could not have made this stuff up. and yet, the bible told us millenia ago, that there would come days when men would call evil what is good, and good what is evil. and here we are.

i think the guy at the end nails it:

'The kind of things that boys like to do - run around and turn sticks into swords - will soon be disapproved of,' he said.

which of course would make the statement:

'Egalia gives them a fantastic opportunity to be whoever they want to be.'

completely contradictory..

theres a theological truth that applies to this somewhere:

Florida man searches landfill for wife’s $10,000 ring – and finds it!

Brian McGuinn accidentally threw out his wife's custom engagement ring. And then he searched through a mountain of trash at the county landfill to retrieve it.

On October 30th, Brian's wife of five years, Anna, handed her husband her ring, asking him to put it in her jewelry box while she showered.

At the same time, Brian picked up a disposable razor and without thinking, he tossed both into the trash.

The couple didn't realize what had happened until the next morning — after Waste Management had already picked up the garbage from their Florida condo.

Anna, five months pregnant, burst into tears. Desperate to find her $10,000 ring, she called Wheelabrator, a division of Waste Management that processes the trash. Officials on the line, hesitant to offer much hope, said that Brian was welcome to come and search.

So he did.

Brian arrived at the county dump, suited up in a protective vest, suit and goggles, and, alongside plant worker Joel Ryan who leveled the trash with a bulldozer for easier searching, started to make his way through the piles where his neighbourhood's trash was dumped.

"Nastiness you wouldn't believe," Brian said of the garbage-digging. "It was absolutely disgusting. It stunk beyond belief. The smell was God-awful. Everything unsanitary you could think of crossed my path at least a couple times. I took an extraordinarily long shower and toothbrushes were used."

Then he saw it: a shiny object wedged between two brown bags. After just 30 minutes of searching (the Associated Press says it took 90 minutes), the ring was back in his possession.

"It looked like a screw and I reached down and it looped around my index finger," Brian told the Sun Sentinel. "I was ecstatic. It was like winning the lottery. It was probably one of the best moments ever."

"Perseverance," Brian said of the moral to the lost ring's story. "A lot of people don't find things; it's gone. But I knew I had to try."

As for Anna, she doesn't intend on ever taking off the ring again.

before i post the other post im working on, just a bit of a heads up. "i cant believe its not butter" has, as one of its ingredients.. buttermilk!! gah!! there was a reason why fabio couldnt believe it.. because it wasnt true!!!!!

cant sleep, so i'll share this with you that i was thinking the other day.

money is not a measure of volume, it is a measure of speed.

heres why, in a normal economy, lets say you have a single dollar in it. so, you produce a good, and the person who has the $1 pays you for it. the end. so you tally up on a volume basis and you have $1. you tally it up on a speed basis, and you have $1. dont worry if it doesnt make sense yet.

now, say the next financial period, you have that $1, and you go to a third person.. say, to buy the raw materials to make your goods. the end. so you tally up on a volume basis, and you still have $1.. no new dollars were created/printed. but, now, if you tally it up on a speed basis, suddenly you have $2. and heres where i explain what i mean. by "speed" i mean that at the end of the financial cycle, all parties report their dollar. the faster that dollar changes hands, the more "dollars" are reported. but, there really is only that one dollar floating around. ok, i get it, im tired, this explanation is kind of crude and confusing, but im sure you know what i mean. this applies obviously mostly to an economy, which is why governments try to "spend" money to get out of debt.. to get the economy moving, and more dollars changing hands. but why then, when an economy is severely in debt, do governments implement austerity measures (these are the policies of spending less)?? well, because when the money is circling at the current speed in a direct dependency to the external insertion of money into it, that is unsustainable. in other words, its like a sugar rush. sure you get that boost of immediate energy, but you cant use that type of energy to fuel your entire day, or you will have a severe sugar crash to follow. you need real food to supply the sustainable energy for your day. it might help to get you going in the first place, but it cannot do so forever.

so the austerity measures are like taking.. well.. candy from a baby. a baby that only eats candy. first comes the crying, then the sugar crush, and eventually the baby settles down and gets used to eating real food. at least, thats the idea. yes, im talking to you, GREECE! if the austerity measures are not undertaken, in time, the baby will just become a crack addict, and whoever the supplier of the crack is, will be the one who owns the baby. its just the way it works. since eventually, the economy will be worth nothing without the sweet intoxicating sugar of the foreign lenders. wow, ok, i really need to sleep (i sort of got distracted while typing the post up, so a couple hours went by from starting the post to finishing it.) anyhooze, wish me sweet dreams... since i havent been having good ones lately. stupid stress.

among other things, today i dreamt that i was swimming in the ocean with orcas, polar bears and seals.. in the space between an ocean liner and what i think mustve been some sort of small yacht, where my dad was, and which had (i think) 3 rooms (yeah, not cabins) im pretty sure my brother was there, and i was looking for an underwater camera. my dad had one but i had a feeling he didnt want me using it, so i started looking for the little bag that we use for ours (me and my lovely wife) i cant remember much more.. but i do remember that as i saw the polar bear and went to jump in, i thought for a moment that this might be dangerous. i still decided to jump in anyways.. and then the other animals began appearing. it was quite real, and i remember thinking how awesome it was to finally see a polar bear and an orca.. wednesday i think it was, i dreamt that i finally saw the aurora borealis.. and again, i remember thinking how awesome it was to finally have seen it.. wait, did i already blog that dream? cant remember.. in any case, the aurora dream was a bit violent though... err, not really "violent" but it was me in a perilous situation i needed to get out of. anyways. time to go off for another bout of sleepage. enjoy your days y'all.

11/11/11 11:11:11 happy remembrance/veterans day. and thank you to all those men and women who fought and the many who even gave their lives so that we might have a free society. the battle is now at home.

and this one's for my lovely wife:

The Error: The Titanic was the first ship known to use the distress code “SOS”?

Although British ships preferred the traditional distress call “CQD”, most of the other European countries used the International Conference on Wireless Communication at Sea standard set in 1908 of “SOS”. The French ship Niagara is known to have used “SOS” well before the Titanic did. Incidently, in CQD, the CQ was a general call on a telegraph line with the D standing for Distress. In James Cameron’s “Titanic”, he did get it right that the radio operator tried both CQD and SOS after the new distress call was suggested to him.

oops, didnt mention the source: 10 Fascinating International Facts That Are Wrong found at listverse.

random fact for you as i close a tab or two:

John F. Kennedy was not the first to say “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

[...] American politicians are renowned for plagiarizing their best lines from foreign sources. For example, Abraham Lincoln took the phrase “a government of the people, by the people and for the people” from the preface of John Wycliff’s 1384 edition of the Bible and current Vice-President Joe Biden cribbed a few speeches while in the Senate from Labour Party MP Neil Kinnock. This quote thought by many Americans to be pure Kennedy was actually from Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran in an article advocating his Lebanese brethren to rebel against the occupying Ottoman Turks.

interesting huh?

ok another quick tech tip.. for you awesome people with infinite patience and technical know-how who run linux at home (or anywhere else really) and have ever run into the

Failed to open 'root_fs', errno = 2
VFS: cannot open root device "sda3" or unknown-block (0,0) please append a correct "root=" boot option
kernel panic- not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

or anything remotely similar to that, you might be wondering "how in the world did it magically break like this?" and then "and how am i going to fix this??"

well, have no pear (we went to a pilipino church service on sunday, its still fresh in my mind) for the solution is here! the problem is more likely than not, that there is either a problem with your initrd image or it is not being loaded.. ive seen this problem before, so i already knew this was the case, so when i went to go check my grub line, i knew what to look for.. but everything looked fine! hmm.. and this was a stock initrd image, so it wasnt that i messed something up somewhere.. so after a bit of back and forthing, i said, "why dont i just try to load a different image, one that i know will work?" well, in the process of doing so, tadaaa! (tatatatataa) i found the problem.. look at my grub entry and see if you find teh error yourself:

title fedora (my kernel version here)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-mykernel-version root=LABEL=root-label ro my-kernel-params
savedefault
boot
initrd /initramfs-mykernelversion

do you see it? obviously the versions and options are unimportant to the problem, which is why i didnt type them out. so, do you see it?

so, when generating my grub entry, the rpm package install scripts added those lines in. but.. yeah, but.. but notice it put the "boot" line before the "initrd" line.. so the initrd is never getting loaded!! its booting without knowing what the initrd should be! ugh.. seriously. so dumb. there ya have it

oh an dthe mystery of teh

we interrupt this blog post to wonder what in the world is causing all these typos lately.. hmm.. no clue.. ok, back to the blog post then, i guess..

ok, as i was saying.. the mystery of the strange dust bugs in our home has finally been resolved.. my lovely wife came home before i was back from this business seminar i went to the other day (yeah, me so important) and she was highly worried.. yes, highly worried.. she was on her way out the door to "go look for me" because i was "really late".. im a bit of a cynic though (ok, not just a bit) so i didnt buy it. it was strange that she would want to "go look for me".. so i was cautious in my approach.. as i entered the apt, i saw that there was a bunch of our food (in its packaging) on the floor, and it was covered in a clear liquid.. as my wife was telling all about her ordeal with "all these bugs that were in the food!!!" oh man.. sure enough, there were dead bugs (and not-so-dead bugs) in the pasta bags (they found a way to eat through the plastic bag to get to the goods) and apparently they had gotten into the rice and beans (which had now been discarded).

and see, this is where the mystery could now be resolved.. you see, these bugs had been showing up in our house, specifically in certain dusty corners.. walking around slowly, or crawling up a wall. but joelie had not known what the bug was, and he's the resident expert on the local wildlife here.. he called it a "pumpkin bug" since it happened to be on the pumpkin at the time, though it wasnt actually eating it. so for a couple weeks, i would find a bunch of these bugs, kill them, and wonder what in the world they were.. and now with my wife finding them in the rice, and beans, and pasta, i had a bit of a "thought".. this has to be a weevil! (i will thank the band "the presidents of the USA" for that.. since they had a song called "boll weevil" and it had forced me to look up what a weevil is.. waaay back in the days of yore) so sure enough, i went to google images, and there it was, a weevil. same lil' bugger we had in our apt, that was the one right there, specifically it is the maize weevil, as pictured below:



now, these bugs have a really hard shell, so you cant kill them as easily as say an ant, or even other more common hard shelled bugs.. you can squish them with a tissue that it wont kill them. what you need to do is use a hard surface (like a piece of writing paper against your nail) to another hard surface (like the floor, but obviously not carpet) and then wait for the "crunch" sound and then check again.. cuz even then, sometimes that isnt enough.

buuut, there is another way. these guys die with the cold. so websites say if you want to salvage your food, you can just shove it in the freezer overnight, and that would solve it.. or if it is cold enough outside, you can just put it outside overnight.. BOOM! bugs dead.

see? solving problems every day.. or week.

ahh.. and lest i forget. bahb reminded me that he was the one who originally told me how to change the default renderer, back when this wasnt something i was looking to do (two days ago, or whenever it was he told me) and sisnce it wasnt something i was needing to do, for some reason it didnt register into mah brain, so.. let it be known, that it was bahb who first told me.

ooook.. so i finally fixed the stupid bug that led me to my konqueror woes.. and since sharing is caring, let me share the solution.. but before, arent you just super curious to know what the problem was?

the problem was that sometimes, firefox crashes, and as my main browser (for some reason i deserted seamonkey a while ago.. i think i was using firefox as my "single use" browser, and seamonkey had 300 tabs open (oh, you think im exaggerating? i know bahb knows im not) and then slowly firefox became my 300 tabs browser.. and i forgot about seamonkey.. heh. *ahem*.. anyways, so now i was resorting to konqueror as my single use.. but for some reason, the blog submitter wasnt working well.. the tags, specifically.. i use an option list and then just type along and press enter when it finds the tag i want and it adds it to the list.. or i can just click and it adds the clicked on tag. hoooowever.. konq (thats what i call it) didnt like adding when i clicked.. the reason? konq doesnt register clicks to individual options, only to the main list box.. and no, there was really no workaround for this. as my default engine was KHTML, i thought, why not test in webkit? well.. webkit had a whole slew of other problems.. mostly, that the clicking part worked, and the typing part.. um.. sort of worked.. except that it sort of "submitted" the form (but not "the" form).. and considering its just a "catchall" form, with.. uh, no submit button.. this is really really undesirable behavior.. (well, mostly just annoying). anyways.. after much wrestling to find an appropriate solution, i came upon it:

the workaround to not have your webkit-enabled konq (or i guess the same applies to safari and chrome, since they both use webkit) is to add the following line to the form you dont want being submitted when you press enter in an options box:

onsubmit="javascript:return false;"

and that will prevent it from submitting. trying to catch the keypress events does NOT work.. in case you were wondering

of course, if your select box option list thing is in a form you do want to submit, then you just use something like this:

onsubmit="javascript:mysubmitchecker()"

and somehow process the event (you need to catch the event in the checker function) so that it submits when you want it to, and doesnt submit when you dont. there are ways to do this.. depends on what you are doing in the rest of your funcs.. but dont be lazy, figger it out yerself! (haha)

it might just be that its late.. but i found it.. ugh.. ok the simple way to change the default web browser in konqueror is.. click on "settings" > "configure konqueror" and in the "general" section (which is where it opens to by default) go to the third option *sigh* which says "default web browser engine" and select it from there.. seriously. must be late.. i noticed some typos below from the other day too.. not sure whats going on in the land of insaner.. my goodness..

laaame.. ok, heres another tip for y'all.. if you are using konqueror for webbrowsing, and have found that it has a certain bug *cough* that you just cant get over, because the default rendering mode is KHTML, and you know it works fine with webkit, and like me, you had no idea how to change the default rendering mode from konqueror (because there is no way to do it from within konqueror), then this is how you solve that.. (oh yes, im on a problem solving row here) as a normal user, run (either from a terminal, or using the Alt + F2 keyboard combo):

keditfiletype text/html

go to the "embedding" tab and move "WebKit (webkitpart)" to the top

hmm.. ahh nevermind, yeah, there is a way to do it from konqueror. ok, go to the "settings" menu then "configure Konqueror", then "file management" > "file associations" > "text" > "html" and then in the "embedding" tab, move "WebKit (webkitpart)" to the top.. and thats it! (yeah, the terminal command method is simpler.. but menu driven option selecting is easier to remember.) anyhooze, hope that helps someone out there

guess who now has a printed copy of the septuagint with english parallel translation and apocrypha? ill give you a clue: me. woot! i was going to include these definitions inline.. but it read a little confusingly, so for your benefit i have broken it off below:

septuagint

original translation of hebrew old testament into greek.. its what Jesus quoted in the new testament and what the first christians used in the greek speaking part of the world

apocrypha

thats the non-canonical set of books that the catholics added in 1546 (well, its a bit more complex than that but you get the idea)

the included english translation is one based specifically on the septuagint's text.. which has certain variations from the hebrew. in any case, this will be quite the addition to my study resources.. i feel so important by having it.. haha

awesoe message by steve lawson (who is in y top 5 preachers list

The Power of God in George Whitefield's Life - Steve Lawson [MP3]
Why did God use George Whitefield? Why was he so used of the Lord? Steve Lawson talks about this and also gives many testimonies from Whitefield's life.

http://www.cfbcmobile.org/
+ view video

awesome awesome inspirational message. may we all have the heart of whitefield..

"The law says, 'Do.' The Gospel says, 'Done.' " - Kim Riddlebarger