Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in guruzilla_lj's LiveJournal:

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Friday, June 12th, 2009
10:33 pm	GUINS WIN! GUINS WIN! Hooray for Pittsburgh! Let's go Pens! Stanley Cup champs 2009! w00! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
7:23 pm	Now and in the hour of our deaths Please pray for local fellow-workers at YWAM -- 2 Killed in shooting at YWAM training facility. I don't know anyone there personally, but have crossed paths with YWAM folks many times. They do a lot of good work in their own inimitable style. Also remember New Life Church, where there's been another shooting incident today as well. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
8:59 pm	And in film news... As a semi-pro historian, I invite you all to enjoy an actual historian remark on the upcoming ''Beowulf'' ''film'': http://gotmedieval.blogspot.com/2007/11/beowulf-footwear.html Yeah, thats-a the good stuff, eh? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
10:06 am	Bloat Today I wish simply to observe that the complete installer for OpenOffice 2.3 is smaller than the third Service Pack for MS-Office 2003. And the former spits out PDFs, too, if you want to do that without spending a kajillion bucks. Down, not across. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 17th, 2007
2:19 pm	For a rare rainy day... Once again, I give you DA's "Bakersfield": These down-payment dreamers of small flat-roofed houses and harsh vacant lots full of milkweed and dust stinkbugs and rust animal excrement and murder evidence... While Scully hangs over the freeways Scully's ignoring the new age I won't go back to Bakersfield My friend died there, I loved him too much See the nomads wandering in the desert moonlight the Chosen Ones moving like great ancient turtles They're going in circles with their holy referrals eating manna from Wendy's and God is with them but I won't be there God is with them but I won't be there though it's the same as any other place, there's too much smog around my face and I won't cry there no I won't die there Current Music: Daniel Amos, "Bakersfield", BibleLand (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
12:32 pm	oh, good... A bit of a weight off my mind, really, considering some of the options... You’re St. Justin Martyr! You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the faith to unbelievers. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers! That's m' boy! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
6:06 pm	O! brave new world! Lo, I bring you this mighty deed of contemporary intertextuality: [musical goodness] in the hopes of making a better world. Or something. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
10:05 am	Microsoft message of the day (so far) I kid you not: Some downloads are made available only after users have validated their versions of Microsoft Windows. Firefox and Netscape Navigator browser users may install a helper program, the Windows Genuine Advantage plug-in, to enhance their download experience. Obviously, I have not been hitting the cheap gin hard enough lately. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 1st, 2007
11:38 am	the true North? Today, I learned that Denver is in Canada, and I'm Canadian -- thanks to Dell! The "cart", which is the cruddy method I have to use to send quote requests to their salesdrones and resellers, is geb0rkt, and insists I wish to look around their lame site in its little Canadian box. H8. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 18th, 2007
2:46 pm	back from .SG Back from my little trip to Singapore -- a few photos are up on Flickr, let me know if you'd like to see them, and I'll set you up as a contact etc.! Pax. Current Mood: jet-lagged Current Music: of the spheres (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
1:20 am	Wesley? [meme] Great hymns and stuff, but what're they doing in my soup? One order of Brunner, easy on the Barth -- no Tillich, thanks mmkay? You scored as Neo orthodox. You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. </td> Neo orthodox 79% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 71% Roman Catholic 68% Reformed Evangelical 68% Emergent/Postmodern 57% Charismatic/Pentecostal 57% Classical Liberal 39% Fundamentalist 36% Modern Liberal 25% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com Not a bad quiz, even if it skips yer foundational Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox positions altogether. Guess Wesleyan/Catholic is one way to describe Anglicanism, sort of. -Ish. -Like. Maybe one day I'll read some PT Forsyth, too... (Comment on this)
Friday, January 12th, 2007
12:48 pm	Conditions outdoors at lunchtime: 1 °F / -17 °C Yeah, think I'll eat at my desk today, thanks... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
9:01 pm	mmm, tasty... My lemming meme for the day, courtesy of Der Doktorvater himself... <tbody><tr><td colspan="2">What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm   You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane. </td></tr><tr><td>Dedicated Reader</td><td>   </td></tr><tr><td>Book Snob</td><td>   </td></tr><tr><td>Literate Good Citizen</td><td>   </td></tr><tr><td>Fad Reader</td><td>   </td></tr><tr><td>Non-Reader</td><td>   </td></tr></tbody> (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 9th, 2006
2:01 am	scary quote o' the day... Now there's a challenge: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. -- William Morris (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
4:49 pm	ecclesiology in the key of maudlin... Yes, The Smiths as hymnologists... I would rather not go Back to the old house I would rather not go Back to the old house There's too many Bad memories Too many memories There ... Oh, there ... There ... When you cycled by Here began all my dreams The saddest thing I've ever seen And you never knew How much I really liked you Because I never even told you Oh, and I meant to Are you still there ? Or have you moved away ? Or have you moved away ? Away ... Oh ... I would love to go Back to the old house But I never will I never will ... I never will ... In the aftermath of All Saints' and Reformation Day (and inevitable ignorant moaning about its outcomes), I often feel this way. This year, the feast of All Saints doesn't even fall on Nov. 1 in my church's local calendar, leaving me twice bereft... (thanks for the lyrics) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 28th, 2006
4:09 pm	Basic play styles... I think that there's basically just the three gameplay styles, and they break down something like this: In A World Where... This Is A Tale Of... Your Challenge Will Be... And so different interests are described by those different hooks; some people want to know what the challenge will be and how they'll overcome obstacles for their ultimate reward. Others want themes of import: betrayal, family loyalty, wanderlust, revenge, true love... Some of us are all 'let a hundred flowers bloom' for expressing 'In a world where..." The Simulationist heartbreaker is to speak "In A World Where..." in such a way that the theme of the Tale and the Challenge contain the seeds of their own expression... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 28th, 2006
2:33 pm	d,na I hate fsckin' ZF-Jvaqbjf: "Warning! Using this remote administration tool will do something totally irrational, and completely the opposite of making the change locally! Decline to be rectally wirebrushed? [No] [Yes]" And people wonder why I joke about not having grey hairs before I went into this business... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006
10:13 pm	mmm, apocalypse Tonight, went off to try the first episode of Bible study with the Orthodox. Noticed, more strongly than ever before, a kooky resemblance, forcing me to ask: Separated at birth? This guy -- and this guy? Spooky, no? Since the phrase "already / not yet" figures prominently in this book...! So tonight it was Apocalypse! With the Orthodox! This is quite as much fun as you might think it (okay, probably more...). But it was quite a straightforward reading an interpretation of the text. In fact, it was much more like a proper Bible study than anything I've seen at any church I've been at since St. S. Ev. Lutheran... 15+ years ago... And really, though Protestants like to talk about being Biblical, the real church emphasis is on so-called "sharing", topical discussion out of Protestant tertiary/quaternary sources, and "culture wars" / values / moralism, rather than straightforward exposition of Biblical texts. While some of those things might have a place in church life (some, and small), they must not displace the confrontation with the questions basic to Christian teaching: First, what does it say?, and second, what does it mean? By no coincidence, this was emphasized tonight, which is why I'm all "w00" about it, instead of despairing. I did refrain from pointing how how foundational this grounding in the literal sense of the Scriptural text was for Luther, however... And next time, I'm bringing our Greek/English NT! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
8:46 pm	eat more rage -- it puts a fire in your belly! When you're a sysadmin by practice (irrespective of title), you find that God gives the gift of rage every day. It is a fire which may come down and consume all at any time. the fire staves off despair, and throws the followers of falsehood (vendors, spammers, misbehaving hardware) into confusion and panic. Today's occasion for rage is the TO DO function of Ybghf Abgrf, synced with a Cnyz, via Ybghf RnflFlap. Now, a TO DO list is surely not rocket science. In fact, it's probably one of the earliest functions of the "personal" computer: A stored list, ordered and sorted to push work from the brain to the machine. Practically what the jolly things there for, what? But no. Despite running mucho $LOCALCURRENCY to rent ("license") and operate, and having the proprietary Ybghf RnflFlap software widget to wrangle the oh-so-elaborate TO DO from Cnyz-speak to Ybghf Abgrf -talk, the list, viewed in the utterly krep! client view so characteristic of Ybghf Abgrf, is trashed. Imagine chavs ransacking a house for spare change to buy pot or some alcoholic swill like Bud Light, and you'll have a picture of the TO DO list's end state: disordered, messy, inverted, garbage from months ago strewn across the screen. Let's just say I don't go for that white trash trailerpark look. Obviously, this list, besides being useless to me in this state, is utterly unsuited to being printed out and used for a discussion with my unP-HB about my work tasks and priorities. Bah. So... How about the native Cnyz software that should work with the gadget? Yeah, I bet you think you're clever. Fear not: Ybghf RnflFlap now intercepts all TO DO data, and diverts it from the native software, leaving the Cnyz software with a list as old as the day you installed RnflFlap. Unless you're daft enough to present the boss with a list that says you've tracked nothing (or done nothing) the last 5 months, it's Ybghf Abgrf holding you hostage. Kill it! Kill it with fire! On a Tuesday following the Monday where the car died, forcing us to push it out of the middle of the apartment complex parking lot (uphill, of course!) until I could return to climb into the hood and scrub the battery terminal until the happy sparks returned, and in which I spent all morning talking about how we (werk) are likely going to hand off the mega-project of our org's data revamp to a (thankfully rather clueful) contractor, giving me a serious case of envy... Yeah, the rage is your friend. The fire is fuel, it keeps us warm as night closes in... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 17th, 2006
8:29 pm	'people in this world, they have no place to go' Did the Orthodox thing again today -- think I'll vote to stick with it, since the perfect church hasn't mysteriously washed up on our block... Am continuing to decipher my relationship to Orthodoxy, since I take my own dogmatic stances as seriously as they take theirs. And since life has finally slowed down a bit, I'm watching football and reading. It's a little bit of back-to-basics with Carl E. Braaten*: Some of us have said it so often that it hardly bears repeating: Lutheranism is not essentially a church but a movement. It is not essentially an independent church in competition with other denominational churches. It is a confessional movement that exists for the sake of reforming the whole church of Christ by the canon of the gospel. The ecclesiastical, organizational structures of Lutheranism are interim measures, ready to go out of business as soon as their provisional aims are realized. The Lutheran-Orthodox ecumenical exchanges have always been a disappointment to me; the Orthodox always seem to regard us as a crypto-Papist advance force which must be disarmed and stripped of distinctives. For the Lutheran part, there's an embarrassing tendency to use the Orthodox to score points on the Papists (and Anglicans), while also trying to replay the Reformation so as to get a better outcome. Hilariously (by which I mean sadly), every couple centuries there's a round of this, and the same mutual incomprehension occurs... And so it goes. In football news, in the 3rd quarter of the Cowboys/Redskins game, and it is utterly clear that "T.O." cam neither make the big play, not take the big hit. Color me unsurprised! Also: GO STILLERZ! * = Principles of Lutheran Theology (Fortress, 1983), Ch. 3 "The Ecumenical Principle", p. 46. (Comment on this)