Similarities and Differences Between key Cartoon Characters.

This is a guest post by my son Timothy. It's a writing project he had to do for school. Publishing it was the final step, and I was grateful to help him! 

Cartoon Characters Rule!

     Cartoons are a really fun thing. Two of my favorite characters are SpongeBob and Phineas. They have several similarities and differences.

     SpongeBob and Phineas are alike in many ways. SpongeBob loves to sing just like Phineas loves to sing. They both have oddly shaped heads. In addition, SpongeBob and Phineas also have unusual pets. Lastly, SpongeBob and Phineas are both extremely enthusiastic.

     On the other hand, SpongeBob and Phineas have some differences. SpongeBob lives under the sea while Phineas lives in the Danville tri-state area. SpongeBob has a job as a fry cook, but Phineas wants to squeeze out every last bit of summer. In their free time SpongeBob does “ Ker-ra-tae,” but Phineas builds contraptions. SpongeBob has two friends named Patrick and Sandy. However, Phineas has a sister named Candace and a stepbrother named Ferb.

     I love both of these characters. I recommend both of these shows to anyone who wants to learn more about these characters. SPONGEBOB AND PHINEAS RULE!!!!!!!!

The Big Fish in my Life

Please read Genesis 3:6-11

Good morning. I'm very glad you're here this morning, whether you are listening from your room or here physically. This morning we're going way back into the Old Testament, otherwise known as the Jewish scriptures, to discover the first time humans hid from God, and what can be done about the problem.

This morning we will be starting with the assumption that God did create everything, including humans, and that the Garden of Eden existed. If this is a difficult concept for you, and it is for many, then just know that this is my belief based on my faith and the scriptures as I interpret them. To catch you up on what has happened in the first couple chapters. In six days, God has created the earth, the stars, and everything on the earth. For an undetermined amount of time, everything was perfect. The humans obeyed God's commands to take care of the creation and not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

Then Satan, in the form of a Serpent, convinced Eve, who then convinced Adam, that they could eat that fruit and not suffer any consequences. It is immediately after eating the fruit that we pick up the story in Genesis Chapter 3 verse 6.

6 Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
10 And he said, “I heard You in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
11 Then He asked, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The key to this morning's talk is, “They hid themselves from the Lord.” Like my father Adam, and mother Eve, I have hid myself from God many times. It has happened either because of anger about what God is allowing in my life or because I have been sinning against God, just like Adam and Eve did. I could be for any number of reasons, but I have definitely hid myself often.

How do we hide from God?

My efforts to hide myself from God are as futile as my first parents. They didn't involve making clothing out of fig leaves as we imagine from the biblical text, but hide from God I did. My efforts to hide from God are often brought to fruition through work in the U.S. Navy, digging deep into some writing project as that is my hobby, or getting lost in my dreams about the future. Often times I will daydream about some future promotion or some stock I have invested and doing well, or even about becoming a best-selling author. The exact content of the dream is secondary. The important thing to know is that I run from God instead of living in the moment with him knowing that he is sovereign in my life.

Of course, sometimes I run from God by sinning against him. When you engage in active disobedience against God's words, you are running from God. This is something I have done in the past. Perhaps you have to.

We have an example from the Bible of someone who did this named Jonah. Just like his spiritual parents Adam and Eve, Jonah in hearing a direct command from God, ran the other way. You probably know about his example from stories that you were told as a child at church. In the story of Adam and Eve running from God and hiding, and then the story of Jonah, we have examples of human nature. That human nature seeks its own will when God has made commands otherwise. It requires the individual to ignore his or her faith in God and instead place faith and oneself.

This is actually the crux of the matter itself. Satan, in the form of the serpent, was able to tempt Eve away from God by telling her that she could become like God. When you run from God or hide from God you're placing your faith in yourself, which shows your attempt to become like God. I don't need God you say, I can do it myself. And when the building blocks of your own faith in yourself come crumbling down around you, you hide behind whatever is available in order to not feel shame at ignoring God and sinning against him.

That is the example of Adam and Eve. In the story of Jonah, this scenario is taken a step further. Sometimes God doesn't ask calmly where we are in the cool of the evening as he did in Genesis chapter 3. Sometimes he swallows us with a big fish. Despite recently achieving a Masters degree in religion, and being under contract to write an article about starting a military ministry, I ran from God both through my Navy career and in my hobbies as a computer enthusiast. My big fish moment is writing this article on my couch with a cast on my right hand using Mac dictate because I cannot type. As I said, sometimes God asks us where we are in the cool of the evening, and sometimes he sends a big fish.

This cast, this surgery on my wrist, which has severely limited my ability to do my hobbies, has been a boon to personal spiritual revival! I am extremely grateful for this injury as it has forced me to come to terms with my face and my walk with Jesus Christ. I remember a few years ago a famous preacher wrote a book called don't waste your cancer. In that book he talked about making the most of the situation and using it for God's glory. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to make the most through personal revival, and to share the testimony with you.

What is the big fish in your life?

Kwheezy 1.2 Review

Want to know how Kwheezy stacks up against the other "unknown" distros of 2013? Click here to find out!

I have always been a categorically against the KDE desktop experience. I've never understood it, and never really tried. Part of that might be because I started with GNOME, I don't know. What I do know for certain is that I have always shied away from KDE desktops and therefore I have avoided many distributions. Something about Kwheezy however, has intrigue me enough to make me want to take a look. I have many presuppositions that will have to be overturned in order to be unbiased, but I am willing to give it a very good try. Whether you are a fan or foe of KDE, put some of your biases aside and join me for this review.

The website says the following: "Kwheezy is Debian 7 (Wheezy), with a pre-configured KDE desktop experience and a good selection of GNU/Linux/Open Source software." That is an understatement! It doesn't come with a good selection of software, it comes with all of the you need to get started. The page goes on to say that it's not really a separate distro, but more of a pre-configured Debian installation.

In order to conduct this review, I used both my MacBook Pro with a 2.5 GHz i5 processor and 4GB of RAM via VirtualBox (of which 1GB of RAM was utilized), and my two-year-old Toshiba laptop with a Celeron processor and 3GB of RAM.

Kwhhezy's 1.2 ISO weighs in at a hefty 3.8GB. It was easy enough to get to. The website directs you to Linux Freedom. Simply scroll down until you see the US mirror for the 64-bit, or 32 bit if that's what you need, and click.

Kwheezy 1.2 comes standard with a slew of programs, which explains its giant ISO. One of the major categories is games. Major categories include arcade, board games, card games, and tactics and strategy, along with Stream, which you can access by inputting your Stream login and password. For office needs it comes complete with LibreOffice suite which is comparable to Microsoft office as well as several utilities such as the HP fax utility and Calligra Flow, which is a flowchart and diagram program. I also found it mildly surprising, but refreshing, to see VirtualBox, Unetbootin, and WINE configuration available. Like I said, it's huge, because it just about everything you want.

The live CD desktop looks beautiful!

Immediately after booting a live CD version of Kwheezy 1.2 into my VirtualBox, I was asked to set up my keyboard. This was an interesting but unnecessary step, as canceling the process did not affect my user experience.

In hindsight, I may not of allocated enough RAM to the distro as it used half of the allocated 1 GB for resting alone. This is not a real dilemma for someone who has several gigabyte available. However, it could become a problem for someone on an older computer that does not have as much RAM available. I fired up the Google search engine and search for Kwheezy. My resource usage immediately jumped to 60% of RAM and the distro began to drag. When testing it on my dedicated Toshiba laptop, the resource issues usage stay the same, but of course that meant better overall percentages because I had more RAM allocated to it. CPU usage sits around 8 to 10% at rest on my Celeron based Toshiba laptop and jumps periodically depending on the task. Overall, despite the higher use of RAM, the distro makes efficient use of my technological resources.

On my Toshiba, using the lives CD at first, it had no trouble figuring out my wireless system and after I put in the pass code, I was on the Internet without a hitch. All programs on the live CD work without any modification.

Installation onto my hard drive was a breeze! I had to input information into four screens, and then KWheezy did the rest. It didn't do the best job of explaining my need for passwords for both the route and administrator. While I assumed that's what it was, it wasn't until after I messed up my password that I learned for sure. While it was a breeze, they did take a while as you used almost all of my CPU for the entire download process, meaning that it was at 100% for almost the entire process. It also required more than 1GB of RAM, meaning that I would not have been able to install it on my VirtualBox on the MacBook Pro without reconfiguring VirtualBox.That small hiccup aside, I am now running KWheezy on my hard drive without any problems at all.

KWheezy was a breeze to install!

The installed version is very clean, but does run you through a short setup.

The good: first of all, it comes with everything you need right out-of-the-box. Aside from getting my Bible software downloaded, which is necessary for me because of what I do as a lay minister, KWheezy comes with everything I needed. I didn't have to go get an office suite, games, or anything else. As I get used to it, I may go get things such as Supertuxkart or other games that I want to enjoy, but I did not need anything to begin working from the distro. This is especially important because the computer serves as the extra family machine, meaning that my children need to be able to use it. My daughter had no problem learning how to use the system once I showed her the few nuances it had. Of course this is my gold standard for Linux distros. If my kids can use it, anyone can.

The bad: Trading immediate usability for size, the distro is very big. I had to set aside my 2 GB thumb drive for the heavier 8 GB thumb drive in order to build the live CD version. Whether this is truly bad or not is subject to personal situation and up for debate. Again, that big distro allowed me to use the desktop out of the box, or thumb drive as it were, without any modification. Still, for those who don't have quite the amount of resources, it is something that must be understood.

Final thoughts: Despite my initial misgivings about KWheezy because it is a KDE desktop, I came away from reviewing this distro very impressed. It truly came with everything I needed and much much more! It does chew on resources at times, but as long as you have more than two gig of RAM and a decent processor you'll be fine. I particularly enjoyed it is easy to start using both as a live CD, and as an installed distro. I highly recommend the distro for your personal review and use. Let me know what you think of it!

Parable of the 10 Virgins: Applicable to the Rapture?

I have long associated the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew chapter 25 with the rapture. Having grown up in a very dispensational setting, I was taught from a dispensational point of view. However, the more I study about the rapture and dispensationalism in general, the more I have to question these things that I grew up with. It is not good enough to just assume things that we were taught as children are still true. We must evaluate things on our own.

As a sidenote, if you are simply relying on what you were told as a child, you are failing the kingdom and yourself. Unless your faith becomes yours and yours alone, your salvation, as an individual event, is sadly underrated. It will also become very difficult for you to share that individualized faith with someone else if you're simply relying on with your parents told you. I believe that this is one of the reason for the decline of the major denominations.

Returning to our scripture passage, we must decide one of two things. First you must decide if the rapture is indeed possible at all. My presupposition in dealing with this subject; this parable, is that the rapture is a possible concept. This is of the upmost importance especially if you do not believe in the pre-tribulational rapture of the church, or if you are debating someone who differs with you on this point. If this is the case then Matthew chapter 25, and in fact that entire section of Matthew, will mean less about a rapture and more about Christ's second coming for his kingdom. My personal research, and my triangle method of proving the rapture, suggest to me that it is going to happen. However, as I stated before you must make this faith yours; not mine, not your preacher's, not anyone else's but yours.

Secondly, you must determine if this parable is about the rapture or for the millennial coming of Christ. One of the key reasons why I believe this is referring to the second coming of Christ for his saints is that it allows for people to be left behind. Half of the virgins awaiting the bridegroom's arrival were ready for his arrival, and of course half of them were not. This would suggest that at least a portion of the given population is left to see life without the bridegroom, although the numbers being skewed to half and half is curious given Christ's words in Matthew 7:13-14.

So in deciding whether this passage is applicable to the rapture study, it seems pretty clear that it must apply to the rapture or it holds little meaning aside from a general call to preparedness. Now, we must decide if this is about preparedness. Something that lends itself to this sort of thinking is that all of the virgins are waiting on the same bridegroom. We know for example that not all people in the world are waiting on the second coming of Christ. Therefore, it would suggest if this is the context, that we are only talking about the church being prepared for Christ coming. If this is the case, then the five virgins who are prepared meet their Lord and happiness. However, the five virgins who are not prepared truly for their Lord meet him in disgrace. One could then assume that Christ is talking about being prepared for him coming back however he may do so. In effect, the five virgins who are ready for his return suggest devout followership while the ones who are not truly prepared suggest hypocrisy. This is an idea proposed by Matthew Henry, who lived before the idea of the rapture, especially in dispensational terms, was developed.

While I would not put it past the Lord to give a general discussion on preparedness and knowing who we are working for, in that we are working for him, I believe that there is a deeper meaning to this passage. I believe the fact that some of the virgins are turned away, meaning that they were looking towards some sort of savior but not knowing the Savior, suggest that a surprise return of the Lord is imminent.

The problem for both ways of looking at this passage, whether you're talking about the second coming of Christ and the rapture, or talking about general preparedness for his followers, is that he essentially banishes the virgins who are unready. In discussing the passage as a rapture passage, the numbers don't seem to match. We know from empirical evidence and from scripture that the vast majority of people in the world are not ready for Christ, not just half of the world. In discussing the passage as a warning to be prepared, it seems very difficult to justify complete banishment of the five unprepared virgins. Nevertheless, we must see it in its context. Christ is giving a parable to suggest those who are not waiting on the true savior will be banished. This is the fact of the passage, and the rest is the plot of the story.

The reason why I believe that this does find application in the rapture theology is that people are looking for a savior. They may be looking in science, Buddhism, Islam, etc., but they are looking. We can then infer from the passage in Matthew chapter 25 that those who are looking for anything but the bridegroom's return, prepared as they are with the light which represents the gospel, are really prepared only for banishment.

As a final note, I am doing what I believe to be exciting research on the biblical concept of the rapture. I can't wait to share it with you, but I am still preparing what I hope will be a scholarly journal article on the subject. Until I have that finalized, I have to keep the research to myself in order to preserve copyright and publication requirements.

Bodhi 2.4.0 Linux Review

Want to know how Bodhi stacks up against the other "unknown" distros of 2013? Click here to find out!

I always enjoy reviewing a Debian or Ubuntu based distro, mostly because I know that they will always work. This is especially important when testing on lower-power systems like mine. By the way, I have a test system 64 bit Toshiba Satellite C655 with a Celeron 2.3GHZ processor and 3GB RAM, onboard video processor and a 220GB hard drive.

Bodhi claims to be a minimalist distribution based on Ubuntu 12.04. To that end, it delivers nicely. It strips away the Unity desktop and replaces it with the Enlightenment desktop. As I feel that Ubuntu's primary disadvantage is Unity, this works out nicely. The developers added a basic webpage explaining Enlightenment as they use it for Bodhi.

Installing it was a breeze, just like it always is with an Ubuntu-based distro. I started it as a Live CD, as I do many of my distros, and then a very short time later (because of the minimalist format), it was installed on the hard drive.

Bodhi comes standard with very little, as follows the promise to be a minimalist distro. If you want an office suite (which I always do because I write reviews and articles), you need to go get it, as suggested by the photo below. If you want games, go get them. It does come with a notepad type program (called Leafpad), for basic editing. Of course, downloading and installing the programs you want is easy via the Synaptic Package Manager or the terminal, whichever you desire. After downloading the programs I wanted for office, I updated my distro via sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade. For browsing, it comes with Midori, which is effective, but not quite like Firefox or Chrome.

I ended up using Terminology to get my favorite programs, which of course includes Xiphos. Xiphos is a Bible software which allows me to continue my studies when I'm working a Linux machine. Aside from that, it also allows me to test the OS for installing programs that aren't normally used by the masses.

The Good: I can't stress enough how important it is that Bodhi is based off of Ubuntu 12.04. Precise Pangolin is a good, functional system. In addition to that, Bodhi strips away the Unity desktop and replaces it with Enlightenment. I'm not the biggest fan of Enlightenment, but it was a good enough desktop. It's also a very attractive desktop.

Another major benefit to Bodhi is that it allows you to customize your system as you complete your first boot. You're able to pick what you want Enlightenment to look like, including wallpaper and format. Without the necessary experience in this area, I probably would have picked better if doing it again.

The Bad: When I first downloaded and installed Bodhi 2.4.0, I liked the minimalist aspect of the distro. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more of a pain then it was a blessing. Unless one is fairly adept at working the terminal (called Terminology in Bodhi), then the process gets a little time consuming and not at all user-friendly. This just goes back to the same issue about not having a user-friendly system. If you want lay-people to adopt your distro, you have to come standard with certain things. You need an office suite, a few games (the simpler the better), and an easy package management system. That's it...oh, and a nice desktop environment. Bodhi comes up a little shy on these counts.

I also didn't like how the pointer snapped back to the middle of the screen or application I was working on instead of just leaving it where I had it. On the other hand, it wasn't hard to find it when it snapped to a different part of the screen. It was just an annoyance.

Overall Impression: Overall, I like the distribution. Had a good look as far as the desktop is concerned and his functionality was effective, but it is a minimalist distribution and as such requires a great deal of tinkering to make it work the way a fully-functioning system needs to. It's a good distro for playing with and testing your hardware, but it's not going to take Linux to the next level any time soon. While I think it's a good system, I'll be staying with my Semplice5 for the time being.

Semplice5 Review

Want to know how Semplice stacks up against the other "unknown" distros of 2013? Click here to find out!

I've reviewed a few flavors of Linux, from Mint to Manjaro, and I've found something to be critical of in almost every distro. Whether it's gNewSense's adherence to an asinine free software policy or Unity's odd design, I've often found problems with the distros I've reviewed. With that in mind, let me just say that Semplice5 is going to be different.

This distro passed the most important test. Within a few minutes of firing up the live CD version, I put my 7 year old daughter on it and showed her how to get to YouTube. I showed her once (left click on the desktop, right click on web browser, type in youtube into the search bar) and then she needed no further assistance.

Bottom line: I like the distribution very much. It's unfortunately sitting at 82 on the top 100 on Distrowatch's list. It should be way, way higher. Hopefully my review will help it achieve more.

As you can see by the above screenshot, the desktop is extremely clean...as in sparkling. Simplice claims to be a fast, elegant design, and they deliver wonderfully on both accounts. Part of what made my daughter so happy about using it is because it looked “pretty.” I loved how it took a computer that had become bogged down by Windows 7 and sped it up to run nearly as fast as my MacBook Pro. By the way, I have a test system 64 bit Toshiba Satellite C655 with a Celeron 2.3GHZ processor and 3GB RAM, onboard video processor and a 220GB hard drive.

To further test the OS as it relates to my computer, I took my 2 year old Toshiba Satellite and put it through several real-world situations. At rest, the OS used 266MB of RAM and 1% of CPU resources. Not bad! I haven't seen a fully-functioning OS operate at those perimeters since I've started reviewing distros, though I know some exist.

Starting a search via Chrome and Google shot my resource usage up to 92% and memory up to 532MB. Once I loaded a few of the pages, the CPU usage, for the most part, dropped back down to about 77% and then finally to 1%. Part of that issue is that one of the pages I used kept loading fresh ads. This is still obviously a high reading. Memory remained stable at 556MB. Pulling up Tetris, the distro's default game, I discovered a 30% CPU usage and around 340 MB RAM utilization during actual gameplay.

Battery life was pretty good for my older laptop. It's hard to compare it to the Windows 7 primary OS because it runs so painfully slow that testing it is almost impossible. Still, I got 2hr 45min from Simplice5 while running a mix of rest time, YouTube videos, Tetris, and taking screenshots. Overall, I was impressed with the resource utilization.

As usual, there are always things that could have gone better. One of the biggest drawbacks to Semplice5 is the lack of office applications. AbiWord is a fine application, and I'm not against having it available, but it can't compete with LibreOffice. They do "ship" with Gnumeric as well. Again, nothing against it, but it's not a complete suite and definitely not enough to launch a home business with. So you will have to go get an office suite once you install it.

AbiWord is good, but it's not a complete suite.

It also only comes with Tetris. This isn't much of a problem for me though, but if you want to play more, go get more.

Final Thoughts: As I mentioned in the Bottom Line, I think this distro has legs. I am so impressed by it that it has become my main installation for my Toshiba test laptop. It could have a better loadout of programs (namely in the games and office suite), but anyone can fix that upon installation by getting the programs you want.

Try out this distro and let me know what you think. I'm betting that you'll like it as much as I do!

My Vision for Navy Christian

When I started blogging at Navy Christian, my goal was to create a site that would give the average Christian a window into the life of a military believer. I still blog along those lines, but also include random posts like my struggle with weight, my love of Linux, and mentoring. I don't think there is anything wrong with that (it is my blog after all), but it isn't what the original dream was.

As I was thinking about what to do from this point, I realized that no overarching tool exists to connect believers in the military from all over the world, wherever they are stationed and whatever they do. We need a way to share what works in the fleet, set people up with contacts when they transfer, and help with advice and prayer requests.

That is what Navy Christian is going to become. I've started the transition now with a new Facebook Group. Currently, we have almost 100 people and I'm aggressively moving toward many, many, more. I want to see The Navy Christian become the single point of entry for all military believers. When someone joins the military, they join Navy Christian. When someone leads another Sailor to the Lord, they follow up by leading them to The Navy Christian and to the community.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that this can become a single-point of all Christian activity in the military community. However, I do believe it can become a point of connection between believers in the Navy. I will, from now on, begin putting out reviews and information beneficial to the community as a whole. In time, I hope to have an admin in each major fleet concentration area to can manage the community locally. Someday, we'll have social events, prayer meetings, etc. So keep a weather-eye out and invite your believing friends!

To see the page and join, click HERE.

Dan Smith Founder:
The Navy Christian
 www.navychristian.org