Facebook Pet Peeves

Six things on Facebook doth Tim hate.  Yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

1. Profile pictures that don't actually contain the person.  (No, your child is still not you.)
2. Friend requests from people who, though we are in the same social circle, I have never interacted with.
3. Invitations to waste time and/or clutter my profile with some application.  This includes "interacting" with me from applications I have not installed.  
4. Also, lost cows.
5. Event invitations that unnecessarily last for weeks.  This screws up my Google Calendar, which imports my Facebook events.
6. Profiles that are not for people.  (Non-personal entities should have a page or a group, not a profile.)
7. Couples that share a single account.  This one bugs me on a much deeper level than the others.

 Now go, and sin no more.

Firefox Extensions Collection

A while ago, I wrote a post in which I create a list of software to install on a new Windows box.  I did this mostly for my own reference, but it might be useful to others.

The first item on my list is Firefox, but (until now) I didn't include any extensions.  Firefox is all about customizations, and extensions are the most powerful way to customize it.  But who wants to go through the trouble of sorting through the thousands of extensions to find the useful ones?  Well, it's more a matter of keeping your ear to the ground and trying out the ones that sound good and/or come recommended.

After years of research, I've created a collection of extensions!  I didn't write any of them, I just bunched them together because they were all useful to me.

I plan on updating the collection as time goes on, so here's the link:

• burndive's essential extensions

You can choose to install them individually, or as a group.  I hope you find them as useful as I have.

Khaki Campbells and Marans

Today, Elizabeth and I picked up two ducks and two roosters that we got off of Craigslist.

The ducks are female Khaki Campbells, and the roosters are copper black Marans.  Elizabeth has wanted Khaki Campbells for a while, since they're good layers.  It's a breed that her family has had before.

Our rooster, Mr. Darcy, died last week, so Elizabeth asked the seller if she knew of anyone who had a rooster.  As it happened, she had a pair of roosters and was looking for a good home for them.

Does anyone have any names to suggest?  If I name one of the roosters Mr. Knightly, what should the other one be named?  They're a bit young, and they timidly stayed in the chicken coop, and away from the hens.  Maybe I should call them Sheldon and Koothrappali.

The ducks, on the other hand, made right for our Pekins, and they seemed to be getting along fine.

Google Wave (Preview)

I just posted my initial thoughts on the Google Wave preview over at my tuxbox blog.

Submission

Recently, I've been involved in a rather lengthy, but in my mind worth-while discussion, mostly regarding what the Bible teaches (or doesn't teach, depending on who you ask) about wives submitting to their husbands.

It's long.  Very long.  And lots of people chime in.  Some of whom just want to argue.  Be warned.

If that doesn't dissuade you, here's the post.

On Fatherhood, Thus Far

A few days ago, a friend of mine (who is a mommy) asked me to post a blog entry on being a father.  Then another mom chimed in to say that would be a good idea, and still another mom, (this one happened to be my wife) said that she, too, would be interested to hear what I have to say about being a father.

I don't think I have anything especially profound to say on this topic, but then, perhaps some of the things I consider mundane will be new to someone coming from a different perspective.

There does seem to be quite a bit of lopsidedness when it comes to mommy vs. daddy blogging.  Perhaps it's not considered manly to talk about having kids, or maybe kids aren't as central in the lives of men who blog.

In my case, blogging in general has suffered ever since our daughter was born, and it has much more to do with the new demands on me in my role as husband than as father.

And those just aren't the things one blogs about, mostly out of consideration for the privacy of one's wife.  The Internet does not need to know it when my wife feels like she can't get anything done around the house, or when she feels awkward about the changes in her body, or frustrated with the loss of liberty. 

When I get home from work, if I head over to the computer and sit there for hours composing an eloquent entry on the latest escapades of a certain three-month-old (or perhaps my life in relation to her), there is someone who all day has been cooped up with a baby, and might possibly appreciate some adult conversation, and perhaps someone to see to her needs after meeting someone else's needs all day.

Not that being a husband (or a mother, for that matter) is unrewarding.  It's just that blogging might not be the best use of my time and attention in certain situations.

So anyway, you get the picture:  blogging is not as high on my list as it used to be, and sometimes what occupies my thought-life is not for me to share.

So... fatherhood...

First of all, we didn't plan for this.  Not this soon, at least. 

When we bought our house there were plans to subdivide and develop the property, and in the meantime, we could easily afford the mortgage on the combined salary of a nurse and a software engineer.  This house was supposed to be a tear-down, and now it's our baby's nursery.  

It's not like we weren't being responsible.  Elizabeth is a nurse, after all:  she knows how this stuff works (or, I should say, usually works), and we were supposed to be okay.  But the Lord had other plans, and here we are, in the middle of them.  My temperament is such that typically I can just roll with the punches.  For Elizabeth, accepting the situation took more effort.

I enjoy kids.  I always have.  I have just as much fun playing peek-a-boo as the child.  My brothers and I used to throw kids up in the air, and back and forth to one another, seeing how far apart we could get.  Mostly at church.  We would chase them, and be chased.  They would steal our keys, watches, and wallets just to get us to chase them.  They would sneak up behind us and jump on our backs, so that we would have to give them a piggy-back ride.  (This still happens, come to think of it.)  I also enjoy talking with children.  Too many adults treat children like children when they speak to them, that is, they don't treat them like people: they treat them like non-people: like sub-beings. When I was a kid, I always liked the adults that didn't talk down to me, and I like to think that I've become one of those adults.

Shoshana isn't quite up to full sentences yet, but it's not about linguistic structure, it's about coming down to her level, but not thinking that I am somehow too good for that level.

Oh, yes.  Fatherhood comes with a bunch of other things besides having a little person in your house.  Things like changing diapers, taking a weighted car seat or a stroller everywhere.  For some reason I had to move all of the computer equipment and several book cases out of our second bedroom.  These are just the background noise of fatherhood, though.

Being a father right now means that my wife needs me to be there for her more than before.  Also, there's a wonderful little person living in my house!

Regarding My Calvinism Comment

In this post, I said,

Calvinists tend to see God’s knowledge from outside of time of events as the thing that makes them come to be, rather than the actual efficient cause within time.

A friend asked me to clarify that statement. This was my original response:

That is actually something which I have observed both Calvinists and Arminians to do. Observing that God knows what our responses to his actions will be "before" he acts, they regard God as being the one who authors the events, rather than, well, the people who are actually the ones responsible. In fact, I suspect that if Calvinists and Arminians got over this hump, they would have a lot less to argue about, and be more comfortable acknowledging all of the truths stated in the Bible in stead of pitting one set against another.

And then a couple hours later, I added this:

After thinking about my comment (and not sleeping, like I should be doing), I would like to clarify it some more.

There are Calvinists who maintain that there must be no "real" free will, since everything that happens is God's plan, and therefore "decreed" or "planned" to be so (and actively brought about by God). We are saved simply because God wanted us saved and not others, only for His glory, and our participation in salvation has nothing to do with our will, other than the fact that it was changed on us. People sin and reject him because he decreed it to be so for his glory (somehow).

The Arminians who make this same mistake of seeing God's knowledge as a cause tend to be open theists, who, when presented with the above scenario accept the assumption that God's knowledge of events (including sin) would cause them to be, but reject the scenario by concluding that God must therefore not know exactly what's coming, and is not the author of sin because he didn't know for sure that it would happen, (even though his plan accounted for the possibility, perfect as it was).

People who make the "God's knowledge causes events" assumption tend to think of it in terms of God "seeing ahead" into the future. I prefer to look at it as God interacting with the timeline all laid out in front of him. He doesn't dive himself in at one end of time, travel in one direction, and emerge at the other end: he touches all points of the timeline in one eternal instant, not arriving at them from the moment before, but directly from his eternal now.

That is, incidentally, why he is the Same. You cannot step into the same river twice, but you can step into the same God at any and every moment of your existence.

That is also how he sees us as already perfected in Christ: not because he's planning (or hoping!) to make us so, but because he knows us as being so (and God does not play pretend). Old testament sacrifices pointed to the offering of Christ, and they were accepted for sins, not because the real atonement would happen "at some point," but because Christ's offering was there in the presence of God for him to accept.

And I would add this:

Please notice that I am not speaking of all who call themselves Calvinists or Arminians. There is a tendency in the extremes of both, however, to fall into this same trap.

Counting Down

Last week, I had to bury our two goats. The neighbors, who had been feeding them weeds and grass clippings, did not know that rhododendrons are very poisonous plants, and so when they trimmed their rhododendron bushes, they put the clippings over the fence so the goats could eat the leaves. They did. Then they got very sick, and then they died. Princess died first during the night, and Fluffy died the following evening.

It was done in ignorance, and they profusely apologized and offered to replace the goats. I feel partly responsible because I didn't warn them and I knew they were feeding them, but I had no idea that they had rhododendrons. The neighbors even helped us dig one of the graves. We're not holding it against them, obviously. Actually, it was kind of a nice opportunity to bond with our neighbors. Except for the nice part, that is. Since the goats died in the evening, I didn't get to burying them until after work the following day, and it's been quite hot lately. If anyone wants to purchase a certain tarp at a discount price, I have a deal for you.

Anyway, the neighbors know someone who rescues goats, and if we tell them which breed we're looking for, they can have them look out for that breed. Elizabeth would like to have milking goats at some point, but right now she's a little busy, so we decided to hold off on replacing the goats until next spring.

This, along with the birth of our daughter, and 1 kitten so far that who has found a home, brings the population of our farm down from a high of 31 to 28: 3 humans, 14 chickens, 6 ducks, 2 cats, and 3 kittens.