Toluu

my name is neal

I use my blog and the podcast as a therapeutic release. If friends and nice people read or listen cool, I guess, but I'm not asking you to.

Dark Desktop MakeoverNovember 17 2008

A desktop is kind of like a living room. In living room design, I like clean, modern, peaceful design with one thing that’s old and rugged to add contrast and texture. The same holds true for my desktop, except that I had one element: darkness. It’s soothing to contrast the brightness of the work screens with a dark desktop.

My Sunday afternoon project was to re-design the appearance of my desktop and I made three changes:

1. Created a new Wallpaper.
2. Changed icons.
3. Increased the size of the icons on the desktop.

This is the result (click to see a full-sized screen capture):

I like the end-result so I’m sharing the wallpaper. The icons are from Apple’s download page. I used some from two sets because I wanted to distinguish between folders on the Mac network and folders on the HP MediaSmart Server. The feed reader at the top is an Adobe Air app called Snackr. Here are the links:

Darkhand Wallpaper by Neal

How Do You Cope?September 13 2008

I’ve writen about my need to stay away from politics in order to maintain mental stability. There are things done and said on the left and the right that totally throw me off my game. I haven’t called myself a conservative since President Bush called himself one, but this election year, putting on the old jacket of Reagan conservatism feels pretty comfortable.

I’m a Christian who loves science. In school, one of the things that drew me to science was the scientific attitude of skepticism. My teachers taught me there are very few irrefutable laws in science and it’s the job of a scientist to continual test what we know what we don’t know. I LOVE that! Skepticism is the guide. Since my university was a Christian university, it wasn’t all that difficult to keep matters of faith and science separated.

The science I fell in love with in school was never self-assured. It is a constant quest of discovery because the moment a scientist becomes sure, the motivation to keep searching begins to die.

From my perspective conservatives separate faith and science well, because faith in God does nothing to squelch the desire to learn why and what this world and beyond is all about. Progressives seem to take scientific ideas and turn them into absolutes. They take it for granted that evolution is a fact and global warming is caused by human activity and then adopt an air of superiority that says, “anyone who disagrees with evolution or global warming is a

My Sarah ManiaSeptember 10 2008

Sarah Palin has hit a nerve with me. I’m trying to understanding it by writing about it.

In just over two weeks, I’ve gone from being a non-registered, non-voter with a 90% laissez faire attitude about what government does to being all-in for a person I want to see become president.

Being disaffected by politics didn’t mean I was without strong political beliefs. It meant I was without hope that anyone strong enough to articulate and push a strong Libertarian message would ever be motivated enough to run for office. My political foundation has been shaped by the speeches of Ronald Reagan and the writing of Libertarians like William F. Buckly and Camille Paglia. I believe God created us as vessels of free-will. We can do good. We can do bad or we can do nothing. I believe in freedom of choice across the board because that’s the system illustrated in the Garden of Eden.

Coming out of school, the Republicans held sway with me because their rhetoric was closer to Libertarianism. The Contract with America gave me great hope that I could see wasteful government spending come to an end. When that didn’t happen. I gave up and dropped out. If the political system’s intention was to screw itself, I wasn’t going to hang around and watch.

I had a little (unfounded) hope that Democrats would learn from Clinton’s Republican-Congress-Assisted fiscal restraint. As my fellow Christians seemed to grow more and more enamored with political power, I

@ Jonathan Freedland … whoever you areSeptember 10 2008

We’re not voting for a president based on what the reast of the world thinks. The reast of the world values the disaster of socialism. Barak fights for socialism in the U.S. and we reject it. We are the country of “live free or die.” Continue to cheer for the guy who stands against individual liberity because it steadies our reslove to resist the opression of socialism. Elitist who think they know better than the rest of us do not have a chance in our nation’s politics (I hope).

Our nation is founded on the principle that all of us are created equil with the freedom to pursue happiness. Taxation and socialism is all about restricting our freedome to pursue happiness. That’s why we reject Europen influence. You guys don’t have our best interest at heart. We love that you support Barak’s insane ideology. The idea that governement can and should help me is the most worthless idea ever prepossed. Government only has one repsonsibility to good Americans: Get out of our way!

Everything we need to suceed is provided to us by liberty. Jesus died to set us free. The world supports Obama’s desire to hold us down. That’s change I’ll fight to prevent.

Palin’s Church and the Gay ThingSeptember 7 2008

I feel like I have to weigh in on this. The church Sarah Palin once attended appears to believe people can be “healed” of homosexuality.

Background: I’m a born-again Christian who loves … is that the word? I value gay people. I believe God blessed the planet with gay people and I don’t care if anyone agrees with me. Gay people make the world a better place in many, many ways. As a Christian, I cannot deny that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin, but I don’t care. My position is that, if God thinks it’s a sin, He has the power to change it and if He wants too … I’m okay with that, but I haven’t seen evidence of it, and I hope He doesn’t.

In my life, I’ve seen gay Christians who love God and their committed relationships are blessed by God.

Let’s just call it a sin since the Bible does. So is gluttony and we share God’s grace for that. Divorce is a sin that Jesus talked about (He didn’t talk about homosexuality), and the church has largely extended God’s grace to divorced people.

Sarah Palin may or may not be where I am in my belief that we should love gay men and women whether they stop being gay or not. I hope that isn’t what God wants. Lots of Christians hope God wants them to change. Either way … it isn’t up to us. It’s up to Him.

What is up to us is that we love each other the same as we love ourselves. I extend a bunch of grace to myself and therefore I extend almost an unlimited amount o