1. Slowly but surely learning how to use the Linux CLI. I talked with James last Tuesday about his experiences in programming and computer science classes at NCSU, and he said that when learning Linux they didn’t even let the students turn on the GUI until the last week of the semester. Wise decision, I think. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any way to be more familiar with your computer than to know how to manipulate it from the command line. I’m so out of practice, though… The last time I really had to interact with a command line was back in the DOS era when I would use it essentially to start up Windows 3.1. This time around I’m determined to learn more.<\/p>\n
2. I fixed the kitchen sink’s garbage disposal earlier this evening. A shard of red plastic, hailing from parts unknown, had lodged itself between the disposal’s disk and outer shell, preventing the disk from turning. I had to drop the unit from the sink pan and disassemble it so I could yank out the offending plastic with a pair of pliers. Got it all buttoned up and it works fine again. We’re definitely getting one of those screen sink trap-type things as a safeguard against future incidents like this.<\/p>\n
3. Attended the men’s Bible study at Rosemont<\/a>, our new church, for only the second time. They’re going through a book by Jerry Bridges called Respectable Sins<\/a><\/i>. Each of its chapters focuses on a unique sin that our culture, in some capacity or to some degree, tells us is acceptable. Two weeks ago we discussed pride, and today we covered selfishness. We began by defining the word. Mark quoted the definition from Webster’s 1828 dictionary, a physical copy of which we have sitting on our bookshelf here at home and which I enjoy very much. Here’s what it has to say:<\/p>\n SELF’ISHNESS, n. The exclusive of a person to his own interest or happiness; or that supreme self-love or self-preference, which leads a person in his actions to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power or happiness, without regarding the interest of others. Selfishness, in its worst or unqualified sense, is the very essence of human depravity, and it stands in direct opposition to benevolence, which is the essence of the divine character. As God is love, so man, in his natural state, is selfishness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n How times have changed. I don’t have more recent dictionaries handy, but I doubt the bulk of that word’s description has remained unaltered to the present day.<\/p>\n In any event, after we had defined the word, we talked about some manifestations of it in the church and in culture, discussed biblical paragons of selfish<\/i>ness and selfless<\/i>ness, and then mulled over ways which we justify selfishness in our own lives. Things we tell ourselves like “I deserve it” or “It’s only fair” were mentioned. I confessed a way I’ve justified selfishness in myself has been to convince myself that I need some sort of “balance” in my life. That is to say, I take mental stock of the day, inventory how much time I’ve spent with my kids and my wife, and from there determine whether I’ve “earned” some time to myself. This is a very insidious form of selfishness in that the culture condones it in the name of “mental health” or some pop psychology term like that. And granted, we do need to take care of ourselves in order to make ourselves more available for those who need us, but as it always does, the Bible calls us to a higher standard than that set by the world–completely sacrificial selflessness. Giving of yourself until it hurts and then giving some more. Our paradigm-setter, Jesus, never reached a point where He justified selfishness in any sense. I need to jettison the mental scorecard and ask the Holy Spirit to help me remain relentlessly focused on the needs of those in my sphere of influence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. Slowly but surely learning how to use the Linux CLI. I talked with James last Tuesday about his experiences in programming and computer science classes at NCSU, and he said that when learning Linux they didn’t even let the students turn on the GUI until the last week of the semester. Wise decision, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}