After hearing only good things about Robert Lewis's "Men's Fraternity" and the courses that go along with it, I signed-up at my local church to start the first course, "The Quest for Authentic Manhood".

After only going to one session so far, I'm very excited about this course.  Contrary to what many may think, it's not a Bible study for men, although it does contain scriptural references.

So, why on earth would I waste my time taking a course on how to be a man?  Don't men 'just know' how to be men?  Don't I have anything better to do with my time?  I view my time spent in this course as vital to improving myself as a husband, a son, a friend, and someday a father.  The more I watch the news and the more I observe the people around me, it's clear to me that many of today's men don't really know what it takes to be a real man... and our society is paying the price for it. 

The following quotation from John Rankin of the Theological Education Institute does a great job of explaining what I've learned through studying and observing:

"We need first to understand how the world's greatest social evils are rooted in 'the chosen absence of the biological father,' whether physical or emotional in nature. The reality of broken aspirations permeates the full spectrum of human life and history."

"If we listen to the children of divorce, we can trace most pain back to what is, or is at least perceived to be such a chosen absence."

"If we listen to women forced through an abortion by the chauvinism of irresponsible men, we can trace most of the pain back to such a chosen absence."

"If we listen to men and women struggling with issues of homosexual identity or actions, we can trace most of the pain back to such a chosen absence. And likewise for many who struggle with heterosexual promiscuity."

"If we look at the emerging soul-searching pain of the children of donor sperm, such a chosen absence is not only deliberate, but mockingly so for perhaps a pittance of cash."

"If we look at the poverty in the ghettos of the United States, we can note how at least seventy percent of black children grow up in the pain of such a chosen absence."

"If we look at polygamous cultures where sons do not have the chosen full presence of their fathers -- in the midst of the sibling rivalries due to the positioning struggles of rival wives -- then we can understand people like Osama bin Laden."

"Historically, the pain of such a chosen absence, an din a unique way, most deeply affects the Arab and Muslim soul tracing back to Abraham and Hagar. Abraham's absence was chosen yet unchosen -- he chose the folly of breaking his marriage covenant with Sarah, at her initiative, but then to keep his marriage intact, yielded to her war against Hagar and Ishmael; yet he never stopped yearning for his son Ishmael, to be a full father to him, but had no power of choice to make it a reality."

- John Rankin

Spend a little time observing the world around you and I think you, too, will find that we men are dropping-the-ball.   I may not be able to change how men around me behave, what they think, or what they do, but I know I can change me... and the quest has begun.

The American Family Association is presenting a 13 part series television series entitled, "Speechless: Silencing the Christians".   After each show is aired, it will become available online as a web cast.

If you've been wondering why it seems like "right is wrong and wrong is right" in today's society, I highly recommend taking the time to view the episodes (They're really short because there are no commercials in the online versions.) 

My typical New Year's resolution is to never make another New Year's resolution.   This year, I'm breaking that trend a little by making a personal commitment to myself that I don't intend to break.  

For 2008 and beyond, I'd like to make the commitment to become involved in the men's ministry at my church.   My wife and I have been involved in the children's ministry for a couple of years now, and will continue to do so, but I feel it's important that I establish relations with other men who know who #1 is (that would be Jesus, not me.)

Like many guys, I seem to be Ok with being somewhat of a loner most of the time and find that having friends that are only an email, instant message, or forum post away is good enough.   However, 'connecting' through the Internet to 'virtual friends' (even if I do know the people I'm communicating with) is no replacement for real male bonding.

To start in my quest to fulfill my resolution, I'll be attending the 10th Annual Hungry Man's Breakfast on January 19th followed by the No Regrets Conference on February 2nd.   It's going to be awfully hard to give-up my Saturday mornings, the only morning I get to sleep-in, to attend these events, but I feel the 'sacrifice' will be worth it.

Since the Pledge of Allegiance and The Lord's Prayer are not allowed in most public schools anymore because the word "God" is mentioned, a student in Arizona wrote the following:

NEW School Prayer

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That's no offense; it's a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God's name is prohibited by the state.

We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.
It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong,
We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It's scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school's a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

After having a "normal" phone for the past 2 years, I decided to give a SmartPhone a try again (My previous SmartPhone was a Motorola MPx220).  This time, I went with more of a PDA-type phone, the Motorola Q 9c (Sprint).   I think Verizon's black and red version of the phone looks much better, but I wasn't willing to switch providers just to get a different color phone.

Believe it or not, my main reason for getting a SmartPhone was that I wanted to be able to load the Bible onto the phone so I could have the Bible with me at all times.  With this in mind, I also wanted a slightly larger screen so I could actually read the Bible.   Due to the high prices of most PDA phones, I almost abandon the idea of getting a SmartPhone until I found that the Q was just over $100 after rebates.

As with most new PCs these days, I was rather annoyed with the Start menu icons that are for trial applications; most of them being online applications.   So, I was able to delete most of the annoying icons using the File Explorer (which requires making all 'hidden' files visible.)   I couldn't, however, delete many of the annoying apps themselves due to security rights.

I find it interesting that most of the mobile applications don't have any exit buttons.   Because of this, once an application is started on the device, it just stays running in the background which can be seen by opening the Task Manager.  Apparently this is by design.  I'm assuming that the OS is smart enough to shut down some of the running applications if it runs out of memory?

Much to my disappointment, there doesn't seem to be a lot of people doing development or at least tweaking their Windows Mobile 6 devices yet.   (Perhaps the OS is too new?)   At the moment, I don't have any ideas for any new mobile apps, but I'm kind of itching to create at least one... simply because I can!

 

My first impression with the phone, after having it for a week, are pretty good.  The battery is staying charged much longer than I expected.  Perhaps that is due to not having the phone setup to automatically sync with any email accounts like my last SmartPhone did.   I also find it actually works pretty well as a phone in that the sound quality is decent.   I put my wife on speaker phone and she said she couldn't tell that I did.

Although I like my Olympus E-500 for taking photos in daylight, I've been very frustrated with it when taking photos in low light situations.   Since it's winter here in Wisconsin, I find myself almost always in low light situations these days and I started leaving my camera at home because I knew that I wouldn't be able to get good shots with the built-in flash.

As with most cameras, the built-in flash usually resulted in a lot of "red eye", unnatural shadows, and over-exposed subjects with dark backgrounds.   If I turned the flash off, I just ended-up with a blurry mess (even at high ISO settings) since I rarely wanted to shoot subjects that were not moving.  

One thing I really don't like about the E-500 is that is strobes the built-in flash in order to get a focus lock.   Not only is this very distracting, especially if the subject of your photo is a person or an animal, but it doesn't seem to work very well since the camera doesn't get a focus lock very quickly.

After attending a wedding a few weeks back where the photographer was taking one great shot after another in low light, I asked the photographer what his 'secret' was.  He said that he was just using a 'fast' lens along with the external flash and had his camera set on auto focus.  Obviously, there there wasn't anything magic about what this photographer was doing to get good shots, but he did have a good external flash that I did not have.   So, thanks to a decent sale on Amazon.com, I purchased the Olympus FL-50 external flash.

Although Olympus offered cheaper models than the FL-50, I decided to get their flagship model because it is the brightest flash offered.  As someone stated on the DPReview.com forums, "You can always tone-down a bright flash to make it dimmer, but you can't make a dim flash brighter."

This is the first external flash I've ever owned, so I wasn't expecting to be able to take decent photos for quite a while until I learned how to use it.   However, I was pretty pleasantly surprised with how quickly I was able to start taking very nice indoor shots while just leaving the flash in it's auto mode.

Because the FL-50 blocks the built-in flash on the E-500 from popping-up, the flash uses it's own red light to assist the camera with focusing in low light situations rather than strobing the built-in flash.  To me, this is a HUGE reason for buying this flash.   No more annoying disco-tech strobing and the camera does get a focus lock much more quickly with the IR light.

The other feature I really like about the FL-50 is it's pivoting head.   It can be pivoted vertically and horizontally so you can make that the light is bouncing off the correct object regardless of if the camera is vertical or horizontal.

The only thing I don't like about have a flash on the camera is that the camera feels very awkward now because it's so top-heavy.  If I'm not holding onto the camera and just have it hanging around my neck by the strap, the heavy and tall flash has a tendency to cause the whole camera to fall over.   I suspect this would be an issue with any flash, but is still a bit annoying.

So far, I'm very happy with my purchase.  I've got a lot to learn about how to use an external flash, but even in the few times I've used it so far, I've greatly increased the number of successful photos taken as compared to when I was just using the built-in flash.