Pillars of Faith

Last week in our Disciple II class with Jay (scroll down), he asked us to come up with five verses or passages from the Bible that give us hope and sum up why we are Christians.

1. Matthew 17:20

He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

I find comfort in that because I realize my faith is ever-growing and yet I can still do things through God already. How much more will I be able to do as my faith continues to mature.

2. Deuteronomy 31:6

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

God is always there for us.

3. Psalm 23:6

Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I can’t think of anything better than knowing I will always be in God’s presence.

4. Psalm 100

¹ Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.

² Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.

³ Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

⁵ For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

This one speaks for itself.

5. Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

We can never forget that God was and is and always will be. It is our duty to glorify Him with our lives.

What are some of your favorite and inspiring Bible verses or passages? Please share them in the comments!

Posted in Christianity, Religion | 1 Comment »

“Twas the Month Before Christmas”

A politically correct Christmas poem…sent by a friend.

Twas the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.

See the PC Police had taken away
The reason for Christmas—no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About shepherds and wise men and angels and things.

It might hurt people’s feelings, the teachers would say—
December 25th is just a “holiday.”
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit,
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!

CDs from Madonna, an Xbox, and iPod,
Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanza
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.

As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe’s the word “Christmas” was nowhere to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penney’s and Sears,
You won’t hear the word “Christmas”—it won’t touch your ears.

Inclusive, sensitive, di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, now Darden, now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen,
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!

At the top of the Senate there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith,
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace.

The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded,
The Reason for the Season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate “winter break” under your “dream tree,”
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.

Choose your words carefully, choose what you say,
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS…not Happy Holiday!

– Anonymous Author

Posted in Annoying, Depressing, Life, Politics, Religion, Ridiculous, Scary | 3 Comments »

Caching With Zend Framework Using Zend_Cache

Today I taught myself how to use Zend_Cache and implemented it within 20 minutes. It’s super easy and very effective. Take a look at the code sample below and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Step 1: Setup the Cache

$frontendOptions = array(
	'lifetime' => 180,	// Cache for 3 minutes
	'automatic_serialization' => true

);
$backendOptions = array('cache_dir' => dirname(__FILE__) . '/cache/');
$cache = Zend_Cache::factory(
	'Core',
	'File',
	$frontendOptions,
	$backendOptions);

Step 2: Use the Cache

$data = null;

if(!$data = $cache->load('data'))
{
	$service = new Service(API_KEY);
	$result = $service->generateReport();
	$data = $service->getReport();
	$cache->save($data, 'data');
}

else

{
	print("Cache Hit!");
}

The page load time went from about 9 seconds to 0.5 seconds! 18x faster and it only took a few lines of code. Awesome.

My main motivation for caching the data ($data in the code example) was actually to reduce the load on the web service which provides the data. We have a good relationship with the company providing the service but there’s a good chance they would become annoyed if we hammered their system to get the exact same data over and over. The load time improvement was a good side effect, though!

For more information on Zend_Cache which comes with the Zend Framework, check out the reference guide and API documentation.

Posted in Amazing, PHP, Programming, Software, Web Development, Zend Framework | No Comments »

Welcome to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Kara and I just returned from a seven-day trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We stayed at Royal Decameron Costa Flamingos all-inclusive resort which had fantastic scenery and was reasonably priced at $1700 for the week including all meals, unlimited drinks, taxis to and from the airport, and airfare.

The best part of most vacations is being able to relax and we sure did. Most days went like so: wake up at 10:00; eat breakfast; get in the ocean until 12:00; swim until 1:00; eat lunch; swim some more; get ready for dinner and eat it; take pictures and enjoy one of five bars. Awesome.

We did venture out of the resort once on foot in an effort to go downtown but were too frightened by our surroundings so we promptly turned around after walking for about 10 minutes. After that we decided to book a snorkeling tour instead which was great because the taxi picked us up right in front of the resort.

My only complaints were lack of air conditioning everywhere except the rooms and mediocre food. But Kara and I quickly found a work-around by making reservations at the on-site Piccolo restaurant which was enclosed (cooler but not air conditioned) and had food at least three times better than the other restaurants we tried so therefore we ate there three out of the seven nights. Even so, a quick trip to Applebee’s when we returned was in order to get some decent dessert. For some reason only flan and nasty, hard cookies were supplied.

On-site Restaurant Rating (best to worst):

1. Piccolo (Italian)
2. Rodizio (Brazilian Grill)
3. Wok (Thai)
4. Buffets (each night the theme changes)
5. Mexicano (Mexican)
6. JapJap (Japanese)

The bars were numerous (5) and inviting. My favorite drink was the mango margarita followed closely by what they called a frozen brown cow which was simply Kahlua and milk. Many of the reviews we read prior to vacationing slammed the bars for putting very little alcohol in the drinks. I can say from first-hand ivory throne-visiting experience that we did not feel the same way. Hey Pepto-Bismol!

Enough rambling. Enjoy the pictures!

See the rest of the pictures!

Posted in Amazing, Entertainment, Food, Life, Reviews, Vacation | 2 Comments »

How to backup your website

Connect to your box via ssh and run the following commands to create a backup of your site.


cd ~
mkdir Backup
nohup zip -r Backup/YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM.zip www/ > backup_log.txt &

(Replace YYYY with the 4-digit year, MM with the 2-digit month, HH with the 24-hour format of the hour, and MM with the 2-digit minute)

cd ~ navigates to your home folder

mkdir Backup creates the backup directory in which the backups will be stored

nohup is short for no hangup and allows processes started by users at the terminal to continue running even after the user logs out

zip is a program which combines many files into one and compresses them to make the end result even more portable

-r tells zip to burrow into all subdirectories in order to grab all of the files

Backup/YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM.zip is the path to the backup file

www/ is the directory to backup (it may be html, htdocs, httpdocs, etc. on your box)

> backup_log.txt redirects all output from zip to the backup_log.txt file so you can review the file later

& tells linux to run the zip program in the background so that you can logout or perform other tasks without killing the process

Now all you need to do is download that zipped file. Use your favorite SFTP client to login to your box and snag it. I recommend FileZilla Client for all platforms. If you’re looking for an FTP server, FileZilla Server is perfect.

Posted in Backup, DIY, Hosting, IT, Linux, Programming, Software, Technology, Web Development | 2 Comments »

That’s the last time I buy from Dell

Regrettably, Dell has canceled your recent order for a Dell Nuvi 275T GPS or Nuvi 265WT GPS

Dear Customer,

This is to notify you that, regrettably, Dell has canceled your recent order for a Dell Nuvi 275T GPS or Nuvi 265WT GPS. Due to our error, the system was shown online at an incorrect price and was far below the correct price for that product, Because of the large difference in price, we have not reinstated your order, but we invite you to visit www.dell.com to re-order this item at the correct price.

As specifically noted on our web pages, catalogs, ads, and customer order documentation, Dell reserves the right to cancel any orders resulting from such errors.

We truly value our relationship and reputation with our customers, and we realize the negative impact from these types of errors.

Please be assured that we are working hard to try and prevent these problems going forward.

We are sorry for any inconvenience that our error may have caused.

Regards,
Dell Employee and Education Personal Purchase Programs

Thank you for being a Dell Customer

I think they mean ex-Dell Customer.

When companies make this mistake, they need to stand behind the company and stand up for their customers. If companies realized how much future business they lost from stupid mistakes like this they would honor the deal in an instant.

In the last five years I purchased two laptops from Dell for a total of $4,000. That’s $800/year that Dell will not be getting from me. Think about how many other loyal customers Dell ticked off with this stupid customer disservice move. I would wager that Dell is revoking this deal for at least 1,000 of their customers. Let’s assume that 10% of those customers spend as much as I do on Dell products.

10% of 1,000 is 100 customers. $800/customer/year * 100 customers = $80,000/year that Dell has lost to its competitors.

The deal was for a Garmin Nuvi 265WT which retails on Amazon.com for $217.84 (at the time of this post) and was being sold on Dell’s site for $130 + tax. That difference is $87.84 and at 1,000 customers that’s $87,840. In just over one year, Dell would have broke even by honoring this deal and now has lost many valuable customers.

What a stupid move. Way to go, Dell!

Posted in Annoying, Bugs, Customer Service, Deals, Depressing, GPS, Hardware, Money, Ridiculous, Technology, Toys, Web Development | 1 Comment »

It pays to be pink. At least Garmin thinks so.

For my mother’s birthday I purchased a TomTom One 130. The updated maps had the other half of my road, so I was happy it could navigate more efficiently. Tonight I stumbled across a new site called DealWaiter. I plugged in “Garmin Nuvi” and it had a few results but also had a link to buy it immediately on Amazon.com. I’m sure that link is purely platonic, right? Hah! It turns out the Garmin Nuvi 250 comes in two colors: pink and silver.

I was blown away by the price difference:

Amazon.com - Garmin Nuvi 250 - Price comparison between silver and pink versions

Silver: $109.99
Pink: $471.99
——————–
Difference: $362.00

The difference alone could purchase
3.3 units of the silver model!

Garmin isn’t the only company who discriminates based on color. Want a black Mac? Better have some “I’m rich!” money laying around. Apple used to have both black and white MacBooks and the typical difference was $100+.

What ridiculous discrepancies have you found?

Posted in Amazing, Annoying, Deals, Depressing, GPS, Hardware, Money, Ridiculous, Technology, Toys | 1 Comment »

How do you watch your television shows?

Midway through Heroes: Season 3 I realized how quickly video streaming technology has evolved in the last few years. Think about the multitude of ways you can now get your fix.

• Regular old TV
• Digital Video Recorder (DVR): TiVo, MythTV, cable box DVR
• Hulu
• YouTube (and other video-sharing sites)
• NetFlix’s Watch Instantly
• Networks’ websites (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, etc.)
• NetFlix and Blockbuster DVDs to your door
• Video rental stores
• Red Box (at grocery stores and various other locations)
• On my iPhone using NBC’s mobile player.

EDIT:
Loren brought to my attention another category which I left off entirely, which is software/hardware combos for consuming the aforementioned services:

• Boxee
• Apple TV
• Roku Digital Video Player
• Xbox 360
• LG Network Blu-ray Players
• Samsung Network Blu-ray Players

Just 15 years ago that list was a lot smaller: TV, video rental stores, VCR.

What’s your favorite viewing service?

Posted in Amazing, DVR, Entertainment, Google, Hardware, Hosting, Software, TV, Technology, Web Development | 1 Comment »

Vote for The Celebrity Apprentice

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Posted in Entertainment, Polls, Reviews, TV | 1 Comment »

Search on Walmart.com: What’s the point?

My back yard is full of bare spots so I thought it was time to re-seed. Since Walmart is usually cheaper than the competition, I check there first when I need something. I searched for “grass seed” on Walmart.com and got results that couldn’t have been more off.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Annoying, Bugs, Depressing, Programming, Ridiculous, Software, Technology, Web Development | No Comments »