Taking life one day at a time

Today has been a very beautiful day here in the Low Country of SC and I have been enjoying each moment to the fullest. I have been fortunate this last year and a half to have had an 8 to 5 job on a regular basis with weekends and holidays off. I can remember a time not too long ago where I had to work 7 am to 3 pm and 3pm to 11 pm at a security job while working another job fixing computers during the day. I worked seven days per week for months on end and we still struggled to make ends meet. I have friends that are still doing that drill so I know how fortunate that I am.

Every day is a gift from God. Our lives are special and they are interconnected one with another and they mean something. How much value and quality of life that we experience is partly up to us. Every day we have to approach our day with the right attitude and spirit. Life happens to everyone and sometimes bad things do happen to good and bad alike. How we deal with those events in our lives defines our core values and character.

One of the things that make my life enjoyable and complete is knowing that God is control and not me. If things were left up to me I would find some way to screw things up royally. Luckily for us God is in control and he has a purpose and meaning for our lives. I attend Grace Fellowship Church on a bi weekly basis and I rub elbows with other likeminded folks that are just like me. Living one day at a time and doing our best to build our faith in who God is in the world we live in.

My family also makes my life complete and they add substance and adventure to my life. Every day is an adventure in our household and you never know what might happen. If you do not believe that having a family can be an adventure then you are not the parents of a teenage son or daughter. That fact alone makes life very real for me in many ways. As a single person all I had to worry about is my needs. I can determine what I want to do and when I want to do it with regards to my free time. I do not have anyone to answer to nor do I have to consider their feelings. If I want to take off for a day and go wherever and stay there however long I would not have to worry about somebody worrying about me or being upset that they did not get to come along. When you take on the responsibility of being a parent your ability to do this gets tossed out the window. You may think that I am complaining about this but I am just trying to reflect upon the fact that single folks do enjoy some added freedoms that we married folks do not.

My family makes me complete because they are a part of me and I am a part of them. We are intertwined one with another in soul and spirit. Individually we are unique and separate people but together as a family unit we are a team with a single focus. We are responsible for loving one another and living in harmony with one another. That task in and of itself can be a real challenge when you have teenagers. As a family we are constantly growing and changing as people and therefore each day brings forth new challenges. I guess you could say that as our family grows older together every day could be a chapter in a book. As a single person in the family we write our own unique chapters as a family unit all of our chapters put together would make a novel or a series of books. My family makes me complete because I know that they love me. They care about whether I come home or not. They care about whether I am happy or sad. My family encourages me by affirming my position in the family as the father of my children and husband to my wife.

My family challenges me to live up to a certain standard. They need for me to be the best dad that I can be, the best husband I can be, the best provider I can be and the best leader that I can be. Sometimes when I think about all of this is sort of scares me and makes me feel inadequate. I wonder if my wife and kids are really getting everything out of me that they should be.

In years gone by the father figure was known as the guy that showed up at the end of the day and ate dinner with his family and then flopped down in front of the television set. This dad and husband was providing for the physical wellbeing of his family by providing a pay check and roof for everyone to live under. This type of dad was also mostly emotionally absent and not engaged in the life of his children much less the needs of his wife. This type of dad and husband did his part and then the rest of his time was his to do with whatever he wanted.

My son challenged me this weekend with regards to me being a dad. From Friday night on he started to beg his mom to take him to game stop. Justin wanted to trade in one of his games that he is bored with for something new for his game cube. Katy and I spent Saturday doing the typical things like paying bills, buying groceries for the week and then we watched a movie. We try to get together as husband and wife for one day a week to enjoy each other's company away from work and the kids. It is vitally important that couples do this because we sometimes forget that there was a life before the children came along. Justin wanted to get a ride to Game Stop and mom and dad wanted to collapse in their recliners and get some siesta time and be lazy. I took Katy home after our movie and snack and took Justin to the Game Stop. My desire was to dump him off at the front door while I remained in the truck in a semi horizontal and conscious state while he did whatever he was going to do. As luck would have it my son engaged me and told me that he would need for me, the adult, to go in and conduct the business of trading in his game and getting credit on the Game Stop Discount card. Before I knew it the commitment to be merely a chauffeur turned into much more. I was now engaged in helping him find the right game for the home computer. As a child I never really experienced being the child and having my dad want to be involved in what I was doing even if it is just for fun entertainment. I found that I was forcing myself to choose to enjoy the fact that I have a son that loves his game cube games. My challenge is to teach myself how to be interested in the things that make him happy. As a dad I find myself using a ruler to gauge everything as either safe or unsafe, wholesome or dangerous. Instead of analyzing everything that he is doing as a child I have to find a way to engage him in his world so that I can be a part of it. Once I do that I can learn what makes him tick and he will learn how to trust me and make me more and more a part of his life.

We chose the game of choice which turned out to be something less than I would have personally chose for him but I gave him the latitude to indulge himself and get the game anyway. So, I was chauffer, financier and also the software installer/trouble shooter when the game did not instantly work after loading five cds on our home pc. After it was all said and done, several hours later the game just would not work. We need a better computer with a much better video card to play this game. What is more important than the game at this point for me is that I did spend the time and I invested that time in my son. We were not successful in the end result of what he wanted but at least he saw his dad taking part in his world.

My daughter, the alien, challenges me on a day by day basis. My alien is 14 years old and I know that I know it is only going to get worse. One of the things that always comes back to haunt parents and make their lives a living adventure (hell…) is that our kids are always a chip off the old block. It has been said that familiarity breeds contempt. Our kids are unique individuals that are learning how to become adults but unfortunately they also have the same quirks and character traits that mom and dad do. You look at your child and recognize those things that drive you crazy about yourself. You find yourself eyeball to eyeball with yourself and it drives you crazy. My dear daughter seems to have many of my traits. Kristina Lynn is very smart, almost too smart for her own good. Kristina is definitely a strong willed child who likes to do her own thing. One of the things that Kristina loves to do is to challenge her boundaries and our authority as parents. My pastor likened parenting to that of a coach at a basketball game. The parents are the coach and the kids are the ball players. The game has rules and the kids are going to play ball (live life). Our job as parents is to set boundaries and when the child goes out of bounds or commits a foul our job is to lovingly yet sternly hold them accountable for the rules of the game.

I find it much easier to relate to my son Justin in his world. Heck, every man has a little boy living inside who loves to play and mess around with all of his toys. How does a dad get engaged in the life of a teenage daughter? I find it more than a challenge on most days especially since the teenage daughter seems more interested in doing everything she can to alienate herself from the rest of the family. I understand that she is coming into her own and becoming a young adult soon as she learns how to walk through adolescence. My challenge has always been to find a way to make her comfortable to talk to me and her mother. I am hopeful that between the ages of 14 and 18 she will figure out a way to develop her interpersonal skills and allow us to be a bigger influence in her life. All we can do in the mean time is to make ourselves available to her as much as possible.

One of the other things that make my life complete and gives me a lot of joy is all of my many electronic toys. OK ok, a little humor here. I do enjoy all of the toys that I have accumulated over the last several years however they do not give me the satisfaction that I receive from all of my friends. Toys come and toys go however there is nothing more important to me than good friends. I am so blessed to have good friends. I thank God for them each day and pray for them every chance I get.

Did I tell you that I love bowling? If not, I do. In the last couple of weeks I have been bowling my average and more. Last week I bowled a 145 average and tonight I bowled a 156 average which is very good for me.

Sandpiper Lanes

Most days when I go bowling I am just happy to break the 100 mark. That is because I seem to have a very difficult time bowling my average which is between 130 and 132 depending on what bowling alley I am at during league play. Tonight I am happy to report that I bowled my very first 200 game at Sandpiper lanes and a 166 average. Now that is something for me to be HAPPY about. Last night I bowled a 145 average which is excellent for me over at Marrington Lanes.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Slaying the Budget Dragon

All the flowers are beginning to bloom here in the lowcountry. The weather was absolutely gorgeous today with clear skies a slight breeze and 65 degree weather. I wish we had this kind of weather all year long. Starting last Thursday I had a three day weekend. I went home early and took Katy to Florence SC which is about 90 minutes from Goose Creek North on I-95. I was doing the speed limit the whole time and you would have thought I was standing still. That was the day that all of the storms that devastated Alabama last week came roaring through the state of SC. Luckily for us there were no tornados or much damage. It made for wonderful driving though. The trip was pretty uneventful and Katy took her mid term exam at Francis Marion University in Florence.

After I dropped Katy off at the university to take her exam I decided to go find a Starbucks so I could enjoy some of their delicious coffee and wireless Internet access. I did not know that this was possible but I found a Starbucks with no WiFi access. Is that even possible? Much to my disappointment I spent the next hour going from one book store to the next looking for Wifi access. I finally ran across an Atlanta Bread Company that did have Wifi. I had no sooner ordered a cup of coffee when my phone rang and Katy told me she was done with her test. That meant that I had to hop back in the truck and go 10 miles to pick her up. Once we did that we returned to Atlanta Bread Company and had a coffee and Wifi break.

Friday I was off and Katy went to work to tame the wild savages in her classroom once again. I spent most of Thursday night in the recliner keeping a wary eye on the weather radar just in case we had any surprise tornados. Luckily for me none showed up but we did have high wind and lots of rain. When the weather is bad I am like a caged animal. No rest for me during those times. Katy and the kids sleep like rocks , it does not matter what the weather is doing. I went to bed around 5:30 am and got up again around 10 am. Friday during the day I spent some time slaying the budget dragon. The budget dragon is that proverbial monster that causes you to have more bills at the end of the month than money. You know the drill if you have ever lived from pay check to pay check. It seems that you get paid one day and the next day it is gone. How does that happen? Very simply put it happens because we live outside of our means. We have champagne tastes and beer budgets. We live in a very materialistic world and most of the time we get confused with our wants and needs. We are surrounded by different types of media messages that continually tell us that in order to be somebody you have to dress this way, live in that neighborhood, drive that type of vehicle and wear those types of clothes. We get sucked into all the advertisements that beg us to spend our hard earned money on materialistic stuff that ultimately makes us miserable and causes us more debt than it is worth.

The budget dragon is no different than any other dragons that might be stalking the corridors of our life. Some of us have problems with weight loss, alcohol addiction, toy addiction, drug addiction, money management, relationships or whatever. If all of us are honest we can look in the mirror and recognize one or several of these dragons that need to be slain and put to rest once and for all.

The first thing I did was to stab the cable company dragon in the heart. I was able to reduce that bill by more than half. Do we have to have Digital Cable or is 99 channels enough? Do we have to have premium movie channels when all or most of the movies that they show have already been seen? The answer to those questions is absolutely not. I told the local cable company that all I want is the basic local channels which is approximately 11 of them. That took my cable bill from 58 bucks down to 11 bucks. The next thing that I did was to reduce my high speed Internet bill by removing the extra 2 mb of download speed which decreased it from 8mb download to 6 mb download.

The next budget dragon that I was able to maim our telephone bills. We got rid of Bellsouth almost 9 months ago and switched to Vonage. Bellsouth was costing us around 45.00 per month and with Vonage we were able to reduce it down to 15.00 bucks per month. That was 9 months ago. This week I will be getting rid of Vonage thanks to my being able to shave 40 percent off of my cell phone bill just by changing plans. We went from the more expensive unlimited plan to our family sharing 2500 minutes per month. From what we were told we only consume about 1500 minutes per month total between the four of us.

The next budget dragon was more difficult to slay and that is the transportation monster. Can you believe how much money it takes to drive the roadways in this day and age? First you have the payment on your vehicle which can run anywhere from 300.00 to 800.00 depending on what you drive but then on top of that you have to pay taxes on that vehicle if you live in SC , then there are insurance payments, gasoline and maintenance if it is an older vehicle. Gasoline alone can cost you and arm and a leg. I am happy to say that I was able to tame the gas pumps by beginning to ride Carta Express from N. Charleston to downtown every day vs having to drive and pay for the gasoline to do it. Just recently we purchased a new Dodge Durango. We went from having a 2003 Pontiac Grand Prix to the Durango because we thought we needed a bigger vehicle. The problem with our purchase is that the payments are twice as big. Not only that but the Durango costs more to fill up and the taxes at the end of the year are more too. While it is nice to drive this type of vehicle it was not the best decision we could have made. For now we are stuck with the vehicle until I can pay it down some and wait for the right moment to sell it.

The next budget dragon was the recurring Internet Subscription monster. That is the many little seemingly tiny and inconspicuous subscriptions for this service and that service that you can only get on the Internet. The problem with those is that all of these innocent little charges add up into one huge payment at the end of the month that can leave a surprise hole in your budget. It turns out that I was lucky recently because the credit card that all of these services had on file expired. Before I knew it I was getting that proverbial e-mail that said I needed to update my information online so that they could continue to empty my budget. The answer to that one is NO. No more charges for services that I would like to have because they are NEAT but are absolutely unnecessary.

The next dragon that will need to be maimed and eventually killed off is the eating out monster. How many of us LOVE to eat and like the convenience of just stopping by Atlanta Bread Company or Cracker Barrel for a quick meal. I know that Katy loves it when she does not have to cook or clean the kitchen after a hard days work. This dragon can slowly and surely drain your finances out of your account if you are not careful. Eating out is expensive and it also is not always the most nutritional way to eat either. We are learning to say no to eating out and eat at home more. Even with as expensive as food is these days it is still cheaper to feed your family at home than it is at a restaurant somewhere.

With time we are getting better at taming the budget monster and getting control of our financial future. This has been a long time in coming. Thanks to divorce, bankruptcy and several other unforeseen events in the life of our family our budget has taken a severe beating. There were days that I thought that there just was not any hope with regards to our finances or credit. Thanks to a dear friend of mine I learned that there is hope. Once I realized that I did have power over my finances and that I could take tiny baby steps towards a positive future then and only then was I able to change my mind and hearts attitude towards doing something vs not doing anything at all. The bottom line is this. Nothing happens over night. Credit ratings do not go down the tubes over night and they also do not get fixed over night. It takes several things to dig yourself out of a hole.

The first thing it takes is a change of heart and a positive attitude that things can get better. Ignoring the problem is the worst thing you can do. Ignoring bills and avoiding the issues only makes things much worse. The next thing that you have to do is develop a plan. Some people call it a budget and some people call it a spending plan. Whatever makes you happy call it whatever. The important thing is that you stay within your allotted funds for living and expenses. The next thing that has to happen is you have to make a commitment to be disciplined enough to do the right things. You have to set the plan in motion and follow it as closely as possible. Having a plan and not following it is like filling the car full of gasoline and then locking the keys in the trunk. Doing that gets you no where.

In closing I will say that it is never too late to start. Today is the day that you and /or your family can set an action plan in motion and work towards financial freedom. My friend told me that it took them almost 5 years to dig out of the hole that they were in because of bad spending habits and abusing credit. This friend has helped me to see that there is hope and a positive financial future on the horizon.

Blogging with Word 2007

This is the coolest font on the planet. I am posting this meaningless drivel to my blog from Microsoft Word 2007. This is so cool…

 

 

Cannon Molthan

Cannon Luke Molthan was born on February 10, 2007 at 5:04 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces and was 20 inches long. He is absolutely gorgeous and too sweet.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Cannon Molthan

Cannon Luke Molthan was born on February 10, 2007 at 5:04 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces and was 20 inches long. He is absolutely gorgeous and too sweet.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Cannon Molthan

Cannon Luke Molthan was born on February 10, 2007 at 5:04 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces and was 20 inches long. He is absolutely gorgeous and too sweet.

Kimberly and her family are very special to us. Kimberly was the counselor for Jessica Ann Moffitt in 2001 when she attended the Camp Happy Days camp.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Yes, I am a sucker for punishment. I figure that while I was playing musical OS's with my 40 gb hard drive on the Toshiba laptop that I might as well give Vista RC2 a spin. After RC1 turned the laptop into a clam shell on the last try I had pretty much given up on doing that again. My experience with Linux this week gave me enough reason to try this again. After all, what is the worst that could happen? I would have to put the dreaded Toshiba recovery cd back in and reboot and restore the laptop to factory defaults. How many times have I done this in the last 2 months? I have lost count. LOL
The first install of Vista locked up the laptop. I am not sure what happened so I turned the laptop off for several minutes, restarted it and gave it try number 2. Heck, you cant say you gave it a Boy Scout effort if you just give up when a computer freezes up right? In this case the second try was the charm. I left it running and went to church to attend the weekly praise team practice and left my son Justin watching the laptop as it installed the new OS.
As luck would have it the install went flawlessly and when I got home after practice I was greeted with the initial desktop setup screen which allowed me to set up specific user paramaters that would allow me to log on to the desktop. So far so good by this point. The install process rebooted the laptop several times and before you know it I was running with Vista RC2 without any major catastrophes. The first test for me was to insert the Linksys Wifi card into the same pcmcia slot and see what happened. What happened caused me to smile because Vista saw it immediately and started installing Broadcom wireless driver software for it. I dug around in the network setup section and figured out how to connect to my WAP here at home. I can not begin to tell you how happy I am that Microsoft has completely screwed up the networking configuration in Vista. Then again that is outside the scope of this article so I will visit that again as I learn more. I was very suprised that Vista identified the wireless adapter as a Broadcom and not Linksys which is the brand. The wireless Linux gurus at work told me that the Linksys card probably uses the Broadcom chipset and that is why that happened. I guess you learn something every day huh? I removed the broadcom drivers, reinstalled the Linksys Wifi manager and drivers and rebooted. Guess what? The wifi manager would not run and the drivers for the Linksys wifi card were not recognized by Vista. So, you know the drill, out with Linksys drivers and software, rebooted and let Vista work magic with its Broadcom drivers all over again. Heck , if it is not broke why fix it??
I am happy to report that over all I am pretty happy with Vista RC2. I have serveral hurdles to overcome and the immediate one will be to figure out how to do this and that in this OS vs XP SP2. In an effort to remove any and all security risks in the OS Microsoft has screwed the lid down on the pot so tightly that you have to pull out a screw gun and take all the screws loose so you can see what is happening under the hood. That probably did not make sense as far as word pictures go but hopefull you got that. LOL
My first software snafu came when I tried to install and USE Incredimail. For some of you that wont be a huge loss especially if you dont use it for email. However I am not so fortunate because a good friend of mine got me stuck on Incredimail long ago and now I feel creatively crippled when I can not use all of the cool stationary and animated gizmos that comes with this email client. The application installs just fine however when the app starts up and the notifier starts up to tell you that you have new mail the application locks tight as a drum. Vista now has a cool software widget that TELLS YOU the obvious. " Incredimail is experiencing a problem and will now be shut down. Before we kill the processes involved we will see if we can peek under the hood and fix it for you." So far all the widget really does is confirm the blantantly obvious fact that the app is frozen. The other thing it does is give you a handy dandy little link to the website of the software manufacturer. I bet Google is pretty hacked off about that functionality. LOL.... Hey honey, how can I figure out where to find the Incredimail website dear? How about www.incredi...... OH STOP IT.... LOL
Our next stop in the software discovery zone last night was in Microsoft Vista Widget land. Vista has a desktop application launcher like Rocketdock. However , from what I can tell you can only use Microsoft Widgets that they developed and I dont think you can drag normal apps in there to use. Please understand that I am still a rattle shaking toddler when it comes to this OS so I might be wrong about that. As of now I have the following widgets showing on my desktop along with my desktop icons which I will remove later if I can. At the top I have the Weatherbug widget , in the middle I have the analog clock widget and under that is the CPU/MEM system widget and at the bottom I put a calculator widget since I am always and forever figuring out how much moola I need to give away to the creditors. LOL...
My third stop in software discovery zone today happened to be with Symantec Anti Virus which is provided for free by the college where I work. I plugged my laptop into the work LAN and downloaded the latest and greatest version of Norton Anti Virus by Symantec. I spent at least 2 hours trying to get Norton Live Update to work only to find out that version 10.1 does not work with Vista but version 10.2 does. On my first install of the new version that is supposed to work with Vista Live Update did not install correctly and all of my pretty icons turned into white place holders. I was pretty excited about that developement, let me tell ya. I decided to reboot the PC thinking that maybe I needed to after a major install of an AV product even though I thought it was weird that it did not prompt me to do it anyway. When I rebooted the pc I was greeted by the dreaded recovery screen as if I had pushed F8 on boot up. I was once again reminded my Microsoft that there was a problem in software land and the OS was having a problem booting. Imagine that huh? I would have never known except for the pretty logo that was supposed to be there was GONE..... LOL
In a desperation attempt I clicked on the trusty and faithful LAST KNOWN GOOD menu selection and I was greeted by a pretty Vista logo and the logon screen. When I finally landed back on my user desktop GUI all of my icon place holders were once again pretty icons. Woooohooooo. Vista was happy but Norton Anti Virus was not. After several attempts I managed to get Live Update reinstalled and working. Live Update is doing what it is supposed to be doing however the definition file screen is not showing todays date yet. After researching the specific error on Google I was told to delete all the live update index files etc and that is supposed to fix that problem finally. I will play around with that tomorrow.
I have Microsoft Office 2003 installed with no problems and I installed AVS Video Tools on the laptop and I am converting some video files to .wmv format with no problems. I am noticing that AVS is a cpu hog as it has the cpu system clock pegged solid at 100%. I am pleased to say that out of 1 gb of ram on my laptop it is only using 33% of the available ram.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Linux Wireless Nightmares

I am sad to say that while Fedora Core (RedHat) Linux installed just fine on the Toshiba Satelite laptop I still had issues with it. The first issue that I had was that I was having problems downloading all of the updates from the RedHat repositories. Perhaps they were just busy and that is why I kept having to start all over again with multiple downloads. The major issue that I was facing with regards to using Linux as the primary OS for my laptop was the wireless network card configuration nightmare that faced me. Lets just say that everything that I read about how to make this happen is not for the faint hearted. As a matter of fact I would go as far to say that your typical Windows literate computer users would not be able to figure this out on their own. Here are a couple of reasons why. First and foremost Linux does come with its own version of a GUI desktop such as KDE in Ichthux however it is so different that you can easily get lost. The GUI interface easily avails the user to the familiar Internet related applications such as Firefox, Email, IRC, IM programs etc. The fly in the ointment is that when you get ready to do any basic maintenance or try to install any software you are in for a treat. That treat is called the terminal window or command prompt. That is where the real nightmare begins and your excitement of using a new OS ends. The second reason that most folks would run screaming from Linux is that the install procedure for applications is no where near as intuitive as your typical windows software. There is a program built into Linux called Adept which allows you to download new updates for the OS Kernel and other applications that come with that particular distribution of Linux. Those packages seem to install ok however the gotcha with that is if you install a program that will conflict with another one of the apps already installed it could potentially corrupt the whole install of Linux and render it useless. Do you remember what Spy Assassin did to the first install of Ichthux the other day? Now lets say you are out surfing the web and you want to download a program off the web that is Linux compatible. Lets take Firefox for example. You download it just fine but then you get to take a trip down nightmare lane in the terminal program where you have to figure out how to extract the compressed fine, change directories to the location of those files and then try to install it. Good luck on that one. The third reason that folks would give up on Linux on the laptop especially is the difficulty level of installing your wireless adapter. Fedora Core did not recognize the Linksys Wireless adapter that was plugged in to the pcmcia card slot. The BIOS recognized its presence through card and socket services and provided the needed power to the device but Linux certainly did not see it. I wont bore you with all of the gory details of what it entails but lets just say that what I read about HOW I needed to get it to work was enough to make me say " Is all of this really worth running Linux on my laptop??" Sadly enough the potential migrane caused me to change directions on what OS I would use on the laptop. One other thing that you seriously need to consider about playing around with Linux is that you really do not want to try to dual boot this OS with a Windows Operating System. The reason I say this is because you can delete the partition that Linux is on but you will have a lot of fun getting rid of the GRUB Boot Loader that Linux installs in the Master Boot Record. Thanks to my inexperience with Linux boot loaders and my not changing the Adminstrator password on XP I found myself just using the recovery cd to wipe the drive and start from scratch. POOF. All my software configurations were gone AGAIN. LOL...

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Out with Ichthux and IN with Fedora on laptop

Ok, for now I am done with the Ichthux distro on the Toshiba laptop. I learned , much to may chagrin, that I was not able to remove the Linux partitions (GRUB boot loader) without trashing my ability to boot to Windoze. I had four partitions, one of them NTFS where Windoze resided of course. The active partition was on partition 1 where the GRUB boot loader resides. Windoze does NOT like it when it does not have control over the MBR (Master Boot Record). So, when I used 98 Fdisk version to remove the partitions and changed the Active partition to the one that had NTFS it would no longer boot up. I tried to boot to an XP install cd and select R for repair but it wanted the Administrator password. The last time I recovered my laptop with the recovery cd I forgot to set a password for Administrator. That means NO repair of the MBR, atleast not with keeping the existing install of XP. So, since I am going to have to do the recovery cd AGAIN one of my buddies at work told me to try Fedora Core on my laptop and see how well that works. Since I am in rebuild mode anyway, I say why not!!!!! It will be interesting to see if I can get the wireless functionality to work with Linux. That will be the ultimate in success if I can make that work. I sure am glad that I have all my data on cd and USB jump drives so I can restore it if need be.














James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Ichthux Version 6.10 update

I got home from bowling last night and was eager to mess up my laptop one more time. LOL... Ok, I was NOT eager to mess up my laptop however I knew that my adventuresome spirit might get me into trouble again. When it comes to technology I guess that I dont worry about things getting messed up because when that happens you have to LEARN in order to fix the mess. I plugged the laptop in and thanks to something I found on a user group yesterday afternoon I knew to plug in the laptop to the hardwired network. Once that was done I started the install process and it worked like a charm. For whatever reasons Ichthux likes for you to be connected to the Internet so that it can go out to the data repositories and get the latest and greatest code. The install process took all of 15 minutes. I rebooted my laptop and was greeted with the new boot manager screen which gave me a choice between Linux and XP Pro. I chose Linux, it booted up to a nice pretty blue screen. Version 6.10 looks a little bit different than 6.09 but not anything major. I put in my user id and password that I had set up during the install procedure and guess what? I could not log on to save my life. Go figure sports fans. Now I have a new OS on my laptop that I want to tinker with and I can not log on. LOL... Luckily for me the laptop works fine with XP Pro so I am not crippled too badly. I have joined several Linux support groups and left a message to see if someone can help.









James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Linux registered user 441766

I have been playing around with Ichthux which is a Linux distribution for Christians. I am on a steep learning curve since it has been ages since I missed around with RedHat years and years ago. I guess I am dating myself a bit huh? So, anyway, without further ado I am officially a registered Linux user. I am not sure what that really gives me other than association with the Linux user group but I think that is cool in and of itself. I have a cool graphic that I can add to my web pages as well which I will start to use. Neat stuff if you ask me. I am running the 6.09 distribution kernel and have it installed on two computers at home. My main Gateway machine is dual booting XP SP2 and Linux and my kids computer has ONLY Ichthux installed. I am not winning any popularity contests having done this so I guess I need to figure a way to get a spare computer other than theirs to play with Linux on. I can not get Linux to run on my Toshiba laptop and I wont be trying that install process any time in the near future. It really is a pain in the keister to have to install everything from scratch when you blow up a hard drive partition with Windoze loaded on it.

My next learning task will be to learn how to connect to Windows Network shares and a network printer. Wish me luck!!


James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Join my new Frapper Map

Go CARTA GO

Good morning Charleston!

I am happy to announce that I am very pleased with my experience thus far riding the Carta Express from the Super K Mart in North Charleston to downtown Charleston. Typically I get on at 7:19 am and arrive downtown around 7:46 am. This morning I rode at 6:49 am and arrived downtown at 7:14 am. The rides have been comfortable and the drivers have been exceptionally polite, courteous and knowledgeable. I have spent some time riding buses in Houston Texas back in the 80's and I can garuntee you that the bus drivers there were no where near as nice as the ones I have experienced thus far on Carta Express. So far customer service from the Carta Express route I am on deserves a big thumbs up! When you get on the bus you will be greeted by other passengers and a free newspaper. The driver greets everyone as they get on the bus and he lets everyone know what time he will be leaving the parking lot. When the driver gets downtown he announces each stop before you get there so there is no need to ring the bell to get his attention. I have been riding the Carta Express since last Thursday and as time goes on it appears that more and more people are taking advantage of the service. Now is the time to try it because it is free for the first two weeks of service. Once those two weeks is up there is a nominal fee for riding back and forth to downtown. I can garuntee you that you will save a lot of wear and tear on your vehicle , your nerves and your pocket book. With the prices of gasoline still hovering around 2 bucks per gallon I think that all of us could use that money somewhere else other than our gas tanks. On top of all of that when you get into the parking lot there is a catering truck there that has hot coffee and breakfast items. What else could we ask for other than for the bus to come to our houses and pick us up? LOL... The bottom line is this Charleston. We need to use it so that we do not lose it. Amen?



James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Fortune City gets reprieve and apology

Our domain , Lightourworld, is back online. I found out this morning that what killed it was that my domain expired on 1/25/07. Fortunecity told me that they automagically send out renewal notices to the e-mail account that is registered within the domain name registration portion of my account. I had changed my e-mail address after we registered the domain and I had gone into the Fortunecity billing website and changed my information but I had not gone into the domain services website and change it there. Therefore all the e-mail notifications that I was being sent bounced back to them. OOOOOOPS.... My apologies to Fortunecity for jumping the gun and being a tad bit peeved about loss of service. It appears that my forgetfullness caused our website and e-mail services to go offline for the weekend. Luckily for us we were not hosting an ecommerce site and I did not lose potential sales. I need to remember to register that domain for several years so that I can be ahead of the game from now on. I will also say that instead of the domain being down for another 24 to 48 hours that it has reappeared within several hours instead. Thanks Fortunecity....





James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Introducing IMSAFER

I am writing this to tell you about a program called "imsafer" Go to www.imsafer.Com to read more about it. Basically speaking it is free for now and it flags any potentially dangerous conversations going on between your children's existing IM accounts on the computers that you install this software to. The program includes monitoring of MySpace IM as well which I am interested in the most. You must have administrator rights to install the program and even if your youngster is computer savy enough to try and uninstall the program they wont be able to. They have to know how to log on to your monitoring account via the web and click the link that allow for the uninstall. If they don't know your email address and password they wont be able to uninstall it.

Katy and I installed it on the two computers that are hardwired on the network at our house and used all of the existing IM accounts that we found under our kids logon profiles. We used some of the conversations that are supposed to trigger the alerts and it works great.

If your kids use Myspace or Yahoo, AOL or Yahoo IM I would encourage you to give this a test drive.

James C. Moffitt Jr.
james.moffitt@comcast.net
http://www.myspace.com/jcmoffitt chiefpropellerhead.blip.tv
jcmoffitt.blogspot.com
843-460-4006




James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Fortune City Sucks

If you are looking for a website and e-mail hosting provider be sure to NOT use Fortune City. My credit card that was on file with them has expired and they could not get their monthly subscription fee. They sent me an e-mail today and then promptly disabled my website and my e-mail. They did this on Friday and I wont be able to pay the subscription fee until Monday at 9 am. Fortune City sells web services yet they are only available to their customers between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday. You can send them an e-mail but dont hold your breath waiting on a response. I will be sure to pay for one more months hosting so I can make a backup of my website and then I will be moving my site and e-mail to another provider.



James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Bam Bam needs access

Bam Bam is one of my sons, the younger one in fact. Justin was nicknamed that when he was a couple of years old. He seemingly could wreck an iron ball if left on his own for about 10 seconds. I guess all kids are that way to a certain degree. Justin has been sick most of this week after spending the night at Paul Bunyon's last weekend. Wednesday we decided that he was not getting over whatever bug that he has and decided it was time to call in the big guns to solve the problem. The doctor looked him over and listened to his lungs and pronounced that he would take an xray of his lungs to verify that he probably has pneumonia. Sure enough, the xrays came back and he has it. The doctor gave him an antibiotic booster via hyperdermic needle and bam bam was very excited about that. Katy told Justin that if he did not get better soon that they might have to send him to the hospital. Justin proved that he is indeed our child and addicted to the Net when he pronounced that he did not care if he had to go into the hospital to get better but they had better have high speed Internet access. Katy just about split her side laughing at that one. LOL...


James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

The Five Guys

This is a picture that was taken of the Jesus Connect Five in 2005. I had flown to Houston to see my son Jeremy graduate from High School. I then went over to Reynold's house where we all gathered to talk and share stories and fellowship. John Searcy is seen here standing next to the gentleman with crutches and has glasses hanging around his neck.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

In loving tribute to my friend John Searcy

AKA "Grouchy Old Man"

I supposed there is never a good way to find out that a loved one has passed on from this life to the life beyond. The Internet gives us instant gratification with regards to information at our finger tips. E-mail can be a blessing or it can be a curse. So goes it with my dear friend John Searcy. I found out from my friend Reynold DeGuzman that our friend John went to sleep last night and never woke up. I have known John Searcy for atleast 15 years back to 1991 or 1992. Technology was one of the things that we all have in common. I either met John because he was friends with Reynold or I met John because he logged onto either Jesus Connect BBS or Cross Connection BBS. Back then Reynold Deguzman had a computer in his home and he hosted Jesus Connect and I had a computer in our townhome in Houston and we hosted Cross Connection BBS. People would dial our modems and log in. Several years later the World Wide Web took off and Reynold jumped on the cutting edge of technology and moved the BBS onto a web page and programmed a custom website with message bases that we could all communicate on.

John, Reynold, Don Chapman and myself all were technology junkies and we all have Jesus Christ as a commonality that brought us all together as friends. I lived in Houston Texas with my family between 1981 and August of 1997. During this time I became pretty close with both John and Reynold. We would get together at one of our homes and brain storm on how we could use Internet technology to reach the world for Christ. One of the things that John Searcy and I did was we would spend hours on end hosting IRC chat channels on several different IRC networks. Internet Relay Chat clients like MIRC and PIRCH would enable someone to log on to an IRC chat server on either Dalnet, Effnet or Starnet IRC networks. John was real passionate about how Christ had changed his life from his old hippie days to the days after when Jesus had changed his heart and made a new man out of him. I remember how we would be sitting in a chat room and some heckler would come in to create havoc and disrupt the chat room. Brother John would be all over that and would not allow them to get away with being disrespectful.

I will never forget all of the times that brother John would come up with catchy little phrases that would enable him to share his faith in Christ.

One of the fondest memories that I have of my friend John is that he was nicknamed GOM or Grouchy Old Man and he nicknamed me GOMMIT or Grouch Old Man in Training. It seems that John and I always got along great in person or on the telephone but when John got into his chat persona he would act like a grouchy old man. I used to give him a lot of grief about that and it turned into part of his legacy as my friend.

I remember when John worked at Compaq Computers close to 290. He was a sales person working on their sales floor. I used to go visit him while he was at work. I think that he was helping to refurbish compaq computers and then resell them. John had a unquenchable thirst to learn about technology. He and I both learned alot about personal computers way back when.

I wish that I had been able to see John one last time but I did talk to him on Yahoo IM several weeks ago. I know that John was probably in his later 60's and maybe even in his early 70's but as far as I knew he was in relatively good health. I know he kept active with his wife as they managed self storage businesses in the Houston area.

John's wife lost a wonderful husband and the "five guys" from the Jesus Connect Ministry days have lost a dear friend. Rest in peace my friend, we love you very much.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Out with the old and in with the new

We are 10 days into 2007 and life is pretty much the same in our pond. We live at the bottom of a hill and thanks to the copious amounts of precipitation I feel as if I should be called rain man. Luckily for me I have a four wheel drive vehicle that sits up high enough to overcome the mud and water. We have been having some unseasonably warm weather in Duck Ditch. Speaking of ducks my neighbors quackers have been unusually quiet lately. I wonder what Paul Bunyon and clan had for Christmas dinner.

I found out last week that my contract for my job in downtown Charleston was renewed until June of 07 so I am pretty pumped up about that. All of my creditors will be happy to know that I can continue to pay my bills. Some day I pray that I can find a REAL job that is full time with benefits. I am happy and thankful for the employment that I do have however having benefits would be sort of nice.

Katy is working through her second year of the PACE program at Charleston County School District. I am really starting to wonder why anyone would want to be a teacher. Katy works 8 hours during the day and then she comes home and works and studies for another 5 or 6 hours before she goes to bed. I am so very proud of my wife for being the type of person that she is. She is a wonderful teacher, wife and mother of our children. Go Katy Go!!!!

The Dallas Cowgirls self destructed last Saturday evening and ended their football season with a 9 win and 8 loss record. I think that was their record last year. Tony Romo is the one shining star of the season even if he did screw up with the place holding on the field goal that was attempted at the end of the game. Had they pulled that off Dallas might be in the playoffs. My dad told me something a long time ago. If if's and buts were candy and nuts we would have a mighty fine christmas. As far as I am concerned the next game to watch will be the Eagles and Saints game where I hope the Eagles are soundly defeated. I have some guys at work that hate Dallas and love the Eagles. LOL

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

A deeper walk with Christ in 2007

As we find ourselves at the beginning of 2007 I wanted to take the time to share from my heart. I hope that you will think about these things and then join me in 2007 as I try to develop a stronger relationship with Christ in my life. These thoughts are primariy focused towards those of you who have identified with Christ and claim that He is your Lord and Savior.

My hope and prayer for myself and for all of my brothers and sisters is that we can find the things of this world that are choking out Christ in our lives and find a way to diminish the presence of those things and replace those things with Jesus. There is an old saying and it says something like this. The Bible will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from the Bible. There is so much truth to that.

As I look at my life and the process of sanctification I know that I know that I stand in His way of that perfect work more times than not. We are to be in the world but not of the world. The only problem with that is we are so deeply entwined in the things of this world on a daily basis that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the two. The only thing that will enable us to see clearly (as through a stained glass) is for us to get a better picture of who God really is. The only way we can do that folks is to pursue HIM in a personal relationship. We can do that through reading of His word. We can do that by experiencing true koininia with our bretheren. Through that fellowship we will see God working in the lives of other believers and in turn the Jesus in them will reach out and touch our lives. We can experience God in a closer more personal way by spending time in prayer and listening to what God is telling us in the still quiet places in our hearts. We must purpose in our hearts to get still and quiet before God shut our mouths and listen. If we can not hear his voice how in the world will he be able to reach us?

My pastor said this statement on Sunday. Christians today try to be self sufficient and do everything themselves and then when they are at the end of their resources and things are all messed up then we go to God and ask him to fix our messes. Proverbs 3:5 and 6 says this. Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Trust in God with ALL your heart and in every aspect of your life. That includes but not exclusive to your relationships,finances, talents, dreams, hopes, desires, career, marriage.... The list is endless. Instead of always trusting our gut instinct we are instructed to see what the Lord would have us to do. We are promised by God that if we will trust every aspect of our lives to the will of God that He will put us on a straight and narrow path that is PERFECT in His eyes and for our lives. We have to die to ourselves daily and crucify the flesh and the things the flesh so desperately desires in order to truly trust in Christ. We have to purpose in our hearts every single moment of every single day to not allow our flesh to take control. Our flesh left to its own devices will do one thing and that is drive you to the pits of hell trying to satisfy it. Our flesh is never satisfied and our enemy knows that and works over time trying to tempt us to do that which is not of God.

The next thing that we can do that will enable us to have a more personal and rich relationship with Christ is to find a way to invest ourselves in service. My pastor says that people get out of God what they put into him. People have this Burger King mentality in which they want to come to church and get whatever it is that they think they need. When they do not get whatever that thing is then they start to whine and say that they did not get anything. The reason for that is because they are using God and the church as a fast food restaurant picking and choosing only those things from the menu that will make them happy. The problem with that is that God is not in the business of making us happy. God is in the business of loving his creation and pursuing us and trying to have a closer relationship with us. We have to remember that God chose us first and that He is God and we are not. Amen? We serve Him as Master and King not out of fear but because He first loved us and died on the cross that we might have eternal life OUTSIDE of HELL. That alone should make us want to serve Him. We all deserve HELL, none of us deserve Heaven.

One of the best ways that I know to experience God in a deep and personal way is to quit focusing on all of my problems, leave them to God to handle and then find out how He has equipped me to serve him. Every single one of us has talents and skills that can be used in the local church to further his kingdom. All we have to do is find out what those skills are and find out where to put them to use. If you do not know what you are good at go to your pastor and say, Pastor I want to serve God but I am not sure how I can do that here in this church. Trust me when I tell you this. After the pastor is revived because he fainted he will be happy to lead you in the right direction of service. Amen? How many churches are filled with Burger King minded people who are seeking to be made happy and completely missing the purpose of the local church? The local church is a hospital that is filled with sick people (us) who desperately need Jesus to fix all of the junk and damage in our lives. Some of us are more healed than others but none of us have arrived. For those of us that are more mature in the faith then we are commanded to help those in our congregation that are not. In a spirit of meekness and fear we are to go to them and minister to them through the power of God in our lives in those areas that the Holy Spirit shows us. Amen?

Are you doing these things mentioned above? Most of us are probably doing some of them but not all of them and that includes me. My desire is to get out of the way so that God can do His perfect work in my heart and change me more into his likeness every day. Our world, our local church, our local community, our schools, our work places, our lives will be better off because of it.

May God bless you richly in 2007

Detroit 39 Dallas 31

Is this season over yet? It is amazing to me that my team actually made it to the play offs with the type of pathetic performances they have shown me in the last three games. I actually paid 2 bucks to get in to watch the game at a local sports bar. I want my 2 dollars back. LOL...

There are several reasons why Dallas lost this game. The first reason was five turnovers by Dallas. How many turnovers? Lets count them. FIVE.... I think that Detroit capitalized on three of those turnovers by either scoring a touch down or a field goal. You can not win a football game by constantly giving it over to the opponent and then not playing defense.

The second reason Dallas lost is because their secondary keeps playing off of the opponents receivers by five yards or more. I saw three touch downs by Detroit where a Dallas defender was not any closer than 3 yards or more. You can not make a play on a ball being thrown to a receiver unless you are close enough to go after the ball.

The third reason Dallas lost is because they have a rookie quarterback in Tony Romo who is inexperienced and is trying to force plays that are not there. How many times did Tony Romo drop the ball today? I lost count and sadly enough he turned the ball over to the opponent several times when he did that. You can not fumble the ball , throw interceptions and run down the field holding the ball like it is a loaf of bread and hope to win the game. If you are going to run the ball tuck it in and hang on to it. It is ok to get sacked vs throwing an interception or having it knocked out of your hands.

The fourth reason Dallas lost the game is because Dallas defensive coordinators refuse to adapt their defense in order to stop their opponent. They are going to play the 4 (3) defense even if it means that they are going to lose the game anyway. If you are not willing to realize that there are teams out there that study game day films and figure out to overcome your defense then you will never get to the point where you are able to make some changes.

The fifth reason Dallas lost the game is because their heart was not in it. The score was 13 to ZERO in the first quarter. Dallas could not get one single first down. They were at a dead stand still. In the second quarter when Marion Barber ran in for a one yard touchdown is the first time we saw signs of life from Dallas. Marion Barber kicked and clawed his way into the endzone on an offensive play that showed some heart. In the third quarter Dallas came out of the locker room and ran a play action pass that had the full back throwing the ball back to Tony Romo as he completed a pass to Terry Glenn for about 35 yards or more. Dallas drove down to the red zone and then Tony coughs up the ball again. So much for momentum boys.

Dallas was beaten by a team that had a 2 win and 13 loss record... Say do what ? Dallas got their behinds kicked AGAIN in their own stadium. This is starting to get old cowgirls..... I think that if you had put your second string in that you might have had a better chance to win. I hope that Dallas puts Drew Bledsoe back in as quarterback against the Seattle Seahawks. Drew Bledsoe is a veteran quarterback and at least we will not have to worry about him dropping the ball every other down or trying to force a play that is not there. I also think that Dallas needs to come out playing aggressive offensive football. This next game will be there last if they lose again. So, this is for all the marbles kids. Time to quit being timid and giving the ball to Julius Jones for the umpteenth time so we can watch him get stopped at the line of scrimmage or the paltry 2 yards per play he might get.

All in all Dallas Cowboys are in the play offs and have one last chance to show the world that they are world champion material and deserve to be there. The good thing about all of this is that Dallas will not be playing at home. For some reason Dallas just absolutely sucks when they play at home. Maybe , just maybe Dallas can pull off another win and stay in the playoffs.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Starting over

I am starting over today with counting calories. I made the mistake of stepping on the scales yesterday and I gained 10 lbs. I was off work for six days and so my activity level decreased and I probably ate about the same amount of food which equals to gained weight. I can also tell that I feel worse because of the extra weight I am not used to carrying.

I had Katy get me a six pack of slim fast and fruit for me to eat for breakfast. Thus far today I have had 660 calories between breakfast and lunch. My problem has always been at night when I am sitting in front of the TV or my laptop and I get the munchies late at night and think I need to eat. I also need to motivate myself to go to the gym once per day and do 20 to 30 minutes on the treadmill or elliptical trainer. Any exercise vs no exercise is beneficial. I need to do this for my health. I spent 3 months at the gym this year and lost 20 lbs and then I guess I over did it a little bit and my knee and shoulder started hollering. The pain kept me away from the gym for the rest of the year save a trip or two.

My goals for 2007 are simple. To take one day at a time and keep counting calories and getting exercise and try to eat the right things. We are also going to continue on working on our credit and increase our FICO score so we can eventually buy a home of our own. Phillipians 4:13 will have to be our battle cry as we put our noses to the grindstone and take these goals on one step at a time. We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength. Help us dear Jesus to make a committment to do those things we know we should and give us strength and perserverance to make the right choices one moment and one day at a time.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Dallas Cowboys SUCK

I can not believe how horrible the Dallas Cowgirls played tonight against the Eagles. I am sorry, I need to revise that statement. I can not believe they showed up for the game and acted as if they forgot how to play the game.

The first sign of their demise was when the Eagles took the ball on their very first possesion and marched it all the way down the field for a touchdown. It was as if the Dallas secondary players were napping. It did not matter what the Eagles did whether it was running the ball or throwing it they had very little to no resistance from Dallas.

The second sign of the Cowgirls pending doom was Dallas's pathetic attempt to punch the ball across the goal line from the one yard line. How many times does the Dallas Offensive Coach need to run the ball straight up the middle to learn that it was not happening tonight against the Eagles. Can we say play action pass coach? If you run it up the middle two times and you are stopped cold what makes you think the Eagles were going to just let you walk into the end zone?

If that were not bad enough we need to turn our attention to the circus clown wearing the numbers 81. Good grief Grady, here we go again. Our special million dollar receiver could not catch the ball because he has a pulled tendon in his hand. There is your sign Dallas. Your star (cough) circus clown (receiver) is injured and has to try to catch the ball without using his fingers. Maybe he should have sat on the sideline vs running around and making a complete circus side show out of himself and his team members. I could not believe that he had the gall to sit on the bench and SMILE after he dropped several passes. He did not even act like there was any sort of anger or remorse on his part for doing that.
There is your sign....

Just before half time Tony Romo and TO actually connected in the end zone. Then Dallas turns the ball over to the Eagles with less than 2 minutes remaining on the clock and the Dallas defense lets the Eagles march down the field 15 and 20 yards per play so they could punch a field goal across just before the half time making it 13 to 7.

One of the sports commentators said it best when he told the watching viewers this. Coach Reid with the Eagles told his team when they were 6 and 5 that they needed to step it up a notch both as players and coaches and that they were playing cautious football. It was evident to me that the Eagles had a singular purpose tonight and that was to beat the Cowboys at home and that is just what they did.

Dallas knew going into this game that they were in the playoffs no matter what the turn out of this game was tonight. It was almost as if they really did not care one way or the other. My wife and I went and watched the movie "We are Marshall" this weekend. One of the statements from this movie is very applicable here. In the end the only thing that people remember is not how you played the game but that you were winners. If you play the game but not good enough to win then it really does not matter. Tonight people will remember that the Eagles won the game and they played hard enough to earn the win.

Now that Dallas is not in first place in the NFC they wont be hosting a play off game. Considering how badly Dallas sucks at home in Irving stadium maybe that will be a good thing. They seem to play much better on the road than at home. Dallas will have to win the next 3 games in order to get to the Super Bowl. Dallas might have to play the Eagles in Philedelphia for one of those games. Dallas plays Detroit in Irving stadium on December the 31st. Maybe they will actually decide to play football. If I were a betting man I would bet in favor of the opponet at this point in the season.



James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

This is Christmas Eve 2006 and before you know it the new year of 2007 will be upon us. I have been off of work since last Wednesday and I can tell that I will probably be ready to go back to work this coming up Wednesday. I am not used to having this much free time on my hands and quite frankly my family is probably not used to having this much quality time with dad. Last night I exchanged gifts with one of my best friends who just happens to be a propellerhead just like myself. My propellerhead friend always manages to come up with the most surprising cool gizmos to give me for Christmas. Last night I got the following cool toys...

A. AirDesk laptop stand for my laptop. This is one of the coolest toys of all. Before I got this neat gizmo I was using a utility table for my laptop when I am in the living room. The problem with the utility table is that it was big and bulky and always in the way of someone else wanting to watch the tv. It also was not the right height to be used while reclining. The Airdesk laptop stand solves all of those problems with its unique patented design. I know, this is starting to sound like a commercial but I can not help but be excited about the new ability to use my laptop in exactly the position I need it and then when I need to get up I can just swivel it out of my way.

B. Emergency escape hammer. This gizmo is designed to break out my window in case I find my Durango suddenly turned into a submarine and I want to breath real air vs water. Everyone should have one of these.

C. Keychain glow stick and flash light. Both of these gizmos will help me to find my keys in the dark as well as stay out of the dark.

D. Power Center. This cool gizmo allows me to organize all of my messy wires associated with all of my electronic gizmos like my pocket pc or cellular telephones. It allows you to hide the actual ac adapter and wires in a plastic housing and then leave the business end of the charger hanging outside while you clamp your device on top of the charger housing. For now I am using this for our cell phones.

E. Special rubber duckie radio antenna for the Durango. In September we bought a 2006 Durango and we love everything about our new SUV. One of the things that I had to give up however was the OnStar antenna that was on the Pontiac. This particular antenna connected me to OnStar and it also allowed me to put my carmate M and M dudes on the end of it. The antenna on the Durango was so slim and tall that the M and M dude kept bending the antenna over and slapping the side of the truck. This new antenna bends but it is much thicker at the base and therefore the M and M Dude rides just nicely.

F. Utility knife that allows me to open packages much easier

G. Gorilla tripod that allows you to attach your digital camera and stand it or attach it to other objects.

I am very pleased with all of the very functional goodies that Santa has brought me this year. Thanks Santa!!!

Blane Mosmeyer

This is Blane Mosmeyer at the age of 9 months... Katy is his great aunt and can not wait to see this fella in person.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Our friends in Arizona

I finally got the time to scan in the picture post card that Kimerbly and Mark sent us from Arizona. Kimberly was the Happy Days Camp counselor for our Jessica Ann back in July of 2001. Jessica was very sick and required a lot of attention. Kimberly had never been a camp counselor so this was her first experience. Kimberly has a special place in our hearts and we have adopted her as our own. Kimberly is now married to her husband Mark who works for the US Border Patrol and is stationed in Arizona. Mark and Kimberly are expecting their first child soon.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Blogging in the rain

Rain Rain go away, please come back some other day. It is raining , it is pouring the old man is blogging. No, I think it was supposed to be "the old man is snoring". Well, I am neither old nor am I snoring at 12:36 pm. It is supposed to be Christmas day in 3 days and we have a forecast for rain until then. Katy and I spent the entire day yesterday playing Mr and Mrs Claus. I am excited to report that all the creditors got something in their stockings but so did the kids. The last couple of Christmas seasons have been sort of bleak in our house thanks to income issues but thankfully we are able to put something under the tree this year. Don't get me wrong, you do not have to purchase gifts in order to celebrate Christmas. Heck, there are people out there in this world of ours that are not celebrating Christmas. I guess it all depends on your personal tastes and upbringing. As for my family we are aware of the reason for the season. Jesus being born to Mary , wrapped in swaddling clothes and no where to lay him. The nativity scene all reminds us of how important Jesus was and still is to our world. Of course that thought requires a bit of faith and belief that Jesus Christ is more than a mere teacher or prophet. Jesus is the primary reason that we celebrate Christmas in our household in December. It has nothing to do with the tree, ornaments, lights and all the gifts. All of those things are fun things to do and we can enjoy doing them as we enjoy the holiday festivities and being close to loved ones. However that is not what Christmas is all about. To me, Christmas is about reflecting on those things that are most important to me. Yes, I am like most folks in that I find myself getting caught up in the "spirit" of Christmas which is all around us as we run around buying this gift and that gift and listening to Christmas carols playing on the radio. What is important to me is that I am able to enjoy the Christmas season. I can enjoy Christmas because of a God who lives in me through the power of the Holy Spirit and the gift of Grace at Calvary. I can enjoy Christmas because I am in relatively good health and I am not in the hospital. I can enjoy Christmas because I have a family that loves me and I love them and enjoy spending time with them. I can enjoy Christmas because I have good friends that bring quality and quantity to my life and I love being around them as well.
This time of year is always a difficult time of year as we look at the names on the stockings hung near the entertainment center. They are supposed to be hung by the chimney with care in hopes that old Saint Nick will be there. Since we don't have a fireplace the close proximity to the Christmas tree will have to do for now. Our Jessica has long since left this world and is now in heaven. Her stocking still gets hung right along with the rest of them. Our Jessica is our sunshine and will always remain an important part of our family. There are folks all around us that suffer from grief, depression or other things that keep them from having a time of joy during this season. I hope that all of us can be reminded of that and that we can all find a way to reach out to others that are not as fortunate as we are. There are many ways to do this and some are more personal than others. Our church took up an offering and we all brought can good foods and clothes for a family that is located at a homeless shelter here in the low country. Some of you give to the United Way and that organization and others that support it do things like providing a hot meal on Christmas Eve for homeless people who otherwise would not be able to get this. The thought that I am trying to get across here is that we are all connected in some small way whether we believe it or not. No, I am not related to a homeless person and they are not in my immediate family. I could very easily just turn a blind eye to all that I see around me and just be selfish and keep all of my "riches" to myself and hoard them exclusively for my family. Can we individually reach out and help everyone that needs help? Of course not and I am not advocating that if you are having a good Christmas time and buying presents for loved ones that we should feel guilty about not helping all the homeless people. Everyone one of us can and should find a way to connect with one other person or family if we can and do what we can. Whether we are related to them is immaterial. They are fellow human beings that are just like us in that they are trying to scratch out an existance the best way that they know how.
You might be thinking that it is so easy for me to sit here typing these words on my laptop while I am elevated and protected and ignorant of what it is like to be homeless or in prison or sick. For those of you that know the "real" me you know that I was adopted alongside of my sister from an orphanage in Aschofenburg Germany. You know that I have been homeless and spent several days living under a bridge in Houston Texas with three plastic bags that had all of my life's treasures. I spent 45 days in a street rescue mission learning what it is like to have no family , no loved ones to turn to. I know what it is like to sit in a county jail cell in Texas looking down from my confines at people walking around in stifling temperatures wishing and praying that could be me. So, as you see, I have been where most of you would not care to be. Part of the reason of why I was there was my fault and partly because of the environment and situations that I found myself in. The important thing is that I am a better man because of it. When I share these stories with most folks they are amazed at what I have been through and that I can have a positive attitude about life and that I can wear a smile on my face. Most people are amazed that I have a good sense of humor and that I can laugh about most of the junk in my life vs. being angry at the world. My ability to do this has primarily been because of the life changing work that God has done in my life. Jesus changed me from the inside out. Jesus traded out the heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh that enables me to be sensitive and caring about the world and people around me. I am also a better man because of my sweet selfless wife Katy. Over the last 17 years Katy has taught me how to be a real man. A man who loves his family and is not afraid to be committed to her and the children no matter how tough things are. Katy has taught me how to share my things as well as my heart. Katy has shown me that it is possible to not react to the children in anger like my earthly father used to and that I can exercise love and mercy towards them. Katy has taught me that it is ok to spoil the children despite my insatiable desire to teach them how to be tough and to survive in this world. Katy has taught me that it is ok for kids to be kids and that they are going to make noise and mess up the house. Gosh, I guess that is what children do huh? Katy has taught me that while I am very hard on myself and sometimes have a difficult time loving myself that she can overlook my faults and problems and love me despite of me being a scrooge and grouchy sometimes. It has become much easier for me over the years to extend grace and mercy and forgiveness to my wife and children and others because I have watched God and family and friends do the same thing for me even though I don't deserve it.
My hope and prayer is that you and your family and/or friends can find a way to relax and enjoy this Christmas season and that you are doing it for the right reasons. I hope that you are using this time to step back and remove yourself from the mad rush that is all around us and to appreciate and enjoy the simple things in life. I hope that every child gets exactly what their heart desires under the tree. I know that I will enjoy watching my kids as they excitedly rip the wrapping paper off of their presents on Christmas morning.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in 2007 from our family to yours.




James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

New Look and New Feel for Blogger Blog

I can see that Blogger has been very busy in 2006. I have been using the blogger interface online now for several years and have not experienced the slightest problem with regards to posting to the blog or other people finding it. Several months ago I started a new blog for my Chief Propellerhead network and I chose to use the BETA version of Blogger. I liked what I saw then and I love what I see now. Big Kudos to Blogger for improving the look and functionality of Blogger. I feel like they gave us bloggers a Christmas present just in time.

One of the things that you will notice on the right side of my blog is my links section. I have put our church website, Low country Today and other sites of interest. Feel free to view them at your leisure. Gosh, I just remembered that I left out the Dallas Cowboys Website link. I would be remiss in leaving that out I suppose since I am such a HUGE Dallas Cowboys FAN.

I am happy to say that I am off until next Wednesday. That means six days of NO work. Whoopee. If I wanted to be I could be off from work until the 2Nd of January. I decided that my budget could not afford my being off that long without pay and managed to find something to do for Wed , Thursday and Friday of next week. That will equate to my paycheck not taking as much of a hit as it would have. I am still working as a temp at the college and until I become full time or find full time employment elsewhere when I don't work I don't get paid. So, if you are off for the holidays AND you are getting paid for it be so very thankful, not all of us are that fortunate.

It is five days until Christmas morning. I can not believe how fast 2006 flew past us. Where in the world did all of that time go? The year of 2006 has been pretty good to our family. Katy and I managed to stay gainfully employed this year and that has helped the budget tremendously. We are still suffering from some financial setbacks thanks to the 2001 - 2005 drought but hopefully in 2007 we will be able to see more daylight at the end of the debt tunnel.

We do not have any major plans for the holidays. We had wanted to go back to Texas to the Houston/Seguin area of the state to see family but we decided that we would be better off to just save what little funds we have and stay put this holiday season. We are talking about four days of driving just to get to Texas and back. That does not include all the driving we would be doing in the great state of Texas.

From our house to yours may you experience a blessed Christmas holiday and a prosperous New Year in 2007.


James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Dallas 38 Atlanta 28

It was like watching the shootout at the OK Corral. Dallas and Atlanta provided NFL fans with a lot of entertainment as they provided a lot of excitement and tons of points. Dallas jumped out in the lead 14 to zip after a defensive interception and touchdown. In the second quarter Michael Vick led the Falcons on several scoring drives that put them ahead 28 to 21 at half time. Atlanta became frustrated in the second half and were penalized several times for personal fouls for unnecessary roughness. Dallas scored 17 unanswered points in the second half which ultimately won the game for them. The Dallas secondary seemed to be emulating swiss cheese until about the 4th quarter when they were able to stop some key receptions between Vick and his receivers. All in all Dallas played a much better game today against Atlanta which was a huge difference from the disasterous loss against the Saints at home. The next test will be Christmas day when Dallas plays the Eagles at home. Go DALLAS!!!!!

Who is dat ?

That is the sign that I kept being shown during the Dallas Cowboy and New Orleans Saints game last Sunday night. People in the stadium were holding up Who is Dat signs every time the Saints would make another touchdown in their 42 to 17 romp over the Cowboys.

I dont know about you but I was absolutely stunned to see the Cowboys play as pathetically as they did. I thought the GIRLS played (sorry girls) pretty badly during the NY Giants game and the only reason they won that battle is because the Giants sucked as bad as Dallas did but just a little bit worse. Dallas won 4 straight games and beat a couple of difficult opponents such as the Colts and the Giants. Does that mean that we can allow our heads to swell to the point that we think that we are untouchable?

The run by Julius Jones for 77 yards into the end zone was the most exciting and ONLY exciting play of the entire game for Dallas. The touchdown by TO (circus) Owens was a freak accident which should have been an interception. I guess that it is good the defender had his entire hand wrapped in tape and could not hold on to the ball.

I am starting to wonder if there are any other field goal kickers out there that could be signed? Last week the kicker kicked a really long field goal , not sure exactly how long but think it was 45+ yards, yet he missed one within 30 yards as he pulled it to the right of the goal post.

I hope that the COWBOYS (not the girls) actually show up in Atlanta on Saturday night ready to do battle with the Atlanta Falcons. At this point in the season no game should be considered a game that can be lost or that the opponent is a push over. If you are a Dallas fan of old like myself you KNOW that you know that most folks HATE the Dallas Cowboys and look for every opportunity to defeat them.

If Dallas plays like they have the last two weeks Atlanta will have a very easy win to add to their statistics. If Dallas plays at the level they are capable of playing then Atlanta could have their hands full. I guess we will know more on Saturday night after the fat lady sings.




James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

Gee, what lives under here guys??