Once upon a time. . .

If you have never heard that ancient phrase, that begins so many heroic and romantic stories, you probably are not from a western culture. But every culture has their own stories. As a matter of fact every person has their own stories, both to tell and to live.

I was reading "The New Testament and the People of God" by a theologian named N.T. Wright. In it, he points out that stories are the basic building blocks of science and basic human interaction. He points out that a scientific fact is only a fact because it tells a story about something. Science takes a hypothesis and that is the "Once upon a time. . ." The facts just are events in the story and scientists are the story tellers. In the end, we have a story that explains something. Take gravity for example, Newtonian physics said that because an apple fell from a tree (and hit Sir Isaac Newton on the head) then the culprit must be a graviton molecule that is exerting force on the apple, pulling it down. There was an event, the apple falling and to explain the falling there was a story. The story is that the graviton pulled on the apple until it fell. It is short and sweet and was adopted into a scientific law.

This is a little hard to grasp, so lets bring it down to a more everyday level. What does a good husband do. Well, he remembers birth days, anniversaries, grocery lists, chores ect. Husbands also find a career and work hard to build a prosperous home. These things are good, but why does he do them? He does them because in his mind, he has to do them to fill the role of a good husband. In effect, he role plays. Now, what if someone does not play the part very well? If he does not, then he certainly has other roles that he is trying to fill. Perhaps, a "bad" husband wants to fill other roles; such as, a sexual item or a drug dealer or of a couch potato.

When I thought about this, everything made perfect sense. I want to be a good provider for my wife, because I am playing a role as a good husband. I want to be strong in technology, because I feel that my role as a professional will have a lot to do with IT work.

Some times, in a world of 6 billion stories, there are stories that do not fit with each other. Sometimes stories subvert or replace other stories. When this happens things dramatically change. We can see it in history and in the world around us. The American dream is a story that has subverted many other peoples story; because it is a strong story, it can subvert stories of dictatorships and monarchies. By the way, Einstein came up with a better story to explain the apple falling from the tree and has now been accepted into science (Einstein's story better fit the evidence that he discovered).

It should be left to a different blog, but can you think of competing stories and how we can judge to see which stories are worth replacing other stories?

Teaching Theology

My wife, Heather, has started a dream of becoming a theological professor. I, for the most part, think that it is an amazing idea. The ability to interact with others in an academic setting combined with helping others to learn and grow the Kingdom of God is a dream of mine as well. I have considered going down this road before. It can actually be quite scary for the timid at heart. The theological, philosophical, and historical disciplines can be very challenging (she has already taken many steps down this road already). I am very proud of her that she would take up this dream. I know that whatever avenue she does go down, her studies in these areas will help her in ways that she cannot now know. It will be quite the adventure to see where all of this take her, she may teach children in remote areas or adults in huge university; the important thing is that the skills that she will learn will help to bring about God's Kingdom. Even if she later changes her mind, she will not have wasted her time.

Free Computer Tools

I dont know if anybody that reads this post likes free computer repair tools or is concerned about security, but if you are I have a lot of good tools that I think you will like. I currently work at a place where I do over the phone IT. All of the tools that I use can be used by individuals for free! So, I will post some of them on here and if you need help using them; just post here and I can help you.

First, does anybody want to make there computer run faster and have less junk in it? Here are a couple of free Windows Registry and Windows cleaning tools that I have used that are very good.

First CCleaner: This program is a free program for both individual and corporate use. It is light and easy to use. You can get it from www.CCleaner.com.

The next is Glary's Utilities. Glary's can do what CCleaner does and more, it can defragment the Windows Registry and give you easy access to Windows tools like System File Checker and hard drive defragmenter. You can get it from http://www.glaryutilities.com/gu.html


Now, lets talk about Internet security. Everyone knows that viruses are bad, but not everybody uses anti-virus programs. This is for a variety of reasons. One reason is the cost of anti-virus programs are high. It is very hard to pay 30-70 dollars a year for a program that doesnt give you any positive utility, it can slow down your computer and at best it only keeps bad things from happening to your computer. Well, here is some solutions that will not cost you any money.

First and my favorite, Panda Cloud Anti-virus. This little anti-virus program is super light on your system and super easy to use. It never needs to be updated and you never have to pay for it. The secret is that it does all of the anti-virus and anti-spyware processing on Panda's servers, leaving your computer's RAM and processor relatively free. You can get Panda Cloud anti-virus at cloudantivirus.com

Now, there are more tradition anti-virus programs that are free. The best is Avira, then Avast, then AVG. These are more resource heavy but also do provide heaver protection. All of these anti-virus programs now come equiped with built in anti-spyware. You can get these from there prospective websites by just adding .com at the end of there name.

There is one more anti-virus program out there that is worth mentioning. That is Malwarebytes. This program has a free version that is good because it can be installed alongside most anti-virus programs. The free version does not have an active scanner, so you have to manually tell it to update and to scan your computer. This version is excellent for a backup antivirus program.

It is also important for every computer to have a firewall. A good firewall regulates data both coming and going out of your computer. Windows comes with a free firewall for XP and Vista, but it only regulates incoming data.

I have recently just installed a free firewall from Webroot. Webroot is a good company that is best known for it's anti-spyware products. The firewall is pretty easy to use and is easy to install. You can get it from the download section at Webroot.com.

There are also a couple of other free firewalls out there, although I have not personally used them. The best known free firewall is from ZoneAlarm.com.

There are a lot of other free programs out there, depending on what you need. My favorite websites to get free programs are download.com, filehippo.com, and MajorGeek.com