This blog is almost three years old and along the way we have made mistakes and misteps, usually in the comments of sporadic posts. However, a while back I decided to put that sort of sophmoric behavior behind us and press on with posts that we collectively thought might prove useful to some.  So with this in mind I want to ask everyone to take a deep breath and step back from their computers for a while. If blogging "makes" you angry then blogging is not your problem, your heart is your problem. If a person can't get over the fact that we do not necesarrily follow the status quo of their theological world then our blog will only continue to disappoint them.

In the end this is not a blog democracy. All the contributors here are pastors, husbands, fathers, and citizens and we refuse to let the behavior of some affect any of the relationships with those institutions. All the men who write here are accountable to elder boards, churches and the closest of relationships, their wives. We would ask our readers to respect that before questioning the calling and wisdom of men they do not know and have never met.

It is a joy to write about the things we love and have devoted our lives to for many years. When I began this blog I simply hoped that this would be a clearing house for anything that might encourage and aid we who preach the Word. I hope we will not lose sight of that goal.

Blessings,

PSL

"Bagaimana cara memasukkan gajah ke dalam kulkas?"

"Bisa dong. Buka pintu kulkasnya, masukin gajahnya!"

"Hah, emang bisa ya?"

Guyonan lama tesebut kelihatannya relevan juga dihubungkan dengan kumpulan foto2 tentang bagaimana menyembunyikan seekor gajah ini.

Cukup menyegarkan! :D

That's me.

Basically.

Because you see, it's dark in that woman's office. Likewise, it is dark in my office. And I am a woman.



Sometimes on Friday mornings or on days that a lot of people are on vacation, people procrastinate turning on the lights in the South side of the office. No big whoop. You hardly notice it. Normally someone comes in and turns them on by at least 9:30. So, whatever.

But it's almost noon-thirty and the lights are still off.



No lights make me feel: HOORAY!





I don't know what it is about no lights, but when they're off it just doesn't feel like work. You know? And not feeling like it's work is the next best thing to not actually working.

If it were up to me, I'd work in darkness for the rest of my life.



But let's say I didn't like the darkness. I still wouldn't do anything about it.

"But Christine," you might reasonably ask, "Why would you not just walk over to the light switch and flip it to the on position?"

To which I would reply "Where is the light switch?"



Happy Independance Day Eve!

The whole "We don't find her wonderful anymore" line by Xeni Jardin stinks to high heaven.

Speaking for all the Boingers--

Boing Boing has been caught in the middle of a real internet shitstorm and pile-on over the last few days. A blogger named Violet Blue noticed that we unpublished some posts related to her. Some people wanted to know why.

Bottom line is that those posts (not "more than 100 posts," as erroneously claimed elsewhere) were removed from public view a year ago. Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn't attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There's a big difference between that and censorship.

Be that as it may, it is a form of censorship. Boingboing didn't like Violet Blue, so they removed any reference of her from their blogs.

We hope you'll respect our choice to keep the reasons behind this private. We do understand the confusion this caused for some, especially since we fight hard for openness and transparency. We were trying to do the right thing quietly and respectfully, without embarrassing the parties involved.

It is a bit hypocritical to talk about openness and transparency when something like this happens. Clearly the way that Boingboing does business needs to be reconsidered. This whole episode is anything but transparent. It's one thing if the decision was taken, then the blogger was informed and proceeded in a normal, albeit private matter. It's another thing doing it behind closed doors, not being transparent and clear, and just editing her contributions out.

Clearly, that didn't work out. In attempting to defuse drama, we inadvertently ignited more. Mind you, we weren't the ones splashing gasoline around; but we did make the fire possible. We're sorry about that. In the meantime, Boing Boing's past content is indexed on the Wayback Machine, a basic Internet resource; so the material should still be available for those who would like to read it.

Yeah, whatever. That's not the same thing. I just hope Boingboing is able to resolve this with Violet.

Xeni Jardin's response:

We, too, prefer that drama be reserved only for one's momma.

But when the apparent campaign to turn this into some kind of a petty blog fight went on for days and escalated, we felt like the responsible thing to do for you, our readers, was to address it.

Blog fights are stupid, airing personal grievances in public is stupid, picking troll wars is stupid. We just want to blog (and make internet TV).

The "unpublishing" versus "deleting" issue is this: the posts were removed from public view while an evaluation of what to do took place. We didn't want to pay to host them on our blog anymore. This is also why we remove hateful, ad hominem attack comments from public view, too: this is our home, we are proud of the home we built and the guests who visit here with us, and we like spending time here ourselves.

This is a directory of wonderful things. If we no longer think something is wonderful, we have every right to remove it from this directory.

This is not Wikipedia or the New York Times. Boing Boing began as a personal blog, and still is in some ways, even though Boing Boing is a bigger thing now. When new information becomes clear, or someone's behavior changes, sometimes a creator of work reconsiders what aspects of their personal creative work they're proud of, and removes them from public view.

The posts still exist in our archives, and they're also available on the Wayback Machine.

We realize that we're now bigger and more complex, and we'd probably handle something like this differently now that we've grown (and now that we are more aware of how things can play out when someone's determined to pick a public fight over it). This hasn't happened before.

But this was not intended to cause harm to anyone, least of all the subject of the posts. We mean no one any harm.

Nobody was "disappeared." When we start doing extrajudicial blog executions, or showing up to livejournals in the dead of night in unmarked cars and putting bags over people's heads, or slicing the power cords off of other people's own blogs, come talk to me about "disappearances" and "unpersoning."

We didn't want to pay to host them anymore? WTF is that? What does it cost, like 0.02 cents a year? That's the stupidest excuse that I've ever heard. Posts/articles and comments are most definitely not the same thing. A comment is just a response. To compare both is ludicrous.

The comments are interesting to read on that post on Boing Boing. However, there are over 700 comments. I got tired after 240.

* * * * *

Relevant Posts

Boing Boing deletes Violet Blue

She's good.  Okay?  She's good and I like her.

I don't have cable, and I haven't in a long time, so I can't say I'm really up to snuff on all the Lifetime movies that are out there. This one, though, seemed familiar.



To my delight, a quick youtube search told me I'd be able to watch the whole thing online.

Which is exactly what I did.



I also forced my friend Beth to watch it.

As we intently followed these characters' misadventures through high school, we realized that the cast was made up of some seriously familiar faces. Like Sally Jessy Rafael, and that one guy.



One particular face seemed more familiar than the rest...

It was the face of Tony Dinardo, Bobby (Fred Savage)'s best friend. I couldn't quite place where I'd seen this guy from, but I knew this was a face that has been permanently etched in the recesses of my brain.



After the movie was finished, we took a trip to imdb to discover as much as we could about this movie and it's actors.



First, we learned that the plot keywords for this film were (*SPOILER ALERT*): "Disturbing," "Physical Abuse," "Abusive Boyfriend," "True Crime," and "Bowling"

That makes me feel: indignant. There is one bowling scene in this movie - unlike Grease 2, which literally oozed bowling. Where is the justice?

But I digress...



Second, we learned that Tony was played by none-other-than Rodney Eastman.

That's right. Joey Crusel from Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.



This successfully made my day.



To further aside, now I can't get the Dream Warriors theme song (yes, Dokken) out of my head!!



We're the dream warriors! Ain't gonna dream no more!

Blogger:

• Well, it is more well-know. Many A-levels student use it, and most clubs also sign up to post their activities on blogspot.
• It is simple and easy to handle.
• A lot of stuff and comments can be viewed easily.
• A lot of stuff and functions can be added to improve the efficiency of the blog.

Wordpress:

well, I'm not familiar enough about it. I have not even heard of this site before until Gray introduced it to me. I've tried poking around for days and find some interesting stuff. Maybe I am not too familiar with this site...yet.

• Wordpress is very organised. The sections are neatly placed so that the user doesn't get confused over
• Stats to let you know how many people had visit the blog.
• Great way to manage all post, comments, drafts in a easy way.

There we are, 2 choices. Wordpress provides good managing options, but it is not well known among students. ( I mean, they wouldn't use this site). Furthermore, upgrades need to be paid for, and it is very "business" like. Blogger, however, is simple and has a lot of functions. There were times where there are spam, but it's generally ok. There are a lot of functions that can be added to enhance the blog and improve it's function.

We have not decided yet, so give us some time. I will post it in 1-2 weeks maybe?

-Scott-