There is a young girl mentioned in Ex 2:4 and 2:7. Who is she?

Click here to read on, my friend.

The alchemists dream, they say, was to turn lead into gold. While it would have been nice to score a room full of gold for speaking a few words(*), in time the budding alchemist would learn that the dream was actually an allegory for the changes that would occur within. As he learned the discipline of his craft and changed from being the baser man to the refined one, he would realize that he had actually achieved that dream.

The metal gold might never come, but the human ‘gold’ had already been tucked away, well beyond the reach of thieves. (Mt 6:19-21)

For a long time I have posted pretty much whenever I felt like it on whatever topic pleased me at the moment. No focus, no schedule, nearly no readers. No discipline.

That’s going to change. All of it. Click here to read on, my friend.

I got the following “head’s up” from my hosting provider. They are upgrading the hardware this site runs on, which will speed things up for all concerned. This is, as Martha says, “a good thing.”
———————————————————–
The server nmwoodworks.com is hosted on will be undergoing a hardware upgrade at approximately 11PM MST Monday March 30th (1-3 AM, EDT)

We expect the downtime for the account to be 1-2 hours, but could be
completed long before that window.  This upgrade will greatly increase
performance on your server and therefore your account.  We apologize
for any inconvenience.

BlueHost Support

DO NOT REPLY, THIS IS AN AUTOMATED MESSAGE.

This is the eighth in a ten-part series.

Most of us are considering the possibility that we may have to retrench our finances. For some, this goes unnoticed, just part of the ebb and flow of life. For others, it’s traumatic.

I’m one of the (yawn) group. I’ve had money. I’ve lacked it to a major degree. Actually, I think that I prefer to skim the edges of poverty. I want to focus on things other than money and the less I need of it, the easier it is to find enough.

Here are some suggestions for how to enjoy life on the cheap. Don’t try to do all of them – pick a couple, try them out and post back with your thoughts about how they worked out for you. Then try a couple more. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

1) Develop an obsession about turning off lights and unplugging appliances. Plugged-in devices, such as phone chargers and laptop power supplies, are constantly sucking energy without giving you anything in return. TIP: these devices typically don’t come with a power switch. Plug them all into a switched power strip to turn them all off at once and save the hassle of daily plugging and unplugging.
2) Shut down your computer every night. The computer is one of the biggest energy hogs. However, turning it on and off too frequently takes a toll on the hard drive and other components. The ’sweet spot’ seems to be roughly once a day.
3) Run your dishwasher and washing machine only when they’re full, to save water and detergent. If you want to go a step further, wash clothing on cold – it uses less energy. Then, dry your clothes on a clothesline. You’ll love the aroma of sun-dried clothes and the sun helps bleach whites even whiter.
4) I’m not too crazy about CFL light bulbs. True, they save money by saving electricity, but much of that savings is surrendered in the higher initial price of the bulb. Moreover, they yield less light and it is not anything near a true white color. The ones I’ve seen have a pronounced yellowish cast that more nearly resembles the candles of yesteryear than the advances of modern illumination. Overall, I’m thinking it likely that they are not good for your vision. I have one on my porch and another in my hallway toward the bedroom and office. But that’s it. I don’t spend much time trying to read in either location.
5) Cut back on driving. There is no need to drive short distances, especially when the weather is fair, so get a bike or, if you aren’t healthy enough to pedal, an electric scooter. I’m ‘iffy’ on whether it is environmentally better to use the scooter or fire up the family sedan … can anyone pump my little brain full of accurate numbers on this?
6) Use vinegar to clean your toilet. Just dump a couple of cups in the bowl the night before and then swish it around in the morning. But conserve water … don’t flush until there’s more than vinegar water to flush. As the economic troubles stretch out, you might want to learn how to make vinegar.

7) You might also want to reconsider the wisdom of sending 3 gallons of water down the pipe to get rid of 4 ounces of urine.

It’s cheaper to start your car again than it is to idle it for more than just a few seconds. Somewhere around the 10 second mark you need to decide whether to save money or spend it. Just 15 minutes of idling per day can cost you $100 per year. Got money to burn but like to hug trees? Idling also creates twice the emissions of rolling. It burns less gas, but does a much worse job of it.
9) Keeping your tires properly inflated improves mileage by about 3% and could save your life by keeping the vehicle emergency handling characteristics within spec.
10) Change your air filter at recommended intervals to increase your mileage by up to 10%. At two bucks a gallon, this more than pays for itself. At $4 and up, this is a stone solid no-brainer.

It is with sadness that I note, as indeed, many have noted, the passing of actress Natasha Richardson from injuries she received in a skiing accident recently.

But the Israeli army just killed 440 women, 110 children and what the BBC described as “dozens” of elderly trapped in Gaza last month. These are the acknowledged deaths. Others may still be buried in the rubble.

Odd that the numbers should be multiples of ten. Were they rounded up or, more likely, rounded down? Which lives didn’t warrant counting at all?

It was like shooting fish in a barrel, except that these weren’t fish, they were humans.

There has been no claim that the children were carrying bombs, the women firing from windows, the seniors throwing Molotov cocktails. Just assurances from the Israeli army that they are the “most moral army in the world” and that they would investigate matters.

Gee, thanks … we owe you so much.

I’ve recently begun writing about gardening in the Detroit edition of examiner.com, an online magazine specializing in local coverage of multiple markets (currently ~40). You’ll find me in the “Home & Living” subsection. But getting viewers to go there, while nice, is not the reason for posting this.

Don’t click on the above link just yet.

My first month’s pay is beginning to accumulate nicely and I’ll get paid again and again for writing the original articles. It’s called residual income, and it will build over time as I write additional articles. And that’s a key … linking new articles to previous ones gets the earlier articles re-read. They will then generate fresh income indefinitely. The more page views you generate, the more advertisements the Examiner can sell, the more money you earn.

It’s sort of like that “one penny today, two pennies tomorrow, four pennies the day after …” math puzzle, except that I don’t expect it to double each time, just steadily grow. Each new article is a link in a growing spider web designed to attract views. Each gives the reader value … and links to other articles that give them additional value.

They have a referral program, and that is why I am posting this.

With 40 markets, they still have vacancies for hundreds of topical writers (it needn’t be about gardening). I’ve referred four IRL friends. Three have read the deal, liked it and signed up. None of them chose to write about gardening.

The other has serious health problems and may be too tired to write at the end of her days work. Of the three who have signed up, one has begun posting and her earnings are already ahead of mine! (*)

It looks like “travel” is a hot topic.

You can write for them too.

Click here to read on, my friend.

When I was a smoker, I would follow a coughing spasm with some gallows humor along the line of “time to change brands”.  Eventually I quit smoking altogether. That was roughly 10 years ago.

I don’t see much distinction between second-hand smoke and second-hand television. Smoking trashes my body. I have no doubts about this.

Watching television trashes my mind.

Technorati Tags: adbusters,television,tv,t.v.,sanity

The BBC blog is posting a sob-story about a guy who doesn’t like it in prison and has set up a blog to complain. This blog has better things to do, but a single entry to refute the others won’t strain me too much.

As I read things, the guy came here during a recession in Great Britain and made roughly $2,000,000 in the US before he turned 35 by speculating in stocks. Even the legal stuff he did here, it would seem, added nothing of value.

That sort of work can be rough on your nerves, but there’s no real risk to your manicure.

Yawn. He got bored with that and began organizing raves in the Phoenix area. Good, wholesome lad that he is, he was no doubt concerned about the dearth of cultural events in Arizona and simply wished to invigorate the dulled sensibilities of American youths. Commendable, that.

Not long afterwards he was busted for money laundering and drug selling. Convicted, he was sent to jail for 9 ½ years.

And he doesn’t like the food. Pity … he’s got several more years of it left.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3735826.stm

This is the seventh in a ten-part series.

Most of us are considering the possibility that we may have to retrench our finances. For some, this goes unnoticed, just part of the ebb and flow of life. For others, it’s traumatic.

I’m one of the (yawn) group. I’ve had money. I’ve lacked it to a major degree. Actually, I think that I prefer to skim the edges of poverty. I want to focus on things other than money and the less I need of it, the easier it is to find enough.

Here are some suggestions for how to enjoy life on the cheap. Don’t try to do all of them – pick a couple, try them out and post back with your thoughts about how they worked out for you. Then try a couple more. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Click here to read on, my friend.

Some guy in Britain was looking for ‘little green men’ from a computer in his mother’s basement.

“The US government says this caused damage costing $800,000 (£550,000) at a time of heightened security in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks”. — http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7946393.stm

‘Heightened security’? Really.

Gary McKinnon, a British citizen who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, used a simple 57k modem to penetrate “97 government computers belonging to organisations including the US Navy and Nasa during 2001 and 2002.”

Thank goodness he wasn’t a Russian or a Chinese spy with access to a DSL connection. Or that Al Queda guy everyone was so nervous about.

This guy is a ‘door rattler’. He had an automated program which simply tried to logon as a variety of user names with a blank password. On at least 97 professionally managed network systems, the tactic worked. That tactic should NEVER work. Never, never, never! Every person connected with the security of those computers should be given the axe.

The $800,000 should come from the hides of those who were responsible for securing those systems and from the users who naively bypassed even the simplest of security procedures. System administrators can set access to require passwords … if policy from the absent-minded wonks above them will permit them to do their job.

Gary should be bought a very nice dinner and be handed a few bucks for having done this low-level intrusion testing.

The Iraqi’s would have charged us much more.