Southern Bread Blog

With college football kickoff right around the corner I’m going to repost the gameday food posts from last year.

Here is an absolute gameday must have. It’s Rotel cheese dip. Mix up some of this in one of those tiny crock pots and serve with tortilla chips. Nothing else needed. Just don’t keep the heat on it all day or you’ll end up with a large dried out cheese brick.

I’m finding it so hard these days to cope with the ever-accelerating decent of Christian doctrine in this country. The church is focused on growth, growth, growth. Nothing matters except the numbers. This mindset is shown ever so well in that pinnacle of summer churchiness called VBS. I had commented to my wife before this year’s VBS race(like an arms race kind of, except with kids instead of warheads) began that it seemed like churches were in head to head competition with one another to claim the highest number of kids in their VBS program. That’s when I saw a journal post by everyone’s favorite Christianity-jaded rock drummer:

Also, we now know that “VBS” stands for “Vacation Bible School,” as the back roads and small towns of America are full of signs for that exciting-sounding activity. We were once bemused at passing a yellow schoolbus full of kids, the side of the bus carrying a banner reading “Soccer With Jesus.” What position do you suppose the Son of God would play? Have to be the coach, I suppose. And would that make Mary, the Mother of God, a soccer mom? (And if that’s sacrilegious, it’s certainly not more so than the banner on that bus.)

One Sunday morning in southern Pennsylvania, Michael commented on the Amish carriages we had been passing, with the little boys in their blue shirts and straw hats waving shyly at us from the back. Michael said he wanted to “save” those kids — by buying each of them a BMW R1200 GS motorcycle.

Different prophets have different ideas about saving others— but I guess even “motorcycling with Michael” might be more fun than “soccer with Jesus.”

But let’s talk about the weather.

Neil Peart, July Post

This is the kind of statement that the church needs to hear and heed. He’s right. “Soccer With Jesus” is sacrilegious. It’s also goofy and it doesn’t fool anyone. I recently saw a small church in the town I live in set up a small little carnival type thing on a Saturday where kids could come and jump in a moonwalk and, I suppose, hear about Jesus. What I wondered when I saw it was, what parent in their right mind would stop and let their kid play in some little carnival with a bunch of strangers when they know the whole time it’s just a way of getting you to listen to their Jesus pitch. I wouldn’t stop. Honestly the whole thing was a little on the creepy side when you looked at it from the road. Seriously though, what does Jesus have to do with soccer or moonwalks?

Those Amish kids that Neil and Michael saw really should be saved from that misguided system. But we have to realize that our system is misguided as well. The Amish have rejected modern affects out of hand and ended up with a monastic sub-culture that makes them unable to reach their society with the gospel. The major denominations on the other hand have embraced culture so much that we have made ourselves a caricature that is easy to dismiss because we look so foolish. Take the emergent church movement as an example. They have committed themselves to adapting theology and church life to our “current” post-modern culture. The problem is that post-modernism is anything but current. Nobody seriously embraces post-modernism anymore, and the e-church has become just another thing for the world to laugh at.

We need to rekindle the Christian mind. Our modern churches need to embrace theology, doctrine and clear thinking. True Christian theology meshes well with modern science. It also answers the most fundamental questions about life and meaning. “Soccer with Jesus” totally ignores that in favor of recruiting people so some pastor can say he has the biggest church on the block. Stop making yourself easy to ignore. Talk about the things that matter and God will be honored. Whether you have 100 kids in VBS or 3, or whether you even have VBS at all is irrelevant.

With college football kickoff right around the corner I’m going to repost the gameday food posts from last year.

This is a recipe that my mom has made for a long time. It definitely rivals chili as an absolute gameday must. I just can’t call it football season without having this at least once.

We have lately been cooking the ham with brown sugar and butter and then dumping the whole thing into the pot. The brown sugar/butter flavor really makes it good. Seriously, you have to try this recipe this season. It’s great.

*Part 1, *Part 2, *Part 3, *Part 4, *Part 5

Wow! What a long neglected thread of posts. I’m ashamed that I left this one swinging in the wind like that. I’ll do my best to pick up where I left off. I think that was going to be the so-called cosmological arguments. There are variations of these, but the main one seems to be the Kalam(an arabic word meaning “speech”) cosmological argument. Here is it’s basic form as outlined by William Lane Craig:

This argument is pretty simple, but it’s also extremely powerful. Step two might look tricky but it’s not. It’s broken down into two proofs for the impossibility of the infinitude of the universe. The first is the impossibility of actual infinites. Everyone is taught in grade school that infinity is just a concept. It’s not even a psuedo-number. The universe, therefore, had to have a beginning since not having one is an infinite regress(lack of a first cause in a causal chain). The second argument is an extension of the first and specifically addresses the only way an infinite could exist. And since successively adding to a collection will never “actually” achieve infinity then infinity’s can’t exist.

With college football kickoff right around the corner I’m going to repost the gameday food posts from last year.

You thought I had forgotten about the gameday foods hadn’t you. Pas aussi mon ami! I never forget about food. Food is a friend I hold close. I hold it so close that I have to buy bigger pants from time to time. One of my best friends on gameday happens to be Zesty Meatball Subs. This recipe comes from a crockpot cookbook we have around here. You can’t beat these on a cold September Saturday afternoon with a big game going on the TV.

Just pour the meatballs and sauce into some split and warmed hoagie rolls to serve. Be sure to sprinkle some Parmesan cheese over the meatballs before eating.

With college football kickoff right around the corner I’m going to repost the gameday food posts from last year.

This is not some crazy new take on chili, but it’s easy, and it’s good. I just pieced together a few good sounding chili recipes and ended up with this one. The only twist here is the inclusion of Molasses(instead of the brown sugar that some recipes call for) and the use of Smoked Paprika. You should probably make it a day in advance and just heat it back up. Chili is one of those foods that just taste better after a night in the fridge.

Just garnish with a blob of sour cream and some shredded cheddar cheese to serve.

Since I started back riding a motorcycle in June, I’ve been thinking a lot about motorcycle safety issues. There is a common belief amongst non-motorcycle enthusiasts that riding a motorcycle is inherently more dangerous than driving a car. I know this to be the case becuase I ride my bike to work every day, rain or shine, and I get hit with the “man, that’s dangerous” comment all of the time. I’ll say this up front just to make things clear: In a crash, of course being surrounded by seat belts and air bags is safer. That being said, I’m not really concerned with the crash itself here. I’m talking more about the factors involved in having the crash in the first place. There are obviously tons of old-timers that have been riding motorcycles for decades with no problems. So, disregarding those “freak” accidents that are always going to happen, there must be some kind of mitigating factor involved in a good percentage of crashes. What are those factors?

I think the answer is kind of complicated. It’s true that motorcycles are harder to see on the road than cars because of the much smaller profile they present. When riding, you are simply not as visible to other motorists. There is a saying amongst riders: “Remember, you are invisible!” But whether this leads to more accidents amongst riders is probably not as certain as you might think. When analyzing stats that involve any skill-related activity, it’s always necessary to seperate the people who have those skills from the ones that don’t. Otherwise the stats don’t mean that much. For instance, if there were 300 fatal crashes in a certain state but only 60 of them involved riders who were licensed, not intoxicated, wearing a helmet and have good driving records then that makes a huge difference to the meaning of the stats.

So what do the most recent stats say about fatal motorcycle crashes? I’ll list out the ones I found the most relevant here:

• 45% were not wearing helmets
• 71% occurred on non-divided roadways
• 37% were speeding related
• 42% were alcohol related
• 36% were improperly licensed

That means if I don’t do any of these things then I have a 231% chance of not having a fatal accident! Just kidding. Seriously, these numbers are telling. The first number that leaps off the page is the non-divided roadway stat. Only 29% of fatal crashes occurred on interstates and divided highways. There is a general feeling amongst people that riding on the interstate is a lot more dangerous than riding on side-streets and back roads. These stats show just the opposite, and I would have to agree. I tell people all the time that I feel a lot safer on the interstate where I have a wide field of vision and very few entrance points. Sure, the speed is higher, but everyone is going the same direction and roughly the same speed, so things seem to happen slower and the reaction time needed is actually slower. This post is getting long so I’ll have more later…

It’s been too long since my last post programming related post so here you go. We have a piece of software in our firm that consists basically of a bunch of msi installer packages. There is one msi file that is the “framework” module install and about twenty other modules that have a seperate msi package for each. It’s a tedious process to install all of them and using group policy didn’t work out too well becuase of the package dependencies. We came up with this script to solve things:

Set SHL=WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set FSO=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strDir = "\serverpathsoftwaredir"
Set objDir = FSO.GetFolder(strDir)

getInfo(objDir)

Sub getInfo(pCurrentDir)
  For Each aItem In pCurrentDir.Files
    If LCase(Right(Cstr(aItem.Name), 3)) = "msi" Then
      strMsiFileRun = "%SystemRoot%System32msiexec.exe /i " & """" & aItem.Path & """" & " /passive"
      SHL.Run strMsiFileRun, 1, True
    End If
  Next

  For Each aItem In pCurrentDir.SubFolders
    getInfo(aItem)
  Next
End Sub

The script recursively searches a directory and all subdirectories for filenames with the string “.msi” in them and executes them one after another. I got the basic sub structure from somewhere on the internet and I can’t remember where since it’s gone from my browser history now. So credit goes to anonymous internet guy for the sub code. Thanks man!

New version of PodWrangler today. I’ve been noticing that everytime my home computer goes into standby mode that PodWrangler was giving an error when it woke back up. Apparently the network services had not fully started by the time PodWrangler fired off it’s first GET request. To fix it I put in some power management handling code. Here is a change list for this version:

As usual, if you are already running PodWrangler just click the menu and select “Check for Upgrades” to get the new version automatically. If you’re using a really old version you may have to download it manually and choose “Autostart with Windows” from the menu once it’s up and running. Source code is already up for it. I’m probably going to have to make the same changes to PodPaper since it shares much of it’s code base with PodWrangler.

• Get the source and binary here

*Part 1

I took some time this afternoon and visited Jefferson’s homestead “Monticello”. It was a gorgeous testament to an incredible genius of a man. As I toured his home something about his house struck me. No, it wasn’t his complex wall clock, his fireplace dumbwaiter, or even his automatic parlor door; it was something in his bedroom. He had a bust of John Adams right there beside his bed! Why is that significant to me? Well if you know your history you know that both men spent a majority of their post-declaration lives at odds with each other. As secretary of state Jefferson was on the other end of the political spectrum of Adams. In fact, Adams struggled to find his place among the other fathers, and felt as if Jefferson got undue attention for his place in American Revolutionary History. It is even attested that Adams left the new Capitol when Jefferson was inaugurated!

But they renewed their relationship after Jefferson retired from the political world. They wrote letters to each other and established a wonderful friendship. Where is that today? I am not talking about peace between two political rivals; I am talking about that type of male friendship. If someone came into my home and I had a bust of one of my male friends, I would be labeled as feminine. This world doesn’t allow that type of friendship any more. These two were bonded by history; they had their hand in creating the best nation this world has ever seen. Those in that era would not have seen Jefferson as “strange” for his lengthy correspondence with Adams. Heck Madison would spend weeks on end living with Jefferson at Monticello; there is no way that could happen today. I long for that type of male friendship. One that I believe only two men can have. Today’s culture has destroyed that possibility and in my opinion they have destroyed the tools needed to create monumental moments in History.

It is only a historical oddity and not of much worth, but both men died on the same day..July 4th, 1826…50 years to the day that America was born. Now that is going out in style!

–Matt, on the road in VA