Book Commercials & Misanthropic Observations

A little can of worms

I feel confident taking this area on, since I was a licensed nutritionist back in the day, but obviously I don’t feel all that confident about how it will be recieved or I wouldn’t have flashed my credentials so pathetically right off the bat. I think this will be a touchy topic.

Here goes: Nutrition teaching: Good thing, yes- BUT a door to the new legalism also.

Killer foods lurk everywhere. We know what they are: sugar, white flour, hydrogenated fats, to name a few. This killer is even worse than a diet of donuts, fatty pork chops and sodas, for this killer poisons the heart and thinking of man.

What am I speaking of? A prideful and condemning attitude.

There are people can quote diet rhetoric like pros, they champion the idea of only keeping the purest of food in the diet, but they have accidentally allowed prideful attitudes inside of their heart.

The truth is, some people get downright ugly about diet. “I’ve done the organic diet for xx years, and I have perfect health. I can run for miles, and can do things people many years my junior can’t even do.” They proudly hold this up in the face of people who are struggling with the costs of an organic lifestyle. But, does it ever occur to these self-satisfied souls that not everyone has the same metabolism, or checkbook, as they do? It’s an egotistical attitude to assume that what works for you will work for everyone else, and that there’s something wrong with a person if they can’t thrive on the same diet as you do. And if someone has arthritis, it’s not necessarily their fault because they haven’t completely cut out sugar. Maybe they just have arthritis.

Be careful, Faith Community. I honestly believe no one means this to happen, and I can’t think of a single malicious person in this area, but you are opening the door to a two tiered system. Good Christians who eat right and don’t expose their children to “toxic chemicals”, and everyone else.

How is this any different than the old “Worldly Christian” charge, where Christians were second tier for dancing, drinking, and going to movies?

The brain flu?

Last Saturday night I got the flu- coughing, aching, up all night nasty flu. Poor Paul, he couldn’t go sleep on the futon because our nephew, Cody, was over. So he had to gut it out with me. Then I slept all day Sunday and Monday.

I thought I was better and went to work last week, but now I laugh at how badly I wanted to be better and my utter denial. I made some really ditzy mistakes on the job, stuff that’s just not like me. I also vacillated between wanting to cry and being unreasonably crabby for no discernable reason. I was just like an overtired, sick 4 year old. Well, by Thursday night I realized what was happening, and called in late for Friday so I could at least just sleep in.

I made it on time, thanks to my new friend, Tylenol PM, but by 1:30 I was wiped out. I went home and slept until 4:00 and then tried to get up and go to dinner for Martha’s birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARTHA!

Well, my good friend, Martha, took one look at me and sent me home to bed. I slept from 7:00 PM all the way through to 9:00 AM. Stayed awake until about 11:00 AM and then zonked out again all afternoon. This is getting old. It must be miserable to live with something like chronic fatigue syndrome. Hopefully I’ll wake up one of these days…

Random helpful tip- Outlook 2007 contact to contact hyperlink

Question: In the previous versons of Outlook, when you were in a Contact, you could go to the lower left corner and setup hyperlinks to one or more other contacts. Does this option still exist in Outlook 2007?

Answer:It does, but it does not appear by default. You can turn on that option in Tools > Options > Preferences > Contact Options

We use this option to link cell groups in FCC’s database- it’s gonna come up when everyone upgrades…

Random Helpful tip #2

Problem: My Singer futura embroidery machine keeps giving me an E1 error, telling me I have a broken thread or empty bobbin when I don’t. AAUGH!

Answer: If you are using bobbin specific thread, (the clear, stretchy stuff that looks a little like fish line) your machine’s automatic eye is not seeing the thread and thinks the bobbin is empty. I know- crazy that you can’t use the thread you are supposed to use in embroidery, but there you go. Use standard thread. I got 23 errors on one project before I figured that one out, and didn’t find it on Google anywhere! I kept thinking I just didn’t know how to thread the dang machine. Maddening.

Random helpful tips

Paul swears I must have a secret search engine that I am not telling him about. Twice recently we have run into some technical issues that he has spent a long time trying to find a solution online - that I was able to find fairly quickly. Google is my search engine of choice, and he swears he does the same thing but with different results.

So in the interest of one more potential search engine hit for any discouraged person looking for resolution to an obscure technical issue, I will be posting random helpful tips that will mean nothing to the average person but will be a blessing to someone in a pickle.

Today’s issue:
Audio is lost when importing an MPEG file into Premier CS3:

Answer: If you’ve got Encore CS3 installed , copy the file ad2ac3dec.dll from the Encore CS3 directory and paste it into the PPro CS3 root directory. Once you restart CS3, you’ll be able to import the file with the audio. This means if you’ve already have a project with the files imported, you’ll need to remove the files from the project and then re-import them, or just start over with a new project. This works- we’ve done it on 2 different computers with success!

Whatever

ok, all you office fans. That’s cool. Whatever- if you are into the funniest show of 2007. I won’t knock it, it holds it’s own.

BUT- if you want to get an early jump on 2008- check out CHUCK. I’ve been trying to tell you all for years that GEEKS ARE HOT.

The difference between academic exercise and real life

One of my current reads is Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (Revised and Updated Edition) - Paul Ekman

I’ve come across multiple references to Mr. Eckman’s work over the last couple of years in the following books:
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcom Gladwell
• Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (Yale Nota Bene) - David G. Myers
• Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last - John Gottman
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts - Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

All these authors bow to Ekman as the master of reading faces and emotions. Knowing this to be an area that I can be hilariously imperceptive, one day this summer I picked up 2 of his books. (I have yet to start the second one.) I should confess that one reason I am so insensitive in this area is my simple lack of interest in people, and what I consider to be unnecessary melodrama. I also know that this is a weakness and should be addressed; hence my interest.

I am on a chapter where he tells of the different experience he has between
1. training professionals, CIA, Law enforcement, NSA and Secret Service in the art of catching lies, and
2. Teaching this as a college level course to both professors and students.
He states that: with the exception of the Secret Service, who surprised him with their skill level, both groups have an equal level of ability, or more accurately, lack of ability. What astounded him, though, was that the academic world was infinitely less open to correction and growth. The reason he states is that the academics had more invested in their reputations and could not admit to not being experts, whereas the law professionals knew they needed to simply be excellent in this area, regardless of how it wounded their pride to have to admit they were not as skilled as they thought.

Where this one aspect of this fascinating book applies to us is this:
1. We can be academic theologians, taking pride in our knowledge and reputation for Godliness, pompously writing off anyone who does not fall in line,
2. Or, we can understand that this is real life, and Truth matters and we do not already have all the answers. And we need simply to be excellent in our pursuit of being more like Christ, regardless of how it wounds our pride to discover (and have others know) that we are not as skilled as we thought.