Gutsy Guilt

Don’t let shame over sexual sin destroy you.

John Piper | posted 10/19/2007 08:27AM

The closest I have ever come in 26 years to being fired from my position as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church was in the mid-1980s, when I wrote an article for our church newsletter titled "Missions and Masturbation." I wrote the article after returning from a missions conference in Washington, D.C., with George Verwer, the head of Operation Mobilization.

Verwer's burden at that conference was the tragic number of young people who at one point in their lives dreamed of radical obedience to Jesus, but then faded away into useless American prosperity. A gnawing sense of guilt and unworthiness over sexual failure gradually gave way to spiritual powerlessness and the dead-end dream of middle-class security and comfort.

In other words, what seemed so tragic to George Verwer—as it does to me—is that so many young people are being lost to the cause of Christ's mission because they are not taught how to deal with the guilt of sexual failure. The problem is not just how not to fail. The problem is how to deal with failure so that it doesn't sweep away your whole life into wasted mediocrity with no impact for Christ.

More at christianitytoday.com…

Why Kids Tattle and What To Do About It
By: Elaine M. Gibson

When we bring an adult perspective to this process of tattling, or telling on someone, we fail to understand what is going on for the tattler. As adults, we aren’t sure what to do about tattling and we convey our ambiguity to our children.

On one hand, we USE the information the child gives us to correct another child’s behavior or prevent damage to people and property.

But on the other hand, we tell the tattler that tattling is wrong. ‘Don’t be a tattletale.’

Children can’t cope with such double messages.

More at All Pro Dad …

All That’s Good in Sports

The NBA is as good a place as any for working out one’s salvation.

A Christianity Today editorial | posted 9/04/2007 08:51AM

July was, without question, the worst month in recent memory for professional sports. Each one of America’s big three got its own black eye.

• Barry Bonds pursued baseball’s most hallowed record, the career home run mark, amid suspicions of steroid abuse—and a pesky perjury investigation.
• Michael Vick, the NFL’s second-highest-paid player, was arraigned in federal court on charges of illegal dog fighting.
• And, most damaging, Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, was accused by the FBI of betting on games in which he’d participated—the cardinal sin in all sports.

Overshadowed by these negative headlines was a noble decision made by Utah Jazz guard Derek Fisher: He asked to leave his team.

More at chistianitytoday.com…

Toyota Headlamp Wiring

I found this site when searching for help for my Toyota Tamaraw FX headlamp wiring kit. I got a standard wiring kit so that I could put in higher wattage bulbs. But Toyota apparently wires their headlamps in a weird way. When I switch to high beams using the auxillary wiring, BOTH low and high beams come on, and the high beam indicator on the dashboard does not.

Here’s the site -> http://www.4crawler.com/4×4/CheapTricks/Headlights.shtml

Many thanks to the author for sharing. Haven’t tried it though, but will do as soon as I find the time. :-)

Here’s another site with car wiring diagrams:

http://pdftown.com/Toyota-Supra-1995-Wiring-Diagram.html

10 Ways to Communicate More Effectively with Customers and Co-Workers

We all know what happened to the Titanic. Clearer communications could have prevented the tragedy and the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Communications plays just as important a role in your careers. When asked to name the top three skills they believed their subordinates need, 70 percent of the readers of CIO magazine listed communications as one of them.

Here are some tips on how you can communicate more effectively with people at work, be they customers, co-workers, subordinates, or superiors.

More at techrepublic.com…

The Forbidden City of Terry Gou

His complex in China turns out iPhones and PCs, powering the biggest exporter you've never heard of

By JASON DEAN
August 11, 2007

Shenzhen, China

Past a guarded gate on the outskirts of this city sits one of the world's largest factories. In dozens of squat buildings, it churns out gadgets bearing technology's household names -- Apple Inc.'s iPods and iPhones, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s personal computers, Motorola Inc. mobile phones and Nintendo Co. Wii videogame consoles. Few people outside of the industry know of the plant's owner: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. With a work force of some 270,000 -- about as big as the population of Newark, N.J. -- the factory is a bustling testament to the ambition of Hon Hai's founder, Terry Gou. In an era when manufacturing has been defined by outsourcing, no one has done more to shift global electronics production to China. Little noticed by the wider world, Mr. Gou has turned his company into China's biggest exporter and the world's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics. Hon Hai's revenue has grown more than 50% a year in the past decade to $40.6 billion last year. It is expected to add $14 billion in revenue this year. That is roughly the equivalent of Motorola's adding, within a year, the sales of CBS Corp.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

How to prolong lithium-based batteries (BU34)

Battery research is focusing heavily on lithium chemistries, so much so that one could presume that all portable devices will be powered with lithium-ion batteries in the future. In many ways, lithium-ion is superior to nickel and lead-based chemistries and the applications for lithium-ion batteries are growing as a result.

Lithium-ion has not yet fully matured and is being improved continuously. New metal and chemical combinations are being tried every six months to increase energy density and prolong service life. The improvements in longevity after each change will not be known for a few years.

A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges.

Read more at batteryuniversity.com

What Would Lance Armstrong Do?

August 1st, 2007 @ 10:49 am

Managers can line their shelves with books on collaboration and not get as much actionable information on teamwork as they would from watching one week of competitive cycling’s annual gauntlet of pain, Le Tour de France.

Football, baseball and basketball have always been fertile ground for team-building chestnuts - but none of those pursuits hold a laser pointer to the Tour, one of the most striking displays of teamwork in all of sports. Here are just a few of the ways that the almost two-dozen nine-man teams that compete in the twenty-day July race are an exemplar of collaboration.

Read more at the BNET Business Network

Forget What You Learned in Grade School: Five Teamwork Myths

August 1st, 2007 @ 9:00 am

Since we were all knee-high to a whiteboard, we’ve been told that we need to work well as part of a team, that the team trumps the individual, that every leader is only as good as his team. Team team team team team. Who didn’t ride the pine in Little League so everyone could get a few minutes of playing time?

But now that we’re adults, cynics — many of us full-blown skeptics — can we really believe that this idea of team is the holy grail of productivity and success? Anyone whose days are spent trying to squeeze in work between all of their meetings can tell you that team unity can sometimes be counterproductive. And it seems that the only people who get anything out of you and your officemates catching a backward-falling coworker is the consulting company that charged $5,000 to show you how to do it.

So just as we adults have learned that you can, in fact, drink too much milk or water, we also must question the grade-school wisdom we’ve always assumed to be true about teamwork.

Read more at BNET Business Network

12 IT skills that employers can't say no to

Have you spoken with a high-tech recruiter or professor of computer science lately? According to observers across the country, the technology skills shortage that pundits were talking about a year ago is real (see "Workforce crisis: Preparing for the coming IT crunch").

"Everything I see in Silicon Valley is completely contrary to the assumption that programmers are a dying breed and being offshored," says Kevin Scott, senior engineering manager at Google and a founding member of the professions and education boards at the Association for Computing Machinery. "From big companies to start-ups, companies are hiring as aggressively as possible."

Many recruiters say there are more open positions than they can fill, and according to Kate Kaiser, associate professor of IT at Marquette University in Milwaukee, students are getting snapped up before they graduate. In January, Kaiser asked the 34 students in the systems analysis and design class she was teaching how many had already accepted offers to begin work after graduating in May. Twenty-four students raised their hands. "I feel sure the other 10 who didn't have offers at that time have all been given an offer by now," she says.

Suffice it to say, the market for IT talent is hot, but only if you have the right skills. If you want to be part of the wave, take a look at what eight experts -- including recruiters, curriculum developers, computer science professors and other industry observers -- say are the hottest skills of the near future.

Read more at networkworldasia.com

Bluetooth ActiveSync Guide for i-mate Smartphone2

In this article we show how to configure and use your desktop or notebook as a Bluetooth ActiveSync partner for your i-mate Smartphone2. The Windows Mobile Smartphone based i-mate Smartphone2 is also known as XPhone or SPV E200 in other markets.

To make this guide we have used a desktop running Windows 2000 Pro with a TDK USB Bluetooth (version 1.4.2.18) as the client.

Check out other Geekzone Bluetooth Guides for more step-by-step pages!

This guide is based on Windows 2000 machines. The dialogs for Windows XP might be a little different, but the configuration will be the same.

Read more at Geekzone

No More Big Ideas

Six years ago, Phil Vischer revolutionized Christian family entertainment by selling 30 million Veggie Tales videos. He was running the largest animation studio between the coasts, and had dreams that his empire, known as Big Idea Productions, would become the next Disney.

But by 2003 his dream was over. After a heartbreaking court decision, later overturned on appeal, Big Idea declared bankruptcy, and Vischer sold the company’s assets, including his computer animated characters Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. His new book, Me, Myself, and Bob (Nelson, 2007) tells the story of Big Idea’s rise and fall. We sat down with Vischer to talk about what he’s learned.

Read more at CT Leadership Journal

"Ghost" Windows XP for free

If you have ever had the pleasure of re-installing Windows XP from scratch, you know what a hassle it can be. The idea of endless tweaks, patches, driver hunts, reboots, and scouring the web for software does not exactly fill me with glee. Did I mention the reboots? For me, the worst part is the sinking realization that when I finish the endless tweaks and software installs, I may end up doing the entire process over again from scratch six-to-eight months down the road. Why? Masochism may be one answer, but a more probable answer is an unexpected bout of spyware, a rogue virus, or a bloated registry that is causing the system to behave erratically.

Read more at TipsFor.us

Killing the Crapware Problem on PCs

As many readers know, I'm not a fan of the Apple ads, but this one was spot on and not to mention funny. Poor old PC looked like a balloon and his dangling arms almost made him look like Jabba the Hutt.

One of the things that bother me the most about the PC industry is the inclusion of all that crapware (or crapplets) PC makers put into their computers. The same thing extends to the software industry as a whole. Every time you download some software, you're prompted (often the default setting) to install some kind of add-on for your Web Browser. By the time it's all said and done, we're looking at a computer that spends three to five minutes booting up and a Web Browser that's so jacked up that half the screen real estate is taken up by utilities that people never use. Of course, this isn't entirely unique to the PC industry, and I've seen Macs loaded with lots of junk during the startup process as well, but at least you don't get all that crap in a brand new Mac.

The first thing I do whenever I get a PC from any computer maker is format the entire hard drive and start with a clean slate. This isn't feasible for most people, so I'll usually resort to my second option, which is to clean out the startup with the MSCONFIG utility you can run from the start - run prompt (run prompt not needed with Vista).

Read more at ZDNet Blogs