I’m happy tonight to introduce another member of the BJ Blogging family, Diane Heeney, who runs Strength for Today. Here are the vitals:

1. Title: Strength For Today
   • URL: http://strengthfortoday.wordpress.com
   • Author: Diane Heeney

Diane and 200 or so more bloggers connected to Bob Jones University can be found at The List.

Like Punxsutawney Phil, I have emerged from my underground tunnels once more to poke my head into the sunlight, squint, and scurry back into the darkness after seeing the shadows of a thousand cameramen eagerly staring at me. Poor thing - what in the world goes through his head? And why doesn’t he just leave the area?

I’d update on my life but nothing’s really all that interesting by way of updates. The New Roomie (the previous Roomie up and got married, which would have strained the current living situation a little) upgraded himself to a 32″ Samsung and a PS3, which means CoD4, Blu-Ray, and digital TV. Neither he nor I are particularly interested in DirecTV or anything we have to pay for, really, so we’re sticking with broadcast for now…when we actually watch it.

So, blogs. Got another four to add to The List: the husband-wife tag-team of Matt and Lee Jury, Mark “The Immovable Object” Smith, and Brian “The Irresistible Force” Buda.

1. Title: EvidentLee
   • URL: http://evidentlee.wordpress.com/
   • Author: Lee Jury
2. Title: Life is Worship
   • URL: http://lifeisworship.wordpress.com/
   • Author: Matt Jury
3. Title: budaful music
   • URL: http://budafulmusic.edublogs.org/
   • Author: Brian Buda
4. Title: Just Cognitizing
   • URL: http://www.justcognitizing.blogspot.com
   • Author: Mark Smith

No, I was not hit by a car (though I did almost hit a deer). And no, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet, though that trip is at the tail end of the planning stages, and I expect to go through with it in the next few months. I hear it’s quite a blast, though getting back on the face of the planet is kinda troublesome. Let’s just say that, with a new job position, new hours for that position, and new forms of recreation at a friend’s house, I haven’t really been home all that much to do a lot of blogging. And let’s face it - the age of the personal blog (excluding those blogs that are specifically focused on a certain topic or area of expertise) has just about seen it’s demise, courtesy of “new” (not really new, but perhaps mostly mature) outlets like Twitter and Facebook, to name a few. For self-published news digests, how-tos, and other related miscellany, blogs remain the sine quo non of their fields. But for personal communication, social networking sites have taken over as the new standard in forcing your up-to-the-second status on people. Hey, at least with blogs people could choose whether or not to view what you were having for dinner.

All that to say, things have been quiet around here, with the exception of that HCSB thread that keeps getting traffic on a consistent basis. To all who have commented - you should be receiving yours shortly. My source apologizes for the delay.

And what back-from-the-grave update would be complete without a notification that more bloggers have been added to the list? Check this out:

1. Title: GraceFlow
   • URL: http://www.graceflow.org
   • Author: J. D. Coleman
2. Title: The Mercied
   • URL: http://themercied.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Rebecca Phillips
3. Title: The Confessing Historian
   • URL: http://timtaylor.edublogs.org/
   • Author: Tim Taylor
4. Title: One Little Hour
   • URL: http://paulmatzko.edublogs.org
   • Author: Paul Matzko
5. Title: Cafe Biblia
   • URL: http://www.CafeBiblia.com
   • Author: Craig Johnson

Some of you may have thought that The List was dead. Actually it’s still very much alive and quietly ticking away back there. And just to prove it, I’ve added another blogger - Noel DeLisle. Noel and I had a few classes together, sang in a few official and unofficial groups together, and basically did most of the stuff that music students in the same classes do together. After a long blogging hiatus he’s back on the grid with a shiny new Mac.com blog, so drop in and say hey.

The absolutely wonderful thing about being a Christian and a blogger (I shun the term “Christian blogger” for all its baggage), especially one who, in a former life, was known for being wildly controversial on a whim, is that I can occasionally trot out the “old me” and stir up the dry bones of controversies past. Because most people think this is what Fundamentalists do for recreation, it is not considered strange at all, and people even look forward to the day a “Christian blogger” does so just for the sheer pleasure of ripping open old wounds and giving it another go-round.
Click for more…

Much has been in the news about this new “Storm” worm…a Perfect Storm-esque (hated that movie) trojan that’s slowly being filtered through the net by someone (Al-Qaeda? Russian mafia? the MPAA?) and will eventually do something to hurt someone or something. Anyway, I care less about that than the computer that sat here in my office for three days running every virus/spyware scanner on the face of this benighted little planet and probably still didn’t leave completely clean. In fact, I think it was so gunked up that I actually caught whatever it had, because unless the allergy count is through the roof (which, given the rain, is unlikely) I came down with something hard on Sunday. Try singing when you head feels like it’s floating a few inches off your neck.
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Okay, who remembers’ back when I started this site and people were thinking, “Who’d want to scorn mounty? mounty scorner? What’s that about?” Well, eventually word got around, one way, or the other, that no one was scorning anything and the site, in fact, represented mounty’s little corner of the internets. The folks at 1&1 didn’t get that message:

Since the days of the Caesars man has communicated in code. Nero (?) was the first that we know of to employ a simple rotation algorithm to his secret messages…and now ROT-13 is one of the most basic encryption schemes in the face of the planet. Still, independent of cryptographical studies, certain strata of society communicate employing various obfuscational techniques to render their communiques illegible to the common observer. (Yes, it took a while to come up with that statement.) Such is the case with an email chain between me, my coworker, and our boss, who has been involved in technology for quite some time. It all started with a Linux twist on everyone’s favorite video game meme: All Your Base.

Fred:

chown -R us:us ~\base

Why Fred copied everyone on what was, up until that point, a serious discussion is beyond me. Though it was getting close to the end of the day, and I guess he needed to unwind. So I replied with another favorite:

mounty:

b{2}|^bb

What Regex Shakespeare has to do with anything, I don’t really know. My boss, though, was not to be outdone:

boss:

Program Career_Change;
Uses System, Crt, Unmitigated_Gall;

Var
    Apologies : Integer;
{*******************************************}
Procedure Update_Resume;
Begin
    Get_out_Paper;
    Get_out_Crayon;
    Make_up_Stuff;
End;
{*******************************************}
Procedure Say_Goodbyes;
Var
    Speak : Longint;
Begin
    For Speak := 1 to 40 do
        Begin
            Writeln(’Goodbye!!!!!’);
        End;
End;
{*******************************************}
Begin

    Meet_with_the_Boss;
    Apologies := 0;
    Repeat
        Inc(Apologies);
        Writeln(’Sooorrrrieee!);
    Until Apologies = 40;
    Update_Resume;
    Say_Goodbyes;
End.

FTW. Bonus points to whoever can identify the language - It looks pre-C…kinda reminds me of Pascal, but then I never took a course in it so I’m not sure.

Oh, and finally, my apology:

<?php
    $apology = “I will not make the boss mad.”;
    for ($i=1; $i<=100; $i++) {
        echo “$i: $apology\n”;
    }
?>

Things have been a little quiet on the BJ Bloggers front. You guys keep bloggin’ away, but since the “blog boom” (wonder if that’s an original term?) fizzled out, there haven’t been many new additions to report. I would, however, like to post up four new bloggers to the list, only one of which is a recent addition. For some reason, the emailing feature that (is supposed to) email whenever someone adds a name half the time doesn’t, so when I logged in to approve one today I found three others going back to April. So, without further ado, here they are:

1. Title: It’s a Jungle Out There
   • URL: http://ajungleoutthere.blogspot.com
   • Author: Melissa Hays
2. Title: Here today and gone tomorrow
   • URL: http://heretodayandgonetomorrow.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Michael Schmid
3. Title: Have Your Fill
   • URL: http://www.haveyourfill.net
   • Author: Jon Eckert
4. Title: Keeping Up with the Joneses
   • URL: http://withthejoneses.blogspot.com
   • Author: Suzanne Jones

Stop by, enjoy the good times, etc. While you’re doing that, I’m going to eat dinner and go to bed.

Some Friday afternoons are frantic - trying to get things done before the day ends. Others are…um…not. I’ll leave it as an exercise in imaginative thinking to decide which today fell under, for me at least. It led me back to a stray thought that’s been banging around my head for a while. I shall start my discourse in true mathematician style:
Click for more…

Word to the wise programmers out there - this will be a rehash of a lesson you undoubtedly learned long ago. Bear with a n00b, though.

Mozilla recently released Firefox 2.0.0.4 (get it here). That meant that one of my priorities as soon as I got to work the next day was to repackage the installer so we could install it on campus with all of our options pre-set. This includes things like proxy server configuration, extensions, and pre-set options. It’s not hard: when you run the installer, you’ll find a new folder in your temp directory (Start | Run… | %temp%) with three subfolders and two files. Simply copy those folders and files out somewhere else and you’ve got the source for the installer. (Huzzahs for open source!) In a slightly related trick, you can package it the same way Mozilla did - use 7-zip and the copy /b command to create a self-extracting executable that runs a program as soon as it unzips. (Instructions available but not posted - comment if you really want to know.) You can tweak a number of preferences files (most ending in .js; some in .rdf) so that options are set the way you want when it installs. You can add or delete files. You can even set up default profiles to be used as templates whenever someone logs in for the first time…all in the installer. I found this out a while ago and have been repackaging the installer so that it transparently installs my options and extensions. Pretty nifty.
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People ask me all the time - “mounty, what makes America great, in your well-traveled opinion?” And I always answer, free wi-fi. Nowadays hotspots are as common as Democrats. Hotels used to charge extra for wireless internet; now they have to offer free wireless in order to stay in business. It used to be only the trendy coffee shops (including Starbucks) offered free internet at their shops. Then trendy restaurants started picking up the craze - places like Atlanta Bread Company and Panera Bread. Now places as mundane as McDonalds and Waffle House offer free wireless internet. Expect to live a shorter life courtesy of all those internet signals whizzing right through you, everywhere you go (except Kansas, who, in a brilliant long-term strategy, is staying out of the technology sector in hopes of someday running the country - they’ll live normal lives while we all die at 27).
Click for more…

Back in the days before Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0, I gave the old bird a shot. I gotta be honest, even with friends going ape over it, I didn’t like it. Honestly, it looked and acted like Outlook. (”New! Improved! 98% less features!”) It was a bad clone of Outlook - clunky accounts interface, no calendar, no tasks, no appointments, no nothing. If you had POP mail and didn’t mind restarting your mail client three times in eight hours then Thunderbird was the client for you.
Click for more…

Get yourselves on over to the list and check out the new bloggers:

1. Title: Broken Chocolate
   • URL: http://www.brokenchocolate.com/
   • Author: Philip Van Reijn
2. Title: Tangible Theology
   • URL: http://tangibletheology.blogspot.com/
   • Author: Rob McQueary
3. Title: My Mind’s Musings
   • URL: http://www.mindsmusings.wordpress.com
   • Author: Ben Howard
4. Title: InFocus
   • URL: http://www.givemetruth.net/infocus
   • Author: Jason Harris

Note on InFocus - that’s the former Fundamentalist Resource Centre (complete with British/Aussie spelling!) but has been renamed and redesigned into something a little less oblique. Otherwise the other three are all new additions. Go on by, pay them a visit, and thank them for associating with the fountainhead of all things BJ Blogging related, mounty’s corner!

Brook Coulson, of By Grace Elect fame, is the newest member on the list. Props to her…make sure to go by and catch up.

This, oddly enough, is post 500. I just now noticed this as I logged in to add juxtaposition, the official blog of Beth Murschell (BJU and, again oddly enough, UBCS alum), to the list. Congrats, Beth, on being the occasion of my 500th post!

Now I gotta go find a party hat for Groovin’ Guy (c)…

I’ve made some changes this weekend. The biggest is that I’m now running WP 2.1 Release Candidate 2. It’s interesting and all that - mostly I just try to keep up with the most recent releases. If you notice any quirks let me know.

Speaking of quirks, some of you may have noticed that occasionally this site looks like all the text has been piled on top of itself. I know it does this in 2.0.x releases of Firefox on Windows XP; if you see it on any other OS/browser, let me know. At the moment I’m calling it a Firefox bug, but just because I haven’t seen it elsewhere doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Thanks.

One good thing about subscribing to boring news feeds like the one for Wordpress.org is that you find out quickly when a new update has been released. Wordpress 2.0.7 is out and features a few extra security patches. The upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.0.7 was painfully easy - I only had to replace six files. As far as I can tell everything works correctly.

In other WP news, Wordpress 2.1 RC 1 is out for testing. If you’re the kind of person (like me) that likes playing around with release clients, you may want to download the RC and give it a whirl. I probably will sometime just to see what it’s like. I’ve seen screenshots, and I think I’m impressed. The list of new features is impressive, but then geeks are easily impressed by lists of new features. Time will tell.

I’m getting three or four new members a week using Cashette.com as their email domain. Since no one actually posts or subscribes using those accounts, I’m just going to start deleting them. I may even block the domain. If you happen to have an account with those folks and legitimately want to sign up, comment here. Also, if you used to have an account at mounty’s corner, but don’t anymore, and you think I deleted you for looking suspicious, comment here too and I’ll apologize or something.

I’ve got two ministries that have been added to the list. First off, the BJU Music Ministry Team has a blog and photo gallery up - check out the homepage for the Sacred Sounds Ministry Team, run by Joey Hoelscher and the gang, and hosted alongside my site by me and Jared Sutton. BTW, we’ve had some additional sites come to our door, so if you’re thinking of breaking out into the blog world, now would be a great time to do it! </end_shameless_plug> The other site that just came to my attention is run by Brian M. Lievens and is for deaf Christians. The site’s called Edifying Deaf Christians, and the URL takes its cue from Colossians 1:10 [+/-] so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.. So by all means add these sites to your “must-read” list for 2007, and as always, happy blogging!