December 8, 2012

I got caught up on some of my work today, as well as doing some more organizing/packing of my office. I suppose it's pretty boring that we all spent the whole day at home, what with Christmas activities going on all around, but that's what we did. I edited an article to get it ready for posting come Monday morning, then I worked on recording some videos of AMD's Radeon HD 7970M in two different notebooks -- one with an Intel Core i7-3720QM and one with an AMD A10-4600M. Needless to say, the Trinity CPU aspect is a pretty huge bottleneck in many games.

Becky spent the day making frozen dinners so that we can eat and clean up quickly during the coming two weeks as we prepare to move. The kitchen was totally clean on Thursday morning, then it got dirty that afternoon/evening, then we cleaned it up again for Friday morning, then it was a disaster by Friday evening; by Saturday morning it was clean again, and by this evening it was a mess. I'm not sure why we bother sometimes, but it makes my wife happy so I go along with it. ;-)

Today's Book of Mormon reading covers the story of King Limhi and his people and their deliverance from the Lamanites. After that, I also read the two chapters about Alma (the Elder) and his people's flight, captivity, and deliverance. Some people seem to think the repetition of such common things is laziness on the part of Joseph Smith, but if that's the case then the whole Bible is full of such laziness. I prefer to think of it as the Lord repeating common themes with his people. The Book of Mormon makes the pride cycle a lot easier to see because it has been translated once -- by the power of God -- into our modern language, where the Bible has been through numerous revisions and redactors over thousands of years.

Something else I got a chuckle out of tonight was thinking about Abinadi and King Noah. I posted a picture yesterday that's commonly used in the LDS church. Try to imagine for a moment what Abinadi and Noah would have looked like. Abinadi is this old, muscular guy in chains with long white hair, and Noah is a huge, fat, wicked looking guy, right?

Except, nowhere in the record do we have any indication of Abinadi's age, and as for Noah, here's what we know: "[Gideon] fought with the king; and when the king saw that he was about to overpower him, he fled and ran and got upon the tower which was near the temple.... And the king commanded the people that they should flee before the Lamanites, and he himself did go before them, and they did flee into the wilderness...." (Mosiah 19: 5, 9; pp. 184-185) Tell me, do you picture this guy fighting with a sword, running away and climbing a tall tower, and then fleeing ahead of his people? Neither do I!

And for my quote, this one is to remind me (and all of us) that trials and difficulties are a part of life. Without resistance, how would we grow? Ask any athlete and they'll tell you: if what you're doing is easy, it's not improving you.

Mosiah 23: 21-22: "The Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith. Nevertheless—whosoever putteth his trust in him the same shall be lifted up at the last day." (The Book of Mormon, pp. 191-192)

Daily Check Up:
1) Scripture study: Yes (15 pages per day through the end of the year: Mosiah 18-25, pp. 180-196)
2) Morning and evening prayers: Yes
3) 15+ minutes good book: No
4) 15 minutes of parenting/relationships/children book: No
5) Exercise for 30 minutes or more: No
6) One doTERRA blog post: No
7) Use doTERRA oils for something: Yes
8) doTERRA Leadership and Mentor calls (Mon-Fri): N/A
9) Talk to two people about doTERRA: No
10) 15 minutes organizing office area: Yes (Probably an hour or so)
11) Solid 8 hours (M-F) working at my job: Five hours (on a Saturday)
12) Early to bed, early to rise: No (2:00AM to 9:30AM)
13) One AnandTech pipeline or article: N/A (Edited Workstation Guide -- forthcoming on Monday)