There is a repeating trend that occurs among the internet population that I just don’t understand. Basically it goes like this: little known thing is seen as awesome by the few people that know about it, some big shot exec somewhere runs across it, shows it to the rest of the world which immediately loves it, and suddenly there’s a huge backlash among the original community against it. We can see this happening RIGHT now with Michael Cera. (And the execs are capitalizing on it even, below is a trailer for Scott Pilgrim that shows him getting punched, repeatedly. I guess this is what the people want now…)

While I’m not really a fan of his movies, I don’t think Michael Cera deserves the animosity, and I find this kind of backlash to be strange. I’m the type of person that’s loyal almost to a fault to the things and people that I admire. They’d have to go pretty far to lose my support, but they can lose it.

God, however, is not unstable like the people that rage against the things that they once loved, and His loyalty to His creation (that’s us) is as infinite as He is. He will not give up on us, no matter how far we stray.

The Psalmist tells us of His never ending quality:

Psalm 102:25-27

Of old You laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
They will perish, but You will endure;
Yes, they will all grow old like a garment;
Like a cloak You will change them,
And they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will have no end.

The term constant is used in mathematics and physics to define something as unchanging. It’s the exact opposite of variable. God and His word are the only constants in this world.

Just as in Lost, Daniel Faraday needed a constant to keep him grounded in his correct time line, we need a constant to keep us grounded in reality. When the world around us changes what’s good and bad, when friends decide to abandon us for other friends or interests, God is there.

If we feel God has abandoned us, it’s time to examine our lives. God does not move away from us, we separate ourselves from Him with sin. Consider Job, who lost all his possessions, children, and health, and then had his wife advise him to curse God and die. To top it all off, his friends stopped by to tell him how horrible he must have been because of all the things that’s happened to him. After all that, Job still remained faithful to God. He knew that God would never abandon him.

God will never abandon you.

So I ask you, who is YOUR constant?

If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be God is my constant.

As a self-proclaimed Christian geek, technology is not the only part of the geek label. As a matter of fact, the technology aspect is more of a side-effect of my true interest: Gaming. I enjoy playing all sorts of games: video games, mind games (kidding!), card games, board games, table-top games, pen and paper games, etc. And I know that there are a LOT of games that I haven’t had a chance to try, and some that when I do play, I just don’t grokk them. But I’m not afraid to try new games to see what they’re like. The hardest part is the expense in buying a game just to try it.

That said, this post is really intended to discuss one of my favorite games that I currently play: Dungeons and Dragons.

Now I know that this game has had a lot of bad press (warning, large image) in its day. The negative imagery most people have ranges from ‘A game only for pimply-faced mouth-breathing 12 year olds’ to it being ‘Intro to Satanism and Witchcraft 101.’ Or, even more outrageous of a claim: it’s the cause of murders and suicides world-wide.

In truth, there are several well known people that play. I’m not saying that they are model citizens, but they seem to be somewhat well adjusted and they are definitely not pimply-faced mouth-breathing 12 year olds.

As for the Intro to Satanism and murder-suicide bit, well, it is what you make of it.

The game is of the pen and paper variety, meaning that it requires a pen and paper to play. (Or for those who like the tech advancements, you can use a computer as well.) These games reside primarily in the imagination and use paper to keep track of the rules and statuses of the characters and dice to help add a sense of danger for the character. They are played cooperatively against the imaginary world the Game Master has created (sometimes with the help of the players.)

Ultimately, however, if you boil the game down to its core mechanic it’s this: rolling a specific die to see if your random number plus bonuses are better than a predetermined target number. I know it sounds terribly boring, and it can be with the wrong mix of players. The fun comes in when you’re gathered around a table with friends who are working together to weave an intricate story that’s less about magic and fighting, and more about the interactions between characters from far-off worlds and civilizations.

Think of the game as Cops and Robbers or Cowboys and Indians (I suppose the PC way of putting that would be Cowboys and Native Americans) with rules to determine exactly who gets shot at a stand-off.

There are many different types of these games, some deal with superheroes, some with army and military strategies, some with spaceships and lightsabres. The differences reside mainly in the rules and the fluff: “Your med-kit helps your character recover from its injuries from the bullet wound.” Vs. “Your healing spell helps your character recover from its injuries from the sword cut.”)

Since these games are limited only to the players imaginations, which would affect the players’ descriptions of their characters’ actions, they can become either extremely dark and gory or light and funny. They don’t inherently demand worship of any god or demon, nor do they have any magic in them beyond mild descriptions such as “Bolts of light leap from my character’s fingertips as he casts Magic Missile.” Also I really have never found anything in it that would cause me to become homicidal. However, I suppose that anything can be made into a religion. And people can find anything to kill and die over.

If you are looking to play any of these types of games, I’d highly recommend sitting in and watching to make sure that they mesh with your desired play style before actually joining in. That way, if they take it a little too seriously, you can bail without any hurt feelings on either side. But don’t give up on the game just because the group you found doesn’t fit. All those words above this are basically trying to explain that the game varies wildly from one group to another and that the group itself is what makes the difference between an enjoyable experience, and something akin to fingernails on a chalkboard.

The group I GM for is composed of Christian men. (And one lady, if she ever got around to joining us.) We get together once or twice a month to goof off and act silly while I attempt to provide some semblance of story telling. It’s great fellowship and we’ve grown closer since we’ve started.

I am a Christian foremost. I am a geek second. I’m also a certified Dungeon Master. I look forward to telling you about some of our adventures soon!

This is completely disappointing. Wave was an awesome system and the only reason it didn’t get user adoption was because it didn’t integrate fully into anything that was currently in use. If they’d made it work with email or had it replace the interface for gmail, they would’ve seen a greater adoption rate. Expecting people to abandon something simple that they already know for something complex that they’ll have to learn that only a few other people use is just a recipe for failure.

We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

:: Update on Google Wave ::

I married my wife.

I apologize to those of you that follow me on Facebook that have already seen this, but this is a pretty big deal to me and I’m of the type to brag when it’s warranted.

Thank you so much my dearest for making these past 5 years so wonderful. I look forward to the next 50+ years.

I love you!

Proverbs 31:10-31
Who can find a virtuous wife?
For her worth is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband safely trusts her;
So he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
She seeks wool and flax,
And willingly works with her hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
She brings her food from afar.
She also rises while it is yet night,
And provides food for her household,
And a portion for her maidservants.
She considers a field and buys it;
From her profits she plants a vineyard.
She girds herself with strength,
And strengthens her arms.
She perceives that her merchandise is good,
And her lamp does not go out by night.
She stretches out her hands to the distaff,
And her hand holds the spindle.
She extends her hand to the poor,
Yes, she reaches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid of snow for her household,
For all her household is clothed with scarlet.
She makes tapestry for herself;
Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
And supplies sashes for the merchants.
Strength and honor are her clothing;
She shall rejoice in time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
And on her tongue is the law of kindness.
She watches over the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praises her:
“ Many daughters have done well,
But you excel them all.”
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
And let her own works praise her in the gates.

The elders at our congregation are really great. They give the men of the church plenty of opportunities to preach the word in front of the assembly. Brother Vinson and his wife recently identified with our congregation and the elders eagerly put him to work Sunday night. He did an excellent job speaking, and one of his anecdotes really struck home with me. Here it is:

Two brothers, both in Christ and in the flesh died of the same genetic disease. One said that if he was diagnosed with the disease he didn’t want to know if he had it so he could die in blissful ignorance. The other said he wanted to know the second it was found out so he could get everything In order, because he knew it would take a lot of time to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. We’ve all been diagnosed with a deadly disease — sin. Which type of person are you? Do you want to know about your sins so you can do something about it, or would you rather stay ignorant and be lost?