I do believe in God. I don’t believe in fate or predestination. One thing that has always bugged me is that if God is omnipotent, why do bad things happen to good people? I know the answer to this question. Simply put, he can’t intervene. To intervene takes away free will. However, if fate or predestination existed then this would also take away free will. So I believe that the preference is put on free will. Therefore, fate and predestination cannot exist. There is no ‘meant to be’. There are no guarantees. Life is what you make of it. Since people have free will, then bad people do bad things to good people. We’re given the choice to be good or be bad. Most of us walk a fine line between the two, but there are also people that take either one to extremes. I prefer the fine line. I think it’s the best place to be.
Blog
Memories
My dad was driving. We were headed from Las Cruces, NM to El Paso, TX; about 50 miles. I can’t really remember why we were going, I just know where we started and where we were headed. I was sitting in the back of our minivan minding my own business. Suddenly my dad pulled over to the side of the road. “Nathan, get out of the car.” he said. I was confused, Not knowing what happened or why. “Why?” I asked. “Get out of the car now.” he yelled at me. I was worried and scared. I didn’t know what was going on, but I obeyed. I got out of the car. Then my dad drove off. The panic set in like a tsunami. I chased after the car, screaming and crying for them to stop. My dad stopped, slamming on the brakes and pulled over. I got in the car. “I made you run for the border.” he said. Everyone was laughing. I have never laughed about that moment.
Pleasure, Pain, Passion, and Prose
A plethora of poetry, a lot of alliteration, some danger, some droll, some dastardly and definitely… some devotedly, daring dreams. “The time has come, my little friends, to talk of other things; of shoes and ships, of sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. Of why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings. Kālu, Kale, come run away, we’re cabbages and kings.” The time has come to piece together a part produced purely of prose; one of passion, of pain, of pleasures to be presumed… pleasures per chance to please the pang of perceptive paroxysm. A spasm of spirit, a jolt of juice, but a selfish desire can be like a noose. Asphyxiating my angels and ostracizing my advocates; making devils of dreams and demons of defenses. And so I say a sooth, per se, a soothing sonnet subtle and sweet a truth by trial or a chiding cheat? Riddle me this, oh Fiddler of Riddles, and fiddle me a riddle that will chiddle my gristle.
Well….
I don’t really know what to write. I’m starting this post, knowing that I have something inside that I want to get off my chest. At the same time, I have no clue exactly what it is. I have some ideas, but I don’t know exactly what I want to say about it. I know that i’m unhappy. I’m depressed. I’ve been depressed for a long time. I think I’m probably manic depressant cause I have times when I’m ecstatic and happy, but then things can flip in an instant and I’m on the floor. I’ve always had a low self esteem. I don’t know why I’m baring this to the open internet where it can be seen by anyone, but I think that it’s important to be honest with myself above all. My blog is the best outlet I have. So, if being honest with myself means writing it down here, well, so be it.
This needs to be said
First, I need to make this clear. This is not an anti-Christmas post. Nor is it anti-Christian, or anti-Jesus.. To those that want to say that, I’ll say right now, STFU. If you think that, then you’ve completely missed the point. Now, this post is why I think it’s wrong to tell your children about Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and ETC.
A step back
Tonight I watched a TED Talk with my brother. The Psychology of Evil by Philip Zimbardo. It was very informative. I want to take a step back here on my previous post. I think that my thoughts on evil were very incomplete. So I plan on spending some time thinking about this and in the next day or so I want to post about my personal opinions on Good and Evil. I embeded the TED talk below, just for convenience.
Think about it
While this video is very satirical, it does touch on some very important subjects. There is a lot of violence in this world. There are a lot of people that are upset about the state of the world. I know I’m not the only one. I think that most people are inherently good people. The biggest conflict is that there are many different types of people who have conflicting ideas. These conflicts cause strife among people. There’s not really much that’s wrong with that. We just need to make sure that we try not to offend other people who are different from ourselves. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I believe it’s not fair to stifle someone else in favor of my own view. Like I say in my prologue insanity is a point of view not a state of mind. Now, all this said, there are people out there that are truly evil. These people have no remorse, compassion, or empathy for fellow human beings. This leads them to do evil things. The hard part is trying differentiate between a conflict of opinion, and someone who is truly out to hurt you.
Thanks yous
After building this website I wanted to make sure I give a few shoutouts to some pretty awesome people that helped me along the way. So without further adieu, here goes:
- My Family: Thank you very much for inspiring me to be a better person. My wonderful friends who are also part of this group, (you would know if you were) I thank you as well. I am very appreciative of having you in my life.
- WordPress: Thank you for building a pretty cool CMS platform. Although I have my gripes and complaints, being able to build a pretty solid website in about a day is freakin’ awesome. Thanks for building such awesome, free tools
- ThemeGrill: Thank you for building a pretty sweet theme. Though I had to make quite a few CSS changes to make sure everything looked the way I wanted, that’s pretty much all I had to do. Your attribution will forever be in my footer.
- Ninja Forms: Awesome plugin dudes. Really easy to setup. Love the UI, and everything anyone could need to build pretty easy contact forms. Great work. Keep it up.
- Under Construction Page: Another Awesome plugin. Did everything I needed it to. The free version was easy to setup in just a few minutes, and had plenty of features to satisfy me while I setup my blog.
- Chad Butler: your WP-Members plugin was exactly what I needed to remove those gaudy WordPress login/register pages. (Sorry WordPress, but you should make it easier to customize and brand the login pages….) The other features of the plugin are great too. Love it.
- Mail Bank: Thank you for fixing the problems with the WordPress mail sender… (again, sorry WordPress, but really… just implement some features that let us set an SMTP server and stuff… really… c’mon…). Something you really should not have had to do, but you solved the same problems for several thousands of people across the WWW. So you deserve some kudos.
Uhm… I think that’s all. If you think you deserve some respect, some attribution, some…. something. And I have not given you an attribution. Please Contact Me and let me know. I’ll be happy to rectify any issues. (Also my Hosting Provider has strict rules about copyright infringement, so… yeah… please, just Contact Me first…. We can get it sorted.)
It’s ALIVE!
Writing software, and creating things is kind of like being Frankenstein. Sometimes you can spend hours on the smallest of problems, and when it’s fixed all you want to do is laugh maniacally. “It’s ALIVE!” I’ll scream at the top of my lungs as I throw two birds into the air. Meanwhile my co-workers are looking at me like I’m crazy. That’s what the adventure of creating this blog was like. It wasn’t very difficult. I’ve overcome much harder challenges at work, but there were some things that I would have hoped WordPress would have done intuitively. It didn’t though. Software is only as smart as its creator. While WordPress is a very good platform and I enjoy using it… sometimes, there are just some things it cannot handle. Then you have to install plugins, configure them, create more things, and pray to GOD that it works with the theme you chose. If it doesn’t… well… you’re f’cked. Unless you’re like me. Then you just modify the theme and make it work. That opens up the door to a whole new headache though. Especially because I did so much customization on this theme. Take a look here to see the theme in its’ default configuration. That’s how much work I’ve done on the theme. I think the only color I kept the same was that cool blue color. It looks nice, and I like the way the fades in and out when you hover over the buttons and certain links. It’s pretty sweet. All in all I’m pretty proud of what I accomplished. It only took me about a day to build it. if you add up all the time I spent it would be less than 24 hours. Now, I’m at the point where I can start creating content. If only I knew what kind of content I should create……
~Nate
Disclaimer
This website is not designed to work in IE. I will not test it in IE, and have no intentions of hacking my CSS/HTML to make sure it looks good in IE. This is the biggest headache of building websites. Trying to make sure it works well across platforms including the various different browsers available, mobile phones, tablets, desktop pcs, etc. Now, since Apple no longer supports Safari on Windows, you also HAVE TO BUY A MAC, to test with Safari. A bunch of BS if you ask me. There is a Safari for Windows download, but it will not be getting any more updates so you cannot guarantee that your web page will look good on a mac, ipad or iphone unless you own at least a macbook. Bullsh’t, cause I don’t own any Apple products. So I have not tested this website there either but have asked my friends to help me with that. For the love of god, just use chrome. it makes my life easier. I had to write all kinds of extraneous CSS just to make sure the layout was the same between Chrome and Firefox/IE. Beyond this, I will be doing nothing further to insure that IE is supported. Opera is a great alternative though because it supports the -webkit functions. Whatever you do, just don’t use IE.
If you’re using IE let me help you.