I got my rebates today, significantly reducing the out-of-pocket cost of maintaining my antivirus stuff. Instead of purchasing a renewal license for my existing Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2007 installation, I got a whole new one, Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2008 from Buy.com, because, of course, it was cheaper (eventually). I’m always looking for deals on stuff I get anyway, so when it comes time to get hardware or software, I shop around a bunch. At the time of this writing, one can buy Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2008 from Symantec for $39.95 (plus shipping of $7.00+, no tax unless you’re in CA, MN, or WA); shopping around, you can find it for a few bucks cheaper with free shipping. Back in June, a few weeks before my subscription expired, Buy.com was running a deal that basically got it to me for $6.41. Pay $35.57 for it at the time of purchase (no tax, free budget shipping) and get two rebates: a $20 “competitive/upgrade” rebate if you can prove you own a previous version or a competitor’s product, and a $10 “if you get it from Buy.com” rebate. So that comes to $5.57 + two 42¢ stamps = $6.41. Not bad for keeping my antivirus software up to date for a year.

I say all this not to congratulate myself on saving $29.16, but to extol the virtues of being patient enough to take advantage of deals when you can. I’m not a big fan of buying seasons 1-4 of The Muppet Show just because you have a 20% off coupon, but if you’re going to get something anyway, deals abound.

A sampling of deals I’ve taken advantage of from this year:

• My QuickBooks 2001 that I had been using to make invoices and keep track of financials for my business was having problems – some related to being too old to get updates, features not working because of their dependence on Microsoft Internet Exploder Explorer version 5. So in March I bought Peachtree Pro Accounting 2008 by Sage for 41¢. Well, it was $145.00 from Buy.com again (free shipping, no tax), with a $145.00 rebate. Total Cost: one stamp to send in the rebate form.
• Ginger’s notebook’s hard drive crashed, so we got her a replacement computer (it was old and slow enough that it made sense enough to replace the whole thing rather than just the hard drive) – a Lenovo ThinkCentre M55e desktop PC from PC Mall for $294.99 ($344.63 including tax & shipping). We saved about $150 because it was an “open box” product but still brand new).
• Our soccer team has taken to going to Buon Giorno after our games on Saturday nights, so when they offered 10% extra on gift card purchases, I was all over it. For $20 down, I got a $22 gift card, which I’m using for my regular purchases.
• At various times, our local Tom Thumb store runs specials on meat. Specifically, it’s great to get Certified Angus top sirloin steaks for $4.99/lb instead of $7.99/lb!

Yeah, you can say I’m cheap. But I prefer “frugal” or “smart”.

I got another one yesterday… you know, the e-mail that tells you that if you don’t forward it to everyone you know, God will be disappointed with you.

First of all, I’d like you to know that I am a Christian, adhering to the essentials of Christian doctrine. (There are many places you can find lists of essential doctrine, including at the Christian Research Institute’s Web site.) So when I challenge the content of this message, I’m doing so from a Christian perspective, so don’t think this is another post bashing those fundamentalist Christian nut cases. Rather, it’s a call to think about how to effectively communicate God’s attributes and message by guarding against some ineffective ways.

Before reading on, view the e-mail here (an html-formatted version that’s pretty close to an actual representation of the forwarded-forwarded-forwarded e-mail I received) so you’ll understand my observations and comments.

The author specifically implores you to “make a personal reflection on this”… heh, OK, I will.

Hmmm, where to start? I’ll tackle the style/format/communication issues first and then move on to the theology of the content…

I’m no marketing genius, but you don’t have to be one to understand that the gaudiness of the format is just not a good way to make the reader receptive to what you’re trying to communicate. Six different bright font colors on a black background?? 24-point font?? The subject and first two lines in ALL CAPS, which we all know means you’re being YELLED AT?? And the styles and line breaks are set up so that there’s at least 5 times the appropriate space between lines of text, so you have to keep scrolling down in the middle of each thought. Honestly, every time I receive something like this in a similarly painful format, I read the whole thing only because I want to find what all is wrong with it. Reading till the end had additional benefits: I’m pleased to know that at least two people use AVG 8.0.100, and I’m happy to have that advertisement for the now-expired “i’m Talkaton” [sic] that someone’s Yahoo! mail or whatever appended to the message.

The author makes it a point to tell you this is “very interesting, read until the end.” Why tell me it’s interesting or to read it until the end? Is it to be assumed that most of the things you send me aren’t interesting, or worthy of being read till the end, and that this is a special exception?

OK, that’s it for the annoyances having to do with formatting and communicative style. I encourage you to read, digest, and act upon my post about E-mail Stewardship to avoid promoting these and other practices. On to the theology stuff….

What purpose is there really in pointing out that some people who disparaged God in some way died in noteworthy ways? (I almost think that the intent is to pass it around in Christian circles, congratulating ourselves on being spared from God’s wrath.) After reading it several times, I really think that the author is trying to tell you that you shouldn’t dishonor God or He might zap you. That’s very simplistic, but I think that really is the point – the examples are given in such a way as to draw a corollary between a God-dishonoring statement and a horrible death.

You know what? It could be true. If you speak or act in a way that dishonors God, you just might die tragically as a result. It has happened before: in Acts chapter 5, two people withheld what was promised to God, lied about it, and subsequently died; in First Samuel chapter 17, Goliath the Philistine defied God and His people, getting a rock buried in his forehead as a result; there are a number of such instances described in the bible. The problem is, even in these miraculous instances, you don’t know for sure if their deaths were a result of their disrespect for God; you can make a good case for it, but mostly because God demonstrated that He was using it to accomplish a particular purpose in history. I would argue that the vast majority of miracles are concentrated around significant spiritual turning points in history – for example, Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the establishment of the nation of Israel, Jesus’ earthly ministry, the birth of the Church, the bringing of the Word of God by missionaries to previously unreached regions, etc. You cannot make the case that John Lennon’s or the Brazilian girl’s deaths had the historical impact that Goliath’s or Ananias’ did. So, although it’s true that God can smite whomever He will whenever He wishes, it’s not consistent with His M.O. to do so, especially not where His greater purposes are not evident. While I grant that it’s possible that God did somehow put these people to death for their irreverent remarks, it doesn’t seem likely if you study how He has revealed Himself and and carried out His relationship with people throughout history. To reduce God to an impulsive, capricious hothead with a chip on His shoulder who one-ups his adversaries by putting them to death is to completely misunderstand His character and motives, and, worse, perpetuates the stereotypes that hide the true message of Christianity. Those who are vocal about their rejection of the Christian Faith use these kinds of things to support their views – they either don’t believe in or refuse to worship a God who kills off those who disrespect Him; and they poke fun at those who propagate such notions. Just do a Google search on “Death is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death” and you’ll find comments like this and this, as well as numerous bitter and condescending atheistic comments on blog posts.

The author of this e-mail correlates a disrespect for God with dying a terrible death, but in fact his examples are isolated instances that he conjures up to subjectively prove the point rather than objectively coming to the conclusion the majority of the evidence leads to. If you stop for a few seconds, you can think of many people who disrespect God but live long, successful lives; even worse, you think of many who love God but whose lives are cut short tragically. You have no logical choice but to come to the conclusion that, excluding miraculous events, which by definition are not normal occurrences, speaking out in disrespect against God and dying a noteworthy tragic death are at best coincidental. To claim to claim that each of these cases is a miraculous occurrence, the work of the direct hand of God, is to claim a revelation outside of the scope of His Word – a dangerous theological position.

I can’t comment on someone’s use of a verse like Galatians 6:9 in such a way without doing what we should all do when a verse is applied: study it, which means to seek to understand it in context, which is to understand who wrote it to whom under what circumstances and inside of what train of thought. Often times, non-Christians (and many Christians, I suppose) will read bible verses like random quotes or proverbs, thinking that they are universally applicable bite-sized tidbits, rather than being phrases or sentences that belong inside a particular context. Galatians 6:9 is a sentence or two (depending on which way the translation you’re reading breaks it up) inside a paragraph that’s in a section of a somewhat long letter that the apostle Paul wrote to a group of churches he had previously visited. You need to know a little about Paul, these churches, and what he’s talking about in this sixth chapter in order to understand this verse – you can’t just snatch out this verse and throw it at whomever seems to be “mocking” or “making fun of” God. It’s doubtful that the word that’s translated into English here as “mocked” even has the connotation of disparaging or making fun of. Merriam-Webster defines “mocked” mostly in terms of contempt and defiance, which is a much better fit in the context of this passage, which addresses how to treat wayward fellow churchgoers, helping with their (spiritual) burdens, embracing your own responsibility, and being consistent in your service of others. “Mocking” God in this context is defying God’s directives with regard to church service, fooling yourself into thinking you can fool God into favoring you if you have the right pious attitudes and words but don’t give evidence of your Faith by putting some action behind it.

So, while I appreciate the author’s willingness to do a small part to propagate the proclamation of the glory of God, I can’t help but take issue with the method of delivery. Indeed, God is powerful enough to make someone pay dearly if he rejects Him as Lord; but his method of dealing with people is in most cases an invitation to willingly enter into a relationship with Him, rather than strong-arming the person into submitting against his will.

To a certain extent, evangelizing (which is a step in the direction of the Great Commission’s charge to make disciples) is ‘winning’ people to the Christian point of view, giving reason for the hope we have with gentleness and respect, or “speaking the truth in love”. This e-mail fails on many accounts: it speaks the truth some, but mixes in a good deal of fantasy; the gentleness part is missing altogether; piousness rather than love seems to be the motivator here; respect and reason are discarded as misinterpretations of selected pieces of the bible are followed to false conclusions. It shouldn’t be the goal to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy, but it sure does a lot of harm to assist critics in taking pot shots at Christianity by giving them the ammunition they want. Atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists are constantly receptive to, and on the prowl looking for, information to use in their case against ‘religion’ or ‘belief in God’. Many times this information is used to obscure and take focus off of the main points (is there one God? is Jesus human and God? is the bible the true, inerrant revelation of God?) and put it where it doesn’t belong (“see – those people are nutso and therefore what they say is wrong”). Let’s not give them those opportunities. Let’s paint as accurate a picture as we can of God and the bible – the critics’ beef needs to be with God Himself, not with us.

Ginger was drying clothes last weekend… checked the dryness, needed to let them go longer, pushed the Start button, and… nothing! So immediately our thoughts went to the worst-case scenario: spending money (yuck!) on a dryer, and the painful process of trying to find one that just dries clothes without having all kinds of electronic computer-controlled features.

Then our thoughts turned to the best-case scenario – flip a tripped breaker. We went to the breaker box in the garage and noticed the one labeled “Dryer” was tripped, over to the “off” side and showing orange. It’s nice when the breakers are labeled! But this day it wasn’t going to be so easy – never before have I seen a breaker that just wouldn’t go back to “on”, but this one just wouldn’t. Repeated flips over and back just wouldn’t ever get it back to “on”, so we were stuck. Being the troubleshooter that I am and wanting to explore all possibilities, we even unplugged the dryer just in case there was a short in it or its cord that immediately tripped the breaker whenever it wound try to come on… but nope, the problem was really at the breaker box.

We let the problem lie for a couple days, contemplating calling an electrician because I didn’t want to get fried by touching all those scary wires in the wrong way. After bringing up our problem amongst our respective coworkers, both Ginger and I had people suggest it was a bad breaker; I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a breaker “breaking” or “going bad”, but that seemed to be the case here.

I unscrewed the panel surrounding the breaker box, exposing the assembly that houses the individual breakers and all the bare wires running into them – it looked like each breaker was a small cartridge-like thingy that could be removed easily enough. But I sure didn’t want to go digging around in there with my bare hands or a screwdriver without doing a little more research.

A guy at my work confirmed what I was thinking: I could turn off the “Main Principal” breaker , cutting power to all the breakers below, rendering them harmless. Then I could touch anything below without sending sparks flying. The idea was to disconnect the wires to the breaker, remove it, go to The Home Depot and buy an exact match, install the new one, reconnect the wires, flip the “Main Principal” back on, and have the dryer and everything else electrical still work, all without killing myself or burning the house down.

Back at the house… a borrowed volt meter confirmed that turning of the Main Principal indeed killed power to all those below it. I was able to unscrew the fittings into which the red and black wires ran, then basically snap out the offending breaker. I made a 10-minute trip to The Home Depot and bought its exact match replacement, a QO 30amp double pole breaker (no, I don’t know what any of that means) for $15.47.

It was super-easy to snap the new breaker into place and reconnect the wires. Now the moment of truth: flipping the Main Principal back on. It would be a good thing for the dryer to work again; better would be for all of the lights and appliances to still work; best would be to have no sparks or fires or injuries. Success! Everything electrical in the house works like a champ, and I even got it done in time for the SmartUPS in the office to keep all of the computer and network stuff running on battery power while the power was off. And we didn’t have to mess with scheduling with (or paying for) an electrician – it only took $16.75 and some patience, effort, and a little courage.

They say everyone in the world has a twin: you know, somewhere in another part of the country, or halfway around the world, there’s someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to you.

Well, I didn’t know it applied to animals, but it apparently does. Consider one of our dogs, The Mighty Throckmorton, a black-and-tan, pointy-eared 65-pound mix who looks like a Doberman-Husky with short hair. Often, he sleeps upside-down, legs in the air:

Throckmorton has a twin. Ginger sent me a photo of Lupus, an Alaskan Husky featured at dogbreedinfo.com:

So there you have it – proof positive that everyone – and every dog – has his twin!