Why is it that any time a tragedy happens in this country, the media are so quick to blame everyone except the one responsible? It never fails.

As my wife and I watched the news about Virginia Tech this past week, there was almost non-stop discussion about the "warning signs" and how the police could have prevented more killings by shuting down the campus - and so forth. Seriously, why do we look to blame everyone but the person actually responsible?

Yes, the Virginia Tech shootings were a tragedy... but THE SOLE cause was a duranged college student... not the faculty that should have caught the warning signs, not the police, not anybody except him.

Warning signs are just warning signs... they are not 100% indicators of anything. There are hundreds of students across the nation that probably act in a similar way to how the VA Tech killer acted... quiet. reserved. inner conflict. anti-social. Just because someone possesses warning signs does not mean he or she will do something crazy. And if they do in fact carry out some tragic event, it is not the fault of the ones that "should have caught it sooner."

There are always things that could have been done differently - things that could have prevent any given tragic event. But the thing is that hindsight is always perfect. We can analyze all the events and determine what may have helped the situation, but lets stop pointing fingers at the faculty and the police and recognize that the shootings at Virginia Tech were the climax of how a duranged college student wanted to be remembered. It is just sad.

May 28th of this year will mark PhuseBox's 2-year birthday. I appreciate all the users that have contributed to PhuseBox with blog entries, photos, and remarks. Simply put: You Are PhuseBox.

So, to say thank you and to celebrate 2 years, the new PhuseBox site will be launched on May 28th. I am really excited about it. With this over-due release, PhuseBox will take on a new look and sport a new ways to contribute and interact with other PhuseBox users.

Hopefully, the hard work will pay off. Again, a special thanks to everybody!

PhuseBox should be running much much much faster now.

Hope everyone is having a great Easter Sunday!

Thanks for everyone's responses on the last post...

Ok. So, continuing on with this hypothetical situation,

1. What if they guy that decided to never become a Christian actually would have become a Christian later in life if he was not "bothered" by the door-to-door evangelism? And what if the person that DID become a Christian as a result of you would have anyways later in life as well? Is it worth it?

2. Also, Is it worth it if you pushed 50 people to decide never become a Christian (who would have otherwise) just for 1 person to become a Christian right then?


Ok, and I know that this might open up a whole discusion on predesitination. That is not what this is about... whether we have free will or God has predestined everything is beside the point in relation to these questions - at least for this discussion.

What are your thoughts?

Hypothetical question for the Christians out there:

Is 1 person converted to Christianity worth the cost of turning away 1 other person forever because of the tactics used?

Example: If you go door-to-door witnessing to people, and you are able to convert 1 person to Christianity, but... you also cause 1 person to never want to become a Christian because they are fed up with Chrisitans coming door-to-door, is it worth it?

More or less, is a person saved worth a person lost forever as a result of you?

MYSLICEOFPI.COM

Thanks to everyone that made my birthday special... Thanks for all the notes, cards, emails, messages, etc... And a special thanks to those that were able to endulge at the Cheesecake Factory...

And Rach totally made it the best day ever...

Fortunately, this birthday turned out much better than many previous ones...


photo from rachael

yummmm... 

Quick Question
What are you passionate about?

I know that the performance of PhuseBox lately has been horrible... I have tried to make a few changes to speed things up. I think I have succeeded for the most part... Let me know if you see significant speed problems anymore.

Of course, many have noticed that one of the things that has changed is the notification in the top bar. I am working to get this functioning again without sacrificing site performance, so just hold tight.

On a related topic, I am still hacking away at the new PhuseBox site. Stay tuned.

I decided to modify the notification bar at the top of the site for purposes of speed. The site should load much quicker now.

This change should be temporary, as I know many users check if they have new remarks or friend content by looking at the top bar.

Check out the Passion Podcast on PodPoint... They just posted a new episode with Chris Tomlin.

Anyone else think that Fox's slogan should be, "viewer descretion is advised?"

I really like it when I pull up behind a van with one of those flip-down movie screens. It keeps me entertained while I sit in traffic.

*Jimmy Stewart voice*

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!

Comcast recently overhauled their website with a very easy-to-use interface... very web 2.0ish.

I thought, "Awesome... here is a company that finally gets that you do not need to try to push every product you offer all on one page... simple, and easy to use. Very nice." Comcast was looking great to me.

Well, if only Comcast's internal accounts system was overhuled in the same process. It seems to me that all energy was spent rebuilding the site and not enough was put into connecting the site to the account management system.

Instead of making manual payments every month, I decided to register for the automatic bank draft on my Comcast account. Easy enough, right? The no-thinking-automatic-withdraw thing was appealing to me. The thing is that I never got any sort of confirmation. Slightly confused, I just accepted that the payment was going to go through, and probably at the end of the month. So I waited.

Bad decision.

The payment did not go through that month. And I did not make a manual payment. So, even though I registered for the automatic online payment, now I was stuck with my next month's bill being twice as much and, in addition, a nice late fee.

I tend to be understanding in situations like these, so I just thought... ok, fair enough. And the next month, in order to escape from the same thing happening, I decided to make a manual online payment in the amount of almost $300 for two months of service, assuming that this payment would overide the automatic payment. Good, I thought. Next month I will not have to deal with this.

Wrong.

It turns out that Comcat's account system does not automatically flag your account as PAID. I found a nice second payment AUTOMATICALLY drafted at the end of the month.

Total taken by Comcast in one month: $600. ((month 1 + month 2)*2)

Luckily I was able to get Comcast to reverse the automatic payment, but not before it did some damage to my bank account.

Moral of the story: 1. don't trust automatic online payment systems and 2. don't use Comcast

I say number 2 but in reality, they have a monopoly in my area, but that is a whole other blog post. Thus, I will continue to use Comcast, but I will be making manual payments from now on after completely shuting off the automatic draft.

Unfortunately, Comcast does not look too good to me anymore.

Frustrating. 

QUESTION 14:
What other websites or services do you belong to?

for example: myspace, facebook, xanga, flickr, digg, del.icio.us, yahoo, etc.

* Please do not use this entry to link to all your other pages. I am just curious which services you use. Thanks!

Again, thanks to everyone that has been giving their input to the questions I have posted.

QUESTION 13
How did you first find out about PhuseBox? Did you see a link on a friend's site? Did you come across it on the internet? Did a friend tell you about it? etc.

Thanks!

QUESTION 12:
Do you have a mobile phone? If so, would you use a feature that allowed you to upload pictures and video from your phone directly to your PhuseBox?