Author Archive

Three Great Signs of a Healthy Parish: Sign 1 Crossed Arms at Communion

Posted: November 23, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
Tags: , ,

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.“

John 4:10

There are many blessings that come from attending Mass and the pleasures are amplified when there are so many signs of a parish that is strong and healthy in plain view. In between other subjects I’ll be touching on some of these things this week.

The first sign is something that might not be obvious even to a catholic but leaped out at me yesterday.

Due to COVID restrictions have the pews in the church are unused (closed off with police tape) so when DaWife and I arrived we ended up sitting in the very front pew of the church (something she absolutely hates). A pew that is a tad unusual and different than most, it’s used as a handicapped friendly area. A pew which had been in front of it was removed to fit self propelled and standard wheelchairs so the kneeler is a full yard in front of where you sit.

This had significance today because due to a commitment yesterday I was not in town for confession so when it was time for communion I went up with crossed arms and instead received from the priest, host held in his hand, the following blessing:

May the blessing of almighty God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you all day long.

One can choose to remain in a pew of course but doing this not only gives the benefit of a blessing but also demonstrates respect for the Holy Eucharist for as St. Paul tells us:

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

1 Cor 11:23-29

Because I did not receive myself instead of kneeling I sat and watched those who went up to receive. In the front row I had a very good view of everyone particularly because of the COVID restrictions that allow only a single file.

Quite a few people bowed or keeled before receiving (not to give homage to the priest but to Christ who they acknowledged as present in the Eucharist) but there were quite a few, in fact rather a lot who like me came forward with crossed arms getting the same blessing as me.

Many of course where children who had not received their 1st communion but almost as many were adults young and old, who for whatever reason either missing confession or breaking the one hour fast before receiving or whatever other reason understood they were not properly disposed for the Eucharist.

I was impressed, that act, particularly by the young because it would be SO easy to remain in the pew, instead each made a public act acknowledging

  1. The reality and significance of the Eucharist
  2. The necessity of being in a proper state to receive Christ in the Eucharist
  3. Their current state of being unworthy, for whatever reason to receive it

These things reflect

  1. The acknowledgement of Christ in the Eucharist
  2. The holiness of God and the respect he deserves
  3. The conscious of sin and the need to repent of it
  4. The value of the blessing of the Lord

A parish full of people who see these things is a parish well catechized and a well catechized parish is a healthy one.

(Oh and the Priest found time to give me confession after mass but more on that later this week.)

30 (33) Tips to Stay Married 30 (33) Years: # 33 Repeat it Back

Posted: November 22, 2020 by datechguy in culture, personal
Tags: ,

“Quite obviously you don’t think alike,” Kirk said, “or both of you would have offered that remark simultaneously and in the same words.”

“True but not relevant, Captain, if I may so observe,” said Spock Two, “Even if we thought exactly alike at the moment of creation of the replicate, from then on our experiences differ slightly —beginning, of course, with the simple difference that we occupy different positions in space-time. This will create a divergence in our thinking which will inevitably widen as time goes on.”

“The difference, however, may remain trivial for some significant time to come.” said Spock One.

“We are already disagreeing, are we not?” Spoke Two said coldly, ‘That is already a nontrivial difference.”

James Blish Spock Must Die 1970

This was a piece of advice that came up in conversation with a couple who have been married 47 years who my wife and I was visiting. I was so impressed with this piece of advice that it is our final piece of advice.

“When you have something to convey to your partner, when you’ve told them, ask him or her to repeat back what they understood you to say, not what they heard you say but what they understood you to say.”

No matter what the culture or academics say men and women are different but more than that PEOPLE are different and understand things differently. You can have five eye witnesses to an event and each will have a different spin on what they saw.

People in a marriage are no different, they have different backgrounds, different experiences and different way of looking at things, they can see and hear the same thing and come back with totally different interpretations of it.

So when you say something that’s really important don’t assume he or she thinks you mean what YOU think you mean. Ask them to say how they took it.

This has the potential to save days of potential arguments.

My thanks to Mar Mar and Mike for this input. I wish I had heard it 30 years earlier.

The 30 (33) tips so far

Brave Dominion Runs away in PA (Update and locked out of Twitter AGAIN (6th time)

Posted: November 21, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

It’s very rare that I unfollow someone on twitter but when John McCormick referred to the problems with Dominion voting systems as a “conspiracy theory” I had enough.

While there’s not a big demand for programmers nearing 60 who haven’t written a line of code in decades these days I still know the principles that programming is based on. In fact I’m old enough to remember being laughed at when I warned a friend that if they were connected to the net the net was connected to them and they were better off shutting their machine down than leaving on and connected unintended overnight.

Of course you don’t have to go back that far to remember the days when the MSM had issues with Dominion voting machines, just back to last year…:

Chinese parts, hidden ownership, growing scrutiny: Inside America’s biggest maker of voting machines

Scrutiny of the U.S. election system, spurred by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, has put Election Systems & Software in the political spotlight.

Of course now that there are questions about a Democrat “victory” you don’t hear stuff like this from NBC instead you see people with a lot of digits in their twitter profile saying…

The real comedy is that they are still saying this AFTER Dominion decided to cut and run from a scheduled Pennsylvania hearing before the state legislature:

On Friday, Republican members on the State Government Committee slammed Dominion Voting Systems after Dominion company canceled a scheduled appearance to discuss voting irregularities.

The Pennsylvania House Republicans tweeted, “Transparency is key for our election security. Dominion Voting Software is asking us to give them only blind trust. We’re very disappointed in Dominion’s last minute cancelation in today’s hearing.”

spelling error in original

Deb Heine has more:

“Why would a vender of public goods fear discussing their product sold to the public for the public good? If Dominion’s products were successful and operated as they were supposed to, why wouldn’t Dominion take the opportunity to publicly review its success?” Grove demanded. “How hard is it to say, ‘our ballot machines worked exactly as promised and they’re 100 percent accurate’?”

“After weeks of accusations, why has Dominion Voting Systems not released any analysis of the success of its voting machines to the public in order to stop their accusers in their tracks? If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding from us?” he asked.

“Today I am saddened to report to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the 1.3 million voters who trusted Dominion Voting Systems with their ballots, that Dominion Voting Systems has hung you out to dry and slapped you in your faces.” the committee chair declared.

Because nothing says “conspiracy theory” like a vendor cutting and running before the hearing of a legislature that’s going to decide if they results they produced were valid.

Perhaps someone ought to tell the left’s enablers this, I’m sure we’ll try until of course twitter or facebook locks them out for it.

Unexpectedly of course

Update: the fellow in that tweet above took exception to what I was arguing so I gave him these links plus one from the BBC on how to spot vote fraud:

Every single one of those cases took place in this election but our exchange ended rather abruptly once guess why…

So of course I tweeted the link out again guess what happened?

I suspect my leftist friend will not mourn my lockout all that much.

Oh one note, every time I’m locked out and win my appeal the tweet still isn’t showing up in my timeline. They are keeping that link well hidden, just like Dominion but here is the link to the tweet that doesn’t work anymore

https://twitter.com/DaTechGuyblog/status/1330179637876547584

Update 2: Welcome Whatfinger readers, check out my podcast yesterday to hear what I had to say on these subjects and others and of course my magnificent seven writers.

I don’ t know if I’m on the pace to set the world record for most times locked out of twitter then restored with an apology (as I refuse to delete my tweets) but we’ll see it coming.

Update 3: The text of my appeal

For what is now the 6th time in under 20 days you have locked me out claiming that I was spreading intimate images when I was in fact each time tweeting out a link to a post on Benford’s statistical law which demonstrates the impossibility of Joe Biden’s magic ballots.

Moreover Every time I have appealed you have upheld said appeal apologized and claimed my lockout was an error. YET EVERY SINGLE TIME AFTER THESE “apologies” I HAVE RETWEETED THE VERY SAME LINK TO THE VERY SAME PIECE AND WAS LOCKED OUT WITH THE VERY SAME FALSE ACCUSATION AGAINST ME.

To say this is despicable and dishonorable is to not only repeat myself from previous appeals but to say something that is so apparent that it almost doesn’t need saying. That you still do this demonstrate why other alternatives like Parler are doing so well.

Bottom line you’re accusation is false and I’m not only not going to delete the tweet but after this appeal is won I will test to see if your upcoming “apology” and assertion of a “mistake” is worth any more than it was the last five times you sent them.

At least my next lockout for that same link will be lucky number 7.

Cryptocurrents

Posted: November 21, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The Senate Judiciary Committee hauled tech titans His Most Serene and Excellent Kahuna of Twitter and Mark “I am not a Zeta Reticulan” Zuckerberg of Facebook to their Zoom cameras to testify about their policies for censoring conservatives on their respective sites this week. The Republicans on the Committee railed about how these businessmen were running their private companies the way they wanted to, which is wrong these days, while the Democrats cried out for more and better censorship- er, barriers against misinformation, which is typically information they wish everyone would miss.

But in a way, Twitter and Facebook are yesterday’s technology, anyway. More interesting developments took place in one of tomorrow’s technologies, that is, blockchains and cryptocurrencies. October 31 was the twelfth anniversary since a link to the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” appeared on a cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com. A couple months later, Bitcoin launched — January 9, 2009. Two years later, one Bitcoin was worth 35 cents. On January 9, 2012, a Bitcoin was worth $6.65. Today, Bitcoin stands at $18,685, with some expecting it to hit $65,000, and has a market cap of almost $347 billion.

It’s a reflection of how cryptocurrencies are slowly but surely ingratiating themselves into the ecosystem. PayPal recently began facilitating the purchase of Bitcoin and one of the other leading cryptocurrencies, Ethereum. Both Mastercard and Visa offer cryptocurrency cards, and Visa has also partnered with leading crypto exchange Coinbase.

Cryptocurrencies exist on a digital technology called blockchains, which allows for secure, decentralized, and anonymous transactions beyond the reach of authorities. Which presents its own twists. Blockchains also allow complex financial transactions to take place in minutes, where the current system takes days, maybe a week.

And Friday, payments startup company Circle announced that it had partnered with the Venezuelan government-in-exile led by Juan Guaidó (recognized by the United States, Canada, Brazil and over 50 other nations as the legitimate Venezuelan government). In fact, Circle was also working with the U.S. government to essentially convert seized Venezuelan funds into a cryptocurrency called USDC – which is pegged to the value of one American dollar – to bypass financial controls imposed by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Of course, with any new technology, regulation in the blockchain world is thin (but thickening up), and the price ticker for bitcoin can look like the heart monitor of a tweeker going cold turkey. Caveat emptor,

But as the U.S. government buries the dollar in Marianas-level depths of debt – and this before the Democrat moves into the White House, promising to give out trillions more – there might be worse ideas than finding alternative forms of currency.

The fact that you can hide secret messages in the currency is just the icing.

Update, 11/21/2020 1:21 PM. Fixed a couple of the links.

Older Entries
Newer Entries