The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera Web browser

Well, I think I fixed a lot of the problems with the template. Hopefully the page is looking a little bit better now. At some point, I'll do my own HTML for the page so that it'll be super spiffy and cool. Until then, this'll have to work. As of this post, the page is valid HTML 4.01. Yay! :)

Let's try this again.

Have you ever played one of those games with your friends where you say a word, then your friend replies with the first thing that comes to mind? Such a game goes something like this:

• T: fish
• H: pole
• T: north
• H: movie
• T: Anastasia
• H: Russia

Well, it occurred to me today that web surfing is often like this. You go from one page to another, clicking link after link finding all kinds of cool unrelated stuff. When I first came on the 'net a couple of years back, personal pages were prevalent. People would have links to their favorite sites and the term surfing was used to mean going from one site to another by following links. Well, I do this sometimes and I thought it would be interesting to see how I found a specific page. So, here goes:

1. Destination: a neat site about a guy who built a lego desk
2. Referrer: who is married to the owner of this weblog site where the owner posted about her husbands recent purchase of 360,000 pieces of LEGO
3. whose site I found while browsing the links at another weblog site
4. reached after browsing the site at the other end of the Blogger link posted as part of that companies policy (you'll notice the link on this page :))
5. having first seen that Blogger link at this site
6. linked to by her boyfriend
7. whose page I found via a link posted in Opera.Off-Topic
8. which I was reading due to my use and advocacy of the Opera web browser
9. which I found and use due to prolonged exposure to sub-standard software, such as Netscape Communicator and MS IE (I am not linking to that site. As if they needed me to perpetuate their monopoly).

Yeah, so I thought that was a pretty cool. Of course, much of this occurred over a prolonged period of time. However, the final six or so sites are fairly new to me, found due to my boredom in one of my classes this semester. :)

GRRRR. I just spent about half an hour on a post. It was very nice and I was happy with it and now it's been deleted because of the incompatibilities between Opera and Blogger.

I'd like to point your attention to an awesome daily devotional guide, something I use personally, called the Upper Room. It's seriously good stuff.

Today there was an really cool devotional that helped me get some perspective on stuff that's going on with me right now. So, here it is (copied without permission):

Read Luke 5:1-11 (NRSV)

[Jesus] said to Simon, Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.

-Luke 5:4 (NRSV)

An exhausted body and an empty net were Peter's only results after toiling all night. Tired and spent, he must have felt somewhat annoyed with Jesus' request, [p]ut out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Without knowing it, Peter was living on the edge of a miracle.

When our efforts seem fruitless, when we feel too tired to trudge on, when the problems of life seem too complex, Jesus calls us to step into a place of faith -- to put out into the deep. To trust that if we simply do what he says, we will see God work in our circumstances. Though we are tired, though we have lost hope, Christ is with us.

Of course, most of us would rather have the path clear before us. We would like to know how it's all going to turn out. We would like to know precisely what steps to take to achieve our purpose or goal. But to see miracles we need to put out into the deep, spread out our nets, and wait to see what God will do because we have trusted. We are living on the edge of miracles.

Renee Miller (California, U.S.A.)

Prayer:

Lord, help me step into that place of faith where your grace is beyond my imagining and miracles are commonplace. Amen.

Thought for the Day:

Where in your life is Christ asking you to put your net out into the deep?

Prayer Focus:

Those who work at sea