I’m often criticized for taking a lone ranger approach to life, and while it’s true that I’ve always been a loner, I’m not against looking for help when I really need it. I knew if I wanted to build a successful blog that I was going to need some kind of support to help me get going, and one of the things that held my site back in particular has been this irritating problem where the footer just wouldn’t stay where it belonged. It kept jumping all over the place and screwing my sidebars up, so as a temporary fix I removed the sidebars from most of my pages. That wasn’t really a solution though, so I started checking around for blog designers I could hire to fix the problem for me.

If I could tell you how many emails I’ve sent out to designers that never got returned, you’d never believe it. You’d think they’d want my business, but I guess I’m not enough of a lucrative prospect for them. Snobs.

Finally, one designer got back to me and worked on my site for a couple of hours, then gave up. He also left one of my sidebars crooked, but promised to look into it, as well as look into a javascript solution I suggested to him to fix the footer. I didn’t hear back from him again until almost a week later, where he sent me a “Dear John” type email suggesting that I’m better off going with a complete revamp of the site. Sure, what’s another 800 bucks or so to destroy the months of work I’ve put into my blog and replace it with whatever crap they had in mind?

Man, when you want something done…

That weekend I rolled up my sleeves and went to work on the blog myself. I only had a rudimentary understanding of CSS, javascript and whatnot, but I kept at it for the whole day and by some miracle of God, I managed to pull it off. The footer issue was finally resolved.

I spent a few hours more banging my head on the keyboard, trying to get my sidebars looking right across different browsers, but without much luck until I started using Firebug, which is quite possibly the greatest web development tool ever invented in the history of mankind. I was able to test and check the results of CSS modifications I made in real time, rather than saving the file, uploading it, reloading my browser, and repeating as necessary ad infinitum. It also helped me locate what file was causing my site to take forever to finish loading, and after I got rid of that it was like I had a new blog all over again.

Deal with THAT, you cheapskate freelance web designers.

Seriously, I learned a lesson here. One, that God is merciful. Two, that people suck big monkey balls. In the end, I realized my project here was going to be a solo operation after all. But I do faith that whatever I can put my mind to, I can achieve, not because I’m so talented and all, but because God is capable of opening up my understanding, and within His will, I can “do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.”

I’ve been so bombarded with the aggravation I’ve been getting at work that I haven’t been able to take a moment to weigh in on the Virginia Tech shootings until now.

What can someone say, really, to such a senseless act? What factors could drive someone so far over the edge that he would meticulously plan a rampage that involved murdering innocent people, many of who probably didn’t even know him? After all, the pain and suffering he evidently experienced is something we all go through in life. I have certainly felt divorced and disconnected from the world, unloved and unwanted, but something like that would make me want to take a nice long nap on the train tracks, not go and shoot innocent people up.

I have to admit I’m a little annoyed by the collective response to this tragedy though, which reveals some of the deeper problems I believe ails our society. When a tragedy like this happens, we usually see candlelight vigils, rallies, and of course, those ever popular ribbon campaigns, all of which seem to serve no other purpose than to demonstrate how much we care (Ooooh, look at me, look at me, I’m wearing an orange ribbon, which means I’m a wonderful, caring person who actually gives a hoot!) There has even been a call for a day of silence where bloggers and commentators alike are encouraged to refrain from blogging, or commenting on blogs for 24 hours.

This always struck me as a rather self-indulgent, Hollywood way to convey sympathy to those who have lost loved ones so shockingly and tragically, even if it had been done with only the purest of intentions. But more notably, it runs contrary to what Christ taught us through Scripture on how our works of charity ought to be made. We are admonished by Him to do such works as secretly as possible, which would prove to ourselves (and to God) that such acts of kindness are not made with the desire to garner favor from others, but out of a genuine love and concern for others. That’s why I tend to see these public shows of support as the equivalent of what the hypocrites Jesus spoke of did, who loved to sound the trumpets and wait for a crowd to gather before they performed their good deeds.

It’s not to say these public rallies have no place at all, but I do think they’ve become embarassingly overemphasized in today’s day and age. That much was evident to me when I noticed the scarcity of sites that were offering drives to donate monies to the victims’ families (to pay for funerals, counseling, memorials, etc.). I only managed to find one so far, but there may be others as well. If you’re interested in donating, the school has created a memorial fund here:

Virginia Tech Memorial Fund

The other day I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about an album cover for the group Trouble. He had recently bought the CD and after showing it to me, I noticed a few disturbing things about the album cover and pointed them out to him.

The cover depicted an explosion with a cross on either side, and in the middle of the explosion there appears to be a man with long hair screaming (an image of Christ?). Under the ground you can more clearly see the image of a huge skull. The sky itself shows a billow of smoke with an image of a face on it.

When I saw this I knew exactly what it was: the destruction of the cross at Calvary. Interestingly enough, the name of the place where Christ was crucified was called Golgotha, meaning “the place of a skull.” (John 19:17). See the connection here? The ground depicting an image of a skull… two crosses on either side of an explosion where the middle cross used to be… it wasn’t hard to see how blasphemous it was. I explained all this to my friend. Maybe he’ll see the same things. Maybe he’ll realize sometimes people are not who they profess to be. Maybe he’ll understand such album covers represents the work of a mind under wicked influences rather than under God’s own influence.

“You’re an idiot,” he said.

Of course I am.