Jehovah’s Witnesses Move Annual Convention Online

Jehovah’s Witnesses unite globally to stream the 2020 Convention “Always Rejoice!”

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jehovah’s Witnesses globally have moved their large annual conventions online. Across the globe, in hundreds of languages simultaneously, Jehovah’s Witnesses will be attending the program virtually.

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Oh Walmart

Limiting human interaction is bad for your mental health, wearing masks a good for your physical health.

Sometimes you do things that are really dumb and then you redeem yourself with something incredibly smart.

Last month Walmart announced it was going to remove all cashiers from its Fayetteville store #359 as a test. Now this month they are going to require all patrons to wear facemasks before entering the store.

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A Quiet Place

A whisper is better than a shout.

Picture the man. He is in his comfy chair in the living room, it’s Friday after work. There’s a pestilence on outside. Chores need catching up on. That child of yours though is aimlessly footling about the house. You know, being a kid. However, the time has come for their next chore. The man in his comfy chair raises his voice enough to be heard in the next room, “Billy! Take the trash out.”

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A Printer Reborn…later

Old printers must die so that new printers can get stronger … or something like that.

About a decade or so ago consumer color laser printers were a mystical device existing only in your imagination. Now there is common as the lowly inkjet. I’ve had an old workhorse in service since 2011 myself. It was a fancy one at the time, but compared to today is rather mundane. It is time for me to decide though. More toner or a new printer. Right now the printer has decided for me.

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Muses and Failure

Where does creativity come from anyways?

Today we seem to make an intrinsic connection between a person and their creative output. For example, an author is hailed as a creative genius when they complete an epic or trilogy. The creativity was internal to that person, it was they themselves that created the thing. Which is the case. They put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and hammered out the words.

The question I put to you is where did the idea come from. Where do all good ideas come from? In a movie I find dear to me, one of the characters who is an author suffering from writer’s block suddenly has a breakthrough. Another character asks how she came to this final detail of her masterpiece, and she said “it came to me.” Another character questioned how, and she replied something to the effect of “like all good ideas, it came to me suddenly and without method.” That may or may not be the exact wording, but the point is clear nonetheless.

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Caffeine: The Double-Espresso Standard

Caffeine comes in many forms.

Brass tacks: let’s all face it, caffeine is a drug. It is legal, but it functions in your body in the same way as a drug. The half-life averages five hours. But the hit only lasts around two. Afterward, the body has processed almost half of it and the effect is tapering off and quickly leaves the “useful” level zone in your metabolism. So the boost from your 8 am zip juice doesn’t last until lunch. So even though the caffeine is still in your system for the next 3 hours you need another hit.

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Stop It!

If you want someone to stop something, they need to know what that something is.

In writing we are told that the active voice is preferred. In education we are given both the syllabus and the rubric for our work. In employment we have our job description. In spirituality we have our doctrines. All of these things have something in common. They all tell us what is expected of us. Being a parent means doing the same thing. Yet when that isn’t happening or some negative behavior crops up a father will tell his children to “stop it”.

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Tickets to The Gun Show

Time to Dad-Up, and get a proper gun safe for your guns.

A man carefully opens the glass cabinet and pulls down a display case. This one has a long and storied history. It is one of the most prized in his collection. So valuable, because it was the first of it’s kind only 1100 were made. Of those only 100 for civilian use. Originally designed in 1846. When he looks upon it he sees the amazing ingenuity of a Texas Ranger combined with an American Inventor. It is his very own Colt Walker … replica. (He isn’t a millionaire after all) Right next it sits a box of 44 caliber lead shot and powder.

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Acceptance and Approval

Can I love someone who does things I disagree with?

Let us suppose that someone you know has made life choices you do not agree with. They’ve chosen to go barefoot all year long. You disagree with this choice. You think it is wrong, dangerous, and goes against all you’ve been taught to think about caring for your feet. What are you to do? What can you do? It isn’t proper to tell someone else how to live their life. Neither is it proper to condemn a person because they made choices different than yours.

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Did Google Forget How Tabs Work?

So this is something that has happened to me multiple times in the past in my chrome browser. For clarity, I use Chrome for work stuff and I do things like this in Firefox, which I prefer. However, where I work is pretty much now a Google shop.

I couldn’t click on any content, anywhere, in any window. I couldn’t even click to change tabs. My browser wasn’t frozen though, I could still type in the Google Doc I had opened on my screen before things went wonky. I could still alt-tab through the opened tabs in a window.

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