Monthly Archives: June 2011

Sims 3 reinstalled

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My test sim has completed a “Deep Thought” ice sculpture. This entry hardly qualifies as “deep thoughts” though. Still, it may interest some younger readers.

After I put in a SSD as my boot “hard disk” and upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7, all my old programs were gone. I have installed the few I am still using.  From a couple days ago, this also includes The Sims 3.

The game worked horribly badly on Windows XP and Vista. The frequent crashes on the Windows XP machine may have to do with the widescreen driver, which I believe was not made for XP in the first instance. But in addition, both of the machines were hit by sound issues, including one where the sound began to loop and there was no way to exit from the program in a dignified manner until the sound stopped looping, which was random and could take hours when I was unlucky. Force closing the program could cause Vista to display a black screen until I logged off.

As expected, the program runs much better under Windows 7. I am slightly surprised that they could not be bothered to keep the game backwards compatible with the only Windows versions that existed when the game was new. -I have the Ambitions expansion pack, but even if you have none, the game will occasionally update itself. Most notably it will implement small bits from the expansion packs even if you don’t buy the whole thing. So for instance I have the new photo memories feature and life phase length adjustment launched with Generations, and the zodiac system for romantic compatibility from Late Night, and my sculptor tries to make objects from the World Adventures expansion – except they end up as blinking red cubes instead…

Anyway, the game seems to be rock stable now under Windows 7. I have run it for several hours one evening. Unfortunately my favorite modification, the Awesomemod, is not yet compatible with the latest version, but this is unrelated to the operating system. It just so happens that the game has been upgraded for the recent release of the Generations expansion, and as usual this broke some of the modifications that worked before. I have no doubt that Pescado will make the Awesomemod work as well as it did before, probably better.

The Sims 3 is a pretty big program, and more so with expansion packs. As you play, the number of people and objects and data about them will continue to rise. So the game is one that benefits from having a SSD for your swap file, unless you have a lot of RAM in your machine. Of course, RAM is even much faster, but it may not be feasible – for instance my 32 bits computer cannot handle more than 3.25 GB RAM. In any case, when running the game now with the Ambitions expansion, on my Quad-core with 32-bit Win7,  there is no pause anywhere at any time: Everything appears instantly wherever I go on the map.  I am not sure whether this will continue if I play the game for a very long time, but I probably won’t do that. I have a lot of other interests now, trying to maintain my body and soul more than I did. So this will have to do for now.

They let the Pope write now?

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Everybody who was something rejected Jesus Christ as a blasphemous cult leader whose death would mean the end to his crazy movement. “Errare humanum est.”

I recently bought a book written by the current Pope, Benedict XVI. He was in fact a well known Catholic writer before he was called to be Pope. I suppose there must have been some hesitation in calling him away from his writing: Being the Pope is sure to be very distracting. Even so, he has managed to finish at least two books, or a book in two parts if you will, a biography of Jesus Christ. Now, it is not often you see a Pope write a biography of Jesus Christ, so some curiosity is in order.

I also hear reasonably good things about this man (the Pope, I mean, but of course also Jesus). I grew up in an officially Lutheran country (although it was already starting to turn mostly atheist) and anything about the Vatican was viewed with severe skepticism, to put it mildly. I have a more nuanced view now. Some of the intelligent religious literature I have read the last couple years has come from Catholic writers. They have a tradition for intelligent religious literature, going back at least to Thomas Aquinas, one of the geniuses of the Middle Ages. (Yes, there were some, contrary to what you probably imagine about the Middle Ages.)

Also, contrary to what you probably imagine about the Pope unless you are Catholic, his writing is not medieval either. He expresses his gratitude to the advances in historical realism in Biblical exegesis, although he thinks it cannot stand on its own. Comparing a number of recent Jesus biographies, he draws the insightful conclusion that they are so different, they probably say more about their authors than about Jesus. That may well be true. While this is not entirely a good thing, it is thought-provoking. In one way, I think we are all doomed to find Jesus in ourselves if at all… but hopefully in our greater Self, as the Eastern spirituality calls it, rather than our small self or ego. In the spirit rather than the flesh, to use the language of St Paul, who seems to give people the willies these days.

Anyway, I have read little more than the foreword yet, but I already found something interesting. There is a tendency these days to regard the Bible as either 1) God dictating his word to men, or 2) men writing their own opinions about God. But the Pope inserts a 1.5 that makes a lot of sense: The community or people of God. The individual writers did not live and teach in a cultural and spiritual vacuum, but rather were part of a community steeped in the earlier revelation. It was to no small extent through this community that God spoke the Bible, rather than simply through the individuals. What they expressed was often dependent in content or form on spiritual impulses in the community, thinks the Pope.

This is certain true to some degree, although I have to point out that a disturbing number of God’s prophets and apostles were killed by the community and the supposed “people of God” of their time. Not least famously Jesus himself. But I am sure there will be more to read about that in the second book.

As for the biblical writers expressing the will of God after being shaped by the spiritual community of God’s people, it is hard for me not to see the parallel to Joseph Ratzinger, now Pople Benedict XVI, himself. But then again, we tend to see in others something of ourselves, whether we are the Pope or not, I guess.

The book is simply called “Jesus of Nazareth”. The author may be given either as Joseph Ratzinger (his name when he started it) or Benedict XVI (when he finished it).

 

Personal health reform

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You also need to exercise to balance your eating. (And your nation’s budget.)

In America in particular, there is a bitter debate about how to finance the ever growing expenses of the country’s health care. The same problem faces most developed countries, although the debate is generally more civil in those I know. Still, there is much handwringing and various not-so-great ideas.

In the middle of this is the small voice of reason, belonging to Dr Dean Ornish: How about people stop eating fast food and starts walking at least a couple hours a week, meditating from time to time and be nice to their family? That way we would have much less illness to contend with in the first place.

Dr Ornish and his colleagues have proved, and in the sense of hard science, peer reviewed large-scale clinical tests, that radical lifestyle change can actually reverse coronary plaque, diabetes, and some cancers. A less radical change can prevent them in most cases, and even when not, improve your chance of survival and your quality of life.

The approach is fairly low-tech:  Cut down on fat, to no more than 10% of your calories. Avoid white sugar and corn syrup like the plague. Eat your veggies. Exercise at moderate intensity. Meditate. Stick with your loved ones. The  more of these things you do, the less likely you are to contract the illnesses that make up 75% of the country’s health care budget.

If we don’t do it for the sake of the country, at least it makes sense to do it because being terminally ill sucks.  You are going to die sooner or later, of course, but later usually seems like the best alternative – after all, that is why people will pay an arm and a leg for expensive new cancer drugs, although they were not willing to move an arm and a leg back when they could have prevented the whole horror.

***

Now, I am fully aware that it is not easy. You come home from work, your head is already tired, and perhaps your feet too. You want nothing more than sit down in a good chair.  And as if it was not bad enough, you have to drive your kids (if you have kids, and most people do sooner or later) to some far-off destination.  When you’re back, it is already late and the weather is not good for walking, running, biking or whatever. There may be criminal elements out there too. No, it is best to stay inside and eat snacks in front of the TV, just like every other day.

I totally understand. After all, I keep a bottle of cola in the house at all times, if possible, and another at work. True, I mix the cola with water before drinking it, but I am sure it is still an unspeakable sin in the eyes of every nutritionist worth his diploma.  Sugar = poison, after all. But it all boils down to this: We have to do something, we have to start somewhere, we have to make a sacrifice for the sake of our own future and those we love, and those we don’t particularly hate. Someone has to go the extra mile. Or, failing that, eat their veggies.

You know quite well that you would do it if your life was at stake, and it is. The thing is to do it BEFORE the doctor tells you that you have X months left to live. I am sure that is very motivating, but by then we’ll probably feel even much less energetic than today. By then we may pray to God, but today God is praying to us, so to speak, imploring us to not be idiots and waste the body we’ve been given.  It is not by accident that the world’s religious traditions put emphasis on various exercises in self-control. Holding back our impulses was never easy, not 2500 years ago and not today. But it is a good idea, not just for ourselves, but for others as well.

It is true that for the time being, at least, most people will probably still continue to eat their fast food and veg out in front of the tube. So that if you eat your greens and work out, you’ll be paying for their bypass and they won’t be paying for yours. Sure it is unfair. But we should love our neighbor, right? It is more blessed to give than to receive. No, seriously, it is; I have tried. But even apart from that, it is more blessed to go the second mile than to receive diabetes, constipation, knee pain and heart infarct. For the love of ourselves and others, we have to make at least some effort, and encourage each other to do what we can.

And of course, if you happen to live in America, there is the small matter of your country not defaulting on its debt and sliding rapidly to banana republic status. Or at least, when that happens anyway, to be able to say “It wasn’t my fault… this time.”

 

May 2005

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Nostalgic – this was the last stretch of the road to the bus stop back when I lived in the original Chaos Node. I would also walk there frequently in the afternoon, as one of the several round trips I could take.

I have  lately been reading up on some of my entries from May 2005, a time which was in some ways similar to now. For years up to Easter 2005, I was moderately overweight. Well, my Body Mass Index was at least above the magic line of 25, although the only visible sign of overweight was a modest paunch or gut bulge, which I could probably have hidden with stronger stomach muscles.

Around the time of Easter, I became acutely ill. For a week or so, I could not digest food at all, it seemed, and I felt terrible. The doctor later said it was probably a virus. That is probably true but does not really tell anything more than it not being magic. For some days, I evidently produced no bile at all, but it did not last so long that I got yellow eyes like with the more famous liver infections. I gradually recovered, but discovered that from then on, I could only eat small amounts of fat at any one time, or I would get violently ill. The amount has increased slightly since 2005, but is still fairly small.

These events caused me to take an interest in physiology and health. In May, I wrote about these things extensively. I also bought a pulse watch and a pair of good jogging shoes, and started walking all over the place. Just like now, I would burn approximately 600-700 calories per day walking outdoors. (One and a half hour today, 900 calories, but that is above average.)  I expected this to be one of my usual fads, to fade away after a couple weeks. But it continued throughout the summer and fall. With the onset of winter, I was already busy moving, and got my exercise from that. There was a lot to carry over to my new apartment, which was within (a long) walking distance from the old. In the end, I did not actually move in there, but hurriedly moved to the house at Nodeland.

During my last 9 months or so in the original Chaos Node, I lost almost 15% of my body mass, all of it fat. I was hungry constantly, and in the end I would wake up in the night with hunger pangs and had to eat before going back to bed. (On the plus side, my acid reflux was gone.)

After I moved, I gradually put most of the weight back on, although not enough to be overweight again. I stabilized at a BMI of 25 or just below. I doubt I will be able to exceed that unless I become able to digest fat normally again.

And now, it seems I have resumed my practice of walking around for an hour each day.  I had almost forgotten that I used to do this in 2005 too. But then I looked for something else in my archives and found this, and remembered it clearly again. I wonder if it will be one of those 2-week fads again this time, or whether it will become part of my lifestyle again. I am not sure quite why it faded away last time. Perhaps I just did not enjoy starving all the time, even when my stomach was full. (Yes, I really felt hungry even then. It was like the brain was detached from the stomach in that regard.) Hopefully I can find a better balance this time.

In spring 2005, my digestion had not yet adapted to life without fat. In the years before, I ate small meals, but rich in fat. These days, my meals are larger but contain mostly carbohydrates. So it was in the meantime, while I could not eat fat but also could only eat small meals, that I lost all that weight. I don’t think it will happen again, for better or for worse. But then, I am not overweight either. I guess that is also beginning to be a rare thing these days.

One thing I noticed back then that I am noticing again, is that I am sleepier. And on that note, good night!

Reverse repentance

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We should reflect on what we did, but not in a bad way.

I have written before about how repentance is awesome. Of course, it is much more awesome than I could possibly tell you. That goes without saying, for great spiritual teachers over the centuries have spoken of it, people who I would not dare to compare with.

So  today I will write about reverse repentance, anti-repentance, the evil twin of repentance. Surely that is more original. And not so far off: I have actually done this myself in the past. Light send that it stays in the past. But if others can find this and become aware of it in the same way, I will be happy. For a human, it is pretty much impossible to never make moral mistakes, or “sin” as our grandfathers used to say.

(I think a short word is still a good idea, given how frequent such mistakes are; but in America especially, the word “sin” has changed meaning for many people. And there are others who think it is strictly religious word and is not relevant to them, as if one cannot make mistakes without divine intervention! What the hell. The opposite is more likely.)

Now, making mistakes is bad enough, but as I said, it cannot really be avoided when one is human. What we can avoid is 1) going out of our way to make mistakes, 2) defend them afterwards and 3) regret not making mistakes.

Yes, this is what I mean by reverse repentance: To regret not having made a wrong decision. That seems plain impossible, but it is not. There is even a Biblical reference, for those interested in that: “For sadness according to God’s mind causes repentance to salvation, which no one regrets; but the sadness of the world causes death.” (2. Corinthians 7, 10.)

The “sadness of the world” may well be read in a wider meaning, but in this sense it is thoughts like: “If I knew he was so gullible, I would have taken his stuff”, or “I was sooo close to getting into her pants, if only she had drunk a little more”, or even “Why didn’t I think of this belittling comment until after he left.” In all these cases, to varying degrees, we regret not having hurt another person in some way. Of course, in most cases we don’t self-identify as evil, but rather think that they deserved it, or it would have felt good, something like that. Few people really thrive on the joy of seeing others suffer. Usually their suffering is incidental, it is our feeling good that matters. Although in some cases yes, the two are strongly linked.

Now there is not hurting people, there is hurting people and regretting it, there is hurting people and not regretting it, and there is regretting not hurting people. This is, to put it bluntly, a sin worse than sin. It is going over an accidental good deed in our mind and erasing it, replacing it in our spiritual balance sheet, or “thought tape” or “Akashic record” if you want, with the evil we would rather have done.

Just like repentance causes the mistakes to be undone in the invisible world, in a manner of speaking (they still exist as echoes in the physical world, of course, and perhaps bad habits) – so  this “reverse repentance” actually inserts a mistake where there was none.  It may not feel like it at the time, but we will definitely learn at the end of our lives that hurting others for selfish reasons is not a good idea. There will be enough of such things, that we have done without thinking and never repented, to floor us when we go through our life review. There is no need to deliberately smear ugly graffiti on our Akashic records, or book of deeds.

So that is the life experience I wish to share with you. Please take care, and wake up when these thoughts present themselves. Let a bell ring when even a small such thought comes up, a regret of having passed up a temptation. (Of course, sometimes temptations present themselves repeatedly and if we eventually fall in them, that is sad but not what I talk about here.)

Again, going back in time and deliberately inserting wrongness in our life beyond what happens spontaneously, is a terrible thing, and something that can happen to perfectly normal people, even those who go to church or synagogue, mosque or temple. So I wanted to share this, even if I am not a spiritual teacher. I hear so little about it, and it is so important.

May the Light forgive me if I speak of things that are too deep and mysterious for me, but I myself had to go back and undo such damage as I had inserted into my own life in that way, and there are probably still corruptions left that I will not find until my life review. I wish I can spare someone that.

“Delighting in your company”

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Delighting in your company. Sometimes it comes naturally, sometimes less so to us mortals.

I was out doing my daily walk (one hour today, 630 calories) when I listened to evergreens and the voice in my heart coming together in a peculiar confluence.

“And I have loved you for so long, delighting in your company.” -Greensleeves.

“When He prepared the heavens, I was there … and my delights were with the sons of men.” -The Wisdom, in Proverbs 8.

I have had many definitions of love through the year I have written my online journal, some of them more cynical than others. “Delighting in your company” is certainly one of the better.

And such is the nature of the love that the Divine Wisdom has for mankind, and that the Presence in my heart has for me. As it assures me, it has loved me for so long – from the very beginning –  delighting in my company. That is actually an awesome thing to feel, that effortless love. A love that feels no uncertainty, no need to be reciprocated, only – at most – to be accepted. And even if not, it remains undiminished.

The other side of the coin is of course to be like that. That is not something one can just decide and there it is. Neither is it something one can work on or strive toward in a businesslike way. At least I don’t think so. I think of it as … attuning? Aligning? Tuning in to that same frequency with which we are loved. And also memories of the past, for those who have that, but not a simple replay of circumstances. Drawing out the core, love itself.

When I say we cannot achieve this love by work, I must add that of course there are times when we need to act in a loving, compassionate way even if we don’t feel like it at the moment. If not, there are times when even a mother would throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have read about various young mothers feeling guilty because they don’t feel that super awesome love for their baby that they thought they would, and that society expects. But that feeling is intermittent – it comes and goes – and must be gathered as memorable moments who show up from time to time, to be added to what you will remember later. It is the same way with other forms of love. Sometimes you feel it, sometimes you act it, not necessarily at the same time. But it builds over time.

Well, I’m not really an expert on such things. The Presence in my heart is. Hopefully I will become more like that.

Upgrading fragile things

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There’s a lot of trouble to go through to live on Earth! If it is not upgrading computer software and maintaining their hardware, it is doing the same for the body.

I gave up on the hard disk. It would be literally months to recover its magnetic patterns, even if it did not continue to fall apart each day. So I tried installing Windows XP on the SSD, at a point when the computer would not recognize the usual C: drive. This worked quite well, but since it was from the CD of an older computer, I could only have it for 30 days. So I decided to make the jump to Windows 7 anyway, while I was at it.  I bought it from the Microsoft Store and downloaded it. I tried at first to convert to 64 bits at the same time (so I could use all 4 GB of the memory rather than just 3.25 GB), but it did not accept that.

I spent a good part of yet another day, but at least now the computer is running flawlessly and has done so for several hours. The operating system and the most commonly used programs are all on the SSD, meaning that they run a bit faster than from a hard disk. The programs I have on the SSD are that game City of Heroes, the web browser Opera, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition.

I have also installed yWriter, the modular novel writing software that is my favorite for writing fiction. Although, truth be told, I installed it on the hard drive: It is already lightning fast and is so small that it loads before I can draw a deep breath. Impressive little  gem from Simon Haynes, himself a published author of several books. Of course, most people won’t need yWriter since they don’t write novels. Yet.

Oh, and let us not forget Irfanview, a program to view pictures and do simple changes to them. It is what I use to resize pictures for the journal, among other things. Again, there is no need to speed this up.

***

You may question the wisdom of upgrading the operating system when the hardware is well past its “best before” date, and actually falling apart. But as it happens, I think the new operating system will deal better with the ailing hardware. And of course, I am trying to do the same with my own body: Upgrade its operating system even as the hardware is gradually failing.

There is no denying that I am past my youth. I walked only for half an hour today, as my guts were unstable and hurt a bit. But today again my legs were stiff and tired, much like yesterday. Seriously, legs? You are not 80 years old. You should be able to fully recover over the course of a night from something as casual as walking for an hour, or five quarters. If I had been running, you might have some excuse for complaining. Now, none at all. Shape up already!

But be that as it may, I will seek to upgrade the operating system of my mind, to use the metaphor I used back in June 2005. Not just the content, but the way it works, the whole way of thinking and feeling and seeing the world. So that, when the hardware of my body spins down for the last time, the  backup copy in Heaven will be suitable to install in a new, improved model with as little modification as possible.  Well, that’s my aspiration. If it were to happen soon, I suspect there would be some serious adaptations to be made. But if I live, I hope that at least some of those changes can begin already here. It is not like eternity will start years from now. It has been going on for quite a while!

And so, I upgrade fragile things, maintain them as best I can, and hope.

Walking (in the light)

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Behold, from out of Heaven there shone a holy light! Or something.

I have written several entries about enlightenment, but I am not happy enough about them to upload them. Basically, my position is that people in the West tend to think the Eastern spirituality is some kind of shortcut, while the opposite is closer to the truth. Everyone here knows (or at least did until recently) that if you were to become serious about Christianity, Judaism or Islam, your life would be changed beyond recognition, and it would not all be fun and fluffy. Sacrifices, at least from the viewpoint of the worldly mind, would be sure to happen. Young people seem to think this is not the case with Eastern enlightenment. They should chat a little with the monks of that area before making their final decision.

I, however, make no claim to Great Enlightenment. I don’t even chop wood and carry water, although that would probably be good for my health. Instead I keep walking. Yesterday I walked for an hour or so, 650 calories.  That was only marginally more than the day before, and the exact same route that I usually walk each Saturday (to the shop and back). So imagine my surprise when I got up today and my legs were slightly stiff.  Not so much that it made it difficult for me to do the usual things, and not painful enough to distract me from work, but noticeable. Why now, all of a sudden?

Well, that is not going to stop me so easily. So today I walked a few minutes longer, past the shop and to the old church. I played evergreens (including Greensleeves, one of my all-time favorites) on my Android phone. I have Spotify installed there, an app that streams music, so I don’t need to store the music on the phone.

Anyway, it was a gray and overcast afternoon, quite opposite of what the newspapers had predicted. This was my first time seeing the church there, it is old and not really very impressive looking. But when I stopped outside the gate, for the only time on the whole trip a tiny hole opened in the cloud cover and for a few seconds the sunlight streamed down on me and the church. Then the clouds closed again. I am not sure whether to be amused, encouraged or creeped out. ^_^;

I am not a big fan of the Lutheran church which is completely dominant around here, but hey, it is a place where people have come together for numerous generations to worship God and praise my Lord Jesus Christ, so I reckon it can’t be all bad.  This particular location certainly felt like it had a goodness about it. For the short time I was within its yard, I could not even feel the stiffness and tiredness in my legs. It resumed when I left though.

I spent about an hour and a quarter walking, altogether, and burned about 75o calories.