WARNING: My opinion is expressed in this post quite strongly. If you are hoping for a glowing review, navigate away quickly.

A friend and I have been reading Captivating by Eldredge’s and working through the guided journal of the same title. I have seen mixed reviews, those in support strongly support and the critical reviews are divisively so. I will admit to clouding my judgment by reading reviews on both sides and deciding that I may not agree with many of the ideas presented, but I am trying to be humble enough to allow God to show me truths despite my preconceived notions. How’s that for a disclaimer?

Chapters one and two have made my brain hurt. I must report that if I hadn’t spent good money on these books, the first two chapters would have caused me to burn the books. I’m not a fan of censorship, usually. The small fire from the books could have kept me entertained for a while, especially if I tore out pages on and a time. I am thankful that I waited, not because the book has magically turned wonderful, but rather because chapter three has visibly more truth than the first two.

I should point out what little information I could learn of John Eldredge was discouraging. I wondered if he had special training to allow him to interpret the Bible, maybe he is a theologian, a scholar, something, anything, a Phd. in something worthwhile, alas. It turns out he attend a Christian college of sorts and majored in counseling. Where on the website of said college, one reads that it is the Christian’s responsibility to spread the truth of the free market system. No wonder the world despises Christians.

So, his vast amount of experience on how God designed women to be is as a result of counseling women, women who feel they are somehow broken. Women who pay a man to tell them how they are broken and how to be less broken. I’m sure he knows a thing or two about identifying behaviors that are emotionally/physically unhealthy, but really, how ignorant do I look? Why are women, intelligent women, falling for this nonsense from him and his wife? Are we that fallen that we need a stranger to stroke our ego and tell us that our desires are valid and right? If so, Christianity many not be the theology for you. God, by means of the Bible and Holy Spirit, tells us quite clearly we are sinful and fallen. His thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways. His desire for us is to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, not the emotional need to be beautiful or participate in a grand adventure. He provides a way for us to be right, but it is not declaring that we are beautiful and must participate in a grand adventure to be validated. With the exception of a pithy prayer at the beginning of the guided journal, Jesus the Messiah is not mentioned and God only slightly. It’s all about the woman’s emotional experience. And how about open ended questions, ever hear of them? Yes or no questions do not stimulate discussion or thought. Grrr. Stay tuned for more in subsequent weeks.

If you live in the United States, vote!

• Independent?
• Constitutional?
• Green?
• Republican?
• Democrat?
• Undecided?

It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know. Do some research, use your favorite search engine and find out what the issues are. Decide how you feel about the issues and pick the candidates/proposals that fit what you believe and vote. Your vote doesn’t count if you don’t cast it. Your vote is not a “throw away” vote if you don’t vote for the major two.

If you aren’t happy with the last 4, 8, 12, 16, and/or 20 years of our government, do something about it. We still have a government of the people by the people. Make sure the people in office for the next term represent the values you value.

Many of you are quite familiar my dairy allergy by now and Jason’s food sensitivities. Of late, the makers of the drug Advair have been airing many commercials for the product. Over the course of this allergy, one doctor put me on Clarinex, Advair, Singulair and a rescue inhaler due to my breathing problems. She admitted that people develop environmental allergies and it’s difficult to track them all, so we would treat the symptoms. I took the first to three drugs daily and cocktail treated the symptoms quite effectively for the most part. I used the rescue inhaler as a last resort, a few times a month. At the time I was not aware of my true allergy, milk products. I was reading a forum that when I ran across a post that mentioned the milk content in Advair. (link to pdf from maker)) I had to laugh at the fact that I had treated myself with the allergen. Oh well!!

How many blogs does it take to answer my question about pingbacks? The correct answer is at least four, but three of them were mine and I ultimately answered my own question.

When I installed WordPress 2.5, my pingbacks broke. You may wonder what a pingback is or you may not be interested in the slightest. If you are not interested, this may be the post to skip, unless you enjoy watching a kitty chase her tail for hours and hours and hours before remembering she has one important blog, this one, and two test blogs. Normally I don’t have two test blogs, usually it is just one, however, a few weeks ago I was attempting to help a Ravelry member with her pre-2.5 blog, so I installed the version she was running and before I broke my blog at the 2.5 install, I upgraded the test blog to be sure nothing would break. I failed to take into account my web host breaking the one-click install, lesson learned let me assure you. To attempt to head-off any further problems I set up an identical blog to this main one with the same posts and settings behind the scenes, as well as the same plugins also behind the scenes.

After spending a few hours combing the wordpress.org codex, then the “interwebs” at large, I decided my answer did not lay out there, it lay between my head and my three installs. I say it took at least four blogs to answer the question because wordpress.org is a blog and I found a few individuals attempting to be helpful on their blogs, but didn’t answer my question. I also checked WordPress.com to reassure myself that WordPress 2.5 did indeed know how to handle pingbacks. You may wonder what a pingback is, a pingback appears on my blog in the comment of a post when someone out in the wide “interwebs” writes something and links back to a specific blog post of mine.

Out of pure frustration of nothing to show for an afternoon’s worth of work, I set about digging through my theme’s code, hoping maybe the theme was broken, no such luck. I then decided to open the test blogs. I admit, I forgot about the second blog running a really old version of WordPress until I went looking for the password for the first test blog. That second install turned out to be a huge help to the investigative process. I worked to make both 2.5 versions mirror each other in code and active plugins. My main blog would catch one or two out of six actual pingbacks. The other two blogs found all the pingbacks I sent. Again, a bit stumped, I started to wonder if it was a versioning problem with a plugin, the test blog doesn’t have the newest versions of all the plugins I have installed. I only update them when I am using it to test something. It then occurred to me that I redirect this blog. The install folder is not at the root of my site, nor will it be again. That is part of what broke it the first time and made it more difficult to fix. One-click install from my dearest host likes to install to a completely empty folder, no other files or folders present. So when it broke and I reinstalled it, I was going to have to create a subfolder or delete all my photos, files, etc and start over from scratch. I was already deeply saddened by the loss of my blog and did not wish to lose anymore. WordPress 2.x has a setting that allows users to indicate where the blog source files are located while redirecting traffic to another location. In my case, my install is at http://proefrocks.net/blog/, while until today, you viewed it at http://proefrocks.net. My test blogs were not redirecting traffic like the main blog is/was. Once I change the setting to redirect it, the pingbacks broke there as well. Which was a huge relief. I blame my own troubleshooting skills becoming rusty. Ten months ago, this problem would have been solved in under an hour. I also discovered along the way I could force pingbacks if I consistently put a trackback url into each post. That’s not going to happen. I’m trying to retrain my brain to remember to put tags on my posts, about 50-50 there and I’ve always used categories but again, 75-25 there.

To summarize, you will notice a change in my domain layout. When you visit http://proefrocks.net you will now be greeted with a static (unchanging) page with links to several different areas of the domain, one of which will be this blog. I will probably link to Josh’s blog, my photo gallery and the photo gallery for BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area). The page will be updated as changes dictate.

Still to do, create a custom redirect script. June 13, 2008: I created the .htaccess file at the root directory per apache.org. Luckily for me, my permalink structure is simple, all posts from 2008 appear to be in a folder called 2008 and those from 2007 appear to be in folder called 2007. The simple addition of two lines directing requests for 2008 to now go to blog/2008 and 2007 to go to blog/2007 has rendered all links out there in the “interwebs” valid.

P.S. If you remember to move .htaccess and index.php from root back to the WordPress folder, be sure to edit everything and well, I had to empty .htaccess in the WordPress folder which then broke my entire site. I fiddled for another hour and then remembered that plugins cause 2.5 to become rather unruly. I deactivated my gallery plugin, WPG2, emptied the .htaccess again and reactivated the plugin. Then I allowed WPG2 to reconfigure itself, rewriting good things to the .htaccess file.

I found out that I was owed money. I had a cell provider for a long time, January of 2002 through October of 2007. I was a loyal, content customer, I even bragged about how much I liked their customer service and service. When others were paying less for service, I was paying a bit more because of the satisfaction I found when speaking with customer service representatives. That is, until I moved to the middle of nowhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy in the middle of nowhere, I grew up in an area of NY no so different. There is a drawback to the middle of nowhere, not enough customers to warrant good coverage between major towns. I jumped through hoops with this company to improve my service. I was encouraged by the aforementioned representatives to drive 2 miles north, south, east or west to obtain better coverage. I reminded them that I expected to have coverage at my house, I was informed that coverage in my house was never guaranteed. I should only ever expect to have coverage outside. I then walked outside with the phone and waited for the call with them to drop, which didn’t take too long. After several weeks of going round and round with various individuals with many titles like engineer, I was finally released from my contract. I ported to a new carrier and then the nightmare began. I received a bill indicating that I was being charged for early termination, when this company had in writing already indicated that there would be no charge once the engineers determined that coverage would not be improved. I got the feeling that the guy never drove through our town calling people and asking if anyone could hear him now. I called several times and thought the early termination fee was removed, but I should wait for the final bill before paying it. By the time the final bill arrived, the company was threatening to write off my bill and turn me over to collections. The final bill indicated that I owed far more than I felt I should, $95 vs. $45. I was happy to pay the $45, but was insistent that I would not pay the entire amount. I called the only outside number I was ever given for the company, besides *number if my phone was still from that carrier. I was stuck in a loop-enter your zip code, enter your phone number, sorry, the office is closed, we’re only open from 8-8, I was calling at 7:30. Actually, I was a returning a call I was disconnected from, and could only get through when I stopped entering my zip code and phone number. In a call last night, I tried to explain my complaint when my phone call was finally answered. I could not get the woman to understand that I simply wanted my month in advance deposit returned. She attempted to explain how it was already refunded and would not listen to me. According to my bill, I was charged for the whole month of November, which was not accurate, as service was canceled in October. Another line reflected a refund of November, which she explained was my refund of my month in advance deposit. That seems a bit shady to me. She then looked over my account and said the $95 charge was part of the $125 early termination fee and I would receive a check for $29 and change in March, since January billing was completed.

April 29, 2008: I keep receiving statements from Verizon saying they owe me money, but they never send it. I should be receiving another one this week or next. That will make the third statement without money. I don’t know if I want to call, I enjoying receiving statements that tell me they have my money so I don’t owe them any.