We had been in church limbo for a few years now.  Attending here – attending there – irregular at our best.  Had been a faithful attender for years – enter mess – mire…etc.  Quit going.  Was very feed up with church.  Head deacon to non-attender.  Explain that one.

Fast forward.  Finally found a church we loved.  Called about joining the church – to make it all official.  Had to go down front yesterday.  Feeling better.

I am sure Franklin had cause for listing temperance first in his virtues list.

While Temperance is important in regards to food and drink.  We must maintain our bodies for optimum health, this takes temperance.  Temperance seems to be a “root” virtue.  Completely opposite of gluttony – one of the Seven Deadly Sins.  If I control myself when it comes to food and drink – I can expect better health, cheaper medical bills, cheaper food bills, and much more.

Temperance.  Are you practicing it?

I sit here – and sheepishly look over the list of virtues as Ben Franklin had defined them.  It’s odd that they are all still relevant today.

Another odd thing.  One of the verses from the Bible that I had been going over lately was Philippians 4:8.  I have been trying to incorporate it more in to my life lately.

The Message translation says it best:
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

I am scanning the list trying to figure out what is going to be the toughest for me.  Industry will be tough.  I find my time being spent in the evenings – either surfing the internet or playing video games.  I really do need to cut back in those areas.

I am going to try something.

There is a story about Ben Franklin and his plan to adhere to 13 virtues.  I am going to try the same over the next 13 weeks.   My weeks will run Monday – Sunday.  Don’t ask – it’s just easier that way for me.  First up this week we have Temperance.  Franklin wanted to emphasize “Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation”.

Meriam-Webster says:
1 : moderation in action, thought, or feeling : restraint
2 a : habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites or passions b : moderation in or abstinence from the use of alcoholic beverages

So . . . this week I will follow all of the virtues – but will give special notice to Temperance.  I will “try” to moderate my food intake and abstinence from alcoholic beverages.  Alcohol should not be an issue – but food – that is a different story.

Google has made some big announcements over the past few days.

In case you’ve been living under that proverbial rock:

Up first, earlier in the week, Google Apps was released of its Beta moniker.  GMail, Calendar, Talk, and Docs are all out of beta – both consumer facing and enterprise.

Most recently we learned that Google plans to hit Microsoft where it hurts.  A Google OS will be gracing us before long.

I have a VPS I keep, mostly for testing, at Linode.  It has the standard LAMP install on it.  The box has a ton of storage space on it – and I wanted to start utilizing for encrypted backups of my home machines.  I thought about SCP – but finally decided to have a go at getting WebDAV running on the box to make access from Windows machines easier.  I thought it was going to be a huge drawn out process – but thanks to the guys at HowToForge – I was up and running in no time.  The directions I used were:  How To Set Up WebDAV With Apache2 On Ubuntu 8.10.   So now I have a clean GUI interface to my storage on the Linode box.

I believe we have a responsibility to help others.  Those less fortunate than ourselves.  Want to see a good video explaining why?  Check this video out from Compassion International.  Compassion is one of my favorite charities, I also like, IFCJ, and Soles4Souls.   I know this is not a typical post for this blog – but giving is so important.  If you want to live a rewarding life – give back part of what you have been given.

I just mapped out my home wireless network using HeatMapper (via LifeHacker).  The software was dead simple to use – and even showed how my neighbors signal strenth was.  Before you use HeatMapper – use Gimp or some other image editting tool to create a rough sketch of your house/office.  Trust me.  It will make the map much easier to understand and read.

The latest version of Skype has implemented UPNP (Universal Plug and Play).  First lets back up a minute and define exactly what UPNP encompasses.  The goal of UPNP was to simplify home networks.

Wikipedia says:

The UPnP architecture supports zero-configuration networking. A UPnP compatible device from any vendor can dynamically join a network, obtain an IP address, announce its name, convey its capabilities upon request, and learn about the presence and capabilities of other devices. DHCP and DNS servers are optional and are only used if they are available on the network. Devices can leave the network automatically without leaving any unwanted state information behind.

One of the first things I do with a home/soho router is to turn off UPNP.

This brings me to the root of this post.  Skype  when used with UPNP turned on (on both the router and in Skype) will not close open ports on exit.   By this morning I have heard about this several time – I dug up a post about it in the Skype forums as well.

I recently signed up for a hosting account with Linode.com.  After struggling for hears with slow sites on shared hosting it was time to move up in the hosting ranks.  I was not quite ready for a dedicated server – so a VPS (virtual private server) was the next logical step. When I first started looking for a host I was over whelmed.  The choices in this segment are mind boggling.  I did some research and it landed me at Linode.  The pricing was attractive.  I could deploy just about any flavor of Linux I wanted.  The server was mine – I could do with it what I wanted.  The first few weeks were full of learning.  It involed me installing a distro – configuring – blowing it away – and starting over.

A few things I really like about Linode:

• The Linode manager (full control of your install).
• Blazing fast speeds – choice of data center.
• Great support
• A really good forum – I was able to find all of my answers by searching the forums.
• Choice of distros – fast install