Here it is, 5:28 in the morning and I’m just now turning in to bed. I’ve been up late after catching a midnight showing of the new X-Men movie about Wolverine. This is, by no means, any kind of a review for the movie. But the movie did get me thinking about expectations.

Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, I could already hear the voices of friends and acquaintances fluttering through Facebook and Twitter—all saying roughly the same thing, “X-Men Origins was the worst movie I’ve ever seen.”

I have to say right now, I’m so tired of that attitude.

Maybe it’s just because I’m amongst a lot of hyper-artistic types, I don’t know, but it always seems like any movie scoring less than a B+ is automatically the “worst movie ever”.

I can’t help but feel like expectations are to blame. When I hear something like that said, I wonder what people are expecting that they’re so terribly let down all the time—or even why they bother to go to the movies at all if they’re not going to be able to enjoy anything less than cinematic gold.

It would seem that if someone really wanted to go and enjoy an evening at the cinema, they would do well to leave their demands and expectations at home. Especially if you know going into the thing that you’re not getting something with a lot of substance. As is the case with the new X-Men movie. What were you expecting, Shakespeare?

So, that’s my qualm. X-Men wasn’t a great movie. It was only even barely a good movie. But I enjoyed it, and I think that you probably could too.

Spurgeon, in All of Grace, on the quickening effects of the Holy Spirit on a man’s sorrow and response to sin:

The quickened spirit is more afraid of sin itself than of the penal results of it. The cry of your heart is not, "Who shall deliver me from punishment?" but, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Who shall enable me to live above temptation, and to become holy, even as God is holy?"

What is more painful, the moral wrong or the pending consequence for that moral wrong? The way our hearts respond to sin, I think, goes a long way in revealing the true state of our souls.

I have had a great deal of trouble rectifying the reality of new birth and life, with the fact that no Christian will ever stop sinning. How can repentance be true if the sin is returned to? And, if the repentance isn’t true, then how can there be remission of sins? But this is the reality we live in. No one will stop sinning completely, even with the truest repentance—and certainly not all at once. There is a difficult tension to live with in this.

But, I think that Spurgeon has understood the balance. The regenerate heart will sin, it may “do the very thing it hates”. But, because of the cross, there is no fear of judicial punishment—only loathsome regret for the sin, which gradually teaches truer and truer repentance.

We move from the fear and hatred of punishment, into grace, which teaches us to fear and hate the sin.

I hooked up a new external backup drive to my computer today and started creating backups using Apple’s Time Machine Software that comes with their computers. I have to say, it’s pretty awesome. The software’s method for exploring backups is epic—to say the least. But it got me thinking about when I might go if I had an actual time machine. (Thanks Apple, for what seems to be an endless supply of inspired ideas).

So, I came up with four events in history that, given the chance, I’d like to be around to observe.

1. With Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai

This is an endlessly confusing portion of scripture. In the narrative, at least. The Jewish people just witnessed some of the most incredible miracles performed in Egypt with a mind-blowing splitting of a giant body of water as the capstone. Then, on the other side, they saw even more. Water flow from rock, bread fall from heaven.

Then, Moses disappears for a few weeks while he talks to God and the Israelites get impatient and decide God isn’t really God and they make gods out of gold.

I know the theological answer to this. But it’s almost impossibly frustrating when you read the narrative. So, if given the opportunity, I would love to be there and ask a question or two—maybe understand first hand what was really going through their minds.

2. Peter’s Sermon at Pentecost

There aren’t many more stories in scripture that have quite as much electricity as the one where Peter delivers the first sermon to the crowds at Pentecost. People were confused, a bit frightened, but intrigued all the same. There was so much energy that, literally, thousands of people became Christians that day.

3. The beginning of my own conversion

So, this one might seem a bit confusing.

At the beginning of my own conversion, I sat in a group of college students studying the bible. I was a smart-ass 17 year old high school drop-out bent on derailing their conversation. I was unsuccessful and humiliated—although not from their doing, but from my own.

If I had the chance, I would absolutely love the opportunity to be one of the other faces in that group observing my own behavior.

4. Martin Luther’s various trials

Luther was a brilliant guy. Really brash, as I understand it—lacking tact. But he stumbled on something the Roman church’s deep, deep flaws that needed rectification. Although he didn’t want to leave the Roman church, he stood on the side of truth, rather than institution.

I imagine, could I be a fly on the wall, it would be exhilarating to witness the trials in which he refused to recant his claims against the Roman church.

In Conclusion

I’ll bet if I sat for longer and thought harder, there would be a lot more. But as I pondered this afternoon, these were the four that came quickly. Maybe the rest are for another day.

I know that it’s been a few days since I’ve written anything of any real consequence. I suppose I just have quite a few posts like these to work out of my system.

Yesterday, I was watching television at a friend’s house. A commercial for PC’s kept coming on. The concept was simple: a computer shopper would be given the challenge to find a good computer for under $1500. If they could find it, they’d be given the money to buy the computer.

Here’s the commercial:

This commercial got me thinking. It’s interesting that a company as huge and powerful as Microsoft is going through all this trouble to deliberately combat this tiny little competitor called Apple Computers. It’s a bit curious. Apple must really have them nervous.

Well, in light of all this, I thought I’d share my top five reasons I love my Mac way more than I ever loved my PC—and why you would too.

There are no secrets. I spent a pretty penny on my Mac. It’s a maxed out 15” , unibody, Macbook Pro, on which I spent about $1900. My old PC was a Toshiba laptop which came from Best Buy and cost about $1600 at the time. Among the most impressive machines at the sales floor.

So, here we go.

1. Consistency: why should time change anything?

I’ve had my Mac now for about six months. With very little deliberate preventative action, it’s running just about as smooth and clean today as it did the day it showed up in the mail. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve had to restart my Mac and I’ve never actually turned it off.

By the time I got to six months on my PC, I’d already had to restore it to factory defaults and sent it away for repair.

2. I don’t see anything I don’t need to see.

I was PC user all my life. I grew up learning to use them and I worked as a tech for an internet service provider for several years. I’ve also built more personal computers than I can remember. I know a lot more than most about what my computer is doing and why.

So, when my PC would feed me dialogue after dialogue of questions about permissions, or firewalls, or error codes, or warnings, or whatever, I knew the language and it was okay. I dismissed them and moved on. But not everyone is so fortunate. My mother, for example, is quickly overwhelmed by them—usually driving her away from the machine altogether.

My Mac doesn’t show me what I don’t need to see. 95% of the dialogues I was seeing weren’t crucial enough to interrupt my work. And the 5% that are crucial enough, can be written in plain, human language, that anyone can understand.

My Mac won’t annoy me, and it won’t scare off the novice user.

3. Windows actually runs better on my Mac.

VirtualBox by Sun Microsystems is free software that will allow you to run Windows inside your Mac. I mean inside. It runs Windows as if it were an actual program inside MacOS. You can even flip between applications as if they were running on the same system. It’s pretty remarkable.

But, what’s even more remarkable is that Windows running inside my MacOS system is actually running a lot faster than it ever did on it’s own dedicated machine. And my non-windows applications running in MacOS barely suffer. I can still use Photoshop and surf the net and listen to music without a hiccup.

4. The hardware.

By Apple’s own admission, their really a hardware company (which unfortunately could be their Achilles heel eventually). And, it just so happens that their innovations are simply brilliant. Little things go a very long way.

For example, the power adapter is magnetic. Get it close enough to the power port and it sucks itself into the right place. Not to mention it saves you the worry of the machine getting pulled off a table when someone trips on the wire. Or how about the wire itself? It’s made of soft rubber that doesn’t remember it’s shape so it’s not as messy.

Or the track-pad. It’s nice and big and the whole things a button. There’s a camera built into every screen, standard. And I’m not worried about breaking the CD drive when I use it as a cup holder.

The hardware couldn’t seem less technical or less threatening. There’s no mysterious buttons or switches. (My Toshiba had at least three).

5. It’s designed for me!

I read an article today discussing the upcoming Windows 7, which I think Microsoft better get right or else they’ll be in real hot water. Here’s a quick excerpt from the article.

“Windows’ dominance relies heavily on third-party software developers who keep churning out compelling new programs. To give those developers as many options as possible for reaching PC users, through the years, Windows spawned confusingly redundant features…”

This is exactly the ideology that makes the Windows experience so comparatively poor (although, with nothing to compare it to, most people don’t even know).

If I hired someone to build a house for me, I would want them to build it so that I will enjoy living in it. I want rooms that make sense to me the way that I live. The last thing I want is for the developer to be thinking about all the possible things IKEA might want to manufacture.

Microsoft has apparently been thinking about IKEA, Apple has been thinking about me.

The Mac system is smooth, comfortable, intuitive and natural. Most PC users when switching, have a little trouble getting used to the new system. Not because it’s actually hard, but because they’re thinking too hard.

6. The bundled software.

When I bought my Toshiba, It had so much crap on it, I can’t believe it. I mean, seriously, there were easily a dozen programs starting up. None of them were particularly well designed and all of them were eventually uninstalled. To this day, I’m not even sure what some of them did.

This is the experience of a whole lot of people buying new PC’s. There’s just so much crap you didn’t ask for and almost all of it sucks. (Best Buy offered to remove it for me, but it would cost $60. Really?)

This experience tainted my expectations of my Mac. I thought that bundled software had to be junk. Not so on the Mac. iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, Garage Band, so on and so forth—this really is world class software. It’s powerful and really easy to use.

Where most bundled software just slows things down and confuses users, the Mac bundled software is, in itself, a reason to love the computer even more.

7. Third-Party software is usually better, too.

I used to worry that if I switched to a Mac I’d have trouble finding software to do all the stuff I wanted to do, because it’s no secret, there aren’t as many people developing for Mac as their are for PC.

But, you know what I learned? Where there might be 10 programs available on PC—usually one one of them is actually any good. On the Mac, there might only be one program available, but it’s usually great. With only two exceptions (out of dozens) this has been my consistent experience.

There are applications and widgets for almost everything you could ever want to do and they’re usually as intuitive and easy to use as the MacOS system itself.

8. The workflow.

Whether you’re a professional or not, when you use a computer you have a workflow. Always, there’s no way around it. Where Windows feels like manipulating a machine, MacOS feels like an organic interaction.

For example, people complain that some Macintosh screens are too small. If you were operating Windows, you’d be absolutely right. But not so with a Mac. Your screen may only have 13 inches to work with, but MacOS gives you as many desktop spaces as you want and switching between them doesn’t even require clicking. It’s as easy as a flip of the wrist. Before you know it, you won’t even realize the screen is 13 only inches.

Or, take this for example, in Windows, if you want to open a program you navigate a menu and find it. Or if you want to modify your desktop image or sound preferences, you go through the control panel and find the right dialogue and have to remember to press “apply”.

On a Mac, you don’t even touch your mouse. Anything and everything you want is as simple as press Command+Space (they’re right next to each other) and typing the first few letters. And, with free software like QuickSilver, it’s even easier.

the Workflow doesn’t stop there, either. I just don’t have the time or ambition to go into all of them.

In Conclusion

It’s all about the experience. And it’s not even necessarily that Mac is that great (although it is excellent)—It’s more that Windows is that bad and it’s not healthy to stay in such abusive relationships.

I’m not married to Mac. If Windows 7 came out and it really was a huge leap in software development that left Mac in the dust, I’d have no reservations about going back to Windows. But, this hasn’t been Microsoft’s character in over a decade. I don’t see why it’d be different now.

Mac is indeed trendy. And, it’s definitely an aesthetic statement. But, it also happens to be the best computing environment available right now and probably for some time to come. With more-than capable Notebooks selling at $1000 and family desktop computers at just $600 Mac really is the best choice, even for most budget computer shoppers.

It’s unfortunate though really, most PC users won’t realize the huge benefits of a Mac until they’ve actually switched over. A quick demo at Best Buy is only going to confuse and frighten them because it takes more time than that to forget the abuse suffered at the hands of Microsoft Windows and learn to trust again.

But take it from me, it’s worth the leap. Life is better on a Mac.

I don’t remember a whole lot about this story. I remember looking at the pictures, and I remember it being read to me. But I don’t remember too many other details. I was really young.

But, I remember enough that the images (as they are for many) are burned into my memory as some kind of childhood staple. Although, I can’t say too much else about it.

Well, if you haven’t heard, Where The Wild Things Are is hitting the big screen in October. It’s directed by Spike Jonez. It might be the nostalgia, or it might just be a really well done preview, but either way, every time I see it I get very excited.

 

Another element of this clip that I can’t seem to get enough of is the featured song. It’s called Wake Up by the Arcade Fire. Here’s a song that’s been lying quietly on my computer, literally, for four years since it’s release, but I never gave it the time of day.

It’s absolutely worth listening to. Which you can do here for free thanks to imeem.com. Seriously, go listen to it.

Here’s a sentiment from Charles Spurgeon that I found somehow encouraging. It’s from his book All of Grace, in the chapter dealing with despair in religion.

Remember that the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance. We can no more repent perfectly than we can live perfectly. However pure our tears, there will always be some dirt in them: there will be something to be repented of even in our best repentance.

Spurgeon argues that being unsatisfied with one’s own repentance is evidence in itself that the repentance is true and honest. I suppose my question then is, does the satisfaction that comes from that create an unsolvable paradox? I dunno, I hope not.

The pilot has fallen asleep.
He didn’t get enough rest last night.
(Or any night.) Yet, still he went to work.

The tilt of the wheel, it started.
The slow descent to the Nevada desert.
A bed prepared with dust and weeds.

His passengers still don’t know.
Like a boat taking on water,
The plane sinks slowly in the clouds. 

The nose of the plane grows heavy.
The cockpit starts to glow.
Alarms, bells and flashing lights.

Still the pilot sleeps.

The trajectory alarming every passenger.
”Where is the co-pilot”, shouts one.
”Can anyone fly this thing!” Panics another.

No. There is no one. Only the pilot.
Sleeping sound. No one can stir him. 
Yet with Olympian skill, his plane dives.

Oxygen masks fall. Tears fly.
Luggage pours from the compartments above.
”This is it, we’re all going to die.”

As though his dream had ended,
The pilot awakes. Horrified, he recoils.
Pulling the steering wheel back all the way.

Alarms, bells and flashing lights.
Sweat everywhere and his heart is in his throat.
“Oh God, save us.” He thinks.

But all the pulling in the world,
all the praying, It couldn’t save his ship.
Not from the force of the earth, falling into the sky.

No one can know from where it came,
the terror in his face—
From his imminent death, or overwhelming guilt.

“I did this”, were his last thoughts,
as his arms cover his his head
and deflected the oncoming shower of glass.

But soon came through the cockpit,
metal and shrapnel and fire and rocks.
Burning everything, and crushing what it didn’t.

The screams and cries lasted only a second.

The explosion a second more.
Then the fire several hours.

But then, then it was over.
Because the pilot fell asleep;
And it was just too late.