I know I know, if you want to be really cool these days you need to be sporting an iPhone, not a dying device created by a dying manufacturer lacking in innovation. But if you’re like me, you might be lucky enough to have Sprint send you a free Palm Treo 755p to keep you as customer–something I can hardly complain about.
I’ve been using Palm devices for years now, this being my fourth device (Palm Pilot, Samsung i330, Treo 650, 755p) and feel quite at home on the interface. So for the time being I’m quite happy with my Treo.
Using DUN (dial-up-networking) to access the internet through your Treo has been around for quite some time for Palm with much thanks to folks like Shadowmite, so I’m not discussing any all to new. What I would like to show though is the easiest and most reliable method for getting your macbook online by “tethering” to your Treo. There are ways to do this using Bluetooth, like I said, you will have mixed results. Connecting through USB really is the best bet.
What you’ll need:
Any Mac with a usb port running OSX.4 or higher.
USBmodem – $24.95 (which also works with Windows and Linux)
For High Speed access a Sprint or Verizon Treo 700p, 755p, or Sprint Centro (sure this will work with GSM providers, but who wants slow EDGE access, oh yeah iPhone Owners)
the usb sync cable that came with your device
A Sprint or Verizon Tethering plan at $50+/m (although there are detailed ways around needing this, I will not describe such things here)
If you don’t already have MissingSync for Palm, I highly recommend it over Palm’s hotsync utility, simply because hotsync blows. But you can do this without MissingSync.
According to a USA Today/Gallop Poll from today, Obama would have a 4 point advantage over McCain if the general election were held today. What the article didn’t mention is what likely voters said on question 9 when asked “Regardless of which presidential candidate you personally support, who do you think is most ready to be president based on his or her experience”. An overwhelming number of respondents said John McCain at 49% to Obama’s 16%. Also, Hillary beat Obama nearly 2-1 with 30%. This shows that most voters when considering who’s ready to be president would go for McCain.
Touting her experience over Obama’s, Hillary has failed so far in her effort to convince voters that she is the better candidate. Obama has won the duel between charisma vs. experience simply because Hillary enjoys little more experience than Obama.
McCain, on the other other hand, has a treasure chest rich with years of political wisdom and bipartisan achievements to his advantage. If McCain is able to make the case that he far more ready to be president than Obama is, then he could very well win in the Fall.
McCain’s experience has already brought his campaign back to life once this election season. His poignant foreign policy expressions after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination filled the vacuum created by the poor and uninformed utterances of the entire field of candidates from both parties. Now that McCain is riding high in the polls from recent victories, similar circumstances could stand to bring him much higher.
As I was listening to the news tonight, I heard a pundit make a good point. Looking back at the 1976 election, Gerarld Ford nearly beat back the tide of the incoming president Carter by pointing to his lack of experience. After the Democratic National Convention, Carter was riding high in the polls–25% above Ford. Ford was able to winnow Carter’s lead down to a 2% point margin by the time voting day came around a few weeks later.
Obama is no Carter and McCain is certainly no Gerald Ford. Still the comparison does raise the point though, that if given enough time, a candidate viewed to be far more experienced can overcome (or at least come close to overcoming) what seems to be an unstoppable tide of euphoria surrounding a far lesser experienced contender’s campaign.
I keep up with postings from DesiringGod.org via an rss feed and one from today kind of caught me off guard. In the Church there seems to be this trend as of late to not allow children into main worship service, but instead place them in a “kid-centric” area that is more appropriate for them. I generally do not have a big problem with the practice, as this practice tends to take place in services that are more outreach focused. So it would make sense to remove as many distractions as possible–including unruly children that parents cannot control so that the unchurched might hear the gospel without distraction right?
Still I don’t know though, because if God is who he says he is in his Word, I really doubt that a kid screaming is going to stop the Holy Spirit from speaking to someone and redeeming that person through the blood of Christ. So, if God isn’t distracted by kids in church who is?
Often times in my experience, the main motivations for removing such distractions (ie. children) seem to come from the speakers. I have seen plenty of pastors/speakers get very irritated at such distractions to the point where they “lose their train of thought”. So, they then search for a “biblical justification” (if the church is so lucky) for creating “kid-centric” environments for children and decide not to allow them in “big church” instead of possibly learning how to to speak without getting distracted.
That’s why I found this article on Desiring God written over 10 years ago now so refreshing. It was refreshing because it acknowledged that there can be distractions, but instead of placing the value on a distraction free environment, they chose to place the value on the ultimate Goal of the Church gathering together to worship and Glorify God. The problem with kids in service is not that kids behave like kids, but instead that their “parents do not cherish the time” and “do not love to worship God”. That’s a tough sell though for churches searching for an easier way and/or looking for a way to avoid such irritations.
When one comes to question how all the pieces fit together, how all of the mess you see on the news, the death, and the questions brought about by what it’s all about that are now used for inspiring hope and change it becomes difficult to figure out where you really stand. You see your friends dying overseas, IED’s, and hopefulness dying for what seems to be a lost cause. All of which cause you to seek for answers to life’s most mysterious mysteries. You wonder does freedom really matter all that much anymore? Surely it can’t at such a high price?
God has afforded us the opportunity in this great nation for all of us to live our lives according to our own choosing. Some use such opportunity to seek all that life may have for them while others choose to believe that life still owes them more than the hand that has been dealt to them.
It is our great challenge during this election season to garner within ourselves such questions to find out where we really stand. Unfortunately the political process is far from a perfect one because people are far less than perfect, but yet we still are left to choose which path to go down. Will it be the path of forcing our neighbors to be responsible for our good or bad choices, or will every man and woman in america be afforded their God-given right to seek out the path of their own choosing? Will every person be able to live out the American dream or will they be forced to pay for the ill-begotten dreams of others? That is what this election season is about, the struggle for the heart of America and the hope to carry this dream to others who have yet to experience it.
I hope you too will struggle to carry the torch and the light of freedom to others when you step into the voting booth come November. However emotional it becomes, I hope that your emotions are well-driven by the forces of well-grounded reason and constitutional values–values that drive you to hope that others can be brought into the fold of freedom.