God Speaks, I Listen

What Is Christmas about?
Why Was Jesus a carpenter?

Ok, I haven't posted here in a long while, but i was mowing today, and those two questions hit me like a ton of bricks. I realize that by some of my previous posts, you might not think I'm a very strong Christian, but in fact, I've been growing in the Lord quite a bit over the last year. Like All Christians, I'm a sinner, but like many (not all) Christians, I am also trying to align my life with that of Jesus Christ (even through sometims I feel more like it intersects more than parelells).
But back to the two questions... I was mowing as I said, and the first question came to me, What is Christmas about? I've often heard people say it "is more about giving than receiving", which to be honest, is a wonderful thought, and if you lived your life that way, you'd be heralded as a "great person". But it struck me that that is totally backwards in respect to Christmas. what gift can I give that is even close to the one Jesus gave. Christmas is not about giving, it's about receiving that wonderful (and at the same time sad) gift of Jesus Christ dying in the most horrible way of the time, so he could save me from damnation for all eternity. WOW. Makes even the biggest gifts you can think of seem like stocking stuffers at best.
Christmas is about receiving Jesus Christ, and his gift, so that you can live with God the Father for eternity. Giving gifts is a nice throught, but if you don;t receive the greatest gift even given to the world, than what is the point. I truly believe that I need start reinforcing that with everyone I know. How can you give your own children a WII, no mater how badly they want it, if you know they haven't accepted the one gift that will keep them from burning in the fires of Hell for all eternity. It's almost like if you had a terminal disease, and the cure was soemthing you could never afford, and you knew you were going to die. Then along comes someone who loved you so much they sacrificed all they had to buy you the cure. Then you took the cure, and said " Hey thanks, but I really appreciate that, but check out this cool new (insert item here)."
Netx post, I elaborate on the other question.

Current Events

Kinda crazy lately. Not sure when I last posted, but here’s the goings on as of late. First, the business me and a former co-worker started has been in full production for over a year now. It’s going well, but due to some crazy circumstances, one of the other Founders (of the company) is likely being ousted somet ime today. The guy came on as a sales/marketing guy, and he’s just not able to do the job. As new business owners, we’re all kind of fighting the learning curve, but this guy seems to have mis-represented his abilities, and now that is causing all sorts of strife in our business.

The “Head Honcho” still needs to makethe final decision, but unless something crazy happens, it’s looks like the sales guy is gonna go away, and we’ll be taking up the slack. Seeing as we’ve been taking up the slack for several months now, no big deal…

Time to update again

Ok, I'm horrible about updating this thing. It;s been so long, I didn't even realize that Google had taken them over (as part odf their gradual domincation of the world). So now I have to update my profile cause som many things have changed since I last came to update here.
First, I've started a new job, or more to the point started a new business. Myself and a few friends have gotten together and started up a business with t conceptual idea that we have all shared for several years now. I can;t go into the details (yet) but it's is revolutionary in it's concept, and is literally something I have dreamed about since I was in High School.
So that is super exciting, albeit somewhat scary since I'm technically not paying myself yet, so we are supporting ouselves on the spousal units income. She makes ok money, but we'll be making double that when the business "launches" and once we are profitable (hopefully years 2-3) there will be no need for her to work ever again. That is also a dream of mine. I want to establish a business by the age of 50 that allows me the oppurtunity to retire if I want to (I probably won't, but I'd like the freedom to if I wanted to). Since we're talking about goals, let's go over some of my other high end goals.

Before I hit 40, I'd like:

1. First and foremost, I want to pay cash for all this stuff, and never give a cent to any credit company again.
2. A nice sized boat that can cross the ocean if we want.
3. A house with a basement, at least two floors, huge garage (at least 4 car), with enough rooms for a huge master bedroom (40 X 40 feet according to the wife), a gameroom, an office for me, a sewing/crafts room for my wife, an unbeleivably huge kitchen that you could cater a whitehouse reception in, a multimedia room where several people can sit and watch a movie, the big game, or just chill out, a gym so we have no excuse to not working out (could be incorporated with game room, or be in basement which would likely be a family type room),
4. In the garage, at least one custom built super awesome muscle car (would be nice to finish the 72 Olds I have now), one jeep type (Jeep, Toyota Landcruiser) vehicle that is super raised, with physco huge tires, and an aftermarket bigblock engine, One luxury/sports car with all the trimmings, comfy to ride in, but super fast
5. A 2-3 story barn that is a giant workshop with enough space to have a woodworking area, a metal-working area, and the whole bottom floor being a auto-awesomeafication area, for building that super awesome muscle car.
6. A small cabin on a lake or ocean somewhere, where you can walk to the water without passing any houses or anything.
7. My Mom, and my Mother-in-law living in a house they own, but don't have to mantain (i.e. be able to have things fixed as they break, painted as it needs painting, lawn perfectly manicured, etc.) Maybe even have room for both at the main (mine and Wife's) house, but with enough seperation that we can all do our own things without stepping on each other's toes. :) :)
8. I'd like to make enough to start donating a large chunk of money to two kinds of organizations, one that helps stray pets, and one that helps lower income children that aspire to greatness, and have shown that they are willing to put in the effort to make a change in their life. I may even have to start some organizations, as I feel that a lot of the ones that exist now have become too top heavy, and too many people make money off the organization as opposed to serving the purpose they were designed for.
9. I want to send my wife back to college (if that is what she wants) so she can do (professionally) what she wants to (I have a feeling she wants to be a vet, but we'd need a really big house with lot's of space to handle all the new critters that we'd be adopting).
10. Enough land to for a heli-pad (see next item), space for horses (one each for me and wife), space to ride, lots of trees, a small putting green, an inground pool, and plenty of room for all the critters that we'll end up adopting (I see at least a few goats, horses, dogs (inside and outside variety), cats (all outside variety, but barn will be where they all live seperated so doggies and kitties can live in peace), and atop a hill so view is great, but it's very hard or impossible to see another house.
11. A helicopter, small enough to land at our house, but large enough for 4 people and some cargo. No I cannot fly a helicopter yet, but that would be another thing I want to learn. I have ALWAYS wanted to know how to fly a chopper.

Ok, well that's a pretty good start. There are a million little things I want, but that will change of course with age and maturity, as will this list probably, but this would be a great place to start.

I have to go let the puppie dogs in, so I have to sign off, but I'll hopefully be updating this on a regular basis, and keep it current for the masses, but more importantly, for myself. :)

God Bless

So

I'm sitting here at work, bored outta my gourd, watching a progress screen on Microsoft's Service Pack 1 for Server 2K3, and clicking around on different links, and what do I stumble on, my BLOG that I was gonna write in every day about the exciting shit tha happens in my life.
Well, no exciting shit, bascially same old same old. Working on getting the website up and running again, and hope to get a copy of Bad Business up too. Bascially, it'll be a site that anyone can bitch about any business they want, hear about gripes from toerhs about that same business, and vent after they have been screwed because of:
Long waits, slow delivery, no delivery, crappy customer service, yadda yadda yadda.
I'm also thinking of starting Good Business, to highlight all the good businesses, but I;m thinking that site would be so damn small, it might not be worth it. We'll see. Gotta switch over my Cox account first (Oh yea, they are definialty gonna be one of my posts on Bad Business). Hmmm, just thought, I wonder if that domian names is taken.....
Yup, both good business and bad business is taken.........Hmmmm, maybe I'll use badbiz.com and goodbiz.com, those are shorter.......and looks like at elsat one of them is free.
Well, gotta go look busy, so back to work for a while. Gonna need to post here occasionaly, not that anyone is ever gonna read this crap, but at least I can gripe about people, and they'll likely never see the post. :)

Profile Updated

Ok, I updated my profile. Not sure exactly what I'm going to use this for, but my wife started one, and I thought to myself, "Self, what better way to chronicle your life than an open book on the itnernet for all to see". Yea, that's the ticket. So here you go, Snakebyte's Life

First Post

Just getting a feeling how the interface works, more to come