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The "Friend Test" is similar to the "Girlfriend Test" or the "Mother Test."  In this case, my buddy Rob had a very old Dell that ran horribly.  I installed Ubuntu Linux and he's thrilled.  The computer is fast and responsive again.  He was a little worried about running the software he needs, but he's very happy with Firefox and OpenOffice; he can even read his .docx files from work.

I reorganized the photos of Nathan so they make more sense.  My old gallery (using the Coppermine software) had this strange structure where it insisted that photos could only exist in albums, and albums could only exist in categories.  It forced me to do things like put miscellaneous photos in a "Miscellaneous" photo.  You know how hard "miscellaneous" is to spell?  There's a reason people only write "misc."

Nathan did several cool things recently.  Unfortunately I didn't bring a good camera but I did have my camera phone, for what it's worth.  Here's a rundown.

I was preparing this week's bible portion for reading at the CW reenactment this weekend.  I was speaking with the chaplain at the last event and he invited me to do a reading at the Sunday church service.  I told him I'd like to do the reading in the original Hebrew and he agreed.  I was reading through the portion when I came across this section, in which God commands the Israelites to wage war against another nation.  This war has explicit religious overtones, and the army is commanded not by Joshua, the secular leader who usually leads the army (and will lead the entire nation after Moses dies), but by Pinhas, a religious leader.

The ethics of warfare is a debate that has raged since well before the Civil War.  The current debate--involving CIA hitmen--hinges on what is ethical during wartime (a question with which this bible portion concerns itself as well), but the bigger question is whether war is ever ethically justified.  The bible's answer is yes.

A friend of mine from Hastings has just set up her own law firm in Los Angeles.  If you need an attorney for employment / business / construction law or litigation, I highly recommend her:

http://gallenberglaw.com/