I did battle tonight for some number of hours against the evil winmsc32.exe virus. Just so you know, this virus installs a service on your computer, innocuously named “Configuration Utility”. It also polls the process list for Task Manager, Registry Editor, the Command prompt(!), and the Services admin tool window and terminates those processes to prevent you from killing it.

Ultimately, my ProcessHammer program killed the processes, but the services relaunched them. I rebooted into Safe Mode, ran an adware program, then disabled the Configuration Utility (virus) service and manually searched for the winmsc32.exe file and deleted it. I booted normally again and Thanks be to God, the virus was gone.

In the meanwhile, I got to talk with Jeff and play some with Nicky and Jane. Jeff informed me that the adoration girl sat next to him at Mass today, though I did not know that because I studiously avoided looking over in that direction during Mass. I told him (jokingly) that perhaps he could whisper to her during Mass while pointing at me, saying “Now that is one solid guy”. (That’s something Jeff would say.) Then I would just have to fulfill my end by working on the “solid” part!

God knows best! Hagase tu voluntad, asi en la tierra y en my vida, como en el cielo.

Would you believe that the Tour de France is NOT currently being led by multi-year favorite Lance Armstrong, but rather by a man named Richard Perales–an unknown in the cycling world until a few days ago when he burst onto the scene and won a mountain stage?

I think we can definitely say that Richard Perales is “Living Strong”.

My good friend Jeff Kress told me about something he thought about one time, related to St. Joseph’s death. We can be sure from the Bible that St. Joseph had died before Jesus died, since on the cross Jesus entrusted his mother to his disciple John’s care–something he would not have done had St. Joseph been alive.

So why did St. Joseph die before Jesus did? Well, it’s simple yet profound. St. Joseph, as Guardian of the Redeemer (Redemptoris Custos), was charged with protecting Jesus by the Father, in addition to being his father in so many ways. If the Father had permitted St. Joseph to be alive during Jesus’ Passion, St. Joseph could not have stood by and watched Jesus be tortured and murdered. He would have fought like a lion to stop his torturers, even doing violence to them, and such an act was against St. Joseph’s makeup. I don’t know if it would have been sinful for him to protect Jesus, but the contradiction of being Jesus’ protector and foster-father and then being forced to sit idly by while his son was murdered would have been too much.

So the Father, in his perfect wisdom, willed that St. Joseph die peacefully, in Jesus and Mary’s arms before Jesus’ public ministry, rather than subject him to the unbearable horror of watching his son die, an act that had to happen for our poor souls’ salvation.

All hail the Lion of Judah!

I was thinking about some lyrics from Simple Minds that I have enjoyed recently:

When you wake there’s a new day dawning

And then I thought about our Blessed Mother, and I imagined her waking up on the morning of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel was sent to her by God to ask if she would assent to being the mother of Jesus Christ.

When she woke up that morning, a New Day dawned on the whole world. Quietly, in Mary and Joseph’s humble little house, in her peaceful bedroom, Gabriel came to her, and she said yes to God. Who in the world had any idea that this momentous event had occurred? Not even her dearly loved Joseph knew it for a while. For a time, it was God’s secret with her and her alone in the world. His beloved daughter, his handmaid, his greatest creation.

She assented to the Father’s impossible, gentle request, and the world was born anew in hope, for Hope had entered the world.

For all those who don’t know you, dear Mother, Thank You! From the depths of my heart, thank you! We love you so much; thank you for loving us with all your heart.

I went to Mass Saturday morning, and afterwards I walked my friends Jeff and Sharon to their car. They commented that I hadn’t made it to daily Mass at St. Louis any the past week, which was true.

Well, I lamented to him about my various worries. We talked a bit more, and they offered some words of encouragement to me. It made me feel better. I told them I was leaving it all in God’s hands. They strongly felt that was a good move. Jeff put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a kind of sideways hug, and so then I just kind of felt the weight of disappointment with all of it and asked for Sharon to give me a hug, too.

So we said our goodbyes, and I drove into the nearby ExxonMobil to buy gas and coffee. I got a call on my cell phone from Jeff, and he invited me to come over to their house for breakfast! I was so grateful because my roommate the G is out of town this weekend visiting his girlfriend and family, so it was going to just be me and God for the day, and I’m not as good a friend to God as I should be. So I went over and got to spend time with them, and Sharon made me breakfast. Thanks be to God! They are so kind to me.

Here’s a picture of one of their daughters, Sam, who woke up while I was eating breakfast:

Incidentally, while over there their computer was messed up again, and the evil virus writers had written one that killed the Task Manager process as soon as it launched, so I couldn’t kill their virus processes (so evil). So I came home today and wrote my own program to kill their processes, and tomorrow hopefully I can try it out. “Uh oh, Mr. Evil Virus Writer, it looks like I know how to program, too, and now your little virus is gonna die!”. On balance I did pray for those virus writers’ conversion today. Peace out!

Tonight I hosted a hang-out night with friends of mine for the second time in six months (I intend to do them more frequently, but then I get busy doing unimportant things and the next thing I know half a year has gone by). The only rule we had was No Girls Allowed–well, that rule plus all the ones we live by being Christian men and following God’s commandments.

Last time we watched “The Bourne Supremacy” with Matt Damon, which was a good guy’s movie, then we played video games on my somewhat dated systems. This time, however, we skipped the movie and played games all night, which was fine with me! I have an 8-bit Nintendo, a Super Nintendo, and a Sega Genesis. We played lots of games and ate pizza:

Mark, James, and Adam eating pizza

Philip and Dominic

I have played most of these games since I was a boy and invested WAY too many hours on them. The bad thing about that is that I could be really good at playing a musical instrument or be a black belt in kung fu. The good thing is that I am pretty good at old console games, especially the ones I own.

We all played the classic Super Mario Bros., and after gleefully showing the guys how to get “mega-men” on level 3-1 by bouncing the turtle shell of the koopa-troopa against the stairsteps, I managed to win the game and save the princess (note to my future wife: Won’t you be proud that your husband can beat Super Mario Bros. and save the damsel in distress? :). How did I accomplish such an heroic feat of gamesmanship? By living strong:

Livestrong!

My friends and I had very good conversation and spoke of things that really mattered in our lives (in addition to the silly stuff that naturally arises from playing games like Dr. Mario). Thanks be to our amazing God for blessing us with such friends, with such joy, and with a life of love. Adam is married and has an 18-month old girl, and I asked him what I should be appreciating more as a single Catholic man (coming from his perspective as a relatively new husband and father). He said I should appreciate the time I have to do what I want to do, as that time will be much more restricted once I am married and have a child especially (God willing).

At the same time he said that the most valuable things take sacrifice and humility, and so marriage and fatherhood offers one of the most valuable things that God has created, for they require tremendous amounts of these virtues.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen!

Many of you are probably following the Tour de France going on right now, with Lance Armstrong, a native of Austin, Texas (where I work and live by), leading the race and trying to win for the nth straight time.

Many of you also have probably seen the yellow bracelets that say “Livestrong” on them. There have been many copycat ones as well, ranging from pro-life blue ones to Boston Red Sox red ones. These livestrong bracelets bother me as I see behind them a kind of secular “empowerment” to “believe in yourself and overcome anything” mentality. Here is an excerpt from a website I ran across touting these principles:

You see we all have the Lance Armstrong spirit to try the best in all we do…. Lance Armstrong knows no limits, he has nothing to prove now; so what drives him? Well, You and I are all driven by our passions and beliefs and truly there is nothing we cannot do; if we want it bad enough.

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As you know, Sandra Day O’Connor has announced her retirement and Bush will soon be nominating a replacement justice. I admit that prior to this turn of events I knew nothing about the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States). Thanks to the wonderful world wide web, I know just enough to make dangerous blog posts.

One of the interesting things I found in my perusal of related Internet articles is that justices like O’Connor are dangerous because they do not base their vote on a consistent philosophy of how the Constitution should be interpreted. Here’s a bite from an interesting article from NRO:

The lack of rigid principles for which O’Connor is being applauded made it easy for her to find compromises in particular cases. This moderation meant that no party ever knew that it had definitively won or lost. Supporters and opponents of abortion; friends and foes of school prayer; activists for and against racial preferences; nationalists and federalists: All had a chance of winning her vote for their cause in the next case, less because she was applying principles impartially than because she was not applying principles at all. But the lack of clear rules made the Court’s will that much more important. Justice Scalia’s relatively rule-bound jurisprudence constrains his decisions in a way that Justice O’Connor’s jurisprudence never did.

I went to Mass today, and behold! St. Maria Goretti had her feastday today. She is just so awesome and inspiring that I wish every girl would know about her. Talk about God overcoming evil with good and his grace abounding! Unfortunately, the good priest made no mention of her.

Also today the OT reading was about the old Joseph, son of Jacob, and how he related with his brothers when they came to him for help (though they didn’t recognize him as they had sold him off decades ago in jealousy). The Church in her God-given wisdom has long spoken of this Joseph prefiguring St. Joseph, the husband of Mary and foster-father of Jesus. And listening to the readings with this understanding in mind, insights start to come out:

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I made my own nation for St. Joseph today at this site:

The Republic of SaintJoseph
Motto: “Go to Joseph”

UN Category: Father Knows Best State
Civil Rights: Some
Economy: Good
Political Freedoms: Rare

Location: The East Pacific
The Republic of SaintJoseph is a tiny, devout nation, renowned for its compulsory military service. Its compassionate, hard-working, cynical population of 5 million are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The large, corrupt government is mainly concerned with Religion & Spirituality, although Education and Healthcare are secondary priorities. The average income tax rate is 22%. A small but healthy private sector is dominated by the Arms Manufacturing industry.

Crime — especially youth-related — is relatively low. SaintJoseph’s national animal is the black lab and its currency is the cord.

–
As you can see, they make up some stuff off the basic things you tell them.

I hung out with my good friend Robert this weekend in Dallas and got to play with his dogs. Wulfric has been growing, though he is still only a little fella.

I also learned how to play Texas Hold’em poker. We fortunately didn’t play with real money or I would have lost a bundle, but it was fun. I loved shouting out, “I’m all in!” and putting all my chips onto the table.

I read a few months ago that one of the band members of Korn had converted to Christianity. His story is worth reading.

Right before I quit Korn, I caught my daughter walking around my house one day singing songs about sex and death that came from my band. I wasn’t having that anymore.

Thanks be to God! Stories of God’s grace like this warm my heart.

Today I went to 7:30 am Mass at St. Elizabeth’s, celebrated by our African associate pastor, Fr. Phillip. I think he is from Nigeria, and sometimes he expects things out of the congregation and the choir that we are not quite up to. Today was one of those days.

Before I go further I want to say how much I thank God for Fr. Phillip. Yesterday, for example, I went to St. Elizabeth’s for Confession, and there was literally no one in the whole church. I thought perhaps due to the holiday weekend they were not going to have Confession. Some other people came in for Confession, but there was no priest. It was past the posted time for when it should begin, so I closed my eyes and said a prayer, asking for God to bring in a priest to hear our confessions. Not three minutes later, Fr. Phillip comes in with a neat hat on, ready to hear our confessions!

Okay, so back to this morning. Right at the beginning of Mass, Fr. Philip turns to the choir and says: “Sometime during Mass today, I want you to sing the national anthem.” The choir kind of looked at each other, since they had not prepared for this, but Mass continued. The readings had a lot to do with the Holy Spirit (esp. the 2nd one), so Fr. Phillip began to speak of the Holy Spirt, then talk about the song/prayer Veni Creator Spiritus (Come Holy Spirit). He sung a little bit of it, then he turned to the choir again and said “I would like one of you to stand up and sing Veni Creator Spiritus”. The choir members looked at the priest, not making any movements, and then two of them picked up the Gather and Praise song books and started thumbing through them in an apparent attempt to find that song. Fr. Phillip kept asking them to sing it, but none of them seemed to know it or were able to sing it.

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Over at this somewhat “edgy” chastity site they have 10 fun date ideas. Some of these are definitely not for me, but others I like. For example, making a drive-in theater in your backyard (one word: mosquitoes). However, the Trade Up idea was cool, volunteering at a homeless shelter, Christmas in July (watch It’s a Wonderful Life and make cookies), and bring dinner to a local pottery shop. My only Catholic girlfriend and I did that with her brother and sister and their dates, and it was very cool.

Now all I need is a girlfriend to take on all these dates!

I just upgraded the blog software to Wordpress 1.5.3 due to a security fix. But then when I clicked on the comment boxes or on a post title, I got an error saying 404 page not found. The whole upgrading process is very opaque to me, even as a computer programmer, so I had no clue what was going wrong. Fortunately, I discovered this post on the Wordpress support forum indicating that the htaccess file could be missing. Once I uploaded that file from my own computer (I had saved off all the blog files before upgrading) permalinks and comments worked again!

I posted a short review of one of my favorite Rebecca St. James songs: Wait for Me. Rebecca St. James is a very talented and beautiful Christian singer. She’s also 27 years old, just like me. (Does anyone else see the connection here?).

May God bless her in the inspiring music she creates, and bless all single Christians as they strive to be pure for their future spouses and families!

On first Fridays we have adoration in the chapel at St. Louis. Today, because there was a funeral, we had to push adoration back to begin at noon (which is when my hour begins). So I was given the honor of exposing Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. First I set up the mobile side altar and placed two candles on it; then I set up the empty monstrance ready to receive our Lord for exposition. Finally, I knelt before the tabernacle and prayed that Jesus would help me humbly expose him on the altar for us to adore him. I opened up the tabernacle and there Jesus was, in the luna that fits inside the monstrance. I picked him up and cradled him in my hands close to my chest and walked to the altar.

Then all of a sudden it struck me: What an amazing honor I was being given to carry Jesus to the altar for adoration, so that others could worship him, pray to him, offer their hearts and souls to him, and receive his mercy and grace. For the past few years I have done the adoration scheduling, but it usually feels disconnected from really helping people adore our Lord. Today God showed me how good it is to serve him and bring him to others. Is this how a priest feels when he celebrates Mass? When he gives absolution in Confession? When he baptizes a baby? When he marries two of God’s children?

I got to adore Jesus for an hour, and the time went by quickly. As I was leaving I saw a young Hispanic family with their little son. They showed him how to genuflect and make the sign of the cross before the Blessed Sacrament. It was really beautiful. May God bless all families!