Soak Instead of Scrub

Soaking in God's word is like adding soap and hot water to a dirty pan, and letting it sit. The pan in the water, along with the soap, loosens the dirt and grime that has built up on the pot over time.  The dirt and grime is there simply because the pot was used.  The pot was doing what is was meant to do.  (Soaking in how water and soap also helps dust.)

For ministry, and in life in general, it is important not to go long periods without taking time to soak in the word of God.  Disagreements, problems at work, arguments, and any other issue of life can start to cling to us, and build up.  After a while, if we don't soak, all that mess builds up and really starts to stink.

If we don't soak regularly, to get clean we  need a good scrubbing!  Sometimes scrubbing can really scratch and bruise the pan... but at the same time, a good scrub is exactly what we need to get us clean.

So, soak regularly instead of scrubbing irregularly.

Tithing Explained via Amdahls Law

I have a pretty busy schedule. It may not be busy from your perspective but I am having trouble completed all the tasks that I assigned for myself. So I am looking for a way to improve the amount of hours I have per day, or at least increase the number of tasks I complete per day. I am trying to increase my effectiveness.

My issue is with time. For problem solving purposes, lets trade my problem of limited time for a problem of limited money. If I had a problem paying my bills, or buying whatever I needed to buy, the first thing I would make sure that I am doing is tithing. If I am not giving at least 10% of my income away, I would up whatever percent I am giving to at least 10. If I am already giving 10%, I would increase that number, and give more to my church, friends, the needy, or a charity.

In increasing my monetary giving, I can expect that I will receive or obtain more money. This is the law (or principle) of tithing.

The Principle of Tithing

The Lord says on many occasions in the scripture that he owns everything. Psalms 24:1 says that "The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." We, humans, were given dominion over the earth, as written in Genesis 1:28. With this said, tithing is the act of giving a portion of your money, animals, or crops away. Able first did this in obedience to God in Genesis 4:4. After giving, God, in turn, says that he will bless what you gave Malachi 3:10 Matt 13:23.

For example, if a farmer decides to plant extra seeds instead of eating or selling the seeds she could reasonably expect to produce a larger crop with a greater amount of total fruit (and more seeds) the next harvest.

I am probably oversimplifying the whole concept, but I have friends who went from living from paycheck-to-paycheck to being able to go on vacations simply because they started tithing. In undergrad, when I was short on money in my last year, I prayed and tithed, and out of no where I got a job that was enough to pay for my rent. Even though I took out loan money I did not have to use it.

I know for sure that God honors tithing.

Now concerning time, what naturally occurring phenomenon can explain that if I give more time to God he will Honor my commitment? I believe the answer is Amdahls Law.

Amdahls Law

Amdahl's Law says that greater 'speed up' (concerning systems) is achieved when the portion of the code that makes the largest impact is improved. This law is associated with the phrase "Make the common case fast." This is represented by the following equations:

Speedup = 1 / ( (1 - f) + (f / n) )

where f is the percentage of the importance that can be enhanced and n is the amount or factor by which the system is enhanced.

For example, if I improve 10% of my activities by a factor of 10 then I would obtain a speed up of 1.1 (f = 0.1, n = 10 -> Speedup = 1.09). If you increase f to 0.5 and make a 10x improvement you would get a speedup of 1.8. When f = 0.1 and n = 20 you get a speedup of only 1.10. This shows that you should work to improve the important task.

Now, imagine that we can measure the tasks in our day by the importance. In order to increase our efficiency during the day, by applying Amdahl's law, we should invest more time in "improving" the most important parts of our day. If spending time with Jesus is the most important part of your day, then an improvement in the time spent with him would allow you to achieve a significant increase throughout the day.

Therefore, investing your time were it matters the most will improve your day as a whole. The speedup, or blessing received by investing time with Jesus is definitely worth the sacrifice it takes to make that improvement.

I hope you followed me on this... I know at the end it got a little blurry, let me know what you think.

Differences between C and C++

Here are some notes from a Programming Language Principles class.

C++ has five major "improvements" over C

1. Stream I/O
2. Strong typing
3. Parameter passing by reference
4. Default argument values
5. Inlining

Stream I/O

C++ adds the library which declares two streams cin ( operator>>) and cout (operator<<). The cin stream is associated with standard input and The input lines are buffered and require an end-of-line character before processing input.

Streams are nice because:

1. Type safe - the type of object in the stream is known at compile time. No dynamic type checking needed with the % operator
2. Less error prone than printf
3. Streams are faster than printf.
4. Streams are extensible to new user-defined data types. So you can read in an object.
5. Streams are subclassable. ostream and istream are the C++ replacements for the File pointer (FILE*). You can define types that look and act like streams.

Strong Typing

In general, C++ has stronger typing and C.

1. To express a function with zero arguments in C you must say foo(void) because foo() tells the compiler not to check for input types such as char * malloc();.In C++ the empty argument list means "no arguments."
2. In C, its ok to call a function that has not been defined. No type checking will be performed. In C++ prior to any function use, you must at least have a prototype defined.
3. In C++, you are required to return a function of the type you declare. In C, you may choose to return a function of the type you declare or you may choose to simply return;. If you try to use return; when a return type of a function is declared, the compiler say error: return-statement with no value.
4. In C you are allowed to assign a void* to a pointer of a different type. This will cause an error in C++.
5. When initializing arrays, the statement char A[2] = "hi" will cause an error in C++ because there is no declared room to add the end of line '\0' character. In C this is ok, and no '\0' is stored ... possibly causing an error with proceeding string functions. It is best to use char A[] = hi;
6. In C++ we can use new and delete instead of malloc and free. malloc doesn't call constructors and free doesnt call destructors. new and delete are type safe.

I will leave the discussion there. Please feel free to add more.

Are men allowed to wear WNBA jerseys??

I came across this picture....

Link

Ok she is good but....