Of Bald Men and Bears

I have grown to appreciate the blogging service WordPress more and more, and I have begun to dislike Blogger proportionately. So, Andrew and I are shifting our blog from here to a new WordPress blog at http://baldbears.wordpress.com. The format and template is a work in progress, but WordPress gives bloggers the convenient option of simply importing old posts. So, I have already imported this blog, but also the old blog that I had before Andrew and I joined forces. Andrew is in the process of uploading his old blog.

Additionally, it will be important to know that some of our intra-blog links (that is, those that point to other posts that we ourselves have written) will still point to our Blogger blog. We will be working on updating those over time, but please be patient. All the dates should be the same, though, so there shouldn't be too much trouble accessing old blog posts through our archive.

So, take the red pill with us, and we'll see you on the other side!

Labels: Blogs

Posted by Jacob at 5:49 AM | Permalink | Comments

OMAHA, Neb., Dec. 5 -- Jacob Gerber is once more in Omaha, having escaped from the Siberian exile to which he was deemed a year and a half ago. He arrived in the city last night after an absence of twenty-one months. After being a resident of this city for six years he returned to Russia to dispose of what property he had there and to bring his family to this country.

Read the full article.

Posted by andrew at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

As some of you know, my iBook has had logic board problems since I bought it. It was a widespread issue with the G3 iBooks, so much so that Apple created an extended repair program covering the issue. I had my logic board replaced three times under the program, and it just failed again a few days ago. Upon calling Apple Support, I discovered that the program had ended a few months ago, and so the only solution was an expensive out-of-warranty repair.

Not knowing where else to go, I sent the following email to Steve Jobs:

Dear Steve,

Today the Apple technician at my university diagnosed my Apple G3 iBook (serial # UV342######) with logic board failure. This is the fourth time that my logic board has failed since I purchased it in May 2004, just over three years ago. I called technical support this afternoon only to discover that the iBook logic board repair extension program has recently ended and thus, in order to fix my computer, I would need to pay hundreds of dollars for an out-of-warranty repair.

I'm very disappointed with the way in which Apple dealt with the iBook logic board problem. Apple acknowledged from the beginning that logic board failure on this particular iBook model was widespread and recurrent, as evident in my case, and yet each time they only replaced the logic board rather than fixing the issue. As a student, it was an extreme inconvenience to repeatedly send my computer to Apple each time this occurred (the third time the repair took a month to perform) and be without my computer during the college semesters. When I called tech support the third time (April 2006) and asked if a more permanent remedy could be found, such as replacing the defective iBook with a newer model, I was told that they would repair this issue three times and then replace the iBook on the fourth occasion. Yet now, because the fourth failure occurred just a few months after the program ended, I'm stuck with a defective computer in the middle of my first semester of graduate school.

I was very impressed with the user interface of my iBook and with Apple's craftsmanship in other products (my iPod has always worked perfectly) and so I was even more surprised and disappointed that instead of recalling and replacing a defective product, in this case Apple merely used stop-gap repairs that never actually fixed the problem. Now I'm left with a defective product and no affordable solution.

I was expecting at most to receive an apology and maybe a iTunes gift card or something. Instead, today I received a phone call from one of Jobs' representatives who said that they reviewed my case and thought that a full replacement would be the best solution. Since the iBook is no longer produced, they're sending me a brand new 2 GHz MacBook, which should arrive by Friday.

I guess the moral of the story is that there are still some companies like Apple who take legitimate complaints seriously. Now I wait for my shiny new MacBook.

Posted by andrew at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments

Psalm 78 opens by declaring:

¹Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
     incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
²I will open my mouth in a parable;
     I will utter dark sayings from of old,
³things that we have heard and known,
     that our fathers have told us.
⁴We will not hide them from their children,
     but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
     and the wonders that he has done.

It is interesting that, on one hand, the psalmist describes his psalm as being a "parable" and an utterance of "dark sayings from of old," which suggests some form of mystery. (Think, for example, of how Jesus specifically used parables to veil the mystery of who he was.) On the other hand, the psalmist insists that he is writing merely things "that we have head and known/that our fathers have told us."

Certainly, much of the psalm is a survey of Israel's history, and therefore a story with which ever good Hebrew would have been intimately familiar. I think, though, that the psalmist sneaks in the mystery at the end of the psalm, masquerading its glory as something very obvious in Israel's history:

⁷⁰He chose David his servant
     and took him from the sheepfolds;
⁷¹from following the nursing ewes he brought him
     to shepherd Jacob his people,
     Israel his inheritance.
⁷²With upright heart he shepherded them
     and guided them with his skillful hand.

What is so mysterious about describing David as the shepherd of Israel? Well, in three of the psalms directly surrounding Psalm 78 (Psalm 77:20, Psalm 79:13, and Psalm 80:1), God himself is described as the Shepherd of Israel. How could both David and God be the Shepherd of Israel?

"I AM the Good Shepherd..."

Labels: Bible, Devotion, Theology

Posted by Jacob at 5:46 AM | Permalink | Comments

In case you didn't know, Indelible Grace is on the verge of coming out with a fifth album, entitled "Wake Thy Slumbering Children."

Maranatha, IGrace 5.

Labels: Music

Posted by Jacob at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments