In the Rapture debate there are several different angles of approach. So that I may retain my sanity to the end of the debate this project will have the narrow focus of examining directly the evidence given by Bro. Walvrood that the Post-tribulation position is false. To begin at the beginning I will define some terms.

First premise: There is a God.

Pre-tribulationism: The belief that Jesus Christ will catch away a certain group of people from off the earth and transport them directly to heaven prior to a seven-year period of great sociologic and geologic distress, known as The Great Tribulation, or Jacob's Troubles.

Post-tribulationism: The belief that all living human beings will remain on earth through time, including during the seven-year period of great sociologic and geologic distress, known as The Great Tribulation, or Jacob's Troubles.

That is the difference in a nutshell as I know it. There are as many variations on these two as there are people holding each view. So I welcome you along on my journey. Please accept the above definitions as our starting place. (If you cannot accept this, please do not flame me, just go find a place where you are happy.)

I think it is time to veer into a different area. I have been reading a book loaned to me called "The Rapture Question" by John Walvoord.

It is hard to keep reading because I keep getting up and arguing with the author. Mostly my comments are about the fact that he is mis-representing my point of view. He says that because I hold a certain timeline of events that I do not hold to a literal interpretation of Holy Scriptures. He says because I differ from his point of view that I hold all sorts of wrong headed ideas. He presents views that he assigns to me, and others who believe as I do, that I have never held and then proceeds to "prove me wrong" on those points. I remember this as a logical fallacy in my persuasive writing course. Setting up the proverbial Straw Man and then demolishing him only works if the hearer does not know the truth.

After consideration it is now time to name my blog and take my stand. I am Deconstructing The Rapture Question.

Start of a new week on a Tuesday. It was nice to come to work rested, but why do people flock in on the day after a long weekend like they had nothing better to do than to think up problems while we were closed? We got through the day with only minor ruffled feathers. At least I hope so. We have a team member who sometimes does not seem to want to be on the same page as the rest of us. We all have bad days, and the sales staff has to deal with whackos on a regular basis, but we are supposed to be there for each other. We should not be at odds. I know that I trod on some toes today. It was not intentional, just trying to keep to a deadline. Everyone has a place in the world some just take longer to find theirs. Of course, some might think that my place is under a dead plant somewhere far away from civilization.

I think that I am in love. I found a new-to-me blog: http://voxday.blogspot.com/
He keeps his blog, writes science fiction, shows the differences between Communists, Democrats and Libertarians, and has a Power Point Presentation of the Greek alphabeta. Of course I do not agree 100 percent, but he is articulate and astute. I have enjoyed everything I have read so far.

Been in the new office for 2 weeks now, and am finally getting a chance to breathe. The server is holding up well, except for the "page to non-paged area" weirdness. New forms are getting fine-tuned, Win Server 2k3 is running well. R. got a good review so things are staying stable for now. We will be pulling Cat5 at B. on Tuesday. He finally got a computer for home and right now it is sitting over on the bench, quite dead. People do not give away perfectly good computers, so what did I expect? The unit will not even power on. Tomorrow I will try a different power supply and see what happens. However the 4 units I bought last week are showing great promise. Two of them have booted and run well. One is Win ME and one is Win 98. Can't have everything, but Suse and RedHat are both waiting for new homes. I may end up giving one of them to R, and see if I can rebuild the HP he has. The Dell has video problems, and the AST is still waiting for a test run.

Came into work yesterday to a dead server. Finally have determined that it is a hardware problem. The CPU fan is non-functional, moved the first harddrive to another machine, and now have the office server hanging off the side of accounting computer until we can replace hardware. Looks ugly, but it works.

Today I had lunch with the owner at his house. Officially offered me a new corporate position: System Administrator/Inventory Control Specialist. I accepted, and now I am trying not to be miserable. I love the new position, but for now I have to leave R. behind at the MV location. The people that we work with make all the difference, and I hate the thought of going into work and not seeing him there. He has learned so much and we work so well together. I don't want to try to train anyone else while I am learning a new job in a new location. At least I have permission to have him assist as needed. He sent me a sweet email this morning before my meeting. I am truly hoping this separation is temporary. I did tell the management when we first discussed the job that I would need an assistant, and they agreed, so maybe after a few months things will turn that way.

Anyway, my days as a sales person are ending, finally. I hope never to work in sales again. Like everything in life, there is good and bad in this.

Wow! It's been a while since I've been here. Life has been busy. Yesterday I updated and installed Service Packs on the main Server, hit a brickwall on re-installing MS Office. Later I swapped out the RAM on the secondary Server, acutally upped it to 4X its original configuration. That went perfectly.

Monday I have to go to the M. Location and figure out why their email isn't working on all machines. The fun never ends.

Have a good year!