Then we bought a Mac.

What a rude awakening! Filtering options are limited in the Mac world. When I faced serious customer service issues with the most obvious choice (to the point of being afraid to call them!) I was motivated to search further. That was a serendipity.

The results: I found K9, from Blue Coat Systems, which now offers a robust filtering solution for the Mac. Better still, K9 (Mac or Windows) is completely free to families and home users. Highly recommended.

K9 offers an impressive, fully-customizable array of blocking categories, easy Web interface, usage reporting, email alerts of questionable use, a three-strikes-and-you’re-out option I’ve wanted for years, custom site overrides (permanent and temporary), P2P and IM monitoring, a safe search engine option that ensures search engines are accessed for the safest results, time limiting, anti-phishing, an online site rating checker (missing for NetNanny 5.6) and more.

Wow!

If you are a corporate or organizational user, you’ll need to buy a license (presumably after the beta period is over if you’re a Mac user) at a price not disclosed on the web site at this time.

Feel free to post your own experiences and comments about K9 here.

Hence this blog.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”). A record-keeping people, Latter-day Saints are encouraged to keep personal journals. My youthful journals gave way to years of no journals during my early married years, then to “small plates” journals of private spiritual experiences, but there was a huge gap in all this. Over the years I’ve had missed opportunities, mistakes, and learning experiences and yielded priceless, precious lessons, but they have no lasting outlet. I’ve tried to share my insights with my children and family and even friends, but did they really understand? Will they remember accurately? (And on a more practical note, will they even be able to read my handwriting on the loose pieces of paper and journals accumulated over the years once I’ve moved on?)

How do you deal with mistakes—even big ones? I decided years ago to turn errors around by extracting lessons from them, analyzing and praying for understanding until I clearly saw the core, diamond truths and governing principles. Then I applied those lessons to the future. I could never hope to do everything right the first time, but I could hope and pray to do much better the second. “Fool me once, shame on you,” my Dad quoted, “fool me twice, shame on me.” I owe a lot to my father for teaching me to learn from my mistakes, and especially from the mistakes of others. “Mistakes are good,” my wife and I have since taught our children, “if you learn from them.” Better still if you can learn from others’ follies and they can learn from yours.

Some small examples from my own life:

• A Seventh-Day Adventist minster asked me, while a missionary, how the atonement of Christ actually accomplished its purpose. He honestly seemed willing to listen, but my answer at age 20 was deeply incomplete.
• We taught a woman in Australia and baptized her, then found she was completely oppressed by an alcohol addiction. How could we help? Inexperienced, I didn’t really know. She was probably looking for help when she came to us, but we didn’t take action out of uncertainty. What became of her?
• A friend once asked me a theological question about the judgment day. Could it be a day of mercy and not punishment? How could a merciful God punish? It was a good question deserving a full, thorough answer which I couldn’t give then.
• I was challenged to write an essay on “Faith” in college. It got a decent grade, but the essay was merely methodical. Unsatisfied, I began to sense that I really didn’t understand the “first principle of the gospel” in spite of my studies to that point.

These missed opportunities and unresolved issues stuck in my mind. I analyzed them and studied and prayed, and the answers always came.

Though many experiences were small things, the most painful ones were the most effective teachers; some from my own life and some from others’. From time to time this blog will let me visit or relive and then amend, like a personal “Groundhog Day” on the Web.

Of course, private details must not be shared, though the learned lessons and principles certainly can be. Brigham Young said: “Do not tell about your nonsensical conduct that nobody knows of but yourselves. Tell to the public that which belongs to the public. If you have sinned against the people, confess to them…. I do not want to know anything about it.” (JD Vol. 8, p. 362.) How much more so the follies of each other!

A seemingly unrelated experience identifies one other purpose of this blog. When I was about 13 or 14 years old, I attended a stake conference of the LDS Church (“Mormon”) in Newport Beach, California. A visiting General Authority told a story that left a lasting impression. A woman expressed concern that she had never been called on to speak in a meeting. (This is significant because the LDS Church has an unpaid clergy. Speakers are chosen from the general congregation, and almost anyone who wants to speak is called on sooner rather than later.) His reply was to challenge her to prepare a talk every week, whether or not she was assigned by the bishop, so she would always be prepared and enjoy the benefits regardless of who spoke. That inspired me. Then he asked our congregation if they would accept that same challenge, to prepare a talk every week, and to raise our hands if we accepted. I raised my hand. Since that time, it bothered me that I didn’t truly prepare a talk every single week, but I’ve worked towards that goal and am now making up for lost time. I’m going to do some of that in this blog, though much of what I write here could not be considered a sacrament meeting talk.

So my purposes are these: create a semi-public journal; share lessons learned; answer questions encountered long ago; share light and truth as I understand it so other truth-seekers can benefit; maybe smooth the path for my children and grandchildren and anyone else tuning in; and do all of this in a semi-organized format rather than haphazard thoughts.

Oh yes, and last of all… to fulfill that obligation I made years ago when I raised my hand in that stake conference as a young teenager.