Rightly so, an astute reader and dear friend asked me why I think so. After all… fall is only a few weeks away. YIKES.

One of the things I love about the lifestyle that YHWH has placed us in for this season of our lives is that we live in our own little bubble in many respects – especially when it comes to news. We’re not surrounded by the normal daily inputs that would otherwise keep us informed with or without our own research. Sure, news is always a few keystrokes away, but I’m not bombarded with the latest popular news media fad and that is a blessing.

But I don’t think we’re all that unique in this respect – regardless of our fairly unique lifestyle. For the most part, and actually because of the popular news media’s attempt to bombard (and entertain) I think the vast majority of America is in its own bubble that is quite a bit different than reality. Sure, there are alternate news sources out there, but I don’t mean Fox News. Nothing wrong with Fox News. Well, other than the fact that it’s merely the opposing side of the Dialectic whose ultimate goal is identical to the side it claims to be opposing. But that’s an entirely different topic, into which it would also be easy to digress via the whole democrat / republican facade.

But really, my point with this meandering background that doesn’t seem to be getting any closer to answering the question I purportedly have set out to answer is that: some of my feelings on Normal (yes, let’s make Normal a character, and his) lack of longevity – perhaps even expiring this fall – are based on several poignant moments when I’ve surfaced out of my bubble recently to consult Reality in other parts of the world. These are really the kind of things that we must do intentionally, because there is a very deliberate attempt to entertain us into total disinterest beyond casual curiosity and program us into passivity.

2 years ago, in my self-centered view of the way Scriptural prophecy might play out in these End Times (which I still believe, as I have for years, are upon us) I had a powerful subconscious assumption that things probably wouldn’t really get all that bad in America until after the “Great Tribulation” – or last 3.5 years of man’s rule on the earth – had begun. The obvious trigger sign from the Book of Daniel is the emergence of the anti-messiah and his desecration of the temple mount in Israel. Although I have always wanted to be prepared for whatever – whenever – I guess I sort of figured that we had at least enough time to wait and watch for that to happen first, and once it did we’d figure out what to do next. So, it came as a minor shock to the presuppositional system (yes, made up word there) to ponder – what if America’s demise came well before that?

The prophets foretell of an End Times destruction of Babylon and the Daughter of Babylon. You can find all kinds of articles on the internet debating the application and identities of these entities. What stands out as conclusive in my mind is the description in Revelation 17-18 which layers the understanding of Babylon as a city that also represents a nation. There are many characteristics described in these 2 chapters that fit America, but the most significant factors that do not seem to apply to any other nation or city in the world are:
1) the city having sovereignty over the kings of the earth
2) the city that is a hub of the earth’s merchandise where some 27 unique commodities are bought and sold on a daily basis

The only place in the world that meets those 2 key criteria (and the other characteristics) is New York City as the home of the UN (#1) and the home of the New York Stock Exchange (#2) and by extension… America.

Scripture is clear that YHWH will not do anything without first revealing it to His servants the prophets. I do not believe this is limited to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc… YHWH still speaks loud and clear to His people and still has prophets on the earth as at all other times throughout history. If you Google something like [war israel 2010] and skim through the current situation brewing in Israel and the Middle East.

It’s hard to appreciate that answer without understanding some quick basics. If you’ve never been exposed to some of these ideas before, they can be a little daunting and seem far fetched, but you don’t need an economics degree to appreciate truth and reality and I can recommend many incredible resources if you want to do more digging on your own. A primer… the facts:

• The fraud that poses as our entire economy works exactly like the game of monopoly. What did you do when the bank ran out of money? Well, the bank can’t run out of money (it’s in the rules!). So, you grab a marker and whip up a few more bills to keep the game going! This is literally what the Federal Reserve does.
• But then the Fed loans that money to the government via the money supply. How do they get paid back (PLUS interest?). What do you think your taxes are for? Have you every thought about government budgets? Have you ever wondered where all the money comes from to pay for over $500 billion now in the war on terror, and everything else, and then just assumed our tax dollars take care of it? But where did the money come from that we earned that was then withheld to pay taxes? Where did that money come from? Well… the companies we work for of course!  But where did they get the money from? Well, by selling a bunch of products or services right? But then where did the purchasers get the money from? We could chase this tail for a while couldn’t we?
• The only way (modern) money exists is that it is loaned into existence. Ponder that. Money is debt. Can you pay debt back with debt? If you owe your friend $5 for the burger he spotted you for the other day and hand him a Lincoln… you have just handed him a note that says “the government owes the Fed $5.”
• The only reason the system “works” is because so far almost everyone still willingly exchanges debt for tangible things of value.
• Because only the principle debt is printed as money – and not the interest owed – it CAN NEVER BE REPAID. It would be like your farmer friend giving you 5 oranges and you agreeing to pay him back 7 oranges for his kindness. But in order to pay him back 7 oranges you have to borrow 7 more oranges after you ate the other 5. And he will only give you those next 7 if you agree to pay him back 10. Do you see the picture?
• Oh, and by the way the Fed is a privately owned cartel and has nothing to do with the government except that the government is beholden to it. So, yes, the owners of the Fed are growing quite wealthy through  the “oranges” they are lending everyone. But the real kicker is that the “oranges” are complete fictitious.
• And now the Fed is going to buy U.S. Debt???? Does this make any sense whatsoever? http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/10/us_federal_reserve – the same debt it created – it is now going to buy it back and then … what … we’ll owe the same amount + interests to them twice over? It is just insane the tactics that are being used to keep the golden goose on life-support. What is more insane is that the golden goose is allowing itself to be kept on life support when she never sees a single one of her own eggs.
• It’s only a matter of time, and any variable on the international scene could upset the fabricated equilibrium quite easily.

Culminating into some sort of conclusion:

• Both Biblical and modern day prophets have foreseen America’s destruction.
• America has many enemies that are already in position and more than willing to help facilitate those visions: from China to Russia to muslim terrorists.
• America’s government (a reflection of her people) seem keen on accelerating her downfall through pride (which comes before a fall), foolish policies, defiance of the Almighty through legislated immorality, murder of the unborn, riotous living, drug-sorceries (Pharmakeia), unholy liaisons between the FDA and Monsanto and the effort to play god for profit through GMOs and other genetic experiments denying the basic human right of access to uncontaminated, non-toxic food (whole other topic that deserves an entire post, but check out http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/Home/index.cfm ) so on and so forth.
• America’s stance towards Israel alone has the potential to trigger greater judgment than she’s already seen for mistakes in that area.
• Everything is reaching a boiling point in Israel: I have first-hand knowledge that the IDF has been visiting homes in the north advising residents to flee to the south past Jerusalem because war is coming and her enemies in Lebanon and Syria now have rockets that can reach at least to Jerusalem.
• Several people I know personally and trust completely have had dreams or visions in the last few weeks indicating that things have been set in motion which cannot be stopped and will play out sooner rather than later. The timing has not been specific in these words – perhaps there is another year (?) – but the tone feels imminent to me. These people have no awareness of what they each have shared with me independently.

MY MAIN POINT is not to say that all hell is going to break loose in October 2010. It very well could be another year or two or three (though I highly doubt it). My main point is to shake the the cobwebs off my own mind, spirit, and heart and in so doing hopefully help you do likewise.

Do not fear.

All the mind-programing wizards in entertainment, the news media, government, corporate America (say advertising), the medical-drug complex, and education are busy massaging American’s into a state of pre-fear conditioning. The end game is control. But they lose all control when we through faith stand fast in acknowledging that only our Creator is truly in control.

Enter Luke 12. Probably one of the best chapters in all of Scripture to bathe your mind in daily. Psalm 91 as well. BUT. These are promises to those who have a relationship with the King of the universe. They cannot be used as religious talismans in a name-it-and-claim-it fashion by those who have no genuine, humble, reverent respect of YHWH and His nature.

Learn to hear His voice daily in your most seemingly mundane decisions. His sheep know His voice.

Practice daily obedience. Do what you know to be right.

If you know His voice and practice obedience then when timing is critical for your own survival you will hear His instructions clearly and respond immediately.

Moses spent 40 years in that process of learning to Hear and Obey – in Hebrew “Shema and Shamar” – which is actually a beautiful play on words and amazing word picture all to itself. “Shamar” means to guard or keep – as in guarding / keeping His Word / His instruction / His commandments. But it derives this meaning partly from a related word “shamiyr” which means “thorn” because in the wilderness a shepherd would construct a hedge of thorns around his sheep to protect and guard them from predators.

As we learn to HEAR and GUARD TO DO what our Shepherd asks of us, He will HEAR our petitions for deliverance and GUARD us as His precious flock… This October, next October and every October after that regardless of what is happening in the world around us. And actually, with the timing of the Fall Feasts this year – Trumpets is on Sep 11th so things could explode even well before October.

• http://www.michaelrood.tv/blogs/1-sixth-new-moon
• http://laydownlife.net/index_files/updates.htm
  • Especially #22 “Dream”
  • If you want to dig deeper also #21 (especially pgs 5 and 6 but read it all)

We’re on our way north and east.

I have many good excuses as to why things have died down quite a bit on the site here… and I want to publish this more boldly and dedicate an entire post to it – and I will likely write a lot more on the subject some other time (if I can make the time for it) – but:

The end of our world as we’ve known it
is closer than we think.

Let that sink in for a minute.

What does it mean? My world? Your world? Everyone’s world? You’ve probably felt the general vibe out there that not everything is as it should be. Sure there are lots of things going on in the news that seem like they’re all somehow connected, but surely everything will go on as it always has. Everything will be alright… right?

If you – right now – wherever you are, whatever you are doing that is getting interrupted by reading this is – pause for a moment; ponder the possibility that this fall – October, maybe later – could be a cataclysmic fulcrum point in America’s history that changes her (and the world) forever; let this possibility sink into your mind and then prepare; prepare by praying; prepare by thinking – what would you do if EVERYTHING changed? if you could not work? if you could not get to your family? if you could not use your cell phone? if there was no electricity? where would you go? what would you do? how? why? start weighing your options, but realize the only option is to trust your Creator whom you might not know as well as you’d like… if you pause for a moment and contemplate what I am saying… you will be more prepared to handle what will be coming in due time than the vast majority who will be caught completely by surprise.

Is this doomsday talk / conspiracy theory / doom and gloom? Depends on your perspective. Heavenly judgment on wickedness and oppression is justice and deliverance to the humble and righteous. Analytically speaking, America’s economic survival is impossible. Spiritually speaking, men of God have been having dreams and visions of America’s destruction for decades. And I’m not talking about televangelist type “men of God” – I’m talking about the kind of men (and women) who suffer persecution for their faith in Messiah in other countries, the kind who come to America as missionaries because of how lost our nation has become, the kind would (and do) walk for months on foot just to acquire a single copy of the Bible.

Could I be wrong about this fall? Certainly. But whether it unravels this fall or later, I am presently convinced that 2 of the next most massive world events are going to be: the collapse of America and war in the Middle East with Israel in the center.

Do I have any inside knowledge? No.

But I will share with you a dream my 7 year old daughter had a few days ago. My jaw dropped when she began telling me about it. She was at the pool with a couple friends. The water started to slowly drain out of the pool, but it was happening fast enough that she noticed it. She said it was very weird. Her friends noticed it too, but what was so bizarre was that no one else seemed to even notice or care. They just kept right on playing, even as they sank deeper and deeper with the level of the water. She and her friends got out as quickly as they could and kept watching. Soon, all the water was gone and everyone else was stuck at the bottom of the pool. She had the impression of very grave danger in the dream. As she was telling me about it, she had no idea how significant it was.

But the first thing I thought of was: “…as it was in the days of Noah…”

Don’t let anything I tell you – or anything that anyone else tells you – become the basis for what you do. Ask your heavenly Father what you should do. And if you don’t know Him very well, well, that’s probably a great place to start. If you don’t know Him at all you need His Son.

So, here’s the highlight reel. Another crazy thing is that I’ve hardly touched my cameras (relatively speaking), though I do have enough great video clips to cut a few more episodes of Joureys… like so many noble projects collecting dust on the back burners. But here are some of the things that have been filling our days here in PA (besides the work we do in our virtual worlds):

There are some amazing storms that blow through from time to time.

We've been feasting on strawberries. Renee and the kids have helped weed and pick, and every couple of days we get a new big bowl-full from the garden. This was an actual, single strawberry that Reayah found.

Our friends set their pool up over a week ago, and it was added to our daily routine.

Ever since our friends got three new cows, Joy has been smitten. Every single day, several times, we here the familiar refrain: "go see cows? i like cows!"

And of course there's all the farm stuff: I made an attempt at seeding a bit of pasture with grass, and Renee has been having a ball doing all kinds of planting and weeding and picking. Of course the kids are pitching in too.

No country farm would be complete without a creek. Even with the pool set up, this is still pretty much a daily necessity. The creek is so versatile it has hosted forts (under the bridge), dam-making, snake killing, rope swinging, splashing, wading, falling in, and so many other things over the weeks.

Flying down the long driveway hill on scooters is also nearly a daily event. The most common question (the younger boys have to ask first): "can I go down the hill 2 times?"

For more pics of our adventures here over the last couple months, check out my latest smugmug galleries, which I am once again finally getting caught up with (there’s roughly 35 pics in each, and they are still uploading, so if they’re not done when you check, you can always check back again later):

• Apr 2010
• May 2010

As far as other news… everything is new. We were planning to have left from here a long time ago, but this place has been so fantastic for getting work done (the kids are incredibly content having so much to do outside all the time), and there have been important things that YHWH has kept us around for. It has been a real blessing to have the nearly constant community and fellowship with our friends here.

There is still quite a bit of uncertainty about what will unfold day-to-day, but we’re planning to hit a garlic harvest in July and meet up with some of our dear Colorado friends there, and then head back and still make a run at heading up the East Coast after that. We’ll see… as we’ve discovered, everything is subject to change

There’s a short video below from clips that I took while we were there, with a brief narration that I added later – but I wanted to expound in greater detail some additional resources for the rightfully curious as well as some of my own thoughts that I’ve collected along the way.

The Georgia Guidestones are an arrangement of massive, granite stones weighing nearly 120 tons and standing over 19 feet tall which have been engraved with 10 directives in 8 major world languages. The directives are these:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

You might find yourself thinking that some of these sound a little creepy but others seem like good, sound principles. But do not be enticed! Remember that a full glass of water with only a drop or two of arsenic in it will still kill you.

There is a much bigger picture at work here. These counterfeit 10 Commandments are also internally inconsistent and deceptive. They publish the agenda while attempting to temper and even conceal it with falsehood. A prime example is #1. In order to justify a philosophy that wants to eliminate roughly 75% of the entire world’s population it plays the “ballance with nature” card. But think about it logically. Population management is inherently UNnatural. Any intervention to change natural processes – from contraception to fetuscide / abortion – is in fact OUT OF BALANCE with nature!

In addition, when we critically examine the mechanisms of population reduction that are currently employed throughout the world we find a massive body of evidence that proves directive #1 has nothing to do with nature and in fact is quite detrimental to nature:

1. War (Self explanatory)
2. Foreign Corporate Water Control (For years corporations have been maneuvering to privately control the drinking water resources around the globe – particularly in third world countries where supply is limited and demand high – in order profit massively from controlling the most critical element necessary for human survival. Through the WTO and the World Bank they have been largely successful).
3. Engineered Famine (Global markets and regulations artificially restrict production by influencing prices and import/export law; genetically modified terminator seeds sold to third world countries have been engineered to be sterile – planting the seeds that come from the crop will not result in new crops; U.S. government subsidies favor farmers who grow crops for purposes other than human consumption, etc.)
4. Disease / Pollution / Contamination / Health Destruction (Vaccines, Engineered Viruses, GMOs, etc… If you think I’m off the deep end here, just read the quotes below… and then go do your research. There is almost nothing safe or healthy about our current medical establishment / FDA / Pharmaceutical superstructure. Not to mention the toxins and viruses deliberately developed and administered through a variety of subtle means to subdue population immune systems and result in sickness and death.)
5. Fetuscide (The semantically correct term for the misnomer “abortion.” Language is manipulated to confuse and deceive. What does “abortion” mean? Go look it up in an older dictionary. By definition, an “abortion” is a natural process and includes miscarriage. Fetuscide or Aborticide on the other hand are the willfull destruction an an unborn person.)

One might take issue with me connecting these atrocities to the 10 “guidelines” above and try to make the argument that the authors would also have been opposed to such morbid means and results. But I submit that the authors of the directives would have to be either completely ignorant and naive or overconfident in their cause to attempt avoiding the logical conclusions of their principles encapsulated in the 5 mechanisms above.

War is an inevitable result of at least #4, #5, and #6, because who exactly gets to determine what is reasonable, fair, and just? For instance, much of the Islamic world thinks it’s entirely fair and just that all Christians, Jews, or other infidels either convert to Islam or die.

Guidelines #7 and #8 – when considered together – reveal that the authors’ definition of “petty laws” are rather the Common Laws of inherent Creator-given rights that should otherwise protect the individual from being enslaved by the relatively modern concept of “social duties.” The very existence of “social duty” must by nature infringe on personal freedom because it requires that a fallible human source determine what is socially required, rather than every individual on a level playing field being accountable to their Creator for their conduct towards other individuals. Thus, Creator-given rights are usurped and replaced by Socially Granted rights and duties.

As characteristic of every man-made law, the lawmakers assume their laws do not apply to them. This fact is exposed by and reveals principle #9 as a complete fraud. The authors were not interested in absolute truth, but in a truth of their own fabrication. Cases in point: The mysterious spokesman for the organization that commissioned and funded the Stones used a fictitious name in all his dealings and never revealed the organization he represented. As if this wasn’t “priz[ing] truth” enough – the spokesman claimed he took the fictitious name R.C. Christian because he was a Christians himself and that the 10 guidelines were based on his beliefs. I have no idea what Bible they were reading, but maybe they should have considered the fate of Nimrod’s Tower of Babel before they added #3 to their list.

Do you think I am being extreme, even paranoid? Actually my words are too soft! The threat can only be truly driven home by the searing words of the world’s elite themselves. Go back up and re-read the list of 10 directives. Then re-read my list of the 5 mechanisms by which these directives are being achieved (just read the 5 concepts in bold). Now ponder the perceived gap between the two lists. Now, read the quotes below and marvel at the way the dots connect:

“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind”
Theodore Roosevelt

“A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner, in an interview with Audubon magazine

“There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it… Our program in El Salvador didn’t work. The infrastructure was not there to support it. There were just too goddamned many people… To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull all the males into the fighting and you have to kill significant numbers of fertile age females… The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa, or through disease like the Black Death…”
Thomas Ferguson, State Department Office of Population Affairs

“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap of mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
Alexander King, Bertrand Schneider – Founder and Secretary, respectively,
The Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution, pgs 104-105, 1991

“In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”
J. Cousteau, 1991 explorer and UNESCO courier

“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people…. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
Stanford Professor ” Paul Ehrlich in  The Population Bomb

“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,”  …  “The elderly are useless eaters” … “World population needs to be decreased by 50%”
Dr. Henry Kissinger

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
David Rockefeller

“War and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. “We’ve got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. “You know, the bird flu’s good, too. For everyone who survives, he will have to bury nine”
Dr. Eric Pianka  University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert, showed solutions for reducing the world’s population to an audience on population control

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.”
David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

Women in the Netherlands who are deemed by the state to be unfit mothers should be sentenced to take contraception for a prescribed period of two years.”
Marjo Van Dijken (author of the bill in the Netherlands) in the Guardian

Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”
Obama’s science czar John P. Holdren: From a book he helped write ‘Ecoscience’

“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control…. Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.”
Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was  shot down by the Soviet Union

“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991

So, as you can clearly see – the sole motive is control and power. It has nothing to do with nature or any other “noble” cause. It is their quest to achieve absolute, god-like control over every facet of people’s lives and decisions.

Do not fear. Be aware. Be alert. Be sober. KNOW YOUR CREATOR AND BE KNOWN BY YOUR CREATOR! The only other option is to be a slave. In truth, you are already enslaved in so many ways that you cannot imagine. But there is such thing as complete freedom. And Kissinger was wrong about pretty much everything – including that “every man fears the unknown.” Many might fear the unknown, but you do not have to be one of them!

Resources:

• The generic facts about the Stones can be found in numerous places, but Wikipedia is usually a good place to start.
• My curiosity about the Stones peeked when I happened across an article in Wired Magazine.
• The Georgia Guidestones Guidebook [70MB pdf] originally published in 1981 is quite enlightening.
• That list of quotes (and others) can be found in several places, but here are two noteworthy ones:
  • http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Print-Page.htm?EdNo=001&Info=0066245
  • http://www.lifeinthemixtalk.com/?p=12412

Video:

the dad: “Oh? What happened?”

the boy: “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“i love my brother SO much…

…i don’t want him to die”

I’m a story teller, so if you just want to know how to fix shopping carts or other PHP web applications hosted by Fat Cow, skip down a few paragraphs.

Renee and I design and code websites together and between the two of us we’ve worked on everything from massive enterprise SharePoint driven collaborative web environments to mom-and-pop hand crafted simple sites and everything CMS or static in between. We’ve built and hacked and skinned and themed Drupal and WordPress and even peeked at Joomla, and we’ve done it across quite a range of hosting providers over the years:

• Go Daddy (our personal favorite for a while now – a little too clicky but the best admin tools and excellent support)
• Fat Cow (a pretty amazing deal with their unlimited plan)
• 1 and 1 (so so… wouldn’t recommend necessarily, but tolerable)
• iPowerWeb (sometimes a necessary evil)
• HostPrince (I do NOT recommend them at all, but my experience with them is a couple years old now)
• etc.

Implementing similar solutions across a variety of hosting platforms, I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but I am still caught somewhat off guard by the variety out there in default configurations and compliance (or lack thereof) with best practices that sometimes get taken for granted.

Case in point: Fat Cow’s default php.ini file is simply atrocious. I love their unlimited plan, and in my short experience with them so far their service is solid. But it’s like they installed PHP on the shared servers a few years ago and never touched the php.ini config. Ever.

Why is this a problem? Well, if you want to run anything like WordPress you’re going to need more than teh default memory_limit = 18M from like 1980 (ok, not really but you get the point). Go Daddy defaults theirs to 32M I think … or maybe it’s 64M now… And if you want to run anything like a shopping cart that requires php sessions – forget it (unless you start by uncommenting the session.save_path line and setting it to something useful – even though the session.save_handler = files … unreal! by default it tells php to use the filesystem to save sessions but doesn’t give it anywhere to put session files.).

This all finally came to head when I was trying to get eShop working in WordPress for http://ordercu.com

I knew eShop was probably NOT the culprit because we set it up and have it working great on http://foodbeautiful.com (hosted by Go Daddy).

What is funny (not) is that 2 months ago I had beaten my head against 3-4 different cart systems in WordPress for  http://indiefilmvideo.com (also hosted on Fat Cow) and never got to the bottom of why they wouldn’t work quite right. Well, now I know.

SO – the moral of the post is, here are the first tweaks you might want to make to your php.ini file if your host is Fat Cow. (If you don’t know where to find the php.ini file or how to modify it, you probably shouldn’t anyway). These are the changes I have made so far. In each case, just update the values being set.

• memory_limit  = 64M
• [uncomment - delete ";" - and set session.save_path to something like]:
• session.save_path = “/home/users/web/b2634/moo.ACCOUNTNAME/cgi-bin/tmp”
  (make sure you pull YOUR actual home path from the front page of the Fat Cow control panel)
  (without this change php sessions will not work and you will get bizarre behavior in shopping carts where the things you add to the cart disappear on checkout or subsequent visits to the cart)
• register_globals = Off
  (eeeek! can you believe that was still defaulted to On ???)

So, there you have it. Even with these basic tweaks WordPress will hum a LOT faster and you’ll actually be able to use shopping cart plugins for it. Imagine that.

wha … What? what was I saying? Oh right, anyway. This will all be more cursory than it should be because I am in the process of digging out of a 3-month photographic hole. I have 2 down and 1 to go and will share in a second. So back to updates: the kids are in wild country mode: scraping knees, swinging on rope swings, playing in the creek, cutting bare feet, flying down the hill on scooters, running around with friends, that sort of thing.

Other highlights: Reayah got to be be a flower girl in her first wedding experience, I just spent three hours with Bennah “organizing” his bed (a bio hazmat operation I can assure you)… actually that might not make much sense to you unless I also provide the additional detail that the kids keep all their personal things / toys / collections at the foot of their beds, Joy is both participating in and resisting potty training at the same time quite nicely, Zach and Jaiden are quite the buddies now and while Zach is convinced we are going to build a flying car together this summer – one that actually flies – Jaiden just wants to make sure that he is doing whatever his brothers are doing.

It’s raining gently outside… such a soothing thing… totally different experience than from inside a house. I got two new drain spouts attached to the rain channel today (I knocked them off a couple months ago when a branch reached out across an otherwise reasonable turn radius and scraped a few little holes in our rubber roof that we discovered a few weeks later during a massive downpour in the form of extra water we didn’t need in the kids room). I patched the holes up earlier in the week.

Today was laundry day. And grocery day. And pick up the new door latch from the RV dealer finally day.

I have to tell you about our main door latch. Ok. Proof positive that things are engineered to break – this was the most ridiculous design ever – back in Florida the tab that was responsible for making the entire handle and latch mechanism work broke clean off and we were stuck inside the trailer until I disassembled the whole thing. I tried everything to avoid having to buy another cheap replacement that would just cause another head ache later. I am not kidding – here are some of the random things I employed in various attempts to rig it (some of which lasted longer than others): aluminum from a beer can, JB weld (but it was too old to last) and a hex nut, a screw, a modified golf tee (still inside the spring to control handle travel distance), hockey tape by itself, and hockey tape with pop-sickle stick (which is actually working fairly well so far). But the moment of truth will come and I better get a proper replacement in there. It has been quite a thorn in my side.

Anyway, enough boring RV life drivel. Here are some pictures! Including some from the solar panel project that I added to the truck.

January 2010

February 2010

Solar Panel Project