14: And thus we see that all mankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence.

Satan proposed a plan whereby he would force us to make all of the correct choices, thereby saving us from all of the consequences of making the wrong ones. However, this plan would have robbed us of one of the purposes for Heavenly Fathers plan. It would have robbed us of our experience.

Jesus Christ's plan, which was proposed before Satan's plan was the plan of mercy. Again Alma 42:15

15: And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice

That God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also.

Jesus Christ's plan was one of infinite love. Given to all who would accept it.

Intro

Today my talk is titled "The Reason I am Greatful for Christ". Today I would like to talk about the Plan of Hapiness. To me the Plan of Happiness is The Gospel. Gospel means Good News, and "The Gospel" refers to "The Good News". Specifically the good news that Christ has fulfilled his part of the plan.

Fallen world

We live in a fallen world. It is full of imperfect things, and imperfect people. Unfortunately we are the imperfect people.

When I was on my mission, my companion was driving our car on a dirt road following a truck. He was paying very careful attention to the road. However, the truck ended up stopping short and my companion couldn't stop quick enough to avoid rear ending it. The truck was fine, as was the driver, however the car we were driving had a new, very clean, trailer hitch shaped hole in the bumper. The Elder with responsibility over the vehicles of the mission was not happy, The damages were estimated as over $1000. When we finally met with him, I vouched for my companion, stating that he stopped as soon as he could and there was no way to avoid the accident. The Elder explained that there was no excuse for this accident. My companion should have left a bigger gap between our car and the truck in front of us. At the end of the day he was responsible for preventing the accident, or letting it happen. I have thought a lot about that day since then, and it has helped me understand the meaning of responsibility. It has also made me understand the extent to which we are responsible for our actions.

Every day, there are things we do that cause pain and suffering to ourselves and others. It's not easy to face this reality. We are not evil individuals with steepled fingers, in dark rooms, seeking out ways we can harm our fellow brothers and sisters. However, just like my companion who did not intend to rear end the truck, it does not matter to justice. Excuses aren't going to cut it at judgement day, and the choices we make will ultimately be our own responsibility. We chose Jesus Christ's plan, and his plan, specifically, did not include having someone else make our choices.

This sounds bleak. If there are things that we do, that we did not intend, that we are responsible for, what can we do? It sounds like this plan of being responsible for our own actions is hopeless. Even if we intend to do good and strive to be perfect we will never be. In fact for all of us it would already be too late.

2 Nephi 9:7

Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more.

We cannot hope to meet the demands of justice, for justice demands that we be perfect. But this is The Gospel, The Good News. Jesus Christ came to this world and performed an act of sacrifice above any other.

Alma 7:11-13

11: And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
12: And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, acording to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.
13: Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance;

What did he suffer for? He suffered for every bad thing that has happened or will happen in this world. He suffered for our sins, and our transgressions. He even suffered for things that happened to us that no one has any responsibility for. He suffered for when we get sick. He suffered for times when we are sad or afraid. He suffered for challenges or infirmities that we are born with.

2 Nephi 9:7

7: Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement—save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption.

He suffered for everyone. He suffered for me. He suffered for you. He suffered for our enemies.

Jesus Christ's gift was given to everyone, not just the worthy, for there are no people on this earth that deserve his gift because of their worthiness.

So how do we obtain his gift and why did he give it to us?

Alma 7:23

23 And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.

Humility and Pride

And now I would that ye should be humble. Humility is a word that is very precious to me. I have spent a lot of time pondering the nature of humility and what it means in terms of the gospel. The root of humility is unconditional self worth, but what does that mean? Obviously, it means that you don't put conditions on your worth, but why would you do that? Haven't we just talked about how much suffering we bring into this world? From the moment we wake up till we fall asleep we commit sin, we are imperfect, and that imperfection causes suffering in ourselves and others. Do we deserve to love ourselves in this way?

You are special

"You Are Special", by Max Lucado is a book very close to my heart. It reinforces this idea of unconditional self worth. In the book wemmicks, which are little wooden puppets come to life, give each other stars and dots to signify their worth. The main Character Punchinello doesn't have anything going for him so he gets a lot of dots. When he meets Lucia, a wemmick with no stars or dots, he asks her how she does it. She responds by telling Punchinello to go see Eli the woodcarver. While visiting, Punchinello lists reasons why Eli the woodcarver shouldn't love him. He says he isn't very tallented and paint is peeling. These are superficial attributes, because it is a childrens book, however these symbolize the many painful, spiritual, and yes even superficial, imperfections that we have. Punchinello asks Eli "Why do I matter to you?". Eli does not give Punchinello a bunch of half hearted reasons that gloss over Punchinello's imperfections and weaknesses. He does not try to minimize their impact on his self worth, and he does not say that Punchanello doesn't have any weaknesses. He responds simply with "Because you are mine." This is the reason God loves us, "Because we are his". There are no amount of stars or righteous doing that will earn us Gods love, and there are no amount of dots, or sins committed that will prevent it. His atonement was infinite, because his love is infinite.

Heavenly Father sent his son to suffer for all of our sins. Because the atonment was infinite Christ even suffered for the unrepentant, and wicked.

This to me is what Humility is all about. It's about recognizing that God loves you infinitely. That is his mercy, and that is his plan.

The Doctrine of Repentance

Some people might stop there, it's an easy way to end. In a vacuum what more could you want than the infinite love of God?

That comes back to the other thing that we came here for. We came here for a body, yes, but the plan was not called, The Plan of Getting a Body, or The Plan of Being Loved. The plan is called the Plan of Hapiness. This is the other thing that Heavenly Father has. It is the thing he wants us to have. However hapiness is not something that can be given to us like our bodies. Hapiness is something we must build and gain for ourselves.

This is where the doctrine of repentance comes in.

D&C 18:11-13

11: For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him.
12: And he hath risen again from the dead, that he might bring all men unto him, on conditions of repentance.
13: And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth!

Repentance often seems scary, and it is for a heart filled with pride. Pride, is the opposite of Humility. Pride is conditional self worth. For someone filled with pride repentance requires a self reflection that shatters ones self worth. It uncovers the pain and anguish we have caused others and leaves it out to bear, naked in front of God and Justice. A heart filled with pride must keep sins hidden and therefore unrepented of in order to keep their self worth intact.

Moses 4:15-16

15: And I, the Lord God, called unto Adam, and said unto him: Where goest thou?
16: And he said: I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I beheld that I was naked, and I hid myself.

But what should we expect. For Alma says:

Alma 42:25

25: What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God.

With Humility, however, we are secure. We know that sins must be repented of, that our weaknesses can be overcome. With Humility there is nothing to fear by laying out our sins, and our weaknesses unto God, because the consequence of doing so is not that Heavenly Fathers love will be taken away. The consequence is that our sins, and our weaknesses will be taken away, through our repentance. It is sin that keeps us from hapiness, and it is hapiness that God wishes for us to have. Only we can lay down our sins on the alter of repentance, in humility.

I am greatful for these facts. I am greatful that it is possible to be Humble, to love myself only "because I am his". For if it were not for Jesus Christ's Atonment it would not be possible. If it were not for Jesus Christ everyone would be left to stand on their own merits.

and as Nephi says:
2 Nephi 9:7

...the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration.

I am greatful for the doctrine of repentance that allows me to shed my sins, and become happy like my Father in Heaven, so that I can return to live with him one day.

I know that God lives. I know that God loves us infinitely. I know that Jesus Christ performed his Atonment. The Atonment of Jesus Christ that enables us to become like him and our Father in Heaven. To become truely Happy. I say these things in the name of the one who saved us, our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Every time I hear, in a meeting or otherwise, someone say one of the following...

• It's a delicate balance
• You've gotta balance
• It's a balancing act

I want to flip tables.

When people say they need to balance something, it just means they don't understand it. Worse than not understanding what they are doing, they don't even understand what they are trying to achieve.

If something is just a balancing act then you are choosing the cowards route of shying away from the hairy problem. If you notice yourself reaching for "Balancing" something, stop yourself, and figure out what it is that you don't understand.

There are things that are technically require the equivalent of a PID loop, that actually could be considered a "balancing act" but that's not the right way to describe what's going on.

Let's talk about water. Keeping water liquid isn't a "balancing act" It's keeping it between 0 and 100 C. Specifically those two numbers. So instead of saying "balancing act" just say what your targets are. Unless of course, you don't know what you are talking about, in which case, use the current time to figure out what the upper and lower bounds are.

Comments on hacker news are reacting positively to this news. I however don't understand this reaction. The "fake choice" is a false dichotomy. You don't only have two choices, there's a third (there's always a third) option. You could not use Facebook.

Let's throw some straw-men at this to figure out how I might be wrong about the false dichotomy.

Maybe Facebook is spying on you without you using their products or agreeing to some sort of terms.

If that were the case then, yes, this would be an actual dichotomy. However, this would also be extortion. It would also be spying, and regardless of the legalities, it's something we should endeavor to stop.

Maybe Facebook, is lying about how they use your data, or something.

That wouldn't actually resolve the false dichotomy, but it would sure be terrible. That's still another issue.

Maybe Facebook is doing something illegal with your data.

Again that still doesn't resolve the false dichotomy. If it's illegal then we shouldn't allow them to do whatever it is that's illegal.

Maybe I'm dumb but that's all I could come up with. I'm sure this weird blog will be read by thousands and someone will have some good arguments, but we'll move on from here.

At the end of the day, saying that Facebook has to provide a free service to users in the manner that they want is crazy. The reason Facebook can offer a "service" for "free" is because they track your data and sell it profitably. There isn't a way to offer a service for free at all. Someone somewhere has to pay for it; period.

If Facebook ever complied with this ruling you better believe you'd have received the results of a magic genie wish (they would comply in the most obtuse way possible). There is absolutely no reason Facebook could (even if they wanted to) operate in an environment where they weren't getting paid for what they do. They also aren't going to find a magic free energy solution where everything is actually free.

I don't have some weird gene that makes me a good software developer. I don't have some crazy slumdog backstory that enables me to optimally exploit my previous experience. I don't think my ADHD is really what differentiates me from others, at least not on that scale. Heck, I don't even think my skills are that impressive. When people compliment me, I'm usually just confused and think, "Isn't everyone at least this capable?"

Here's a list of things that I could brag about.

• I use vim
• I have a tiling window manager
• I use the nix package manager (cause nixos was a little too steep for me)
• I took a compiler class in college (didn't finish my degree)
• I know how to use kubernetes

Beating my head

I think though, if there was something that maybe makes me unique, it is that I have a thick skull. I create ambitious projects in my head, and then I beat my head against it until either it, or I, break. I don't finish all my projects; I probably don't finish half of them. However, I think there are projects that I take on and end up finishing that most people wouldn't even try. None of them are glamorous or even that long term.

Over time, though, it looks crazy. The way I have my developer environment set up right now is an accumulation of me getting some silly idea in my head about how I can be 1% more efficient, and then beating my head against it for days. Now I have likely hundreds of little tweaks that makes me look like some techno dork who lives in a cyberpunk dystopia. Again, this is all relative. I'm not wearing a VR headset and minority report gloves. I've got a split mechanical keyboard that I ordered off a website. I "built" it like you "build" things you buy from Ikea.

A forehead of steel

I guess all of this to say, is that I think that the only difference between me and someone who looks at me in awe, is just a bunch of time and a thick skull. Both in the sense that I'm an idiot who can't scope out the difficulty of projects well, and that once I start, I let sunk cost fallacy overwhelm my rational thought and I just keep slamming my head against the metaphorical wall until I figure it out.

Just learn to take a compliment

I know some people would say that I should let people just compliment me. Receiving compliments is a skill that many consider a virtue. A lot of people, including myself, find it annoying when someone rejects a simple compliment. For me though, I feel like accepting when people say I'm a "wizard", or whatever, just lets them off the hook. This is something you can be good at too. If you don't want to be good at this specific thing, then that's also cool, but you can go be a wizard at something else, and you wouldn't have any awe for me anymore. You'd be like, look at that average guy, doing that average job.

What's the big deal?

At this point, this post is probably going to veer off into a rant, but I need to explain why I even care. Couldn't I just let people compliment me and be done with it? Truth be told, I'm pretty selfish. Working with people who are smarter than me makes growth a lot easier. And working with a bunch of people who are in awe of you, makes seeing your own failings a lot harder. I know I'm just an average guy, but I really want to be amazing at what I do. When everyone around me thinks I'm already amazing, it's really hard to achieve that. Plus, it feels sad that others don't have passions about anything that would at least make them go, "Oh, he's into software like I'm into X" and set us as equals.

Plus, it allows INSANE thoughts to creep into my mind like:

• It's lonely at the top
• I'm better at what I do than everyone
• I'm right all the time
• You can be a grump if you are smart enough

🤣 as if right?

While I was using this I noticed how it felt like everything was so well set up for specifically interact with the video game creation process. You are tunneled into doing nothing but working on your video game. Currently it's got a lot of rough corners and bugs. I'm not talking about polish here. I'm talking about focus.

This got me thinking. Is there a way to bring this kind of focus to my development environment? How would I build an operating system or facade specifically for software development. After a little thinking I've realized I'm already on that journey a little bit.

Back when I first started to use Linux as my main development OS I started on the harrowing journey of learning a whole bunch of tools. Vim, and bash were the two big ones. Since then this has lead me down the rabbit hole of tool chains. I stumbled into the world of tiling window managers, first with i3, then awesome, and now bspwm . At this point my computer is not suited to anything other than writing software and the like. Steam games don't particularly enjoy being run in a tiling window manager, and there are some rough edges that I don't run into on a daily basis that make some things a little less than smooth. For daily software development however, it's a dream.

My OS is extremely purpose built, from specific windows being tied to specific workspaces and monitors, to the hotkey that I have for pulling up a terminal. I've invested a lot into this kind of setup, and if it work for tools like home-manager I don't think I would be able to keep this level of customization up.

Now what?

Now that we've established that I have "The Best Developer Setup Ever" where would we even go from there? My setup is extremely tailored to my personal preferences. Is there anyway that all developers everywhere can benefit from this kind of setup? It takes a lot of effort to really appreciate such a setup, it's a lot of learning hotkeys and bash and Linux to customize.

I've heard rumblings that a lot of Gen-Z hasn't had the training and exposure that other generations have had with traditional computer interfaces. Would that make a hyper focused development environment more or less appealing them?

Whatever we build it needs to be customizable to an extreme extent. At the very minimum we need to be able to install random applications and be able to launch them. You can't possibly think of all the apps one would need to write software up front? right?

At some level a lot of apps are a browser away. Some apps however need to be run on the local system right? like terminal commands, and compilation.

Is this even a thing. Have I just imagined myself into a loop? Is linux already the dream software development stack and the fact that I can customize things how I wanted the exact thing I'm wanting here? Or is there something in-between picotron and rolling your own developer environment?