My thoughts on various things

Again the world is years behind the church

rmhogsett — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:20:40 +0000

I was on Yahoo news today when I stumbled accross this article which I thought was interesting as the title says that researchers have found what exactly it takes to keep a marriage alive. For those of you that know me probably know that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the things that the church is known for is having strong families which is why I was interested by this article. It lists things that families should do to stay closer together. I thought it was interesting how all of the things that they mentioned were told to us by the Prophets years ago and now science is just catching up. I will give you some examples.

The article says “one-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage — either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship — having separated compared to just nine percent of couples without children born before marriage.” Another thing that the LDS church is known for is the no sex before marriage. I think that is a pretty good way to make sure that you don’t have kids before you are married. I understand that there are cases of abuse and death of a spouse that are different but for people getting married the first time, that is quite a big drop.

The article also says “And couples where one partner, and not the other, smokes are also more likely to have a relationship that ends in failure.” Now this did suprise me and I still haven’t figured out why this is happens. On February 27th, 1833 Joseph Smith, the first prophet of this era recieved the revelation that is now know as the Word of Wisdom. This teaches that you shouldn’t, smoke or drink alcohol, as well as advising people to eat well. It wasn’t until years later that science found out that those things are bad for you. Now it turns out that if one person smokes it will damage the relationship. I know that this doesn’t address the fact that it doesn’t say anything about both people smoking but there are multiple other reasons I could site why you shouldn’t smoke all together.

Now I fully understand that there are instances when divorce is the only option, such as any type of abuse. I am also not advocating that if you follow the teachings of the Prophets that all marriages are perfect and great but I do know that if Husbands spend time with their families and put them above anything else then you have a much greater chance to have a successful marriage. I have found that to many husbands think that if they make more money then their families will be happier. I fully believe that if you make enough to survive and spend the rest of the time with your family then you and your family will be much happier. I can say from experience that coming home and seeing my wife and daughter is the greatest experience that I could ever have and I will constantly strive to keep them in the front of my life. I realize this article doesn’t encompass everything it takes to have a strong family. What do you guys think make a particularly strong family or what has helped you in your family?

I certainly hope that I didn’t offend anyone but in things like this it is almost impossible not to. I want my friends and family to know that just because I don’t think someone should smoke or drink doesn’t mean I think less of you if you do. Its a choice that I just happen to not make. If you are interested in hearing more about the LDS church there are a few links scattered throughout this blog that will take you to sites where you can learn more or you can contact me on facebook, by phone or by email. If you just stumble across this blog and don’t know me leave a comment and I will point you in the right direction. I hope you guys have a great summer.

Outlook Issues

rmhogsett — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:31:24 +0000

So I have recently been using outlook to combine my school email account with my Gmail account. Because I am a student I got a pretty good deal on Office 2007 ultimate through Microsoft (totally legal I swear). I hadn’t really had any problems with it until recently when I tried to open Outlook and I got a “Cannot open Microsoft Office Outlook. Outlook window failed to Open” error. Very helpful error by the way, don’t you just love Microsoft’s error messages? I hate having to redo the profiles for each of the email addresses as I have to use Google to find the pages that tell me the server information. I figured I would try to fix it instead of reinstall it and hope that it worked again when I was done.
There are a couple of programs that you get when you install Outlook that can help you if you ever do have problems with Outlook, Scanpst and Scanost. They are both found at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 directory. They are pretty straight forward to use. Go to the directory and double click on the link. From there navigate to where you pst file is kept which is usually C:\Documents and Settings\User-Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook where User-Name is your user-name and click okay.
After I ran those it still didn’t fix the problem so I searched on-line and found out that supposedly sometimes an XML file that outlook creates errors out which causes Outlook to not open properly. The file is found at C:\Documents and Settings\User-Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook (with User-Name again being your User-Name) and is called Outlook.xml. Just delete that and restart Outlook. If any of the folders listed above aren’t found try to unhide folders. You can do this by going to tools in the folder browser then clicking on Folder Options. In the window that opens up, click on the tab that says View. Towards the top is a section that says Hidden Files or Folders. Choose the Show hidden files and folders option. Be careful as you don’t really want to be deleting to many of the hidden stuff if you don’t know what it is. I hope that this helps some people. If you have any questions feel free to ask and if I can help I will.

Using old ways to combat new problems

rmhogsett — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:11:59 +0000

The future of Newspapers?

While my time spent in the corporate world is limited I would have to say that while Rupert Murdoch might be a genius in the world of business I think he is fighting a losing battle. For those who haven’t read the article above Robert Murdoch is an Australian born newspaper Mogul who started out in his homeland of Australia and has since spread to the UK and America. He is in the news recently for saying that to save newspapers and generate revenue they need to stop giving content away for free and to start charging.

While I don’t try to be an authority on the subject of marketing, business or even newspapers, I can’t see how charging for something that other various sites, not newspaper related, offer it for free. If newspaper sites start charging to read their articles people will just move on. While I agree that newspapers should be saved somehow I don’t see charging people to read their articles the answer. I think that ads could be an option but supposedly they aren’t making enough that way. One option that I don’t know if it would work or if they have tried it could be to become purely online. That way you don’t have the cost of printing. I realize that this also cuts out a major part of their revenue, but they could start charging for other things.

Aside from cutting out the actual printing of newspapers they could offer some sort of service that if you paid would deliver news about given topics directly to you a personalized part of their site. I see it as kind of like combining the personal page aspect of facebook and other social networking sites while getting the articles of people’s favorite newspapers. This also could let people comment on various stories which is something I have noticed is quite a trend.

I think it would a shame to see newspapers go away all together but I think in the direction our society is headed its inevitable. While I might have misunderstood Murdoch’s comments, I don’t think I did. I think that they need to comeup with some way of delivering news to people in the way that most people have become accustomed, free. But like I said earlier, I am just in Grad school and have yet to enter the “real world” what do you guys think. Do you think the future of newspapers online is to charge their customers to read their articles?