pinakidion.*

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Levity is the conscience of wit.

I came across an article here that mentions a novel concept. It was pretty interesting and a thoughtful read.

This past Saturday, the ‘teaching committee’ of my church got together to plan future direction. Having recently changed teaching days from Sunday to Wednesday, we needed to think about cirriculum and other things. Having decided that we are going to go through the Wild at Heart book and workbook this fall, the topic changed dramatically. Suddenly, someone said,

“People want a Study Series.”

There’s a lot I could say about the so-called study series and the dangers of creating another one. The biggest issue being that a study series reinforces a checklist-mentality. I’m sure the spreadsheets will come back with the names of the studies measuring a person’s “progress” through the studies. This would be awful. I know that structure is good and healthy and I’m not against having list of people that are studying the Bible. I am against the one-size-fits-all approach.

Aside from that, the key goal is to get back to the message of the gospel. The good news is simply that Jesus was a man like us, sacrificed his life on the cross for our sins, and rose again. I think we’ve traditionally done very well in discussing Jesus’s humanity and sacrifice. However, we’ve never done so well at the resurrection. During communion, a host of good-hearted people are trying to get in touch with Jesus’ pain and their sin instead of the good news of the resurrection. Communion is a ‘common’ time, not a group of isolated individuals in a room crucifying themselves in order to be ‘broken’ about their sin. You think the first believers gladly defied the government and said “Jesus is Lord” for this? Where in the Bible does it say that being a Christian requires a desire for masochism? The Bible is clear about taking communion in a worthy manner and I am suggesting that we have rarely taught a worthy manner.

The following are some ideas I have: unlike other posts, I will clean this one up considerably over time.

Jesus was human
As many of you know, the word gospel means ‘good news’. That begs the question, “What is this good news?”. It’s more than Jesus died for our sins. Without his humanity brought into the message, his ministry was nothing more than a field trip from Heaven. Without the humanity of Jesus, it is almost impossible to believe that he suffered. Even if that hurdle is overcome, it makes the message of God becoming like us incorrect. How can a spirit, especially the divine spirit, make a claim that He understands us and our lot in life when he really wasn’t experiencing life like we do?

I have decided that I want to elope.

I know that these are familiar feelings and I feel a bit guilty because my family tries so hard to ‘be good’.

However, I just wish that there was a little respect for my timetable. This it has to be done this second mentality is going to kill me if it doesn’t end. As my roommate put it, I was the angriest he had ever seen me in two years of being my friend.

On a lighter note, it’s oddly comforting that there is, in fact, something that can upset me more than church bruhaha. I decided that Laryssa was more important than church drama, and I’m glad to know that our wedding is more important.

Other than that, things are going very well - Laryssa’s dad has been wonderful in helping my dad find a place to stay and find a place for the reheresal dinner. Mom has offered to pay for the flowers. The location is set, the groomsman and bridesmaids are set, the men’s clothes are set; everything is going along pretty well.

Next weekend (Labor Day) we are going to the Minnesota Ren Fair, and that will be most fun. We need to get a couple of things for the wedding, but also get away and have a good time. I really look forward to it.

Gotta go for now, work calls.

I’m teaching an Old Testament Survey class through the end of August and I decided to include a topic that I considered a bit risky. As you can guess from the title, it was a look at the OT Apocrypha. Just for clarity, I mean the books and material commonly found in Catholic Bibles, not the Pseudographia.

Why read the Apocrypha?
The Apocrypha is useful reading for understanding our spiritual past. It is the largest source of material covering the Maccabean revolt (160BC?). It was considered at least useful for instruction by Hellenistic Jews and some early Christians. It gives us examples of Jewish and early Christian thinking by allowing comparisons between inspired and human writings. Looking at the reasons this material is not included in Protestant Bibles, gives us insight into our own Christian heritage as well.

The Apocrypha is also useful for understanding our present. Some Catholic doctrines are formed entirely on the basis of the Apocrypha, for example the existence of Purgatory, the intercession of saints, and prayers for the dead. Even in the Orthodox church, this material is considered scripture and used for teaching and instruction in doctrine.

Wanted to write about the sook today, but that will have to wait until Sunday or Monday. Large wedding plans this Saturday.

Also, I hope to get a new website up for my upcoming wedding.

This website is 64% Good according to the principles of Gematria developed by Dr. Ivan Penin.

Contrary to popular belief, leadership is not evil. Without someone saying, “I’ll make sure this gets done,” nothing gets done. All of us look to someone to coordinate or plan or even motivate. As long as you don’t abdicate your own responsibility to lead your own life, this is pretty healthy.

I went looking for good materials on leadership and found this site. It certainly parallels a psychological survey, but the undelying principles ring true to me as of my first look of them.

It short, leadership is based on four principles:

1. Love God and others above yourself
2. Be a servant and a shepherd.
3. Relate to those you lead as friends.
4. Use wise methods and procedures.

The first two deal with the leader’s heart and their own attitudes towards leadership and those they lead. The last two deal with the actions and deeds of a leader. There’s plenty of scripture to go along with these and I plan on looking into it.

What I see in the ‘call for strong leadership’ in various conferences, is a call to Love God, but also an encouragement to lead in a strong and powerful way(tm). When asked what a strong a powerful way means, the answers are not entirely clear. As best I can discern (in my limited ability), this means that leaders should regain a sense of confidence (in ICC vernacular, this is called boldness(tm)). Leaders should, as I understand it, preach powerfully and speak plainly about sin and commitment and responsibility. I don’t entirely disagree with that, but it says nothing about leadership. Saying that a preacher should be forthright in style, dynamic in presentation, and biblical in content changes the focus away from leadership and onto preaching style. Preaching is preaching not leading; all Christians are called to preach. Saying that a leader should be confident and decisive is just as off-topic. We should all be confident in our lives: Jesus sacrificed everything on the cross so that we could confidently approach the throne of God. If you and I can approach the Lord of Heaven with confidence, what is left to be afraid of on the Earth? Being decisive in action is getting closer to the matter, but leadership is something different entirely.

The real heart of leadership is to love. Through this love, a leader should serve and shepherd. As a leader myself, I strive to grow in my love and I fight with all my might against what I perceive as enemies to the church locally and abroad. I need to learn to love. I still need to repent in my willingness to serve in individuals’ lives. It’s true I work hard and coordinate the teachers, but I mean something different. I’m talking about going to someone’s house that is not on the advisroy group, taking care of their pets, or taking care of the house, or help clean out a basement, or something like that. I don’t want to be above a certain task or too busy to simply help someone.

I hope that this program will turn out to be a ‘wise method’. So far, it looks great, but I’ll let you know as I look into it. In any case, I hope that a look at the heart of leadership will bring about godly behavior as a leader.

M.O.A.C. 2004 in Chicago is coming up in a month, and believe it or not, I am excited to go. You may not think so, but I consider it a good opportunity to talk to people all over the world and discuss real change. The format of the conference is Lesson, then breakout groups. I like it at the Teacher’s Conference last year and I like it in this setting. Friday night and Saturday night are wide open for time to talk. I am excited about it.

So why the name change? It’s simple, really. It’s funny and it fits.

The temptation with this and any other conference is the temptation of self-importance. I am grateful for all the hard work that Chicago has put into this conference. I put together a much smaller program myself for Doug Jacoby almost a year ago, so I understand in a small way the effort required. I’m not picking on them, they are actually doing the work and probably serve with all their heart in putting this conference together. To that, I say ‘thank you’. But for those that claim to be leaders, especially the teachers and lesson speakers, this can be another opportunity to inflate a sense of world-wide importance.

Get over yourself.

Honestly, I don’t want to hear any of the speeches because I do not trust any of the speakers to preach. I would trust Doug Jacoby and Mitch Mitchell. I have met and spoken with these men and I believe their motivation behind what they preach and how they preach it. There are a few others, including the minister at my church and Rich Little, but my point is that I have seen and heard the other speakers and found their past messages to be hollow at best. In some cases, I even believe their messages and preaching to even be insincere.

What I look forward to is meeting a guy from another small church to talk about small church issues (dating,campus and singles ministry, etc.). I look forward to talking to people that actually teach Bible classes and topics and ask them about effectiveness in times, material, and many other things. I don’t want to talk to be big names, I’ve already talked to them. Their issues and areas of concern are worlds away from what I consider important. I want to find other people like me that love their church, work hard, and aren’t afraid to speak their mind. I hope to find people in their early to late thirties. I hope to find SINGLE people that aren’t in college. I hope to find people from a big church that are enjoying ‘the changes’. I especially look forward to talking with those that aren’t Americans - their perspective is usually quite different.

To sum up, I look forward to having a good time at a wonderful conference, even if I do think of the Aflac(R) duck everytime I think about it.

Gary Sciascia wrote an interesting article posted on the Groton-New London International Church of Christ website that I thought was worth mentioning. You can read it here.

At first read, I thought that this was yet another defense of maintaining the status quo. I know a thing or two about overreacting, but in my experience, few have actually done so. There is this uniform urging of ‘caution’ from all the so-called teachers for fear of overreacting. That is understandable, and under normal circumstances, probably the best approach. However, outside of Henry’s original letter and a few subsequent letters, there really has been little action at all. Who is doing all this overreacting that so many are frightened of?

**DIGRESSION ALERT: PLEASE PROCEED TO THE END OF THE MARKED SECTION FOR COHERENCY - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED**
Instead, I see a few people speaking out in various places and either being silenced or marginalized. The most popular reaction seems to be “Let’s not go overboard! We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater!” Seems that some people think that babies can be washed in a teaspoon of water.

Outside of that, my friends in other cities don’t see much change, if at all. If anything, we’ve just decided to be really nice to each other, not disagree too strongly, and basically take an “I’m OK, You’re OK approach”. I’m not saying that this is true everywhere. I don’t want to overgeneralize. But when I ask myself honestly, “What has changed?” I see a lot of change in how churches deal with each other, but I see little change in an individual member’s life. Many places still have church appointed Bible Talks, still have so-called discipling partners, still have top-down leadership. On paper, there may be no one-over-another relationships, but without a serious effort to reverse so many years of practice, it’s not going to change that much. What has changed for the average member? From what I see, little more than nicer sermons and staff members actually saying ‘hey’ to others that aren’t in leadership. Again, this isn’t everywhere, but it seems to be the common situation.
***END DIGRESSION. WE BRING YOU BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED COLUMN, ALREADY IN PROGRESS ***

But after a good digression, I came upon the last paragraph:

The debate should not be over “should we be old school or new school?”, but simply, “what is most biblical?” Shortcuts to building our ministries must be abandoned for the most biblical ways to build, regardless of how long it may take. Oftentimes, the most biblical ways of doing things may take longer or do not produce the kinds of quick results we have become accustomed to.

And I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that trying to introduce artificial boundaries will only cause division. It’s not about old school vs. new school, it’s about biblical practice and doctrine. Of course, this means different things to different people, but it is a principle that I do not consider ‘bathwater’. If we can discuss the Bible and practical solutions, we will go a long way to change. It is not important to me if someone considers me new school or old school, what matters is faith expressing itself in love.

The effects of real change will take time. If you read the digression, you may think that I am impatient for results, but that is not entirely true. What I rant about is the fact that there are few that make public statements about change, fewer still that publicly make those changes, and only two chruches (to my knowledge) that have sought outside help. Read icocinfo.org or disciples.today.com and there is little sign of anything really changing. I don’t blame the respective websites, they just report on events and articles that they can access or are submitted to them. It just saddens me that for all this talk of ‘change’, that there is little record or mention of it.

If anyone out there knows, please fill me in on the secret.

In any case, Gary wrote a good article and I wanted to make mention of it.

I haven’t written a lot about ICC stuff since I broke with the forums. I think it’s indicative of the reason I needed to leave them. However, I haven’t ignored church events completely. The two things on my mind at the moment are an article written by Gary Sciascia and Thomas’s latest sermon (not article). I’ll write about Gary’s article in different article.

Thomas’s latest sermon is entitled, “Jesus, Friend of Sinners”. I have to admit that the first 20 minutes was a genuinely good sermon. The story of Zaccheus, the woman cuaght in adultery, and the leper of many years being healed with a touch. Familiar themes and such, but a surprisingly coherent and effective message on compassion. I started thinking that my prayers for him and about him were beginning to bear fruit. I didn’t like the hype style and extended s on the end, but that’s a minor consideration.

So I’m about to click off the sermon and then the twist occurs. There’s a mention of ’sold-out disciples(htdm)’ that appears from nowhere. Then, when talking about Jesus’ admonition to the woman caught in adultery, the real topic of this sermon emerges. After all the talk about the compassion of Jesus, the audiences hears that members of the Portland Church are not confessing their sins to their discipling partners. A familiar pattern returned where he confessed his sins that have plagued him since college. He “got open” with some folks about his sins and then he was “super-fired-up” again. That lead to a call for everyone to make sure that their discipling times happen and that when they happen, they should confess their sins.

This is where I tuned out and turned it off.

I still think, that in the bigger scheme of things, he works hard every Sunday to defend himself and his ministry from someone or something. Until recently, I just figured that he is aware of his waning influence and his own unpopularity. Nowadays, I wonder if the critics he addresses indirectly are people he is talking to fairly regularly. I know that the Chicago Leadership came to Portland at some point and discussed the Mother Of All Conferences(tm) (also known as the 2004 International Leadership Conference) and that he has addressed “our fellowship of churches” almost every week that he preaches. I get the feeling that he will not be there. If he is, I’m sure that he will have something to say in his October 2 sermon.

I’m glad I don’t tune in every week anymore. A friend of mine asked me if I keep up with him anymore, and she said that it might be good to check in every once in a while. She was glad that I wasn’t checking in every week, but she also mentioned that she wants to know, but doesn’t have the time do it herself. I appreciate that, but I really want to focus more on building relationships in other places.

I enjoy my freedom and the ability to get help from so many people without another appointment.

I’m having one of those weeks where everything is difficult. Too many things are broken with the Pension system at work and I can’t fix them. I’m just frustrated. Too many details with the wedding, Alsa won’t configure on the laptop (What do you mean run ‘amixer’ at the prompt? I’ve emerged everything ALSA and it says “amixer not found”), too many ideas running around in my head in regards to church and roleplaying stuff. It feels like so many things at once.

Jump on a horse, Mongo, this merry-go-round is just starting up.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy having a lot going on, but it seems to be backing up and I don’t have the time to release it all. I really want my laptop to work, I really want to figure out the groomsman attire, I really want to finish the Prophets of Old article and start on the Foundations of the Faith series. Last night was supposed to be a time to work on one of the two articles, but nothing got done in those areas. The good news is that I got firefox installed on the laptop and Shane and I worked a bit on a neighbor’s computer. I feel like the night was a total loss even though it wasn’t. Laryssa was there for me and kept me from exploding.

But I know that something else is wrong because I can’t relax. I’m having one of those Romans 7 days where my thoughts and actions are completely the opposite of what I want to do. My mind has gone to all kinds of dark places that I wish weren’t there in my heart. It’s not anything uncommon that I battle against, but that is not comforting. When I get weary, everything is a difficult struggle and adding these thoughts doesn’t help at all. I want to scream (and I did earlier).

Romans 8 is the answer to this, but right now it is not helping. I’m not able to hear when there is so much I feel that I need to say. I think I just need to unwind. To this end, I’ll start a few ideas just to get them out of my mind.

This is the part where I notice that I’ve had too much coffee. The good news is that it wouldn’t have been possible to have this much coffee without the fantastic shopping of my rommate. It was good to grind some coffee beans, fill the kitchen with the smell of just-ground coffee, add way too much Coffemate(r) Amaretto…

Anywho, some ideas in random order are forthcoming, that’s enough for now to enable me to stare at COBOL for awhile.

I decided to use the format presented in the netbook of races. It’s not that I may present this to them, but it seemed a logical format to use. The first post on the Gainarii (or Gainar) can be found here.

Gainarii
Little is known about the Gainarii socially, but it is evident to many that they are one of the few groups of people that thrive in both magical and non-magical lands. Unlike many other races and ethnic groups, they do not choose to live in one area or the other. Wherever they live, they are possessed of a keen mathematical ability that they use to make a living. In magical lands, they are great wizards able to control the force of magic with unparalled precision. Their mathematical prowess enables these wizards to understand magic in more detail than any other race or ethnic group of wizard, including the elves. In non-magical lands, they are given to mechanical or merchant trades. As merchants, they are able to deal with all kinds of rare materials and maintain profitability.

Personality: In general, they are perceived as serious and stern. Their almost fanatical work ethic is one of the main reasons they are successful in any undertaking.

Physical description:Gainarii appear very similar to humans in most regards. Their noses are more flat than most humans with two v-shaped ridges just above the nostrils. Their ears are also slightly higher on their head, but are round and small like human ears. At the midpoint of their spine, there is two ‘double ribs’ on their back, one on each side, each protruding about two inches. They appear to be similar to the collarbone, but smaller. They also curve more toward the rib cage ending in two small knobs. All known Gainarii are pale and clean-shaven. Their eyes range from brown to grey but a special few are born with either two yellow eyes or one green and one brown eye. Within their culture, these special few are considered to be of exotic ancestry.
They dress in whatever clothes are fashionable to the area they live. They are known to live in any area where there is human civilization, and a few other areas where other races and ethnic groups have developed an urban area.

Relations:The Gainarii are not unfriendly, but are also not overly cordial. In many respects, they go to great lengths to maintain and separate their culture from other cultures. Intermarriage is strictly taboo, even with humans. They have no racial or ethnic dislike of anyone, in fact, they seem to be able to do business with anyone including the sook. Gainarii seem to slightly prefer the company of humans of all other races and secretly mistrust elves of all kinds.

Alignment: Gainarii prize order and sequence, especially when it comes to abstract thought. As a result, almost all Gainarii are Lawful. Those rare few that are not Lawful are usually those that have lived separately from other Gainarii, or those of extremely high intelligence. There are no Chaotic Gainarii. Their devotion to mathematics has also made most Neutral in terms of Good and Evil. It is especially convienent to be Neutral when you sell goods and services to all people without prejudice. However, those that are not in the merchant business can have good or evil tendencies.

Gainarii lands and society: At home and anywhere other than in business endeavours, only their native language is spoken. All Gainarii are educated in their own system that emphasizes mathematics and language arts. Their society is little known, but appears to outsiders as conformist in nature. There is also a complex caste system, but because of mobility between the castes, only the Gainarii know how it works.
The Gainarii do not have a homeland, pro se. There are no predominantly Gainarii cities. They do have a very strong sense of identity that is reinforced through their private education system. Gainarii schools are not secret and will even admit humans from time to time. The humans take only mathematics and language arts in human languages: they are not allowed to take Gainarii language, history, or religion classes.

Religion: The Gainarii religion is based on an event called “The Awakening”. According to their creation story, the world was already populated with various sentient beings when a benevelont being came and gave the gift of knowledge to their people. Shortly after his arrival, those that chose to continue their learning left their homes and settled in a new area. Apparently, a malevolent being came and stirred dissension amongst their people causing a great civil war. The benevolent being was quickly victorious, but the divisions were too deep to overcome so quickly. After many years, a peace was achieved, but only at the accidental deaths of the two kings that ruled each faction. According to the story, they met to discuss the terms of peace in a neutral place, but the ignorant peoples in that land were frightened by the the kings. In fear, they struck them down, though the wise kings tried in vain to reason with them. Having fought for so many years, they were few in number, thus were forced to live in cities that they did not build. Some religious leaders of the Gainarii speak of a ‘return to the homeland’, but even the Gainarii do not know where such a mtyhical place could be.

Language: The Gainarii language is tonal and inflected. This makes the language complex, but extremely compact. Through the study of their own great poets, they search for greater economy within their language. Amonst other people, some of the Gainarii merchants have developed the habit of repeating themselves to each other in order for their language to sound more closely to other languages. It is thought that the economy of their language creates mistrust among the customers. However, when they speak other languages, they have no discernable accent. Those merchants that repeat themselves, however, tend to be verbose in other languages.

Names: More to come
Male names:
Female names:

High level meta-magic feat that allows the caster to create a temporal hole to a place where magic is more powerful. In other words, there is more magic crystal in that area. This allows subsequent spells to have the same effect as if cast in the area of more powerful magic.

Once high level casters have found a strong ley line (rich vein of crystal that allows for the most powerful magics), they will, as needed, create a conduit to that area. There are no known succesful attempts of creating a permanent conduit.

Sometime ago, I wrote a small piece for the Backara campaign setting. The idea behind Backara was that it was a low magic world without dragons. As magic was a more rare commodity, cunning and skill were more prized. As such, the Gainar were a people of excellent merchant abilities in addition to being great mathmeticians. Where the great mathematic abilities would lead was uncertain. Unfortunately, the creator and co-creator of the system passed away in the real world while fighting in their respective militaries. One was British special forces, the other from Australia. As such, these ideas were never developed in more detail.

My perspective world has a few rules to it, so I’m going to explain those briefly and then explore the idea:

1. Magic is a force of nature with its source in a crystalline material. Wherever this material exists, magic is possible. The more of this material that exists in a given area, the more powerful the magic. If you want to create a device using magic as a power source, you must include a piece of this crystalline material.

2. There is a dull metallic substance that is immune to the effects of magic. Wherever this materials exists in abundance, magic is impossible. If you want protection from magic, you need this material. Magic is impossible, even if you bring a magic item with you. The metallic substance nullifies magic, period.

2b. I know that the rules lawyers will want to dissect this, so let me give a few paradigms to explain the idea. If a geographic area is a no-magic zone, it cannot become a magic zone, no matter how much of the crystalline material you bring in. If you have a small piece of the metallic substance and take it with you to a geographic area that is a magic zone, magic will still work as normal, but the person possessing the metallic material will be protected from magic.

3. Societies that exist in non-magical lands are quite different from those in magic lands. They have been unsuccessful in conquering each other.

Assuming these three things, enter the Gainar. They appear human enough in their appearance, but they are a peculiar bunch.

Little is known about the Gainar socially, but it is evident to many that they are one of the few groups of people that thrive in both magical and non-magical lands. Unlike many other races and ethnic groups, they do not choose to live in one area or the other. Wherever they live, they are possessed of a keen mathematical ability that they use to make a living. In magical lands, they are great wizards able to control the force of magic with unparalled precision. Their mathematical prowess enables these wizards to understand magic in more detail than any other race or ethnic group of wizard, including the elves. In non-magical lands, they are given to mechanical or merchant trades. As merchants, they are able to deal with all kinds of rare materials and maintain profitability. In general, they are perceived as serious and stern. Their almost fanatical work ethic is one of the main reasons they are successful in any undertaking.

The gainar have learned the arabic muneral system in order to communicate with others (and buy and sell goods), but use their own mathematical notations and system for computation. The Derigee is a device similar to an abacus that they use. Portable ones often have a rectangular shape with 24 taut strings spread across from top to bottom. Marks are made into the sides of the derigee and clips are used (isntead of beads) to mark a position on the string. Their number system doesn’t appear to be base10, so looking at the derigee, it is not obivous what number(s) are being delineated. Larger versions exist, but are rarely seen by non-Gainar. They have more strings, presumably to deal with larger numbers, but that is only speculation.

With the ability to make advanced calculations, non-magical Gainar are even known to build devices that use steam or electricity as a power source. Seafaring Gainar have even developed rudimentary hyrdraulic machinery used in lifting heavy objects in non-magical lands and for strange watercraft that don’t use sails as propulsion. This ability also serves the magical Gainar well as they can consistent explain and demonstrate the ‘laws’ of magic. As noted earlier, Gainar spellcasters exercise full control and accuracy with their spells and magic-powered items.

There’s a lot more to write, but I need to go to bed. See you tomorrow.

I have just discovered that in the world of Homestar Runner(tm), that I am Bubs(tm).

Which Homestar Runner character are you?

this quiz was made by jurjyfrort

I’ve been reading through the prophets lately and I have been impressed by the extremes they demonstrate to help the people understand the will of God. Ezekiel, especially, really went through some bizarre circumstances. However, my favortite prophet to read is Hosea. Whenever I am down and feeling “out of it”, I can always rely on Hosea to get my mind reset.

After my little huff-n-puff about Gentoo and networkless installations, I just went to Best Buy and got a nic card. 19.95, not bad, really.

Now, of course, everything works wonderfully. The last time I checked in on my old laptop, it had spent eight hours on emerge icewm. The two biggest differences in time involved are:

1. I didn’t install X.org before emerging Icewm.
2. I set the optimization flag to -O3 instead of -O2. Longer compile times, smaller space on hard drive.

After an emerge rox and some configuring, I just might have a working prototype of what I want the Contigo software to look like. Going to have to test a lot of things, but it should be good enough for now. Besides, it’s easier to demo the laptop than the whole system!

Okay, I should have known this, but there really isn’t a choice for a networkless install of gentoo. The instructions will get you up to compiling the kernel and a bash script, but that’s it. I can’t get anything alsa to emerge, except for the things included in the kernel. icewm and rox won’t emerge, but Gnome will from the package CD (but not from the portage tree and source I copied on the machine).

ARGH!

There is no networkless install on gentoo. So, let me see if I can get the pcmia card to work… I’ll let you know more on Friday when Shane and I try to get our protoype to work.

Maybe I’m down to LFS…