I can recall serving in the military when it was called “peace time” and all we did was train. In those days, our senior battalion maintenance officer said something to a group of us about what a wonderful thing it was our nation sent so much weaponry to Israel. He said that the IDF would use and abuse the stuff in a real combat environment, compile statistics on what failed and why, and then offer design enhancements.
Maybe the IMF and global banking moguls look at Greece the same way. They are testing all the ways to legally confiscate the last penny from the population. Who would have imagined a Western democracy would do this? Greek taxpayers will be forced to declare all cash “under the mattress” (including inside) or boxes that contain more than 15,000 euros as well as jewelry and precious stones (including gold) worth over 30,000 euros, starting in 2016. The edict and matching forms are just that specific.
This is not a good time to suffer from materialism. The god Mammon is a cruel master.
In retrospect, it seems to me I’ve always had an active heart-mind, but had no help learning how to use it. It’s the only way I can account for having always believed the best use for money was gaining experience and education. Buy things that can’t be taken away from you because they are a part of you — travel, adventure, learning to cope with unexpected situations.
Most of my computer ministry clients, if they store anything on their computers at all, it’s pictures and a few documents. One was writing a book, but still cared more about the pictures she lost when someone else messed with her computer. Those are a sort of memory, and as we age, family pictures become pretty important. My shepherd’s heart breaks when stuff like that gets wiped for no good reason. I can’t help you when government determines to drain your bank accounts and confiscate valuables, nor can I save your computer stuff if something eats your file system. I keep telling folks to back up their files to an external device and keep it somewhere away from the computer.
It really bothers me that, starting with Vista, despite the improved security against common threats, the one thing that has gotten seriously worse is the file system integrity. Updates on XP and before were usually pretty quick and file system rescue tools were plentiful and effective. Those days are gone. Updates take forever, even on fast computers, and they tend to eat both system files and private files. I’ve had several calls where the whole thing was simply file system corruption from an update. Now I’m hearing that Win10 is far worse on this very thing, and I have to wonder just what the heck is Microsoft doing.
Is everyone with money and power out to make us miserable just for their own convenience?
In answer to your last question. Yes.
First create the misery, then sell the cure, is that it?
Yes, dear Sister, but a it’s always seems a cure that creates new misery.