Are you jealous? Or do you already have one? Jenn and I fell in love with the Wii a couple of months ago, but finding one since then has been impossible. Yesterday a couple of our friends who live in Austin called to tell us they found one! They are shipping it either today or tomorrow. I will put a post up when the new toy arrives. - Sean

If you look to the right hand side of my blog page you will notice a section called BLOGROLL. In it you will find links to other blog sites that I read often. One of the entries in the BLOGROLL is for the Daring Fireball blog written by John Gruber. John epitomizes the next generation of writers...the online generation. In an excellent interview with Shawn Blanc he discusses writing online and what it looks like. The interview was heartening for the aspiring author such as myself because it gives hope that print is truly not dead. Print has been reborn with the birth of the weblog. Instant access is the buzzword of the new era of writing, and the internet delivers. Most people also don't have the time, nor the inclination, to read entire books anymore. Blogging fills a unique niche that allows people to read without requiring the commitment to reading hundreds of pages. Many traditional authors look down on online writers as hacks that don't have the skill to be published in the traditional way. John and I disagree with the traditional author's on this point. I can't speak for John, instead I urge you to read his blog and the interview with him by Shawn Blanc, but I can tell you my thoughts on this topic. Writers are realistic. In other words they like to eat. Since the utopian society where money is no longer needed to get food is no where on the horizon we writers have to find a way to get paid for writing. The traditional route to being published is frought with hurdles that can be daunting. Traditional publishing is a shrinking market which makes it harder and harder to make money in the field. Getting published in todays paper published market is truly a daunting task. Whereas online you can publish yourself immediately, and be copywrited at the same time. Another benefit the internet offers the aspiring writer is equality. If you are good at your craft others will find you and start reading you. Once you have traffic to your site you can begin advertising, and before you know it you are making a living as a writer. Something any aspiring author wants. However if you write poorly you will be ignored and your site will flounder. In the interview John Gruber address these issues and more with his popular style. His is a success story in that Daring Fireball supports him financially without any outside source of income. The reason why is because he is good at what he does. Read this one post John referred to in the interview titled "Vacation, All I Ever Wanted" and tell me that he isn't a talented writer. At one time being published was the holy grail of all writers. The internet has leveled the playing field to the point where this goal can be obtained by anyone with internet access. The rules have changed and now more than ever content and quality are more important to a writers success. SeanDareOnline.com was started for three reasons, see my manifesto post, one of them being the desire to hone my writing skills. I want to become better at what I do and maybe someday I can support myself with my writing. So, what is your passion? What do you want to do so badly that you want to support yourself doing it? Is it what you are doing to support yourself now? - Sean

I have a couple of really good posts on writing lined up in my head. Can't wait to get them published. Unfortunately Tuesdays and Wednesdays are always busy for me due to my Church obligations. I plan on writing the full posts tomorrow night and Saturday so stay tuned. Along the line of new topics you should also keep an eye out for post on the usability of my website. I have been tweaking seandareonline.com with some new features. The most recent addition is a new link at the bottom of each post that allows you to easily share your favorite posts with others. Look just below my signature for a green icon with text link next to it that says "ShareThis". Click on it to see how easy it is to add a post to Digg or del.icio.us among others. You can even email a post to a friend or add it to your favorites. - Sean

You will notice an addition to the sidebar on the right hand side of seandareonline.com. I have added a widget called Skribit. Skribit allows you the reader to submit blogging topics. You can also vote on topics already listed in the Skribit window. If a topic gets suggested, and then gets a lot of votes, it then becomes the topic of a blog post. It is a way for you the reader to tell me what you want to hear about. You can learn more about Skribit at www.skribit.com. I first heard about Skribit from one of it's creators, Paul Stamatiou, on his excellent blog which I highly recommend (www.paulstamatiou.com). Paul personally emailed me about a problem I was having getting the widget to work. As a business man he is first class all the way. Skribit was created by Paul Stamatiou and a small group of programmers in a Startup Weekend. Startup Weekends are where you take the time a startup company usually takes to launch a new product and compress it down in to one weekend. From Paul's posts on the subject it sounded pretty intense. I urge you to read more about the Startup Weekend and Paul's involvement in it by clicking here and here. So what do you think about Skribit? (Feel free to answer in a post or by suggesting a post topic in the Skribit window) - Sean

Manifesto - a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives.

I want to take this opportunity to explain the three principle reasons why I decided to launch seandareonline.com. In hindsight I probably should have made this the first post on my blog, but to be fair this is also my first blog and I didn't know how to do a lot with it the first few weeks I had it. Now that I am getting the hang of things I need to make my intentions known so those of you who read it will have some idea of what to expect.

Reason One - To Glorify God

God gives us everything we have, and in my minds eye, everything we as humans take for granted. Our culture ignores God and tries to weed him out of everyday life. The subtitle of my blog is "An Everyday Christian" and speaks to my desire to show everyone who reads it how I try to find the greatness of God in everyday things.

Reason Two - To Educate the Non-Believer

I feel that Christians have a bad image in todays society without just cause. Yes there have been atrocities performed by the Church, and yes people have done horrendous things in God's name, but that doesn't mean those people were following the teachings of Christ. My goal is to show that Christians are not all narrow minded fools or overly pious self rightious insensitive elitists. Christians are flawed human beings, what we call sinners, who desperately want to become like the one person who walked this earth without a flaw, e.g. without a sin, who is Jesus Christ. We also believe that he is the key to a spiritual awakening like no other. This spiritual awakening is called being "born again". When one is born again he dies to his old flawed sinful nature and is awakened anew to the grandeur of God and his creation. After experiencing this reawakening we often try to spread the good news of our discovery to the world, but the world doesn't like to hear it (this is to be expected), but we are commanded to try. Only those whom God had chosen to hear his word will hear our story for what it is and in turn follow him. Even while writing this I realize it must sound a little crazy to an outsider, hence the second reason for this website. If I can show the Christian life from behind the scenes maybe it will convince the Non-Believer that we aren't crazy and that there really is a God and he does love each of us and wishes to have a relationship with us. That is the goal anyway.

Reason Three - An Outlet for My Writing

It will shortly become no secret that I want to write novels. Really good ones at that. The novels will hopefully fulfill reasons one and two which I have listed here. Anyone who writes will tell you that you need to write everyday to get better. That and they tell you to read a lot and to STOP WATCHING TV! (more, probably much more, on that later) A blog is a perfect outlet for daily writing as it includes built in accountability. Special thanks to Tom who left a comment on post earlier this week asking me to continue writing. That is the kind of support this website needs. Read it daily and comment on what you see. If you see I haven't posted in a while be sure to comment on that too! You can also email me at sean@seandareonline.com. Hopefully one day, with your support, I can change the subtitle of this blog to "An Everyday Christian Writer". There you have it. Three reasons why seandareonline.com was born. I hope you will continue to come back and see what I have to say on a daily basis. I hope you will comment on my posts. I hope it will inspire thoughts and decisions about God. I hope you will be with me as I pursue one of the great American dreams, the writing and publication of a novel. No matter what the outcome, no matter what level of success, seandareonline.com promises to be a great ride. Do you want to come along? - Sean

Woke up Saturday morning full of determination and drive, thinking I could spend most of the day writing on this blog, only to find out I was also full of the stomach flu.  I spent the first half of the weekend either in the bathroom or lying on the sofa fighting a fever while watching TV.  The second half of my weekend was spent cautiously eating things I hoped wouldn't turn immediately into semi liquid waste products.  Not a fun weekend. I thought about writing a funny vignette on my weekend adventures, but decided against it.  Maybe I will write one later.  Instead I decided to ask my faithful readers (all three of you) to pray for me in this endeavor.  As you will see from my next post I plan on using this website to speak to the unsaved of the world and I fear the Devil is doing his best to keep me from it.  I would ask you to pray that God keep me healthy and strong as I do his work. - Sean

Sorry for the impromptu hiatus.  I attended the boat show on Saturday (great fun, look for a post shortly) and when I came home I started feeling sick.  Turns out I came down with the flu.  For the past few days I have been as sick as a dog.  Today I am back in the pink and ready to post.  Look for me to catch up on my posting tonight and over the weekend. - Sean

I want to see if one of the settings for WordPress is working properly.  To do so I have to have a minimum of eleven posts on my blog.  This is number eleven!  Yeah :-) - Sean

One reason I started this blog was to encourage and edify other Christians. Another reason was to be a voice of reason in the techno-jungle of our modern society. So many people don't know Jesus because they are running under preconceived notions about Christians. I want to give an inside look into the everyday Christian life, the struggles and the joys. One of the area's I struggle with is pride. Pride is a terrible thing. It makes you think you are more important than you are. If you need some clarification on this issue you should check out Louie Giglio's Indescribable video, which can be viewed in it's entirety here. Louie makes the point that we are all infinitesimally small compared to God. The only part of ourselves that is large is our pride and in turn our ego. God is great and we aren't, it is that simple. I will assume you have watched the video at this point (if you haven't you really should, it is...well...indescribable;-) ) and we are now all on the same page with how small we are compared to God. Pride seems to me to be the root of most, if not all, sin. Think about it. Pride leads to the feeling that you are more than a small spec of dust in space. Pride makes you think that you are important, when in reality you are not. The Church today seems to want to tell you that you are important and that God misses you, and, if you can find the time, you should find a way to fit him into your life. In reality it is the other way around. God is important and you should find a way make him the center of your existence while humbling yourself before him to ask continuously for his favor and forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? You might say? Why forgiveness for every minute of your life! God is perfect, perfect! We on the other hand cannot go five minutes without sinning. God cannot be directly associated with things that aren't perfect. God wants to continue being associated with us, but because he is perfect, and we aren't, he can't associate with us. This is where Jesus comes in. Jesus's death and resurrection covers up the sin in our life, which in effect filters out the sin so we can associate with God. Without Jesus all hope of communicating with God is gone. Yet, even with Jesus in my life pride keeps me from seeking out God! Pride insists that I can live my life on my own without communication with God. So, I ask myself, "what will it take to rid myself of pride?" The answer? Divine intervention. God will have to humble me. Oh man! Who in today's culture wants to be humbled? Who of you looks at humbleness as a sign of strength? In today's culture pride is looked upon as a virtue! And yet which personality trait do you find more attractive in a person, pride or humbleness? I would bet that the person who you find the most charming is humble person. The ones who are pridefull typically put people off. Do you think this is a mistake? Nope, God planned it all along. So, I have started asking God to humble me. I just pray the process isn't to painful. Now it is your turn. In what area's do you struggle? Do you struggle with pride? Feel free to post your answer in the comments below. - Sean

This evening the company which hosts my blog will be taking down their servers for maintenance. They will be down this evening starting at 11:00pm and should be back up no later than 4:00am tomorrow morning. - Sean