kent lee's blog & ramble

I recently upgraded my Linux to Ubuntu 12, and I had major difficulties installing the IBM Lotus Symphony. It would not install, complaining about dependencies involving some libnotify program. I found and installed libnotify, but then Lotus would not start up. I found that there's a problem with the currently available Debian installer / program for Lotus, and following some advice I found from my Google search, I tried a previous version of the Lotus installer, and everything seems to work fine. I'm making the installer available here for people who need it, since I can't seem to find it on the IBM website.  Details: The current installer is designated for the Lucid version of Ubuntu - symphony_3.0.1-1lucid1_i386.deb - for Ubuntu / Debian versions since March 2010. Installing this in the most recent versions of Ubuntu / Mint Linux (versions 12-14) doesn't work for some people, leading to the following error message - or the program simply won't start up.  ..... ...

Job is one of my favorite Old Testament books because of how it addresses deep life issues. It addresses why we as Christians face trauma, suffering, injustice, and evil in this world -- why God allows to happen to us, or allows others to face severe persecution for their faith. Yet it is paradoxical in how it addresses these issues, seemingly without providing us a direct answer that we would expect to the question of why. Yet simple answers to such questions are not to be found in scripture. We read of Job struggling deeply with spiritual despair and loneliness in the face of suffering, plus criticism from his dubious friends. He never learned the why's of his particular circumstances from God, nor apparently of the spiritual warfare in which he was enmeshed between Satan and God. The book provides no straight, simple answers to these questions. The answer that comes from God seems in fact strange. Essentially, God speaks and reminds Job and his false friends of who he is, as a...

“Immanuel” - “God with us” announced the angels two millenia ago. And thus, a great cosmic mystery unfolded in human history. The most holy and omnipotent God, whose nature and existence we cannot comprehend with our finite minds, who exists beyond the universe that he made, broke directly into human history to reach out to us. The eternal Christ emptied himself of his divine powers and prerogatives, took on human form, to show us the way to salvation. And not just to show us the way, but so that he himself would become the way, as he humbled himself to death on a cross for us. This month, as we reflect on the Christmas gift of the Son to us, let us remember it not just as a story of long ago, but let us also remember his profound love. Let us open ourselves to experiencing it more each day. Jesus, our Immanuel, came to be with us, and is always with us and in us. This is amazing for so many reasons, first of all, because God himself is infinitely ...

People in relationships often ask themselves, at some level of consciousness or another, how they feel the relationship is going. Particularly they ask themselves, “how am I benefiting from the relationship” or “what am I getting out of the relationship?” And in a healthy romantic relationship, a person would ask him/herself, “I wonder if s/he is benefiting from or enjoying the relationship, and me?” These are the kinds of questions that healthy people would ask themselves in healthy relationships, as long as their expectations aren’t unreasonable or overly selfish. We also have to evaluate our relationship with God, but we can’t evaluate this relationship in quite the same way. To simply ask, “how am I benefiting from this relationship with God” in the same way would be egocentric. A better way to approach this question would be to ask yourself, “for what specific things am I thankful to God?” and to reflect on all his mercies, grace, and blessings to you – ma...

In Jesus’ day, a disciple was a follower, a student and an apprentice of a rabbi (a spiritual teacher). If one wanted to become a rabbi, one trained as a disciple-apprentice to a rabbi, learned from him, followed him, and then started to do as the rabbi did. Jesus, by the way, was a self-taught rabbi; as God’s son he did not need to learn from a human rabbi. Jesus commands us to be his disciples. We follow him, we learn how to live the spiritual life that he wants for us, we learn his teaching, and we spread his teaching to others and encourage them to become disciples of our Lord. Being a disciple, then, entails a cost, because we must give up everything to become his disciples [Luke 14.33]. There’s no room for the sort of easy-believism that has become popular today. One could be a faithful disciple, or a disciple who is ineffective or inactive (just as one could be a good or bad student, but a student nonetheless; in fact, ‘disciple’ and ‘discipline’ come from the Latin word f...

Here's the transcript of my talk at the 세바시 on Freedom from English. This is an approximate transcript that I prepared for my talk, so that they could provide Korean subtitles for listeners. My delivery was kind of unnatural and sometimes not so fluid, because I had to give my speech from a memorized script. Freedom from English I remember several years ago, I was at a bus stop near 왕십리 [Wangshimni], when some high school boys came up to me, wanting to practice English. But as they opened their mouths, all they could say was, “Hi... I like kimchi... I love you” - and then walked away quickly, giggling, and embarrassed. Sadly, they studied English in school for many years, yet they could not say anything meaningful – just a few simple, awkward phrases, not knowing that it is not appropriate to say “I love you” to stranger. I often hear of how Koreans spend so much time, so much effort and so much money on studying English, but with such poor results. In fact, English has beco...

Alas! My talk has been posted on Youtube. I gave this talk at 세바시 a month ago, on "Freedom from English." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9f0692r_dg&feature=plcp I talk about how English education has become such an obsession in Korea, that it has actually become a form of bondage. This speech describes the difficulties and misconceptions of learning English as a second language, the motivational problems that are prevalent here, and some steps to freedom. I hope your friends can be blessed by it. Later I'll post a transcript of the talk.