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Skyrider, you keep bring back such teachings (memories) which now seem almost ubelieveable to me. Yet we sat there like a duck....in 1997 and years afterwards too while he taught things that even VPW probably would have hesitated in teaching. Plurality Giving. I remember it well. In my mind I knew I would never reach this level as I barely tithed anyway. So I just lived with the pain & suffering and guilt. I believed what he was saying. I was not living anywhere near the standard that God expected of me. But others were more committed than me. They DID give plurlaity..... anything left over. I seem to remember thinking that any form of substantial savings (above a few months emergency need) was not God's true will according to this teaching. I remember him talking about how we shouldn't horde money. What a crock! It was easy to read between the lines. It seemed to me he was saying "save a little and give the rest away to TWI." He was not dumb. He was calculating. In my opinion he also new there were large inheritances in the future with our age group. For example our middle aged friends Tom & Ann here who inherited over $1 million when her Dad passed away. They were, until then, living modestly. Why would they need $1 million? True disciples would operate Plurality Giving when they receive their windfall. Nevertheless, we humbly gave a little more as the "carrot" was raised higher. We turned our giving up a notch or two after this teaching was prevalent. Of course top leadership concurred and taught these things too. I am sure it raised more cash for TWI....cash which was raised on what now seem to me to be deceit and lies. But meanwhile, the disciples were less propserous than they were before. John Richeson Tampa,FL

I agree. Hi Excathedra. How are you? I guess you have to be on the same version as the servers hosting the game. Downloading the upgrade will not change what's burned on the CD. He might just have to go with 1.5.

Wow, you guys go waaay back. Socks were you and Jim at Woodstock by any chance? :D--> Jim I met you once in Maine when a bunch of us flew there with VPW on Ambassador One, 1978 I think. It was a nice house, almost an estate. Reminded me of a mini HEadquarters. You guys treated us as royalty, Maine Lobster, steak dinner and all. That evening you and VPW were going on and on as old friends on stage. He taught.... but in a way I kinda wanted you to teach because you were more interesting, and I wanted to hear what you had to say. I had heard the rumors of course as many of us latter Corps did. Here was the spin by the time it got to us who came later. You were an early follower of TWI, Haight Ashbury scene, etc. Early days of TWI. Began moving the Word dynamically. But got greedy and wanted to do your own thing. Unfortunately VPW had to let you go. You were then "tripped out". (Remember that dumbass phrase?) Then you came back to TWI and VPW sympathized and gave you another chance and sort of let you be in a leadership position because he was such a nice man of God who loved you so much. Honestly it semed at that point you fell into the spiritual corruption that befell many of you top leaders. That's all I want to say about that. Even back then I had a feeling there was much more to the spin than that. Still do. Anyway, God bless you and your loved ones. I like you attitude. And welcome! Stay for coffee and dessert. PS - for what its worth I like John Lynn but that's just me. Didn't know him that well or had many dealings with him but liked some of what he said and did. And he seems to be trying to do good in this world as are some of the others at CES. That's more than I can say for myself a lot of times. John Richeson Tampa, FL Email address is: jrich7 at Verizon DOT NET

This thing is fast and looks fabulous too. I'll do pictures some day when I am not working so much. Yeah, almost done. Shopping for double monitors now like these. Samsung I like this setup too. Triple monitors What I really want is two of these side by side or on top of each other: 30" Apple Cinema But at $2800 each that ain't gonna happen right now. I might get one of them. Not sure yet until I see more and find out more. Lots of questions. Claus is fine. We have been doing lots of painting for him and they need much more. He likes our service and always gives us lots of work each year. Here is where he works. He is in charge of the whole facility. PErforming Arts Center

OM, what I think Skyrider is alluding to is that the Way Corps "commitment" we originally made became a "we own you and you WILL do what we say for the rest of your lives" commitment. And if you didn't like it then you were dropped from the Corps if not kicked out all together from TWI. That's pure BS. Orignally back when larger groups of us were going into the Corps by the hundreds (I was in the 7th, I believe Sky was in the 9th) it was not implied that there would be this "dog soldier leash" around your life after you graduated. Only much later did this become specifically stated. Heck I remember LCM stating one evening at a Coprs meeting in Emporia .... "not all of you can become branch leaders. Many of you need to go out and get jobs and careers and go to college." Well some of us did. Later we were resented for it. Yes it was implied that once Corps always Corps. No prob. Think Marine Corps. You have had the training and served your country and now you serve in society as a better man for it. It was more promoted as another program like WOW or other such ministry commitments. A Wow Vet was not under this short leash and control, for example to move every three years and such. Yet he is still a WOw Vet. I still have one of the old Corps Vet tee shirts which I would bet they discontinued in latter years. A lifetime of Christian service? No prob.... Still doing that best I can. A lifetime of volunteer enslavement on a dog's leash. No way, Rosie!

A router can be purchased from Best Buy. It is handy to have one because it provides a good firewall. They are so cheap now. If you don't get one install Zone Alarm. And Raf, we implore you PLEASE, ditch AOL!!! Why would you be using that thing?

ZZZZZZ, Snore, ZZZZZZ, Snore, Yawn!! Jesus is left out of TWI's mind set again. THEIR word seems to have taken his place. If Jesus were here I think he would fall asleep too with all their jargon. Actually he would have been kicked out long ago.

LCM said: Yes it has. What are you living in now at your age and what will you have to leave your children? IF you had the sense to buy a home years ago it would have been paid for by now and would have most assuredly doubled or tripled in value. I'd say you have been hurt by that decision. Better hurry now. Its late in the game. Homes in Toledo are going up each year.

Galen - you sinner... "owe no man anything", the math genius would have said to you if you had lived around here. Due to their many years in the stale cocoon they called the household, they had no clue as to what was right and wrong when it came to finances. Bob and Paul and other leaders disliked me because I knew far more than they did about these matters. They didn't like it one bit. Screw them...they were plain wrong and they knew I knew it. In my opinion THEY needed financial counseling to help them overcome THEIR fears of being man enough to step forward financially. No question, some debt is bad such as credit card debt..... some debt is good such as a low interest rate mortgage and the American dream of home ownership at an affordable level in your timetable. This is not rocket science or complicated math. It takes cult mentality or fear.... (or greed in wanting more ABS) to suggest otherwise. BTW there is nothing wrong with renting. In some situations I think it is better than owning a home. But in the long run ...it doesn't take higher math to figure out what common sense tells us all. Oh, and from what I hear, Moneyhands dislikes Greasespoters. I'll bet he reads, however, as do others still in. John R.

Suz, I have not heard of anything. But 2003 is rock solid and tried and tested by now. It has everything you could ever want.

Raf - I would also recommend a Dell. They are tried and true. Make sure you get a pentium 4 3.0 processor or above. 256MB graphics card, PCI EXpress if you can afford it. 512MB ram or even 1gb ram if affordable. Get a nice monitor and if you have room for a CRT (that is the big heavy ones, not the flat panel ones). They are a bargain, cheaper than the flat ones and many of them are better quality than flat panel ones. Don't skimp on sound. Make sure your motherboard has good sound built in or just go out and buy a Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs card and install it yourself. And get some nice sounding speakers and subwoofer. Get those from Best Buy not from Dell whose speakers suck.

Dear Bob We are now debt free. No thanks to you and you dumbass advice. Remember when you called us "foolish" because we refused to pay off our very low interest mortgage? Remember when you sent Paul & Phyll to reprimand (threaten) us to get out of debt or else. And we had to state what we were going to do about it. And we we were required to write to you about it. Our method: Put a very small down payment on a house and go into good debt to purchase an appreciating asset that we were able to afford, well within our means about 14 years ago. Our mortgage payment was LESS than your rent and LESS than Paul & Phyll Gilxx (our Corps branch leaders)rent which our abundant sharing was paying for. Your dumbass advice: If you can not pay off your house then you should sell it to get out of debt. You specifically told us that ALL debt was off God's Word. ALL. That includes a mortgage. Our method: Ignore you and LCM, knowing absolutely that YOU were wrong and had no idea what you were talking about. We privately laughed at your stupidity and that of TWI when it came to financial matters. We were astounded that you took math at all in school. The advice was so poor that it is our opinion that TWI was simply trying to raise more cash. Your method: Continued badgering of the believers to either get out of debt or get out. Our method: Keep our home of course and not sell it to get out of debt. Continue to make extra pricnipal payments as we had been doing long before you tried to interfere with our personal lives. Continue to ignore your lame foot advice. Continue to "pretend" we are doing someting about it to appease you so you would get off our case and not kick us out. Your method: "Owe no man anything".... end of story. That's what God almighty says. Take it or leave it. Continue to be narrow minded on reality and the interpretation of the scriptures in context of our culture. Continue to pay rent and give money to increase the wealth of your landlord. Our results: Our house is paid for and has doubled in value so far to over $300,000. Our other two homes (rentals) which we had mortgages on (and did not tell you or you would have freaked out) have also doubled in value. Those mortages are also nearly paid off by renters like you who paid for it all those years. Thank you renters! Oh, and we saved many thousands on our taxes due to legal write offs. Your results: I see you are still renting and so are the GileXX. I would venture to guess that MOST of the TWI participants do not own real estate. Your landlords are very thankful for all the money you have given them all these years. Many of the believers sold homes they should have kept due to your badgering and that of your leaders. Some regret it to this day. Belivers were not to get mortgages. Therefore believers did not invest in real estate at the very time when they should have. Where was this revelation coming from? Some have never financially recovered from your poor advice. Who's foolish now? DO THE MATH! :D--> John Richeson Tampa,FL

Dam noisy processor, stock fan from Intel. Replacing it with one of thee beauty's. Extremely quiet, efficient and....purty too. LED Blue Zalman Flower Copper Cooler

Another insightful post Skyrider. I was out here on "the field" when it opened. Some of the believers around here did a Saturday car wash, proceeds of which were to go to the auditorium. That was kind of strange I thought. I didn't much care for it. Last time I was in it was to hear that all spouse corps were no longer considered corps. A lot of sad people walked out of those doors that day including some of my friends. Then later we sat through the abominable AOS production. We were stunned at its badness but couldn't really figure out why until years later when I heard John Lynx explain that its main focus we the devil and the "minister" and how Jesus Christ was left out of it. Made sense. I never visited the place again. I agree they should sell it. TWI of today just does not need it anymore. What a waste and lots of money to maintain from what I hear. After all, Howard and others used to pride themselves about getting rid of something that is no longer useful. Heck, from what I hear CFF might need it some day the rate they are growing. Ha! I felt sorry for those within the 250 mile radius who were all but forced (mandatory) to attend STS's regularly or face stern reproval, especially Corps. Yes, this was a reality for a long period of time.

From what I hear she considers herself a CEO and so do the followers. She just stays behind the scenes and lets others do the leading. Are they really that blind? IMHO they are in serious delusion and denial. They LACK leadership and direction from Ms. Rivenbark. Yet they treat her as a CEO? She has the presidency in her cluthces and there is not a thing anyone can do about it except wait for her to die. Your abundant sharing at work. Ha! I would be soooo miserable to be a part of that thing they call an organization. IMHO at this point it is nothing more than a scam to gullible and weak people. John Richeson Tampa, FL Former 7th Way Corps Grad

IMHO BSOD's are usually caused by some sort of hardware conflict. Did you add any new hardware recently to this machine? What kind of machine is this? A Dell what? What kind of graphics card? Installing the wrong drivers could cause probs too. You could always just reinstall windows over the top of itself. You won't lose data and will not have to reinstall all programs. It will refresh the Windows OS and hopefully fix your prob in the process. But you will have to download ALL the windows updates including SP2.

It amazes me that grown men and women, some of them probably in their 50's by now, still allow TWI to determine where they live and what foot-ignment they will undertake. I have come the conclusion that some of these men are not real men in my opinion in the sense that they are afraid to face the world on their own. They are under some serious delusions which I believe lead to a boring and substandard life. I believe there will one day be lifelong regrets. In thinking back in retrospect, I remember that a lot of these men and women did not seem genuinely happy. It appeared to me that no real joy seemed to be there. What a way to live life!

Well stated, Skyrider. I agree. Things sure changed over the years.... for the worse. And when we confronted our local leadership (you know who :D-->) with indisputible facts (from the bible) about debt teachings and mark and avoid it just came down to .... "Well, it's the present truth" Sounds like the Pope to me. Or "Popette" or "Popetress" :D--> More later...busy at work.....

Hmmm, thanks. Looks like it would draw from both.

Oh, that is classic. :D-->m PAW. I have seen a person get a virus almost as soon as he got on a cable modem. I think they need to teach classes on "Spyware 101. But I bet some of the attendees would be spyware inventors and hackers so they can learn how to be more clever. :D--> By the way, what do spyware inventors hope to gain by infecting someone. None of it seems profitable really. I mean do they make money off it? It almost seems as if its done with a virus-like goal in mind to just mess people up.

But for the everyday average mom & pop user who are non-technical and do not care to be it gets difficult. You who are in the computer industry take note of what is happening even from our little forum here. Computers all across the world are getting fuczed up by spyware. Everyone focuses on Spam and its problem what with more than half all emails being Spam now. But spyware is just as bad and in my opinion worse than the Spam problem or virus problem. Just last week I was at a buddy's place and he had hundreds of what he called viruses on his Pentium 4, 3.0processor with 512MB ram and a fast hard drive and graphics. His computer was like an old Pentium II. Slow as molasses. NONE were viruses. It was all spam yet he had Norton AV and a router. Using every tool I knew and some other little tricks I still did not get rid of it all. A couple of things were still in MSCONFIG even after deleting all related registry keys! And one stubborn *.exe could not be deleted because it was "in use." I finally got the most vicious ones by booting into safe mode and MANUALLY deleting the offenders. This took 2 hours. His computer was clean and performance was back to nornal. But I'll bet there are still dozens of empty (harmless)registry folders left behind on the baattlefield. What a mess. Now what average everyday user would have a clue? It is complicated for them and very frustrating. I think they would rather just go watch TV where it is safe. :D--> I am not being negative here, but I am being a little negative here. :(--> I see some real problems ahead and some real changes are going to have to be made somehow. This crap is on almost every computer I sit down at. I am glad I am not a technician or it would get tiresome. Anyway, Abi, try booting into safe mode and using your tools while in safe mode. Also unplug yourself from the Internet until you get rid of it all. Start by removing anything you are suspect of from ADD Remove Programs. Then uncheck things that are not needed in MSCONFIG. Then use your tools. Beyond that it gets into registry deletions, etc. And be sure to Immunize. Take preventive measures that will put thousands of known spyware sites into your restricted sites zone in your browser so that you can't be affected by them in the forst place.

This motherboard is nice. Almost too many choices. For example it has 10/100 Lan, Gigabit Lan and 802.11 g wireless connectivity. The wireless is so fast I am having 2nd thoughts about the need for hard wiring anymore. Does anyone know if there is a chance of improved performance if I use both? Or does it just default ot the weakest link? The Gigabit Lan seems a bit faster than the 10/100. And that motherboard Live Update is fabulous! It does what it says and searches their site for all manner of bios updates, drivers, utilities and even the live update software itself. (There must be a dozen things related to this board.)It gives you a clear listing of your version number of a bios or driver compared to their latest version of a driver on their site and mentions the fixes and patches. Then at a click of a button it downloads and installs. It nice that bios updating has become so easy. With everything patched and freshly installed including the chipset this 3.2 processor is fast! And I haven't even overclocked anything yet.

It is my opinion that some of the people who remain in TWI are selfish and cowardly. Selfish because they have chosen to remain out of close contact with friends, relatives and family and have chosen to fail to plan ahead for their children's future. Selfish in failing to plan and save for a secure retirement for their spouse. Selfish in hiding their heads in the sand and not facing reality about the serious problems that are contained within TWI, ignoring the "elephant in the room." Pretending that they and their family are living a blessed and orderly lifestyle within the peaceful and secure walls of the household. Selfishly pretending that The Word is over the world providing a reason to ignore the needs of their fellow man on the street because he is not of the caliber that TWI is looking for as a recruit. Selfilhly ignoring real charity and charitable causes and true good works in favor of pretending to make a difference by being a member of TWI. Also it is my opinion that many of them are cowardly or full of fear as well. Afraid to dare to break out of the mold they are in and to try something different for a change. Afraid to go out at their age and make a living in the world they fear belongs to the adversary. Afraid they are too old. Afraid to fail. Afraid to tell their spouse or children how they really feel about TWI for fear of divorce or estrangement. Afraid of going into GOOD DEBT, afraid of acting at cross purposes with what they think is The Words Way when a REALITY CHECK shows all along it has been The Ways Word . What a sad, sad way to live and go to the grave. Abundant Life? I do not think so. John R Tampa, FL

And that virus certainly came from an incoming email OR a file you downloaded from a site. Thats the most common ways people get viruses. Does you AV software scan incoming mail for viruses before it reaches you like online email services do? And does your AV software scan files as you download them? Concerning Spyware (a whole different issue than viruses), the best approach is a proactive one to immunize, block and protect you from the thousands of worst offender sites out there in the first place. They are blocked in your Restricted sites Zones. But you have to update the blocking of the new ones occasionally. My Spybot, Ad Aware, and anything else I use are all like the Maytag Repairman now. I hardly ever have to even run them anymore regardles of where I go. And when I do they never find anything.

Even God is saying to Jesus, "That Mike guy is nuts, you know what he believes?" :D-->