Befriending

Our Daily Bread
Of all the TV gadgets ever advertised, I think my favorite is the "Bedazzler"!  No, I do not own one.  Bedazzeled stuff is sooooo not my style!  I like the name of it.  I like the fun that I have with other friends about the gaudy additions to clothes, shoes, bags, etc.  It is a hoot!

Instead of "bedazzling", the devotional talks about "be - friending"!  hehehe  Yes, I know that was a stretch for an intro, but it was fun!  ha!  Christ tells us that it is very easy for us to love or like those that love or like us.  Very easy.  The challenge is to love those that don't like us.  They may talk about us.  They may try to use us.  They may not want anything to do with us.  Yet, Christ tells us to think of their needs as he would!  What's up with that?

The odd thing is that other people may consider us to be "codependent" when we follow this commandment. I think the line is drawn in how much we give of ourselves in these cases.  I am still trying to figure that one out!

Lord, please help us love others like you love us!

Technology Thursday
Google Nexus 7 tablet
I wrote last week that I ordered one of the new Google Nexus 7 tablets the week they were available for pre-order.  I received it last Friday.  Here are my observations.

Specs
It has a quad core processor and a gig of RAM.  This puppy is FAST!  I have been very impressed with the performance.  The screen is also very nice as it displays HD quality movies and pictures.  Very nice.  It is a decent weight.  It is about 40% lighter than the Kindle Fire and half the weight of the larger iPad.  I am not sure about the battery life.  I did something wrong that resulted in running the battery down in less than a day!  Yikes!  The standby battery life is supposed to be several days.  Not sure what I did.  It does have some external controls like power and volume (no external volume control is a big complaint about the Fire).  It does not  have a card slot for expansion (like the Nook).

OS
This model is a 7" tablet with the latest version of the Android OS (Jelly bean), which is made for tablets.  It has the smoothest performance of any Android OS I have seen.  The implementation is pretty good, though I need to get used to the interface.  I touch and touch sometimes and can't get to what I want!  The OS is fully integrated with Google stuff (much like the Fire is integrated with Amazon stuff).  If you use the other Google tools like Mail, Calendar, etc, it will be very easy to sync that stuff to your Nexus 7.

Apps
I found a few apps I wanted so far.  I got a $25 credit to Google Play with my order.  I am buying a few apps I want.  It also came with the last Transformer movie preloaded.  That is nice.

Summary
I really liked the Nexus 7 tablet.  If you are looking at a small tablet, consider this one.  It comes in an 8 gig model for $199 and a 16 gig model for $249.  The 16 gig model is hard to come by at the time of this blog entry.  You might have to wait a little while to get it.  The 8 gig should be adequate for most casual users.

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Let go, my friends!  God will be there to catch you and hold you in his loving arms!