Mo' Boy - Parenting

Perhaps it's the upcoming holidays, or perhaps it's the fact that I just had the wonderful opportunity to confer the Aaronic Priesthood on my son, but I've been thinking about fatherhood and parenting lately. 

So, I thought I'd pull up some of my past posts on the topic in the last couple of years.  It's been an interesting journey!

• My Weird Father's Day
• My Son and My Guitar
• What is Fatherhood?
• Common Uniqueness
• Swearing and Parenting
• Brendon's Pizza
• Brendon's Comedy

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.



Mark's Other Blog Posts: Bah Humbug, Cloud Computing, Dutch Oven Turkey,

The Games of Zion - The Armor of God

I know that there are thousands of you out there than hang on my every word here at Mo' Boy, that can't wait for my next keystroke or mouse click, that find my writings so inspirational and powerful that...

...or not.

But, on the other hand, if you're one of two or three people who's been reading Mo' Boy for a while, you'll know of my on-and-off love/hate affair with LDS games.  If not, you can catch up on the discussion of LDS and Mormon themed gaming with these links. 

So, since I'm both into gaming, and am exploring game design, I follow this blog about mormon gamers and game designers. And Mike, the blogger, wrote about a game he's been working on that he's started self-publishing, called "The Armor of God".

It's fun for me, because, since I joined his email discussion group for LDS gamers and designers, I got to help playtest this game last spring.  That was before he got all those seriously cool graphics that make up the cards now (art done by Tony Peters).

The game had a lot of plusses going for it.

• It was a lot of fun.  My 11-year-old son, after playing the "print-n-play" playtest version of it with me, immediately asked to borrow the cards and ran off to his friend's house to play it.
• It learns fast, and it plays fast.
• It includes some intriguing game mechanics that are very different from existing games.  This game, in fact, is unique and doesn't follow the pattern of simply copying an existing famous game and slapping a Mormon "face" on it.
• The theme is something positive and scriptural.  You can't go wrong with that, right?

So, this is my unsolicited endorsement.  Mike doesn't even know I'm writing this, yet.  You can check it out at his blog, and even watch a "how to play video", and you can buy it, if you want to.  It's definitely worth checking out.


Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.



Mark's Other Blog Posts: Brendon Makes Dutch Oven Baked Ziti, Building Blogger Authority

Digg-ing in the Dirt

Even though I'm an SEO kinda guy, I've not really been all that focused on Digg.  I know it's a cool place to find interesting stuff, and a great way to promote stuff, but I've just been busy in other areas, like Blogging, Twitter and Facebook.

But today, I thought I'd, if you'll pardon the pun, digg a little deeper and see how it works.  So, I went to Digg.com and did a search for "Mormon".

Yikes.

I clicked through five full pages before I found a posting that was favorable.  And, of course, the ones I saw about the Mormon Church that were favorable had one, two, at most three diggs.

My first thought was to come back here and tell everyone within the sound of my typing (that means both of you) to go to Digg and click to digg any pro-mormon piece you can find there.  Let's get these things ranking higher!

My second thought was that if we all did this, it would mean that a lot of faithful church members would be suddenly looking at a lot of anti-mormon ranting.  Which isn't necessarily bad, but I'm not sure that it's a good thing, either.  It certainly didn't make me smile.  Why make someone else's day miserable...

My third thought was that perhaps we, as members of the Mormon church simply prefer not to use Digg.  Maybe we're all on StumbleUpon, or Delicious.  A part of me is not sure that I want to go there and see.

I guess it's simply a symptom of being who we are.  In a lot of ways, that's good and bad.  I mean, we believe what we believe, and we don't apologize for it.  That means that people who believe otherwise are going to be upset at us.  We do have a reputation for having these "pushy" guys out there knocking doors.  And there is a lot of misinformation circulating about us (contrary to what many seem to be saying, we don't believe it's right for a 45-year-old man to marry six 14-year-old girls).

I guess what frustrates me is that I know there is a lot of material out there that is telling the story from our perspective.  But I guess that it's not cool enough to "Digg".


Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.


Mark's Other Blog Posts: Dutch Oven Dessert, Connecting to LDS Music, FTC Sets New Rules