It was trying to phone home for additional instructions. Don't they all do that?

Yes, I hear what you're saying. For many years I was agnostic, and when I did venture into a church I had exactly the same experience you describe. Eventually I found a Methodist church where people were willing to put aside the dogma and explore what the Bible really is about and how that is to be lived out in our own lives. I won't claim that I've got it all right, but it has helped me to wade through a lot of the standard crap that some churches throw out there.
Take a look at some of the writings of NT Wright, an interesting fellow who has a way of cutting through to the core beliefs of Christianity. There's a lot of YouTube videos of him as well.

No, nutters are not the majority.
They are just loud and too many people listen to them without questioning them or taking the time to look for themselves what God is all about.

No, the nutters are not the majority.
They're just loud and too many people listen to them without questioning what they are saying or making the effort to find out for themselves what God is all about.

Nutters.

God is not a man and he doesn't live in the sky.
He sees everything that's going on, but not in the sense of the quote. Santa Claus does that ;)
There are many things he doesn't want you to do, but they are summed up in the idea of loving God and loving others as you love yourself. If you do that, your focus is on doing the right things not on just following rules.
God does not send people to hell. People decide to go there themselves. Hell is the absence of God, much like darkness is the absence of light. Furthermore, God is more concerned about the hell we bring to the lives of the people around us and about those who stand around and let it happen.
God does love you.
Churches need money. God doesn't. Any group, institution or government under the control of man will become corrupted, even with the best of intentions, and this includes the church.

I second that. Unfortunately, the "religious nut-jobs", although a minority, are quite loud and are the voices that others hear the most. This leads to the confusion between what the nutters are saying and what Christianity is really about. Most of the objections I see raised by atheists are about the way Christians behave (or a perception of how they should behave), and don't often delve into the real core beliefs. That's unfortunate because some very interesting conversations do not occur because of the superficiality of the arguments (from both sides).

Very true. POTY jumped the shark before Fonzie did.

Our data shows that Joe just stopped at his dealer's house. Before that he bought some boots at the Army Surplus store, a six pack of Red Bull and a 5 gallon gas can at the mini-mart. He also stopped at the gun shop, but we don't know what he bought. He appears to be headed to Central High School. Hmmm, what can we sell him there?

The last update of the Amazon Android app had a new security requirement that it be able to read your GPS and gather fine location data. That was the end of that app on my device. I don't mind that they track what I look at on their web site or thru their app, but to track where I am to be able to sell that information to others just pisses me off.

On the other hand, perhaps I should load the app, but only turn it on when I'm in Barnes and Noble looking at Nooks.

I can't remember the last time I actually purchased software for Windows. Must have been the copy of Office I bought back around 2003, which I'm still using under Vista. Everything else is open-source/free. I don't think there is anything for Windows that is actually worth buying (that I couldn't find an open-source equivalent, or better, for).

No reason to put up with crap like this. I blocked to domains cnet.com and download.com from my network. Problem solved.