This Pilgrim's Progress

Ken Jennings Kerfluffle

Wire services were circulating a story earlier this week about Ken Jennings and a humorous post he wrote on his blog called "Dear Jeopardy", and implying that Ken was an ingrate, biting the hand that fed him and all that rot.  It actually is quite funny and it's obvious he poking rather gentle fun at an American TV icon that he loves.  Only those with a deficient sense of humor would find anything malicious in it. I encourage everyone to read it. His web site at http://ken-jennings.com/ is pretty good and worth a browse. I've always liked Ken, and from his blog you can see he is quite a good humorist. His new book looks interesting too.

Dell XPS 400

The new family computer arrived yesterday. I was up till 2:oo a.m. last night getting it set up. I still have some more work to do, but it's going rather well.

The main problem is the heat has loused up our internet connectivity at our house. We have a tech scheduled to come out Friday. The TV and phone are ok, so I don't know why the internet connection is so flakey. Maybe the power outages we had this weekend stressed something.

The PC is a beautiful machine and quite fast. We got a new digital 20 inch LCD display and a new 5.1 speaker system to go with it too.  The LCD monitor is gorgeous and it's nice not to have to look at a 15 inch laptop screen!!

I'll give a longer review sometime next week when we've had time to use it some.

p.s.  Now that Intel has come out with the Core 2 Duo processors, the prices have come down on the Pentium D's.  This PC has a Pentium D 940 at 3.2 Mhz, and it priced out at $1000.00  less than a comparable system I looked at earlier this year!! So, unless you've got to have the latest and greatest and don't mind the cost, I'd say the Pentium D processors are fast enough for most home users.  And given that my family's PC's don't last more than 2 or 3 years anyway, we'll eventually get a PC with the faster chip and at a lower price. Early adopters pay a high tariff!!

Heat Crazed Squirrels Invade German Home!!

...Or at least that's the way the headline should have read. Those pesky rodents are at it again. This time a family of squirrels staged a home invasion of a elderly German couple. They had to call the local fire department to deal with the miscreant critters.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,428663,00.html

I'm surprised we haven't heard of more incidents like this one with record heat waves in the U.S. and Europe. Maybe it's another one of those left-wing-squirrel conspiracies??

Stay tuned to this blog for the latest in Squirrel News!!

Daughter off to the Sierras

Our daughter left for a 10 day backpack trip yesterday. She will be with a group of about 15 hikers led by a pastor and his wife. They are hiking in the eastern Sierra's and will be climbing up Bishop pass sometime today or tomorrow. When she gets back it will be just a few more days and she'll be off on a trip up Whitney. It seems like she's gone off to college already and we are struggling to cope.  We have labored long to reach this point, but it's hard to let our precious child jump out of the nest and fly!! We'll survive, but it just isn't very easy right now.

Back on track

We had very fruitful discussions with our contractor over the last few days. We are very relieved that it went so well. We feel like we did the right thing and that it actually will help the progress of the construction. We are concerned not to offend the man we are dealing directly with, but I think we are OK with him too.  The cabinets are on order and some other tasks are in progress. We hope to see some new windows go in next week and hopefully the rough inspection completed.

New PC for the Family

Earlier this week I tried to order Dell's new  "Ueber-maschine" the XPS 700. The next day I took a closer look at my order confirmation and the estimated delivery date was late September!! I sent their customer service an email asking what the deal was. I got a phone call later in the day, and the explained that there was a part on backorder because the original delivery failed quality control.  I was supposed to get a call Thursday on the status of my order. No call, so I called them. Again, from the same CS facility somewhere in India, a nice Indian lady told me that there was no change on the status, so I cancelled my orders which she gracefully handled for me. She wasn't able to tell what the part was, so I didn't have an opportunity to change the configuration.

I then checked online on the model that's next down from the XPS 700, the XPS 400. Well, the  estimated delivery date on that one was just 2 weeks away. So I configured one that was pretty much identical to my original order except the chipset was going to be an Intel Duo 940 3.2 Mhz, rather than the 950 3.4 Mhz. I then called Sales at Dell, got a nice lady from somewhere in the South (accent was easier to understand!!), who was able to tell me that the est. delivery date would be just two weeks and the 400 didn't have the same problem as the 700.  So, I went ahead and ordered the 400.

Now, you'd think that the first guy I talked to could have helped me change my order to the XPS 400. But no. I wonder how many sales they are losing because of this supply problem and they way they are handling customer inquiries? And I just got a new catalog in the mail from Dell where they were selling some new machines with the same 950 chipset. Is it the chipset that's the problem, or some sort of mother-board problem??

Well, the machine I ordered is a nice one and should be a good one for the family. I'll report back later.

Update: Here's an article that explains the problem that Dell is having: http://news.com.com/Dells+XPS+700+on+summer+vacation/2100-1042_3-6093539.html

Attacks on Israel

The news coming out of the mid-east is disturbing. Hezbollah has fired over 700 rockets at Israel, and the IDF is retaliating in a big way, but with focus. 

I'm becoming somewhat pessimistic about the War on Terrorism. It looks like Congress is not taking the war seriously, and I wonder if the administration is taking it seriously too?? Why the waffling on border security? Why did the Senate after approving the construction of a border fence, vote against it's funding!?

In the meantime, our church just said good-bye to a family that was returning to their home in Israel. They were here while the husband was attending seminary. He graduated, found a position in a ministry, and they moved back last week. They are a wonderful family with small children and I am worried for them. Please be in prayer for them and for the nation of Israel and for peace in that area.

I'm confident in God's sovereignty in history, but that doesn't mean I think we (the U.S.A. ) should not be a force for peace and democracy. In fact, in light of the many blessings God has bestowed on this nation, I believe we have a duty to fight international evil like the Jihadists.

You might wonder why I use the word "Jihadist". Well, I think "Terrorist" is somewhat accurate, but doesn't really paint the character or nature of the enemy.  Jihadists are militant Islamic fascists who will stop at nothing to further their agenda of spreading Islam by force and defeating Western culture. They are a culture of death, and view their own death as sufficient reward for their pursuit of violence.  Hezbollah and Hamas are jihadist organizations supported and sponsored by Syrian Bathists and Sunni, Iranian Shiites, and Saudi's  Sunni Wahabists.  They are want to restore the Caliphate, but of course they all have different ideas of what that Caliphate would be like.  If they didn't have the West to vent their violence on, they would be killing each other, much like the sectarian violence in Baghdad the last few weeks.

The sad thing is, even if they were successful in cowing the west and wiping Israel off the map, the Caliphate would never arise because they have no unifying ideology other than a culture of violence. In the past the Caliphate was a product of strong and unifying leaders who knew how to conquer and rule from cultures that had more to offer than bleak death.  The Jihadists only know how to deal out death and violence.

Until our culture truly understands the nature of evil that these Jihadists represent and the threat they are to our civilization, we will continue to be their victims.

Johnny Cash

Listening to Pandora on the internet, I heard some cuts from Cash's "American Recordings" produced by Rick Rubin. I was blown-away by them so I decided to order the entire series of 5 cd's. 

Cash is awesome in these recordings.  I recommend them to anyone who loves Country/Folk/Blues/Bluegrass.  Mr. Cash is an American Icon, and these recordings made at the end of his life are his magnum opus.  The most amazing aspect of these cd's is the way Cash's emotion and spirit is communicated in his singing.  We are indebted to Rick Rubin for persevering on this project and capturing Johnny Cash the artist and man in these cd's.

Our House

My wife and I met with our contractor site supervisor yesterday. It was a good meeting, and we are feeling considerably less murderous now!! 

It finally got through to him that we did not have any extra money for "upgrades". We were brutally honest, and I think he finally got it that we weren't lying about our financial resources. At the same time we also tried to reassure him that we weren't really angry at him,  just frustrated with the process. So, I think we had a "meeting of minds" on the project.

We meet with his manager (the guy that runs the contracting company), next Monday. We plan to ask for some things we hoped would be forthcoming from the site-super, but realized that wasn't going to happen, so we will approach it from a different level.  We were promised a time-line/project schedule, so we want that. We also want a "hard-date" on the completion of the project.  We intend to hold them to it too! We think we've been way too laid-back on this, so we are going to be a little more on top of it, and start to hold their feet to the fire on the project milestones.

And we are going to do this while remaining a good witness of the Holy Spirit within us!! Tall order, but we are leaning on the Lord for the heavy lifting!

"Wedded Bliss"

Tomorrow my wife and I celebrate our 26th wedding anniversary. It has been a incredible life for us together, and I'm very blessed to be married to Debbie.  We both have been thankful that we are going through the year's events together, and we can't imagine enduring it without a partner.  We have much to celebrate and thank God for!