Very cool site

Amazing. Now here's an idea for entrepreneurs: cafepress.com. Basically it's an outfit that produces custom products (caps, mugs, frisbees, t-shirts, etc.) and does everything except market them for you: you upload your logo, and the handle the orders & fulfillment, all at nominal cost. The interesting thing for me is books: 3 cents a page plus binding, makes a 500 page book sell for $22 plus markup.

Makes me think about the college textbook I've been considering writing.

--Steve

Authoxy

With the help of Heath at HRSoftworks(.net), he got Authoxy working for me. We Mac users are now nearly 100% full citizens on our MS network. I can do everything including software update, access network drives, iTunes music store, iTunes radio, Live365, MS Office Update (and other software updates), etc. etc.

Can't do MaxiBidder (colourfull.com) for some reason. It doesn't work. Some other things don't work, like Skype, but that's not surprising because I think some of those special ports are not open to anyone here.

I am a happy camper. I've used Authoxy for about 4 weeks now hard, and it just works. There is an issue with startAuthoxy (startup items) that doesn't seem to be working right but I bet we get it working.

Wow time flies

It's been over a month, sorry (to all my multitudes of readers, yeah right).

I have a theory about time. When you're a kid, say, 5 years old, one day constitutes a large percent of your total existence (1/(365*5)). But when you're 47, one day constitutes much less than that when compared to your total (1/(365*47)). Consequently, the days seem shorter than they did when you were a kid.

It's just a theory. :)

Ciao.

Visuals

A week ago, several of the deacons in our church came to my house to talk over a change we want to propose at our church. It involves property, mortgages, real estate, etc. We talked through three or four scenarios, came to a couple of decisions.

There I am sitting in prayer meeting tonight and it comes to me in my mind, a beautiful graph showing how one figure will change over time, and how other figures will change in relation to it, all working together to confirm what we decided. I jot down a quick sketch and show it to our pastor and one of the deacons who couldn't be there for the meeting. They see the concept immediately!

It will serve as a superb visual to help the people in our church understand what we're proposing.

Ah the spendor of just the right visual! Worth many thousands of words.

The Internet: Source of All Knowledge?!?!?

Not so.

We have an optical scanner at school, and it runs software that is no longer commercially supported. The other day scanner decided to forget it's settings, and in order to get it back up and running, we need a "Host Port Communications Configuration" sheet to reprogram it. Could we find the sheet? No. Can we get a blank sheet? Yes. Can we find the settings for the sheet? No (qualified no--some of the settings, but not all, are in the manual). The settings are NOT anywhere on the Internet. So there.

If I find them, I will post them HERE: ___________________.

Looking at Blogs

Spent some time hitting "Next Blog."

Over and over. Next Blog. Back. Next Blog. Back.

Weird people. The poetry ones are fascinating, rather creative, a few good ones. There's nothing for me in the foreign language ones (sorry) or the weird English ones (not sorry). A few interesting reads. What I don't like are the ones filled with foul language or other in-your-face stuff. Why should I have to read or look at it? I don't. Next Blog.

Probably people say the same thing about mine. Next Blog. Back. Next Blog. Back.

I'll reach my limit after I feel like I understand what blogging is all about.

September 11ths

My wife said to me this afternoon, "Patches died 8 years ago today." Patch was our first dog, a lovable shepherd mix who strayed into our lives as the smallest of puppies. "Pooch of the millennium" is what I called her. She up and died one day unexpectedly at 8 years of age. Cindy came home at lunchtime and found her dead on the couch. Sad day in our household.

Obviously 9/11/01 was another sad day in our household. I still remember where I was when I saw the first tower fall--in the student center watching the big screen TV. Incredible. My jaw still drops when I see replays of those towers falling Straight Down.

Apparently something as hideous as killing all those innocents in the twin towers is not enough to swing the tide of Muslim opinion against the extremists of their faith. Apparently the recent disaster in the Russian school is not enough. Wonder what it will take?

Regularity

Well, I suppose some would say I'm an uninteresting, dull, kind of guy. Whatever. But some things are important to getting on in life on a day to day basis and regularity is one of them.

So some years ago my Dad got into the First Fitness program of dietary supplements. At first I was quite skeptical. Let me say first that regularity has always been a problem with me. Let me also say I have no economic ties to any of the products or companies I'm mentioning.

That said, he suggested I try a product called "Reneu". It's for colon health, cleansing the colon, also works well to ensure regularity. I tried it once and wow it cleaned me out and I was scared.

But eventually I figured out how to take them without the wow factor. The key (for me) was take two in the evening before bed with 8 oz of water. Then in the morning, soon after you get up and move around, you have to go.

Well, my Dad passed away a couple of years ago and if I'd wanted I could have contacted his upstream provider to continue purchasing Reneu. But it's expensive, like $30+ for one bottle of 100 capsules.

I decided to try some alternative products. Looking at ingredients, there are several key ingredients, one of which is Chinese Rhubarb. So I tried a second product, Turkey Rhubarb Colon Cleanse which was about half the price from an online place, theherbfinder.com. It did not seem to work as well for me as Reneu, and I was not willing to burn through 3 or 4 capsules each time I took them.

I looked around and found another product from herbalfitness.com, called Turkey Rhubarb Formula. Now I don't know the difference between Chinese Rhubarb and Turkey Rhubarb, but they seem to generally have the same effect on my body. This particular product is great! Now I take ONE capsule in the evening before bed with a glass of water. If I take two, the wow factor is too much, but one capsule keeps me regular. The price is right, too, about $15 for a bottle of 100 capsules. So I've effectively cut my cost to stay regular to 25% of what I was paying for Reneu.

I have not seen any bad side effects, to be honest. If I quit taking them, I go back to my old habits of skipping days, hard stools, etc. If things slow down a bit, I may take an extra capsule in the morning.

Regularity is a key to losing weight. The other thing of course is diet. Since going on the South Beach diet with my wife around Easter 2004, I've lost over 20 pounds and several inches off my waist.

End of the week

Just finished the week at school. Friday was hectic. Here's what I worked on:

• I entered the expiration dates of my and my customers' domain names into my calendar.
• I worked on trying to get Authoxy to work properly with our MS authentication server.
• I fixed up several broken links and worked with the Athletic Activities director to get some schedules online.
• I spiffed up the digital pictures I took for Omer the other day, and put them on the network for him to retrieve.
  
• I cleaned the Opscan 5 scanner and recalibrated the heads with the calibration sheets. No go.
• I accessed the AQIP website and submitted the updates for our three Quality Action Projects.
• I subbed for Marsha in her College Algebra class. We learned about Polya's Problem Solving technique.
  
• I worked with Ray on the revised instructions for hooking Macs into our network.
• I talked to Dave about his Quality Committee Meeting Schedule on the Intranet.
  
• I called NCS Pearson why we're getting the error message on our Opscan. Turns out we need a Port Calibration sheet that goes with our software. But where is the sheet? Who knows. So I called and ordered a pack so we can make one.
• I met after supper with our church deacon board to work on one of our projects.
• Fixed up a Pass Submission Form on our Intranet that was malfunctioning.
• Tomorrow--administer the PPST in the morning and go buy a new red tie with Cindy in the afternoon. Oh, and grade those final exams from the Peru class and finish up the distance learning grading from that one student who finally got all her work in. Whew.

Is that a day or what?

Class is in session/Tests & Measurements book

First day of class here at Maranatha. I teach two classes this semester, Tests & Measurements and Instructional Media & Technology. Excellent group of students (from all appearances) and I am excited. My main goal this semester is to rewrite my notes and lectures in preparation for writing textbooks for both classes. That's pretty ambitious and I would expect that nothing concrete will be evident for a couple of years. However, the Christian college textbook is pretty wide-open. Many if not most of us here at Maranatha use secular textbooks and supplement them with our own material to integrate them with Bible principles. That's not an ideal situation.

My Tests & Measurements book will be called something like "Measurement, Assessment, Testing, and Evaluation for Christian School Teachers." Its audience will be broader than just college students in teacher education programs--I hope it will also be appealing for Christian School teachers and Christian College faculty. There are many teaching in Christian schools who had the old style, statistics-heavy tests & measurements classes, but not much about constructing valid, reliable tests and product/performance assessments. There are also many teaching in Christian Colleges who have never had any formal teacher training, and who desperately need a primer on writing good tests (at least that's what my Tests & Measurements students tell me).

So this is going to be my ongoing project for the next couple of years.

Adult Bible Fellowship

I just started a new Bible Study in my Adult Bible Fellowship class at Fellowship Baptist Church in Watertown, WI. The topic of study is The Weaknesses of Men. Actually, it's more The Weaknesses of Humanity, but the first title has a better ring to it. The first lesson was an overview of the specific Bible references that explicity refer to something as being an example. For example, Jesus said he washed the disciples' feet as an example to them; Paul exhorted Timothy to be an example to the believers in his church; etc. Then we also looked over Bible references that explicitly indicate an example that should not be followed: Jude said that the punishment of the Hebrews and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were examples to us; Paul indicated something similar in I Corinthians 10.

We'll be studying various weaknesses of men mostly from the Old Testament. We'll be using a series of questions I developed. Here they are:

• What is the weakness being evidenced in this person’s character? (may require some sanctified speculation)
• What is the first evidence we see that the weakness is there?
• At what point do we see them taking a specific action that exposes their weakness? What action provides the most specific evidence of their weakness?
• To what sin or sins did giving in to their weakness lead?
• How did they (intentionally or unintentionally) draw others' into their sin?
• What were the immediate and long-term consequences of their sin?
• Do they give evidence of dealing with their weakness and with their sin? Do they show repentance? Do they show evidence of a change of behavior?
• How would you have advised this person to deal with their weakness before it turned into sin? Use a Bible verse to support your advice if appropriate. What first action might have headed off the entire situation?
• What situations in our own time can lead to exposure of this weakness and consequent falling into sin? What should be our first action to help avoid falling?

Those questions will guide our analysis.

The first one we looked at partially today was Adam and Eve. How would you answer those questions based on the passage: Genesis 2:15-3:7?

ihsts.com

Back a few years ago, I thought of registering a website called ihsts.com. The "ihsts" stands for "I have something to say." I thought of it as a place where people could post their thoughts on whatever topic they chose. And then along comes the whole concept of blogging. Cool! My thoughts, published to the world.

Of course, blogging can be akin to the old question, "If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?" It depends, of course, on how you define sound--the air waves are definitely vibrated, but is there a receptor to sense the vibration? We don't know.

The way blogs link into the web, to be indexed, cross-indexed, and "BlogThis'd," ensures that somebody somewhere sometime will listen. At present, my blogging doesn't allow comments, but maybe someday I will have enough confidence to do so.

Just checked, I see that "ihsts.com" is not a registered domain name. Well, if you're reading this, go for it! Maybe you can turn the idea into gold.

TTFN.

Welcome to my blog!

This is my first foray into the world of blogging, so be kind to me.

I'll try to post a weekly blog.