>Museums and Computers

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Steve Picray

>The last full week in March was spring break at my kids’ school. We weren’t planning on doing anything special, but my son had other plans. When we moved to Indianapolis in 2005, we were introduced to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. We went there in March of 2007 (during spring break) and bought a family Membership, which lasts for 12 months from the date of purchase. We decided that buying the family membership would be cost effective since we could go that year, and then go the next year right before the membership expired, basically getting two years for the price of one. So we went in 2007, and then again in 2008 before it expired (on spring break). The week before spring break our son asked us what day we were going to the museum. We hadn’t planned on it (actually, we forgot the original plan), but after researching, there were several exhibits that interested us, so we decided to go. We had a good time, and my oldest daughter didn’t throw up this time due to a vasovagal syncopal episode (that’s a story I’ll have to tell sometime, but not when she’s around).

We drove home after a good day at the museum. At some point that evening I turned on the computer, and it clicked at me. Not good. I restarted it, and it got to the “Windows XP” screen, and didn’t go any farther. Windows wasn’t loading. Then I started hearing the click of death. I restarted it about ten times, each time praying that it would work. I tried restoring the system. Didn’t work. Using my kids’ computer, I did some research and then tried another trick that a website suggested (download a copy of Puppy Linux, boot it from the CD, and then try to access the files on the hard drive). Didn’t work. I went to an electronics store and bought a USB hard drive docking station, hoping that maybe if I could access the drive when it wasn’t hot, that it would work long enough for me to get my files off the computer. Didn’t work. I declined to stick the drive in the freezer, since a few websites said that trick doesn’t work if the “click of death” is present.

So my hard drive, which was almost three years old, is now dead. I have an external hard drive that I bought for backup purposes in August of 2006. Some of my important files (music, money records, documents, etc) were backed up at the beginning of March. But the last time I backed up my photos was…..you guessed it, August of 2006. That is the bad news about this whole episode. We have lost almost every single picture that we took between September 2006 and August 2008 (our SD card in our camera is so big, we hadn’t deleted the photos since July 2008). Two years of photos are gone. At least we still have the memories. I do have the option of sending the hard drive to a recovery service, paying them anywhere from $500 to $2000 with no guarantee of recovering anything. No thanks.

I got a new hard drive, and used the recovery disks to reload everything. After a few days of deleting useless stuff and re-installing my programs, I basically have a new computer. And I am using my backup hard drive regularly. Lesson learned.

Posted in computer, museum | 2 Comments

>God’s Financial Plan for Me

Posted on March 25, 2009 by Steve Picray

>Malachi 3:8-10 “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you! Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.”

Looking back at my last pay period, our bills were such that we were not able to pay everything AND tithe. I did the stupid thing, figured that God would understand, and paid my bills. I sent God’s tithe to some bank. We ended up having too much month at the end of the money.

My next paycheck came, and I thought about postponing the tithe, since again we might not have enough money, and we were running short of groceries. I decided that obeying God was more important than eating Oreos (i.e. we could pay our bills and not splurge at the grocery store). This time I paid my tithe to God, including my monthly payment to our church’s building program that I had promised before we started building. I didn’t know if we would have enough money, and, sure enough, last Friday (the non-payday Friday), it looked like we had $10 left for gas, groceries, etc. We got by, I rode my motorcycle a few times (since it only costs $6 to fill it up). I bought milk and eggs at the store, and we have been getting by on whatever we still had in our pantry.

I have been looking at our bank balance online, and it kept saying that we had $135. I was waiting for whatever hasn’t cleared to come in, since my records showed that we should have only $10. Finally I decided yesterday that I would balance the checkbook. I only do this every few months, since we usually keep close tabs of our account transactions through the bank’s website. When I got done, I found that there was only one item outstanding: a check for $7. I also discovered two errors I made: in February I entered a debit for groceries for $70 two times, and just a few weeks ago we returned a few things to Meijer (a local discount store) for $33, and I entered the transaction as a debit, not a deposit. So now we have $130 where we thought we only had $10.

Last pay period I didn’t pay God what He was due. We ran out of money.
This pay period I paid God what He was due. We found extra money.

Coincidence? I think not.

Posted in Bible, church, God, tithe | 2 Comments

>Boycott Pepsi

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Steve Picray

>I am boycotting Pepsi and all products made by them. Details can be found here. Pepsi has chosen a side in the culture war, and there is no reason for them to do so. They are a company that makes pop. Just pipe down and sell your pop. Homosexual rights has nothing to do with pop! I guess the upside is that now I’m not drinking Diet Mountain Dew like it’s going out of style.

Here is the text of a letter that I am mailing today to my local Pepsi bottler:

March 18, 2009

Pepsi Hoosier Refreshement
PO Box 449
Logansport, IN 46947
Terry Kubsch, President

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing this letter to inform you that as of January 28th 2009 I have purchased neither Pepsi products nor any affiliated products (Frito-Lay chips, Quaker Oats, Gatorade, and Tropicana juices). I have joined this boycott because of your company’s overt support for the homosexual agenda. You donated a million dollars to GLBT causes, and are making commercials that make homosexuality seem like an acceptable option to kids.

I am not disputing the fact that some people feel homosexuality is acceptable. I am not disputing the fact that homosexuals deserve to live in freedom in our society without threat of physical harm. I DO however dispute the goal of Pepsico to shove the “acceptability” of homosexuality down our collective throats. I resent your support for organizations that openly promote a lifestyle that I believe to be violent and morally wrong.

Please let me clue you in on something: your company makes soft drinks (among other things). Soft drinks have nothing to do with sex or “sexual orientation.” There are hundreds of charities that have no moral downside (such as Habitat for Humanity, The American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, MDA, the Red Cross, etc) that you could have donated your million dollars to, without threat of boycott. I don’t understand why you seem to think that a company that makes soft drinks should be on the “cutting edge” of societal change. I don’t know why you have decided corporately to promote the homosexual agenda, but as a lifelong Mountain Dew (and Diet Dew) drinker, I can tell you that I haven’t had any kind of Dew since January. I refuse to support your company so long as you donate money to homosexual organizations and create advertisements that promote this lifestyle.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

(signed by me)

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

>Taxes

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Steve Picray

>I thought of something this week that really irked me. Every year I do my taxes, and every year I get irked by this one fact: we are taxed on the same money over and over again. Let me illustrate using percentages from my most recent paycheck:

I go to work. I make $1. The government withholds the following:
6.3 cents for income tax
2 cents for Medicare
6.1 cents for Social Security
3 cents for State income tax
1 cent for county tax.

I enjoy health insurance, so I elect to have my employer take out 5.5 cents on every dollar to cover my premium so my family is insured.

What does this mean? For every dollar that I make at work, 18.4 cents goes to the government and 5.5 cents goes to insurance. I get to take home 76 cents for every dollar I earn. Out of that 76 cents, I tithe 7.6 cents to God, and I am left with roughly 68 cents to spend on things like food, mortgage, car, education, etc.

But wait, there’s more! Anything I spend that money on, from cars to clothing, or whatever, is hit with a SALES TAX of 7%! So five cents out of the remaining 68 cents goes to sales tax. I only get 63 cents of every dollar to spend on stuff I want to buy.

This is all bad enough. But then, when I do my taxes, I am reminded that I have to pay taxes on my money that I get back from the government. Let me reiterate: I make money. The government withholds some in taxes. If they withhold too much, then I get it back as a refund. Here’s the kicker: this money that I get back as a refund (remember, this is MY money that the government withheld too much of)….I have to pay taxes again on the refund as if it were income! This really irritates me. It’s like the government is borrowing my money, and not only do they not pay me interest, I pay them a penalty for them borrowing my money.

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