Words of Truth

Ok, so here’s what I think…

Israel has been attacked by terrorists. Israel is now striking out at the terrorists, as well as the country that is harboring them. This is no different than what happened here five years ago. We were attacked by terrorists, and we took the fight to their front yard, displacing the government that refused to get rid of them.

We should support Israel in any way we can. Unfortunately, I could see how this thing could escalate to World War III. Israel is attacking Lebanon…Syria and Iran jump in to defend Lebanon, we jump in to defend Israel. Then other, larger nations jump in to defend the Arab league (like maybe…France?).

Just saw a report this AM that some Israeli Army units went over the border into Lebanon. Troops on the ground. Traditionally that is what shows who is winning. It’s like the old NATO joke about World War III between USSR and USA: Two Soviet tank drivers met in Paris and one said, “So who won the air war?”

Evidently it was just a commando mission. Now they are saying that they went over the border, did what they went to do, and are now back in Israel. Our prayers go out to all those involved, that wisdom will prevail, the terrorists will be destroyed, and the loss of innocent life will be minimized. Shalom.

Here’s an update on my PDA. I got sick of the HP iPAQ and it’s propensity to not work properly, so I returned it. Here’s what would happen: After being idle for a minute, the PDA would go on “standby” or “off” mode. This is fine. My Palm Zire does the same thing. But when I want to use my Zire again, all I have to do is turn it back on. With the HP, I actually had to do a soft reset every time, to get it back on. Grrr. So I took it back. I looked online the other day and saw a Dell that is supposed to be better than the iPAQ was.

Also, I have bad news for those of you Microsoft detractors out there…

I loaded up my Microsoft Office on my new computer last week, and was having a problem with Outlook (it wouldn’t recognize the right folder or something). I called HP (The manufacturer of the computer system) and the wonderful Indian lady there told me that something is corrupted, and that I would need to wipe the hard drive and do a “system recovery” to restore the computer to it’s original state . I said, “That’s ridiculous. You are taking the easy way out. I paid extra for the guys at the store to take off a lot of the advertising crap that you guys put on the computer, so I’m not going to recover it all if I can help it. Nevermind, I’ll call Microsoft.”

So I went to the Microsoft website to try and figure out if I could fix it myself (by searching for my problem in their database). No joy. I decided to pony up the $35 for live tech support. I called, gave my credit card number, and then got to speak with an Indian gentleman named (no joke) “Iru.” I had him spell it. He took about 30 seconds to listen to my problem, diagnose it, and then an additional 60 seconds to tell me how to fix it. He hung around on the phone to make sure I got it fixed (I sent myself a test e-mail from my hotmail account). Then he said if the problem isn’t fixed, feel free to call back with the same case number and they would help me. I asked, “for free? Or would I have to pay again?” He said, “You paid for this? It was only a few minutes. I am going to refund your fee.” So I got Microsoft to do something for me for free! I am pretty happy with them right now. Some would point out that if their program hadn’t broken to begin with, I never would have needed to call, but I say, pshaw!

So I am currently waiting for my new PDA, which is supposed to arrive today via Fedex. We’ll see.

Hey there! Got a new computer! It’s an HP multimedia type computer, lightning fast, has a DVD burner, etc. I also got a new printer. All my previous equipment was 4yrs old. Oh, and it came with a new 19inch flat panel monitor. Wowza! This thing is as big as my first television (the one Kim and I used from our first year of marriage until 2004).

So I spent the past several hours figuring out how to use Nero Ultra 7. I have taken the first of 16 VHS-C camcorder cassettes and have converted it to DVD format. I plan on doing so with all of our camcorder footage from the past 9 years. Then I took one of our favorite cassette tapes and converted it to CD format and burned it. Wow, that took a lot! I had to record the entire tape on computer as a .wav file, then edit it into tracks, remove the static and noise (popping and crackling), then convert the files to some other type of format, then burn them onto a CD (the whole 30min CD was 367MB at this point). Then I ripped the CD files into Windows Media Player format, which made the whole CD of music 39MB. But I did it, which means that all the cassette tapes that we have, that are not available in CD format, are now safe from destruction. We have a few tapes made by the college groups from our Bible college, and they aren’t on CD. Now they will be ;-). If I could figure out who all the people were that were on the tapes, I might make copies of this CD and send it to them. Hmmm. copyright infringement? Who knows.

Anyway. I like the new computer, and the kids like my old one. Since they got my old 17″ flat screen monitor, we could get rid of their old monitor. This was the first computer monitor I ever owned. It was the original monitor that we bought with our first computer in 1996. The tube was going bad, and it was hard to see things (was getting dark).

One other thing that I did today….I got tired of my WLAN setup, so I changed it. Let me explain. My house has a “great room” (with a cathedral ceiling) on the first floor, a staircase leading up to the 2nd floor, and a loft that overlooks the great room (with a ledge). When the cable guy came to set up my cable TV and internet, he used the cable outlet in the “great room” for the cable box, and the cable outlet in the loft for the cable modem, telling me to just hook up my wireless router to my cable modem, and then use the wireless receiver on my computer to receive my wireless internet signal.

This arrangement worked. Poorly. For one thing, my computer sits in a solid oak desk, which makes for cruddy wireless reception. As I set up my new computer today, I thought to myself…why is it that my computer, which I use for the internet every day, doesn’t have a dedicated internet connection? Why does my children’s computer have one, when they don’t need one? So I called El Cable Compagne! I asked the lady, “Oh LADY!!” (think Jerry Lewis). “How much would you guys charge to come out here and put in another cable outlet?” “$25” sez she. But then, after I explained why I needed one, she said, “Why don’t you just get a cable splitter and use the outlet by your television?”

Silence from my end. Then, “Will that affect the bandwidth of my tv OR internet signal?” She: “Not as long as you get one that handles over 1000mb” So I run off to Best Buy and purchase a splitter. There was one that handled up to 1500mb for $5 and one that handled up to 2gb for $7. I thought, What the hey, and bought the better one (gold plated, even!). I also had to buy a 25′ coax cable to stretch to my desk. Probably could have gotten by with 12′, but as someone once told me, “Better to have and not want, than to want and not have.”

Now my computer is hooked up but good as is my kids computer (my old one…only four years old as compared to their old computer which was six years old). Now they won’t ask me, “Dad, can we install this program on your computer (one they checked out from the public library)? It won’t work on ours.” Hee hee.

Now it’s off to bed.

So I bought a new PDA. I made the decision to switch to Pocket PC, and I trust HP, so I bought an HP iPAQ 2495. Any thoughts? If there’s one better out there for the same price, I might return this one. The battery doesn’t last long, and to charge it, you have to put it in it’s cradle, which hooks up to the computer. Inconvenient.