Things to be Thankful For

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My Second Job

I have not written much here lately, because life has been very busy.

With a daughter starting college in the fall (at Grove City, yay!), and the economy being in the shape it’s in, I thought it would be good to “diversify my income sources.”  I pondered a few ways to do that, but quickly settled on teaching basic electronics at nights.  There is a local technical school that I have worked with at my day job for years, and they were looking for a part-time electronics instructor, so they were happy to have me work for them. 

My students are mostly adults returning to school, and most are taking a course to become Biomedical Technicians.  They will be calibrating, maintaining, and repairing medical equipment.  [You had better hope that I teach them well; badly calibrated medical equipment can cause a lot of worries.]   The others in the group are taking a more general Electronic Technician program.  

My biggest difficulty in teaching these classes is that I have worked in the electronics industry for so long that I assume that there are some things that “everyone knows,” when actually these things need to be taught.  For example, I have used scientific notation since tenth grade, and I initially thought that everyone would remember how to work with scientific notation.  Of course, most people don’t need to use it, so they forgot after a few years.  Using laboratory equipment is also something most people stopped doing in 10th grade, or possibly in their first year of college, so I have to teach it as a new thing.

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This Little Light of Mine: An Earth Hour Post

The nut jobs who came up with “Earth Hour” got their symbolism perfect.  For Earth Hour, we are all supposed to turn our lights off and stop using electricity for one hour, starting at 8:30 p.m. tonight.  The UN is even turning its lights off, and they are expecting to save a whopping $102 in electricity costs.

Of course many people will switch to candles, which cause 10X to 100X the CO2 emissions that are caused by a similar amount of electric light.  (They are also romantic, and may contribute to “overpopulation,” but that is another story.)  So they won’t be in the dark at all, but they will feel good about themselves while they increase the air pollution in their homes.

But the symbolism is perfect.  The inventors of Earth Hour do not understand what humans are, and so their only solution to problems facing humanity is to plunge people into darkness.  Their only solutions to the world’s problems involve reducing what people consume, or even trying to reduce the number of people on the planet to consume resources.

What they don’t understand is that people, unlike animals, produce as well as consume.  So, I can use less than $1.00 of electricity to power my computer, and create something valuable, or analyze data to reduce thousands of dollars worth of waste in a manufacturing facility.

Or a person can use less than $1.00 of electricty to power woodworking tools that will turn a pile of wood into a dining room table. 

Electricity and other forms of energy are relatively cheap, and very useful, and people who choose to stay in the dark probably don’t understand how cheap and useful it is.

So, for earth hour and every hour, you should thank God that energy is so easy to get these days (for example, you don’t have to burn cow dung for fuel, or chop down a tree and wait months for the wood to dry), and use it freely for useful things.  Instead of living in the dark, like a mushroom, let these African children set you straight:

AFRICAN CHILDREN’S CHOIR – THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

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District 10 Cross Country Race at Sharon

Last Saturday, Anna ran for Strong Vincent in the District 10 Cross Country Championship at Buhl Park in Sharon, PA.  Grove City and Corry were added to the AAA division this year, so the AAA race was more competitive than last year.  Before we begin our biased commentary on the race, I’ll start by posting a goofy team photo.

When we drove down, we went through heavy rain, so we expected very bad conditions.  But by the time we got there, the rain had ended, and there was apparently much less rain at Sharon than we had seen on the way down.  The park was wet, but not terribly squishy.

Last year, Katie Spade was the dominant runner, but the field was tighter this year.   Here is a picture from very early in the race, before the leaders emerged from the pack.  Katie is at the top right and Elesia (in red) in the middle.  Rachel Munsie from Corry is in orange.

Katie Spade and Elesia Wilson got out to an early lead.  By the end of the first mile, they were clearly in front, and Anna was in the second group of 6 or 7 other runners who were bunched tightly together.

This group spread out a bit, with McDowell’s Katie Sabolcik in third place, and Anna dropping back as far as 8th.  Katie Spade had pulled into clear first, and Elesia Wilson was in second place, keeping Katie in her sights even though she had lost one of her shoes.  Here is a picture of Anna in red, with one runner ahead and another close behind.

During the third mile, Anna, who does well in cold and mud, moved up to 6th place.  Meanwhile, in the front, Elesia Wilson, with one shoe on and one shoe off, caught up to Katie Spade and passed her.

In the final sprint, Anna was chasing Rachel Munsee from Corry to try to finish in the top 5, but she came up just a few feet short.  Nevertheless, 6th place is good enough for a trip to Hershey, PA, to run in the Cross Country State Championships this Saturday. Here is a picture near the end of the race, and here are the complete results.

The talent was spread much more evenly this year.  The top 6 runners were each from a different school.

Josh ran also, in the boys AAA race.  He was hurting for much of the race, so he didn’t place well.  Here is a picture form near the end of the race.

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When Kids Go Bad :-)

Who says parenting is easy? 

Sometimes, you do your best to raise your kid according to “traditional family values.”  You send him to the best schools, you raise him according to your religious beliefs, get him a job in the organization that you are a leader in, and you try to keep him away from the corruption of the world.

And then something like this happens.  What is a poor parent to do?

Top Hamas Leader’s Son Converts to Christianity

The son of a top Hamas leader has converted to Christianity and prays someday his family will also accept Jesus Christ as their savior, an Israeli newspaper reported.

Masab Yousef, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, revealed for the first time in an exclusive interview with Haaretz newspaper that he has left Islam and is now a Christian. Prior to the interview’s publication last Thursday, Yousef’s family did not know of his faith conversion even though he is in regular contact with them.

“[T]his interview will open many people’s eyes, it will shake Islam from the roots, and I’m not exaggerating,” Yousef, who now resides in the United States, said. “What other case do you know where a son of a Hamas leader, who was raised on the tenets of extremist Islam, comes out against it?”

Read the rest of the article here.

This is not quite Saul on the Damascus road, but it is significant that there are a few cracks appearing in the wall of Islam.

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The End of a Computer-Free Week

I just got back from vacation near Washington, D.C., which is why I haven’t written anything for a while.  I hope to blog about my vacation when I get around to uploading the pictures.

One nice thing about my vacation is that I managed to spend the entire week without turning a computer on.  I don’t think I have done this since my honeymoon, more than 20 years ago.  I can’t even remember the last time I took a whole week off from work.

Of course, when I got back to work, there were 210 e-mails, all demanding my immediate attention.

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Recovering From Disaster

Here is an update on the washer and dryer situation:

We are no longer spending quarters as fast a a gambler at Presque Isle Downs and Casino.

I was able to fix the dryer using the SECOND part I had to buy.  I should have trusted my electronics training rather than a repair guy who was in a hurry, but I probably saved a little bit of money compared to having the repair guy make another trip.  The moral of the story is, learn a bit about electronics if you can.

The washer is dead and gone (it would have been $700.00 to fix), and replaced with a GE floor model that had a few scratches, but came with a 5 year complete warrantee and free shipping, and was $150.00 cheaper than a similar brand new model.  It looks like we got to the store at just the right time.  Front loaders seem to have gotten more reasonable over the last 5 years.

I have to say that we are disappointed with the short life of the Kenmore, but it may be that when we moved 1 1/2 years ago, we damaged it slightly and it started to wear badly.  Otherwise, we just got a lemon.

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A Small World

When I was 9, we moved from the Pittsburgh area down to Severna Park, Maryland.  (Wow, I had no idea that it would have a Wikipedia article about it, or that Pat Sajak has a home there.) Though I was a shy kid, I pretty quickly got to know a few of the neighborhood boys.  We did typical boy things, like playing 2 on 2 football, Smear the Queer (a reverse tag variation involving a football and a whole lot of bruises; there are several more politically correct names for it), and fishing in the Severn River.

One of the boys in this group was Garrett Craw.  Like many kids in the area, he was from a military family, and moved frequently.  After 4th grade was over, he moved on to Germany.  I grew up and probably went a decade without even thinking about him.

One day I was looking at a blog and saw a link to another blog called “The Craw.”  So I clicked on it, and found out that it was operated by a Garrett Craw.  There are undoubtedly several people with that name in the world, but only one of them would be my age, from a military family who moved around a lot, and who looked like a grown up version of the kid I knew.

Just last week, I posted on his blog, and he recognized me.  Our paths have taken a few common turns.  We both became Christians in college, and we both have served as elders in the same denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America.  (He has gone on to pastor a church in a different denomination.)

The world can be a very small place.

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Attacks of Laziness Barely Repulsed

The lazy man buries his hand in the bowl; It wearies him to bring it back to his mouth.  Proverbs 26:15

The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, But diligence is man’s precious possession.  Proverbs 12:25

The sluggard in Proverbs is a comical figure.  You can learn more about him if you go to www.biblegateway.com and search on the King James version, using words like “sluggard”, “slothful”, and “lazy.” BTW, aren’t “sluggard” and “slothful” wonderfully descriptive words?  You immediately think of some of the less desireable members of the animal kingdom.

We look at him, and think, “I would never be like that.”  In the one proverb above, the lazy man won’t even do that which is easy and gives immediate reward.  In the other proverb, the lazy man does nearly all the work, but doesn’t finish the job, and his efforts come to nothing.

So what have I done this week? 

1)  I bought two shirts, and was almost too lazy to unpin them and get them into the laundry.

2)  I wrote something, and almost forgot to e-mail it in time for it to be useful.

3)  I almost didn’t get my lawn mowed this week because I was almost too lazy to pull the cord on the lawn mower to get it started.  (Once the mower is started, my son can mow the lawn.)

Each time I noticed that I needed 30 more seconds of work to get the job done, I laughed to myself and remembered these proverbs.

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Crime in the Neighborhood

Last night at about 3 a.m. I heard kids hanging out in my driveway.  Once in awhile, they would run across my yard, and they were smoking and talking.  Other than the f-word, my daughter heard one of them say “when I was arrested…”  I didn’t feel like I was in any danger, but I figured they were up to no good, so I called the police.  The dispatcher said it was a good thing I called:  Five of their friends had already been picked up.

 The Erie police did good work:  within 2 minutes a police car was on our street, and they must have caught the three kids.  This article appeared on the GoErie.com website today:

Erie police arrest 8 juveniles for overnight thefts from cars
Police said group was working together in upper east side thefts
Published: September 19. 2007 6:00AM

Erie police arrested eight juveniles overnight for stealing from cars parked on several blocks of the city’s upper east side.Police said that the group — six males and two females ranging in age from 14-18 years old — were working together to steal from cars parked between 33rd and 36th Streets around Zimmerman Road on the 1600, 1700 and 1800 blocks. The group was arrested at about 2:55 a.m.Some of the juveniles lived in Erie and others were from outside the city, coming from Fairview, Lawrence Park and Greene Township, police said.

Police said they did not yet know how many cars were broken in to or how much was stolen.

— Cody Switzer

We checked the cars today and thankfully, nothing appears to be missing.