Pastor Andy's Ponderings

Keith Olbermann's comment on Prop 8 - What's it to you?

2008-11-12T00:13:00.001-07:00

Given the state of heterosexual marriage, how can anyone want to work against those who want to love? Keith, without yelling or spinning as much as Ben Affleck, makes that point well. Full text available here.

Worried about the DTV Transition?

2008-10-20T11:47:00.000-06:00

The Name Game: Who is the real Barack Obama?

2008-10-14T14:47:00.000-06:00

Jon Stewart compares John McCain to Gollum

2008-10-09T11:16:00.002-06:00

I know, I haven't been posting anything here. I've been adding to the Tech Geek blog over at the ELCA Youth Ministry Network site. And I've been spending way to much time watching political TV in anticipation of the upcoming elections.

125 Years of Pittsburgh Sports

2008-08-23T11:26:00.001-06:00

TGIF - June 16, 2008 - Facebook

2008-06-17T10:00:00.001-06:00

I received numerous invitations to join, but still I stayed away. Finally, I received yet another invitation and it was from a friend my own age, so I got on the bandwagon. A few days later, she chided me because I had over 50 friends and now the number has kept increasing. I'm talking about Facebook, the social networking site that connects over eighty-million users to one another. Are you one of them?

As soon as I joined Facebook, I was friended by lots of people that I knew in the real world. As my network grew, I saw more and more people that I knew and we 'friended' each other. I have been able to re-establish contact with some friends that I'd lost touch with and share mundane parts of my daily life with plenty of people who don't care!

I've also discovered it is one of the tools that can be useful in ministry. I see status updates from the youth in my group and know when they are having a rough day. I have some who tell me that they don't use old fashioned e-mail, just send them a message on Facebook. I have joined groups for members of the ELCA Youth Ministry Network and am creating a group to help those of us in the Montana Synod stay connected to one another.

Facebook allows you to create groups, so I have created a group for our high school youth group. This gives me yet another place to publicize events and send messages from. I can also share pictures within facebook and the youth in my group will tag them with names of other facebook users. I think that every photo I had uploaded was tagged within 2 hours of my having uploading them!

There are countless applications that are a part of facebook, some of which are useful, some of which are silly, and some of which will cause you to waste much of your precious time. I'm not going to recommend any particular applications, but I do recommend that you check out what you are giving away when you install one of them. There have been some privacy concerns associated with specific Facebook applications and also with Facebook in general after they tied purchasing information to specific accounts and displayed that in the feed.

I do use the Facebook Toolbar for Firefox, which pops up status change updates whenever I'm online and one of my friends changes their status. It can be a little distracting when I'm working on a sermon, but it's nice to know what's going on in the lives of my friends.

If you're already on Facebook, keep figuring out new ways to use it. If you're not, think about it the next time you get one of those e-mails inviting you to join. Chances are, you'll be surprised by how many people who know who are already using it.

God's blessings on your daily life and ministry,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network Tech Geek

Here are two other articles I stumbled upon which connect Facebook to youth ministry:

2008-06-09T14:13:00.000-06:00

June 9, 2008 - TGIF - KeePass

How many passwords do you have to remember? For many of us, the answer should be a large number, but in reality it is only one or two, because we use the same password over and over again. Of course, this means that if someone figures out one password that we use, they could get into everything. But who can you remember a computer password, server password, e-mail password, banking password, cable company password, ELCA Youth Ministry Network Website password, etc.? I have over 90 different passwords to keep track of!

I do it using an open-source program called KeePass Password Safe, available at http://keepass.info/. This free program allows me to store all my passwords in a single encrypted database. One password to remember instead of a hundred. Since it's stored in the computer (and backed up to a Universal Flash Drive), it's more secure than sticky notes or hidden entries in the address book.

The passwords are also more secure because instead of using easy to remember words, I'm using cryptic strings of characters, including letters, numbers, and symbols. KeePass includes a password generator that creates passwords of a given length and allows for you to use mouse or keyboard input to generate additional entropy.

When it's time to use one of these passwords, I navigate to the website in my browser or click on it from with KeePass to have it open in my default browser. I put the cursor into the user name field and then highlight the site I'm on in KeePass and press CTRL-V, which switches back to the browser and inputs the user name and password. If that doesn't work, I can use CTRL-C to copy the password and then paste it in the browser. It's not as easy as using the same password for everything, but it is easier than having my bank account compromised!

KeePass will run from a Universal Flash Drive, so you could carry your passwords with you. It is available from PortableApps.com at http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/keepass_portable .

I also wanted to note that a program I recommended awhile ago has been updated from version 5.0 to version 6.0. doPDF, at http://www.dopdf.com/, is a program that's great for creating PDF files from any Windows application.

God's blessings on your daily life and ministry,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network Tech Geek

P.S. - For those of you who are interested in seeing the photos I talked about last week, you can view them on at: seniorleague.blogspot.com as a picasaweb slide show. I was also able to upload them straight from Picasa into Facebook, where a couple of my youth tagged them all in about an hour. I'm really glad Gmail stacks messages, or I would have had well over a hundred messages stating that someone had tagged someone else in one of my photos!

2008-06-01T13:02:00.000-06:00

TGIF - June 2, 2008 - Picasa

I just got back from a trip to Holden Village for a May Holden Youth Weekend, coordinated by some of the students at Trinity Lutheran College. It was a great event and we had a great time, both on the trip over (all 400+ miles of it) and our time at Holden Village. We worshiped, played, sang (with my friend Rachel Kurtz ) and thoroughly enjoyed our time together. The trip back ran more than halfway through the night and was an unfortunate requirement of the experience! Of course, since we were having such a great time, and wanted to remember our experiences, we took a lot of pictures on the church's camera. Additionally, the participants took pictures of their own and will be e-mailing them to me. Now what!?!

There are quite a number of tools designed to edit and sort photos. The one I settled on using many moons ago was Picasa, which was once an independent program, and has now been purchased and updated to version 2 by Google. It's not available for the Mac (you have iPhoto), but is available for Windows and Linux machines. It does most of what most of us need to do to digital photos easily. It is not as good as Photoshop or The Gimp at editing photos, but it is easy to use and works well for simple photo editing like crops, color fixes, and red-eye reduction. It also allows you to tag (and even geo-tag) your photos, sort them into albums, and upload them to Picasaweb albums so you can share them.

Once you download and install the program getting photos in is remarkably simple. I just take the card from my camera and slide it into my computer. The image acquisition box pops up and I put the photos into Picasa. Then I go through each of the pictures, deleting the ones that didn't turn out well, fixing the ones that need some help, adding captions, tags, and geo-tags. Once I've designed my album, I can upload it to Picasaweb with a few clicks. I can also send it to a variety of online photo printers like Wal-Mart digital photo center, PhotoWorks, Walgreens, Ritz Camera or Wolf Camera, Shutterfly, Zazzle, Lifepics Network (local camera, photo, drug and grocery stores including Ritz, Wolf, Safeway, Albertsons, H-E-B, Hy-Vee, Wegmans, MotoPhoto, Woodmans, & many others), PhotoCentral, Snapfish, CVS Pharmacy, PhotoStamps, winkflash, or Kodak EasyShare. Many of these services allow me to pick up photos locally in about an hour.

I can also click a button and post pictures to my blog or create a link from the web album to my blog which will display a slide show there. One of the things I really like about Picasaweb slide shows is that they look like you're playing them off the machine hard drive. They scale up to full screen and look great. I can even set the pictures of my and my friends albums to be my screen saver using Google Photos Screensaver.

There are ways to post photos directly to Flickr and Facebook using extensions to Picasa. This keeps you from having to create the same album multiple times on different services. I haven't made it through all my pictures yet, but sooner or later they'll be available in a variety of online locations. (I didn't get back until 3:30 a.m. from Holden, then I had a sermon to write, and I'm refereeing soccer this weekend at our area's major tournament, Three Blind Refs!) I'll update this when they are available.

God's blessings on your daily life and ministry,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network Tech Geek
techgeek@elcaymnet.org

2008-05-26T10:00:00.000-06:00

TGIF - May 26, 2008 - Online Scheduling

I'm sure that all of us spend quite a lot of time scheduling meetings, classes, events, and (when we're good) time off. Some of these we can just put on our calendar, PDA, or sticky note and know that the time will work. Others take a bit more planning because we're trying to coordinate with other people. A local pastor was asking me if I knew of any tools to help people set up board meetings and I had happened to have stumbled on something that I thought might help him and you.

I found a few free sites that aim to help a group of people negotiate a time to get together without just doing a lot of back-and-forth e-mailing, text messaging, and calling. If any of you have experience with any of these sites, drop me a line.

These are the sites that I discovered:

When 2 meet - a simple site where you click dates on a calendar along with a generic starting and ending time.
When Is Good - a more complex site that lets you pick specific times on each date that you are available. An e-mail gets sent to the folks that you're coordinating with. Each person then fills in the grid and you're left with the times that work for all participants. I like the fact that no sign-up is needed, it just uses e-mail addresses. It also will adjust for time zone differences for conference calls. As someone who used to live 4 hours behind the East Coast and hated 6 a.m. conference calls, this appeals to me.
Doodle - allows you to create polls to ask any question, or to allow folks to choose from specific times for an event. Supports Yes, No, If Needed logic for those things that aren't ideal, but you'll make it work if it works for everyone else. Also converts for time zones. Supports a free account for management, but you can both create and respond to polls without an account. I really like the fact that you send the e-mail link directly, so you don't have to enter e-mail addresses into their system.
Google Calendar - allows you to create an event and then send invitations to participants who can respond if they are going to come or not. If you use Gmail, you probably don't have to retype all the e-mail addresses.
Pingg - snazzy site that allows you to design an invitation and send it via e-mail. It doesn't allow flexibility nor does it integrate with existing calendars. It does allow you to send invitations via Web, e-mail, text message, printed message, or social networking site. This might be a good way to promote a big event, but it doesn't strike me as a good way to schedule a youth board meeting!
Timebridge - integrates with your Google Calendar or your Outlook calendar and lets others see when you are potentially free. But it requires a Timebridge account and that the others use one of the supported calendar tools. Might be good for executives, but probably not so much for what we're doing. [Laura commented that I was mistaken on this point. She says, "Great post! One clarification--TimeBridge does not require attendees to have a TimeBridge account, nor do your attendees need to use one of the supported calendar tools. Give it a shot!"]
Presdo - designed to help people make time to do a certain thing. This is a similar site to Doodle in that it lets people respond to and make suggestions for times for an event. This site has a review of Presdo. I like the fact that you can respond to a meeting without having to create an account. Like Doodle, it supports accounts for those who want them so you can manage your events. It also supports exporting events to electronic calendars (Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, and Yahoo Calendar). Unlike Doodle, you have to enter in the names and e-mail addresses of the participants to invite them. It does support multiple time zones.

I haven't tried most of these sites other than to look at them. I did try to use Presdo to schedule a teleconference and a meeting with my Sunday School Superintendents. It was down when one of them tried to respond and the other didn't have e-mail for the week, so it didn't work for her at that time. For the conference call, it was somewhat helpful, but people do have to read and respond to their e-mails for it to work! I like the interface of Presdo the best and the way it interprets statements (go here and click on What types of phrases can I type into Presdo?) is ingenious.

Eric Ly, the founder of Presdo, helped me understand how Presdo presents options to guests by explaining it this way.

Presdo allows you to enter in a choice of times that your guests can pick from. If you want to do this, just type, for example, "tue, thu or fri at 2:30". (Dates can be given in place of the days of the week.) This gives guests a choice of three times to choose from. Let's say your best time from this proposal is Tuesday at 2:30. If your best time doesn't work for them, they will get to pick from the other two choices, i.e. Thursday at 2:30 or Friday at 2:30. Because of the way the guest UI works, you can actually suggest up to four different choices for guests. Presdo then "rolls up" all the choices from the guests and shows you the best times from your guests, just like Doodle does.

If you enter into Presdo "lunch in the next couple weeks", this results in 10 possible choices, but Presdo picks three choices in this "time range" for your guests.

I'm going to keep experimenting with Presdo and Doodle and then, depending on how the features grow, I'll end up using one of them most of the time. For things that I just schedule and share, I'll continue to use Google Calendar, as that's where I keep the church calendar anyways.

God's blessings on your daily life and ministry,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network Tech Geek
techgeek@elcaymnet.org

2008-05-21T16:15:00.000-06:00

Seventh graders playing Chaos

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The winning 30-Second Ad for Barack Obama from MoveOn.org

2008-05-12T19:04:00.000-06:00

Pictures and a Video of our New House

2008-05-08T20:51:00.001-06:00

We've lived here since mid-February, but there haven't been that many nice days conducive to taking pictures. But finally I've put together some pictures and a short video showing off our new place. We're happy to be here and looking forward to hosting some visitors!

Our New Home

TGIF - March 3, 2008 - PDF Creation

2008-03-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Fliers, brochures, registration forms, health info forms, covenants, postcards, newsletters, etc. We all create all sorts of information that we distribute on paper for people to see and maybe return. Sometimes they e-mail us and want us to e-mail them something back so they don't have to wait for the snail-mail. It sure would be nice to send it as a PDF (Portable Document Format), but who wants to spend hundreds of dollars on Adobe Acrobat in order to create those? I know I don't!

If you created your document in Open Office or in Microsoft Office 2007, you can use the Save to PDF feature of either of those programs. You may also use another program, such as Print Master, that has a Save to PDF option. That works great. But what if the program you're using doesn't have that option? You could set up a geeky program called Ghostscript and convert from Postscript to PDF, but that requires a geek and, while very powerful, is a bit inconvenient to use.

The simplest option that I've found is called doPDF, available at www.dopdf.com. It's a free, although not open source, program which allows you to create PDF files on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. It installs as a printer on your system and then you select the doPDF printer from any application that you're using and it creates a PDF file for you. I have only started using it recently, but it seems to work quite well and has received good reviews from other people on the net. It doesn't put any watermarks on your output and seems to generate relatively small files that are easy to e-mail.

Before I upgraded to a machine with Windows Vista, I used PDF Creator, an open source program that works similarly on earlier versions of Windows. They are offering $150 to anyone who can figure out how to make it work on Vista! I like the fact it's open source, but was disappointed when it didn't work on my new system.

For those of you that have a bit more geek in you, Ghostscript, in combination with GSview, can be used to not only create PDF files, but also to convert them to a wide variety of other image formats. This can be quite useful for posting a picture on your website of a fancy poster you created in some program that can't export to JPG. If you are interested in learning more about how to use this program, e-mail me and I'll devote a future space to it.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

P.S. Don't forget that I love to receive questions so that I'm talking about things you're interested in hearing about!

TGIF - February 25, 2008 - Woot!

2008-02-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

w00t is one of those unique internet created words that many of us know and even occasionally use. According to Wiktionary, it's used to "express joy, particularly that felt during success or victory." It's also a place that I'm now able to use to find some great deals. I never paid much attention to it when I lived in Alaska, since the shipping terms to Alaska weren't favorable. Actually, they just weren't. No shipping to places outside the Lesser, err, Lower 48 (that's contiguous, not continental, by the way) States.

But now that I'm a resident of one of those states that has borders with some other states, I have started to pay attention to a woot of a different nature. Woot is an online retailer that sells one item per day. There motto is "One Day, One Deal." They do derivate from that somewhat these days, but still stay largely true to that form. They have also broadened their offerings to include shirts at shirt.woot.com and wine at, you guessed it, wine.woot.com. The main site starts a new item each day, seven days a week, at midnight Central Time. They run until midnight the next day or until the item sells out, which is often far earlier. Items are reasonably priced and cost $5 to ship, anywhere in those connected states.

The shirt site runs one shirt each day for $10 with free shipping, unless you're in hurry. They also let you buy a shirt you missed, but charge an extra $5 for it.

The wine site runs items for the whole week, and only charges $5 shipping, but because of the state I live in, won't ship to me (yet), but maybe you'll get lucky and live in one of the states that they do ship to.

I know youth ministers can always use some extra T-Shirts, so start checking the site each morning, or, more likely, each night before you go to bed!

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

TGIF - February 18, 2008 - Pidgin

2008-02-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

How many instant messenger clients do you have running? Yahoo Messenger, Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, MSN/Windows Live! Messenger, ICQ, and the list goes on and on. Each one of those clients take a small bit of the power of your computer and when you add them all up, they may be slowing it down significantly. One thing I hate is a computer that is unnecessarily slow.

I have accounts on many of the various messaging systems since I can't get everyone I know to stop using whatever they are using and switch to just one. There has been some progress towards inter-op-ability of the various clients, Yahoo Messenger users and Windows Live Messenger users can now send messages to one another, but you still need to run three or four to stay connected to everyone. There are features that are unique to each client and features, such as webcams, that you can only use within an individual client, and so I do download and install each one that I use. But for general purposes, I have stopped using all the different ones on a daily basis and switched to Pidgin. I set the other clients not to load on system startup and enter all my accounts into Pidgin.

Pidgin, available at www.pidgin.im, let's you send and receive at least the basic text messages from users of:

AIM
Bonjour
Gadu-Gadu
Google Talk
Groupwise
ICQ
IRC
MSN
MySpaceIM
QQ
SILC
SIMPLE
Sametime
XMPP
Yahoo!
Zephyr

It is an open-source program, released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and runs on Windows and a variety of Linux distributions. There is also a related program called Adium designed for Mac OS X.

According the the Pidgin website, "Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more."

I haven't used all of these features, but I do appreciate having to only run one program to talk to people from a variety of networks at the same time.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

P.S. - It was great to see some of you regular readers at the Extravaganza!

TGIF - February 11, 2008 - Mighty Backup

2008-02-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever lost your cell phone? Or dropped it in a toilet? Or run over it with your car? Or just upgraded to a new phone? It's a pain, isn't it? All that contact information that you've collected on the phone but never copied into your address book, PDA, or Rolodex is gone. Then you have the joy of inputting it back into your replacement phone. I would be happy if I never had to do that again! Since I found Mighty Backup, I should not have to!

Mighty Backup is a service that communicates with your cell phone directly and synchronizes your phone's contact list with a website. They have instructions for using it to upgrade to a new phone and you can also use the website to add contact information to your phones contact list using a full sized keyboard instead of the one on the phone. I use it for free since I signed up for an online account with Verizon Wireless, which, thanks to IN calling may very well be the preferred carrier of the ELCA Youth Ministry Network. If it weren't free, it would only be $1.99/month, which is probably worth it for the peace of mind it provides. Verizon customers can visit www.getbackupnow.com to see how to add this service to their phones.

If you're not on Verizon, but you are on Alltel, Bell Mobility, CellularOne, Cellular South, or Midwest Wireless you can visit www.mightybackup.com/get to see how to install the application to your phone. They also say that they are working on developing versions of their software for users of "Cingular, T-Mobile and many other networks." Once you have everything working, you can even go onto the website and print out a hard copy of the information.

Your specific instructions may vary slightly, but what I did was the following:

Went to the "Get it Now" menu on my phone and downloaded the Backup Assistant application.
Ran the application and picked a PIN number.
Picked the time I wanted to automatic backup to run each day.
Ran the first backup and verified that it worked.
Visited the website and logged in with my phone number and PIN.
Printed out a good old fashioned paper copy of the information! (Well, actually, I didn't. Just not my style! *grin* )

Each day during the time window you configure the service sends a text message that triggers the program to run. You may want to disable the automatic feature if you pay extra for data services and only want to run the application when you manually start it. After it runs, any changes you have made online or on the phone are synchronized and your contact information is backed up! Visit www.mightybackup.com/how to see a bit more about how the service works.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

TGIF - February 4, 2008 - Wireless Networking

2008-02-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week I'll try to shed some light on another user-submitted question: What's the easiest (maybe cheapest) way to get wi-fi into the further parts of our building? With concrete walls and steel infrastructure, the LinkSys wireless-G 2.4 GHz system never worked even between our offices which are all in a row on one side of a hallway. So we went to hard-wiring. I'd love it if I could use my laptop in the youth room which is in the basement of another wing of the building -- but even better would be if anyone could use their laptops in whatever part of the building we were in.

Wireless networking is one of my favorite additions to the world of technology. We all are happy to have fewer cords, cables, and wires in our lives. We're even happier when they really do what we want them to, which can be a challenge!

I want to start with a couple of assumptions. I write these posts assuming that you don't have an Information Technology department at your beck and call. I also write from the standpoint of someone who wants to get a good value solution, maybe not the cheapest, but certainly frugal. Finally, there is an art to getting these things to work and there probably isn't one right answer, but I'll take a stab at passing along some information that I hope is helpful. If you want to have an excellent wireless network and money is no object, consult a company which installs networks and will use commercial enterprise-grade equipment. They will set something up that will work extremely well. It will also probably be extremely expensive.

At the same time, you do get what you pay for. Buying the cheapest available wireless router will get you a piece of equipment that does not perform as well as something that was not $9.95 after rebate. I have bought lots of these cheap blue boxes and they generally work alright, for awhile, but then they fail. This give me an excuse to go out and buy newer technology, but it can also be inconvenient. As with just about all technology, price continues to drop while features increase.

In researching some options, I came across this page (http://wirelessinfo-r-us.blogspot.com/2007/11/basic-service-set-bss-vs-extended.html) which provides a good overview of how to use multiple wireless Access Points (APs) in order to provide broad coverage. The assumption is, however, that these APs will be connected via a wire to the network. By using the same ESSID, you will be able to roam throughout the building and maintain coverage because you are always in the reach of a radio signal. Each AP needs to be set on a different channels, but use the same SSID. The wireless security needs to be the same on each AP as well.

This is the solution recommended by my friend at Pacific Lutheran University, David Allen: do wired whenever you have a fixed office (Pastor, Secretary, etc.) and supplement that connection with wireless for mobility in meeting rooms, visitor areas (even visitors in the fixed offices), but unless you're willing to invest time and money it's generally cheaper to use the cables than the wireless for your average building/installation area.

It is also possible to add stronger antennas to a wireless router or AP so that the signal reaches farther. I have experimented with this myself, however, and I was not particularly impressed with the results, especially considering that the antennas were quite expensive. Compared to pulling network cables through the wall, it might be worth a try.

I spent much of the week scratching my head as to how to get the signal down to that youth room in the basement of another wing of the building without drilling holes in the wall to run new wires. Then it finally hit me, don't run new wires, use ones that are already there. It may not work in some church buildings because of the way churches tend to be built in phases, but it may also be worth a try. Use your existing power lines to carry the signal from one area to another. It's called powerline networking and all the networking gear manufacturers carry some equipment that will help you to do it. C|Net.com has an article in their Do-It-Yourself section entitled Set Up a power-line network. You can go to cnet.com and enter powerline into the Search Box to find more information. They will also give you a list of current products from a variety of vendors. Another option, which I'm not going to go into in depth, would be to use the existing phone lines (www.homepna.org) to carry the data.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

P.S. - I hope to see you at the Extravaganza!

TGIF - January 28, 2008 - Backup Ideas

2008-01-28T02:00:00.000-07:00

I received this question from an ELCA Youth Ministry Network Member in Kansas: What's the easiest way to do backups that will be stored offsite? We aren't doing any! (arrgh!)

Kudos for realizing that you should be doing backups! So should I and so should everyone else. I do backup some things, but I am not as attentive to it as I should be. This was a challenging question for me because I haven't paid as much attention to is as I should. So I am not able to make one good recommendation, but I will point out a couple of options. My current backup practice is redundancy. I keep things on my UFDs (see last week's post), on multiple computers at the office, and on a variety of online places. What else could I do? What else could you do?

I don't backup my e-mail because I don't have to. As you may guess from my earlier posts, I use a Google Mail (www.gmail.com) account which currently gives me 6355.160193 (and counting) megabytes of storage for me e-mails and attachments. I'm only using about 5% of that space at the moment! All Google services are hosted on their servers and they redundantly back them up and keep them secure.

On my computer, I try and store everything that I might want back under a single folder. Windows makes this easy by providing the My Documents folder. If I use another program that wants to store its data somewhere else, I change the folder to be a sub-folder of My Documents. That way I know that copying that folder to another machines provides some level of backup. I routinely copy my laptop My Documents folder to a shared folder on our network.

You can use the built-in services that your operating system provides. Windows Vista Ultimate, which I am running, has a backup service built in, as do most other operating systems. You could use one of these to copy your data to a portable hard drive, or to another machine on your network. As one example, Amazon.com is selling a SimpleTech SimpleDrive that has 500GB of capacity for only $129.99. I would think that most church offices could copy all of their machines to a drive of that size. Then, of course, the drive needs to be carried elsewhere so that if the church burns down, the data isn't lost with it! And, of course, you need to remember to bring it back in and re-do it every week or so. If you are going to go with a physical backup system, this is probably the way to go. Otherwise you could find yourself going nuts with backup CDs and DVDs stacked to the ceiling.

There are also a variety of online options available. I am not going to try and list all of them here and I have not used most of them. They range from free to quite expensive in price. One of the currenlty free ones, Microsoft FolderShare (www.foldershare.com), allows you to synchronize files between multiple machines. If you set this up between a home desktop and an office desktop, that will keep your files in two places. Good backup security requires a third location as well, so ideally you would find a third machine to synchronize with as well.

These services provide automatic backup of data from one PC

Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) unlimited storage for $49.95/year
iDrive (www.idrive.com) 2GB of storage for free; 50GB for $49.95/year
Mozy Online Backup (mozy.com) 2GB of storage for free; unlimited for $4.95/month

These services provide space, but you must manually copy files to the service, often using a separate program. They generally allow sharing directly from the internet as well.

ADrive (www.adrive.com) 50GB for free
MyOtherDrive (www.myotherdrive.com) 5GB for free; 25GB for $19.99/year; 75GB for $49.99/year; 200GB for $99.99/year
XDrive (www.xdrive.com) 5GB for free
OmniDrive (www.omnidrive.com) 1GB for free; 10GB for $40/year; 25GB for $99/year; 50GB for $199/year

The time that most of us think about the ineffectiveness of our backup "solution" is about 45 seconds after we realize that our hard drive has crashed or the sprinkler system has ruined our computer and we don't have any of what we've spent years putting together. Planning ahead can make these sorts of tragedies a little less traumatizing.

TGIF - January 21, 2008 - USB Flash (Thumb) Drives

2008-01-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Do you find yourself wondering where you left the file that you wanted to work on? Do you e-mail things back and forth from the office to your house repeatedly? Do you have to make trips to find the computer that something is actually stored on? Or, even worse, do you work in a church that doesn't have a network!?! You need a USB Flash Drive, also known as a Thumb Drive.

A UFD plugs into a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port on your computer. Under any modern OS it is recognized instantly. Under an old version of Windows, you may need to install a driver in order to see the UFD. If your computer has USB 2.0 ports, you can rapidly move files to and from the UFD. If you only have USB 1.1 ports, it's still fairly quick, but definitely takes a bit more time.

UFDs are great for moving documents from one machine to another. They don't have any moving parts and they are much less likely to fail than a floppy disk. I keep one on my keychain so that I always have a few programs that I use often. It's also a great way to backup important files that you really want to be sure and not lose!

As is the case with all technology, prices of UFDs have dropped over the years. I bought my first UFD in the spring of 2003. It was a 64MB drive and it cost me about $50. A little over a year ago I bought a 256MB UFD and it cost me cost me about $25. This fall I splurged an bought a 4GB drive and it was the same price as the first one! You should be able to fit all the pictures from a trip onto a drive of this size. I would also recommend that you get one with a retractable connector, as you will eventually lose any cap that comes with a UFD.

If you use a lot of different machines and want your own bookmarks and browser, you may also be interested in using Portable Applications. There are a variety of websites that contain applications you can put on a UFD and then run on any computer without needing to install them. I have had good luck with PortableApps.com, a collection of Open Source applications that will fit on a moderate sized drive. I used it so that I didn't have to lug a laptop around when I was visiting family this fall.

Finally, if you're truly literalistic, you can buy or make a Human Shaped Thumb Drive.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek
techgeek-at-elcaymnet.org

TGIF - January 7, 2008 - Word Replacements

2008-01-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

So, you got a new computer for Christmas, or with that end-of-year budget surplus? Congratulations! But now you've spent the whole budget and you've discovered that your new computer comes with a trial version of Microsoft Office, which is going to stop working in 60, 59, 58, 57...days. You could spend a substantial amount of money in order to convert that trial version to a full-fledged version of the program. Perhaps you could take advantage of an educational or non-profit discount, which is a good way to acquire Microsoft products. (I'll write about this option in the near future.) You may also be able to use alternatives that are free and, in some ways, better. I would like to suggest a few of them.

Open Office is an open source office suite. It includes a word processor, presentation program, spreadsheet program, database program, and drawing program. All of these are able to open and save the corresponding Microsoft Office files. Open Office is developed by many people around the globe and there are new versions released frequently. While it cannot do absolutely everything that Microsoft Office can do, it is able to do everything that most people actually need to have done. It will run on modest computers, of both the Windows and Macintosh flavors. I think it is a good solution for those who are running older versions of Microsoft Office because it is patched and more secure than they would be. Open Office may be downloaded from www.openoffice.org at no cost.

Another option is Google Docs, found at docs.google.com. You need to have a free Google Account in order to use these services. Google Docs includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and simple presentation program. All three of these are able to open and save the equivalent Microsoft Office files. While not nearly as robust as Microsoft Office, these tools provide most of what people need on a regular basis. They also provide a great solution for those who routinely work from multiple machines. Once you sign-in to the website, you can access your files from any internet-connected computer, running any modern operating system and web browser. Another noteworthy feature of Google Docs is that you can collaborate on files with multiple people at the same time. It is very interesting to be editing a file and watch text in another portion of the document get changed as someone else edits the file simultaneously. There are easy ways to e-mail files, download them as Adobe PDFs, and to share Google Docs files with website and blogs.

There are some other options available as well. For a "vintage" computer, Abiword is a free word processor that runs well with minimal system requirements. It can be downloaded from www.abisource.com. It will also open and save a variety of file formats. Some people will need to use Microsoft Office, but for many people, it is over-kill and over-priced and one of these other options will serve their needs quite nicely. I'm writing this article using Google Docs, because I can easily work on it from different computers. If I really wanted to, I could even view it on my cell phone!

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

New Knight Rider

2008-01-06T17:51:00.000-07:00

I saw the first of these commercials while watching the AFC Wildcard Game yesterday. The funny thing is, I knew instantly it wasn't a car commercial, because of the NBC Olympic bug at the bottom left. I think I knew what it was before I even saw the glowing red lights under the cover.

Then, through the magic of YouTube, I found this longer format teaser.

And if you want even more, here's a clip of the car being introduced on the NBC lot.

TGIF - December 17

2007-12-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I do some of my best thinking and planning while I'm driving. Good (and some not-so-good) ideas pop into my head and I ponder them for a few miles, then lose them before I commit them to long term memory or write them down. It might be an item for my to-do list, a person who I need to contact, or a program idea, but most of the time it used to be lost because I didn't keep it in my head until I could actually use it. Enter Jott, a free service that transcribes voice to text and sends it to a variety of places. It's also useful to keep track of those pesky expenses!

I have Jott assigned to a quick-dial key on my cell phone. When I think of something, I just dial it, tell the name of the folder or service that I want the message to go to, and it shows up in that folder. There is a desktop application that you can use to manage the messages you've sent yourself or you can use the website. You can have Jotts sent via e-mail, text message, or carrier pigeon. (They're still working the last option out, but it may very well be coming.)

The real beauty of Jott is that the designers are working to interface with lots of other online entities. You can send a Jott to Amazon.com and you will get the top 5 search results for your request sent as an e-mail. You can send a Jott to your Google Calendar and have an appointment show up. You can send a Jott to Remember the Milk and add something to your to-do list. You can send a Jott to Twitter and update your status. You can Jott reminders to yourself and have them sent back to your phone or e-mail a few minutes prior to what you might forget. You can also send Jotts to other people on a contact list. I haven't used this feature myself, because I am more accustomed to using instant messages and e-mails, but some folks might find it useful.

You can find out even more about Jott and sign-up by visiting http://www.jott.com and clicking on the Learn More link.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

The 12 Days of Christmas by Staight No Chaser

2007-12-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

My brother sent me this video that shows about how generally muddled most of us are around the twelve days of Christmas!

Vox on Fox

2007-12-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

My brother Matthew is the Executive Director of the Columbus Gay Men's Chorus. Their audition group was recently on Columbus TV.

Tech Geek - December 10, 2007

2007-12-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

What are you up to? Whatcha doing? Busy? I was late to the whole blogging game and late to the mini-blog game as well. I've been playing with Twitter for just a short amount of time and I find it an interesting exercise in sharing what I'm up to throughout the day. Sometimes I only update it once a day and sometimes more frequently. Probably no one even cares! But maybe there are folks in your youth flock that do find it interesting.

Twitter is a service that lets you post mini updates about life from the web (www.twitter.com), by e-mail to a special address, from your phone via SMS or mini-browser, from a Google Desktop Gadget, and probably a bunch of other ways that I have not yet figured out. Each update can only be 140 characters long, but you can post as many of them as you wish. You can also set up people that you want to follow and see their updates in a variety of ways. This is somewhat interesting, but what I was really interested in was ways to post a single update and have it show up in multiple places.

I only update my blog every once in awhile, when I have something I feel like updating about. But, by using the Twitter Badge for Blogger, my Twitter updates are shown right on the blog. So there is at least something new! To add that, I logged into my Twitter account, then went to http://twitter.com/badges and installed a badge on my Blogger page. You can also add badges for MySpace, Facebook, TypePad, and just about any other site.

I also added an application called TwitterSync to my Facebook page. This copies my most recent Twitter update to my Facebook status. The official Twitter/Facebook badge is supposed to do this, but I have heard people had problems and I've had better luck with TwitterSync, available at http://apps.facebook.com/twittersync/ while you're logged into Facebook.

God's blessings on the ministry you do each day,
Pastor Andy Arnold
ELCA Youth Ministry Network's Tech Geek

P.S. Don't forget, if you have questions or topics you'd like me to address, e-mail at techgeek-at-elcaymnet-dot-org.

2007-12-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

TGIF - Tech Geek's Informational Feature

Many of us know that Google has practically become a verb up there with Xerox, Band-Aid, and Kleenex. We use it to refer to searching for something even if we're using another site like GoodSearch to do the actual work. GoodSearch is a site that donates a penny or so for each search performed in its site to a charity of your choice, including Lutheran Disaster Response, the ELCA, or Lutheran World Relief.

Google has lots of other great features in addition to searching for web sites. I'm writing this very article on Google Docs, their online word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program. I keep my calendar at Google Calendar, because it allows me to access it from any computer or even my cell phone. I use Picasa Web Albums and the desktop photo management software, Picasa (available for Windows, Macs, and Linux), because it lets me easily tag photos and use them in web albums, blog posts, or e-mails. I even use GMail for my e-mail, because of the sorting features, and my chat client.

I use all of these services from Google because they get how the web should be used. I can get into my stuff from different machines, even different technologies. They provide interfaces for other programers to use in developing tools that branch out from these services. I've also used Google to create web pages and, yes, even to search for things! As the ELCA Youth Ministry Network's new Tech Geek, I'd like to share with you, my youth ministry colleagues, some of the ways I've found to use technology to enable ministry and relationships. I'd also like to hear from you about the sites, widgets, and gadgets that you use in your daily life and ministry. E-mail me at techgeek-at-elcaymnet-dot-org with your suggestions and thoughts for use in a future TGIF.

God's blessings in your daily ministry,
Pastor Andy Arnold

Three things to think about...received in an e-mail today

2007-11-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

Three things to think about:

1. Cows
2. The Constitution
3. The Ten Commandments

COWS: Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a single cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves right to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

THE CONSTITUTION: They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq . Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery", and "Thou Shall Not Lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians -- it creates a hostile work environment.

2007 MLYO Fall Gathering

2007-11-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

Five of the Senior League at the Montana Lutheran Youth Organization Fall Gathering.

Segway!

2007-11-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

While visiting my brother Matthew in Columbus I got a chance to ride on a second generation Segway courtesy of one of Matthew's friend. Thanks Paul!

Train Spiral

2007-11-03T15:57:00.000-06:00

Laura and I were impressed with Costco's Brio train layout and especially the fun spiral. We've tried to build something like this for our nephew Caden, but it has never worked as well as this one does!

We Made It!

2007-09-26T21:43:00.000-06:00

We rolled a bit slowly through Canada as we enjoyed the scenery of Jasper, Banff, and Kootenay National Parks. We took the Icefields Parkway and climbed near glaciers and beautiful lakes. We ended up staying in Lake Louise, which was beautiful as well. We plan on making a trip back at some point, maybe to ski.

We arrived safely in Kalispell, with the trailer intact, on Tuesday evening. We're moving and unpacking a few boxes and then we'll hit the road again to visit a variety of family and friends and take advantage of the time that we have before I start here at Northridge Lutheran.

Getting there...

2007-09-24T08:02:00.000-06:00

Internet access hasn't been as readily accessible as I had hoped on this trip. We were supposed to have it on Saturday night and I could see three different wi-fi hotspots from our room, but couldn't get a connection to any of them. We have been moving right along and making pretty good time.

Thursday: We left Wasilla at about 6:00 p.m. after getting the last of the stuff loaded into the car and dropping the keys and the garage door openers off at the realtors. We drove as far as Glennallen, AK and stayed there for the night.
Friday: We got up bright and early and headed for Tok, AK to have breakfast at Fast Eddie's. Each of us had the most enormous omelets we'd ever seen. Which was good, since we didn't eat again until we got to Whitehorse, YT late at night, after many miles and kilometers of bumpy roads.
Saturday: Up early again and driving before breakfast. We stopped for a snack in Watson Lake, YT, and then continued on to Muncho Lake, BC. I had hoped to spend the night there, but the hotel was full. So we ventured onward to Fort Nelson, BC, where we finally ate a real meal and slept.
Sunday: We slept in a bit after the early mornings and because the Steelers were on TV. Watched the game and then headed out on quite good roads, past the end of the Alaska Highway, and on to Grande Prairie, AB, where we spent the night.
Monday: We're up and moving out this morning. We may make it all the way to Kalispell or we may stop somewhere between here and there, as it's about 700 miles.

In the post above are some pictures of some bison, a bear family, and other things that we saw on the way.

Route Choice

2007-09-20T11:19:00.000-06:00

You may notice that the route I posted below has a diversion to take us to British Columbia Highway 93 and US Route 93. There is a reason for that. When Ron and I took the U-Haul down, we wanted to follow Alberta Highway 2 and cross where it becomes US Route 89. This seemed like a good combination of not too many extra miles and a fairly straight and flat road. We had debated it a good bit and come to this conclusion. Then we'd swing around the east side of Glacier National Park and end up in Kalispell. This is the route that Google Maps proposes.

But...after driving for 21 straight hours, when we got to this border crossing at 7:10 a.m., the US Border Patrol wouldn't let us cross. They didn't like our choice of route and didn't think it made sense to them. As they didn't have an X-Ray machine at that particular crossing, they told us we had to go to one of the two in the "area" that did. We we drove an extra 187 miles to the nearest crossing to the west, where we had no problem getting through (and they didn't X-Ray our truck). This trip, Laura and I are just heading for the crossing to begin with, it's a beautiful drive and takes us straight into Kalispell.

So...what's the plan?

2007-09-20T10:50:00.000-06:00

Laura and I haven't had too detailed of a plan recently. We've been running around taking care of lots of details and saying good-bye to lots of folks. We're staying with some friends near Wasilla and going over to the house every day to pack the last few items and organize the paperwork for it to sell. The good news is that our house was only on the market for 3 weeks and we had a buyer. We're under contract, we have our home inspection report back, and things are looking good. We're hopeful that we'll be able to close the sale in the next couple of weeks.

Today (Thursday, September 20) is the day we're hoping to begin the trek to Montana. I already made the trip down there with a U-Haul with our stuff. Now Laura is going with me and we're going to drive the Explorer down with the snowmachine/snowmobile trailer. We won't get an early start, but hopefully we can make it to Tok tonight. Since we'll have the camera and laptop, there may even be some blog posts with pictures. If the weather stays yucky like it's been in Wasilla the last few days, there may not be anything worth taking a picture of.

When we get there, we have a very nice townhouse to stay in. Some snowbirds have offered us their home to stay in while they winter in Tucson, AZ. It will provide us with a great opportunity to get settled and take our time as we search for a house of our own. We're very grateful to them.

View Larger Map

Where are we going?

2007-09-20T10:32:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures of Kalispell and the surrounding area that I took when I visited in June.

Football Fans

2007-09-19T09:28:00.000-06:00

There was a survey recently reported on in this article that showed the Pittsburgh Steelers have the highest percentage of female fans. Green Bay was second. I've always said that the Steelers and Packers have a different kind of fans. Does this prove the difference?

Halfway there!

2007-09-12T10:34:00.000-06:00

A friend from Good Shepherd (Ron) and I are driving most of Laura and my worldly possessions in a U-Haul truck (with Laura's car following closely behind on a trailer) from Wasilla to Kalispell. We've seen some great wildlife, including caribou, bison, moose, and deer; everything has gone well so far. We spent the night in Fort Nelson and are just about to head out. We'll finish up the Alaska Highway today and head into the big cities of Edmonton and Calgary.

Lutheran Summer Camp 2007 Pictures

2007-08-15T16:37:00.000-06:00

Pictures of the fun at Lutheran Summer Camp 2007

Why have the Pittsburgh Pirates been so bad for so long?

2007-07-18T12:11:00.000-06:00

I have no idea what the answer to that question is. I have not followed baseball much for the past decade or so. I've known they weren't very good, but I guess I hadn't really realized how bad they've been and for how long they've been that bad.

This clip puts it into perspective a bit.

Spam

2007-06-24T14:04:00.000-06:00

Ever wondered why unsolicited e-mail was called 'spam'? It traces back to this Monty Python skit where all communication is drowned out by one word. There is really not a direct connection to the salted pork product! -AA

Sarcasm and destruction

2007-04-13T13:15:00.000-06:00

This is a confessional post. It is one of those things about myself which, in one sense, I know, but in another I have been smacked upside the head with enough recently that it is making an impact.

In her article A small, beautiful thing from the March 20, 2007 article of The Christian Century, Stephanie Paulsell ruminates a bit on making sacrifices during Lent and the small-ness of those gestures. She writes:

But the small gestures that we are invited to embrace each Lent help us experiment with our lives; they help us try on different ways of living. Last year, a nine-year-old friend of my daughter told her, "I'm giving up sarcasm for Lent. And it's really hard."

Think of what that child stood to learn in her attempt to renounce sarcasm for 40 days. She already knew what it feels like to have a great, sarcastic rejoinder well up inside of her, a comeback that draws the attention of others to her, makes them laugh at her cleverness. But her Lenten practice taught her what it feels like to have that sarcastic reply come to mind, and then to wait and let it pass. Perhaps she learned that to say no to a sarcastic remark opens a space for other kinds of conversation. Perhaps she learned to cherish the anticipation of what might be said instead. And perhaps, through her learning to say no to a small, destructive force, her ability to resist larger destructive forces increased.

While not the overall theme of her article, this paragraph hit home for me. I am often cynical and sarcastic. I have always thought of it as a part of who I am. Partially because of my family of origin, partially because of experiences I had growing up, and probably a whole lot because of my own insecurity. I enjoy sarcasm. I appreciate comedians who use it well to make their points. I am quick to deliver a snappy comeback and assume it is alright because people know I am "just kidding." As Paulsell writes about her young friend, I want to draw people's attention to me and be amused at my cleverness. What I have not paid enough attention to is the destruction that wreaks on others. While I may preach about being a humble servant, I have used sarcasm to build myself up while putting others down. I need to work on my own insecurity issues without dragging others down.

I am going to work to change this part of myself. It will be difficult, because in some ways, this is a part of myself I like. I remember a seminary colleague telling me one time that he was impressed with how well I "thought on my feet" and could adjust a presentation as it was happening. Quick wit and sarcasm are often the same, but they need not be. I am going to work to change so that I stop hurting others and so that I allow conversations to continue instead of squelching them. Sharing this here is a way to invite others to hold me accountable and remind me when I am not living up to the change I want to make.

I am also reminded of what a deacon at my internship congregation told me. He was dieing of cancer and clinging to the last days of life on this earth. We met one day and he told me, rather bluntly, that while he knew I was a very caring person, I had a lousy way of showing it. He's right. I do care for others, and I have good ideas, but getting moving on them is difficult, especially when there are so many other things to do. Trying to control sarcasm is one way of being better at showing my care for others and not tearing others down to build myself up.

Perhaps, through learning to say no to a small, destructive force, my ability to resist larger destructive forces will increase.

Ruth Update: Prayer Shawls and Todd's Hair

2007-03-28T09:06:00.000-06:00

Ruth Update: Prayer Shawls and Todd's Hair

I have been posting occasional links in the sidebar from Ruth's blog. You can read the whole story there, but the short story is that she is a friend and member of the congregation who is dealing with breast cancer. As this post shows, she has lots of prayer support and love from family, neighbors, and friends.

(Todd, her husband, is planning on shaving his head. He thought he would dye it first and then, a day or two later, shave it off. Since Ruth isn't very good about following plans, her hair is still attached to her head and therefore, Todd has had dyed hair for a few weeks now!)

Iditarod 2007 Red Lantern!

2007-03-23T12:11:00.000-06:00

Cabela's Iditarod - 2007 Race Coverage - Red Lantern!

Ellen Halverson, this year's Red Lantern winner, is a member of our congregation and I enjoyed reading this article about her trip to Nome.

Way to go Ellen!

CMOS Battery in a Laptop

2007-03-15T18:46:00.000-06:00

I own an old and cheap laptop. I bought it four years ago at Costco. It says Northgate on the outside, but it really is an ECS 731 Green. It has never had any real battery life and has always been more of a portable desktop than a true laptop. It basically works for what I need it to work for, but I also drool over the new laptops that cost half of what I paid for this one!

As often happens with computers that are four years old, the CMOS battery started to flake out, especially when I left it outside overnight in sub-zero temperatures. This is the battery that helps the computer remember what kind of hard drive it has and things like that. Having replaced many CMOS batteries on desktop computers, I figured that I could handle replacing this one as well. It's about a five minute job on a desktop, maybe two screws to get the side of the case off, replace the battery, and put it all back together.

I started by looking at the ten big screws that hold the bottom of the case on. I found that my regular screwdriver was too big for them, but the jeweler's screwdrivers were too small and didn't give enough leverage. A trip to the garage and I had found a small but easy to grip screwdriver that did the trick quite nicely. Ten screws from the bottom of the case removed. Still nice and solid. There are a variety of panels on the bottom of the case that cover things like the hard drive, memory chips, and CPU. I took the half a dozen (total: 16) screws out that hold those panels in to see if there were more screws under them. The CPU heatsink was really dirty and looked like the screws holding it in might go through to the top of the case. So I took out the four heatsink screws (20) and the four screws holding the fan in (24). Still, the case was remarkably solid.

Then it occurred to me that maybe there were more screws under the laptop battery. It's big and heavy and lasts about eight seconds, but it was hiding eight more tiny screws which I removed (32). Still not budging it, I pulled out the only remaining thing I could find on the bottom, the CD/DVD drive and found three more tiny screws, for a total of 35.

Then I flipped it back over right side up. Must be something there, but I couldn't see it. The only thing that looked removable was the keyboard. I poked, prodded, and pried and found the little latches that let me remove the keyboard. Unplugged the little cable and took out the piece of metal shielding under the keyboard and found four more (39) screws to take out. Now I could get the front and the sides of the case to separate, but the back was still firmly holding together.

I looked around for quite awhile and tried to see if there were plastic tabs holding things together but could find any. Then it occurred to me that maybe the display needed to be removed, something I was hoping to avoid. I found that there were plastic pieces covering the hinges and that I could pry them off. Underneath each of them were two more screws which held the monitor to the case and held the whole thing together (43). Now I had access to one more screw on the top of the case, which I removed (44). But still, it would not come apart.

I pried out a piece of plastic that had icon on it for the hard drive activity, shift lock, etc. Then I could see six more screws (50), two of which held down the panel with the power switch on it. Underneath that there were 2 more screws (52) and that was all I could find. But the top of the case would finally move. I gingerly picked it up and revealed another metal shield that covered most of what was there. Five more screws to remove and this shield was out of the way and I saw my goal, a $4 CMOS battery. It only took removing 57 different screws (unless I lost count and it was actually more than that) to get to it. So, almost three hours and 55 more screws than a desktop later, I pulled the battery out and put a brand new replacement battery in!

Laptops look smooth and elegant compared to desktops, but that's not what they are like underneath the cover. I was reminded of my father's memories of trying to work on the mobile home that he and my mother lived in before I was born. I'm sure that those of you who have lived in mobile homes or worked on RVs could share similar experiences. Somehow making things appear to be neat, organized, and efficient outside introduces a new level of complexity on the inside.

This complexity is not always a bad thing though. As we look forward to hosting the 2007 Alaska Synod Assembly, we need to have as many people involved as possible. Perhaps two families could do the job, but 57 or 114 or all of us could do the job better. We want the experience for those who come to the Assembly to be one that looks smooth and elegant. We want them to be able to focus on Workshop, Business Meetings, Bible Study, and other parts of the Assembly without worrying about food, housing, transportation, or restroom facilities. It will be complex on the inside, but it will look neat, organized, and efficient from the outside.

I hope each of you are able to find ways that you can support Good Shepherd in this effort,
Pastor Andy

Beauty and the Beast - Finished

2007-03-15T18:39:00.000-06:00

We had an overwhelming response to the show, selling out 25 performances. It was an incredible experience and one that I was thrilled to be able to share with my wife, Laura, who played Belle. I finally have all of the pictures of the two of us posted to my photo site so click the link below and check them out.

From Beauty and the Beast

2007-02-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

This is the blender that we have. I wonder if we should try this? -AA

Sold Out!

2007-02-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Anchorage Daily News had this to say about our show:

Review: 'Beauty and the Beast' commercial success
Posted: February 5, 2007 - 12:11 pm
By Rindi WhiteAnchorage Daily News
WASILLA – There’s a reason Valley Performing Arts sold out 18 performances of its newest show, “Beauty and the Beast.”It’s good. It’s really good.
“Beauty and the Beast” is a big, beautiful Disney production, replete with fantastic costumes, a wonderful set and a large cast. Forty-two people share the stage and another 10 are in the orchestra.
The story is a Disney classic, with heroine Belle, a bookish girl with an inventor father, being pursued by the French village’s most macho he-man, Gaston. Belle rebuffs Gaston and accidentally falls into the hands of Beast, a prince put under a spell by a lesson-teaching hag.Well-written, the play is far from serious and even pokes fun at itself. It’s peppered with puns and silly asides that the actors dish out with excellent timing and a wink here and there to the audience.
Director Larry Bottjen said more than half the cast is new to the VPA stage, including a third of the leading characters. They do a tremendous job and it looks like they have fun doing it.
Appropriately, Belle and the Beast are played by real-life husband and wife Laura and Andy Arnold. Laura Arnold is in most scenes, sings in most songs and otherwise does a lot of work in the show. This is her fourth VPA show and she proves that she’s more than up to the task. She has a beautiful singing voice and the charming good looks befitting a Disney heroine.
Garry Forrester, as the egotistical Gaston, injects a lot of fun into the performance. Forrester has a Jim Carey-like way of emphasizing his words with absurd facial expressions and twinkling eyes that leaves the audience in giggles. Michael Bailar plays his foolish sidekick, Lefou. The two deliver several sidesplitting comic routines, filled with puns and Three Stooges-esque physical comedy.
Dave Nufer, Ted Carney and Sarah Hendricks play talking clock, candlestick and teapot. These three supporting characters are strong enough to lead the show on their own. Carney and Hendricks have proven wonderful assets in every performance they’ve been in. Nufer, a VPA first-timer, does more than keep up with these seasoned performers. Hopefully he’ll become a regular face on the VPA stage.
An excellent cast, ingenious costuming and an impressive and well-crafted set that makes the small Machetanz Theatere stage seem bigger than possible make this performance one of Valley Performing Arts’ best yet. Anyone lucky enough to be holding tickets can look forward to a wonderful evening.
“Beauty and the Beast” just wrapped up its run on Broadway. Director Larry Bottjen said Disney uncharacteristically released the play for other theaters to use before the Broadway show wrapped. Nabbing it proved a good move for Valley Performing Arts.
“This is the biggest explosion of ticket sales we ever had,” Bottjen said.
If you go: "Beauty and the Beast" by Valley Performing Arts, is sold out for the rest of its run through March 4. For information about possible tickets, call 907-373-0195.

From: http://community.adn.com/?q=adn/node/105041

The review missed one thing. We haven't sold out 18 shows, we've sold out 25! We're probably adding a show or two so that the cast members' families can all get to see it. -AA

AllFreeCalls.net | End The Rip-Off: Make Free Calls from The USA

2007-01-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

I don't often have the need to make international phone calls, but this service looks like a great way to call a lot of places for just the cost of a call to Iowa (712 area code).

AllFreeCalls.net | End The Rip-Off: Make Free Calls from The USA

Opening Night with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

2007-01-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

We had a great opening night for VPA's production of Beauty and the Beast. Everything went smoothly for the whole opening weekend and now we are down to five more weekends. Weekend #2 is almost sold out and there are less than 500 tickets left for the rest of the run.

From Beauty and the Beast

What is your accent?

2007-01-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

I thought this was kind of fun and interesting. And, incidentally, pretty right on about where I learned to speak and my (slight) accent.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Beauty and the Beast rehearsal photos

2007-01-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

I have added a bunch of rehearsal photos to my photo album. Enjoy!

AA

From Beauty and th...

Christmas Cookies

2006-12-07T01:58:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday & Monday were Cookie Days at our house. That means that Laura uses a lot of butter (11 pounds) and powdered sugar (11 pounds) and makes a variety (20 different recipes) of Christmas Cookies. Our friend Brenda came over and helped on Monday. With all of the time and energy that we've been putting into Beauty and the Beast, it wasn't surprising to see what Laura's inspiration for Gingerbread and Sugar Cookies was!

From Beauty and th...

Now it has fur!

2006-12-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast are going well. Laura and I are now doing some dialog for parts that we're actually in. I visited with our hair dresser earlier this week and now we've got some fur on my head!

From Beauty and th...

The Beast's head starts to take shape.

2006-11-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the process that we're using to create my character's head for the Valley Performing Arts production of Beauty and the Beast. Laura is Belle and I am The Beast, although I prefer to be known as The Prince! ;)

From Beauty and th...

It was an odd experience to sit there with a plastic bag on my head while the taxidermist poured expanding foam onto me. It gets quite hot as it sets up. In the end, we'll have a Beast-ly head that will sit quite nicely on my own without slipping and sliding around too much!

Lutheran Summer Camp @ Victory Bible Camp

2006-08-14T19:22:00.000-06:00

A peaceful scene of Index Lake during Lutheran Summer Camp at Victory Bible Camp near Sutton, Alaska.

Lutheran Summer Camp 2006 Pictures

ELCA Youth Gathering - Dome

2006-07-16T10:24:00.000-06:00

Just a quick update before we leave San Antonio and head for Houston. Everyone is having a great time and looking forward to our next adventures. Here is a picture of the Alamo Dome where we have been having our mass gatherings. - Pastor Andy

JAM Trip Details - July 11-21, 2006

2006-06-16T20:19:00.000-06:00

Next Meeting: We will gather again after service (11:00 a.m.) on Sunday, June 25th at the church.

Cost: As we talked about on Sunday, the cost per family will be $500 for the trip. Each of you has already paid a $100 deposit, so the balance is $400. Here is a breakdown of how that figure was arrived at.

Per Person Item                                    Total Cost
      $690 Airplane Tickets                          $10,350
      $130 Gathering Hotel ($95 per room per night)   $1,900
      $235 Gathering Registration                     $3,525
       $85 Van Rental                                 $1,220
       $40 Van Gasoline                                 $600
      $160 Food                                       $2,400
      $160 Admissions/Miscellaneous/Reserve Fund      $2,560
    $1,500 Totals                                    $22,555

Here is an idea of our current financial situation:

Beginning Checkbook Balance                          $15,300
Parental Contributions ($400 x 13)           +$5,200 $20,500
Balance of Gathering Registration            -$2,025 $18,475
Airline Tickets                             -$10,350  $8,125
Hotel, Van, Gasoline, Food                   -$6,120  $2,005
Admissions/Miscellaneous/Reserve Fund        -$2,560   -$555
Rummage Sale Profits already in hand          $2,055  $1,500

All of our work fundraising has paid off and we will be able to afford this trip!

Contact Information:

Pastor Andy – 232-8386 (I am using a different cell phone for the summer)
Kay Peterson – 232-4034
Elizabeth Hanson – 232-6402 (She will be carrying my cell phone during the trip)
pastorandy.blogspot.com (We will try and post photos and updates here during the trip)
Gathering Infoline – 1-888-411-ELCA (3522)
Radisson Hotel San Antonio Market Square – 210-224-7155

Flight Info: The bulk of the group (including myself on the return trip) will be flying together.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 Northwest Airlines Flight #844
depart 9:40pm - Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
arrive 5:57am - Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
Plane Change (1hr 13min - ground time)
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 Northwest Airlines Flight #3362
depart 7:10am Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
arrive - 10:00am Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Return:Friday, July 21, 2006 - Northwest Airlines Flight #1156
depart 12:45pm - Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
arrive 3:30pm - Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
Plane Change (1hr 45min - ground time)
Northwest Airlines Flight #845
depart 5:15pm - Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
Friday, July 21, 2006 arrive 8:01pm - Anchorage International Airport (ANC)

Kay Peterson will be organizing transportation to the airport. If you would like me to add a frequent flyer number to your reservation, please e-mail me the number (andy@goodshepluth.org) and I will take care of that. Remember, all passengers must have government issued identification of some sort.

Itinerary: After arriving in Houston, the group will collect baggage and then I will fly in at 10:45 a.m., followed by Elizabeth Hanson, her girls, and Kara Larson. Then we will all drive to San Antonio to participate in the ELCA Youth Gathering. I will not be staying at the same hotel as our group, since I will be working with the Learning and Communications Technology teams at the event. Wednesday through Saturday nights we will be at the Radisson Market Square.

Sunday we will drive to Houston and work with a Camp Noah program for children displaced by the hurricanes last fall. We will either be staying at a church or with host families. As soon as we know, I will let you know so that we know if we need to bring sleeping bags and mattresses or not. We do know that wherever we stay will be air conditioned. We are planning side trips to NASA’s space center (http://www.spacecenter.org/) and to Schlitterbahn Waterpark (http://www.schlitterbahn.com/gal/) and probably some other places as well.

Health Forms: Your health form needs to be filled out and and returned to the church by our June 25th meeting. E-mail or IM me if you lost yours and need another.

Please contact me if you have any other questions or concerns.

ELCA Youth Gathering 2006 - Musicians and Speakers

2006-06-05T15:14:00.000-06:00

The list of musicians and speakers for the ELCA Youth Gathering this summer in San Antonio has been released and all I can say is WOW! This is quite a line-up of powerful thinkers and speakers. Bishop Hanson, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and lots of others. WOW!

Click here for the full list.

Pictures and Stories to Share - May 15 @ 7:00 p.m.

2006-04-26T22:26:00.000-06:00

Andy, Mr. Li, and Laura in the Hill's apartment on our last night.

These were the sorts of traffic conditions that Mr. Li had to deal with!

One of the many advantages to visiting China while my relatives lived there was the fact that they have a driver. This meant that instead of having to learn the subway system, chase down taxis, and learn our own way around town, we could just tell Mr. Li where we needed to go and he would figure out how to get us there. Mr. Li would tell us how many minutes it would take, warn us about traffic jams, take us to places with safe food for our delicate Western stomachs, and deal with the craziness that is driving in Shanghai!

The rule about driving in Shanghai is that you don’t follow the rules. The drivers, most of whom are full-time drivers, are not aggressive, but they are very opportunistic and very defensive. I watched Mr. Li move his hand to prepare to honk the horn or flash his lights as he made a left on red in an intersection, drove our van down the bike lane, and avoided collisions with the millions of pedestrians, bikers, and scooter riders on the roads. He had go be prepared for road construction with no warning signs whatsoever, traffic using the road in the opposite direction, and all sorts of distractions that would have confused me or caused a wreck. Mr. Li was not only a good driver, he became a very memorable part of our trip. He was our guide through Shanghai with all of its cultural differences, wonder, a beauty. When he dropped us off at the airport, he told us, in his limited English, that he and all of China were happy that we had been able to visit. While I’m sure that is a bit of an exaggeration, it was wonderful to have a Chinese friend and guide.

Laura and I would like to invite all those who are interested to join us so that we may share more memories of Mr. Li and our time in China. Please join us at Good Shepherd on Monday, May 15th at 7:00 p.m. We will share some pictures, videos, and a bite or two of Chinese food. If you can’t make it, or you’d like a preview of the pictures, click on the China Trip Photos link in the Links section to see some of our almost 700 pictures! If you are thinking of coming, don’t worry, we won’t show all 700. We’ll plan on being done around 9:00 p.m.

JAM Talent Show - Shellie and Friends Demonstrate a School Bus Driver's Day

2006-04-04T20:54:00.000-06:00

JAM Talent Show - Kathy Lunning reads Billy Goats Gruff

2006-04-04T20:50:00.000-06:00

Local Chinese Neighborhood Tour

2006-03-21T04:26:00.000-07:00

Monday we were able to go on the most wonderful tour. We met up with some other tourists and expats and our three guides at a subway station. After that we headed to a wet market (it's wet because of the water that they run over the live fish that are for sale there) and after quite a bit of walking we ended up at Aunt Chen's house. We made some wonton or dumplings, learning how to fold them so they would stay together, and then cooked them. After that we had a variety of traditional Chinese foods. On the table you can see Stir-Fried Peanuts (with my chopsticks in them), Deep-Fried marinated Tofu to the left of that, some Marinated Beef, and some Tea-Soaked Hard Boiled Eggs. The eggs look rather bad because they've been soaking in dark tea, but they are actually quite tasty. They're one of the things that you see for sale from the street vendors. I had been interested in trying them for awhile and was glad to have an opportunity to try them in a "safe" place. We had a wonderful time with the Chens and enjoyed their hospitality. We continued on down a few other alleys and eventually made it back to our starting point. It was a wonderful tour and will surely be a highlight of our trip!

2006-03-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

We can never pass an opportunity to eat Dairy Queen. Here we are enjoying a Green Tea Chocolate Chunk Blizzard at the Yu Yuan Market in Shanghai.

Flower Doggies!

2006-03-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

We made it safely to Shanghai, spending many hours in the air on the way. Thankfully, we were able to fly in World Business Class much of the way which made for a much more pleasant experience. About 36 hours after we got on our first plane we arrived in Shanghai, where we met my Aunt Louise, Uncle Garry, and their driver, Mr. Li. They presented Laura with a beautiful flower arrangement, probably the only kind of dog that she'll ever like. (They don't bark, they don't need much attention, the won't bite...)

We spent our first day (Thursday, Tuesday just didn't exist for us) seeing some of the sights of Shanghai including the Fabric Market, the "Fake Market" (lots of stuff with logos on it that may not have been manufactured by the owner of the logo), an overwhelmingly large Chinese grocery store, and Century Park in the middle of Shanghai. It was all lots of fun and we're enjoying the weather. It's in the low 60s. Yesterday was fairly clear, with a bit of smog. Today (Friday) looks a bit more overcast, but perphaps that will change. We are heading out soon for tea. Lots more to come! -AA

Chinese Visa Saga

2006-03-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

We are really excited about our trip to China which starts in just a few hours. We've been cleaning, planning, packing, and getting ready for the last few days as we prepare to head out. We will be visiting relatives of mine who are living in Shanghai for a couple of years while my uncle finishes his career. Laura has been busy reading guides to travel in China and we’ve been e-mailing back and forth to figure out what we need to do as we prepare. We never thought we’d visit China and are quite excited to have the opportunity to do so and to have relatives to be our guides! Of course, we may be exhausted by the time we get done because my Aunt Louise has about a million things planned for us to do!

In order to travel to China, it is necessary to have a Chinese Visa. Many countries either don’t require visas or they sell them at the point of entry. China requires you to get one in advance. We figured that we could just fill out a form online, maybe send a copy of our passport, and we’d get our visas back. It’s just not that simple. You have to either go in person, or send someone on your behalf, to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. or to the Chinese Consulate General’s office to which your region of the country is assigned. Ours needed to go to the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in San Francisco. You can pay someone a fee to go and represent you, you can go yourself, or you can get lucky and have friends who live in the Bay Area. As we do have friends who live there, we picked the third option!

Now we just have to hope that the spots of mold that are growing on our passports because the USPS dropped them in some water don't keep us from going anywhere that we want to go!

It sure seems wierd that we'll get on a plane in Portland at noon on Tuesday, get off ten hours later in Tokyo during the late afternoon on Wednesday! Coming back we get in about six hours before we leave! This will be my first trip across the International Date Line!

Picnic Table Preparations

2005-12-27T23:46:00.000-07:00

One of the tasks that we were assigned was painting and assembling picnic tables for the church that we stayed at in Florida!

Florida Pictures

2005-12-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

I'm a little slow at getting them all scanned, but they are finally done. These are the pictures that Nori, Kelsey, Donald, and maybe someone else gave me to scan for the trip. Enjoy!

Audio Post

2005-07-10T13:05:00.000-06:00

And a second set of pictures...

2005-07-07T19:30:00.000-06:00

Here are a few more pictures, but read the post below first if you want to see them in order.

Here we are arriving at the Florida border.
Kandice helping paint a house.
And some proof that others in the group are working as well.
But there is still time for fun in the sun and the surf.

Thanks for checking in,

Pastor Andy

Finally, some pictures and some real internet access

2005-07-07T19:08:00.000-06:00

Hi Everyone,

I am borrowing a high speed network internet connection from one of our presenters who is staying at a nearby hotel. So finally I can upload a few pictures and let you know that we really are alive and well here in Florida.

There have been a few minor sunburns and only one major one that resulted in blisters, but that was the nurse's son, so he had to tough it out on his own. Kayla, everyone is doing great and having fun, including Grandma. She has been a real blessing to us and to our trip; thank you for sharing her with us. Kandice is having a wonderful time (see her picture below) and has been very involved in everything that we've been doing. She's just a little under the weather today from a touch of stomach trouble and maybe a bit of the flu, but she felt well enough to go swimming this evening at our "Low Boil." A Low Boil is shrimp, smoked sausage, potatoes, and corn on the cob cooked all together and eaten with no utensils! Mmm, tasty, and fresh shrimp!

Here are some picture from our week. We'll have a bunch more at an upcoming slide slow at church I'm sure.

Here we are outside Redeemer Lutheran in Macon, GA.

Outside our Saturday night home

Our Macon hosts, the Rodgers

Who were nice enough to bring us a true Southern Breakfast!

The Sanctuary at Redeemer

Audio Post

2005-07-07T16:51:00.000-06:00

Audio Post

2005-07-06T15:07:00.000-06:00

Tuesday Update!

2005-07-05T21:57:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone. I'm on an old and slow half-speed dialup connection, so it's taken awhile to be able to update you. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to send some pictures. I tried to send one tonight, but it took almost 20 minutes and didn't even work! Everything else is going well and we're "enjoying" the near-100-degree temperatures.

We have spent Monday and Tuesday working on a variety of projects around Ft. Pierce, doing painting, insulation, carrying sheetrock, and repairing carpentry. Everyone is doing well and having fun. I do have some picture that I want to share so I hope to find a WiFi connection and pass them along to you.

Thanks for your support,
Pastor Andy

Audio Post

2005-07-03T10:54:00.000-06:00

Our Trip Itinerary

2005-07-01T12:43:00.000-06:00

Here are the plans for our trip so that you can follow along at home!

Friday, July 1, 2005 – Wasilla, AK
10:00 p.m. – Gather at GSLC
Parents – Sign Servanthood in the Sun Permission Forms!
Adult Chaperones Meet
Tara Wreyford develops Covenant of Conduct with group
Check-In for Delta Flights online
Commission and Communion service
11:30 p.m. – Depart for Ted Steven’s Anchorage International Airport
Rides coordinated by Michelle Boyden
Saturday, July 2, 2005 – In Transit to Macon, GA
1:00 a.m. – Arrive at ANC airport and finish checking in
2:40 a.m. – Delta #1233 from Anchorage, AK to Salt Lake City, UT
9:13 a.m. – Arrive in SLC
Rendezvous with Gloria
10:30 a.m. – Delta #387 from Salt Lake City, UT to Atlanta, GA
4:05 p.m. – Arrive in Atlanta
Gather luggage
Pick up vans (include 3 confirmation numbers)
5:00 p.m. – Depart ATL for The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Macon, GA
390 Pierce Avenue; Macon, GA 31204; 478-742-4281
7:30 – Arrive at Redeemer
Dinner provided by Christian Action Group
Overnight at Redeemer
Sunday, July 3, 2005 – In Transit to Ft. Pierce, FL
Breakfast – either simple food at the church or eat out before church
Pack vehicles except for traveling clothes if different from church clothes
Clean areas that we used
10:30 a.m. – Worship at Redeemer, followed by Lemonade in the Shade
Noon (or earlier) – Depart for St. Peter Lutheran Church in Ft. Pierce
2900 S. Jenkins Rd.; Ft. Pierce, FL; 561-461-7431
Late Drive-Thru lunch on the road somewhere
Stop at Florida Welcome Center for Pictures
7:00 p.m. – Arrive at St. Peter in Ft. Pierce
Monday, July 4 through Friday, July 8 – Ft. Pierce, FL
Participate in the many activities of the Servanthood in the Sun program.
Saturday, July 9, 2005 – Orlando, FL
Noon – Program concludes
Afternoon – Fun Day, most likely at Walt Disney World
5:00 – Andy or someone to church to get keys
Night – Stay at park until the very end (always in groups of 3 or more)
Stay at Trinity Lutheran Church in Kissimmee
3016 West Vine Street (US 192), Kissimmee FL USA 34741
Church Phone: 407-847-4204
Sunday, July 10, 2005 – In-Transit to Valdosta, GA
Morning and Early Afternoon – Beach time?
Afternoon – drive to Valdosta
8:00’ish – arrive in Valdosta
Evening – Stay at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
2804 Bemiss Rd,; Valdosta, GA 31602
Church: 229-247-4014
Monday, July 11, 2005 – Return to Atlanta and on to Anchorage
Brunch with Gloria Dei youth? Or breakfast in the area (Waffle House?)
10:00 a.m. – Depart Valdosta
3:00 p.m. – Arrive ATL airport
Return cars
5:45 p.m. – Delta #709 from Atlanta, GA to Salt Lake City, UT
7:43 p.m. – Arrive in Salt Lake City
Farewell to Gloria
8:55 p.m. – Delta #673 from Salt Lake City, UT to Anchorage, AK
11:46 p.m. – Arrive in ANC airport and get rides back home

Official Packing List from Florida

2005-06-27T21:45:00.000-06:00

[I will have copies of this release at Good Shepherd so that parents can sign them on Friday night. Also, please note their restrictions on cell phones and electronics. These supercede what we discussed at our meeting on Sunday, so please do not bring them. -Pastor Andy]

You will have a roll away bed, so you will need to bring a sleeping bag or bedroll and a pillow. You may still want a mat for our nights in Georgia. Bring clothing and other items appropriate to our summer weather, and the work projects.

PLEASE BRING:

Bible - an open heart and desire to serve
Guitar/musical instruments - Very small ones...like harmonicas
Camera, film, extra batteries
Notebook & pen
Shorts and Long pants
Fanny pack/Day pack
“Grubbies” to wear for work projects
T-shirts
Modest swimsuit and a towel
Walking/tennis shoes (closed toe)
Flip-Flops/Sandals (extra shoes)
Hat, cap or visor for working in the sun*
Insect Repellent
Sunglasses & sunscreen (SPF #30)*
1 paint brush (optional)
Water bottle or canteen*
Work/garden gloves
Sleeping bag/bed roll/pillow
Flashlight
Toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, wash cloth and towel, etc.)
A positive attitude, eagerness to learn, and a friendly smile!

*Florida summers are very hot and humid. It is essential you wear light-colored, cool and loose fitting clothing and stay well hydrated. Only modest attire will be permitted for safety reasons. For your health and protection, you must drink plenty of water and apply liberal amounts of sunscreen (minimum SPF #30).

PLEASE DO NOT BRING: Jewelry, video games, radios/boom boxes, pagers, cell phones, fireworks, any form of drugs or alcohol. These items will be confiscated. Personal CD Players will be allowed during lights out time. LOMF will not be responsible for loss or theft of these items.

PLEASE WRITE CAMPER’S NAME ON ALL PERSONAL ITEMS (CLOTHING, BEDDING, TOWELS, ETC) in waterproof Permanent Marker.

Medications will be the responsibility of each adult sponsor for the group. (In our case this will be Debbie Hanson) Please bring all medicines in original container with complete administration and storage directions clearly indicated. Further, enclose medicines in a Ziploc bag with your camper’s name clearly written in permanent marker on the bag.

If you have any questions about camp, registration, or any other concerns prior to or during camp please call Denise Baringer at 727.560.6241. Please bring all completed forms to camp with you. Health forms will be accepted without a Dr.’s signature.

Cordially,

Denise Baringer
Youth and Young Adult Disaster Response Coordinator

Enclosure: Parent Permission Form

Lutheran Outdoor Ministries of Florida
3815 W. State St, Tampa FL 33609-1259
Phone 813.801.9600 Fax 813.350.0664

SERVANTHOOD IN THE SUN - PARENT PERMISSION FORM

Dear Parent,

Our Program Committee and Planning Team have been busy putting together final details to make Servanthood in the Sun Week a fun and meaningful experience for your youth.

Servanthood in the Sun includes: Swimming Off-site work projects
Off-site field trip to see fireworks on 4th of July

Insurance coverage for these activities is not provided by LOMF. If you wish your youth to participate in these activities, we must have a copy of your permission on file. Please sign the form below and bring it with you to Servanthood in the Sun.

Cordially,

Denise Baringer
Youth and Young Adult Disaster Response Coordinator
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I waive any claims for personal injury or property damage that may occur as a result of my child’s participation in the following activities at Servanthood in the Sun:

Swimming Off-site work projects Off-site field trip to see fireworks on 4th of July

In consideration for ____________________________________’s (camper’s name) participation in above noted activities, I hereby grant to Lutheran Outdoor Ministries of Florida (LOMF), the Florida-Bahamas Synod of the Evangelical Church in America, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and their agents a release of all legal and equitable claims, actions, or suits that may arise as a result of the above named camper’s participation in planned program activities.

This release is to be read broadly and include transportation to and from planned program activities and transportation while involved in planned program activities.

________________________________________ __________________
Parent/Guardian Signature Date

Clothing - Think "appropriateness" and "modesty"

2005-06-27T19:34:00.000-06:00

There was some concern that we were not specific enough in our Sunday meeting about what sorts of clothing to bring on the trip. Tara wrote up the following to help you in your packing:

Girls, no short shorts. If you wear halter tops or midriffs in our free time, they should not be low cut and you will also need to wear a swim suit top, sports bra, or another layer. Skirts should also not be short, short.

Guys & Girls, please do not wear any low rider waistlines on any clothing. Clothing should at all times cover all underwear.

Please make sure all T-Shirts and clothing model appropriate messages. If any chaperone believes what you are wearing is inappropriate, you will be asked to change. So think while you are packing.

Packing List Update - Good News

2005-06-26T23:42:00.000-06:00

Just got an e-mail from Denise Baringer, our Servant Trip coordinator. She says that we won't need sleeping mats while we are in Florida, as we will have rollaway beds to sleep on. (We will still need mats for our nights in Georgia, however) Here's what her e-mail in response to my question about what we need to pack says:

Sorry to just now answer this--I have had major computer problems. We have rollaways so only sleeping bags are needed. Work clothes include jeans and at least one long sleeve shirt. Work gloves would be nice, but not necessary. An assortment of shorts and t shirt are all that is needed. Towels and washrags are needed as well. We have the rest of the tools.

Packing List

2005-06-26T16:34:00.000-06:00

Remember, please Pack Lightly, but also try and remember all of the things that we're going to need. Two duffle bags are better than one overgrown suitcase.

The Packing List:

Bible
Sleeping Bag/Bedroll/Blanket/Air mattress
Pillow
2 sets work clothes with long pants
Work shorts
Beach clothes/swimsuit (modest)
Towel/Washcloth/toiletries
Other clothes
Lightweight, long-sleeve shirt & pants
Hat (lightweight, cover top of ears)
Shoes (closed toed and closed heeled for work), tennis shows, sandals
Water Bottle
Sunscreen & DEET bug repellant
Clothes for Worship
Camera, Music player, Cell phone - YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Personal Spending Money ($40-$80)
Picture ID
Journal
Book to read on plane flights
"Shoveable" luggage (bear in mind, you may have to have it in your lap or next to you)

It's only one week away...

2005-06-24T18:44:00.000-06:00

Next Friday night 14 members of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church's high school youth group (JAM - Jesus Always Moves) will be boarding a plane for Atlanta and then 3 mini-vans to drive the rest of the way to Ft. Pierce, FL for our week of service and learning. We are joining with Lutheran Outdoor Ministries of Florida for their Servanthood in the Sun program. Please keep the youth and the 4 adults who will be joining them in your prayers for the next weeks.

We will be traveling to Atlanta on Delta #1233
Leaving Anchorage, AK (ANC) @ 2:40 am on 2 Jul 2005 and arriving in
Salt Lake City, UT (SLC) @ 9:13 am on 2 Jul 2005 connecting to
Delta #387 at 10:20 am on 2 Jul 2005 and arriving in
Atlanta, GA (ATL) @ 4:05 pm on 2 Jul 2005.

Make sure you have your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan cards with you so you can earn miles for this flight.