Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for January, 2008

The doorbell rang late this morning and the best looking delivery man I’ve ever seen was standing at the door because in his arms was my repaired laptop fresh off a trip to the Apple repair facility in Texas.  I had to send it off last week to have the logic board repaired.  So, now I feel connected again.  Can you hear my big sigh?

January 22, 2008

This past week we had a good winter storm come through North Carolina that left everything outside covered in beautiful white snow. Dana and I both had doctor’s appointments that day so we were pretty tuned in to the television in search of local closings. Alphabetical and slow. So, we hopped online and checked out the Big Four broadcasting stations in Charlotte and discovered the vast difference in how each website had it’s list.

4. The worst… Fox Charlotte. It listed nothing that I could find. Maybe I overlooked it on their main page… you tell me…

3. The only reason WBTV didn’t rank last was because it had something… if you can even call it that.

2. WCNC had a decent user-friendly list.

1. The best source (by far) out of the four was WSOC TV 9. They not only had a name list with alphabet links but also told the county, time of closing, and time the info was submitted.

Hope this helps you if you live in the Charlotte region.

Here’s the article. 

I hope this doesn’t materialize and especially doesn’t catch on to be the norm for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across the country.  Internet access in Tanzania is operated like this and it hurts, I tell ya.  Once we get back to TZ, we’ll have that kind of set up where we buy internet ‘credit’ to use by paying Tsh. 95 per MB.  At today’s exchange rate, that’s a little over 8 cents per megabyte.

To put it into perspective, while in TZ if we want to download one of John Piper’s free sermon podcasts which average around 12MB each, we’ll spend about $1USD.  When sermon podcasts are an intricate part of your spiritual nourishment while on the mission field, those little dollars add up quickly.  On top of that, it’s not a dollar going to a ministry, it’s going to Time Warner.

Unlimited true high speed internet, anything equivalent to dial-up in the USA and faster (trust me, I’ve surfed while in foreign countries), is a beautiful thing.  Cherish it. A lot.

There’s no argument about the foulness of some web content.  It seems as though temptation can always be just a click away.

I cherish my marriage, my Dana as well as the One who gave us marriage.  That’s why I use an internet accountability software called Covenant Eyes.

Dana and I have tried a different setup by xxxchurch.com but it wasn’t a thorough as CE is.  But, xxx is free and CE is currently going for $84.95/year.

You choose your accountability partners and they log in to the covenanteyes.com to select how often they’d like to receive your internet usage log (every single URL with date and time) in their e-mail inbox.  But, even with an accountability program, the ultimate decision is whether you want to be held accountable or not.

It is worth every penny to protect our family.

Tonight, Dana and I went to our first of four lamaze classes.  When we checked in at the front counter, we were told that there were four other couples already in the room. As we were walking down the hall, the thought ran through my head of I’m not up for meeting a bunch of new people.  I only spoke to one guy close by while I was taking my seat.  I felt reserved.  I noticed others were reserved.  A part of me didn’t like that the thought was pretty automatic for me.  Kinda how I’ve always been.

But, now is different.  Especially after many months in Tanzania.  I want to know people.  I want to find out about them.  I want to enjoy the time I’ll spend with them and them enjoy the time with me.  I can easily credit it all to me definitely now being a people person but there’s another big factor… God.  Jesus.  The Holy Spirit.  He has given me compassion for people.  Those I know.  Those I don’t know.  I like it and feel guilty when my habit of not being up to meeting new people dampens the God-given motivation in me to be something to somebody.

It also made me note a difference between Americans and Tanzanians.  When one of them walks into a room full of other TZians, every single person receives a face-to-face greeting.  As more time goes by, I begin to notice the many differences between the two cultures.  Some good.  Some bad.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you think.