according to jeff

I just completed Murder in the Mummy’s Tomb, by Kel Richards and published by RiverOak Publishing.

I ran across this book while at our one remaining Family Christian Store last week. (We used to have two Family Christian Stores; now we just have one.) This book was on the sale rack, marked down from $12.99 to about $4. I was ready for a light read, and figured I couldn’t hardly go wrong for $4. So, I picked up a copy.

I found this to be a very pleasant, light read.

I suppose it falls in the “clean, Christian, mystery” genre, as it is clean, includes some Christian themes, and is primarily a mystery.

What do I mean by Christian themes? While few of the characters are Christians, the narratives often gently explore religion and faith. For instance (from page 100):

“Look at all the millions,” continued Wilding, waving his fork in wide sweeps, a note of real passion in his voice, “the millions who believe in astrology and tarot cards and palmistry and spiritualism and seances. I’m not Robinson Crusoe, you know.”

“He’s quite right,” said Elspeth Fell, the passion in her voice almost matching that in Wilding’s. “There are many millions around the world who believe in these things.”

“Of course there are,” Chesterton offered. “When belief in God declines, belief in these other things increases.”

“Surely,” said Narracourt, “as belief in God decreases, scepticism increases.”

“Huh!” snorted Chesterton. “Would that it did. The decline in Christianity, my dear Sir Edward, means the increase in gullibility. It is not the case that those who do not believe in God believe in nothing. Rather is it the case that those who do not believe in God will believe in anything! They have discarded their last protection against superstition — namely a belief in the God who is there.”

Some Christian fiction is over-the-top, shoe-horning in the gospel, in what feels like unnatural ways. Other Christian fiction is more subtle, which may result in the message being missed completely. In this work, the author found the happy median. Not at all over-bearing, but still present and uplifting.

The mystery was mysterious enough. The romance was sweet and innocent. The nature of sin was explored. And I enjoyed it. Murder in the Mummy’s Tomb was a $4 winner!

Our friend, Bonnie, is starting a Pampered Chef consulting business. To help her get off to a good start, Lu and I are hosting a Pampered Chef party on this next Friday evening. If you’ve been wanting something from Pampered Chef, but haven’t stumbled across a consultant to place your order, then we could pass your order on to Bonnie. You’ll save shipping costs and Bonnie will make some sales. It’s a win-win situation!

“People use duct tape to try to fix everything.
God used nails.”
— Church Sign

I recently started receiving unsolicited text messages on two of my mobile phones. These text messages were from “26706″ and contained movie information.

Turns out these messages were from enmob.com, and were a subscription service that included a monthly fee billed directly to my cell phone bill. The enmob Web site claims that subscription requires both signing up and confirming the subscription at their Web site with a four-digit pin. However, I know that I didn’t do that.

I’d also been unsuccessful at sending a “STOP” message to 26706, as my phone expects to send messages to a 10-digit number, not a 5-digit number. Neither replying to a received message nor sending a new message was successful.

Today, I received a text message from enmob thanking me for resubscribing — which I had not done. Hoping to get the bottom of it, I visited their Web site, where I found their phone number. When I called it, a recording answered, informing me that hold times were higher than normal, and encouraging me to send an email to support@enmob.com. Then, rather than putting me into the hold queue, it shuttled me off into a voice mail box. With a system like that, it doesn’t seem possible that their hold times would be higher than normal. In fact, it doesn’t seem possible that there would be hold times at all!

Slightly irritated but still undaunted, I next sent an email to the support address. It quickly bounced back as undeliverable with a cryptic error about being unable to verify mchsi.com. What a good way to reduce the amount of email technical support!

Since text messaging, phone calls, and email didn’t work, I opted to call my carrier: Cingular, um, I mean, I next called the new at&t. I talked to a helpful representative. Within 10 minutes, he’d found and credited two of these fraudulent subscription charges and removed the subscriptions. The agent thinks that I won’t receive any more of these messages now. If I continue to receive text messages, then I’m invited to call Cingular back again.

So, I have high marks for Cingular, but very low marks for enmob.com. According to my experience:

1. enmob subscribed me without my permission
2. enmob billed me without my permission
3. “stop” instructions are unsuccessful because enmob doesn’t provide a 10-digit messaging number
4. contacting enmob by phone is unsuccessful
5. contacing enmob by email is unsuccessful

These lead me to believe that enmob is totally fraudulent and relying upon peoples gullibility and inattentiveness.

I recently made a purchase from sweetwater.com, and had a great experience.

Sweetwater sells audio equipment — mixers, microphones, and stuff like that. I don’t often need equipment like that, and when I do, I talk to my friend Jim. Jim often points me to comparison charts at the Sweetwater Web site. Recently, I selected something and placed an order online. Here’s what happened next.

• I received an email confirmation of my order.
• I received a phone call from Sweetwater to confirm and thank me for the order.
• I received an email confirming that the package had shipped.
• The package arrived on time, and the packing material included a nice insert about how important my satisfaction was. It also included some hard candy!
• A few days after that, I received a second phone call to determine if I was satisfied.

Nothing special about the email confirmations and notices, but the satisfaction insert in the package and the two phone calls went beyond what I usually experience.

My typical Friday includes lunch with my Laridian associates. Today’s choice was Thai Moon.

Actually, I’m surprised that I haven’t yet reviewed Thai Moon. It’s one of our favorites. In fact, regular readers of my Friday Lunch posts may recall that I often compare the Asian restaurants to Thai Moon, the gold standard in Cedar Rapids.

The Thai Moon menu features both Thai and Chinese selections. The lunch menu is not as extensive, or expensive, as the dinner menu. However, since the lunch servings are more than ample, we usually visit for lunch, rather than dinner.

I typically order the Evil Jungle Prince with Chicken (Thai) or the Mongolian Beef (Chinese) or the Kung Pao Chicken (Chinese). However, since I was sure that I had previously discussed Thai Moon here, I opted to try something new today — something that I had not yet discussed: Salmon in Red Curry (Thai).

This dish included salmon (no surprise there), onions, and red pepper. The red curry provided a bit of pop, though I found that the spiciness varied quite a bit from bite to bite. (In comparison, I recently tried Szechuan Pork at Egg Roll House, and it was spicy throughout.) Since this was a Thai dish, it did not include a spring roll or crab rangoon. Instead, it included a salad and a chicken-on-a-stick. (It has a fancy name, but I don’t know how to spell it.) Salmon can be easily overcooked, but this salmon was just right. I’d definitely have this dish again.

Thai Moon is also known (by us) for its summer rolls. These rolls are wrapped in a gooey rice paper and are not deep fried. Served with a peanut sauce, they make a great appetizer.

Sushi is available at dinner, but not at lunch. If you’d like sushi options, then I’d recommend you try Sushi House. Otherwise, for Thai and Chinese, you must try Thai Moon.

I’m pretty proud of my daughter for many reasons, but what I’d like to highlight here is her music.

Bethany participated in the Cedar Rapids City-Wide Music Contest this past Saturday. It was held at Jefferson High School. This is an instrumental contest for students, grade school through high school. It’s not a competition, where students compete against one another, but rather an individual evaluation. Each student or ensemble is evaluated based on his own performance.

This year’s contest involved a lot of kids. There were 17 performance rooms, and performances were scheduled every six minutes in each room. So, with 10 performances an hour, 17 rooms, and around 8 scheduled hours, there were around 1360 performances. One judge told me afterwards that he had heard 75 performances. With that estimate, there were around 1275 performances. Wow. Given that many kids and performances, the scheduling seemed to hold up pretty well. There were some glitches in our room assignment and paperwork, but overall the contest was a success from our perspective.

Of those 1000+ performances, Bethany gave three: flute, piano, and harp. One advantage of home education is that Bethany is able to focus more time on music than many other traditional students can.

I used my new H4 recorder to make recordings. Here they are:

1. Flute, 1+: Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy (Doppler)
2. Piano, 1: D-Flat Prelude (Chopin)
3. Harp, 1+: Impromptu Caprice (Pierne)

(Keep in mind that I recorded in WAV format but converted to the smallest, lowest quality MP3 format. Also, the contests were held in high school classrooms, and the crowd noise in the hallway sometimes bled through.)

Ask new parents what some of their “must-haves” are, and many will list such things as a digital camera and a video camera. Why? We know that time flies by and that memories are fleeting, so we want to do what we can to help remember those precious moments of life.

For us, some of those precious moments of life include music concerts and contests. It’s nice to be able to make a record of those events. Plus, In addition to recording our own family activities, I also often am asked to make recordings for other people.

Up until a week or so ago, I’d use my digital video camera with two external microphones to make these recordings. I’d need my camera, my tripod, an extension cord, two external mics, two mic stands, and microphone cords. Plus a new digital tape. Not exactly a quick and unobtrusive setup.

When I need to make a video recording, I still use that system. However, for audio recording, I now use a Zoom H4 Handy Recorder. This little device, just a bit larger than a deck of cards, is amazing. It records in either WAV or MP3 format, at up to 24-bit, 96kHz (WAV format), and saves the recording on an SD card. (I knew I’d find something to do with those 1G SD cards that newegg had on sale a few weeks ago!) It supports two external microphones, with phantom power, but also includes two internal microphones configured in an X-Y arrangement.

I gave it its first test this past weekend at the Cedar Rapids City-Wide Music Contest. Even though the recording conditions were not ideal, the recording results were very satisfactory.

Another advantage that this H4 has over using the video camera to record is that the back-end processing is much easier. I can now just copy the WAV file to my PC, process it with a program like WavePad, and burn it to CD.

Even though the H4 is very cool and makes recording on the road very easy, it could use a few improvements. For instance, fine-tuning the recording levels isn’t as easy as it should be, and if the levels are adjusted while recording, noise from the controls will be inserted into the recording. So, it’s best to set the level “close” and then leave it alone. Even so, though, I think I’m going to be very happy with it.

My typical Friday includes lunch with my Laridian associates. Today’s choice was Irish Democrat Pub and Grill.

While I can’t comment on the pub part of the Irish Democrat, I can say that the grill part is pretty good. The menu features an assortment of salads, burgers, and sandwiches.

My choice today was the Maytag Grilled Chicken Cobb Salad. The “Maytag” represents Maytag Blue Cheese, which was crumbled over an ample bed of lettuce, tomato, onion, carrots, and cucumbers. The crumbled blue cheese was joined by crumbled bacon and a sliced, hard-boiled egg. A grilled chicken breast, flanked by blue cheese dressing on the side, sat atop. While it wasn’t as good as a Chicago Dog from the Flying Weenie (but then, what is?), it was plenty good.

One team from last year’s fantasy baseball league is unable to return this year. Therefore, our Iowa Farm League has an opening for a new owner. If you’d like to take advantage of this rare event and join our league, let me know as soon as possible, or contact Brian, our commissioner, via the IFL blog.

Here is some vital info that a new owner will need to know:

1. There is a small fee — around $10, I think.
2. The draft is scheduled for Saturday, March 31, at 8 AM. Plan on spending about 4 to 5 hours with us. You must be able to attend the draft in order to participate.
3. The new owner will be eligible to keep up to two players off of last year’s Mud Boyz team. This means that you start with the same advantage as returning owners.
4. Our league scores with these categories: runs, runs batted in, home runs, stolen bases, on base percentage, wins, holds, saves, strikeouts, WHIP.
5. We play with National League players.
6. A full league is 12 teams. We currently have 11, so we need you!

Tomorrow is, of course, the beginning of the new start of Daylight Savings Time (DST). I like Daylight Savings Time, and am glad to see it expanded. In fact, since I don’t wait for a school bus at the corner, I think I’d be happy to have DST all year long!

At the close of his segment today, the announcer on Fox News’ 8:00 CT radio broadcast reminded us to set our clocks back tomorrow. Oops. If you do that, you’ll find yourself two hours late. Though the starting date has changed, the old adage still applies: spring forward; fall back.

This new starting date has created several problems for computer makers. Windows Update has already updated my Windows XP computers, and my Mac has automatically updated as well.

Palm has released a patch for their Palm OS and Windows CE handhelds. If you have one of these, you can download the patch here. Even though I don’t use my Palm T5 as a mobile device, I downloaded and installed the patch. It took perhaps 5 minutes.

Microsoft has released a patch for handhelds running Windows Mobile / Pocket PC / Windows CE / (substitute branding-of-the-day here) devices. Download this patch here. This update process is a little more involved. It verifies that you have updated the host computer and provides instructions for patching Outlook, installing the latest version of Microsoft ActiveSync (if needed), and finally the patch for the mobile device. Between updating Outlook and ActiveSync, plus installing a genuine windows validation plugin, and finally the DST patch for my device, this update wasn’t nearly as quick as the Palm T5 update. It took well over 30 minutes.

My typical Friday includes lunch with my Laridian associates. Today’s choice was Biaggi’s.

Biaggi’s is a casual to upscale Italian restaurant. While restaurants such as Zio Johno’s offer traditional fare — such as spaghetti, ravioli, manicotti and lasagna with red, meat sauce — Biaggi’s offerings go beyond these standards. Choices with mushrooms and cream sauces abound!

Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of mushrooms and cream sauces. As a result, Biaggi’s isn’t among my favorite selections.

I’d like to tell you more about today’s experience; however, I was unable to join my associates today. I’ve invited them to submit their comments for publication here, so watch the comments to see if any take me up on it!

I recently completed evangelism for the rest of us, by Mike Bechtle. The author’s premise is that since the majority of Americans are extroverts, and since most outreach material is designed by and for extroverts, those with a less extroverted personality feel like evangelism is a square-peg-in-round-hole activity. Mr. Bechtle addresses this by arguing all believers can obey God’s command to make disciples by “sharing Christ within your personality style.”

The author suggests that since the majority of Americans have an extroverted personality, then this becomes the norm by which we compare ourselves. For instance, it is more common to find a quiet person who wishes that he was more outgoing than to find an outgoing person who wishes that he was more reflective. Some with more introverted personalities even begin to feel guilty that they aren’t outgoing “like everyone else.”

Then, when evangelism is presented as an “outgoing” activity, or an activity for outgoing people, the guilt may multiply. On the one hand, there’s the desire to obey and share. But on the other hand, confrontational street evangelism (for example) doesn’t seem effective for many people.

However, when we realize that the command to evangelize and our individual personalities are both from God, then it shouldn’t be surprising that people with all sorts of personalities are able to evangelize. The trick is breaking out of our often limited view of evangelism.

The biblical model of evangelism is primarily a process, not an event. The pattern involves meeting people at their level, developing a relationship, and moving them along a notch or two in their spiritual journey. [Page 53]

The book explores this concept further, providing some concrete examples and insights which I found helpful. He shows that people with various personality types all have something to offer!

The exciting thing about our unique God-given design is that we’re all so different. Not everyone can be reached by everyone. That’s why he puts people in our lives we can influence. Extroverts tend to have more relationships in their lives. Introverts tend to have fewer, but deeper, relationships. Introverts will take the time to build trust in a relationship and deal patiently with someone’s questions. [Page 55]

It surprises me that, during the 2006 baseball season, the Detroit Tiger’s Joel Zumaya threw 233 pitches that were clocked at 100 MPH or faster, while all other pitchers combined threw only 102 pitches clocked at 100 MPH or faster.

The Sporting News, March 5, 2007

His photo has graced the covers of several magazines. He’s been a star pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, a team with many star pitchers. I’ve read of his Christian faith in magazines such as WORLD, Sports Spectrum, and others. He’s been involved in many Christian ministries, including helping with the launch of a new Christian school in the Atlanta area. Many people looked up to him as a baseball hero, while others of us applauded his faith.

Yet, with sadness, I read this week of his divorce after 16-years of marriage.

How do things like this happen?

Perhaps a little neglect over a long time.

Perhaps failure to resist or flee temptation.

Perhaps expectations grounded on TV drama instead of God’s Word.

Perhaps.

But one thing is certain. When a Christian man and a Christian woman divorce, one or both has lost their vision.

After all, what’s marriage about? Romance? Companionship? Love? Sex? Confidence? Friendship? Yes! However, even in the best marriages, these can wax and wain. If that’s all we have, then it’s not a very solid foundation.

Yet, as they say on TV: “But wait! There’s even more!”

As great as all those things are, marriage isn’t about you and me. It’s about God.

Yes, marriage is about God. According to Ephesians 5:32, my marriage is to be a picture of the love between God and His people. The Apostle Paul calls it a mystery — how something as simple and lovely and good and almost universally practiced as marriage is a picture of God’s everlasting love through His son, Jesus. My love for my wife is to show how Jesus loves you and me. My wife’s love for me is to show how you and I respond to Jesus. That’s why God cares about my marriage. That’s why my marriage shows my love for God and can reveal Him to those lost and hurting around me.

What a great vision of marriage!

It’s a vision that can help us avoid those first steps of neglect. It can help us resist temptation. It can help us get back on track. And perhaps best of all, it can help us look beyond ourselves and look to God!