Black Jack of Belarat*

Ok, so he was not really black, instead he was a medium grey, but he surely was a rat.

Sometime this last winter, various "critters" attempted to make their home under our box-barn. It had always been undesirable, but it became absolutely unacceptable a few weeks ago when we found a snake quartering under there. After killing the snake, I poured a small concrete footing to keep these "critters" out. Evidently, one rat remained trapped under there and eventually dug his way out. Upon seeing his hole, we tried to get him out but we were not successful. This morning, Pascal made a bunch a racket in the box-barn and came out triumphantly with a large rat. However, both Pete and Pascal have learned that it is more fun to play with their prizes than to actually kill them, so I carefully placed several lead pellets in his mid-rear section. I do not think that he suffered much at all.

I covered up his hole, so that hopefully we can be a happy, "critter" free family again.
Enjoy!

* Can you guess where "Black Jack of Belarat" is from?

Thesis

Wednesday morning I went to defend my thesis. Everything went as good as can be expected. I was asked to add one sentence to my Abstract, which I promptly did and my advisers approved. So I am now technically finished with my MS degree (though I will not be officially done until the end of the semester). It is very relieving to have this task completed, and we are very thankful to the Lord for his help during all of this. Surely He was with us on Wed. because many more things could have gone wrong, but did not.
Enjoy!

Sorry for not giving a Daniel update sooner...we were busy enjoying him and forgot that there were those out there waiting for more pictures. He is doing really well in all respects and has a wonderful habit of sleeping for six hours at a time, which makes for an almost sane Mama! :) Our friends have been wonderful to bring supper over every other day for the past two weeks, which has been a big help...although I think my husband is afraid that perhaps I have completely forgotten how to cook. :) Glory had her fourth birthday just after we brought Daniel home; so between the birthday commotion, Grandmothers coming and going, and just the excitement of finally having Dan, it's taken us this long to settle into any sort of "normal". (Whatever that is.) Yet, we feel extremely blessed that God has given us the opportunity to run this race and pray for His grace to help us finish it well!

Meet Dan Courage

On Saturday, August 23rd at 12:51am, Daniel Courage Hollingsworth was born. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 1 oz. and was 20 3/4 inches long. Comparatively, he was shorter than Levi, but outweighed his older brother by 2 oz. Glory and Levi met Daniel later that morning and took a liking to him immediately. I have heard of children being jealous of their newborn sibling, but we have not yet witnessed that. After Glory got over the shock of us being in the hospital she became the delighted little "mama". Levi on the other hand was just proud that he could touch Daniel "gently"; he did have fun counting Daniel's ears, and eyes (again, remembering to be "gentle").

We are all doing well, and expect to return home on Sunday. We appreciate your prayers as we help this little child grow in the strength of the Lord Jesus.
Enjoy!
Taylor
P.S. - We have (and continue to get more) pictures. We have yet to determine how we will share them, but if you are interested then let one of us know.

The "LAZY" Struggle

In engineering (especially including computer programming), I think that to some degree part of our job is to help people be "lazy" by simplifying basic or repetitive processes. The definition of lazy can varying here depending on context and/or relative positions or views. Let us also be clear that the "lazy" that I am speaking of is not intended as the stubborn sort of lazy where someone will not do something because they simply do not want to. Rather I am speaking of lazy in terms of effectiveness or efficiency. For example, have you ever used a calculator find the square root of a number or to multiply two large numbers, or perhaps you have used a computer to balance/track your checkbook, pay bills, online, manage income and expenses for a business, or make future projections based on some data (many online services, like bill pay, like to substitute "convenience" for "lazy", but do not be fooled, I am speaking of the same thing). These are quite useful tools, but there is a drawback...

Simple users of the tools can abuse the tools by using them to replace higher order processes, like thinking, reasoning, and debate. Have you ever met a high school student who needed a calculator to subtract 40 from 100? I have. My point here is not to pick on our educational system, but to consider how much technology is too much.

Think of it this way, we have three basic economic classes: upper/wealthy, middle, and lower/poor. What would happen if we could group people into these same groups in terms of knowledge. Assuming that our technology aides the upper knowledge class, how does it impact the middle and lower classes. Which class is growing faster due to technology?

Enjoy!

Network Administrator

When working (or playing) on the internet have you ever received a message that reads something like, "...please contact your network administrator..."? If you use the internet, then I am sure that you have received this message at some point (whether you actually read it or not is a different story). When I read this type of message or when my wife says that she got this message I get a big lump in my throat and my palms begin to get a bit shaky and sweaty. Why? Because, as of a few weeks ago I became the Network Administrator for our little wireless network for the house!

Theoretically, this is a simple job: keep the internet server running; turn on the internet; turn on the wireless router...OH! but it is SO much more complicated than that! Here is my latest episode...

I rearranged my office to accommodate a new computer that I plan to use for my WTC teaching work. On Thursday afternoon, the internet seemed sluggish, but still functional. I checked our wireless internet connection and it still showed 3-4 bars of reception (the max available). On Friday, it was unreasonably slow and it was all that I could do to stay at work. By Saturday, then connection was dropping about once an hour. So I rebooted the internet server, checked all my settings and tried again. It was going OK...for a while...argh! Today, Monday morning the connection was still slow and still dropping. So I put my Network Admin. hat on again and moved my wireless internet connection modem over about 2 feet. I now have high internet speeds again...go figure.

Enjoy!

Amish Computer Virus

My heart sank as I read the spam that began, “By opening this e-mail, you have activated the Amish computer virus.” Then I realized that not only was my computer in jeopardy, so was my reputation, as it continued, “Since the Amish don’t have computers, this works on the honor system. Please delete all your files. Thank you.”

Tracie Walker

Reader’s Digest, August 2008, p. 163

(While this may be funny to you it is really funny to the people that I work with. Many of our programmers are Amish!)

Enjoy!