Hey JJ this one's for you!

Another busy day here at the Mission. I grabbed a shot of four of the guys I work with. Carl, Larry, JJ, and Mark stopped for a minute to let me capture a snapshot. Bless you boys!

The Linux bug has got me bad

Just another snapshot of a new Linux desktop. This is Mandriva 2006 useing the KDE desktop GUI and slightly tweaked. Next II will upload a Fluxbox desktop.

The Mission Men

As you all know I work at the New Life Mission here in Kamloops. This morning as I was getting some shots of the renovations we are doing here I snapped a picture of two of my co- workers. Carl (in yellow shirt) runs the dayroom 4 days a week as the support/chaplain worker and Mark is our Kitchen Manager. They both have the un enviable task of learning to live with me so please pray for them.

Bright Shiney One

He was the bright light at the local petting zoo. I could not resist 

Jim packing his wing

My brother Derek flies with this nice fellow. I was driving back from Barrier and found him "wrapping up" his day so to speak. I had just missed Derek so we chated for a bit and I am looking forward to getting in the air this summer. 

Dwighter Doing His Thing

This be Dwight. Dwight is truly a handy man. He can fix or build almost anything. Here he is doing the foor of the new reception area. Yea Dwight. 

Here is another one of Bert and the gang at the Mission

 

The Open Door Fellowship

These are some of the dear saints of the Open Door Fellowship in Barrier. I was ask to come and share the Gospel and while I was there I met these great folks. We had a great time and some time I hope to return. Bless you folks. 

The Wall

I was recently in Barrier to share the Gospel. This was painted on the wall of the school. It kinda caught my eye. 

Al at work... well kinda...sorta

This here is my buddy Al he comes down to help us during lunch cleanup. Life at the mission can be very busy and Al helps keep us from drowning. Bless him all over! 

Bert and the gang

Bert My old friend came to the mission with a bunch of international students. They raised a nice donation and came and did chapel and helped serve lunch. What great bunch of youngsters! 

Change at the Mission..... Again!

It's lunch time at the Mission and I have a few minutes to lay down a new post. We are under construction here and things are upside down. We are going ahead with IHA to create a new medical centre. Housed here at the Mission we will have both dental and medical facilities. I am looking forward to having this new addition to our services. With all the construction the offices are moved and we are all trying our best to make it work.

School at work

This is a little snapshot of our new learning centre in action. We have created a small classroom where anyone can come and get upgrading and computer skills. The Mission is growing again! 

Mp3 Players

Well the experiment ended badly. I told you earlier I was trying Napster To Go and the new Iriver H10. I am here to say both experiments have ended. The Iriver was a dog and I took it back. I now have a iPod Nano. While it seems to have it's own issuses it sounds good and works ok. I do miss the FM radio though. As for Napster it helped me remember how bad DRM can be. Thats my story and I'm stickin to it.

Gone but Not

Linux has been a bug in my system for some time now. I have tried a few different Distros but I keep coming back to this one. Simple clean and fast. This is a KDE desktop but it will boot into many others including Flux Box. I have been having a ball and leaning lots about the open source community. The windows tax has me looking for alternatives and wow have I found some.

MY WIFE IS GOOD TO ME

She bought me a hard drive based Mp3 player. A Creative Zen Mini. With all the extras in a kit but the darn thing would not work. The touch pad was hooped. So I took it back to get a different one and guess what. None left! Well after much searching I found an iRiver H10 and brought it home. My search was narrowed by my desire to find a player that worked with Napster To Go the only music service in Canada that allows you to download unlimited tracks to you computer and or your digital music player. You rent the music, as long a s you pay 14.95 per month you can download as much as you want. I thought this would be a good way to "try before you buy". Well the first iRiver was a dud too. Took it back and tried again. Third times a charm as this one works well. It took a firmware update to get the best out of it but I must say it sounds great with my sennhieser headphones. Battery life is ok. I have learned that to get max battery life you need to play non-drm mp3's. Any other format consumes more power, up to 25% more. To bad Napster is WMA. Oh well you can't have it all. We shall see how the whole thing works out but I have reservations about Napsters customer service I was on the phone 3 times and have still not spoken to anyone. The last time I was disconnected after 30 minutes on hold. I will keep you posted.

These are two of my girls sisters to the end 

It's been a while

I have been so busy over the last while I have not posted in a long time. But here I am plunking away. We are now mostly settled in the new home we bought. I have forgotten how much work it is to move and setup a new place. jackie has bustled around for days setting up the new nest, I think she is having fun. Kristine is enjoying her new space the only draw back is I hardly see her any more. I like the new place it's starting to grow on me. I look forward to summer and riding bike again. The mission is changing again and with it my shifts. I am back to 4 on 4 off 12 hour shifts. I am hoping to get back to Mon.- Fri. Soon. Well thats all for now. Grace and peace be with you.

We are in a new house

Well I have been away for a while, very busy. But I am here to report we have a new home. We have moved from Westsyde to Brock. From 850 sq Ft to 1440 sq Ft. Funny though I can't seem to find any empty spaces in the new place. You would think that taking what fit in the mobile and moving it here you would have some extra space but I do not. It would seem that we had things crammed in pretty tight. We have had a wild time getting into the new place with each day a real learning experience. I have a new found distaste for realtors, they are buck passers extaordinare. Our move date moved several times and we finaly moved in on the 15th of Dec. Pictures will follow in my next posting.

We are so very proud of our fair haired beauty. Rhea has grown into a awesome young lady. This is a portrait of her I took recently during her visit us. I took this with my new Sigma 70-200 2.8 . I love the Bokeh this lens provides. It enhances the natural beauty of Rhea's beauty. She looks great!