The first broken bone

This is the hand of my youngest daughter Kristine. She broke her index finger at the joint while playing basketball. Doctor says tape and 4 weeks of rest will heal it. I'm glad it was not too serious. She was a real trooper and weathered the pain well.

This picture was taken later during the same walk. I have touched up the contrast and the saturation for effect. 

The Wall

It has stood the test of time. A walk in the downtown area brought me to this old brick wall. A nice old wall. I thought of the story behind the the building and wondered who had laboured to build it. Each brick nestled into place by hand. Simple things to amuse an old man. 

As you know I have been trying out various Linux distros and here is one of the most popular distros out there. It is called Suse Linux. it uses the KDE desktop. The learning curve has been a bit trying as there is a new language to learn. And while all the basic tasks are no brainers. Surfing email and chat are easy to learn, with programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, there is no difference. Messenger is replaced with multi protocol programs like Kopete and Gaim which where easy to learn and in my opinion better than MSN as there are no advertising. Photo editing and other tasks require learning new software choices like Gimp instead of Photoshop. While I have not mastered Photoshop I have become comfortable with it and Gimp has proven to be challenging. I am finding that I am using Linux more and more all the time and hope to make a complete switch soon. I will still need Windows to run Photoshop for working with my brother Derek. I do a little sports photography for him and we are setup with Windows. So for now at least I will continue to run a dual boot system.

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! 

Family Rocks

We had a visit from our daughter this week and I had a chance to finally get a curret picture of her. And a few of her and Mom. Awesome! 

Re: The Lens

I spent the week-end shooting with my new Sigma 70-200 2.8 and I must say it is at least as good as the Canon. I took about 1400 pictures and found the lens to be fast and crisp in all situations. A very good buy.

Selling A House

Well we are still trying to sell our little trailer. We have had several folks come through and finaly an offer, it is quite low but I will try to work it and see where we get. I am hoping to be in a new place by Christmas.

Bears & Stuff

My day at work was over and I had just gotten off the bus. A quick descent down 54 stairs into the trailer park. I was ajusting my Mp3 player when I caught somthing out of the corner of my eye in yard 6 ft. to my left. At first I thought it was a dog and then quikly realized that it was way too big. I stopped to see what it was and to my amazment a medium sized black bear stood on his hind legs with one paw on the tree beside him and growled at me..... It took a moment to register what I was looking at. At that point I decided that eye contact was not the best idea. I started to walk down the road away from the bear and reached for my cell. And called 911. To my suprise they gave me a number for animal control which I called. By this time I was standing about 100 ft. from where I had first seen the bear. I looked back to see him looking at me as he crossed the street tot he next house. Animal control put me on hold for about 5-10 minutes and then gave a chat about garbage and the like. To my suprise they where not prepared to send someone to catch or even to investigate. How about that eh?

This is my Dad and I during the summer holidays. We was chillin. 

The Lens

I just picked up the Sigma 70-200 2.8. I have done a little testing so far and look forward to getting to the hockey rink to see how it performs.

Birthdays and Fishin

The day before my 47th birthday my father called to say he would be fishing so he wanted to wish me a great Bday. I wished him good luck fishing and we hung up. Well.... the next day I get a call from Dad it seems he caught a monster 29 salmon. As you can see it's beauty!

Figure Skating

I headed down to the rink to try my new Sigma 70-200 and bumped into some friends. The Flukinger's. Thier daughter was competing. and I got a few shots for them. Not entirely happy with the results. I guess I need to work on a few settings. And perhaps my technique. 

Family comes to visit

My mother and her husband Ralph came to visit from Brandon Manitoba. They where doing a visit with all the friends and relatives. We got the chance to spend a day together and share a meal. We laughed, cried, and solved all the worlds problems. They left for Kelowna the next day. It was real nice to see them and gab a bit. Family is great! 

Buying a house

Well have you ever gone through the process of selling your old place then buying a new (new to you) house? Man does it get weird. We thought we had sold our mobile in one day on the market but the folks backed out at the last minute. So now we start all over again. We have had two more walk throughs but no offers so far. So we wait and see what happens.

This is my city. Shot from the walk bridge up to the hospital in the background.  

I was walking in the local park and came upon this wall painted up in the most rich and wonderful colors I thought I would share it with you all 

This is my brother Derek coming in for a smooth landing just off Strawberry Hill. He has taken up paragliding and has really started to get the hang of it  

House Hunting

Well folks we have begun to hunt for a new dwelling. It's kinda depressing to see what a 100 grand will buy you. We are tring to stay in the Westsyde area but it looks like slim pickings so far. We have just listed our house and will wait to see what happens.

These are two of my children, Jessica & Kristine. They are the absolute "Bees Knees"