My adventure with a malfunctioning computer program

            A couple of days ago, I set myself towards figuring out a little bit more about what makes a blog work, given that, during the first six months of my writing this, I perceive that few persons have actually looked at it.  To that effect, I got a book from the library, which told me that a website, www.technorati.com was like a search engine for blogs.  I went to it, found that they had news stories on their home page, and began to read one.  I was about 10 seconds into reading a news story (oddly, I no longer even remember the subject), when I was hit by a program that was telling me I needed to buy a program to repair Windows.  About a month before, I was at a point where I could not get online, at a time when the other computers in my house had no problem.  I had a promotion for a repair program pop up, and, silly me, I bought it for $39.98.  It did get me back online, but the computer was still running slow.  Threee times, they called me about a week later to check on how things were, and each time they were on the phone with me for about 1½ hours attempting to correct things, but I could see no improvement.   I could easily figure out that, even at the minimum wage, and phone tech persons make a lot more than that, they had spent far more than $39.98 on me.  I called them, mentioned that they had run their diagnostic three times in the past month already, and I was running it again.  After a few questions, the person said that what I was talking about demanded technical help, which they could provide for an additional $249.  Since I knew that I could buy a brand new beginning of the line computer at Sam’s Club for $298, I declined.

            About a year and a half ago, I took a supposed intro to computers course at the local community college.  I say supposedly introduction, as, after I got in it, I found that the only people who were actually learning from the course were persons who either had a bachelor’s from another school or had received training and experience in the military.  I commented on that long in the past.  Anyway, one of the few things I learned from that course was that one should have on one’s computer two accounts, an administrator account for significant adjustments and a user account for day to day work (yes, if you have Windows 7, Microsoft corrected the flaw of allowing users to work on administrator without knowing better, as had been the case previously).  Therefore, since I couldn’t get on my user account, I thought I would try deleting my user account, making a new one, effectively starting from scratch, I hoped.  Since I am in no way a computer geek, I wasn’t sure if that would work, and it took me most of the day, but it did, and the computer runs far faster, at that.  Then I found that a copy of my writings and audio was still able to be accessed from the administrator account.  I thought I really had done well.  I am certain that the garbage program is still in the computer, but, if it is hidden from the program list, then I can’t get at a program I don’t want to get to.  Yes, it could be set up to migrate over to something else, but it hasn’t so far.

            Today, I went to Wal-Mart, and saw a computer for $249.  I don’t think I’d want that little machine, but the price is the same as that online technical service.  I think of a few years ago, when the Better Business Bureau would have a representative appear on a soft news feature of a local news program and advise that one should do business which people you know.  For years, I would feel like screaming at the screen (not actually doing so in that no one could hear) that that was impossible.  They have, I perceive, stopped doing that in that, in our society, that is impossible.  I almost never do business with people I know, because I have no choice.  Every week, I must go to the gas station, but I don’t know any of those people, or their bosses.  Same at Wal-Mart.  Same at Home Depot;  I used to work at one close to my home six years ago, but only a small number of people who were there then still are, as much as that is supposed to be a good place to work.  I know I don’t know anyone at my city offices.  My ISP, power company, garbage company—I’ve never overtly met someone with those companies, much less know them.

            A couple of months ago, I posted a letter to my neighbors with regard to some of the things I normally deal with on this site.  This week, as I had printed 100 copies (that only cost about $7 at the quick printer), I distributed them to nearby houses on a day in which my knees could take the walking.  I was surprised to find that a good 10% of the houses had some kind of “No Solicitors” sign on the door.  I knew more neighbors when I lived in the country!  I’m not sure what that says about our society, especially when one almost never has door-to-door salesmen knock anymore (because it generally doesn’t work anymore, except for kids selling stuff for school projects).  How do we deal with a society in which many members want to hide from everyone? 

            I don’t have an answer to that one.  I can see, from various simple church literature I have read, that examples given where people in an area come together, the area is very poor.  A few people I have talked to in person don’t have any positive answers, either.  How does one get to know neighbors in an urban or suburban, non-poverty level community?

May 19, 2011: My latest lifechanging day

          Funny when life changing moments happen.  For instance, the night I prayed that initial prayer of surrender to Jesus for the first time was a weeknight the week after the 1968 Democratic Convention, but it never occurred to me to remember the specific day until years later when there was no way for me to figure it out.  The specific day, though, is irrelevant in comparison to all the twists, turns, and changes along the way.

            In a sense, today (actually yesterday, May 19, as I’m writing this after midnight), is one of those life changing days.  Early on the morning of January 1, 2009, I did the pickup portion of the last rental I would have before closing my business.  Little did I know that over the next nearly 2½ years I would have such difficulty getting a stable job.  I had already been living in my son’s house for a little over a year. I had been struggling with pain in my knees for years, which made some of the work I had done previously impossible.  Anyway, in December 2010, my son, who is in the Navy, was told that he was going to be transferred to a little desert town in the intermountain region in the late summer/early fall of 2011.  As I had no savings or stable employment, I felt that I had no choice but to follow him, but, for a few days, I was in a kind of shock/depression.  I have lived near an urban area for my whole life, and I was having difficulty finding work here.  How was I to find work there?  Further, the past couple of years, the Spirit had been teaching me about the subjects I normally write about on this blog, but I have little idea of how to go about things in a town where I didn’t know anyone, and I had not been able to find anyone so far who has been walking down this same road of following Jesus without the added man made structures and traditions.

            Today, everything changed.  My son called and told me that his orders were changed, and he was now going to stay in the same city he has been in for the last six years.  I am no longer in a holding pattern waiting to begin learning how to live in a new area, but I am suddenly looking at, “Lord, how do I honor you right here, right now (as I guess I’ll be here a while)?

            I just started reading a secular book about following one’s passion in the latter part of life.  The assumption within this writer is along the “do what you love the money will follow” idea, but part of simply following Jesus is that doing so isn’t a vocation, although each of us is responsible for covering the needs of our brothers and sisters who go where, for whatever reason, it isn’t or might not be possible to earn a living due to the culture being so foreign.  My passion for the moment is to find one neighbor (geographically) who is destined by the Spirit to begin walking down the path I’m going, that I can share what God has been showing me and vice versa (with the latter being equally important, not just a phrase to tack onto that statement to sound humble). 

            I live in a suburban neighborhood.  Neil Cole, in Organic Church, speaks about working in poor neighborhoods.  That last business I had had me visiting the poorest neighborhood in my metro area often.   No one could afford to run the air conditioners consistently, so on hot days, everyone was on their front porch.  That can be trouble, as that situation can allow for two or more people to be physically hot, and inwardly angry about not being able to do something about their situation, and if one rubs another the wrong way, the frustration spill over to violence.  Conversely, everyone knows (whether for good or ill) their neighbor.  In my neighborhood, everyone comes home from school or work and hides in their a/c’d house, or cooks on their grill in the back yard with eight foot high fences.  Normally, the rest of the neighborhood’s contact with them is only smelling their steaks waft over the fence.

            Therefore, this change makes me seek immediately how to contact my nearby walled society.  I am almost certain that it isn’t going to be easy finding my neighborhood’s first “person of peace.”  I am on the lookout for any signs in the culture around me, even in the Christian subculture, of the slightest hint that simple church exists.  I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the Irish band getting video play on JCTV.  Yesterday, I was in Books-A-Million, and looked in their Christian section.  Now, I couldn’t figure out the order of books on the shelves (most bookstores, within a genre, order by last name alphabetical order, but that didn’t seem to be the case in this store), but the only author I found on the shelf which I had heard mentioned in simple church circles is Bruce McLaren, and he his a theological writer, i.e. the book I picked up isn’t what I’d call a light read, although more readable than some seminary level texts.  Today’s the next day, and I can’t remember anything of what I read.

            With this change in my life, a new challenge awaits.  I wish to live and work in excellence, but first comes competence.  Chesterton wrote, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”  A bad plan is better than no plan.  I am trying to come up with a bad plan that the Spirit may correct.