Kementian News. 03-02-08 Edition

 

Howdy everybody!

Several months ago, the generator literally shook it self apart and in the process of taking it apart to tighten it all back up, the armature took a fair bit of abuse. When going back together with it, we found that the coil had been cracked in the process as well. We finally got a replacement coil and found that the generator doesn't work. Runs fine, but doesn't generate anything but noise (the muffler is long gone).

Worked on the Sthil 070 chain saw and narrowed it down to a bad spark plug. This chain saw is quite large, in fact it has a compression release so that you can even crank it over. I was unaware of this compression release and proceeded to yank quite hard on the rope. What I did was pick the saw up. As soon as I realized what was happening I stopped pulling which allowed my other hand, pressing down on the grab handle, to force the saw into the 2^nd toe on my left foot. This resulted in a pretty fair bit of damage to the top of the distal knuckle and cracked my toenail all the way across from left to right. After a day or two it started turning pretty colors. Fortunately the chainsaw was not running or I'd be quite a few toes down from whats supposed to be on my left foot. For once, I'm thankful the beast didn't start on the first pull.

And yes, I did take pictures of it. Don't expect to see them prior to my return though.

After getting the toe taken care of, I went back down and was able to get the chainsaw running. Found it was missing a vent hose and couldn't use it. Got the vent hose and found that the spark plug failed when under load due to a cracked insulator. So now we're waiting on a replacement to be sent in.

After that much fun, I started working on editing sermons that we've recorded since October of last year to be placed on some media players for the local people to listen to.

Sadly the computer I'm working on is, well, we'll just say its seen its better days. It runs poorly even after a fresh install.

The audio software I'm using to do the editing (Audacity, for anyone that cares) is great for its price (Free!) but its nothing like some of the commercial software thats available. This is resulting in some of the sermons being unusable due to the inability to remove background noise, white noise, and other things we don't want there.

Ideally, I'd love to see a new computer and nice software to produce good quality audio for the people to listen to. Sadly the budget just doesn't allow for this right now.

Received word from home that someone was kind enough to "borrow" a wheel and tire off of my 4Runner thats sitting at my parents. While its really of no importance in the grand scheme of things, its annoying that someone would do that. Fortunately, the wheel itself was just what was available so nothing special. The tire on the other hand was pretty nice and had at least 90% of its tread-life remaining.

Oh well, I hope the person that borrowed it is blessed by the tire.

On a lighter note, I experience God's amazing workings just recently. When I left I called Verizon and had my service suspended till I returned. Unfortunately, something got mixed up and they reactivated my service back in December. This of course resulted in a bill which I wasn't expecting as I thought it was suspended. Since I was in Manila at the time I found this, I called Verizon and tried to straighten it out. At some point in the last 5yrs of service I've had with them I added a verbal password to my account and then promptly forgot it. So when I called I wasn't able to get around this password. This was the first time that I'd had that happen as on prior calls I'd been able to answer a series of questions and bypass the security question. This time that didn't happen. As a result I wasn't able to get anything done. I sent mom and email asking her to call from my phone (left in the states) and see if she could get anywhere. Nothing else I could do, so I prayed about it and let it be.

about a week later I receive an email from mom thanking me for adding her to the account and enabling her to get things worked out. Since I wasn't able to get past the security question, I wasn't able to do anything of the sort.

To top it off, the late fees, and many of the other fees were able to be removed from the bill thus reducing it immensely.

Again, God steps in and intervenes in the lives of His children. And to think that I have the audacity to doubt Him!

Somethings come up dealing with this project and I ask that you keep it in prayer. I feel its best to not expound upon the details at this time, I will say that it is at its base a differing of opinions and prayer is the only solution. If you could please keep it in prayer, I'd be very thankful.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support, its much appreciated.

Take care and God bless y'all!

Nathan