When Uninstall won't work

Friends, I have to admit to you that I have been rather dazed and confused this entire week. That is until now.

I have an old PDA. It is a Handspring Visor. I've had it four about 7 years now and I love it. It is rugged, dependable, and usually reliable. I use it a lot! It is my lifeline to being the anal retentive, calendar driven individual that I am.

On Monday, I tried to Hotsync my PDA with my computer, and when I did - it shut the computer down completely. This is not the first time this has happened to me in my years of using a PDA, but usually it happens once, and then I can move forward. Not on Monday.

After several hours of attempting this sync, I resorted to trying to reinstall the software. When that didn't work, I went online for some suggestions about compatibility problems with the recent time patches for Outlook, etc.

I then went to the Palm Site (Handspring was purchased by Palm years ago). I got some advice. Found some FAQ's about the problem that I was experiencing. They told me to uninstall and reinstall the Palm Desktop software using the Uninstall program on the computer.

I did - nothing. At this point, I was at a full blow!!! My children were asking my wife what was wrong, and all she could say was, "just stay away from Daddy!"

I walked away, tried to eat dinner, and tried a hard and soft reset. Nothing!!!!!!

I then proceeded to write tech support to ask for some help. The response was to uninstall.

But did you know that is not enough? It turns out that you need to search for hidden files! How frustrating is that!

Long story short - I also told myself that I was going to wait until today to try to do anything. It is my day off, and what would be a day off without a little frustration, right?

I followed the directions, which were four pages long by the way, and IT WORKS!!!!!

Is there a connection to the church? Sure there is! I think that sometimes as Christians we do our darnedest to remove sin from our lives. We focus on that during lent. We repent, we reaffirm our faith, we try to move onto Perfection, and still there are the hidden things in our lives that prevent us from being who God has called us to be.

Because of that - we have to dig deeper and deeper, pray harder and harder, and continuously seek God's grace in all that we do.

The Gospel of Matthew says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect."

I seek that!

But now I have to repent for all the bowling words I used this week.

Apocryphal Renderings

I don't know whether you know this or not, but apparently there is a little known text that goes like this:

As Jesus was about to ascend into heaven, he said to his disciples, "as soon as you make disciples of me, forget everything else that I have said about the poor, the hungry, the lost. Forget about the sheep, they can feed themselves. Worry about yourself, your kind. As soon as you grow my church to be about the size that you want it - stop. Put a hedge around it, insulate yourselves from the outside and wait. I'll be back. And before I go - don't let too many people help others, I don't trust them. Let those who are paid, be paid to do your work."

I know what you're thinking - where did that come from? I don't know either, but it must be there somewhere. I say that because I have been a part of so many discussions this week with others that lead me to believe that we have a real struggle on our hands as the people of God.

When did we get to the point that we were more worried about ourselves than others?

When did we get to the point that we thought that it was the "paid professional's job" to care for our children?

When did we get to the point that we leave a church because we didn't get enough attention?

When did we get to the point that churches will poach, steal, and accept good disciples in the name of church growth instead of fulfilling the Biblical mandate - and I'm not referring to that fictitious one from above.

I don't care what church you are in (I know there are a few exceptions), but we have a lot of work to do. We have got to do a better job of teaching, modeling, preaching about our responsibility to those who are not here. It is not the paid professional's job - only - to care for those who are already here.

And just another thought. When did we get to the point when you were the number one priority?

Those are my thoughts - if you can tell me where to find that text from above, I'd love to see it.

March Madness

There are a few times of the year that I get excited, but this happens to be one of the times that I get really excited. In terms of sports excitement, March Madness has me captivated.

I enjoy College Basketball, and enjoy the coming weeks. I enjoy watching teams compete, as well as the opportunity for the underdog to soar! Cinderella is invited to dance, and many times she is given the opportunity to find her Prince Charming.

I happen to be a Duke Apologist and so I enjoy watching my team on television more than we are accustomed. However, alas, Duke already hit a major stumbling block. After winning 7 of the last 8 previous ACC tournament titles, Duke lost last night in overtime to NC State.

Previously, Duke was probably looking at about a number 3 or 4 seed in the NCAA tournament, but I am afraid that due to their recent loss to the dreaded Tar Heals of North Carolina coupled with this early exit from their conference tournament, Duke is now looking at something far worse.

I may be a Duke apologist, but I am not foolish enough to place them out of the second round. But that won't stop me from rooting for them, screaming my head off, and rooting for Cinderella to get her shoe.

No Duke game to sit and watch this weekend. Guess I just have to wait until next week.

Let's Go Duke!

It didn't take long

I got my first Gold Dollar the other day from a friend. I was excited about the new dollar and looked at it quite closely. I enjoyed the new look of the dollar and as a coin collector, I look forward to seeing all of the Presidential Dollars as they are released. One thing I liked about the dollar was that instead of a smooth edge like a nickle or the ridges of a quarter, the new dollar has words printed on the band or edge. It was unique enough to me that I took notice.

Well, today I got one of those emails. You know the ones that people feel they just have to circulate in order to preserve our heritage, our christian way of life, our freedom. You know what I'm talking about. This one was decrying the decision to not include the words "In God we trust" on the new dollar.

I knew immediately that it was a scam. I am looking at it right now - there it is! In God We Trust. But just to see if there was any information, I went to my favorite site for this junk. Snopes.com is a myth-busting, urban legends, and scam page. If you have never used it - you should check it out. I like to check it out any time that I get something fishy. Here is what they say about the email today.

There is a part of me that doesn't understand the mind of a person that chooses to intentionally manipulate information. What is so funny about it? What gain is there?

The person that forwarded the email was a well intentioned individual from my congregation. I suspect they forwarded it to me because I just used the Dollar in my children's message on Sunday. What bothers me is how these emails really only affect those who trust others enough to believe what is sent to them. They then send them, in all sincerity, to others who get caught up in the game.

For the most part, I hate forwarding emails. But what I hate worse is sending a reply to someone telling them they were the brunt of a joke. It makes it even worse when it is a parishoner and you have to tell them not to worry, Touched by an Angel is not being cancelled because they say God, and no Madeline O'hare is not alive, you are not going to win a shopping spree, etc, etc.

Anyway - go use the coin. I want to see it in circulation regularly! And check out Snopes.com