My wife of 51 years and 8 months went home to Heaven November 27, 2015, at 0600 hours. She had fought cancer for 6 years. The pain is gone and she is walking with her Lord and Savior, Jesus.

Windows 10 update.

I have three desktops, and one laptop, that I use fairly frequently. The main one has an AMD 8120, 8 core processor, 8 gig DDR3, 1 meg video card, and a 500 gig HD. It runs Linux Mint 17.2, Peppermint Linux 5, and win 7. I got a notice that windows was ready to install the update to win 10. On the first reboot it booted into GRUB rescue, so it took about eight commands,using Mint Linux to get it back up, and booting. Installation continued and finished in about 2.5 hours. The second machine has an AMD 8350, eight core processor, 16 gig DDR3, 2 meg video card, a 640 gig HD, and a 500 gig HD. It runs win 8.1, Linux Mint 17.2, Peppermint Linux 4, and PCLOS. The update came in for win 10 and it installed without a hitch, and only took about 1.5 hours. Yesterday, Aug. 7. the notice came in to my laptop, so I started the update. It got to 30% and rebooted, and froze. I gave it ten minutes before doing a hard reset. When it booted up again it started where it left off and made it to 40% and froze up again. Did another hard reset and it started the install again, but it never made it off 40%, and froze up again. I did another hard reset, and this time it came up and said it was reverting back to the original version, and the update had failed. After it had finished and win 7 was running I checked the updates. There was an optional update for the printer so I ran that one. Update failed. Checked the error code and finally got it rectified, and ran the printer update again, and this time it took it. But, on the reboot, a message popped up and said the update program was broken. I tried the update to win 10 and it failed again at 40%. The laptop has an AMD quad core processor with 8 gig of ram, and a 640 gig HD, It runs Linux Mint 17.2, PCLOS Full Monty, and win 7. I guess I'm lucky to have 2 of them update, as my expectations from Microsoft is very low. I know windows is going to mess up, I just don't know when. Windows being a high maintenance OS, it requires a lot of attention. Anti Virus, adware remover, malware remover, registry cleaner, disk defragmenter,, and even with all that you will still have problems. I only use windows for games. The grandkids, and the great grandkids like to play games, and the main gripe I have is the you can be playing a game and all of a sudden the game has jumped to the taskbar, and a third party program has a popup message to update. a REAL OS would not let this happen. Even if you are doing something that should not be interrupted, it will happen. Boot time on windows is slow, starting applications is slow, the update system is a disaster, security is non-existent.

Carol's accident.

Carol has been fighting cancer since 2009. She was diagnosed in April of 09 with a lump in her left knee. She had a full knee replacement in May, and they told her if it came back it would hit the lung. A year later it did. She had the lower lobe removed, and then went 3 years cancer free. It came back in both lungs. One nodule was on the outside of the lung and the other spot was deep inside. They removed the on on the outside, and did radiation on the deep one. Then it showed up in her spine in 2014 in two places. They radiated one of them but the other messed up her stomach. Then in February of 2015 she tripped on an area rug and hurt her left knee, went to the doctor and he said there was a hairline fracture just below the glue joint of her implant. Told her to stay off of it. It never got better, just continued to get worse. Finally in may we went to the ER and they did scans up past the knee and discovered she had a fractured hip. They took her to Baylor Dallas by ambulance and she had a partial hip replacement. about a month later her right leg got to hurting her so bad she had to go back to Baylor Dallas and they put a gamma nail in her right hip. I had developed a habit of praying for her every night, while laying in bed. One night I told God that he had put us together and would he please not separate us. I immediately felt my entire body get extremely warm, and I felt a calmness I had never felt before. I don't know if I heard the words or saw them, but the message was that everything was going to be okay. Now, I don't know what it means, but It's in God's hands. I still pray for her, but there is no worry, because God is taking care of us. I really don't know what I would do without God. Carol passed away on November 27,2015, and on December 3, 2015 I went to bed but could not sleep. Her passing really tore me up. I got up and was upgrading a laptop and reading Dr. Charles Stanley's book of daily devotions for December. I got to one titled, " Peace Beyond Comprehension", all of a sudden I felt like something was lifted from my body. I now know what God meant when He said, " "Everything is going to be okay".

Windows 8.1

Our church uses a Sony HDR CX-430 video camera to record the services. I download the MP4 files to the computer in our sound booth. I then transfer them to a flash drive and bring them home to process and upload to our website. I built a special computer to do this. I run an MSI military class mobo, an AMD 8350 8 core processor, 16 gig of DDR3, and an Nvidia 2 gig video card. Plus I have cable internet, which is probably 20 to 30 times faster than our Verizon DSL connection at church. The camera records in 2 gig segments, which means after it records 2 gig it starts a new movie. Our preacher runs long, most of the time, so there are two movies which have to be stitched together into one. Sony provides a software program which will do this, if everything works right. Problem is Windows is seldom working right. All of a sudden the program will not display any videos at all. There was an update availabe so I started to do the update. It got to installing the update and up pops an error message that it can't continue due to an msi. file. I uninstall the entire program and download the latest version. It gets to 99% installed and quits again due to an msi. file. Windows is, without a doubt, the most useless fragment of fecal material on the face of planet earth. It is high maintenance, You have to have anti-virus, adware remover, malware remover, register cleaner, defrag program. The update process is horriffic.It takes a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes to boot, it freezes up, and if you are doing something that shouldn't be interrupted, here comes a third party program wanting to update. It even does it while playing games. I'm running into the same problems with Windows 8.1 that I had with Windows 3.0. Thirty years and it's still a piece of crap. My main OS is Mint Linux. I only use windows for games and the Sony camera. Linux boots up, and is ready to use in around 20 seconds. Never locks up, do the updates and keep on trucking, no reboot or nothing. It does EVERYTHING faster than windows, and is more secure. It's even easier to use than windows,with all their tiles and those stupid little things that pop out of the side of the screen if you get too close. I welcome the day when Windows is an unpleasant memory here on earth.

Humor in the pulpit.

I expect the overuse of jokes in sermons is meant as a camouflage for the failure to provide anything of merit in them. If so, let the preacher take note: it doesn’t work. The sermon which depends on a joke for its effectiveness is an insult to God, to the audience, and to one’s calling. The pulpit is for the preaching of God’s Word, Law and Gospel. Anything that distracts from that shouldn’t be there. The religious experience is largely bound up in the sermon. Most sermons can be edited down to under 10 minutes. Most the scrap material includes humor. People laugh and might remember the joke but it rarely contributes to edification. And don’t kid yourself, most people are not impressed. There is a hunger out there for conversations – dialog, not monologue – and real relationships. The reformers moved the pulpit in the center and our shift should be the other way: Ten minute message perhaps, with lots of conversation and activities that practice the Christian lifestyle in community – praying with others, listening to their stories, serving the community, etc. I say this as one who loves a great story and enjoys being the one telling it. I just think of what Christ did for me; brutalized and nailed to a cross. The lamb of God. When I go to Church I "need" to hear the truth without humor. I love wholesome humor but... when I present myself to my King on Sunday in corporate worship - I think some reverence is in order. Remember; this is what the holy spirit has done for me so this is the way I see it. Our God certainly has a sense of humor. He created us in his own image, and he gave us the ability to laugh and to tell jokes, even to be silly. That said, I don't want my pastor to entertain me on Sunday morning. 1 Corinthians 13 doesn't say "love is patient, love is funny." Scripture doesn't preach winning people over with our clever anecdotes. It preaches the glorious and incomparable love of a risen Savior. I'm much more comforted knowing that my God is Sovereign, Gracious, Infinite, Merciful, than I am knowing he's amusing. I've heard pastors who use humor to shy away from the deeper truth of Scripture or to prove how relevant Scripture is. Our God doesn't need proof! He is always relevant! I'd much rather the Holy Spirit use my pastor's words to convict me and lead me back to grace than to keep me smiling. If our sermons never offend, we probably aren't telling people the whole truth.