Mon, 29 Sep 2003

Sep 29, 2003, 00:42 [home/journal]
Drilling Nowhere

Yesterday afternoon we decided to put coaxial cable throughout the church building so that we can have PowerPoint announcement presentations in every room.

On the surface, it seemed like a simple job. We had to make a few holes through walls here and there, and planned to run the cable along the flat roof of the church. Once on the roof, we found ourselves standing in two inches of water! The roof’s drain was plugged.

When we started drilling through the block walls, something discouraging happened! The constructors had filled the hollow spaces in the blocks with fine gravel! When we removed the drilling bit, the hole would fill up again and we couldn’t get the cable through. We tried fishing it through with a coat-hanger taped to it, but the friction of the pebbles rolling against the cable made it impossible. Not only could we not push the cable through, but once we wiggled it halfway in, we couldn’t pull the cable out! We tried re-drilling at a place where we thought there would be less gravel but that didn’t work either.

It took two hours to get a cable through one hole!

There must be some valuable lesson to be learned from this— “patience is a virtue,” I suppose. I thought I was being patient waiting for someone else to do this job for the last eight months. I had no idea just how patient I would need to be. It was also a good excerise in self-control. How many times I wanted to throw the drill, or kick the wall, or swear. I should be thankful for the lesson.
~Jason

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Fri, 19 Sep 2003

Sep 19, 2003, 18:36 [home/journal]
Autumn Blues

I love autumn. I love the colours, the wind— endless wind. I feel cozy when I think about pumpkin pie, Hallowe’en, scented candles, crackling fireplaces, sleepy-turkey-dinner-afternoons, big warm sweaters, extra layers, raking up leaves, all that stuff.

But it’s a sad time too. It reminds me of my childhood. I remember tire swings, and first days of school; new faces, new rules. Then there’s jumping in rake-work; my daddy’s despair. And life-naïveté. Now I remember something forever lost: childhood.

But I have my own children now, and they have their childhood before them. I watch. And then someday they will have children who will build their own fond memories. I want the house to be full of these ghosts when I’m old. No, I want the house to be full of children forever.

I want to believe it’s never over. I can’t imagine how some people let it all slip away— like I do. Dreams and hopes for the future are fleeting enough— and then we become the catalysts for our own destruction. It shouldn’t surprise me: original sin is no new concept. We are, each of us, destroyers.

I won’t be going home this autumn.
~Jason


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Thu, 18 Sep 2003

Sep 18, 2003, 10:09 [home/hobbies/cycling]
Fatigue Starting To Catch Up with My Mountain Bike

I’m getting tired! It’s a good tired though. I’ve been riding my bike everywhere for the last week!

A friend came over last night and tuned it up, so I think this is a good time to take a break! No, really I’m just exhausted and I’ve heard that excersising every day isn’t as good as every other day. Maybe I should drive the car in today.

I love the rush of biking— the wind flying through my hair— almost keeping up with automobiles. It usually takes me 15 minutes in a car, and I’ve been able to get downtown on the bike in 25! That’s fairly fast. Yesterday I did it in 22 minutes, 16 seconds! I’ll be happy when I can bike as fast as I can drive. I’m not sure that’s even possible.
~Jason

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Sep 18, 2003, 10:04 [home/webdesign]
New Site Underway

Metaphor has always been king in my life, and the idea of living in a giant metaphor is intriguing! It reminds me a little bit of watching Matrix— watching a giant metaphor for something, nobody is sure what.

Anyway, a new site is being developed at work to describe the Christian ‘walk’ through life. The URL is thePathway.ca. It’s pretty interesting to see how it’s all coming together.
~Jason

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Sep 18, 2003, 10:02 [home/webdesign]
New Site Complete

I just completed work on my latest site: NewLifeTrimRepair.com.

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Wed, 10 Sep 2003

Sep 10, 2003, 21:25 [home/journal]
I Still Don’t Know Why I’m Tired

Wow, I’ve been busy! Spending too much too! We bought baseboard for the kitchen, living room, and hall — painted and installed most of it. We bought a bunch of furniture for Shin’s room at Ikea (and assembled it). And ceramic tile was on sale at Home Depot for 99 cents, so we bought enough to ‘someday’ do our kitchen/hallway/downstairs bath. And we bought paint to do the eavestrough (gutters to you Americans). We also bought a nice dark red colour for the front door— if you’ve ever painted, you know that red takes a LOT of coats to cover well.

And since we’ve spent too much on all this stuff for our house, I couldn’t fill up with gas this week, so I’ve been biking to work! Boy am I exhausted! It’s a 15 minute car ride, 25-30 minutes on bike. It’s not too bad, but I’m tired! I guess all this stuff going on is the main reason I haven’t really contributed much to my blogs lately. I’ve had a few people comment on that— sorry!

Oh, and not to mention about three new web sites on the go for people, designing business cards for someone, fixing a few bugs in scripts, full-ime job getting ready for our BIG fall season with lots of new ideas and direction. And dealing with Seth can be tiring too. Wow, I’m crazy.
Help?
~Jason

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Sep 10, 2003, 21:17 [home/journal]
New Friend

OK, not sure if this fits in ‘projects’, but we have a new friend in our house: a boarder from Japan. It’s pretty neat, and our kids are really enjoying having a big brother! Shin is seventeen, and he’s going to high school here in Canada so he can improve his English, and perhaps find a way to be connected to any music experiences he can find. He’s a phenomenal drummer— which is a plus for me— too bad he didn’t play bass!

It’s so funny watching Seth with him… Seth comes up behind him and BITES HIS BUM! Seth loves to beat on him (which isn’t funny for Shin). Seth is just always in the mood for a good tussle, but Shin is so gentle and retiring in his polite Japanese way. It makes me laugh.

Luke likes it too, because Shin is an expert on all the video games. When Luke sticks a cartridge in his Nintento, Shin shows him how to find the secret keys, how to get unlimited lives, stuff like that! Shin says he played them all when he was Luke’s age.

So we’ve got a new friend. I just hope Shin is enjoying his visit as much as we are!
~Jason

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Wed, 03 Sep 2003

Sep 03, 2003, 21:11 [home/webdesign]
Something Useful

Here’s an interesting script I’ve written and am developing:
CGI Script Submission Database!
~Jason


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