Sunday, 13. September 2009, 00:29:22
audio, life, church
About 2 years ago a small cable shorted and burned out a channel on the mixing board at my church. It wasn't a major issue since we had a spare channel to use and the dead one was just taped up.
I got the schematics from the national distributer of this mixing board and tried working on it myself to save our church spending some big cash. Couldn't find anything obvious as to why it was dead. Left it until I went on vacation in late July and took out just the dead channel strip to the national service depot on the edge of Toronto. After a couple of weeks, they call back and say it's fine. The technician suggested a few other things to try - all of them time-consuming.
I put the channel strip back into the mixing board and thought, "Why not just see what's going on?" I plugged in the wireless microphone as per usual and fired up the board. No flashing lights. No smoke. Good so far. I turned on the mic, turned on the channel - and it worked! But I don't know why. I experimented with different types of inputs and they all worked. Humph.
Just hope it stays that way.....
Saturday, 7. February 2009, 12:20:42
blessing, generous, church, school
...
I had a couple of remarkable incidents this week. The first was replacement adjustment knobs for a K&M microphone boom stand. Our little church has had this stand for years and has taken a lot of abuse. At first, it seemed these knobs wouldn’t be available to purchase.
An e-mail to Germany to the manufacturing company changed that. I received four replacement knobs Thursday from the Canadian distributor. A PDF of the exploded parts drawing was also sent for future reference. Sweet. I love that company!
Secondly, I am in school to finish off the last course for a Mechanical Engineering Technology diploma. The instructor from the previous class recommended an award-winning software program aimed at helping newbies like me learn applied loads and stresses and how to graph or plot them. The last 5 weeks have been a reckless stream of confusion trying to understand the math and concepts. Last weekend I was a mess, crying out to God
to help me understand and not squander this opportunity He has given me through my work at this time. I use the experience of Daniel and his three friends as a source of inspiration that education can be God-ordained when it’s for His purposes (see Daniel 1: 3-7). God also provides wisdom to those who ask for it (James 1: 5). Anyway, the software was so good at visually showing the concepts, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a student license for the software. But the website wouldn’t accept my PayPal account because of certain purchasing restrictions. What to do?
I contacted the professor who created the software directly by e-mail. I explained the situation and asked him where I could send a cheque. It wasn’t overly expensive for a license, but I prefer to legitimately own any software I have. He responded back with a complimentary license! How wonderful is that?!
And yes, finally, my brain
is grasping the math concepts. PTL.
Tuesday, 30. September 2008, 00:56:33
fun, church, offering, love
This past Sunday I was asked to help with counting the offering money at church. This note was in a small plain unmarked envelope with a bunch of chocolate money. Anyone could have received it, but I was the fortunate recipient. How sweet is that?
Tuesday, 17. July 2007, 01:59:45
friends, church, life
"Hey Henry, this is Solomon. I'm in Toronto for 3 weeks for work. I'm staying at the Holiday Inn on King. Give me a call and ask for my room number."
What a surprise to get that message on my answering machine last Friday from one of my best friends. He lives in Montreal and our communication is usually by infrequent long distance phone calls. To have him be within an hour's drive was an opportunity not to be passed up for us to get together personally. We haven't done that in over 4 years since I moved away from London, Ontario.
Although he is quite a bit younger than I, we have a lot of common interests in Christian faith, engineering, aircraft (the Avro Arrow in particular), music, business, politics and more. The
Toronto Aersopace Museum had finished a full-size replica of the Avro Arrow last fall. Ever since then, I had wondered, "Wouldn't it be great if both Solomon and I could see that?" This past weekend was the chance. We talked Saturday morning for over an hour but made plans to get together for the whole day on Sunday. Solomon didn't have a car, so I was going to provide all the transportation - he was going to pay for the gas and a meal.
I picked him up at the hotel and we drove back to Hamilton so he could attend my local church (that's us together in front - couldn't get the spire in the shot). It happened to be a communion service that day - so wonderful to take it with a close brother in the Lord (as an aside, check out the post on
communion by Big White Hat). Solomon met my pastor and some folks from the congregation. It seems our youth group actually stayed at his church in Montreal when they went on their evangelism trip last summer. What a small world! I then showed him my handiwork with creating our church's new sound booth last year and some of the technical problems that were overcome. He thought it was great (aw, shucks..).
I showed him some of the natural sights so close to my apartment and how great the view is from this part of the city. He was so impressed and compared it to Mont Royal in the heart of Montreal. We zipped off to Toronto to get to the museum and check out the replica of our favourite aircraft. We were not disappointed (more on that later). Afterward we went out for dinner and talked again for a few hours about life, faith, women, careers, God's leading and timing in life situations, etc. We tried to wrap up our day in less than half an hour while dropping him off at the hotel. We missed each other so much and there was a lot to catch up on. I don't have many friends like him, but he is a gem. Thanks for the day, man!
WIDGETIZE