The Purpose Driven Life

It’s been a long time again since I have posted on my site.

Our church in Taipei, Grace Baptist Church started their 40 days of purpose campaign yesterday. I have read the book before, but just kinda glimpsed over it without too much thought, just quietly agreeing to what had been said.

Anyways I have a website up for the campaign at http://pdl.peterandava.com where I will be putting some thoughts each day and leaving it open for people to make comments and share their thoughts. I invite any of you to share your thoughts too.

On other notes, my photos which have been down for a little while now, are back online (but still not updated), click on the link at the top of the page to see them.

Check out the photos and check out the Purpose Driven Life blog.

I really need to learn my lesson, again

Well, remember how I nearly lost all of the information on my website the other week.

I also remember having some issues with my hard drive a month or so before that.

My hard drive crashed approximately a week ago, what a downer. I haven’t made any backups of the information on there, which is very sad. Even worse is that although most of my information can be brought back in one way or another, a lot of Ava’s stuff is on there too. It’s really my responsibility to keep it backed up, so oh well.

I have been forced to do upgrades to my computer, even though I would rather wait for a later date.

I got a new motherboard, an ASUS P4S800D-X which gives me a few more options which I didn’t have before. I now have a video card, a Leadtek with nVidia GeForce MX4000, it beats my onboard graphics hands down, which is cool. It was actually the cheapest card I could find at the computer store.

The other addition is two new hard drives. I bought 2 Maxtor 120GB SATA drives. I got two so I could set them up in a RAID 1 configuration (mirroring) just to be on the safe side. I think a DVD burner might be on the list of things to get in the future, just for the ease of backing up lots of information.

On the hard drive front, I am sending it to a hard drive repair place. They have a clean room and engineers who work on hard drives. Price for just looking at the drive NT1100 (about R250) and then a quote for the repair which can run from NT10000 to NT40000 (R2000 to R10000) or so. I will send it in and discuss with Ava when we get the quote to see if we will repair it, or at least salvage the information. OUCH!

The company is Lin Wei Data Recovery.

The computer is noticably faster with the new motherboard as the old motherboard was only a 667MHz board, which made things run down on notch.

I also went for a ride (off-road) last weekend, but was disappointed when I found that my bottom bracket was coming loose. I will have to fix it before I go riding again. I don’t take care of my bike and kind of just expect it to work all the time. Time for a little loving care.

I, on the whole, am getting on well. It has been a little tiring with the computer issues as they lead to late nights figuring out what to do or what has to be done next. The computer is now working and that side of things will be back to normal.

Another Typhoon Came and Went

Well, last Thursday Typhoon Talim hit Taiwan pretty hard. There was lots of wind and there was a fair bit of flooding around those places that usually get flooded.

Anyways it came and went. It was the fourth Typhoon this year that resulted in a day off work. There haven’t been this many typhoons in such a short time for ages I’m told.

Life goes on as usual. Where I stay there is never any flooding so things are the same. The water has become unusable, except for washing, even the water department said that they recommend that you take the top off the kettle once the water has boiled and let it boil for another 10 minutes. It now looks a slightly yellow colour when poured into a container.

Ava passed all of her exams, which were a few weeks ago, and is now officially in university. So tomorrow she starts back at university in the evenings.

As for me, I have decided after putting on much extra weight that I need to switch back to my healthy diet again. Not watching what I eat for the last four years since I got here has taken it’s toll. So it’s lots of vegetables, fruit and meat for me.

Work goes on as usual, but it’s pretty relaxed, only 4 teaching hours in an 8 hour working day, so there is lots of time to read and to get ready for classes.

I hope all of you are doing well.

Back in business

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!

I’m sure you all got my mail about my website problems. Anyways, with the help of a very helpful tech guy at my web host, everything is back in order, more or less.

Funny thing is that this incident, although very annoying didn’t get me fuming, which is great. All my worst fears were not realised.

I have also come to be MUCH more protective of my information and am looking into ways to make regular backups of all my information from the server.

That’s it for now.

Skype – internet phone service

Today, I signed up for skype.

http://www.skype.com

It’s really cool. For those who don’t know, it’s a service that allows you to phone, using your computer, to other people around the world.

It’s free to phone from computer to computer, but if you want to phone from your computer to a telephone you have to pay. The best part is that it is REALLY CHEAP. My first call, which went to my parents in Westville cost me 1/10 of what it normally costs me to phone them. In fact, it is even cheaper than a cellphone call.

It costs me US$0.075 or so per minute to call to South Africa. The cost to call to my home here from South Africa is even less, about US$0.03 per minute.

So, if you haven’t tried it out, go for it. There are other options, but this one has become quite popular. It’s a prepaid service, so you have to top up the credit before you can phone. The standard 10 euros is not too much, and will last a while. If it doesn’t work out for you, not much loss.

Head on over to http://www.skype.com and give it a go.

CamStudio Screen Capture software

This might only be interesting for those slightly more computer nerdy friends of mine.

Hail to open source and the GPL. This program is completely free and may be useful to someone. It allows you to “record” what is happening on your screen. You choose some options, click the record button, and then everything from that moment to the time you press stop is recorded as you see it on the screen.

If you don’t want it for any serious reason, it’s still fun to play with. Get it at…

http://www.camstudio.org

Go ahead, it’s a good alternative to computer games and solitaire, although the novelty might wear off. Hey, you might even do something productive with it.

Yay, another day off work

Well once again the big rains have hit.

As the edge of a big typhoon passing through the region it is coming down in buckets. It really is just pouring down with about 500mm in 24 hours in some places in the North of the island (hey, I’m in the North).

Anyways that means that we get a long weekend.

On Friday Ava and I are off to PingDong which should be an uneventful trip.

My friend Clint sent me this today, and I wanted to share it with you all (a conversation from 2000 years ago)…

“Are you kidding? That group of nobodies?”…”I’m telling you these people are insignificant. The only thing I ever hear of their leaders is that they’re always winding up in jail. Trust me, in 2000 years, nobody will give them a thought.”…So here we are 2000 years later. And isn’t it interesting that we name our children Peter and Paul, John and James, Mary and Martha? And we name our dogs Caesar and Nero.

The leaders of that time could not have known how much Christ coming to earth would affect us all.

God is Lord, always, over everything!

More photos added

More photos have been added to my gallery. Click on the links to go and see the pictures.

July 9th and 10th: Ava’s friend Banana came to Taipei for the weekend
http://www.peterandava.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=80

July 16th and 17th: Ava and I went to Pingdong again
http://www.peterandava.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=79

July 22nd: Last day of semester for me and the kids so we had a little party
http://www.peterandava.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=78

July 23rd and 24th: We went with Ava’s friend Michelle and her boyfriend to Ava’s parents place
http://www.peterandava.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=77

Enjoy, more pictures will be added later if possible. Bye