A new poster I got for my wall.

The quote reads:

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that is creativity.” – Charles Mangus

As many of you know I have not been blogging much for ages here, I hope to change that and will be adding a series of post on matters relating to a smaller audiance thenthe whole open web, I will not close this entirly but will password protect posts that I only want a limited number of people to read. I will still try to keep up some travel and photograph type things here to keep the thing going for all but my primary reason for this blog will be more targeted, good news for those of you who will get the password as I think you might enjoy more indepth views on things to come.

A friend asked me to help bring their van from Serbia to Italy, lots of driving, all expenses paid and hooking up with friends all along the way- I did not need to think about it and was glad I didn’t.

Croatia-Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia-Italy, 1600 km of public transport and van driving. I would have driven it all the way to Spain had I been asked to.

A shot from the train to Zagreb, a lovely sunny/misty morning

Belgrade by night, did not have much time ot look around as we had a connection to catch but definitely will be back.

Mike singing to some friends in the city

Me on the camper in front of a old water tower in Vukovar that was a victim of the Serb/Croat war

Drivin’, not the fastest prettyiest thing in the world, actually we nicknamed it “the ugly date” but it was fun to drive for two days, would not buy it as my legs had a hard time under it and the colunm shift gave me a bruse from shifting into fourth banging into my knee.

Mike and I stopping at a local tavern in Slovenia for home made beer, not the most tasty, rather sweet and murky, but heck was it strong! timer shot.

Wanna live in that? a uniquely hideous flat in Trieste most of the first floors are way off the ground and all the view is just other flats.

It seems every hill in northern Italy has a castle on it, this was a rather nice one with the houses and vinyards below

I just got back from a trip with some of our other volunteers to the island of Rab. We conducted a project there for the well known psychiatric hospital there of a mural on one of there walls.

We spent two nights there with them, slept in their ward and got a look at what it is like for so many people there. Some lost businesses, were homeless and so got depressed and were sent there others were junkies, street fighters and alcohol or war veterans all put together in a ward with 73 others…and five of us.

The mural project was nice as it was for the elderly who can not wonder the property as they are too old, have Alzheimers and/or medicated to find their way back to the right building so they have a closed in concrete area between two buildings for them to roam in the fresh air in.

The staff were wonderful to us but also let us see and experience (though for sure sheltered version) of life inside, we talked to many of the patients in our “addictions” ward and were able to provide them at least a few minutes of company and encouragement, some of them even helped us with the painting of the mural and their friendship and stories we will never forget. The included a man from Mali Losinj with shrapnel in his head from the war that is to risky to remove that effects his brain negatively. A first-time mother who is 5 months pregnant who had problems with drinking and had a bad road accident leaving her in a coma for two days, thankfully her and the baby are fine now and she will have the baby in Split where her husband is waiting for her. These are just two of the nearly 500 people in this institution, and only one in four large places like this in Croatia.

The weather and the wall were not ideal for painting but we did our best in spite and did all we could in the short time we had. One volunteer that came with us was Andrea a hydro engineer from Italy who came to help us during half of his holiday time off to do this with us and went beyond to make sure the whole garden was clean as well. In the evening we sang songs in the TV room with some of the people we met, long days but it was an amazing experience for all of us. To see pictures of this project you can visit our Italian blog (sorry it is only in Italian) but the pictures are self explanatory. http://perunmondomigliore.wordpress.com/

Finally got on facebook.com, what a tool it is for finding everyone, been on MySpace for years but never really found old friends. Been spending time finding friends, getting accepted and going through their friends to see if we know more of the same people and repeating this over and over. Kids I used to look after are adults, bikers, fighter pilots, parents, secretaries, lawyers and many more. going though their pics too shows how much time has passed, many of my teen buddies have up and coming teenagers, ex-GF’s were the hardest or girls I had teen crushes on all married and with kids, but that is life, we grow up and life takes us in different ways and places.

Face the book, take a look and enjoy this medium to connect with others you’d never meet again if it were not for this way!

Well been busy and been sick, and more busy catching up and then sick again. Thought I’d do something different this time as I have not been taking pics to post some great ones I’ve seen on the news wires lately, enjoy!

Oh bummer – Three weeks on the job and looking tired, this great AP pic shows how much the stress on that job is. Still no big recovery bill passed, his buddies not nominated for tax problems, sure not what he thought it was going to be like riding off on his white horse into the sunset waving his magic wand of “change”. My bet is he’ll be gray haired before years out.

Road plow – This 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe, ever seen a front like that? I’ve taken pics at old car shows before including a 1939 Tata with three headlights, but this one man! Was one of the fastest cars in the world at the time but looks like it has a snow plow in front that is not the standard for speed aerodynamic, but i guess it worked, wonder what the mileage was. I’d love to have been there in those days and see all these innovative ideas sprawling the roads, today mass produced cars are all same-ish, and no radical new ideas or looks.

OK, a wide angle Fisheye lens makes it even wider, but fascinating! Other great pics from AP can be seen here.

Senate Saints? – It seems that new thing for press photog to take pics up-angle of Senators delivering speeches and press briefings under the dome of Capital Hill. Poor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has to deliver bad news, but this is not the angle for him, he looks like a Dr. Seuss character already and the press takes pics of him with a “halo”? Is the country in such bad shape they have to keep peoples moral high with subliminal hints like this that they are elevated above us?

Cheeky butt- A Celebes Crested Macaque, how can we be realted?

This is a fantastic movie! At first you say “not another Ghost movie”, but right away you see it opens up very different and keeps you guessing and hollering the whole time. Staring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni, the last two are great actors but I’d never heard of Ricky Gervais before but seems to have had a long career in writing/producing TV shows and a standup comedian, he really brings something new to the story, a role they might have casted Huge Grant in as a awkward Brit, but would not have been as funny and witty, as the big guy really plays both who he is to start and who he becomes so well, they are so opposite yet so him. Great movie, I’m not going to give away more of the plot, very worth watching, meaningful, light and one of those movies like “Stranger then Fiction” that do not get a lot of promotion but are well worth the time and well written and acted.

Loud is the first thing that comes to mind after recherchéing violently a few times on my eardrums, tympanic membrane and auditory nerve! Thankfully I got warning of this from Steve’s blog, I had to turn my sound on player to 43% just to listen to it on headphones, just to make it listenable, on a boom box it might heighten the experience but on a headset it makes a big difference in volume to other studio tracks. Once you have them on your mp3 player you might have to dive for the volume every time one of these songs come on when you add it to your playlist on shuffle if  you value your eardrums and want them to last at least the complete length of the album and beyond. Hard music is cool, being hard of hearing is just stupid! Don’t try to be cool and play it on full volume with headphones.

On the music side it is just an onslaught of vibes and beats that get you from invoking the matrix “Red Pill” parallel to the acid rock parody of Mary’s little lamb with “Mary’s little Lie” both to show our life is different from the world and why. It’s no-non-sense sound like it’s cover delivers and is something different yet again, but what we have come to expect from a project that includes Steve McNair.

@#@#(Explicit) the System (not read, at number, at number – ha)  is a rally call to do what the title suggests unabashedly as God’s called out ecclesia and leads the way with the thumping beats and screams to I’m loving to hate you/For the stench that you breathe and lies you conceive /My total rejection/Of the promise you gave to the lives you enslave/No time for discretion/I curse every mention of the system that make you want to storm the gates of hell that seep inside all of us with acceptance of worldly ways. This song works the conviction to the heart while the wiggles out of every bone in your body. The despairing tunes of “Reason With Myself” hopefully is a view of someone lost in the world, interesting tune but for those not familiar with Seattle’s 90’s music scene it might just seem like an off key dirge to more “cultured” ears.

Overall there is nothing exceptionally deep or profound, no huge dedication calls on this short album, but that is grunge/acid rock, and it is good they did not try to over spiritualize this style of music as its lyrics structure simply is not made for it. It is an arousing call to get off your ass and scream, shout and revolute, and I can see this being a wonderful addition to times when you just want to mosh with your friends at a party or heck even scream out in the car when stuck in traffic.

Downloading it from Steve’s blog (God told Lot to pinch His tits? maybe in the STEM bible -ha) gives you a lot of little extras that you will not get if you just download from The-Glitch or other sites, including a little explanation, news of future projects and all the lyrics, God bless you Steve, Shun and Taka, your our 6 great song Guru’s!

I watched the inauguration yesterday over the internet as ABC News had a live free feed of the events. Firstly I have to say, it is a big event, I do not think he will be able to fix things much better then anyone else, he is no Messiah, he is clever but that an’t good enough with the mess we’re in. His speech was very Utopian, grandiose and polished, he never seemed to even look at the prompter, but clever words never fixed anything.

Some people say “well is this the anti-Christ?” Steve makes a case (not so watertight), but I have a hard time finding all the dots for that, he is a good speaker, he does have a stern look at times, has a “False Prophet” in new-age liberal Oprah and her show that espouses his ideals in TV sets worldwide, but more then anything I think this is the next piece in the game. Who was he just a few years ago? A community outreach worker paying off his huge collage debts still nearly into his forties, he could have been a big lawyer like he studied for but decided to do community projects (and write books of his life that netted millions once he became known), gets into local and then national Senate and pow! Jumps the line even on Hillary, even they did not know what was coming losing millions of personal money to her campaign trying to beat this new kid on the block. Poor old Bill caught with his pants down again, those behind the scenes people keep pulling the wool over his eyes, they almost passed his job over for Gore with a Monica power-play, then used his old buddy Gore as a smoke screen to get their new dummy cowboy into the job in 2000 and then made him think his wife really had a shot this time, In Israel the Jews have gentile house servants who do things their faith says they can’t do on the sabbath and that looks like Bill much of the time in politics.

Obama has the world in awe now but it will not last long, one comment on Gaza or Iran and the Arab and Muslim world will change their minds, at home he has even a bigger mess with the economy and wars. We will see if he has any “super powers” very fast, if he can make world peace in his first term then I see him breaking the covenant and declaring himself God in the temple in Jerusalem in his second, but the only way that will happen with a US president is for it to be a 51st state, and that seems improbable, but then a black president seemed something we would never see in our lifetimes too till it happened today. We are a long way from that, every president like a soldier looks good going into battle, it is how he fights that makes the difference. Bush might have been a dumb-ass pawn, but I think Obama is just the wise-ass rook setting the stage, getting the crowds, getting some of the house in order with new catch words “unity” and “change” for the big act to come called ” I am God”.

One of the most touching moments in this was seeing those little girls, they are so cute and idealistic, videoing their dads speech with the little digicam and all, reminded me so much of two little girls I know and care about their age. And I got to thinking what in the world they got into by default of who their dad is now, their lives are not theirs, outings and shave-ice on the beach in Hawaii are far off memories. I just had to pray for them, this bad, hard, cruel world will beat them for the rest of their lives, not crime and poverty but even worse, politics, compromise and lobbying and glare of the media and expectations of the world that will make their father into a different person as he becomes the first  “house slave” of the global agenda.

God help us all.

Seems like STEM has landed a first for Family music by scoring a goal in our history for getting a song of his and others apparently written exclusively for the game on Pro Evolution Soccer 2009, a multi-platform computer soccer game like FIFA etc. While it might not make him or the Family a financial power it is helping to get the Word out to a new a different audience we are often not able to reach as they “live and breath” computer games, now they will be doing so to our tunes and especially high stakes that while it has a soccer chant is really much more meaningful and words are about life and overcoming, “high stakes for all our souls”.

Listen to it here on YouTube, I did not inbed it as it slows down my page for those of you who do not have high speed. Worth reading are the comments too that people left there on this YouTube post. Word is going to all the world and even cyber and computer space!

Well every day I wake up and say “this idea or pic would be great for the ol’ blog”, but never get around to doing it, it becomes history faster then ever these days. Here is a pic for all those New Year goals. The past year is all those old houses, yesterday’s success.  The sky is were we still want to go, the plane our dreams and were I want to go.

I’ve started to write some of my thoughts and ideas. This project is not like others where I write opinions of views of scenarios but the mental process, struggles and mental “childbearing process” in my head. Might be dark, might be colorful, might be things you never thought of, and it might be things that fly in your head too that you never get around to putting down. My mind of late has been afloat with endless words, thoughts, ideas and observations that I just can’t ignore any more; it’s telling me to write them down, so I am. Not sure if or how you’ll ever see or read them but that is what is happening and one reason (other then a Christmas onslaught push) I do not post much here right now. It might be a flood after New Years or nothing, stay tuned!

Here is one sampling:

Anger to Answers

I was born with an extra dose of aggravation in my blood, I’d think it is hereditary some, yet my Scottish ancestral spirit helper Michael “Mick” McKenzie says “don’t blame it on me”, so I don’t. My father said that we, his sons had…

Here is a blog I’ve recently found that I thought was very interesting. We’ve all seen the pics in Link magazines but there is where it comes from, teens doing their part to reach the world.

visit their site here

I did not write this but my aunt forwarded this to me and I thought it was pretty funny.

SARAH PALIN:  Before it got to the other side, I shot the chicken, cleaned and dressed it, and had chicken burgers for lunch.
BARACK OBAMA:  The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change!  The chicken wanted change!
JOHN MC CAIN:  My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON:  When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road.  But then, this really isn’t about me.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the road.  We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not.  The chicken is either against us, or for us.  There is no middle ground here.
DICK CHENEY:  Where’s my gun?
COLIN POWELL:  Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.
BILL CLINTON:  I did not cross the road with that chicken.  What is your definition of chicken?
AL GORE:  I invented the chicken.
JOHN KERRY:  Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it!  It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken’s intentions.  I am not for it now and will remain against it.
AL SHARPTON:  Why are all the chickens white?  We need some black chickens.
DR. PHIL:  The problem we have here is that this chicken doesn’t realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he’s acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.
OPRAH:  Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I’m going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed access to the other side of the road.
NANCY GRACE:  That chicken crossed the road because he’s guilty!  You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
PAT BUCHANAN:  To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
DR SEUSS:  Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I’ve not been told.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY:  To die in the rain, alone.
GRANDPA:  In my day we didn’t ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.
ARISTOTLE:  It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:  Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS:  Did I miss one?

Recently I’ve been reading back over older letters and series like “The Weakness Revolution – How You Can Make It! pt 1-3” (1998) and “You Can Make It” pt 1-2 (1999)

The interesting thing about reading old letters aside from the fact that the Word is just as good and applicable today is that it shows how far we have come, how this was a real purging time and years of the “bottom line” and how the Family and us as individuals are better prepared for the coming days. It’s been ten years since most of these letters and for those of us old enough to remember the first read and times when and what we were doing it is good to read them again and see how far we have come and for future kids and joinies it is interesting to see how this was preparing us for working more with the spirit world and the next generation disciple. If the early MO letters were the foundation of our faith with several updates and service packages this was the start of a real new version were things begin to really change, and not spiritual “patches” but a reload of discipleship that we all needed. Many could not take the new version, had hardware that was outdated or not compatible, help us always to be for the updates and reformats that we need to facilitate farther discipleship change in our minds, hearts and lives!

Today I helped someone with their new mini PC so I approached it as a product test drive, here is my assessment.

As far as practical and light it was wonderful, what you right away feel is the wall, there is no desktop and task bars for people familiar with other full PCs. This is basic to the bone, not only that but most (if not all) of the options are Internet driven, so no Internet, no use. I would have thought there at least would be some kind of writing editor on there so you can write notes on a bus or train where there is no signal, there was only google docs, and like all google products you need Internet connectivity.

I like the keyboard, it was small but still usable even with my large hands, not sure how it would be after writing long emails and blog posts but it is primarily a web tool, but even that was impaired with the lack of screen you actually get or fitting the page size to the browser so you do not need to scroll both horizontally and vertically, it’s just to much. which brings me to another point, there is no right and left clicks on the mouse touch pad making things a bit frustrating.

I’m guessing these are just web toys, they do not have CD or DVD ROMs in them only USB and Ethernet access so you need to bring pics, movies or songs to it with a USB flash drive or some other media like external HDD, I did not try sound or graphic capabilities on this one.

Really this should not be billed as a “mini PC” but a web tablet in folding PC style. really if you have 300 dollars get your self a handheld an portable keyboard for it as overall those have more functions at least at this time. This kind of thing is still in infancy and i really have doubts it will even be a viable option for long as full size computers keep dropping in price and people know the difference from a PC that can do as much as long as a desktop and one that only looks like one.

I’d see the use of this in my photography to view back pics as it is bigger then my LCD screen on my camera and maybe to check mail on the go and web surf but really I;d send that money on any number of things before this.

As for a “affordable PC for the worlds poor”, I’d say, we can do better then this, really, it might be great for a poor school provided they have Internet for the web, mail, wikipedia, and google docs, messenger, world clock(?) and Skype, but it will just get them frustrated for the above mentioned reasons, and for those reasons also it is not as great a gift for your older child that you might think it could be.

I just spent an hour trying to help a middle aged woman how to turn it on and get on a network and google search and it is a painful bunch of steps compared to my old XP computer I’m writing this from. Developing schools just need an equivalent to MicroSoft’s Notpad/Wordpad (with a spell check) a Calculator, and Paint to do school and be creative, they don’t need Internet driven content as these big international companies seem to think. as for the rest of us it just fills another small gap in our consumer imagination for something new and different, something more we might wish we could have that we do not really need or serve us much lasting purpose.

What do you do when you go bank corrupt? Borrow from someone even more in debt? That is what is playing out now over the 700 billion the US is giving banks, and other countries around the world are imitating. The US is trillions of dollars in debt, ten point two trillion, so much so that the NY time square clock has run out of digits.

The government has already spend/lost 2 trillion dollars from their pension fund now they want to take from tax money, the money that usually goes to running the country, government salaries, politicians, and pet projects and give it to the banks who mismanaged the rest of your salary already.

Doesn’t it frighten you how fast stuff hits the fan, and all of a sudden these big corporations like AIG and others just fold? More alarming are the sweeping changes that happen in these bills in congress that give the government so much power? We saw this on 9/11, a new “homeland security department”, now with this financial problem they have a new “Office of Financial Stability”. And now will get ownership stakes in these banks. All they need to do is cause some identity problem and everyone will be lining up for a chip in their heads by the new “Department of Registry”, Remember Dad’s letter “Registration”.

The few man at the top just keep on getting fewer. We always read about rich bankers and huge bonuses, but why in the last few years have we seen these rich millionaires willing to work in government for peanuts? First over were John Snow (a director of banks and corporations), then Paulson and his little squire Neel Kashari a 35 year old who is in charge of distributing the 700 billion both left Goldman Sachs for government salaries, did they know something we don’t? Why would you choose a 6 digit gallery with a sinking ship when you had a 9 digit one, yachts and everything, smells fishy?

Oil was going skyrocket all summer, over one hundred dollars a barrel, the media hyped it up and it was a real problem for us at the pump, now it is dropping and the media is making a big deal that it is falling and we are able to actually get something for our money these days while it is still work the paper it is printed on, I’m sorry the rich companies are not making the huge profits they made off of us all summer but for the media to use words like “plummet” because gas is finally at a 1 year low and $80 a barrel is still not as low as it was in the recent past and they are far from losing money off of it.

I’m a little surprised the Family is not more focused on this event, this is as big a deal as the Great Depression that hit the US 70 years ago, we have never seen anything like it in our history and we should be preparing and stocking up while our money is still worth it in shops, Dad always reminded us and I know it will hit us very hard in this winter/Christmas once the ripples reach the little guys, once shops and governments run short and cash is scarce, I’m not a doomsday person but I do understand billions and trillions don’t come from the rich guys pockets but ours and bills and consumer products are what make cash, these banks and their international reach will start collecting loans and investments from small businesses and retailers and many will go bank corrupt and others will be the monopolies that will be able to put the prices anywhere they like.

I live in europe, last year I was back in the US and paid in dallars, they got me lots of stuff there that was both cheeper price-wise and compaired to Euro exchange rates. I have a one dollar bill in my wallet left, it is not worth changing into Euros or my local currency so I want to see how worthless it gets in the next little while.

Enjoy the modern conviniances while they are still around, this is an exciting time in world history as we know the happy ending, but it will hurt and change our lives once the crunch comes to our local shops and lives.

The end is here, it’s only the begining!

That time of year again, JayDay!

Well it is not to important to me though I am glad it is also many other people’s birthdays and I take joy that they are having their ’special day’, and I’m fortunate to know a few people that I can write birthday greetings too and pray for on this day, our day. I do not usually post on this day as I’m not to positive during it, but I thought I always take pics of others that this day would be a good one to point it back at me for once, well I used a mirror but you know what I mean. I went for a honest shot, just as i was at time of the inspiration just to mark the passage of time as a notch on the proverbial tree.

Blessing gifts in my life today in order as they happened:

A long internet chat and wishes from a real long-time friend that I have not been in touch with for so long.

My wonderful and loving sis is going to help me and my camera with a little addition to my kit.

A good friend and my shep, gave me some words from the REAL J-Man (Jesus), cool!

3 cherubs and their angelic mother sent the sweetest wishes and love my way.

While waiting to pick up some freinds in town I ran into some teens I know who were having a worse day then me and I was able to encourage them that God is in control, like our chance encounter.

Despite myself life is good, and now I get another year to help make everyone elses lives even better (with the Lord’s grace), here I come for my “surprise” birthday cake!