Evendays

Most of you know that a company of Swiss soldiers did a big booboo last week and accidentally invaded one of our neighbors, Liechtenstein. This was quite an embarrassment to the Swiss Army, who had to apologize profusely to all eight people who actually live in Liechtenstein. I have not read about this incident in the Swiss press, but saw that it has been covered in papers world-wide, from London to Des Moines, which has led me to suspect it was all done on purpose in order to get a little free press and boost tourism. A bit like Bush did.

But why did these 170 soldiers, each carrying assault rifles, NO ammo, and a Swiss Army Knife with corkscrew, tweezers (but NO compass), cross the border in the first place?

1. It was night…
2. Large quantities of beer…
3. The out-of-date GPS system they were using was only accurate to 15 meters. And since Liechtenstein is only 14 meters wide…
4. The Liechtensteiners hadn’t repainted the black X-X-X that marks the border in a really long time…
5. Jack Bauer was leading the 170 and he NEVER follows protocol.

Rest assured that things will soon go better for the Swiss Army of the future. Son 1 and Son 2 will be part of it.

France, beware!

I got to talk to "Mary" yesterday and things are not good. She is now in a mental hospital and heavily drugged. When we talked she said she was very tired and didn’t want anyone to do anything for her.

Thank you for keeping her in your prayers. This is a tough one. We have been praying so much that her voice go away. And now she’s worse off than ever.

In March of 1999 I was in the computer market again. That’s always a problem when you’ve got friends that own Mac stores, but it was 4 years after my last purchase and a new battery for my PB 520 was going to cost more than the machine was worth and… Well, you know how it is when you’ve already convinced yourself…

I had the funds for a Mac G3 Blue & White, code named Yosemite. It was a desktop… Ran at 300 MHz, had 64 Mb of RAM and plugged right into my 17 inch screen. It had NO floppy, NO SCSI, and cost about $1900.00. It was bold.

I bought it while Wife’s Dad (FIL) was in the USA. And not that it mattered, but I finally had a faster machine than he did! But, of course, FIL was up to the challenge, and came home to Switzerland with a very slick black PowerBook G3 (the Lombard with a “bronze” keyboard). It had a 14” screen in beautiful color, no ADB port, no floppy… But I was speechless. It was my dream machine. Out of our budget, but my dream machine.

After 5 years with my Mac SE, a good friend (and supporter) from Austin started looking for a new portable for me. At a Sunday evening church service, he ran across someone who could get an Mac PowerBook 520 for only $1000.00 in March of ‘95. It was a great mobile machine and had a connection for a 17” monitor for use on my desk. It had a track pad and a 160 Mb hard drive, and it ran at 25 MHz, waaaaay faster than my old SE.

I took th PB 520 everywhere, especially when I was teaching English is businesses. I’ll never forget the manager of a French bank walking in on me before class and saying, “That is certainly not a PC.” “How did you know?” “It’s got style,” he replied. I just smiled. Not only were my sermons getting better, but I could work on them anywhere, able to digitalize a thought faster than you could say QUERTZ. And my MacBible program still worked on it.

The PB 520 sold me on mobile computing and I promised myself I’d never go back to desktop computers.

Well, never say never…