Computer Problems?

As usual, I am pushing Linux Operating systems. The new version of Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) version 10.04 or Lucid Lynx has just been released. As soon as it was released I upgraded and was extremely pleased with the improvements. The developers at Canonical have taken aim at the business sector with this release. As always there is 24 hour a day free support for the Home User and there is Commercial Support for business to tap into for the free operating system that puts windows to shame.

The operating system has a Windows feel and the learning curve for transiting is almost flat. Any person that can operate a Windows Computer can operate an Ubuntu computer. I purchased a new hard-drive and did a fresh install, leaving my other two operating systems in place, just in case. Where Windows always claims the install will be done in about 39 minutes, the new Ubuntu install took just under 30 minutes and that included automatically detecting my hardware, downloading the drivers for it and installing and configuring all of them, automatically. I did the restart and without any “tours” or other hassles I clicked Firefox and went on the net.

Now you're thinking, yeah but now he had to install his office apps and all the other junk, nope, not true! Ubuntu installs with a complete, MS Office, compatible office suite, free of charge. Better still the equivalent of Power Point and of Publisher come with the system install. You can view Power Point presentations and you can build them with this office suite.

But there is better news yet! Puppy Linux 5.0 a.k.a. Lucid Puppy is released and available for download. It is also free, of course but it is for that tired old machine that you have retired because of speed. I did the test install on a VirtualBox hard-drive set up to test for use on a Compaq Armada built in the late '90s with a Pentium One processor with a maxed out memory of 80 meg of RAM and a two gig hdd. The install used about five hundred Megs. Of the two gig. Hdd I set up for it. It boots in the VirtualBox in about 36 seconds from turning the machine on so I'm expecting about a minute of boot time on the Compaq Armada Laptop. This Operating System comes with the standard Calculator, MS Office compatible Word Processor and many other apps, free.

So, if your unit is dying a slow death, revive it because the Lucid Puppy is based on the Lucid Lynx Ubuntu release and is just as easy to install and operate. Like Ubuntu it automatically detected and set up my hardware and immediately went on the Internet, Well... immediately after it automatically installed My choice of browsers after I clicked the Internet Icon on the darn good looking desk-top.

So once more I beseech you, brethren, don't operate operating systems that are supposed to be purchased to use, both of these systems are point and click, just like Windows and as an added bonus, the last time a Linux Computer was attacked by a virus, worm or trojan was in '96. It sure takes the required maintenance for Windows driven computers out of the equation. Computer manufactures think enough of Ubuntu that folks like Dell are selling and supporting Ubuntu Computers with their names on them.

When Life Is Unfair

When Life Is Unfair


We May Be Abused


Mar 15:15 Wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified.
I was taught that Barabbas was confined less than a quarter of a mile from the trial site of Jesus. He would have heard them shouting his name. I figure that Barabbas being Jewish and likely knowing the custom of the Roman Governor would have felt a great salvation had just been given to him. From my map, available at www.bible.ca, the Fortress Antonia, where I believe Barabbas would have been held, was very close to the Trial of Jesus.


Mar 15:16 The soldiers took Him away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium), and they *called together the whole Roman cohort.
In the first century a Roman Cohort was composed of 800 men. The guard placed on the man that had committed no crime was 800 armed men.

Mar 15:17 They *dressed Him up in purple, and after twisting a crown of thorns, they put it on Him;
Mar 15:18 and they began to acclaim Him, "Hail, King of the Jews!"
Mar 15:19 They kept beating His head with a reed, and spitting on Him, and kneeling and bowing before Him.
It is notable that Mark leaves the 39 stripes with the Cat-O-Nine Tails out of his account of the Crucifixion account. It Is thought that this Gospel is what is remembered by John Mark, the same Mark of 1Pet. 5:13, as told to him by Peter, in Rome. This would account for the omission. Any story retold loses some depth but this, in no manor harms the account.


Mar 15:20 After they had mocked Him, they took the purple robe off Him and put His own garments on Him. And they *led Him out to crucify Him.
It is important for us to remember here that the ripping of the whip has caused the oozing of blood to have flowed and the robe would be full of his drying blood. I once ticked two of my fingers with a chain saw to the bare knuckle. The restoration of them involved jerking the bandage off two or three times a day to rip the scabs off and cause layers of replacement tissue to grow. This caused me, almost unimaginable pain and when they jerked the robe loose this is exactly the pain that Jesus would have felt...all over His body. We must never believe the popular lie that serving Jesus is the end of all our troubles. We should always expect persecution and we should always expect it to grow. If we follow Jesus we will be abused.


We May Be Mocked


Mar 15:29 Those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Ha! You who aregoing to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days,
Mar 15:30 save Yourself, and come down from the cross!"
One of man's largest faults is the desire to be in the group. I remember many days as a youth watching one person begin to torment another and as time grew so did the tormentors. At seventeen I stood 6'1” and weighed 110lbs. Since I was so skinny I was often chosen for a beating in the grave yard three blocks from the school. Retuning to class the next day meant a great deal of shouldering and elbow abuse. I was mocked because I couldn't fight but Jesus was mocked because He fore told the future and healed people. He did good for everyone and only the Sanhedrin disapproved...until he was on the cross and then everyone hated Him.


Mar 15:31 In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes, were mocking Him among themselves and saying, "He saved others; He cannot save Himself.
Mar 15:32 "Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe!" Those who were crucified with Him were also insulting Him.
From the Luke 23:40-43 account that one of the two might have joined in the ?fun? at first that before the end he turned and rebuked the other thief and asked for and received salvation from Jesus. The Scribes and the Pharisees, though not all of them, mocked Him in disbelief but one of the thieves and a soldier came to believe while Jesus was on the cross. While being mocked He remained true to His mission...so should we.




We May Face Untimely Death


Mar 15:37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last.
Mar 15:38 And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
Mar 15:39 When the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
The Romans were experts in the arts of torture and they enjoyed their work. It was in no manor common for a man on the cross to die this quickly. The fact that the veil hiding the Holy of Holies was ripped from the top to the bottom and not form the bottom to the top because even though it was far to thick for a man to have torn or ripped it, only God could have done it from the top down.


We Will Be Vindicated


Mar 16:5 Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed.
From Matt.28 we know that the “young man” was an angel of the LORD.


Mar 16:6 And he *said to them, "Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him.
For the Christian, the true follower of Christ, this should be one very comforting passage of scripture. Like Jesus we will not go to Sheol but will immediately be with Him in Heaven. Jesus went first to Paradise, a.k.a. Abraham's Buxom, to empty it of the Old Testament saints (Matt. 27:50-53) allowing them to enter into Heaven.


Mar 16:7 "But go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.'"
Any time that we see a promise from Jesus we need never doubt it because it is the very Word of God. Though we will be mocked and mistreated, in the end of everything we will be rewarded and justified because we believed and followed Him.

The Fruit of a Christian

... Before I fell victim to the results of my years in the military I was crazy about growing a garden. My fondest memories of my garden are when my yellow headed granddaughter would come over and the Okra plants towered above my head. The first time she was three years old and I gave her a paper bag, sat on the ground and just enjoyed watching her scurry through the plants picking every pod she could reach. When she could reach no higher and she had cleared both rows and could reach no more she sat down beside me, opened her large grocery bag and told me she did not have enough. The bag was about ¼ full but she wanted to fill it. I made a deal with her there as we were seated, I promised to plant more for a late harvest and I told her that the very best ones were at the top of the plant. She looked and she told me, “Maybe, but those were smaller.” Standing up I threw her onto my shoulders, one leg oner each and told her to hold on to my head.
... As I walked she devastated my crop of new, tender Okra and she filled the bag to the top. She went home and had my daughter fry her some of both the new and the older. She never again wanted anything but the new growth because she learned the lesson that day very well. She is almost 16 today, yellow hair that glistens in the sun and she has a young man that thinks she hung the moon in the sky. She has grown to be a teen aged Christian, the fruit of many teachers within and outside of our family and I'm proud as a new papa of her, she is the fruit of a bunch of Christians. Just as my Okra seeds grew new Okra my family and church family have been growing new Christians for many years now.
... Tit 3:14 And let our people also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful.
... Every Christian will bear fruit at some point in their journey through this world. As much as my granddaughter brings joy to my life there is a greater joy that is so full I am unable to number the fruit of it. When I was first saved I read the Bible so much that I just consumed it.
... By the second year I had moved so close to God that I fully believed every word of the scriptures, without question. It was at that time that God placed His first calling on my life. I was forty-seven years old and God was calling me to teach. My first reaction was that I was still a babe in the faith, how could I possibly teach anyone? Just after I made my calling known to my pastor a position, teaching Primaries, opened up and of course what should a babe in Christ learn but the, down to earth, fundamentals?
... My wife, a Deacons daughter, co-taught the class with me and it was there that I led my first person to the foot of the cross. He was an eight year old boy that I have since gotten my truck serviced by and as a man he has not turned away from his first love. Before the LORD called me from that church, in Humble, Texas, I taught the men's class in the evenings and every student in my Primary Class had made professions of faith. My next calling was to serve as the music director under a young pastor as he and his wife were being called into the Mission Field in Honduras and together we were busy building the church there in Tomball, Texas and leading the lost to salvation in Jesus, the Christ.
... Soon after young pastor Jones and his wife moved onto the field the LORD moved my family to a small church in Pinehurst, Texas where my wife, daughter and granddaughter worked to build the Children's Ministry with the pastor's wife and I moved into the Prison Ministry. In my years inside the Texas Corrections System the team led thousands to faith in the LORD and I was just awe struck at the movement of God.
... Now, I am stricken with the damage of my years at war in Vietnam and I am stuck to my wheel chair. Many will and do think that God is finished with me but that is not true. I work a few Christian BBS's and folks are still moving to the foot of the cross. I do not have any idea how many have been saved because I obeyed God but I am certain the He knows. Nothing else matters, He knows.
... In summary, the fruit of an Okra seed is some of the best fried okra and some really delicious Gumbo. The fruit of a Christian is another Christian.
... Mar 4:21 And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?

Ruined Memories

I recently restored a photo for a Christian Missionary in Guatemala. As one might imagine this photo, from his days in the Queens Army in Bahrain, circa 1950, was in very rough shape. I restored the photo by cloning some of the areas that had pealed away. There were several points along the edges that had evaporated with time and they were reconstructed with the use of the cloning tool, the air brush and by smudging. I then smoothed the effects of the years of exposure to the elements by setting the Opacity of the Smudge Tool to 65% and slowly smudged the rippled texture out of his unifrom and his skin.

Then I colorized his skin and uniform by selecting the area to be worked on and air brushed each area separately. By selecting an area with the point to point selection tool I eliminated the problem of bleed-over from the air brush. When applying the air brush effect I use an opacity of 20% and apply layers until the effect is pleasing to the eye.

The results can be measured by visiting my site at www.photorepaired.com where you will see the original as well as the finished product.

Photo Recovery

I have been repairing photos for over eight years and I love the work so much that since I have been forced to retire I have decided to hurt the people that are stealing so much money from ordinary people.

I have purchased the domain name, photorepaired.com, and I have set up shop to accommodate people in their search to restore the memories of the past in order that they are passed on to the next generation. I figure I will get a certain amount of hate mail from the established Photo Restoration Industry but, being a Vietnam Veteran, they will not be the first to spit in my face and I took it then and now, I'm seasoned.

I welcome you to visit my web site and to take advantage of my extraordinary offer while it is in effect. I will certainly become swamped at a point and need to withdraw the offer, so get in now.

I do any photo you have and I even colorize to some extent.