Electronic tinkering

The power jack on our laptop has been going out over the last couple weeks. We decided not to get the protection plan, because we couldn't aford it with the monster dog computer we wanted. So I opened her up. I re-soldered the jack several times, each time it went bad in a worse way. So I picked up a new jack from Radio Shack. It was heavy duty compared with the delicate thing attached to the mother board. I soldered it on with a length of wire, so that the connection wasn't in danger of being torqued, not that that could happen anyway, the jack is bolted to the case. I am very proud of it, my monster computer now has a monster jack. It works great.

All this gets me schemeing. I got an old LCD unit that you set on an overhead projector. It is insanely dim, but what's to stop me from super charging the overhead? I figure I'll get a bunch of really bright lights and mount them inside, I'll wire them seperately and give them their own mean switch. It'll be like hitting turbo, and viola, 5000 lumens! Ok, we'll see how that one turns out.

Speaking of electronics projects, my typewriter to keyboard conversion progresses nicely. I'm in the home stretch. All this tinkering makes me think about investing in a nice soldering iron.

My Goals

I just returned from our quarterly conference on church planting and revitalization. I set some personal goals, here they are:

1. Build a leadership team
2. Spend time with people every day (Speaker, Dennis Clanton expects 40% of our time spent on people)
3. Preach holistic family sermon based in greater prayer and exegesis

Rosary

Chuck, my spiritual director, is getting ready to retire and move to his cabin. His office is getting bare. While meeting with him this week, he gave me an old plastic rosary he had in his office. I have found not only the rythem meaningful as I have prayed it, but just feeling the beads is for me a connection to the prayer. Even in the midst of doing other things, I am reminded of his presence by the bead between my fingers. I wonder if Brother Lawrence felt the same way with a spoon in his hand.

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