I took some pictures of the lunar eclipse that happened on Feb. 20, 2008.
This first shot is a look through the trees in the park across from my place in Calgary at 6:45.
The moon at 6:51.
Moon at 7:27.
Moon at 8:07.
Zoomed in view of previous.
Hmm, where have I seen it before? It seems familiar and yet foreign. Oh wait, it's snow! Yup, it's been a while since we last got any snow in Calgary.
Well time is just flying by, I can't believe it's almost been a month since I got back from Rwanda. The weekend after getting back, we went to Edmonton for Missionsfest. I got to see some of my friends who came by the eMi booth, which was nice. I went to some booths to see if there was anything that I might be able to get involved with in the near future. I would like to do a mission trip that's at least a couple months up to a year long. I think something with Interserve might be possible.
I've been trying to put together a movie of the trip to Rwanda and it's taking a while. Windows Movie Maker just doesn't cooperate, it crashes/freezes after what seems like every 5 things I do. Then it takes at least 5 mins to reload everything and if I forget to save after every step, I have to redo the last x-number of steps. I am almost done, just have some audio editing to do. Unfortunately, movie maker isn't helpful with this. I have to do it all with Nero Wave Editor. If I was able to get Adobe's Premiere working, this movie would so be done. I downloaded the trial version but it wouldn't import the audio of the videos I captured. I don't want to risk corrupting the captured video by trying to split the video files into smaller pieces (Premiere will import audio of the smaller video files but not the big ones, don't ask me why).
At the office, I've worked on bits of the project report, just waiting for more of it to come in. Last week, the staff went to Missionsfest in Toronto so Jason and I were left to run the office for a few days. This past Wednesday, I put together a new computer at the office, it wasn't until Friday morning that it was fully updated and all the software was installed. Never in my career in building computers (I've now got 3 under my belt) did I have as much trouble as this one. USB 2.0 didn't install properly and I racked my brain trying to figure out what went wrong. In the end I found out that the drivers that came with the motherboard tried to install USB 2.0 before XP's service pack 2 was installed and so it screwed it up. When all was said and done, there were 143 updates for Windows downloaded and installed. I also fixed the internet/network connection issues we were having.
Last Friday (7th) afternoon, Jason and I went to the zoo with Kevin's (civil engineer on staff at eMi) wife and kids. His two little girls are really adorable. It was funny with the younger one, Kaisa, she kept saying "I want to go home" then we were about to leave and she wanted to see the dinosaurs, so we went to the dinosaurs. Part way through she started whining about going home again. Afterwards, Jason had his cousin's ball game to watch but I went to play Lego with the kids, it was fun. We built some houses, cars and I built a very simple airplane.
The last couple days has been a hoot with the e-mail conversations bouncing around amongst the small group I joined. I won't go into the details but there was talk of dismemberment of body parts and holding of captives, it was all quite hilarious joking around.
Last night, we had an awesome bible study and had excellent discussions about what it means to follow Jesus and persecution. Afterwards, we had a very involved discussion regarding facebook that went almost an hour and a half.
I'll be posting some pictures soon, right now I'm going to the auto show.
As the title suggests, it's time for a rant. Two things in particular are bugging me right now.
Firstly, I was flipping through channels on TV today and saw on CNN what I thought was another campus shooting, thank God it wasn't. But it was still shocking to hear that the student body president at UNC was shot to death in what looks like a carjacking. My prayers go out to friends and family of Eve Carson, may you find comfort and peace in Jesus Christ. I know this is a rhetorical question but, what is wrong with this world? I've got a jumble of words in my head that I can't get straight right now...uh....I guess I'm extra sensitive after having gone to Rwanda; just seeing and being at some genocide memorials has had a profound effect on me, I can't put it into words, I went to WWII genocide memorials in Europe but they didn't affect me nearly as much as Rwanda has.
Second rant: I thought people who worked for the government needed to be smart, oh wait I forgot, only morons work for the government. Which reminds me of a quote I read the other day: "There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. - Kurt Vonnegut" here's another good one from today: The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'. - Larry Hardiman
Anyways, morons at the National Student Loans Service Centre obviously don't know how to read. I'm trying to apply for Loan Relief and if this keeps up, my internship will be over before I get it. So I needed to send proof of my income for the month of December, so I sent copies of my pay stubs along with my application. They sent me a letter saying they couldn't process my application. This is what it said: "No proof of income or insufficient proof of income was provided... Actual amount of your income is required for (no supporting documentation required): Dec. 2007." Ok so you want proof of income but don't need supporting documentation, but the reason you can't process my application is because you don't have the supporting documentation. What?! So I called them and they said I didn't give them enough information, I asked what I didn't give, they said proof of income, I said I sent it with my application, they said they didn't have it. How do you go from me sending it in the same envelope, to them not having it, but they have my application form? So I send it again, this time by fax, clearly marking the dates and income amounts. This was 2 weeks ago; I was supposed to get a response within 5 days. So I called them yesterday and they said I still didn't give them enough information. I found out I was "supposed to" send proof of income for Dec. 29. I only got paid on the 1st and 15th, there is nothing for me to send for the 29th! It says on the pay stub "Pay period: Semi-monthly (24 pay periods per year)" READ WHAT I SENT YOU MORONS! ARGH!!!!