Welcome to Adventures with Phil v2.0

So what is/was Adventures with Phil and where did "Step it up a notch" come from? Well, I used to do Adventures with Phil e-mail updates to let everyone know about the happenings in my life. If you're wondering, I originally got the name idea from the Red Green show, where there's a segment called Adventures with Bill.
Now, where did "Step it up a notch" come from? Before I go into that, there's something else I want to say. Even though "Step it up a notch" was hilariously funny in its original context, and the 20 or so of us who were there will definitely remember it as such, I am finding it is becoming more than just something I say; it's like a life motto, like the one the Three Musketeers had.
As I think about the words "step it up a notch", what comes to mind is the idea of doing more/going the extra mile, which also brings to mind Jesus' teaching in Matt 5:38-42. For me, applying step it up a notch means going deeper with God, building stronger family relationships and recognizing that I have the ability to reach out to help someone in need, no matter what the need is.

This section is getting too long so please make your way to the sidebar to find the origin of the phrase "step it up a notch".

Saturday, March 15, 2008

What is this white substance falling from the sky?

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.

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