Back from Asia

We are all back from Asia. We had a great time. About 3 of us did get sick but it mostly lasted only a couple of days. The secret is to only eat cooked food and only drink bottled water or tonic water.

Everything went fairly well. Even with a generator and a backup generator power was not reliable. The main generator had a bad transfer switch. The backup generator had bad gas.

With the electricity being off most of the time the traffic lights were also out. Even if they worked they were mostly ignored. If the light was red that means slow down but if there is no traffic keep on going. A two lane road becomes 5 lanes at the intersections, then with the traffic light out it turns into utter chaos.

Another thing is learning how to use the horn. Two short beeps means I am happy, a longer one says get out of my way. If you are walking and they beep at you, ignore it, the beeping says that they see you. If they did not beep then it is too late anyway.

Computers for Pastors in Africa

My brohter Fred sent me pictures of happy pastors in Africa that received used laptops that I refurbished. I will upload the pictures to my facebook account, they might appear here too.

Back in New York

Well I am back in New York where I was greeted by about 2 inches of snow and Ice to chisel off my van. The good news is that the van actually went. It sometimes does not go when you put it in gear, it has a transmission problem. I went to Lima to pick up a firewire card for Fred, then to Hemlock to get Hannah’s guitar amplifier, then to Olean to deliver everything to Hannah to take to Fred in Africa. Except I forgot to get some clean clothes so now I am doing the laundry.

Back in Texas I had a few mishaps, or maybe you would call them bloopers. When I first went to preach the cameramen backed up and covered their eyes. Then someone said “Man you need to get a tan”. I suggested that I take a day off and spend it at the beach. Texas has more sun in the winter than New York has in the summer. Then there was the time when I introduced myself by saying “This is Bob Davis speaking to you from beautiful Laguna Vista California”. I guess I forgot what state I was in! Then when I tried to fix the sound so it was in sync with the picture I made it so there was no sound at all. So when Sara Cliff preached there was no sound. She had a good message and she also makes a good mime.

Update from Texas

Well right now I am in Texas where we are doing test video's in the recording studio that we will be taking to Asia in a couple of weeks. Yesterday I preached on the life of Peter, today I am not sure what I will preach on, likely it will be on "Be strong and courageous" from the book of Joshua. So far besides preaching with an interpreter, I have operated a camera, and run the video mixer in the control room. We are trying to learn all of the positions so we can teach the locals how to operate everything when we get to Asia.

New Washer launcher and coil gun

At the 2007 Rochester hamfest in June I picked up an entire box of capacitors for $65. The 4 old ones in the 900 volt model were rated at 7500 uF at 250 volts. Four in series yielded 1800 uF at 1000 volts. The new ones are 3700 uF at 450 volts. Two in series will give 1900 uF at 900 volts. My cabinet will hold 8 of them for a total of 7500 uF at 900 volts. That is 4 times the uF of the current washer launcher. Also the popularity of my coil gun has lead to me making an adapter so that the coil gun will plug into the 900 volt power supply, not just the 300 volt power supply. I can't wait to see how fast the bolts will fly at 900 volts!