Recycling old TV's

I just read on CNN about a program that is being set up to recycle old refrigerators. They need to do the same thing for old TV's. This fall and into next year everyone will be switching to digital TV's. What do you do with all of the millions of old analog TV's? The government needs to set up a TV recycling program. The old analog TV's will probably work on cable where a cable box does the conversion as well as in other countries that still use the old NTSC standard. If enough people complain maybe they will see the need and set something up to prevent millions of working TV's from going to the junk yard.

Revival

Most everybody has heard of the Florida revival going on and available for viewing at http://www.god.tv/. Up here in New York we just finished the biggest Leadership conference ever with about 1,000 pastors, leaders, and missionaries in attendance. Jack Hayford was the guest speaker. I will be uploading pictures and video soon at http://www.elimfellowship.org/. I thought I would share some thoughts on what is happening.

I have been a Christian for over 40 years, I know I do not look that old but... I remember back in the 70's listening to CBN radio out of Ithica NY. Sometimes the Scott Ross show would have Phil Keaggy, Peter York, and Ted Sanquist in 'concert' at Love in, now called Greater Love Ministries. I made several recordings of the show on my Reel to Reel recorder. Years later I converted them to Cassette and I still have 2 tapes of the show. Those recordings sound a lot like what is happening today.

Back in the 70's there were two cultural roadblocks. God could never use someone with long hair and ragged jeans with holes in them were definitely of the devil. I remember how repugnant those hippies looked. Why did they not know that you have to look your best to go to church? But God did use them though matter how much we were repulsed by their appearance. Now I see people with tattoos and piercings. Don't they know that those piercings open them up to a high risk of infections? Once again we need to realize that these things are only cultural and do not affect their salvation or the message that God is speaking through them.

God will also use people in this revival that have criminal records or even a history that includes divorce. Remember Joseph had a criminal record.

Strange Dream

I have a lot of strange dreams. One that I wrote down in 1997 predicted 9/11 with incredible accuracy. I have a habit of writing them down, and usually I know what they mean. I have learned that you cannot let them change what you do, but you can look back after things happen and say that God was in it. So anyway I had this dream and do not know what exactly it means.

04/17/08 - Corn on fire

I dreamed that someone was hosing down some corn. They showed me how some of the corn had caught on fire. Just the tops of the corn plants had been burnt. So I joined them in hosing down the corn. Then the little pump station was burned up. We resorted to using buckets and cups to stop the fires. I was going to take the elevator or stairs to another floor of the building. Then I saw a table full of people and explained the problem to them.

Notes;

You could not easily see the fire, it was almost invisible.
It was spontaneous combustion, the fires started on their own.
It was happening inside of a building, like maybe a hospital.

The war rages on....

We techies are waging a war on three fronts. There is the war on spam, the war on viruses and the war on Internet attacks. Every time we make a move to block these criminals they make a counter move. It is a race to keep up with the techniques to stop these people.

If you are still not using Nmap to scan your network for infected computers with unusual open ports, I can almost guarantee that you have an infected computer. There is a new Windows version so forget the excuse of needing to use the cumbersome command prompt to run Nmap. The Windows version is called Nmap-Zenmap. Don't just run a network scan but also save a print out what is normal. Every time you run it you will find new open ports on some computer. Then when you notice someone's computer has port 6670 open for the first time you can go to the computer and ask the operator what they have installed. They will claim ignorance but be sure they are infected. If nothing can fix the problem just replace their hard drive. If you are like me you will have a box or 2 of used hard drives. I keep them for months and keep running virus scans, etc to no avail.

What I am saying is that Antivirus, Rootkit detectors, and Malicious Software removal tool are all next to worthless. They might find a problem around 25% of the time if you are lucky. The rest of the time it is up to you to find the infection. They are also not very good at removing the infections either.

You may ask why I disabled posting comments to my blog? Well some turkey posted a comment that was a virus and infected my laptop hard drive. So now it has a new hard drive and once again I cannot find the infection on the old one. AVG did give a virus warning a few days after the infection but that was too late.

On the Internet attacks, tighten up your firewall rules! Sonic Wall for example allows any computer inside of the fire wall to access anything outside of the firewall. So they send someone a virus infected email that is not detected for several days. In the mean time the virus has reached out and connected to someone and downloaded who knows what. Just block everything except for ports 80 and 443. Of course you know that they will write the virus to communicate on those ports sooner or later.

This was an awesome weekend

This was an awesome weekend. The highlight was Sunday when Teddy got saved. To make a long story short I took his grandson over to see him at the Buffalo VA hospital a couple of weeks ago. It was fun sitting there talking with all of these fellow Veterans. Last Friday Teddy got to go home from the hospital and Sunday he wanted to come to church. He is over 70 but he finally got right with God. It is never to late. There were some other things going on as well and maybe I will get to them in future posts.

Another highlight of the weekend was the wonderful weather. Fred, Mary Louise, and I went bike riding along the Allegheny river in Olean. I was planning on getting some work done at the church but instead spent the afternoon helping Fred clean up his back storage room.

House Fire South 2nd St Olean NY

Last night a house just down the street had a fire and was about 50% consumed. The Fire department was there most of the night and left at 7:30 AM. More pictures are on Facebook under bobdavis321.

Thyroid Synthroid and medical problems

First of all this is NOT intended to be medical advice.

I have been on Synthroid since around 2003. Back then I had changed doctors 3 times and they all said to see a shrink. My shrink admitted that my fingers were blue but he said I was causing it out of my felt need to be sick. They sent me to a heart specialist who said there was nothing wrong with my heart but my fingers were blue. Then a blood test revealed that my TSH was real high so they put me on synthroid. My temperature jumped from 96 to 98 degrees and 15 years of constipation was finally resolved.

I wish that was the end of the story. However it gets a lot more complicated at this point. Synthroid is T4 and you need T3 and T4 to operate. The theory is that excess T4 is converted to T3. Your brain needs T3 to operate. The amount of T3 and T4 you need varies with the temperature outside and the amount of stress you are under. So after tracking my thyroid status by the constipation I discovered that it actually shows up quicker as depression/paranoia. In fact my brain totally shut down before my fingers turned blue again. Then I took an extra 1/2 dose of synthroid and the depression lifted like magic.

I have long felt that people on synthroid need a better method of tracking their medicine. People with diabetes check their blood sugar three times a day. So I got the idea of tracking my temperature. Over a few days of taking my temperature three times a day, I concluded that it is 96 in the morning, 94 in the afternoon, and 98 in the evening. I have like a "hot flash" almost every evening, and I am a guy! I checked and if it goes below 93 degrees you need medical help. The low reading of 94 corresponds with every muscle aching, being stiff as a board, and being depressed. In fact I sometimes had "panic attacks" that also seem to be from the low temperature. It is like getting on an airplane and remembering that you forgot to pack your suitcase.

What is the solution? I do not know. I think the doctors should keep the TSH real low so that you have excess T4 to convert into T3. Another possibility is to take a Thyroid supplement like Kelp that is a source of natural Iodine, as well as thyrosine, Irish Moss, and some other stuff in it.

Having a low body temperature also leads to chronic illness. This winter I had a cold for 6 weeks before going to Asia. There it quickly resolved. After being back a few weeks it started coming back. The reason you get a fever when you are sick is because raising your temperature kills bacteria. Lowering your temperature allows the bacteria to thrive.

Viewsonic VA800 and VG175 repairs revisited.

My web site has had how to repair these Viewsonic monitors when they have garbage on the screen. You replace C19 with a 1 uf to 4.7 uf at 16 volts capacitor. Now I want to add that if it has a reddish picture with green streaks to the right of the text, you can replace C67. Again use a 1 uf to 4.7 uf at 16 volts capacitor. The capacitors should be available at Radio Shack. I have also encountered one monitor that would not turn on for 5 to 10 minutes. I replaced the capacitor that is just to the right of the C67 labeled IC to fix it. I think it was 22 uf at 16 volts but it might have been 47 uf. I have only encountered that problem once.

What I have learned in the last 2 years.

The last 2 years have been the hardest years of my life. This has been worse that having a critically sick child in the hospital. With the child you sign them over to the doctor's care. With a failing marriage you keep wanting to try another counselor or something to try to save the marriage. No matter what you do, you feel you have not tried hard enough. These are things that I have learned through these trials.

1. I learned to pray three times a day, not just once. I used to get a 1 hour lunch break and instead of taking a nap, it became a new prayer time. Also the importance of praying before going to bed became clear, not just in the morning.

2. I learned to pray on my face on the floor. I was so desperate for God that I spent most of my prayer time on the floor. If every tear is saved then there should be a large tub waiting for me.

3. I have been feeling the presence of God like never before. I have always felt my hair standing on end, now I also feel a cold cloud sensation. I though it was just cold air until I went to India and I still felt it even in the heat. It is a good cold; it is kind of like drinking water when having bad heartburn.

4. I have learned to "Praise Him in the storm". That is a song by Casting Crowns. I have long since learned to praise God even when my car was totaled. Can I praise Him even when my marriage is falling apart? Can I praise Him even when going from having everything paid in full, to broke? Can I praise Him even when my children disown me? For a while it was impossible to praise God, but that has changed now.

5. Look for, think about, and thank God for the positive things that do happen.For instance;
A. My daughter Hannah and I are back in good communication.
B. My van transmission repairs only cost me about $145.
C. Dale is giving me his like new furniture and appliances.
D. I slid off the road in a snow storm but drove back up on the road with no damage.

6. It helps to see God. I was praying that if I must go through loosing my wife that I could please see God first. He gave me a dream where I was leaving heaven. We were all singing beautiful songs of praise in every language and tongue, yet in perfect harmony. I wanted to remember the words to the songs but all that I could remember was "It is something ___ to be in the presence of almighty God". I asked about the missing word and was told that there are no words in any language that can even begin to describe what it is like to be in God's presence. It was kind of like when you are in church and someone begins to sing a new song that is wonderful, and they normally cannot sing that well. Everyone there in the dream was filled with so much joy that they could not help but sing the praises of God.

7. Someone told me that it is not over yet. I already knew that. I have wanted to say that 2007 was the worse year of my life, but that 2008 will be great. However I know that it is not over yet. I may be over the crest of the hill but there are many more bumps in the road ahead.

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!