Answered Prayers

I recieved a phonecall this morning, a rather tearful S. My thoughts immediately turned to crisis (as they do when someone phones in tears!)

But no- the news was good. Excellent. Absolutely fantastic. And a wonderful answer to prayer.

For after a long struggle, much letter writing and working hard, S & her children have been granted leave to stay in the UK. No longer “asylum seekers”, no more fear of being sent back, but able to set down roots, feel safe and feel at home.

They’ve become a valued and well loved family at our wee church over the last few years, but their uncertain status has always been a shadow for them - and the fear of what may happen should they be deported has weighed S down.

That weight has been lifted. A family can live in peace, no longer strangers in a strange land. Thanks be to God.

techno joy and techno fear

After the PC probs of the last week or so, this cheered me up no end!

(CAUTION - Strong language on occasion)

Backwards in time

Dont forget that British Summer Time officially ends this Sunday morning and the clocks go back one hour at 1am (or is it 2am? I can never remember)

I’ve reminded all the emailable members of the congregations, including the family of E who is being baptised in All Saints this morning.

When BST began, I forgot to remind the congregation and various members of AS sauntered in during the offertory hymn looking extremely confused,  wondering why no-one had told them the service time had changed.  I wonder how many will do the same this time?

It works! But learn to practice what you preach…

A new motherboard later, the machine is finally working. Windows & Office installed, Email Addresses, contacts and diary retrieved from the SPV M3100. Took 2 days to discover that the problem was a short in the motherboard caused by something dislodging when it was moved from room to room.

Whenever one of the congregation comes to me for computer advice I tell them that the most important (and useful) thing to do is to make frequent back-ups of all their data. Sometimes I need to listen to myself - why is it I never seem to take my own advice? The last backup I made to the external hard drive was 10 months ago, and that (I discovered this morning) was accidentally overwritten by the PVR. So thats 6 years of work down the loo - sermons, adapted liturgies, artwork, music, edited movies. All of it. Including the stuff I had prepared for the baptism this weekend and the wedding I have in 2 weeks time. One of these days I will learn to listen to myself!

Anyone know how to retrieve data from 2 apparently corrupted SATA drives in a RAID configuration?

Continuing PC woes

It doesnt seem to have been the power supply after all and I’m stumped.  We’ve managed to get it to power-up at least to enter the BIOS, but it cant seem to find windows  boot information. Imany need to re-install.  Hopefuly a windows reinstall is all it will take, rather than new hardware.  Luckily I have all my work and art stuff on a separate physical hard drive, not the same one on which windows is installed.   Email addresses are all backed up to my phone, but emails aren’t. 

Reinstalling windows is something I’m used to - I do it around once a year anyway to make  sure my machine runs at its best.  I usually like to do a full back-up first though. Not this time, unfortunately.

I need geekish help…

for my PC has died. 

Firstly - the machine:  its a Gigabyte GA-965-s3 motherboard with an intel core2 6300CPU (1.86GHz), 3GBram (DDR2 dual channel), 2x 250GB HDD’s, running WinXPpro, with a NvidiaGeForce 7900GS graphics card with 500mb ram.

And now the problem:  the machine (which was built by my own hands and had been working perfectly for a windows machine) was moved to another room whilst the study gets a makeover. Alan set it up and turned it on.  It didn’t like that.  For the tecchies amongst you, I got a continuous short-beep POST,  the machine powered down and re-powered independant of any action by me. 

What I’ve done: checked all cables are properly connected; removed, cleaned and reseated all pci cards; attempted bootup with minimal setup.  All to no avail - same short-beep continuous POST and powerdown before self-powering to do the same again. (I havent found any information on the Gigabyte website regarding the POST codes.)

I’m thinking that the problem lies with the Power Supply - a Blue Storm.  Its 6 months old, replacing the last one (same model) which died.  But before I fork out on another power supply I’d appreciate a 2nd opionion from someone more geeky than me.

UPDATE  continuous short beeps is a power issue - finally managed to find the relevant information (only took 2 hours!)  Given that I built this machine 10 months ago and that this is the 2nd Blue Storm that’s died, I think I’ll be getting a different power supply this time…

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Blog Action Day

Its Blog Action Day today. Doing my bit for the environment - the PC is staying turned off!

Reading instead - Michael Northcott’s A Moral Climate. Havent got much past the introduction yet, but what he is saying is contoversial enough to have me hooked so far. Human Empires rise and fall as a result of their long term sustainability, and since biblical times those empires seeking to expand beyond their sustainable limits have faced sociopolitical and ecological disaster. Now we live in a world of global marketing empire, expanding beyond far beyond the sustainable, and are experiencing socio-political and ecological disaster as a result. I’m looking forward to discovering his arguments and potential solutions.

Router issues

Router problems and dodgy email servers are leaving me with limited connectivity at the moment. Blogging will be random and sparse until the new shiny replacement arrives.

Harvest in the city

Harvest festival this weekend for AS & HC, followed with a pot-luck lunch in the Church halls (its a united all-age service at Holy Cross if you want to join us, 10.30am)

Living and working in the city it is more important than ever to celebrate harvest - giving thanks for creation, for God’s goodness to us, and for those who provide the food, goods and services we use.  We are so removed from the creative and sustaining processes as all we buy is a short drive away in the supermarket or shopping centre, and so infrequently contemplate where our “stuff”  - food or otherwise - comes from.  These things are gradually becoming part of the popular (and church) consciousness, and its about time.

One of the hymns we’ll be singing this weekend - and I think FPG has the beauty and the tragedy of human attitudes to God’s creation summed up perfectly!

God in such love for us lent us this planet,
Gave it a purpose in time and in space:
Small as a spark from the fire of creation,
Cradle of life and the home of our race.

Thanks be to God for its bounty and beauty,
Life that sustains us in body and mind:
Plenty for all, if we learn how to share it,
Riches undreamed of to fathom and find.

Long have our human wars ruined its harvest;
Long has earth bowed to the terror of force;
Long have we wasted what others have need of,
Poisoned the fountain of life at its source.

God owns the earth: it is ours to enjoy it,
Ours, as God’s stewards, to farm and defend.
From its pollution, misuse, and destruction,
Our God deliver us, world without end.

Fred Pratt Green 1903-2000
© 1973 Stainer & Bell Ltd.