Vox Lucens

I just realized that I forgot, before leaving, to ask you all to help promote the work that Remember is doing. I know that many of you have blogs and web pages of your own, and you can–very simply–use small portion of your webspace to spread the word on the work that we are doing to bless persecuted Christians.

So, if you would please, go to www.rememberthose.org/banners, enter your URL, and generate your custom code to add one of our three banners to your site.

And I thank you. Trip reports to come…

Defenestration: A throwing of a person or thing out of a window.

Since the days of Jezebel–or more precisely, the last day of Jezebel–defenestration has been on the minds and hearts of mankind. From her window, she pridefully stood out and surveyed her domain, laughing at Jehu’s attempt to disenthrone her. But even as she, with painted face and adorned head, gave him a scornful answer, confident in her own powers, she did not see the servants behind her.

But I bet she saw the window frame fly by. I bet she saw the ground rapidly approach. And the rest of the world saw her skull, feet, and palms–all that was left of her arrogance. (For all the juicy details, I refer you to 2 Kings 9:30-33.)

The window that was the source of her pride was the source of her demise.

But let us not stop there. Defenestration has not just been the Biblical tool of revolt; it has also been the tool of religious change. Take the Defenestration of Prague in 1419, for instance. Just four years before, John Huss had been burned at the stake for his reforms, but his followers were gaining power. Good King Wenceslas IV, apparently undistracted by the Feast of Stephen at this juncture, had an affinity for taking Hussite leaders to trial. During one of these trials, citizens of Prague stormed the Town Hall and threw the jury out the window.

NB:

Good King Wenceslas went out,
The window very quickly.
As the ground of Prague came fast,
He said, “I do feel sickly.”
But his stomach soon was calm,
And likewise was his psyche,
For the ground applied the balm
To all his earthly trouble, oooohhhhhh…

[No, it wasn't Wenceslas that was defenestrated, but hey.]

(While this defenestration helped to instigate the Hussite wars, I find it ironic that 200 years later was the Second Defenestration of Prague, which touched off the Thirty Years War. Being a war between Catholics and Protestants, that defenestration was an agent of both religious and civil change. Regardless, Prague apparently has a long and glorious history of windows that need more effective screens.)

It was said once, and repeated countless times later, that those that forget history are doomed to repeat it. Today I found that to be true.

It is no mistake, my friends, that the prominent agent of modern technological change is simply called “Windows.” And after fighting with Windows all afternoon, I have discovered the feeling of modern cyber defenestration.

You see, I, like Jezebel, can look through the Windows to view my domain. Though I don’t need to paint my face, or adorn my hair, and thankfully don’t need to give arrogant answers to a would-be conqueror, as she did, I have learned the power of some lowly servant standing just behind the Windows. One lowly misbehaving useragent, one usurping registry entry, and I go through the Windows to the hard ground below (and not mention the dogs).

Beware, beware, this new defenestration.

I tend to be too cheap to be a real gadget geek. I’m more about making things work than just getting whatever’s the latest rage. As an example, I’ve taken lots of flack for the boombox I used to carry in the front seat of my car. It looked weird, I’ll give you that, but it sure worked nice–I could listen to lectures in the boombox and music through my car audio. And that car audio was generally fueled by a Dell Axim Pocket PC that I used as my cheapo mp3 player.

Sometimes, though, that changes. It changes when it comes to travel, because sometimes when traveling it just has to work. Here’s my collection of electronic travel essentials.

It goes without saying that all travel electronics starts with the laptop. This, however, is not the laptop I’ll be taking to Sudan–that one’s getting minor changes like a formatted hard drive before I take it on the upcoming trip.

I love active noise reduction. I’m not sure I can say it better than that. Before I was given this set of headphones as a gift, I was skeptical of what they could do, but now I am a believer. The one thing that keeps them from being perfect is that they really only work for background noise like plane engines–a baby crying in the row behind you doesn’t qualify as background noise, and the headphones don’t work as well. But hey, perfection aside, I try to never travel without these babies.

A more recent addition to my travel regimen, I was blown away by the quality of the connection using Yahoo Voice on my last trip to Thailand. There was no delay, the quality was crisp and clear, and I paid a whopping penny a minute (plus exorbitant hotel internet fees, of course). And this VOIP headset plugs right into my USB port and works admirably. I’m not quite sure just how valuable these are going to be in Sudan, to be honest, as that will depend on what internet connections I can find, but I’m taking them along just in case.

OK, so it isn’t a piece of equipment used exclusively for travel, but travel is why I purchased the Nikon D-40. I have goofed around with it so far, but I can’t wait to put it through its paces overseas.

There comes a time, many hours into travel, where the only thing you want to do is throw yourself from the emergency exit of the plane cruising at 35,000 feet. Music helps calm that urge, so yesterday I bit the bullet. While I’m still too cheap for an IPod, I decided it was time for something–and this is what I ended up with. Bar review lectures, watch out, for you too are on the sync list!

And then there are all of the accessories that make it all work…

But travel does not end the jerry-rigging. Sometimes it enhances it. My latest exercise in “making it work” came with the ANR headset, which has a very narrow input jack for audio:

Most 1/8 inch cables are far too wide to fit:

The set came with the manufacturer’s custom cable, which has died. The manufacturer has been less than helpful in replacing it, and I don’t have time to deal with them, so I’ve traveled all over the tri-county area trying to find an electronics store that has a cord that would work. No one does. I’m leaving in a matter of days, and need this to work, so, being desperate, I bought a normal 1/8 inch cord, pulled out my pocketknife, and trimmed it down:

So far it works. Hurray for jerry-rigging!

I can’t make up my mind. I cannot decide whether I’m really dull for not researching sooner, or really smart for seeing through the haze without researching.

I explained some of what I’m talking about in the last post. After writing that, I went out and had even more big fun.

You see, there were a number of other sites that offered good deals on the camera I was looking for. In looking through them, even before I placed my first order, I was struck by their similarity, especially in their credit-card-processing pages. That similarity was my first inkling that I might be dealing a slightly-less-than-aboveboard company.

Misgivings aside (since I was using a credit card with full fraud protection, if worse came to worse), I placed an order with another of these similar looking entities (Express Cameras). The deal wasn’t quite as good, but I figured there was little I could lose in trying.

I should take a step back here and note that I was smart enough to be cautious before placing any of these orders. For instance, there was no indication on these websites as to whether or not a battery came with the camera. I called one of them and was told it did not, and the batteries on their website were vastly overpriced, so I found a great deal (and a legitimate one–imagine that!) from another place and ordered my batteries there. I figured, to give these “companies” the benefit of the doubt, that they legitimately made money on the battery after selling the camera at-cost. I was smart enough not to fall for that one.

With that background information, we can proceed. Yesterday afternoon I got an e-mail from “Express Cameras” asking me to call them and confirm my order. (Notice the similarities to the first order? Don’t forget about that…) So I called them, and I got some guy on the phone who must have been sitting on a chair o’ nails. That is the only thing I can think of that would make a person so rude. He started with the normal stuff–identifying the camera I ordered, etc. Then he asked what battery I wanted. I told him I didn’t want one at all, that I had already gotten one from another company.

Sounding completely exasperated, he explained to me that I couldn’t use the camera without a battery, and why on earth would I buy one from somewhere else? “You have cameras at good prices, and batteries that aren’t,” I told him, “So I bought a battery from another source.”

“No, we sell everything cheap!” he corrected me. I was sick of arguing, and said with a good deal of firmness, “I. Do. Not. Need. A. Battery. From. You.”

At that point he was done. He tried to hang up, but I stopped him. Remember the deal with expedited shipping from the order before? I wasn’t going to let that slide, so I asked him whether that $40 I spent would mean that I got the camera in two days. “I don’t know,” he told me. “You’ll get an e-mail from shipping.”

As you can probably guess, I wasn’t satisfied. As he was hanging up–again!–I told him to wait. I talked over his repeated assertions that I would get an e-mail from shipping and said, “Do you have this camera in stock? Can I at least expect it soon?” He told me they did have it in stock, and hung up before I could ask anything further.

I was ticked. Ticked enough to do research. And what a treasure trove I found! I’m not the only one that has dealt with these people. “Bait and switch” is the name of the game. I called them back, and carefully canceled my order.

Here is where it gets fun. I checked my e-mail a couple minutes after that, and found one from “Express Cameras” (that must have come before I called to cancel) telling me that the camera I ordered had been oversold, would not be available for 6-8 weeks, and that they were canceling my order. Obviously this was the result I wanted, but it got me thinking. I would be willing to bet that they send this e-mail standard to everyone who refuses to buy their overpriced batteries and memory cards. If you don’t take the switch, you don’t get the bait, either.

That was a long story, and you are to be commended for bearing with me. I hope that you are as amused as I by this prolonged weirdness. It has a happy ending, though I paid more than I wanted to, and I have my new toy from a reputable dealer.

I am, as yet, a horrible photographer, but that has not stopped me from turning out a number of masterpieces (which I am calling my magnum opiates) so far. I would like to share those with you.

Self-Portrait

“Guy’s Night Out”

My collection of lifesavers from the USS Legal Education

” Still Life of Justice on a Black Background”

“The Thrill of the Hunt”

Ranting & Raving, that is.

I hate it when someone goofs me over. I hate being taken advantage of. And what might be worse, I hate falling for scams or even psuedo-scams.

After a good deal of price-shopping today, I decided to make a rather significant purchase. I found a good deal, one that the seller (”Best Price Cameras“) indicated came with a number of accessories, and one that had highly reasonable two-day shipping. I gave them my order, my credit card info–amazed at the amount of weird technical requirements they put on it all (like validating my shipping address with my credit card–has anyone else heard of that?)–and gleefully went my way.

I got a call a few hours later from an upbeat-sounding gentleman who wanted to confirm my order. Confirm we did. I gave him my credit card security information, listened patiently as he told me I had to call my credit card company so that they could ship to my office address, told him that I had purchased batteries from another source. When I told him there was nothing more that I needed from him, he began the “goodbye” procedure, telling me that I would have my camera in two weeks.

“Two weeks?” I said. “No, no, I paid you $24 for two-day shipping. I should have it Wednesday, right?”

“Oh, no,” he told me. “This item is on backorder. You can get it in two weeks.”

After confirming he was serious, I began to wonder just why he hadn’t mentioned this before. He had all the other information about my order, and must have seen my expedited shipping request (which is important to me), but just *failed* to mention the backorder. It made me suspicious, so I asked, “What about all of the other stuff that was listed on the website as coming with the order? Is that still coming with?”

“No…..” he said. “You didn’t purchase a package. Just the camera and the lens.” At that point I had enough–this deal wasn’t that good, and I was feeling seriously scammed by false promises of free stuff and two-day shipping. So I said, “Alright, let’s just cancel the order.”

It is no exaggeration to say that it took him less than one second to say “yourorderhasbeencancelledgoodbye” and hang up the phone. I’m still not sure if I’m happy he gave up that fast or annoyed that must be really used to people cancelling when they hear the whole story.

And now I’m back to UCC. UCC, that is, accompanied by Hitchhiker–it helps to ease the pain. It helps a lot, actually–the only thing that would help more is a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

(And it must be admitted, studying Article 9 and secured transactions is infinitely more interesting when watching the scene in which Humma Kavula removes Zaphod’s second head as collateral.)

Ah, I remember the days when I used the Altavista search engine. Back in those dark ages, there were a variety of search engines which were roughly equal in their ability to find what one was looking for.

But now, now is the time of modernity, and since my conversion to Googlehood I have not been reticent to sing the praises of the modern search giant. I have cast aside all apocryphal fears that its success is a sign of the times, or that it will someday arise as the beast out of the sea.

If any of you follow the workings of Web 2.0, you know that Google is far more than just a search engine. It is a blogging service, a shareable calendar program, the end-all of web-based map programs, even a document collaboration system, and I have only begun to scratch the surface. It is also, my friends, a terrific RSS reader. (If you don’t know what RSS is, watch this video.)

I must admit that I jumped into the world of RSS with a lot of trepidation. Eventually, though, it became a necessity. I am expected to know what is going on in the world of the persecuted church, for instance, and RSS is simply the best way to do just that–not to mention all of the other things I am interested in following. So, throwing trepidation to the wind, I jumped, and quickly became addicted. The fact that I can cover my highly eclectic interests in one place–Google Reader–is amazing. Nothing else has my personalized blend of ESPN, blog tips, international news, right-wing opinion, San Diego Padres, legal news, tech updates, and humor.

That is all well and good, or was, until Google blew my mind with another possibility. To give some background, one of the goals of Remember Ambassadors is to share news and updates with Christians who want to serve the persecuted church. But how do I, a technologically inept wannabe, give up to the minute updates? What about sharing the stuff I read?

*drumroll* Ladies and gentlemen, Google Reader…

Using Google reader and a beautiful little piece of javascript, I can now share with my readers up-to-the-minute news on the persecuted church. All I need do is mark it as I read it. (Check it out in the Ambassadors sidebar!)

So now I’m debating adding a “What I’m Reading” box to this blog. Would anyone read it?