Hertzler’s Outpost

…looking a bit sleepy this Christmas

This year the cousins sent us matching Hertzler University t-shirts. Pretty cool.

Here in Orlando today it was about 75 and rainy, a perfect day to stay inside and play with new Christmas gifts.

OUC Half Marathon Finisher’s Medal

Last Tuesday, at the end of four months of training for a half marathon, I pulled my hamstring. It was on a track at the middle school a mile and half away from home at night in, what is for Florida, cold weather (55 F). My walk/hobble home was very cold, but even more disappointing was the realization that the training may have resulted in not being able to run the race. My real reason for doing this race was to stay in shape, so I had actually already accomplished my most important goal. But I still really wanted to run that race!

The pain went away by Wednesday night, but by Friday night I was still not sure what would happen if I tried running on it again, much less running hard.

This morning I found out; my leg worked. In fact, after six miles of running easy I realized it wasn’t going to blow out on me, so I ran the rest of the race hard. It was fun passing all those people who had passed me earlier in the race! Finished in 1:43. Good enough for me this year with enough padding to shoot for beating it next year.

My friend, Ted, beat me this year by almost a mile.

Night Launch of Endeavor

On my blurry camera phone the launching space shuttle, Endeavor, and the full moon looked pretty similar, but in real life it was a spectacular site. This is one of the benefits of living in Orlando for sure.

If you click this photo you can see two more photos of the shuttle launching (lower right corner of page, click “next photo”).

The Time of My Next Meeting

In about 9 hours I’ll have an Internet-based conference demonstrating features of a new system Campus Crusade is developing to help our volunteers respond to visitors from our evangelistic websites. It’s part of my new job helping our staff members in various parts of the world understand what their options are for reaching people in their areas with the gospel.

This diagram shows the time this meeting will occur in each of the locations where someone will be tuning in.

At the Osteen Diner

Lunch today was at Osteen Diner with my friend, Dave. We got there on our motorcycles on a very warm Florida November day. Lunch was good. Travel was better. Dave let me ride his Harley Davidson back home, a bike twice the size of mine. Fun.

Lots of little kids came to the door
this year. And this ghost.

Having two kids who don’t like chocolate usually means Halloween is a sweet deal for me. Until this year. Neither Andrew nor Audrey went out for candy, and Cathy and I stayed home and handed it out for the first time in a long time. Negative candy flow.

Testament to the incredible wife of 20 years of mine is that fact that I NEVER heard a word of complaint from her about our broken oven over the last two months of its demise. Granted, the “Food:EatOut” category in Quicken got a bit more of a workout in the mean time, but today we finally resolved the situation.

After pulling the oven out, cleaning up the nastiness that grew under it over the years, and locating what we thought was the most likely broken part we called an appliance repair service. With the price of what we would likely pay to have our old oven fixed we set out to see what “new” cost. Within an hour we had found a NEW unit within $25 of the repair cost. No brainer.

You won’t be seeing this oven in use anywhere on the Food Network, but it will cook Hertzler food just fine.

The Team - Ivo, Beni, Bartek, Andrey,
Galin, and me

This is the team of men leading Campus Crusade for Christ’s outreach on the Internet in Eastern European languages. They help publish websites about who God is and what it might be like to know him - in languages spoken by over 200 million people. They all lead teams of volunteer email mentors who answer visitors that write in from their sites. Sometimes they have the privilege of meeting personally with these visitors, and other times they build a relationship across many time zones to places they could never go otherwise.

Pray that God continues to accomplish his purposes through them.

Before

After my first unsuccessful attempt at getting the brakes on my 1986 Yamaha XJ700 Maxim motorcycle working a few weeks ago, I did more research and found out that Yamaha never intended for their brake lines (rubber hoses surrounded by steel spring guards) to be in use longer than 4 years. It had been 22 years on my bike, and since brakes are the biggest safety element on a motorcycle, it seemed wise to finally replace them.

While I was at it, I decided to rebuild the master cylinder, too. It wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. Along with the replacement parts I bought a special set of ‘circlip’ pliers that made the job possible. Amateur Mechanic Lesson 1: get the right tools.

My friend, Dave B, helped me install these a week ago. It wasn’t too difficult, but making the new lines actually fit was a bit of a brain puzzler (as was the master cylinder job). Stainless steel brake lines don’t twist at all, so you have to figure out which position allows them to connect smoothly at the fittings.

Now I have a whole new lexicon of motorcycle brake terms, and I learned how to operate a brake bleeding pump and a torque wrench (not hard). Compared to the corroded, old, water-in-the-brake-fluid system the bike had when I bought it, the new brakes are incredible!

After

I’m learning how to use Jott to update my blog. listen

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Dan’s Garage

My friends, Dan and Dave, helped me rebuild the front brake caliper assemblies on my motorcycle today. The good news is that Dan really knows how to recondition brakes, and we got my 22 year old brake assemblies back into good condition. The bad news is that we never regained pressure in the brake lines, so these newly cleaned brakes don’t work. Good thing Dan lives nearby, because I drove home on just the rear brake. Something tells me the next step is rebuilding the master cylinder, but I’m hoping not.

The Evangelical Church in Bansko

Last week I was in Bansko, Bulgaria meeting with several of the CCC ministry leaders from Eastern Europe who are using the Internet to reach students. My goal was to hand off the job I have been doing in the area to them.

We met in an evangelical church founded in 1868 by American missionaries. It started under the reign of the Ottoman Empire and, ironically, had more freedom then than during the period of control by the Soviets. We spent two days in this antique building planning how to use the Internet to reach more people in this part of the world with the gospel.

Bansko, Bulgaria looked like a cross between Hungary and Colorado, and it was cold. The rest of Bulgaria (that I saw) looked like Hungary, so it felt quite comfortable.

One other unique thing about Bansko is that it has its own language, Banski. It is not a dialect of Bulgarian either, but is related more to Macedonian. Only about 15,000 people live in this village, so there are not many Banski speakers.

All in all, it was quite an interesting place.

bo3a

For breakfast my friend, Galin, introduced us to bo3a (”bozsha”), a slightly fermented grain drink that is traditional here, along with topnitza, a cheese-blintz sort of thing. He said this was typical school breakfast fare for kids.

The drink smelled like bean soup but tasted sweet. Kind of like drinking buckwheat pancake batter that had gone bad. I couldn’t do more than a few sips. I guess it’s one of those things you have to grow up drinking to like.

My Grandpa Bill

Today I got some photos of my family from around 1947 or so, and I found this one of my grandfather, Bill.

I didn’t know him very well growing up, as he contracted Parkinson’s disease when I was young. This is from an era I never knew, but it makes me think I would have enjoyed knowing him and fishing with him when he was my age.

Judging by the ads Google runs in the side bar of this site, I’m guessing they think this site is about home repair, fixing leaks, stucco repair, and leak repair. (Just thought I’d throw in a few more key words for the construction ads).

When Google thinks it knows what your site is about they start sending visitors to your site who are looking for information about that topic. So for anyone wanting to know how our leak repair story ended, here is a description of our final solution for the wall leak we discovered a few months ago: GUTTERS.

Gutters solved 90% of the problem. They look nice, they were easy to install (i.e. it was easy to find a good installer), and they eliminated the cause of the problem by removing the water from the narrow section between our houses.

Getting our stucco repaired was another part of the solution. It was necessary because we had a hole in the side of our house, but I am not convinced that over the years that even repaired, well sealed, and painted stucco can withstand the water pressure that regularly exists on the side of our house if we didn’t have gutters.

Paint was another part of the solution. I dug the dirt away from the foundation all the way around the house and painted all the stucco I could reach as far down as I could reach. Several contractors suggested doing this as a way of keeping water from seeping through the stucco.

A French drain was NOT part of the solution. I considered the cost and effort of installing a below-ground drain, and it seemed like I’d be at the $500 mark quickly. After installation there would still be two significant problems left to solve: aesthetics and maintenance. The aesthetics of a line of gravel running down my side yard didn’t appeal to me, and I couldn’t think of a way to hide it with landscaping that wouldn’t also ruin the French drain. And maintenance on such a drain is necessary to keep it working. And the drain would only help if it could run out to the street or the pond in our backyard - all at the right slope. For our relatively flat Florida lot, this just didn’t seem like a good solution.

Tropical Storm Fay brought a week of heavy rain to Central Florida. On the Sunday after the rain stopped an informal raised-hand survey of people at our church indicated that about 30% of everyone had some sort of leak in their house during that storm. Our house didn’t get a drop inside, so I think it passed the test. I think this problem is solved.

Now I just have to get Andrew to fill in that ditch.

Pretty Boring in Orlando So Far

Tropical Storm Fay gave the kids a day off school today on what would have been their second day. So far the storm sent little more than rain and some gusty wind, but it was nothing that would have interfered with school. We like this kind of anti-climactic storm activity.

Audrey and Andrew Ready For School

We’re running out of “1st Day of Schools”, but today was one of the last few. Audrey started her freshman year of high school, and Andrew begins his junior year.

This year high school starts during daylight hours. Our county swapped the starting times between the high school and middle schools, so now the poor 6th graders have to be at the bus stop at 6:30 am while the high schoolers sleep in. Andrew said it was weird finishing first hour in daylight.

One interesting contrast between our experience sending Andrew off to high school and that of sending Audrey: On the Saturday before school begins there is an orientation and sign up where you get your locker, find your classes, etc. Both of us went with Andrew two years ago and helped him figure things out. He was happy to let us join him. Audrey, on the other hand, went with Andrew to the orientation day, and was happy to have the independence. She didn’t want a ride to school from Mom on the first day either; she took the bus.

Audrey talking to the kids

Andrew with one of his kids

Andrew and Audrey had a great week in NYC working with the Exodus program for kids. They had some pretty funny stories to tell, and they both came back with a new sense of how God can use them. We’re glad to have them back home!

Read the blog from their week for the rest of the story.

Preparing The Way Stucco Repair

‘Preparing The Way’ is the name of Jarrod Brown’s stucco repair company, but I prefer to think of the job he did as ‘Stopping Up The Way’ for the ants and the water. The stucco is fixed, and I am surprised at how much of a relief it is to have it that way. Knowing we’d have a gallon of water sloshing around our house during the next hard rain storm made it difficult for me to relax. Call me a nut.

This is Jarrod at work. He did a great job and was pleasant to have around while he worked. He also does a bunch of other stuff, so give him a call if you live in Orlando.

Me Sitting Outside My Stucco Hole

Today the stucco repair guy came (ya, I was surprised he wanted to work on a Sunday, too), and we found the hole in the stucco that was letting in all the water. At first it didn’t appear to be anything more than a screw hole, but ants kept going in and out of it so we dug a little deeper. Then a chunk of the wall came loose, and we were suddenly looking into a cavern in the wall, pictured at right. It was so big I could see daylight from the inside of the house.

It’s patched up now, and it didn’t leak during the storm that followed so I guess we’re good to go.

(That really is a close-up picture of the hole.)

Our New Moat

Part of our leak fixing project has been digging the sod away from the house and changing the slope of the grass so water flows away from the foundation. Andrew dug out one side of the house and is waiting for the stucco repair guy to come before finishing. This has left us with a new moat that has remained full for the last few days.

It looks like the solution to this problem will be gutters, stucco repair, getting the house painted, and a lot of digging. We need to replace the carpet in our house, so it’s important we get this solved before that happens!

Cathy called me today just after Andrew and Audrey drove off by themselves. Andrew passed his driving test (”It was easy,” he said) and has his regular license now.

He was very happy to discover yesterday that the additional cost of our insurance (due to him being a licensed driver) will be half what we were expecting. Since we’re making him pay the difference in insurance, this meant he had six months of insurance saved up rather than just three.

Our Overflowing A/C Unit

My caulk plug on the outside wall washed away, so I’ve spent the last two afternoons soaking up water as it gushed in during our afternoon downpours. Last night I plugged the hole with roofing tar and placed a piece of plastic to shield it from any more rain, so I’m hoping that holds until we can get the stucco repaired.

So today when I saw yet more water where it shouldn’t be I just laughed.

Fortunately, this problem was easy to fix. Our inside A/C unit’s drain pipe had clogged and began spilling out onto the unit’s platform in the garage. This is not the first time this has happened, so I remembered the solution; vacuum out the drain pipe. Fortunately my neighbor’s wet/dry vac was handy, and I had the problem fixed in less than a half hour.

StudiuBiblic.ro

With 26 translations of EveryStudent.com going, we still have just a few translations of our follow-up site, StartingWithGod.com. One thing we did to try to make it easier to produce new translations of this site was to create a tool so our translators could enter their text directly onto the site. Our Romanian language site, StudiuBiblic.ro, is the first one produced using this tool.

The idea of using a tool like this for producing new translations wasn’t completely successful. Our initial version proved too difficult for a non-experienced translator to use, and some more features need to be added before we can produce multiple new versions simultaneously. So the future of this tool is unknown at this point.

1986 Yamaha Maxim

Last night I became a motorcycle owner, and today I did my first commute to work on it. It was the first time I’ve enjoyed the commute to the office since when I rode my bike to work back in Budapest. It was really fun!