Beware Nigerians seeking computer equipment

Dave Farquhar Spam , ,

It wasn’t really a 419 scam, but I think I came a little too close to falling for another Nigerian scam this week.

Some time back, I listed some computer equipment on Craigslist. Not really high-dollar stuff, but stuff I’m not using, and while I’m not in desperate need of the money, it would come in very handy. And Craigslist is a lot less hassle than a garage sale.I listed it about a month ago, and interest was ice cold. Then yesterday I got a message from someone named Anna Gray asking if I would agree to sell it to her. Interesting way of putting it, but at the time I didn’t really take much note. I was just excited at the possibility of turning a computer that was just taking up space into 50 bucks.

The would-be buyer wanted to use a money transfer. “Aren’t you in St. Louis?” I asked immediately. My whole reason for using Craigslist was to avoid shipping and money hassles. Women are rightly nervous to meet strange men for transactions (and when they aren’t, they probably should be), but I’ve handled several transactions like this lately. Standard procedure is to meet in a public place that’s as convenient as possible for both of you. I generally take my wife so there’ll be a female present. If you’re a woman and can’t take another person with you, make sure you have a cell phone with you, and to make sure the other person knows you have it, make sure the person sees you casually talking on it as you arrive (even if you’re faking it). The ability to quickly dial 911 heads off a lot of trouble.

“No, I’m not in St. Louis,” she responded.

Well, so much for that.

She said she would pay me using Moneygram. She would send them the money, and then when I shipped the item, I would provide Moneygram with the tracking number, and I would get the money.

I would later find out that’s not how Moneygram works, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Knowing it could easily cost more to ship the computer than my $50 asking price, I asked my would-be buyer if she was willing to pay the shipping. She said she would send me a FedEx ticket. Then she said she would send me the money via Moneygram. She asked me every 30 seconds if I’d received the confirmation e-mail yet. “No,” I said. “But I’m in no particular hurry.” It wasn’t like I could ship the laptop immediately anyway.

She informed me that Moneygram was having technical difficulties and begged me to be patient. I found it odd that she was able to ask and receive an answer so quickly. Usually when a company is having technical difficulties, their customer service is slow too. I didn’t think anything of it yet.

Then I got busy and didn’t write back right away. She got just plain rude. “Are u there? BUZZ!!! BUZZ!!!”

Obviously she wasn’t willing to extend me the same patience she expected of me.

Once I got less busy, I got back to her. I’d received an e-mail message claiming to be from Moneygram, and I’d received a shipping label from Fedex, and told her.

“Take the package to Fedex tonight and give the tracking number to Moneygram and you’ll get your money,” she said.

I told her I was busy that night. Which I was. I’d had plans for a week and I wasn’t going to cancel them over a $50 computer–especially now that I was going to have to go to the trouble of finding a box and packing materials for the thing.

“I guess it’ll be OK if you ship it first thing in the morning,” she said.

Umm, well, I didn’t know what time I would be in, and I had to be at work first thing in the morning. Besides, if I had to drive it to the Fedex station, I was looking at a 45-minute drive.

“Take it to the closest Fedex. But if there isn’t one, you’ll have to take it to the station. First thing in the morning.”

How considerate. But that wasn’t the first thing that came into my mind. Actually the first thought that came to mind is a not-so-pleasant one-syllable word.

I told her I’d do my best, thanked her for her help and her interest, and reminded myself that I was being paid to free up some clutter from the house. Emily would like that. And if I spent $10 of it on her, she’d like it even more. So I put it out of my mind and told myself I’d print off all the paperwork that night, when I went in search of a box.

And aside from telling Emily I’d sold the computer, I did put it out of my mind until late that night.

Emily had a box and packing material ready for me. It wasn’t perfect, but we could have done a lot worse. So I packed it all up, then I went to the computer and printed off the paperwork. The Moneygram e-mail said I would have to provide them with a tracking number, full name and address, and either a driver’s license or social security number before they would free the money.

I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it at all. Nobody needs that information.

Making matters worse, the e-mail included a tracking number on the cash. I followed the link in the e-mail, punched in the tracking number, and it said it had no information on the tracking number.

The e-mail from her containing the Fedex shipping label also contained a customs form. She asked me to print and sign three copies. Customs? That seemed odd.

I printed the label. It had a declared value of $1. While the computer isn’t worth much, it’s worth more than $1. A DEC VT100 terminal is worth more than $1 to someone who needs it. I started to realize I wasn’t dealing with a very honest person here.

Then I printed the Fedex shipping label. The address looked odd to me. It registered when I pulled the label off the printer.

Nigeria.

It all made sense now. The unorthodox English. The belligerence. Demanding information they shouldn’t need. Classic symptoms of 419 scams.

Another rude one-syllable word came to mind. This time I said it out loud a few times. Someone in Nigeria had my name and address!

Mind you, not everyone in Nigeria is a crook, but suddenly I had a whole host of reasons to be suspicious.

So, when I was supposed to be getting up at the crack of dawn to send a computer halfway around the world, instead I was doing research.

On Moneygram’s own site, I found this:

MoneyGram is not an internet escrow service or a shipment service. We do not email a confirmation notice to inform a person that a MoneyGram transfer has been sent to them for payment of an internet purchase. Do not believe that such an email is genuine even if it contains the MoneyGram name and logo. The MoneyGram service should not be used as an escrow service.

And then I found indication that some Nigerian scammers have an affinity for buying computer equipment, particularly Apple Powerbooks, off Craigslist, using Moneygram.

Of course, seeing as part of the process asked for my social security number, losing the laptop was the least of my concerns. Once she had my name, address, and social security number, chances are she’d be able to get lots of other things at my expense as well.

Needless to say, the computer is still in my living room and I’ve kept the digits to myself.

My Nigerian buddy sent me a number of messages in the morning asking me if I had shipped the laptop, and since I had expressed some doubt in my last message, took pains to assure me that all was well. I replied to the message that said all was well, quoting that paragraph I found on the Moneygram site and asking her to explain.

I never heard another word from her. Seeing as there was a point in time when she couldn’t go three minutes without hearing from me, maybe I should find that odd.

Unless it was a scam, of course. In which case, there’s nothing at all strange about this new silence.

Not enough IT workers?

Dave Farquhar Society

His Billness claims he can’t find enough IT workers. I think this is more posturing so he can get more visas–it’s cheaper to import labor from the Far East than to outsource, I guess.

I don’t see this shortage he’s talking about. Billy needs to read what I’m reading: unemployment is up and salaries are down in the IT field.

If he can’t find the workers he needs among the 2005 graduates, it seems to me he needs to be looking at the people who have a bit more seasoning.

And when the unemployment rate among IT workers is higher than the national average and salaries are decreasing in the face of increasing cost of living, do you think that might have something to do with why the dean of engineering and applied science at Princeton sees fewer people going into that field?

I just came off the job market. Trust me, it’s not like your phone rings every hour with a job offer or even an interview.

Either the situation is extremely different on the programming side than it is on the sysadmin side, or Gates isn’t seeing (or refuses to see) the whole picture.

Cheap train accessories from Big Lots

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , ,

Yesterday while the wife was scooping up cheap groceries at Big Lots (also known as Odd Lots in some parts of the country), I spied some useful stuff in the toy section.

They were cheap playsets, priced at 99 cents and $1.99, sold under the “Mini Wheels” and “Superior” brand names.The 99-cent sets generally consist of two or three plastic vehicles and a couple of figures; the $1.99 sets feature a vehicle, a couple of figures, a building, and a random assortment of plastic scenery items such as signs, gates, and the like.

I picked up a school set, a construction set, and an emergency set. The doctor and the paramedic will look good with the Plasticville Hospital, which was one of the last gifts I gave my Dad before he died. Construction workers are easy to place, and the kids from the school set will look good in conjunction with the K-Line figures from Marx molds that I already have. The school building looks pretty institutional and will probably just be a generic building flat in the back of the layout; I’ll see if I can pick up a used Plasticville or Marx/K-Line school building cheap at some point.

The school set sports a table with an umbrella; I have no idea how that fits into a school setting but it’ll look great sitting outside my O scale soda fountain building. I may have to pick up another school set mostly to get another table.

The actual scale of the items varies a little. These are cheap toys, not scale models. Adult figures scale out to about 6’7 or so in 1:64 (S scale) and a little over 5′ in 1:48 (O scale). The vehicles generally look like they scale out to about 1:72 but some of them, particularly the construction vehicles, would be fine in 1:64 and passable in 1:48. The buildings are about right for 1:64. They’d be fine on any traditional-sized American Flyer or Lionel or Marx layout and even rivet-counter modern hi-railers could find some usable parts inside.

The quality of the paint jobs on the figures themselves varies. I’ll probably end up doing some touch-up. I’m not sure yet what kind of paint will adhere well to the rubbery plastic they used, but I may be able to get by with just spraying some Testors Dullcote on them, touching up the offending areas, and then following up with more Dullcote. You don’t get a lot of quality for 99 cents, but for me, improving cheap toys to give them a home on a train layout is a big part of the fun.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Big Lots, it’s that not all stores carry the same things at the same time. I have three different stores within reasonable driving distance of me and there isn’t much consistency between them. These sets have also been spotted at other discount stores but I’ve only ever seen them at Big Lots.

Windows for Morons

Dave Farquhar Windows ,

Microsoft is considering a numeric ratings system for PCs for the upcoming version of Windows–The Operating System Formerly Known As Longhorn, that is. I believe it’s going to be called Windows LH.

I smell marketing.Basically the idea is that a PC will be assigned an arbitrary numeric rating between 1 and 5, based on how much CPU power, memory, and potentially how powerful the video card is. Then a piece of hardware will have a number on it, and software will have the same number. If a piece of software has a "5" on it, don’t expect it to run well on a $399 Emachine with a rating of "1".

The problem with this idea is that capabilities change. This year’s "5" PC is 2006’s "1" PC. Granted, PC capabilities aren’t growing by leaps and bounds the way they have for the past few years, and maybe this is an admission that CPU power has leveled off, but memory requirements aren’t going to level off, and hard disk speeds are doing anything but standing still. So this is still a system with built-in obsolesence. And it doesn’t even take into consideration the speed of the disk drives, which to me is still the most underrated component of system performance. If you’re not a gamer, you’re much better off with the cheapest PC you can buy, hot-rodded with the fastest hard drive you can find and some extra memory, than you are with a system with a fire-breathing CPU and the hottest new video card. Or just put the same drive and memory into your old one and keep it for another three years.

Old-fashioned system requirements are still the way to go, I believe.

But I suppose if this rating system goes through–which really should be conducted by an objective third party and not by the collusion of Microsoft and Intel–it’ll give me a chance to write a new book. So I guess I should be happy, eh?

Don\’t blame the demon

Dave Farquhar Christianity

Dennis Rader, the confessed BTK serial killer, blamed the killings today on a demon inside him.

I don’t know if he was speaking literally or figuratively.

I believe in demons. I also believe in cop-outs.From the story:

“I just know it’s a dark side of me. It kind of controls me. I personally think it’s a — and I know it is not very Christian — but I actually think it’s a demon that’s within me. … At some point and time it entered me when I was very young,” said Rader, who was once president of his Lutheran church.

Rader, 60, said his problems began in grade school, with his sexual fantasies that were “just a little bit weirder” than other people’s.

“Somewhere along the line, someone had to pick something up from me somewhere that there was a problem,” he said. “They should have identified it.”

Let’s dig into this.

What a demon is. A demon is an evil spirit. It’s not a dead person; you don’t have to worry about the ghost of Hitler harrassing you. A demon by definition is a fallen angel. Unlike the Hollywood definition, angels aren’t dead humans. Angels were created before humans were, and although they can appear in human form, they are distinctively not human.

The Bible doesn’t talk a lot about demons; what we can infer from what it does say is that sometime before God created Adam, there was something of a civil war in heaven, led by Lucifer, who was the most powerful of the angels (this may have been a title he shared with the archangel Michael). Lucifer sinned, and a number of other angels–possibly as many as 1/3 of the total number–sinned with him. These are demons. Lucifer is known by a number of other names, among them Satan and the Devil.

Recognizing evil is very easy. Look at the motive. God loves you. Angels love you. They have your best interests at heart. Demons hate you. Their eternity is miserable and they want yours to be miserable too. The best way to recognize evil is to look for hate.

What a demon is not. While a demon can be a very influential force, it’s rare that a demon is a controlling force. The movie The Exorcist is a dramatized version of a true story (it happened in St. Louis) but this is the exception, not the rule.

Why are there more demons in the Bible than there seem to be today? I love this question, mostly because it took me more than 10 years to find the answer. Misdiagnosis is one possibility. In Biblical times, when you were nuts, demons were the only explanation they knew. Today we know about mental illnesses and can treat many of them.

And demons shouldn’t necessarily be the first thing that people blame. If a condition responds to medicine, it isn’t a demon. If the condition doesn’t respond to medicine, it could be a misdiagnosis. Or it could be a demon.

But another reason you don’t see as much demonic influence as Jesus did is sheer numbers. There are more than 6 billion people alive today. Roughly 6 billion people total lived from 4000 BC (the dawn of civilization) to 2000 AD. Humans probably have the demons outnumbered today. At best, the margin was much, much narrower in 30 AD.

Is demonic influence Christian? Yes. This probably surprises you. If you run down your list of the most evil men who ever lived, those men may or may not have been tormented by demons. But some may not have been. They may have been lost causes from the beginning. If you were a demon and your goal was to stir up mayhem, why would you waste your time messing with someone who’s stirring up plenty of mayhem without you?

A few years ago, I counselled someone who believed she was being tormented by demonic influences. I told her this was a good indication she was doing something right. A demon isn’t going to waste time with someone who’s evil. A demon is going to concentrate on somebody it sees as a threat.

She went on to help a lot of people once she shook that away. Now it’s easy to see what that demon was afraid of, and what it was trying to prevent.

So a demon is going to tend to look for someone with a lot of potential that it can knock out, or it’s going to look for someone it can steer to make mayhem.

Dennis Rader was a leader in his community and the president of a Lutheran church. He fits both descriptions. There is no doubt in my mind that he hears voices.

So when I’m tempted, is that the voice of a demon? Maybe. Of course, humans are pretty good at wanting to do the wrong thing anyway. If you see a $10 bill laying somewhere and you’re tempted to take it because no one would ever know, that’s probably you. If the temptation is bizarre and out of character, it’s less likely to be you.

So could a demon have entered Dennis Rader, like he says? Sure. It’s like catching a cold. You’re more susceptible to it if you sin a lot, just like you’re more susceptible to catch cold if you run outside without a coat and with wet hair in the winter. But sometimes these things happen in spite of all the precautions we take. And some people seem to never get affected even if they do all the wrong things.

So should someone have noticed his problem? Maybe. But Lutherans aren’t very comfortable talking about this stuff. It seems like Roman Catholics are more comfortable fixing it than talking about it. There’s a Christian author by the name of Neil Anderson who has done more than anyone else in recent decades to get evangelical Christians talking about this subject and doing something about it, but Anderson’s books were written after the BTK killings started.

Ultimately, it’s up to the affected individual to recognize there’s a problem and do something about it. That’s not easy when you don’t know what to look for.

Neil Anderson’s book The Bondage Breaker does a good job of explaining what to look for.

In my very limited experience, there are a couple of things to look for. First and foremost are bizarre and unshakable temptations that seem out of character. Second is the inner voice. We all have an inner voice. But if your inner voice is especially cruel to yourself, that could be an indication.

Can you get rid of these things? Yes. Neil Anderson has made a career of writing books that tell how. Each volume gets more and more specialized. The Bondage Breaker is usually sufficient enough to change someone’s life.

The prescription I was given involved specific scriptures and very specific prayer. Read Psalm 18 and 119 aloud. Psalm 18 is all about victory and deliverance; Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm and it seems to cover just about everything. Maybe it works because it’s all-encompassing, or maybe it just shows that you’re serious. Finally, if there’s another Christian present, read Matthew 18:18.

And after that, the affected person needs to renounce the thing, say Jesus’ name, and tell it to leave. And in my limited experience, this works.

Now, if the problem isn’t demonic in nature, this exercise probably won’t work. God gave us authority over demons; He did not give us authority over disease.

When my pastor’s daughters used to have nightmares, he used to renounce the nightmares and the fear in Jesus’ name. It worked.

Can a demon make a serial killer kill? Well, in theory it probably could. But we’re not puppets; we still have free will. I guess it depends on your definition of “control.” If the idea to do something dropped into his head, and then the demon tormented him until he did the deed and then relented for a while, is that control? But the demon didn’t actually commit the act.

Had the right person recognized something, could the BTK killings have been prevented? If what he is saying is true, yes. But the same thing is true for most things. One is not likely to be cured of this without wanting the help.

But if he had been Roman Catholic, or if he had been born, say, 30 or 40 years later when the subject of demons was a bit less taboo, yes, I believe someone could have helped him.

Should journalists protect their sources?

Dave Farquhar Writing , , , ,

In the wake of New York Times reporter Judith Miller going to jail for refusing to reveal the identity of an unnamed source, of course I was asked about journalism and confidential sources, and should journalists protect their sources anyway?

I liken this situation to what would go through my mind if the New York Yankees ever played the Cuban Nationals. I would have a hard time deciding which team I wanted to lose.You see, confidential sources aren’t something you’re supposed to use very often. Since the biggest journalism event of the previous century–Watergate–couldn’t have stood without Deep Throat, people tend to assume it happens a lot. In reality, you ought to see a rude four-letter word somewhere on the front page more often than you ought to see an unnamed source in a story.

I was taught that unnamed sources are inherently unreliable. Think about it. Why would you have any interest in what I had to say if I wasn’t willing to sign my name to it? When my name’s not on it, it doesn’t matter what kind of a lie I tell. It’s not going to affect my reputation any. The best source has something at stake by talking to the journalist. A lot of people find talking to journalists to be tedious and unpleasant, but let’s face it: People respect people whose names they see in the newspaper. So a journalist inherently ought to seek out people who have a need to build or protect a reputation.

To my knowledge, I only ever used unnamed sources once. That was in a story about college students drinking underage and getting DWIs. None of the students I interviewed wanted their names used. Every attorney I interviewed did. That’s predictable. And since the unnamed sources’ stories sounded reasonable, nobody questioned me over their use. My assurance that these people really lived and weren’t the product of my imagination was enough. The story ran.

But that’s one problem with unnamed sources: A lot of times they’re just a cover for laziness. It’s a lot easier to make up quotes than to get them. And if you’re not willing to divulge a name and a phone number, and the editor is willing to take you at your word that you talked to these people, unnamed sources can result in a lot of fiction being presented as fact.

That’s why I’m not a fan of unnamed sources. They should be a last resort, not a first resort. If one person’s willing to talk, someone else ought to be as well, and maybe that other person has a name and is willing to let you print it. And two unnamed sources lend more credibility than one. It’s a little harder to fake, for one thing.

But Ms. Miller used unnamed sources. And this unnamed source revealed the identity of a CIA operative during a time of war, which is a crime. Since she wouldn’t reveal the source’s name, she’s doing time.

And that’s why I liken this to the Yankees playing the Cubans. On one hand you have a journalist using an unnamed source. On the other hand, you have a government that considers this a time of war when it’s convenient, but not really a time of war when it’s not–there’s that little bit in the Constitution about only Congress being able to officially declare and wage war, for instance. And that government really seems to be eager to gobble up freedom these days. Without a truly free press, that’s one less check and balance. Thomas Jefferson once said newspapers are more important than government.

So I’m wondering a lot of things, including how Ms. Miller could have broken that law when we aren’t officially at war, but also if we were to lose a free press, how we would get it back. It’s a lot easier for the CIA to get another operative.

Journalist-source confidentiality is supposed to resemble that which exists between a doctor and a patient, an attorney and a client, or a priest and a parishioner. And while there are exceptions to those often unspoken confidentiality agreements, they are just that: exceptions. If during the course of gathering a story an unnamed source told me he committed a murder, or another heinous crime such as child abuse or rape, that’s obviously an exceptional situation. A journalist who has just learned such a thing should be compelled to go to the police, as should a priest.

While a CIA operative being unmasked is a more exceptional situation than someone confessing to having run a red light or having spent the previous evening at a disreputable entertainment establishment, I have a difficult time mustering up the same sympathy for the CIA as I would the family of a victim of a violent crime. Murder, rape, and molest ruin lives. Did Ms. Miller’s source ruin the CIA? Ms. Miller’s source certainly changed the life of that CIA operative, but is that along the lines of murder? Isn’t this situation one of the hazards of the job?

So while I don’t like the practice of using unnamed sources, and I’m anything but a big fan of the media as it exists today, I believe that a free press is a necessity. And by that I mean a truly free press–not a press that’s free to print things I agree with. The Soviet Union had that. The Pravda was free to print whatever the government would allow it to print.

Once you lose a truly free press, it usually takes a very bloody revolution to get it back.

Unfortunately, both the far left and the far right tend to want to suppress opinions that don’t agree with theirs. I believe that the people who disagree with me have the right to print whatever they want to print. I’m confident that enough people will see that they are idiots and will agree with me. And in those instances where I’m the idiot, how else would I ever find out that I’m the one who’s wrong?

So while I’m not willing to call Judith Miller a martyr–some headlines have–I believe I can make a case for siding with her. I don’t see how I can make anything but a very wobbly case in support of the government.

Those who don’t agree with me ought to click on that link a few paragraphs back that features some quotes from Thomas Jefferson.

A journalist\’s take on how to eliminate snoring during sermons

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , ,

First things first: I am not a pastor. While I have nine years of Lutheran primary and secondary education, my degree came from the University of Missouri and I have exactly zero days of formal, master’s-level theological training.

But I am a published author, I spent four years and thousands of dollars (and thousands more of scholarship money) studying journalism. So hopefully what I lack in Bible knowledge, I make up for in writing knowledge. And if denominations are to grow, especially the more conservative ones, I think more of the latter is going to be a necessity.I am writing this because I heard a sermon today that was relatively good. It disappointed me mostly because it could have been one of those sermons that people remembered for the rest of their lives. So let’s get down to business.

Write on a sixth-grade reading level. Your morning paper is written on that reading level. Newspapers are publications for the masses, so they are unwilling to assume that the majority of people can digest anything more complex than that level. Jesus made a point of demonstrating that Christianity is simple enough that a child can understand it. Therefore, a child ought to be able to understand the pastor.

And I’ve got something else shocking for you. What about the more intellectual publications? They’re written on a 10th-grade level.

So how do you write on that kind of a level? I’ll give you some tools. Eventually it becomes automatic.

Lose the big words. Most Lutheran pastors are academics. When it takes four years to get your master’s degree, you have to be. And if you want anyone outside of your own congregation to listen to you, you almost have to go back and get your doctorate.

But the problem is that while pastors and their colleagues are academics, the overwhelming majority of the congregation is not. The people who most desperately need to be reached certainly are not. And while I firmly believe that the pastor can stand in front of the congregation and read recipes for 20 minutes and God will make sure the person who needs to hear Him will hear exactly what He wants, I also believe it’s better for God to work through the guy standing up front more than in spite of him.

If your English Composition teachers were anything like mine, they required you to use five words you’ve never used before in every piece. But your English Comp teacher isn’t in the audience. Good writers know the rules of writing. Great writers know when to break them. William F. Buckley Jr. isn’t the rule. He’s the one guy who can get away with breaking so many.

Lose the long sentences and paragraphs. Your English Comp teacher probably told you a paragraph is a minimum of three sentences. That should be the first rule you learn to break. Short, punchy paragraphs are fine, and so are short, simple sentences. There’s nothing wrong with an eight-word sentence.

Practice writing on a sixth-grade level. If you use Microsoft Word, you can easily turn it into a tool for checking your writing. Go to the Tools menu, select Options, click Spelling & Grammar tab 4, and tick the box next to “Show readability statistics.” Now run a spelling/grammar check, click ignore on anything it flags, and it’ll give you your reading scores.

Try shortening up on some words and simplifying some sentences to see how the changes affect your work.

Relevance. A single mother of two who has never had a healthy relationship with a male doesn’t care about the original Greek or Hebrew in any given Bible passage. That’s an extreme example, but virtually everyone who walks through the doors of a church comes in carrying some baggage. It’s usually the only way God can get them there. It’s when life becomes its least bearable that people are most willing to find out what the Creator of life has to say about it. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like the place you’re least likely to hear what God has to say about life is church.

That’s unfortunate. When you read the four Gospels, it’s clear that part of the reason thousands of people followed Jesus instead of the Pharisees was because Jesus talked about the things that mattered to them, while the Pharisees did not. If that contemporary church down the street is growing and your conservative church is not, the reason might not necessarily be the guitars and drums. The reason might very well be that the pastor gives good advice every week on how to get through this life.

I know plenty of people who attend my church for exactly that reason. They have no great love for the electric guitars and distortion–but they put up with it so they can hear how to have a better life every week.

While you don’t want to single out anyone and talk about his or her problems to the whole congregation, speaking about issues in general terms is good. Does the Bible have anything to say about credit card debt? Diet? Spoiled children?

I’m no fan at all of daytime talk shows–I think they’re God’s curse on the unemployed and unemployable–but I do believe that this world would be a better place if pastors would tune in to them once in a while. It gives you an idea of what kinds of problems people think about and face–and may not be willing to talk to you about–and it gives you some idea of what the world is saying about them. Your job is to tell the congregation what God says about those problems.

Get out more. I used to know someone who was required by his congregation to spend some time hanging out in bars. Ostensibly his job was to win converts. But I think it accomplishes some other things too.

First, it gives you a good feel for how people talk. Since these are the people who most need to be reached, you need to sound like them (minus the four-letter words).

Second, it gives you an idea what these people care about. You’ll probably overhear more about women and money than anything else. Significance and security are two very basic needs; if you can manage to illustrate every Sunday how God is the ultimate source of these two things, the size of your church will probably double every five years.

Granted, you don’t have to hang around in bars to hear people talk, but bars are where the broken people are most likely to go, and if your goal is to do what Jesus did and reach broken people, I think it helps to know what one looks for and what a broken person looks like.

The end. Like I said before, I’m not a pastor. I’m just a writer of above-average intelligence. It’s rare that a sermon sails over my head, and that was nearly as true when I was in the 4th grade as it is now.

But I’m not everyone, and the college-level dissertations that are all too common in many denominations every Sunday don’t do much, in my experience, to strengthen the church. Yes, to a degree I am advocating the dumbing down of the Sunday sermon. Hebrews 5 is relevant. You can’t assume anymore, in this day and age, that the majority of the people in the congregation can handle spiritual solid food. The Sunday sermon is the place for milk. The place for solid food is in Bible study, whether it occurs on Sunday morning before or after the service, or on some weeknight. And even then, I believe a lot of studies need to be serving milk.

But if every church serves milk long enough, the general public’s knowledge of the things of God will progress to the point where it can handle solid food on a much more regular basis.

Coming back

Dave Farquhar Personal , , ,

The phone rang this morning, around 9 AM. I’ve gotten used to that; my recruiter’s been calling me around 9 for the last few days. But this time there was a different tone to his voice. He was nervous.

Great, I instantly thought. Another rejection. What is this, high school?But I let him finish, because he said he had some good news. "Dave, they’re excited about you. But there’s a problem. Do you think there’s any way you can start tomorrow?"

Tomorrow. He’d told me yesterday he thought they’d probably be interested in me, and that we’d be preparing for a start day of July 5. Being able to start tomorrow was about the last thing I expected.

I wasn’t the least bit prepared, but in reality, what did I have planned for tomorrow? A trip to the post office, certainly. A trip to a thrift store or two, most likely. Maybe I’d get ambitious and change the oil in my wife’s car, and maybe I wouldn’t. So I’d make $7, maybe $15, and I’d save another $20.

I figure that every day I didn’t work cost me between $150 and $200 (pre-tax). So you do the math. I told him I’ll start tomorrow.

Actually this was a longshot if there ever was one. The job position involves Unix administration. I’m not a stranger to Unix, but it’s been a year since I’ve done any Unix on a regular basis. I pulled out all the stops on the job interview, showing up in a suit and tie on a 90-plus degree day on just a couple of hours’ notice. It was all downhill from there. The entire department of five interviewed me, plus one guy who’d been recently promoted out of it. They peppered me with Unix and e-mail questions. One of them asked me why to never type "rm -rf /" and I asked him whether the "r" was uppercase or lowercase. Apparently in Solaris it doesn’t matter. It does in every Linux distribution I know. But I got the rest of the question right. I struck out on the others, sometimes badly.

I left the building with a little more than a thank-you for my time from the supervisor. I made a note to myself to make sure my recruiter briefed me better on what the responsibilities would be, and to get me enough time to actually brush up so I’d look like I know something, and not some idiot off the street who can barely spell "Unix."

Then they started interviewing other people. And with each passing interview, my recruiter felt more hopeful. I started to feel hopeful too. I didn’t count on anything–my wife and I all but started a business last week, and we’re profitable. It won’t pay the mortgage, let alone make us rich, but we made more than enough to pay the electric bill, and we did it on our terms.

And then the phone call came. A few hours later I drove 10 miles, signed some papers, and it was official. I’m a professional Unix administrator.

How to read electronics schematics

Dave Farquhar Hardware

If you want to read electronics schematics, first you have to know what the symbols mean.

I found this link on electronics symbols this morning. It’s new to me.

I don’t know how many people actually try to read schematics and fix or build things anymore, but since it looks like I may be able to pick up a little extra cash by assembling electronic gizmos for train layouts and modding old video game systems, it’s useful to me, so I’m posting it.