Luke’s Notebook

Oh, what a busy Sunday it was. And I even anticipated that it would be a quiet one. To be fair, though, as far as what was scheduled, it was to be a quiet day.

After church, we were visited by Uncle Joe, Aunt Dianne and their five kids. Their kids played around for a while with the chubs here, as the parents talked and stuff.

Around 1:00, a few of us left to get lunch at Cici’s in St. Louis. We ate there, talked a bit — actually, we figured out just how much weight the five of us (Paul, Mark, Jude, James and I) had lost in recent years. We figured that we collectively lost 210 pounds in the last four years. Pretty astonishing figure! We were later joined by Dad, John and Philip.

Pretty much as soon as we got home, we went outside to have our first full softball practice of 2005. It was such a beautiful day — sunny wih a high of 65 or so. It would have seemed wrong to just stay indoors on such a pleasant day, especially in the month of February!

We took turns batting, and I’ve got to be honest and say that I wasn’t thrilled with how well I hit. I didn’t really do that well, though I did hit a few really well, and actually one that sailed into the creek. But I’ve simply got some things to work on — mainly timing and the angle of my swing. Thankfully, I have about two months until softball begins, so I certainly have time to make tweaks or adjustments. And I’ve got to remind myself that this is the first time I’ve really played in like three months! So it’s okay if it takes a little bit of time to get going again.

Late in the afternoon, I played a computer game, Worms Armageddon, with Jude and Mark across the network. It’s a really unique game, but it’s a whole lot of fun. I don’t know if anybody remembers the old “Gorillas” game that was written in QBASIC, but it seems to be somewhat similar to that — the goal, anyway — but obviously much more advanced and sophisticated.

In the evening, I left the house extra early in order to swing by the nursing home to visit Great-Grandma before my volleyball game. I stayed and talked with her for 15 or 20 minutes, and it just was good to visit her and see heragain.

Finally, on to volleyball! We played at 7:30 — well, the first game started around 8:00 due to a long basketball game. We ended up winning all three games, which was a very good feeling. I actually think I had a pretty good night playing. I had some nice hits, a few real good spikes and a couple of blocks. Seems like I’m steadily improving.

By the way, Jenny came with her parents (Aunt Greta and Uncle Rob, who played with us tonight) to the game. It was great to see her! She seems to be doing great, and it’s just nice to see her doing normal things.

Paul, who has a different team in a different league at the Sportsplex, asked if I could fill in a little while for his 9:30 game, since one of the guys on his team, Kelly, was going to be late. So I stayed after my game and waited for his team to arrive. Almost all of the team is family, as it consists of Paul, Christy (cousin), Kelly (Christy’s husband), Hannah (cousin; Christy’s younger sister), Melanie (second cousin) and Josh, who is of no relation. So it’s another family team! But anyway, I stayed and filled in for Kelly for the first game-and-a-half. I played pretty well, and, actually, I think it worked out real well under the circumstances. Obviously, I don’t play with these folks on a regular basis, but thankfully we were able to play together pretty well. We won the first game I played, and they were leading when I left and ended up winning the final two games.

It was taxing to have a long softball practice and then play four-and-a-half volleyball games, but it was definitely fun. This Sunday has been much more busy than I had anticipated, but that’s not a bad thing. I would definitely rather have days like this than days where it’s just dull and empty.

Well, I’ll call it a night. There’s been something on my mind the past day or so that I think I’m going to write about. Now just isn’t the time, though, since it’s so late and I’m really tired. I’m going to go get some sleep.

Thank God for another week, for protecting us and covering us through all our different activities!

Wow! And I thought I would have some free time today. Truth be told, I did have some free time, but not nearly the amount that I expected. So that explains why this is being written at the tail-end of this Sunday.

Yesterday was a pretty busy Saturday, really. I spent most of the morning and afternoon scoping a pair of depositions. Also, I watched parts of the Illinois at Iowa college basketball game, where Illinois collected their 27th win in their undefeated streak. But scoping kept me busy for most of the day.

In the early evening, I set out to go to Lowe’s in Fairview Heights. I had two goals: Return some stuff we bought from there, and pick up two bathtub surrounds (for the bathrooms in the basement). The first task was extremely difficult for a couple of reasons. One, some of the stuff that needed returning were these four-by-eight sheets of Styrofoam. They’re very light, very flimsy and very big. I set them in the bed of the truck, just hoping that the wind wouldn’t blow them out of there, because with their size, if any wind gets a hold of them, they’re gone in a hurry. I also decided to strap them down very gingerly, since these things are, like I said, quite flimsy and would be easy to snap in half.

About five or 10 minutes after I left, I noticed the strap came off, but I figured that the sheets were pretty safe, since the pressure would only be pushing them down as I drove. I didn’t worry about losing the strap.

At a stoplight, a man pulled along side of me and gestured for me to roll down my window. I did so, and he told me that the strap was haning outside of the truck and skipping off of the road, making sparks fly. I thanked the man for notifying me, and I quickly sought a parking lot to pull over into. I was near a Metrolink station, so I pulled in there and hopped out of the truck. I saw the loose strap, and I tossed it back in the bed.

I finally arrived at Lowe’s, and now it was time to load up the cart in order to return the items. As soon as I grabbed a sheet of Styrofoam, the wind got a hold of it and it nearly went flying! Thankfully, I managed to get it to the ground and carefully slide it onto the flatbed cart. I then did the same with the other two sheets and also loaded the cart with the other assorted items that needed to be returned.

As soon as I got in and told the lady I’d like to return the stuff, she asked for my receipt. I told her I didn’t have it and asked if they could simply give me a gift card, which is typically what they’ve always done when we return items without a receipt. This lady was particularly difficult, it seemed, and she firmly said that with no receipt, there’s no return — no two ways about it. I asked her if there’s anything that can be done, but she essentially said no can do without physically having the receipt.

So I wheeled the cart outside and called up Mom, to ask if she even knew where the receipts were. She started digging through the stuff at home, and I just sat outside of the store for a little while.

Well, 10 minutes or so after that, I saw this return lady leaving the store, and I just wondered if somebody else might be more heplful or, if nothing else, might be able to give an idea, a suggestion — whatever. So I went in again, asked to return the stuff. The new lady asked for my receipt; I told her I didn’t have it. She basically told me that they’re attempting to move to a no-receipt-no-return policy, but she went ahead and allowed me to return everything. Thank God!! After that, I was able to get the two surrounds and leave the store.

While in Fairview, I went and bought some clothes. I figured I might as well use some birthday money, so I went and just got some shirts, pants and shorts. After that, my expedition in Fairview Heights was complete!

That’s it for that weird Saturday. Stay tuned for a busy, though not overwhelmingly weird, Sunday.

I’m going to sleep! It’s very late, and I have been bad at keeping up with this here journal lately, mainly due to the busy weekend that I’ve had. Tomorrow, though, things should be much lighter, so hopefully I can get caught up then.

Another week is coming to an end, as we kick off this Friday morning.

Yesterday was a busy day, as it included several big tasks — one was editing the Safe At Home Show — which was delayed due to some hard drive problems I was having. Another was the scoping of three depositions, all relatively short ones, totally approximately 80 pages.

Also yesterday, two things arrived — one via FedEx; the other from USPS. From FedEx came Dad’s Archos Gmini 220, an MP3 player/recorder. Let me tell you, it looks awesome! I was very surprised at how small it was and how flat-out attractive the thing is. Plus, it has a big, bright LCD screen. He hasn’t yet had a chance to use it with a deposition, but he has recorded several Fireside Chats with it, and so far, so good. I’m still waiting on my Archos FM Recorder, which will probably arrive early next week.

Also arriving yesterday were my CDs! A dozen total came, and four of them were for Dad. I’ve had time to listen to some of them so far, and I’ve basically heard the entire Chris Tomlin CD and most of the Casting Crowns CD. Both are excellent! Chris Tomlin has mainly worship music, which I just love. It’s so awesome to hear new and old songs that are praising God. I also like what you’d call contemporary Christian music, which is not necessarily worship music. Either way — as long as it’s uplifting and it’s glorifying God, then that’s fine with me.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to much aside from those two CDs, but I look forward to hearing what’s on the other discs. It’s a lot of fun to get to “discover” new songs that you really like.

Later today, I’ll probably be driving over to St. Louis to run some errands. I may also go to Edwardsville to drop a deposition off. At the moment, though, I need to print a deposition, so I’ll sign off.

I love technology! Really, there are so many cool things you can do with the gadgets and gizmos. And I’ve realized just recently what I’ve been involved with the past couple of days that relates to tech stuff. For instance…

Yesterday, James and I were up here in my room, his open Xbox on the floor next to my open computer tower. We performed what’s known as a hotswap (while both are on, switch a hard drive from the Xbox to the computer) as we needed to use the computer to access the Xbox hard drive and fix something, which was not allowing the Xbox to boot at all. That’s Exhibit A.

The past few days, I have been on a mad hunt for the right MP3 players/recorders for Dad and myself. Like I mentioned the other day, I found one for Dad. Today, I won another Archos FM Recorder — which is what I currently own — and I hope to be able to fix it and use it. The auction described it as having a problem staying on. I’m hoping this is a simple battery problem, because I have an extra battery. If it’s something more complex, though, I may have to turn around and sell it. The finaly price, after shipping, was $65. Once I receive it and get a chance to check it out, we’ll get to find out if it was a smart buy.

This morning, you would have found me on the laundry room roof, with a wrench in hand, repointing the Direcway satellite dish. Our Internet signal strength had been dropping recently, so I decided to climb the ladder and get up there to try to improve the strength. It seemed to have help, as we jumped from 55 to 65. So hopefully it will stay in the 60s.

And this afternoon, my E: drive (my 160 GB hard drive, mainly used for video purposes) was AWOL. It flat-out went crazy. I have no idea what happened, but I could no longer access anything on the drive. Long story short, I had to format it, and now I have a little bit of work to do to get things back to normal — or close to, anyway. The E: drive contained many video files — which can somewhat easily be copied back onto the computer — but it also contained a handful of files that will be hard to replace or need to be recreated. Shucks. Thankfully, it wasn’t my C: drive that went nuts. That would’ve been really bad news. Which reminds me… I think I need to back up some stuff. I’d advise you to do the same! Computers can go nuts at any given moment.

See? Everything from Xboxes to MP3 players to satellite dishes to hard drives. I’m so relieved to have my eBay hunt over — for now, at least. I’m hoping that it is finished, but we’ll just have to see how the Archos works out. I’m just happy to get to stop watching auctions now. It was really overwhelming to try to take in so much!

How true those words are. I sit here with a sore neck after a not-so-graceful move in volleyball, whereupon yours truly, in attempt to hit a ball, backtracked, jumped and promptly landed on his back and head. Ouch. It definitely wasn’t my finest moment, and I was actually in quite a bit of pain for a little bit there, as my left leg and my right hand were really hurting. Thankfully it improved a lot, but my neck is still kind of sore after having my head whack against the floor.

As if that weren’t enough, we lost all three games. Overall, it wasn’t the best evening as far as volleyball goes, but it was still fun. And I thank God that I was able to get right back up, despite my awkward fall.

So that’s tonight’s volleyball. I think we’re off for the next week or two until the next session starts up.

I’m going to keep this brief because I plan to write another entry about all that’s been going on lately.

We’ll be back after a quick message from our sponsors.

Lately I haven’t been real good about keeping updated. I suppose that’s because I’ve been really occupied the past few days. What’s really been keeping me busy is this whole MP3 player hunt. Argh! I’ll get into that more later.

Last night, I played volleyball again. We played at 8:30 against a team called Johnson, and we lost all three games. The second two were very, very close, but we just couldn’t quite pull them out. Jude came along with me to watch the game, and then after the game we shot a basketball around on an open court at the Family Sportsplex.

This was the last game in the Sunday night session, and this Wednesday is the last of the eight-week Wednesday session. It looks like I’ll be playing one more session on both Sundays and Wednesdays, which means another couple of months of volleyball.

Okay, so the whole MP3 player debacle has been amazingly confusing and frustrating. It’s really kind of humbling to realize how much difficulty I’ve been having with this. Basically, I had two goals. One was to find some sort of digital voice recorder for Dad to use for depositions and Fireside Chats. The other was to find some replacement for my Archos Jukebox FM Recorder, my 20-gigabyte MP3 player that’s been having some serious issues.

I spent many, many hours reading, searching and reading some more on reviews of various MP3 players and recorders. Then, I’d check prices everywhere under the sun. After much research, I reluctantly ordered the Archos Gmini 220 for Dad’s purposes. It’s a 20-gigabyte MP3 player/voice recorder, with a built-in microphone. When I say I was hesitant to buy the Gmini, it’s not because of this product; it’s simply the uncertainty of never having touched the device and never being able to test it, its battery life or recording capabilities. It’s actually a really attractive player, significantly smaller than my old MP3 player. So that should be in the mail soon, and hopefully that will be just the ticket for Dad’s purposes.

The second objective is to try to find something to replace my MP3 player. I’ve looked up several different players, and there are a few contenders, based on price and features. Here are the finalists:

iRiver HP320

Rio Karma

Archos Gmini 220

Archos Jukebox FM Recorder

The iRiver is probably the most attractive of the bunch, but also the most expensive. It sports a full-color LCD screen and has a nice black finish. However, it’s running somewhere around $300, so that’s a lot to shell out for a music player. It does have a built-in microphone and also have some features such as photo viewing, but still… that’s a lot of dough. This also acts as an external 20 GB hard drive.

The Rio Karma is relatively small and not real flashy. It’s much cheaper than the iRiver (costing somewhere around $180), has some additional features yet some drawbacks. Pros: It has a nice docking station, it can be hooked up to a network for easy MP3 sharing, and the dock also has audio output, so you can easily have that hooked up to a stereo of some sort. Cons: No drive-letter access (meaning you can’t simply treat it as a 20 GB hard drive and drag and drop files from Windows Explorer). Also, there’s no built-in mic (kind of a biggie for me). Furthermore, the reviews it has received aren’t very impressive. So… it might not be the best choice.

The Gmini 220 is, of course, what we just ordered for Dad. It has a built-in mic, a nice, bright screen, 20 gigabytes of storage and is relatively small. I guess I’ll have to wait and see how this device works for Dad. It looks attractive enough. The price tag on this guy? $240 with a $50 mail-in rebate.

And… my old Jukebox FM Recorder is also an option. This old thing is not very flashy, as it is the largest of the group, has probably the smallest screen, and is not exceptionally pretty. It’s not ugly, but it’s certainly not as sleek as an iPod. Pros for this would be I know exactly what I’m getting. Having own an FM Recorder for two years, I’m very accustomed to its features and flaws, knowing its battery life, its quirks — all that good stuff. I can’t really find one of these new, but I could probably find a used one for under $100. The good thing is I already have a good battery and hard drive for this thing, so if I were to get one of these without a hard drive, I’d be able to just plug mine in there.

So what should I do? Break the bank and get the attractive iRiver? Keep it simple and get the Karma? Another Gmini? Stay the course and basically repair my FM Recorder? Well, as it stands now, I’m following an eBay auction for an FM Recorder. If I can find one for a low enough price, I might just try to grab it. It certainly isn’t the best MP3 player on the market, but it would come with no surprises, and, heck, I was pretty happy with the FM Recorder while it was working. Definitely wasn’t perfect, but it did play MP3s well, which is what you want an MP3 player to do.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make a decision soon! It’s been kind of torturous and embarrasing with how indecisive I’ve been. Thankfully, once we have Dad up and running, mine is certainly not an emergency. I would still like to have this taken care of, but there would be no real pressure to get mine taken care of.

We’ll see what happens!

I didn’t get a chance to write about this, but yesterday I ordered a bunch of CDs online. I ordered 12 in all, though four of them are for Mom and Dad. The eight that I’m getting are:

Phillips, Craig & Dean (Let The Worshippers Arise)

Switchfoot (The Beautiful Letdown)

Tree63 (The Answer To The Question)

Matt Redman (Facedown)

Passion (Sacred Revolution)

Mercy Me (Undone)

Casting Crowns (Casting Crowns)

Chris Tomlin (Arriving)

I have CDs of PCD, Passion, Mercy Me and Chris Tomlin. The other artists/groups have some great songs, so I bet I’ll fall in love with some new tunes soon.

By the way, I got a great deal on the CDs. The price ended up being right after $7.50 apiece, after shipping. So that’s hard to beat!

Speaking of music, I’m still trying to decide on what to do with my MP3 player situation. I might try to buy a used model and mix and match parts, or I may just up and buy a new player altogether. I think I’ll be watching eBay to see if there’s any especially good deal I can get.

To be quite honest with you, I don’t at all feel like typing right now. I would much rather be doing something else, such as sleeping, as opposed to making this update. I’m just not feeling my best on a couple of different fronts, and this day hasn’t been the absolute best. Despite that, though, I’m thankful that God brought me and my family through another day, protecting us from accidents, tragedies and the like. So even though compared to other days this wouldn’t rank at Number One, it still is much, much better than what it could be, so I’m going to remind myself to have a thankful attitude. It’s easy to think that it was a bad day if a few things didn’t go your way or whatever the case may be, but then I think of all of the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t. So thank you, God, for all of the daily blessings that just seem so natural!

I shall leave with my clear marching orders, straight from Philippians 4:4-9 — “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me–put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

I’m already feeling better. Thank you, God!

I’ve had my Archos FM Recorder MP3 player for over two years. It’s been a great device, helpful for recording and playing back music. Just recently, though, it’s taken a turn for the worse. The LCD screen has gone blank on it, and now the player will not give out any sound. I’ve already had to replace the LCD screen once, and the one I have had been halfway broken for a while — the top third or so of it was blank due to my accidentally chipping off a corner of the screen. Anyway, now the entire screen is not working. And on top of that, the headphone jack isn’t working! So.. it’s really frustrating. I’m not exactly sure what is wrong. My guess for the screen would be that it finally died completely, but I have no idea why the audio will not work. I suppose there’s a chance that the reason it’s not working is because I’m not actually playing a song, but I think I am able to play a song blindly, without needing to look at the screen to find my way. So assuming that I am getting a song to play (which I’m pretty sure is the case), then something is wrong with the headphone jack. And that just mystifies me. I know next to nothing about that, so I would have no real idea how to fix it.

Right now, the MP3 player is essentially useless, except as an external 20 GB hard drive. I can’t record with it since I need the screen to be able to see what I’m doing. I can’t play back files since, for one, the headphone jack isn’t working, and even if it did, I would have a hard time blindly playing songs.

Argh! So I’m not sure what to do now. Should I buy a broken Archos off of eBay or something and try to turn two broken MP3 players into one good one? Should I look for a totally different kind of MP3 player? Should I scrap the idea altogether and just save my money? I don’t know. I would hate the idea of having a broken MP3 player and not fixing it in some form. But as of now, it looks like the minimum I’d be spending is $55 or $60. But maybe it would be worth it, to have it working well again. I’m just frustrated that this is happening. I expected to have to replace the LCD screen at some point, shelling out 30 bucks or so for that, but this audio output problem has really got me confused. I guess

I’ll go do some searching on eBay!