My Life, My World

Its been a couple of weeks since my last post.  I’ve been recovering from my surgery, and unforunately still have a ways to go.  I did an 8 mile bike ride yesterday.  Should have been a piece of cake as I’m used to riding 10-12 regularly and 18-20 semi-frequently.  Seems I’ve got a little further to go yet before I’m back to 100%.

My wife and I made our public declaration of our faith in Jesus Christ this past Sunday.  Our Baptism will occur on September 28th, which is also a very special time for our church.  We’re very excited about this step and the steps that will follow.

Over these past two weeks, I’ve had several ideas for a post yet, but none of them have grown to complete thoughts.

I’ve been reading my Craig Smith books.  Most recently was, “The Voice.”  It basically outlined how to heard God’s voice.  I’m putting the lessons learned in that book to work in my daily life.  Any plans, short-term or long-term, that I make now are always prefaced with, “if its God’s will…..”  I’ve also started listening during times of prayer.  Seems odd when you think about it, but as Craig put it in his book, if you’re a college student and you call home to your dad and ask, “Dad, should I take French or Spanish, ok, thanks, goodbye.”  You don’t get the answer you’re looking for.  You also never hear if perhaps you’re being told that you should take German.

I think perhaps I’ve finally discovered what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.  Atleast this new direction feels right.  We’ll see how it manifests itself over the next year or so, but I’m praying that I’ve found my direction.

Craig’s book also mentions that God opens and closes doors for us.  Seems that recently we’ve seen some doors close and some new ones open.  I pray daily that we’re following God’s will and that these opportunities are being arranged by Him to guide us to where He wants us to be.

This week started out just like any other week.  Normal.  Until Tuesday morning around 4am, when I woke up feeling sick to my stomach.  Still being tired, I decided to try to power through it and go back to sleep.  When I woke back up around 8am, I noticed that I had a sharp pain in the lower right quadrant of my abdomen.  I did a quick press test and sure enough the sharp pain got sharper.

As I sit there looking at my ceiling, with thoughts of appendicitis running through my head, I began to wonder what the next couple of days would hold.

I made an appointment with my familiy physician, and upon examination acknowledged that it could indeed be appendicitis, but he was seeing a few other characteristics that pointed to something else.  He suggested that I return home and rest.  Around 6pm, I received a call from the doctor asking me for an update.  Basically, everything was the same.  He told me that if the problems persisted in the morning to call him back.

So Wednesday morning rolls around.  No change in my condition, unfortunately, so I called the doctor and left a message.  After doing so I went back into the bedroom and laid down.  I woke back up around noon, and had voicemails on my cell and home phones.  The jist of both messages was, “We need to talk to you NOW.  You need to be at the hospital at 12:30pm today!”

I called the doctors office back and talked to the lady who’d left me the message.  She wanted to know if I could still get to the hospital in 25 minutes.  Luckily the hospital is right near my house.  So we bundled in our truck and my wife drove me to the ER.

After drinking what can only be described as a big styrofoam glass of this lemon-lime slurry, I was given a cat scan.  Shortly afterwards, the technican came out and said, “I’m sorry, but it does appear that you have appendicitis.”  He ask me to go back to the primary waiting room and they’d send a surgeon down to talk to me shortly.  The look on my wife’s face was not something I even want to see on her face again.  Shock, fear, it some sort of combination along with uncertainty.  I’m not sure what my face looked like, but I just felt like, “Ok, where do we go from here?”

So I go back to main waiting room for a few minutes when the come down and put me in a little prep room and start sticking IV’s in my arm, taking blood and of course morphine.  They had me sign paperwork, before rushing me into surgery.  One of the forms I had to sign was an authorization for blood in a life saving sitution.

Now I really started to think.  The only medical operations I’ve had was ingrown toenail removal several years ago and LASIK a few weeks ago.  So cutting into my body was definitely something new and uncomfortable to me.  Which brings me to the point of this post, I hope you’re still with me, because this is the point I want to make…..

As I lay there thinking about the whole thing, looking at the ceiling, I was honestly not too upset, nor was I too scared.  I was in complete believe that whatever came to be was His will.  Before the morphine started kicking in, I closed my eyes and prayed that I would get through the procedure ok.  And if for some reason I did not, that I acknowledged that it was his will and that my wife would be taken care of.

So my point of all this is that you never have to walk alone.  As I told my pastor who called to check on me following the operation, “When walking unfamiliar or unknown paths, there is no one better to have holding your hand than Jesus.”

Obviously, I’m writing this afterwards, so I’m made it through with no complications.  I’m back home now and will be for the next few days with restrictions on activity and everything else.  Guess I’ll be watching alot of TV.

I thank God for getting me through my ordeal.  If you remember one of my posts a week or so ago, it mentioned that all Christians should prepare themselves for these moments and allow God to try and glorify himself in everything in our lives, good or bad.  That prepartion was what allowed me not to be overly nervous about what was going to happen to me.  I felt like I was going to be taken care of, and I prayed that my wife would be likewise.

I also want to thank God for my wife.  She has been absolutely marvelous through this entire ordeal and still continues to help me with all aspects of my daily life that I need help with.  She hasn’t complained, sighed or anything at any point when I’ve needed her help.  I love her!

Utilizing an analogy between spritual growth and a Hot Air Ballon, this Sunday my Pastor gave me some food for thought.  He mentioned that things like friends, plans, etc. can be like the sand bags on a hot air balloon, in that they hold us down.

Of particular interest to my was the part about having plans.  While its a good idea to always have a plan for your life/family, what we plan to do/have may not be God’s will.  So instead of saying, “I’m planning to do such and such,” try saying, “If its God’s will, then I’m going to do this or that.”

This really got me thinking.  I’ve always been a believer in meeting God halfway.  He’s just not going to give you what you want.  Maybe what you want doesn’t match up with His plans for you.

There are some changes I’d like to make in my life, and while I still plan to pursue those changes, I’m going into it with the idea that, “if its God’s will, this will come to be.”  If it doesn’t happen, then I take consolation that He has something better in mind.

Regardless of whether you’re planning for a new house, car, job, child, etc., its always a good idea to take into consideration what He has planned.

As a child we often played connect the dots.  As I recall, it was one of my favorite things to do.  I remember as I progressed through each and every one, that as I went further I could start to see the picture.  I’m sure you can remember something similar.

Looking back over these last few months, I can see the “dots.”  Each and every Bible reference in Church or in my own private study was somehow exactly what I needed to hear at the time.  I participate in a Bible study at work.  We would discuss a particular topic on Thursday, and somehow that would tie into what my Pastor covered the following Sunday.

I’ve just kept progressing from point to point with my excitement and amazement growing at each and every step.  As I look back now, I realize that these are dots and with God’s help I’m starting to connect them to make the picture of my life.  Its entirely too early to know what that picture will look like, but He knows.

As I examine my life as a whole, I realize that in God’s plan, I’m behind in where I should be in my connect-the-dot excercise.  For the majority of my adult life I’ve strayed away from God and my faith.  However, I’m back on track now and with His guidance I’ll make up for lost time and complete the picture that he has in mind for me.

While the tech was in replacing my DVR, I ask about the black/gray processing in the Motorola Box.  He mentioned specifically that in the interest of size, Motorola intentionally limited the black and gray processing capability.  This is visible anytime you’re looking at a largely black or gray screen.  The gradations between shades if obvious.

He mentioned in other markets that they are using Cisco boxes and one other manufacturer that I can’t remember.  But so far those haven’t been introduced in the Indiana market.

Its a shame that you put money into a nice television only to have the cable box impose limitations on you.

I called into AT&T to report that my sound was dropping in and out.  I was told that there were new DVR’s out that had a new chip in them that was supposed to resolve the issue.  They dispatched a tech out the next day.

When the tech arrived, his initial fix was to bypass the audio I was sending to my system via HDMI using the red/white RCA cables.  When I explained to him that with the setup I had and my Harmony Remote already programmed that I did not want that done, and that I was told I would get a new DVR, he went out to his truck and brough in a new one.  I now have a Rev C. unit.

The following day, I was pleasantly surprised to see programs being recorded.  When I checked my recording schedule, I noticed that everything was intact and I didn’t have re-do any of it.

Definitely a surprise.

Just over four months ago I experienced what I can only be described as the worse thing ever in my life so far.  Prior to that, the worst thing I’d experienced was watching my father waste away to cancer, which I thought would be the worst thing ever in my life.

I was listening to a radio program this week and they mentioned that the saddness and misery that we experience in our daily lives is a result of man being a sinful creature and it all goes back to Adam and Eve.  The point of the broadcast was to emphasize that it is God’s plan to bring his glory into all situations, good and bad.  Given such understanding, Christians should recognize and acknowledge that before bad things happen, so that they find themselves better prepared to weather such storms.

In my experience, the rebirth of my faith is what got my through my ordeal.  As I sat in the middle of what can only be described as the darkest of darkness in my life, I just knew what I needed to do.  I could have reacted in many different ways, many negative ways.  Some of those negative reactions appeal to me even now, but I have the ability, thanks to God, to recognize them as the wrong thing to do.  However, I still fight these negative urges on a daily basis and I suspect that will continue for the rest of my life, based upon my discussion with friends who have been through similar situations.

In the last four months, I’ve done my best to change my outlook on life, attend my church regularly and put God first in all things in my life.  Today, as I sat reflecting on the words of a religious program I was listening to, I looked out the window at the clearing horizon just after a thunderstorm and I had the feeling that I’m just taking the first few steps toward rediscovering life.  I’m not exactly sure where this feeling came from, but I have an idea.  The feeling was definitely a good feeling and it definitely brought about more than a little excitement.

More to follow….

I’ve received a couple of requests for help in configuring the Cisco ASA5505 with U-Verse DSL.  Here’s a summary of how I made it work.  Feel free to contact me for further assistance.  I’ll do what I can to help out:

Setting up the U-Verse residential gateway with my ASA5505 was the most difficult part of my installation.  The tech knew nothing beyond basic networking, nor did the guy on the phone.

Here is what you need to do:

1). Connect only the outside interface of your ASA to your RG (residential gateway), disconnect everything else for now.  You’ll see why in a minute.
2). Log on to the RG, http://192.168.1.254 (I think).  The password is on a sticker on the RG.
3). Go into the firewall options and look for an option called DMZ Plus.  You should see the MAC of your ASA in a selection box.  Once you set that up, the RG will pass its public IP right through to the outside interface of your ASA.
4). Configure the ASA’s outside interface for DHCP.  It should then pickup your public IP.

I’ve then uplinked another switch to the RG for my TV’s to plug into.

Its tricky, but it does work.  I’m not at home right now, so I might have a term or two confused as I’m pulling this out of my head, which is loaded with cold medicine right now.  But that was basically it.

If you don’t pass the public into the outside interface of the ASA, you end up with a double-NAT situation which will screw up most forms of VoIP.  I have a SIP trunk from Junction Networks and an Asterisk box for my home.

Let me know if you need further info.

Haven’t updated in a while.  Here’s some more differences that I’ve noticed:

VOD doesn’t display programs recently viewed in the selection list.  On Comcast, if you watched a few episodes of say The Sopranos, you would see a small check mark next to the ones you’d watched.  The check mark didn’t stay very long, 24-72 hours.  But if you were watching a series over a day or so, it was a nice book mark.

There is evidently an issue with HDMI on the U-Verse boxes that can causing goofy behavior when switching between inputs.  For instance if I switch, via my Harmony Remote, to my PS3, then back, the guide will not display, however the little preview screen in the lower left does.  This can be resolved by switching my TV to another HDMI then back.  Hopefully this is a software issue and not a hardware issue with the VIP-1216.

My Comcast service was disconnected on 1/24/08.  So far I’ve been very happy with U-Verse and continue the learning curve.

I came home and fired everything up. I had no directory on my DVR box. I could get the little preview box in the lower left hand corner, but no directory.

A call into T2 Support let me to the reset where you hold the power in for five seconds. That fixed it.

Until I turned off my DVR to play PS3. When turning things back on again, no directory. Same as before. I had to do another reset.

Been busy with other things and no time to play around and see if it repeats. Lets hope it doesn’t. Had today not been MLK Jr. Day, I would have called ComCast to cancel my service. Maybe this is a sign not to? I hope not.