More Pictures

Here's a bunch of family pictures, courtesy Shutterfly

Upgrading to XP from Vista

The hard drive on the family laptop died in December, so we bought a new desktop. We got an HP Pavilion Slimline – small but still a desktop. I thought it would be nice to go back to having a desktop to get the better display and regular size keyboard. And, NC state employees get a nice discount with HP.

Well, we got it and like it. We had a small problem with the monitor (a bright yellow, one pixel wide vertical line on all the time) which they replaced quickly. The hardware is a nice jump from our 4 year old laptop, and we didn’t know how much we missed having a number pad on the keyboard.

However, it also came with Vista. It is pretty and has decent navigation. It didn’t take long to get used to it. But, the problems soon started. About every 1-2 weeks we got the blue screen of death (BSOD) and had to restart several times before Vista would start again. Explorer also froze whenever we copied, moved, or even renamed files. Updates didn’t help, and sometimes had a BSOD while installing them!

So, we finally got sick of it. One of the advantages of working at WCU is that faculty and staff get a discount on lots of software. I got a copy of XP for $10 and installed it. I have to give it to HP: even though their policy is to only support the pre-installed operating system, they pointed me to all the drivers I needed (except for the modem – which I found myself). It only took about 1.5 hours to go from Vista to fully running with XP AND all our necessary software.

Updating XP through dial-up took longer, but at least it doesn’t crash regularly. Now if we can just get DSL...

Stephen on Loving Jesus

Stephen and I were reading books last night before bed, and as usual we read a Bible story. This one was about the woman that washed Jesus' feet with her hair. Stephen asked for another story about Jesus, the one "about the cross." His picture Bible has several pages about the crucifixion, so we looked through those and I summarized each page. At the end, where Jesus is resurrected and talking to the women outside the tomb, Stephen pointed out Jesus' scars "from the cross." We talked about how Jesus died to forgive sins (and what sin is, etc.). Stephen thought for a few seconds and said "I love Jesus!"

Now THAT warmed this dad's heart!

Again, it isn't just this one reading that brought this response - it's the constant attempts to teach Stephen that lead to a point like that.

The "rest of the story" is that I was tired last night and wasn't sure I felt up to doing the "put Stephen to bed" routine. In fact, I wasn't sure I wanted to read one more story, but I'm glad I did.

4-month-old Lydia

Lydia just turned 4 months old - she weighs 14 lbs 7 oz and is 26 inches long - growing girl! I haven't been as diligent with tummy time as I was with Stephen, so she hasn't rolled over yet or propped up much on her forearms. She is quite "talkative" and starting to show a little stranger anxiety, but not too much. Lydia is also showing lots of interest in foods and sitting with us as we eat. I forgot how quickly babies go from one stage to the next!

We were in Greenville this past weekend and had Lydia's first professional pictures taken. Stephen did as well - he really got into it!

Stephen On Faith

One of those great conversations with Stephen happened last night. Our Bible story was about how Jesus walked on water and how Peter walked out to him but didn’t trust him the whole time. We talked a little about faith and I told Stephen that the Bible says that if we even have a little bit of faith we can make a mountain move. Stephen thought about this for a little and then said:

“Can I have a little bit of faith?”

I tried hard not to laugh – I’m pretty sure Stephen thinks being able to move a mountain would be a great thing to be able to do. We then talked about what faith is and what that verse about moving mountains means (trusting God and being aligned with His will).

I wonder how much of this stuck with him in some way – I just have to remember that teaching him truth is continuous, not discrete (yup, I’m an engineer). That is, it is the whole life of teaching, not one single event, that will make a difference.

We did pray for more faith last night.