I heard the angles sing...

Tonight I heard the angels sing. Both boys, the wife and myself. we sang, and it sounded awesome. The song was "Into My Heart". For the first time, all of us were singing. Usually, its just daddy and mommy with one of the boys off and on. Just makes me love having kids.
I wonder if God sings with us when we sing? You think He might?

He's going to be a UPS driver...

Yes, I think my youngest will be a UPS truck driver. You know how I know? He loves trucks, always points them out to me. You should hear him. "Daddy! Daddy!" he says with an excited earnestness. "Come look!" And then he exclaims, "A TRUCK!!!!!!!!" Said with all the excitement a 2 year old knows how to muster up.

Every morning as I'm heading out the door, he grabs up an imaginary package and hands it to me saying, "Daddy! Daddy! here! A package for you!" What can I say? "OK, I'll put it here." I stuff the imaginary box into my pocket. Two more packages later, I'm finally out the door. Yes, it's easy to say, my youngest is going to be a UPS delivery guy. He loves trucks and always gives me packages.

I wonder if God would play along with us if we were to try to give Him packages. What if we were to play these little games with him? Maybe start by giving our hearts? Giving our troubles? That problem that's been nagging at you, give that to Him. "God! God! Here. A package for you!" Do you think it would bring a smile to the GREAT-ALL-MIGHTY? One thing is certain, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in." (Matthew 18:3 - Message) That's the words of Jesus.

Popups...I hate them.

If hate is not the right word, then despise is a better one. It seems that some companies will stop and nothing to push advertising to YOU!! Yes, I'm pointing my finger in your direction. Well, it seems that tagboard for blogger.com is infected with the need to generate pop-ups on websites where their scripts are installed.

So, for those of you who visited my blog over the last couple of days, I'm sorry for the popups. Blame tagboard as once their scripts are removed the popups go away.

Kind of makes me think of the way Satan operates in our lives. He takes advantage of everything he can to the benefit of his cause. However, enter God on the scene. He is only out for our best interest. So, who will you follow? I'm choosing GOD. No popups, thank you!

They do exist...

Taking my lunch at the radio station has become somewhat routine. For those of you who don't know, I manage a local Low-Power FM radio station. Just the other day I was wondering if we have any listeners out there. Having not heard from any listeners lately, it seems that we broadcast only to the wind and non-existant prairie dogs.

Today, I arrived at the station just about 12:10. About 2 minutes after I walked in, the telephone rang. I checked the caller ID, and there was a name I didn't recognize. I answered, and the caller was asking about a song that she had heard on the air. I gave her the information and thanked her for listening. After I hung up, I realized that call was just for me. God was sending me another message letting me know that this station is doing good.

So, radio listeners do exist, and as the bible says, "So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit." Galatians 6:9 (Message)

Password: FAITH

Was making a service call and the particular user was not at their computer. So we made up a password for them. We used FAITH. The reason was that everywhere around that office were little notes and quotes expressing faith. Here is the one from the keyboard.

"Sorrow looks back; worry looks around; faith looks up." No author was listed. But think on that one. If you're worried, where are you looking? If you are sad and depressed, where are you looking? I'm not saying that it is bad to be sorrowful, but we should not be lost in sorrow or worry. We should always keep our eyes on God.

There's the challenge for today. Keep your eyes on God.

Miracle in 5!

Finally making it to the last of the customers who need their equipment changed to accommodate the new polarization. One customer was a christian school. They are the only one on the north side of this tower. A side affect of our fix to the wireless issue is that we didn't have enough equipment to cover north from the tower. Several months ago, I had already tried all our various systems at this location, and I knew full well that they just weren't going to be able to get on. I went up today to make one more attempt at putting them back on 2.4GHz.

I got to the site and upon inspecting the radio noticed that the signal strength meter showed 2 out of 3 bars signal. That was curious so I rotated the antenna 90 degrees, and the signal went to 3 out of 3 bars. I plugged in my laptop, and I was off to the races. Speeds were not the best I've seen, but they were acceptable.

I walked away from that just shaking my head. How can they be on the internet when there is no signal pointed their direction? They are drawing off the back side of a panel antenna. I told the registrar, "God must want you on the internet."

God is capable of more than we think. He is only limited by our willingness to have him involved in our lives. So, get on the God bandwagon. Allow him full control and you'll see more than you've ever dreamed of.

Jesus has owie!

Getting the kids ready for bed tonight, and my little 2 year old says, "Daddy, Jesus has owie!" He was looking at a picture of Jesus holding a little child. It was my favorite picture growing up, and now it is the favorite in our house too. I replied, "Yes, he got that owie because mommie's and daddies and little girls and little boys were naughty. That's why Jesus got that owie."

Have you ever thought of that? Jesus got hurt because we were naughty. Sometimes, great bible truths become crystal clear when seen through the eyes of a child.
"I don't want Jesus to get any more owies because of me. Do you?"

Polarity Matters

Spent the day today working over our wireless system in the 900MHz range. Sent a tower climber up the tower twice today. Found out that even in a non-line of sight frequencies, polarity matters. We've been running vertical and once we switched to horizontal and things started working.

Got me to thinking. In life, there is an entity which always sets up camp next door and attempts to drown out our communication with our heavenly father. When we are distracted by the things around us (horizontally polarized) we can't hear God. We need to take some time to get ourselves tuned back into God (vertically polarized) and then we'll be back where we should be.

The equipment I was working on today can't fix its self. The cool thing is that we can't fix ourselves but God can help us get set right with Him.

Resumé, Oh Resumé

How often have you updated your resumé? Have you looked at it lately? Mine has been for 8 years. WOW! Talk about a very large project. My current job has been so vast in its scope of detail that updating is a daunting task.

I'm so glad that God doesn't require us to have a resumé. In fact, He is the one keeping track of where we've worked and what we've done. Its so much better to be accepted on the basis of Jesus instead of on the basis of me.

The Oxygen High

This morning on my way to work, I had a God encounter. It was inspired by the song Oxygen from Avalon. As I listened to the words I was impressed with just how dependent we are on God for life. Without him, we would not have our next breath, our next heart beat would not happen. "You are my oxygen. I breathe you out. I breathe you in."

It was a very high moment. Probably stronger than any gained through drugs or other substances. God is truly awesome, and when impressed with that, a person can be left without words.

"You are my oxygen
You are my love
You are what life's about "

Get ahold of a good song about God and you have spiritual adrenaline. Get ahold of a song without God and you have a shot of spiritual poison.

Getting the laser

That's God for you! He done it again! The Radio Station now has a laser printer. The story starts about 2 or so years ago when a cat did its best to ruin a perfectly good laser printer. So after smelling the mess, the printer was scraped. It has sat around since then.

Part 2 began a month ago when another laser printer decided to scream whenever it was to print. Sounds terrible. Customer decided not to repair so once again, another dead printer.

The boss said I could take the two machines and make a working one if I wanted to. I finally got to the printer. The cat damaged printer wreaked. But the laser scanner only had two spots which were easily cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

Put that into the second printer and we have a working unit. So, can you imagine God working out this great plan? "The radio station will need a laser printer so we'll just get a cat to fix that printer, then we'll have parts for use in 2 years."

What an awesome God we serve. Show me, just show me another being who can make things work out like that.

Master of the Minute (as in very small)

There you have it. God is truly awesome. Been struggling with some coding perticularly related to this blog. I wanted to include a code block from another website. I had it working...well, kind of, and last evening, I went to bed and asked the source of all wisdom and knowledge to help me make it work. This morning, I "happened" upon the solution. After prayer, "coincidence" is not part of the equasion, at least in my world.

Add another point for our awesome spectacular all knowing God. By the way, do you realize that his hands formed you? Therefore, "YOU ARE NOT A MISTAKE".

Working on Denial

Today I saw first hand what is a "Denial of Service" attack. Basically, the attack starts very small, with just a couple of hosts openning network connections to a server. As the attach prograsses, the volume of the connections climbs and the volume of hosts joining the attack grows. What I saw today was a number close to 24,000 connections per second to one webserver. It made the entire network act like it was in slow motion.

This got me to thinking about the "Denial of Service" attacks we see each day on a spiritual level. Have you ever noticed that they start small, and grow slowly. Before you know what has happened, you are wondering just why life has slowed to a crawl. You find that you can't make any spiritual headway.

Today, I made a phone call to get some help. The solution was simple. Limit the number of connection going to that server.

Same thing with us. We have a source of help available to us that we need to tap into. When you make that phone call, you don't have to wait, you don't get put on hold. You're immediatly connected to the ultimate source of power in dealing with our enemy. Now in case you think that you can make a difference in this area, you need to realize that against our enemy you're totally out numbered and out maneuvered. However, the one thing you can do is make a choice. You can say "I choose".

Been a while

It's been a while. Since I've posted. Things on the wireless side are slowing a bit. Cold weather keeps us inside and hunckered down. This past Thursday, Friday and Sabbath, temperatures were sub-zero. Had 2 customers with issues. I haven't been able to verify their functionality as I'm 35 miles offsite, and my systems are so locked down that I can't get to my monitoring server to check things out. We'll see tomorrow. I guess that this blog will have to change its focus but that's the way things go.

It's time to go to bed; kind of getting late. So..."Until next time!" CntryTwist signing off.

State of the wireless.

It's been a busy week. Last Sunday morning, God got his wind out and played with it for a little bit, and it left me running for most of the week. Tuesday morning, God played with his rain a bit, and took one of my Access Points offline for good. Water in the power cable to the outdoor amp, shorted it out and lost 8 customer associations.

Replaced the tower by Wednesday evening. Had replacement radios for the customers off the other tower delivered on Thursday so I started running. I found a bad amplifier on the new tower, and so got that fixed with an amp that I removed from customer premise while replacing their radio. So, you could say that God knew what he was doing. How awesome.

I must say that God is better to his children than the devil is to his. Money and power doesn't make up for the assurance from God that he's happy with our effort to work for him.

State of the spectrum

Took 2 more reading, Radar is still in the upper part of the spectrum, and The downtown tower is still in the lower part. They have not changed anything yet. That mans that they are still being nasty. That's the nicest way I know of to put it. That's all for today.

The Battle continues

Called and talked to CFR. They moved their downtown tower to the lower 900s and kept their radar in the upper 900s. Yesterday morning, I was promised that they would do something.
I put another customer on the Telex at Rocky. I got some adapters that allow me to use existing antennas with the indoor SmartBridges radios. This makes it possible to switch somebody over for 3 months of internet access, then they become a paying customer again. Every place I switch over just seems to rock. It's a good deal for us. I'm glad we put up that new AP.
God is good, and his blessings are amazing.

Spectrum Analizer arrived.

The Spectrum Analizer arrived yesterday. Took a couple of readings. Found that CFR had moved their downtown tower to the lower end of the spectrum, and that they had left Radar tower in the upper. I sure wish I could get ahold of the lady to get this straightened out. I've moved our 900 to one frequency 904 so that our customers can travel.

This is very frustrating.

Spectrum Analyzer Arrives Today

The Spectrum analyzer arrives today. WOW, am I excited. Maybe, just maybe we'll see why we're having such packet loss and high bad packet rates on two access points.

New Rocky wireless AP Status

Seems to be working. Continued working through the power outage last night. All graphs show things are up and working.

Praise God its working.