the Zookery

Father of all mankind

We plead that you look upon those

Prepared to deal in death

At the hands of men of war

In mercy hear their cry

And spare them

The terrors of destruction

* *

Father of all mankind

We plead that you look upon those

Prepared to receive death

At the hands of men of war

In mercy hear their cry

And spare them

The terrors of destruction

* *

You who are Father of All

The unjust and the just

How shall we implore that you spare ours

And not theirs

That you dash their young men to the ground

Rend them limb from limb

Make widows of their women

Orphans of their children

Tombs of their homes

Ruins of their cities

Under the mighty heel of our warriors

Who may return to us with joy

* *

Let the weapons of war be confounded

Let the machines of war be stilled

Let the Men of the West

And the Men of the East

Meet not as warriors of many nations

But as sons of one Father

Let them find

Not triumph

But brotherhood

And peace

My iPhone home button stopped responding the day after I updated its firmware to version 3.1. All functions worked except that button. I couldn’t switch between applications without a power-off/power-on cycle.

Since I purchased my phone in April 2009, my phone is still within its first year of hardware warranty. I requested a phone call-back from Apple support, but the techie only gave me the recommendation to reset it to default settings. Since I am now beyond the 90 days of complimentary AppleCare, he advised me to buy Extended AppleCare, which would free him to hold my hand if I had problems such as downloading purchased music from iTunes Store. No thanks, I can hold my own hand, and that’s not the problem. It’s a hardware issue, see, so it’s covered under warranty. Oh, yes, he agreed, so would I like to purchase AppleCare? No. Ok, reset your phone and see if it works. How do I get it serviced if that fails? You can visit an Apple Retail Store for service or call back, and we’ll arrange the repair.

I reset the phone to default settings. No joy. Called Apple support again. Well, sir, you definitely need to visit an Apple Retail Store for service. I already knew the nearest store is two hours away in downtown Pittsburgh. Why can’t I send the phone for hardware repair? This phone is under hardware warranty, with a hardware problem, but I have to drive four hours to get an Apple genius to look at it? This is progress in progress? Well, would you like to buy AppleCare? No.

Shari and I drove to Pittsburgh this evening, along with 4-year-old Aarick and 2-year-old Regan. I vaguely remembered reading about a world leaders’ summit in Pittsburgh sometime this fall. I forgot about it until I saw signs on I-279 saying no downtown access because of G20 Summit activities. Whoa. We’re talking…like…Obama. Sarkozy. Brown. Who else? Well, those who accompany the modern-day kings of the earth, trying to disrupt the festivities with rude signs and flying rocks.

My printed Google maps and directions were useless. I pulled my iPhone from my pocket, power-cycled, and got into Maps. Driving along the downtown limitations on access (heavily manned by National Guard Humvees  and police barricades), we cut across 16^th St Bridge to Liberty Ave, cut up the hill on 28^th St to Bigelow (380), which turns into Baum Blvd…and met a police riot squad unloading from multiple vans at the corner of Liberty and Baum. Turns out the rude signs and flying rocks were in the vicinity in the recent past (like, about an hour before we were). Time to turn around. We drove past the Boston Market restaurant where carpenters were cutting OSB to cover the windows broken by protestors, as reported here. Finally got to the Shady Side Apple Retail Store. Hardly recognizable with plywood covering the storefront windows. Three cops inside the store. What fun.

I got an appointment at the Genius Bar in less than 10 minutes. Explained my problem, yep, button doesn’t work. We’ll get that display replaced. Ok. Fifteen minutes later the display is replaced. Still no joy. Well, we’ll replace the entire phone. Sure thing. I walked out with a new iPhone. Got home 5.5 hours after starting out.

Lessons learned along the way

1. Complimentary Apple support is overrated, unless you happen to live near a big city with a Retail Store.
2. Don’t take a two-year-old and four-year-old on a five-hour ramble to downtown Pittsburgh.
3. Don’t take a ramble through downtown Pittsburgh when the G20 Summit is also there.
4. I’m not sure the problem was hardware. But hey, if Apple in its abundance of genius decides to break my iPhone with a firmware update, I sure don’t mind getting a new phone in the process.

Oh, yeah, thanks, Apple. I’m still not buying AppleCare. And my hand is just fine.

PS. Anybody see the goofy path we took? What would have been smarter?

PPS. Anybody see why the “smarter” path wouldn’t have worked?

Aarick: Rej keeps taking my cars!

Me: Remember, you can only keep two cars, one for each hand. You can play with more than two on the car blanket, but I’m not going to make Rej bring back any cars that you can’t hold in your hands.

Aarick: But I want three cars. This one is my racing car, and this is my work car, and then I want the four-wheeler, too.

Me: Well, I guess you’ll just have to grow another hand.

Pause.

Aarick: [smiles] Growing another hand sounds like a pretty good idea.

If you’re like me, you hate targeted advertising. I wanted to disable the Facebook ads entirely but couldn’t do that. This gets rid of the ad photos, at least.

• Add 127.0.0.1 ads.ak.facebook.com on a new line of your \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file.

If your firewall has content filtering options, you can add ads.ak.facebook.com to its URL deny list. Mozilla Firefox has plugins to block content as well, but this works for any browser.

This past Tuesday the trustees closed the purchase of the property on Baldwin Street. We are now the owners of a building in Meadville! We’ve found it very exciting to explore the possibilities in a larger building. Currently we have room for about 70 in the main room, with classrooms in the three smaller rooms. The trustees asked Geryll Zehr to serve as an overseer of the trailer park, and he met this week with the tenants. He plans to finalize and sign lease agreements with them this coming week. The building purchase is sobering as well as exciting. We face a large debt that we hope to repay in 20 years, although we could hope to repay it in much less time! If God lays this need on your heart, we would welcome any contributions toward the purchase. We also face new responsibilities of caring for the grounds and the building.

In June our congregation affirmed John and Barb Coblentz, with their children Jean, Josh, Andi, and Ted, to serve at Faith Builders in leading the Campus Fellowship there. Jean and Josh will begin the Ministry Apprenticing Program tomorrow. Remember their family in prayer this year! While we miss them at MMC, we’re also excited that they can bless the young people studying at Faith Builders.

Following their graduation from Faith Builders in May, two sons of the church have headed for fields of ministry elsewhere. Chad Weaver is serving in York, Pennsylvania, as principal of a Christian day school in the city. Kyle Lehman moved to Chambersburg, PA, to teach in his dad’s old school, Anchor Christian.

Someone went for a ride this morning.

Wasn’t me.

I’ve come to realize I’m better at some repair jobs than others.

Yes:

No:

“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.” – Douglas Adams