Archive for August, 2007

I have mostly used frontpage to do most of my website work…no code to write and pretty much get anything cool added or on my website.  BUT nowadays they have stopped updating frontpage (I think maybe since 2003) and I am trying to grow with everything else in order to keep up…

I have all this great coffee cup software that can do almost anything so I am trying to use its many different stand alone programs, and they even kind of jive together.  Right now I am working with the blog feature which is pretty nice.  It is real light and less of a hassle than all the other software that you can have on your own host.  Like:  Wordpress (I changed my mind about this obviously), nucleus, pmachine…

This software was a free download for using Lunarpages as my website host and domain name server…you can check the prices and things and see if its right for you.  I really just needed a good host but now that i have been playing around with this software and learned a few more things like php and mysqul databases…whew, now I am having fun!

So bare with me as you may not be able to access things from time to time.  As a side note, did you know that Books-A-Million has wifi now?  Yep, and if you have one of their BAM cards (which is only 15$ a year – good for discounts too!) you use the number on the card and get the wifi for free.  That would be worth 15$ a year…especially the one I like to visit when I am at home.  Nice plush chairs, no hassle, 50cent (not the rapper) coffee for life if you buy one of their coffee for life cups.

Yeah, life is good sometimes….then you go to a third world country.  And it gets better…you realize you CAN live without all this STUFF.  And you enjoy and appreciate it more when you come back to visit on breaks and fund/support raising trips.  Oh, and by the way…I borrowed the BAM card and coffee cup from my father.  Yep, good ol’ dad.

Here’s to ya!  While I sip my Vanilla Nut Coffee and upload this post.

Part of working out all the fine details of working for a ‘volunteer’ organization is talking all these people into supporting you for so many $$ a month, and/or getting what we call ‘one-time’ gifts instead (or in addition too) that are usually pretty sizable since they will sometimes not want to commit to supporting you every month.

Either way can be fine some times…I had a supporter that wanted to give me so much a month BUT then they calculated it out for a year and wrote me a check. And that was great too…those tickets to fly to Africa to meet the ship can become quite expensive. And sometimes hard to get when you are going to Liberia or Sierra Leone!

Stephanie and I have been printing, folding, enveloping, stamping, and addressing quite a few ‘refrigerator postcards’ (so they don’t forget you while you are thousands of miles away in a third world country) budget brochures, and letters of intent/information…if you will.

This is not really new to either of us, we have been involved in missions/volunteer work in the past. But now, we need to raise it as a married couple. Its been interesting but I am confident there will be provision. And if you are reading this and would like to know how to do this…there are different ways of contributing to our operating/living expense budget(all here on this website, or the bottom link on tyronebcookin), all of which come with that tax receipt thingy for tax credit. Because Mercy Ships is a global charity that just happens to be run by mostly Christians. I would like to call it a Christian Missionary Organization but that would probably make people squirm and be politically incorrect in title and status….sigh.

Hopefully I can get stephanie to learn how to use this blog so we/you can have her perspective which may be more interesting or funnier than mine at times and will certainly break up the monopoly. Hopefully posts that reach all sprectrums of the board: serious, funny, personal, emotional, etc…

Right now we are packing up our apartment in East Texas getting ready to move back on the land base for Mercy Ships in Garden Valley Texas. Its called the International Operations Center or IOC for short and this is where we run things like the medical, food, equipment, and various other containers to be shipped to the Africa Mercy. And also the other important things like paperwork, human resources, project development, Classes for field preparation…the list goes on.

We will live on base why I finish up my work here at the IOC Kitchen and Stephanie finishes her time at the local hospital. She works in the ER and I have dubbed her ‘THE CODE QUEEN’ ! When people code, or die so to speak, she brings them back…these situations seem to be attracted to her. But hey, now she’s probably the best at running ‘codes’.

Right now I am back in Alabama for a funeral. Not the best of times for me…my best friends (we grew up together) dad died last Monday. A painful journey fighting cancer. No more suffering though…that is good. The family and I are real close. It hurts to see time move on sometimes.

I miss my wife. She could not come due to short notice and work scheduling.

Some ‘training courses’ are running at the IOC for the next two months so its always nice to meet new people. And I enjoy having a lot of people to cook for, believe it or not there comes a point when you would rather cook for hundreds than just a few. But each takes its part in honing your skills.

Remember a couple of months ago when I took a survey? And I said I would report back after a couple of weeks? Yeah, well…sorry about that. This is tied into an article earlier this year in my blog called Appreciation Dinner – Food Politics.

OH! One additional thing, I did resort that answer to show the most popular…thats why some of the answer don’t seem to be in order…

Ever had those tasty peanutbutter and marshmellow fluff sandwiches in that store bought sliced white bread? Re-live your adult dream with this cake…
Foodaphilia: FlufferNutter Cake

Both of them cost about ten dollars apiece online…you’ll get your monies worth.

***I was condensing down my web expansion and deleted one of the blogs that was only getting viewed for this one post…so here is the post from that blog: ***

Toolbar EULA – I started this blog just to rant and rave about this ‘toolbar EULA’ problem with VISTA on my Dell computer…that just won’t go away! AND give you an easy alternative to get rid of it!

• I tried to shut it down with task manager= didn’t show up on task manager
• Tried to right click and close it= didn’t have that option
• For those of you who seem to think there is a ‘button’ on this page somewhere to close it= there is NOT!
• I uninstalled the program= it still gives me the same page after computer boots up
• I deleted all temporary files= it did nothing, still came back
• I restarted, rebooted, shutdown, did all kind of combinations of the previously mentioned= that did nothing.
• Oh get this all you clever people out there, after uninstalling my ‘toolbar’ as it were there was NO box to ‘unclick’ in the run/msconfig/tabs that you were talking about also I could find no EULA.EXE (until I got into the Dell/ecenter file)…but I did unclick the windows sidebar, all that = NOTHING!
• I went into Dell/ecenter and found the EULA and EULALAUNCHER I clicked on them and indeed these were the culprits of the page! BUT WAIT!!!! The system would not let me delete them!!! so that also= NOTHING!

So guess what? I renamed the applications (because apparently you can do that without any adverse effects or rebelious systems trying to thwart you). I renamed them to crap and crap2! Yes, I renamed both applications just to make sure…SO TAKE THAT! And you know what? I restarted my computer to successfully never seeing that toolbar EULA page again.

That is the easy fix my friends….and now, I bet I could delete them because the system is no longer trying to use them! But I haven’t tried that yet…I am just rejoicing in FINALLY getting my own resolve to the problem! WOO! HOO!

Hopes this helps somebody….And YES, I was able to go back and delete those files (crap & crap2)!