The Net Ninja.com

Ah, the DMV. Who doesn’t enjoy the euphoria of basking in the utopia of the regulatory government system that keeps all traveling peoples safe from mishap, and in perfect harmony? Socialism at its best. Drawing enormous crowds of people, nearly bursting with the anticipation of witnessing the famous, the legendary, the blinding magnificence of the efficiency and expedience that has given the Division of Motor Vehicles it’s flawless reputation of excellence nationwide.

It was a bright sunny day, the seventeenth of February in the year of our Lord, two thousand and ten, at eleven o clock in the morning. On this day, I, N8 the Net Ninja, drove up to the full service center of the DMV, dripping with all the optimism of a man falling without a parachute. This being my third trip to this office in the past month, as well as having talked to the highly trained and obviously competent employees extensively on the phone, I was confident that today would be no exception of the establishment’s reputation.

I parked my green, 96 S10 out front, and strode inside to claim a number amongst the hoard of enthusiastic co-patrons. I was present for two reasons. One, was to obtain a copy of my drivers license record for the purpose of applying for the job of RTD bus operator; the other, was to correct certain errors associated with the endorsements on my commercial driver’s license. On the first of the three mentioned trips, my Wisconsin CDL had been transferred to Colorado with an endorsement restricting the number of passengers I was allowed to carry on a full size 65 passenger bus, to 15 people. The second trip and the phone calls were made to correct this error, and this third appearance, was to collect a temporary document, and a promise that the correct ID card would be mailed to me.

As I searched for an empty seat, I glanced at my number: A275. finding a seat between two people, I scanned the room for the sign indicating the current number being served, which read A120. Blinking a couple times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I looked again. The same numbers stared back at me in that cheerful Christmas light red, informing me that I was lucky enough to be able to spend a great deal of time reveling in the excitement of this place.

After an hour of reading the book that I had brought with me, the number had changed to A149. As much as I enjoyed being there, another matter began to gnaw at me. For the past few minutes, my chair had been vibrating on and off, and it seemed as if I was hearing the voice of an enraged animal off in an undetermined direction. Realizing that I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and it was now 12:00 pm, I came to the conclusion that I must pry myself away from the wonderful gathering, and devote a measure of time to the search of fast food. Returning a half hour later, I exited my vehicle, and sat in its empty truck bed to eat my lunch. After finishing the refuel process, I decided to collect my book from the passenger’s seat, and head back inside. I reached for my keys to unlock the door, and found that they were not in my pocket where I had left them. How could someone have stolen my keys right out of my pocket while I ate?? This wasn’t the nicest neighborhood in the state, but still, I’m a NINJA! My thoughts were interrupted by something staring at me from the other side of my rolled up windows. I am, of course, speaking of my keys, which were smugly grinning at me, tucked safely in the ignition. “Oh, you think you’ve won huh?” I said to the inanimate keys, “well, you aint seen nuthin yet! Just wait until I work my magic on this door!”.

After checking the number in the office, which was now at 165, I marched purposefully into the dollar store next door to purchase a wire coat hanger. “That lock won’t know what hit it” I thought, as I bent my new hanger into the shape of a hook five minutes later. Sliding my makeshift slim jim between the window and it’s seal, I got to work. Feeling around the inside of the door, my tool struck what sounded like a metal rod. Sliding back and forth, I attempted to hook the lock rod with my highly professional implement, unlock the door, and wow the bystanders who had begun to stare in my general direction. At 1:45pm, I felt a promising amount of resistance on my “slim jim”, and gave it a slight tug. I stared with dismay at my now hookless coat hanger, as the former opposite end clunked softly to rest at the bottom of the inside door panel. By this time, the number inside had advanced to A266, so I trudged, momentarily defeated, back inside to take care of business.

Once the number A275 was called, I payed $2.50 for my record copy, received my temporary document, and stood while they took another picture of my ecstatic facial expression. Three hours from time of arrival, my business at the DMV was taken care of, and I went back to my inaccessible pickup truck. Having long ago called everyone in my cellphone’s directory who might possibly rescue me, and having no luck, I walked to a nearby gas station to borrow a phone book.

Finding the section for locksmiths in the stations yellow book, I dialed one of the numbers. After a brief exchange with the woman at the other end, I gave my approximate location, and was promised a call from their technician in a moment,who would give me a price quote. 5 minutes later, my phone rang, and I answered to the sound of broken English. “How much will this cost?” I ask

“It be $29 for cost of service call, plus small fee for cost of how door opened.” He replies

“Can you give me a rough estimate of what that will be?”

“No, I tell you when I look at car. Don’t worry! It won’t be too much, I already on my way, and be shortly there!”

After another phone call from him trying to find me, he arrived on the scene in an old beat up Buick. After glancing at my truck, he said “ok, this come to $140″. After putting my bulging eyeballs back in their sockets, I informed the man that I could not possibly afford that much money, and that I would have to figure out something else. “How much you think it going to be??” He asked incredulously, “You have to logic your thinking! All other places cost $190 or $200!”. When he saw that I wasn’t swayed in the least, and that I was making preparations to spend the night there, he started incrementally lowering his price, and receiving no’s back. Finally, throwing his arms up in exasperation, he asked “How much would you pay?”. Realizing that he wanted to barter, I indulged him. “$60″

“$70″

“$65″

“OK FINE!”

After signing the agreement to $65 (which I still wasn’t particularly jazzed about), he stuffed an inflatable wedge between the door and frame, pumped it enough to make a gap, and unlocked the door from the inside with a long stick. After charging my visa card, he left to answer more calls, and I drove home.

Finally arriving back home at around 4:00 pm, I immediately hid a spare key underneath my truck in the event of future lock-outs.

Cheers to exciting days!

These past few months, especially since graduating from NTBI, I have been weighing options for finishing my college education, and I have finally come up with a solid plan. I mentioned in a previous post that I have been considering getting a degree in electrical engineering. The method I will be using for this goal is as follows: for the purpose of keeping cost and time down, I will be doing 16 transferable credits with College Plus (a test for credit system), and then transferring to University of Colorado Denver. While looking at colleges, I had narrowed it down to UCD, and Mines. I chose UCD largely because I have a better chance of getting accepted there than I do at Mines, given my ACT scores from high school. You might ask, “aren’t you settling for less than ideal?” since Mines has a reputation for being “the engineering school” in Colorado. My answer would be that I don’t believe that to be the case, because from what I can see, UCD still has a very reputable EE program that is comparable to Mines, and on top of that, UCD will accept the 16 transfer credits I plan to do through College Plus.

At any rate, it’s nice to finally have a plan to go by. I guess we’ll see where things go from here.

It has recently come to my attention that the year is not 2009 anymore. This realization has been somewhat of an irritation in situations such as check writing. The realization that you just screwed up your check blank after you’ve already filled out the rest of it, the irritated look from the other party to your sheepish look as you fumble with another check… Things like that. However, since it is in fact a new year, this also means that I have not yet posted on my “blog” this year (and the debate about whether or not I posted last year is still going on). Since the former realization leads quite nicely to the latter realization, it seems logical to me to boot my dead laptop battery from the front page by posting something new.

In December of last year, I graduated from New Tribes Bible Institute with an associates degree in biblical studies. Hence, I am no longer residing in the frozen cheese-laden-northern-territories-of-WI aforementioned in previous posts, but am back in the promised land of Littleton CO.

My plan for future career plans has also changed somewhat significantly. I had been thinking that I would go to pilot school and eventually go into missionary pilot work. My thoughts were influenced by being at a bible school with a missions emphasis, and having had an indecisive frame of mind for quite some time, I thought “why not? it’s directly involved with missionary work, and it’s pretty clear God wants the church to do missions”. Some other factors came to mind however that have changed my mind. While talking with my dad about my plans, he made a good point. He said that definitely the church is to be involved in missions work, but missions work is much more than the guy on the front line. He used the illustration of the fact that for every soldier on the battlefield, there are eight people supporting him in various ways. Those eight people behind the lines make the soldier’s job possible, and cannot be counted as not involved in the battle. In the same way, people on the home front supporting missionaries have no less an important job, are no less involved, and God isn’t going to tell them “I’m not as happy with you as I am with this guy, because you didn’t go to the jungle like he did.” This got me thinking about something my brother-in-law’s father told me when I asked for help in figuring out plans (he’s got significant counseling experience in this area). He said, after I told him my story so far, that it seems like up until now, I have let life happen to me, instead of happening to life. All this got me thinking about my thought processes over the years. Before I considered piloting, I was thinking that I would go to the police academy after bible school, and become a police officer. Why was I considering that? Because I thought it to be a profession that wouldn’t require me to learn a-lot of math. What is it about math that intimidates me? My last three math classes were as follows: I dropped out of calc 2 after slogging through it, not understanding much, not getting good help from the professor, and not being able to finish my homework due to a glitchy computer homework system, before that I managed to plug through calc 1, which I got a bad start on and only passed with a C with a-lot of one on one help from the professor, before that, I took a trig class taught by a professor who had terrible handwriting, went very fast, and had a very thick accent. When I had trouble understanding things at the beginning of the class, the professor ridiculed me and implied that I had cheated my way through math to get to this point, and therefore he wouldn’t bother to help me. Before that, I took college algebra from a professor who explained things well and helped when he was asked, and I passed with an A… Wait a second, an A?? What were my thoughts about careers when I taking that class? At the time, I wasn’t really intimidated by math, it was just work, and my career interests involved computers and engineering. Hold on a second… I’m still a nerd when it comes to computers, and I am fascinated by the engineering of electrical components such as circuit boards and computer controlled systems. Why aren’t I pursuing technology careers anymore? It occurred to me that I wasn’t pursuing my actual interests because I was intimidated by some bad experiences with math, and I had a less than accurate perspective on missions work. So, I have decided to man up, take life head on, and go for an electrical engineering degree. I made this decision a little late to get fully started at a college, but I have started a class in trigonometry to show this math thing that it aint got nuthin on me! As far as the degree goes, I’m considering going through a program called College Plus, which is designed to help you learn things faster and test for credit. Since this is an engineering degree, I won’t be able to do the majority of my classes online like you might be able to do with a history degree for instance, but depending on how many credits I can transfer to the school I decide to go to, I may still be able to save a-lot of time and money on gen-ed classes.

Talitha and I are still together, but we are long distance since I’m in CO and she’s in MN. It’s been a little tough, but I think we’re learning a-lot about each other this way, and long distance won’t last forever.

If I think of anything profound to say and I also manage to think to post it here and also somehow get around to doing it, I’ll post more at a later time.

Well, I seem to have found out something new about the particular batteries they put in the 13″ plastic macbooks… When I left for Bolivia, I forgot to turn my macbook off, which drained the battery, and put the computer in hibernation mode. Unfortunately, one of the little fineprint things that nobody reads is that if you leave the battery discharged for just a few days, it kicks the bucket. Bites the bullet. Gets a pink slip for life. If you have this happen to you, it’s probably a waste of time to bother with the apple store. I went down there, and they said that they won’t even help their special “apple care” customers if this is your plight. They did however offer to sell me an OEM battery for $130. How nice. I wasn’t about to eat that, so I said “no thanks, I’m not paying that much” and left. I later found a brand new extended life generic battery on ebay for $58. A 5600 mAh rather than the 5100 mAh OEM ones. So I guess the good news is I’ll have an extended battery, and the bad news is that I had to spend an extra $58 when the original battery probably would have lasted a bit longer.

Win some ya lose some I guess.

Well, I made it there and back. We showed up at the airport in Santa Cruz at about 8:00 pm on the evening of the 1st, found out our flight was delayed for about two hours, and after some sitting, we flew out at about 1:00 am the morning of the 2nd. After 7 hours of flight, we landed in Miami FL, where most of us went our separate ways. I managed to get a flight at 6:05 pm back to Denver, so I ended up sitting at the airport board out of my mind for 10 hours. Oh well, I had some books with me, so I did lots of reading. I’ve got a ton of pictures to sort through, so hopefully I’ll be able to get those online soon. Thanks to all who supported me on this trip through prayer as well as financial aide! God provided all I needed right at the last minute.

Talk atcha latta!

Not much to report today. We made it to Santa Cruz via bus today, and found out that the place we were going to stay could no longer accomidate us. After calling around a little, we ended up at a mission home in kind of a rough part of town, but we have a place to stay. I´m at an internet Café a couple blocks away, sitting next to a bunch of gamers. We´re going to get dinner in about an hour, then tomorrow I´m not sure what the plan is besides catching our flight to Miami.

Pray that we won´t get mugged or anything

Today we finished the last chunk of concrete for the basketball court! I wasn´t as busy today as I was the other days because there was no surface prep to do for the next day this time. When I was occupied, it was mostly hand-mixing concrete, and hauling wheelbarrows, so I´m pretty well covered in concrete.

Last night we had a little worship service and devotional, and we did the mime drama that we weren´t able to do previously at the market before. After a short message from the bible, we had a little meeting to give a little history of Manos de Amor, or Hands of Love. Dan and Karen Bunn, a couple working as dorm parents at what was then the Tambo MK school, had an idea for a soup kitchen for the children of Comarapa who were very much in need of such an establishment. Although they wanted to set up something to fill this need, they didn´t really have any kind of resources to do so, so it stayed a dream until when someone from Tambo needed to be taken to the hospital for an illness (can´t remember the exact details there), and they met a doctor there who had been wanting to do the same for a while as well. To make a long story short, they teamed together and formed Manos de Amor. It started out as a tent in the middle of town for a temporary location, then the government told them that they would give them a plot of land in order to build a facility for the soup kitchen. Unfortunately, the plot of land they were going to give them was near several pubs, and the law says that an establishment that sells alcohol can´t be within a certain area with an establishment that works with kids. So the locals went all up in arms to prevent Manos de Amor from building there, because they were afraid they would lose their pubs! Soon, Karen received a phone call informing her that since the official papers hadn´t been signed to transfer the land to them yet, they were going to build a soccer field there instead (which they still haven´t done, for the record). God is good at providing for his people though, and another plot of land was offered to them a little ways out of town by the government. This is the current location of Manos de Amor. The agreement with the governmet is that if they do what they say they are going to do with the land, which is the soup kitchen/orpahanage within 30 years, the land is theirs. They now have the main kitchen building, one dorm, and the basketball court. The plan is to build one more dorm so they have a girls dorm and a boys dorm, and finish the water tower. That´s what I can remember from the many points of view expressed from the different people involved. God has brought a-lot of people from a-lot of different places together to make this a reality.

We found out that the road will be closed on saturday, so we will be heading back to Santa Cruz tomorrow to avoid missing our flights out of here, so it´s good that we finished the court today.

The insect report today is: I found a spider under my pillow when I checked my bed last night. He´s smoosehd now.

Not sure when I´ll be posting again, but my net time is up

Tootles!

Here we are again. I´m still in Bolivia, and I´m still alive! Not much else to report. One more slab done, and one left. I worked on surface prep on the section we´re doing tomorrow, which is the last one. Work on the water tower was also started this afternoon. I described before how we don´t really have much machinery at our disposal for all this; the way the tower is being done is we have a plywood mold with re-bar inside, then set up a bucket brigade to pour concrete into it from the top. The surface prep I was doing with two other guys is getting the ground uniform and level where we need to pour. This means digging with a hoe or a pick axe where it´s high, and adding gravel or dirt where it´s low. If things were ideal, we´d be doing this with a CAT, but we don´t have one of those, so wheelbarrows, rakes, and shovels it is. Actually, sometimes it´s a little hard to hang onto the tools that we do have. If you set it down for a couple seconds and turn your back, it might get snatched for another job somewhere else! The rakes that we got here are a tad short handled. I guess either people are just shorter here, or the rake-maker didn´t want to waste wood on an excessively long handle . I put a P.S. at the end of my last post about some people getting sick when I had about 30 seconds of internet time left, so I didn´t elaborate much then. Nobody has gotten sick to the point of death, but some have been vomiting and feeling generally cruddy. The ones that got sick first are mostly recovered now, I don´t think anyone is in bed right now, just a couple walking around feeling a little under the weather. I think one of the sicknesses was caused by the guy drinking from the water hose, which isn´t a good idea around here. Talitha said she had a bit of a sore throat yesterday, so I don´t know if she might be getting a little sick. She seems to be ok this morning, so hopefully it was nothing. Last night we played some vollyball back at Monte Blanco where we´re staying. It was fun, but I think I made myself more sore doing that oh well…

anyhoo, that´s all for now!

P.S. I think some bugs are getting in bed with me at night, cause I keep finding bites on my arms. Might be spiders. My roomie shook one out of his jacket this morning, and one of the girls killed a scorpion a couple days ago. Maybe pray the bugs will leave us alone. At least the deadly ones

P.P.S. Oh yeah, and there was that poisonous snake that was found on the lawn too… It´s dead now too.

Well, we´ve got one more slab poured for the basketball court. We have it divided into 4 sections and we´re pouring about one a day. I´m not sure exactly what the dimensions are, but Steve (guy sitting next to me) thinks it´s about 50´ X 30´. Yesterday when we got up in the morning, it had been raining so it was pretty cool out, and it was partly cloudy most of the day. That combined with the wind that gets stronger as the day goes on made for fairly comfortable working weather in the afternoon, but kind of chilly and windy in the evening. Today it was warm in the morning, hot in the afternoon with no clouds, and now at about 3:15 pm it´s sunny with a strong wind. By the way Tamara, I did roll up my sleeves today so you don´t have to pester me about having a bad farmers tan . But enough with the weather report… We made pretty good time with the concrete today, and we don´t want to start a slab that we can´t finish in one shot, so we´ll probably head back to Monte Blanco a bit earlier than yesterday. Maybe I´ll talk Steve into playing a game of chess with me later.

Me thinkith that´s all I can think of that´s pertinent right now…

Tootles!

P.S. some people have been getting sick, so pray for that. I´m fine so far

Hello again readers! I have once again found internet. Let´s see, what is new today… At the moment, I´m in a little hole-in-the-wall internet cafe in Comarapa with another team member. Today we started pouring concrete for the basketball court, and leveling the ground where we weren´t pouring yet. We don´t have a concrete truck for any of this, so we are mixing most of the concrete by hand on the ground, plus one small electric mixer. I´ve lost count of how many wheelbarrow´s full of concrete I´ve moved today, but it should be pretty nice when we´re done. I have been working quite a bit with one of the bolivian team members whose name is Josè. He knows about as much english as I do spanish, which isn´t a whole lot, so we´ve been going back and fourth trading english and spanish words while we work. Yesterday we went to the local open air market and did a little shopping and sight-seeing (while keeping a close eye on our money and valuables…). We saw things like wool blankets, pirated DVD´s (the only kind they have here), and sandles made from old tires,which are apparently really popular.

Anyway, my time is almost up on the computer, so I will sign off here.

Will post more when able!