This past summer I got a new phone—an LG Rumor Touch—with Sprint, the wireless company I’ve been with since 2001. It’s certainly no iPhone, but for making phone calls and sending text messages, it’s a good phone. The only problem was that I couldn’t send or receive pictures via text messaging (a.k.a. “picture mail”). The phone would just show “ERROR 7 Network timeout”. I took my phone into my local Sprint store and the techs there fooled around with it and reset it, wiping all my data, but they couldn’t fix it. They gave me an “eTicket” number and told me to call Sprint tech support.

I got busy with other things, started a new semester, and generally felt like I had better things to do than spend a couple hours on the phone wrangling with a customer service rep over a minor detail like picture mail, so I let it go. After getting Dorothy’s iPhone set up to text pictures the other day, I decided that it’s time to get my own phone fixed, so tonight I called *2 and prepared for customer service hell.

The first rep I talked to got hung up on the fact that I was calling on the phone that needed to be fixed—presumably because she then wouldn’t be able to make me jump through the standard basic troubleshooting hoops. What could she do for me tonight, I asked.

Not much, sir.

Well, “not much” is more than nothing, but in the end, despite my assurances that I had already been to the Sprint store and that they had failed to fix my phone, all she could do was refer me back to the store since I lacked another phone to call back on.

Not ready to give up, I decided to give chat support a try. At least that way I wouldn’t be on the phone while communicating with the rep. Meanwhile, I remembered that I had that eTicket number from my visit to the Sprint store, which would have notes attached to it about what the techs tried to do that day, so I typed it into the chat window. The rep, ”Ben”,  had me turn my phone off and on, which triggered the network timeout error. I received lots of messages from the rep thanking for my patience and assuring me that he was looking into something or another, but in the end, after 30 minutes, I was told that I had to call tech support.

Well, at least now I had my old eTicket number. Perhaps now the phone rep would be able to see that the store had checked the hardware and would examine my account more closely for configuration problems. Unfortunately, this new phone rep was fixated on the fact that I had called earlier today and had been referred back to the store. I insisted that she look up the eTicket from August.

Are you aware that it is December?

Really? And here I thought we were having an unseasonably cold September.

She seemed to think that the eTicket from my call earlier tonight took precedence over anything that came before and that there was nothing to be gained by looking at the older eTicket. I pressed further. I explained that the staff at the store hadn’t seemed to understand the problem. The hardware checked out, and they had given me the impression that there was probably something wrong with my account.

Can you make phone calls? Can you send text messages?

Yes.

Then your account is fine.

Well, I can’t do anything with data, I countered.

Oh, hold on… … … I think I see the problem.

Finally! She explained that she was making some corrections to the settings on my account, told me to use the option to update my phone’s profile and then try sending a picture mail after hanging up, and promised to call back in a few minutes.

You may receive a survey about your experience today. Would you say that your problem was completely resolved?

Not yet. (I mean, seriously?)

I hung up, updated my profile, and was able to successfully send a picture to myself. And yes, the rep did call back—and proceeded to try to up-sell me to a more expensive service plan.

So how long did all that take? Approximately 2 hours.

What did we learn? Persistence pays off; don’t take no for an answer.

“I educated myself. I went to the library—the books are free.” FoxNews host Glenn Beck, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 19.

“Glenn, Glenn, Glenn. The library isn’t free! It’s paid for with tax money! Free public libraries are the result of the progressive movement to communally share books. The first public library was the Boston Public Library in 1854. Its statement of purpose: Every citizen has the right to access community-owned resources. Community-owned? That sounds just like communists. You’re a communist!” Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, February 22.

Watch the clip on thedailyshow.com.

Heavenly Father;
Thrice Holy Lord of the universe enthroned in splendor;
most righteous, most gracious, most merciful, most loving God:

We lift up our voices to you to give you praise and thanks. We thank you foremost for the love that you have shown the world in the work of Christ on the cross for those who place their faith in him. Your name be praised above all others throughout all the Earth.

We also have occasion to thank you today as we celebrate the love between my Dad—Roger—and Sherry—this wonderful woman you have brought into his life according to your good providence.

We ask your blessing upon this marriage. When they laugh in times of joy, may they give you praise. When they cry in times of distress, may they seek comfort from you. When they labor in the work that you have given them, may they find their hope and strength in you. When they hurt each other, may they have the courage to recognize and confess their fault, and may they have the grace to offer forgiveness just as you offer it to us.

Challenge and enable them to grow together in grace and godliness—to grow in love for each other, for you, and for others. May they help each other more fully develop the gifts that you have given them.

As they make vows today to love, cherish, and care for one another, and as they seek to fulfill those vows in the years to come, remind them that it is only in the power of Christ that they have hope to overcome sin and remain faithful to such promises.

Keep them forever in your love and care. We pray these things in the glorious name of your faithful son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One of the things I have to do at work it post the Library’s monthly new acquisitions list. I used to just forward the Excel file produced by the Tech. Services department to the webmaster who would convert it to HTML and post it to the web site. Since the Seminary’s website transitioned to a Content Management System that gives me editing access, I got to take over the HTML conversion process. Much to my chagrin, however, I found out that the conversion process involves a lot of manual copying and pasting in Excel, using a formula to concatenate the various fields into the final product, and then a series of search-and-replaces to clean up special characters and blank lines. I had hoped that there was just a program that I could run the file through to format the data with the necessary HTML tags, so that’s what I set out to do.

I’ve long wanted an excuse to start learning PHP, and this seemed like a good problem to solve via a simple PHP web app, so I started Googling for example PHP code for processing tab-delimited text files, handling special characters, and receiving web form input. I also dusted off my copy of the very handy PHP Function Index application, which provides an interface for viewing, searching, and browsing PHP’s documentation. After a few false starts, struggling to understand some new functions, and debugging a few errors, my first PHP application, HTMLified Acquisitions List Generator, was done.

Now I have a simple web app where I can select a tab-delimited text file containing the acquisitions data in the proper order, and the application will spit out HTML code that I can simply paste into the “Recent Acquisitions” page.

T-shirt design by tgentry, produced by Woot!

Cool, eh?

I’ll let you be the judge.

1. Brush your teeth?

Twice

2. Shower?

Once, occasionally twice (if I get dirty after the first).

3. Check your E-mail?

Constantly.

4. Check LJ Facebook?

At least twice, and probably too much!

5. Eat?

3 meals plus a snack or two.

For the coming Fall semester I had signed up to take “Web Application Development I”, whose catalog description begins: “Learn to develop web applications to support online learning and collaboration using Perl, PHP, or Java (student’s choice)” (emphasis added). I’ve long been interested in learning PHP, so this seemed like a great opportunity to fulfill that goal and to get credit towards my degree doing it. However, on Friday the instructor sent out an email to the entire class:

Due to an unexpected administration issue, I realized some of you might not read the proper course description. [...]

In the fall 2008 course you will learn to use Asp.Net 2.0 with VB.Net or C# and MS SQL database server.

Well that’s just dandy. No choice but ASP.NET. That torpedoes half of my Fall schedule, but for future planning I replied to the instructor asking when the PHP version of the course will be offered. He replied:

I guess the course will cover php when it is fully shaped as object-oriented. Probably in a couple years.

The next language the course will use would be Java.

Wait… what?

(A) Since they don’t have any firm plans to teach PHP in the near future, why is it listed in the course description at all? False advertising I say!

(B) More importantly, how can you get away with teaching web application development without addressing PHP—one of the most widely used languages for web application development? I don’t care whether or not it’s fully object-oriented. If it’s good enough for Wikipedia, WordPress, Facebook, et al., then it deserves our attention.

Was someone going to steal the book, but had a change of heart? Did someone “borrow” it for the semester and then return it? Who knows? You just don’t expect that sort of thing to happen around a seminary. Sure we have security gates, but they’re more to prevent people from accidentally walking out with books than to deter conscious theft. I was troubled and disturbed that someone in the Seminary community would do something like this.

However, the more I think about it, the less troubled I am. Around the Seminary, where everyone is so nice to everyone else (most of the time), it’s easy to begin believing at some level the illusion that we are good people. People out in the world may be sinful, but seminarians are righteous—or so it might seem. But that’s not the truth. Seminarians are sinners like everyone else. Although my particular struggle may not be the temptation to steal library books, I have my sins, and they are just as evil and ugly. Who am I to cast the first stone?

So, to whoever tried to make off with the Joüon-Muraoka, Christ forgives you, and so do I.