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This Blog is just a place for me to upload a few images I need for a Geocache Travel Bug that I am starting....

The comradery of amateur radio

As many people who read my blog know amateur(ham) radio is one of my hobbies.  One of the things I've found with ham radio is a willingness for everyone to help each other out.  Of course it makes sense for any friends or relatives, such as my dad, to help out when needed.  But then you have complete strangers willing to help as well.

One area is the show Ham Nation on the Twit.tv network.  For anyone who has any interest in ham radio I would highly recommend you check it out at http://twit.tv/hn.  They cover almost any area of ham radio, and will try to answer any question asked of them.  Its hosted by some famous hams such as Bob Heil and Gordon West.

Another place you can get help is just by asking people online.  One good example of this is when I was looking for a way to connect my radio to my computer.  I tried a few options that seemed to work, but not exactly right.  I put a few questions out on some ham radio related message boards, and in the end Ray KG7AV offered to send me a EZ-PSK interface free of charge.  All he was asking me was for me to help cover the cost of shipping.  So for the price of a small flat rate USPS box it was sent to me.  I hooked it up, and tested it out, and found that it looks like it will work with my radio.  So this was great, it now will allow me to get on the air with various digital modes.














These are just two examples of how members of the ham radio community are willing to help each other.  I know there are easily hundreds more that happen, but I'm going to cut this blog post short for today.  I have another blog post in mind that will also touch on this, so stay tuned for that one.

Fabio & Joe's - An update...

    The regular readers of my blog I'm sure read the post I did a little over a year ago about Fabio & Joe's in Palmyra.  Cathy and I hadn't eaten there in about six months, and decided to go  back and give them another try.   We have been eating there off and on again now since.

    When we went back in the first time, I have to say the owner did apologize for the bad service we were given in the past, and asked that we just give them another chance, which we agreed we would.  We picked up our food, which I'll be honest I can't remember what we even got on our first time back.  I can say though that it was good, and that it was more like what we used to get there.  I can say this for sure because if it wouldn't have been we wouldn't have gone back after that.

   Since that visit, we went in several times over a short period of time.  On one of the visits they gave us a gift card for coming back to them again, which obviously enticed us to go back another time.  We've eaten there at least once a month since that first time back, and I have to say we've been getting a lot friendlier service, and food that's back up to the quality we used to get.

     So after several times back to Fabio & Joe's in Palmyra, I would recommend that others eat there again.  I have been really pleased with them, and I hope it just continues to get better.

What's in your pocket?

     What's in your pocket?  This is a question asked by The Pocket Testament League(PTL). Most people answer this question with keys, a cell phone, a wallet, and change.  But what about God's word?  Most people would say no to this, but with the PTL's help you can change this.  Many people may not know what the PTL is, and that's why I've decided to write this blog.

     The Pocket Testament League was started in 1893 by Helen Cadbury, daughter of the president of Cadbury Chocolates in her early teens.  She organized groups of girls to sew pockets into their dresses, and to carry copies of the New Testament with them to share their faith.  Since then The Pocket Testament League has provided more than 100 million Gospels to people to share in their daily lives.

The Pocket Testament League follows several statements of faith:

•  The inspiration and authority of the whole Bible (Old and New Testaments) as the full revelation of God by the Holy Spirit.
• The Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, His substitutionary atoning death on the cross, His bodily resurrection, and His personal return.
• The necessity of the new birth for entering the Kingdom of God (as described in John 3)
• The obligation upon all believers to be witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ and to seek the salvation of others. 

     The PTL is a community of believers serious about their relationship with Christ.  With a free membership to the PTL you can benefit in many ways.   Here is just a short list of them from the PTL website:

• You'll enjoy knowing that you helped others grow in their faith.
• You'll experience the excitement that comes from helping to "turn the world upside down" (see Acts 7) because you've made a difference for Christ.
• You'll discover that sharing your faith is easier than you ever imagined, and more effective than you may have thought it could be.
• You'll have the joy of knowing that the Body of Christ is being built up and multiplied as a result of your efforts.
• You'll have access to special resources such as Evangelism Boot Camp, a powerful training program sent by E-mail, and Pocket Devotions, daily devotional messages sent by E-mail.
• Members can increase the harvest by sponsoring other members who don't have the financial means to give to cover the cost of their Gospels. This sponsorship program is highly rewarding. Sponsors even receive E-mails showing how their sponsorship is changing lives.

     When you become a member of the PTL you will be able to order pocket size gospels for you to read, carry and share with others.  As a member you are able to order up to 30  gospels a month totally free.  If you are able to cover the cost of these gospels you can do so, but if not, they always find sponsors who are willing to cover them for you.  The PTL has many different covers and translations of the gospel of John to choose from, and you will almost certainly find the one that fits for you.

      I have been a member of the PTL for a while now, and have used it to share gospels with more people then I can count.  For me this hasn't been easy.  I'm not the type that is comfortable approaching a stranger and asking them questions, or even handing them a gospel, but I've managed to find some things that work for me.  I thought I would list a few ways I've shared them and hope it helps you.

• Door to door:  If you like to go for walks, while doing so you can share the gospels.  You can go "door to door" in your town and hand them out.  If you are like me, and can't get yourself to knock on everyone's doors you can leave them at the doors.  I usually would leave them near, but not in, the person's mailbox.
• Restaurants:  If you like to go out to eat you can share your gospels there.  I wouldn't recommend that you approach tables of other diners to share them, as most wouldn't like this.  But you can leave one for your waiter or waitress with their tip.  An easy way is to fold your tip, and slide it into the gospel.  Just make sure the tip is sticking out so they don't accidentally throw it away. 
• Fast food: If you are the type that goes through a drive-thru on a regular basis, this can also be a way to share your gospels.  When you approach the window to pay and/or pick up your food you can hand them a pocket gospel telling them its something for them to read and share.  Also you can keep aside a little bit of money to use when you go through drive-thru.  You can use this money to pay for the order of the person behind you in line.  You can then also hand the worker a pocket gospel, and ask them to hand it to the car behind you when they tell them that you paid.  Even if the worker keeps the gospel, it is still one shared.

     These are just a few ways to share the pocket gospels with people.  If you check out the PTL's website, they have a lot more  ways to share your faith.  I ask that you go there and read what they have to offer, and consider joining.  In case the links don't work the website is, www.ptl.org, and I ask that you just use my membership number: 240608 as your referral code. 

      Now I know how some people think, and the thought "What's in it for me?" comes into their mind.  The most fulfilling answer to this is knowing that you shared the Word of God with someone, and possibly brought them to know and accept Jesus.  They also have a lot of free resources to help you grow in your knowledge of God's Word.  But sadly for some this is not enough.  For them there is also the Impact Club.  The Impact Club rewards members who recruit people into the PTL.  When you get just two people to join under you, you will become part of the Impact Club at the Bronze level.  Here is what you will get at the different levels:

• Bronze - A beautiful cloissone metal Pocket Reminder that you can keep in your pocket as a permanent reminder to share a Gospel each day. This durable and high quality metal token, about the size of a quarter, can be placed in your pocket or wherever you keep your small change as a constant reminder to share your faith. Die struck from a copper bronze surface and hand-filled with a glass-like mixture, each Pocket Reminder is fired in a kiln, more is color added and then it's fired again, a two-step process especially designed to ensure that colors don't bleed. Individually hand polished and gold plated, this is a keepsake you'll appreciate for years.
  
• Silver -  A high quality two-tone ceramic coffee mug. Use this gift to invite a Christian friend to share friendly conversation over a cup of coffee as you explain the League and how you've been blessed by learning to share your faith with others.
  
• Gold - An  elegant personalized leather journal that you can use as a prayer journal, devotional journal, or any other need that you have. It features a Bible verse on each page to inspire you as you use it, as well as a slide tab closure and a ribbon marker to help you quickly find the page where you made your last journal entry. We'll put your name on the cover in gold foil. You get to choose from two sizes and whether you want yours in black or brown leather.
  
• Platinum -  A personalized Bible. This quality Bible, personalized with your name in gold print, is a gift you'll treasure for many years. You get to choose from two different Bibles: either the ESV Classic Reference Bible, or the KJV Personal Study Bible. Both come with quality leather binding and many special features, such as the words of Christ in red, built-in concordance, introductions to each Bible book, maps, and much more.
  

     As you can see the Impact Club is another way to entice people to join the PTL.  Again, if this is something that you are even slightly considering please go over to The Pocket Testament League's website and join.   Again if my links aren't working for some reason, its www.ptl.org, and I just ask that you use my referral code 240608.

The math of publishing an ebook

     So some of my facebook and twitter friends know that I have thought about writing an ebook.  I have probably anywhere from four to ten ideas rolling around in my head at any one time.  So some of you may ask why haven't I written one yet, well that's a good question.  It comes down to motivation.  I've mentioned to several people about writing, and usually get that look of "Yeah right you write a book."  So because of that I usually drop the idea, but lately the ideas just keep popping into my head, so I figured I would do some research and look at the math of epublishing,

     The most recent numbers I can find are for 2012, I'm sure by now someone has done the numbers for 2013, but I have yet to find them.  Anyway in 2012 there were 19.9 million ereaders sold.  So this got me thinking, if I wrote an ebook, and only 10% of the people who bought ereaders in 2012 saw the book, that would mean 1.99 million people would see the book.  Now consider if only 10% of those people actually purchased the book.  This would mean 199,000 buying the book.   That's only 1% of the people who purchased ereaders in 2012, which isn't that far of a reach. 

     Now that we've established a number of people to buy an ebook, you have to think about what that means money wise.  There are various commission rates from all the different epublishers, so I figured I would go with the lowest commission with selling the book at the lowest price possible.  This would mean I would sell the book for .99 and only get a 30% commission, or .297 per copy sold.   So now we take this and multiply it by the 1% of people calculated above, and it give you an amount of $59103.  That's a pretty good amount to take some spare time to write a book.

     One of the things though that I have been asked is, "How would you get that 1% of people to buy your book?"  Well that comes from getting the book out there.  And how do you do that?  Well one way to start would be to blog about it, which if I publish an ebook I would do here.  Another way is to put it out on social media such as facebook and twitter. 

     Just by using social media you could reach a lot of people quite quickly with your friends help.  If you put links to the ebook out on your social media sites, and if only 100 of your friends and family help you out, that would be 100 more times your link to the ebook would be shared.  So now if even only ten people from each of those friends and family share it you would be up to 1000 times that your ebook was out there.  You can see how the link would grow exponentially. 

    So all these shares would also help you out in another way.  The more the link is out there, the more likely it is to show up in a basic search.  So that is yet another way someone could find your ebook, with a basic google search.  based on some research I did about 2% of people who buy ebooks say they got one of their books through a link that came up during a search.  Of course you could also get your book out there in other ways too.  You could do up ads to and pass them out, or take up ads on google or facebook, so something like that.

     So based on the math writing an ebook could be a good second job.  Now to just get the motivation to get all the ideas in my head out onto "paper".  After that submitting the book and epublishing it is the easy part.  But once all that has been done, it is up to the help of friends and family to get the ebook out there, and make money.  So while I motivate myself to write the book, I ask can you motivate yourself to help spread the word of the book.

Back to blogging... Again

     Ok, so yet again I've been neglecting my blog and have made a decision to try to get back to blogging again.   Like I've said in past posts I just tend to get lazy when it comes to my blog posts.  I have a few ideas for some upcoming blog posts, and I hope I'm able to start posting them.  These ideas range from just posts about my day to posts about places we've eaten, to posts about what is on my mind at the time I  sit down at the computer. 

     I also want to start posting blog posts about my diet and exercise progress.  I know I've said it many times that I'm going to start getting into shape, and I seem to fall away from that.  But if I start posting things on my blog, it will help keep me honest about my progress.

     There are also a few local businesses that I would like to blog about.  I know there are several businesses in the area that I feel people need to know how they operate, and decided if they want to give them their money. 

     Over the next few days/weeks I'm going to start increasing the number of blogs that everyone sees from me.  I'm also going to look for new readers and followers.  So if you are reading this, please pass the link to my page on to your friends, and help bring them to me.   The other thing is if any of my readers have anything they want me to blog about, ask and I'll try to get one done.

Sending the wrong message

I'm going to start off by saying that I understand that in this day and age I know people have to always be cautious.  I know even places like churches have to worry about things like vandalism and thefts.  But the more I think about the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Palmyra I really feel they are sending the wrong message to nonmembers with in the community.

     A little while back they expanded their church, and also their parking lot.  In doing this the two side entrances to their lot connected the two sections of Pajabon Drive.  Up until this point if you were someone, like me, who regularly traveled from one part of Pajabon to the other you had to go completely around  the church's property.  I'm sure once the lot was open they had an increase of traffic traveling through their parking lot to get from on side to the other.  That's when they put up a gate on one side, and the signs seen in the pictures below.

Gate blocking off one entrance.

Private Property sign on gate.

Private property on stop sign

     Now  I know there are various reasons as to why they probably put these up, like I touched on above, but shouldn't a church be open to the public.  The gate on the one side makes it look like they don't want any outside people, Then you read the signs. The one says "Private Property No skateboards bicycles, dogs, loitering", and the one on the gate says "Private property. Do Not Enter. Not a through street."  Then on the other side of the parking lot there are two similar signs.

Sings on other entrance

     These signs make it sound like they don't want any outsiders at their church.  I know as a person that passes them on a regular basis that's exactly how I feel.  Now I know I was told at one point in time that if a person or business lets the general public use their property as a street that eventually that state/local town can change it into a public street and you can lose that part of your property.  So I can see the point of the "Not a through street sign", but not the point of the gate or the "Do Not Enter" part of it. I would think as a church they would want outside people coming through, and who knows maybe entering the church.

     A church should be encouraging people to come onto their property.  They should be inviting you into the church, and trying to get you to know Jesus.  If they unofficially let people cut through their parking lot it would be a great way to "advertise" to people.  I know like most churches they have a sign that they post things on, but a lot of people don't pay attention to it.  By letting them drive through the lot they could put signs up with biblical sayings on them, or with church events.  I feel this could actually reach more people.

I looked for contact information for the church, but couldn't get their website to come up.  I would kind of like hearing their side of this.   So if anyone reading this can pass it onto the church that would be great.  And if you are from the church, please post your comments.  A church should be open and inviting, and not sending the wrong message like it seems this one does.