...from Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional

What time is Christmas this year? You find the answer in four statements the angel said to the shepherds at the first Christmas (Luke 2:10-14).

1. Its time to release your fears! The first thing the angel said was, Do not be afraid! Fear is your greatest barrier to knowing God and fulfilling his purposes for your life. Fear is a self-imposed prison that keeps you from living the life God intends for you. So whatever you are afraid of - Christmas is the time to let it go. The Bible contains 365 "Fear nots - one for every day of the year! Its time to stop worrying and start worshipping. Stop tensing up and start trusting God

2. Its time to renew your faith! Next, the angel said I bring you good news with great joy, and it is for everyone! The Good News of Jesus keeps getting better because the bad news of the world keeps getting worse. The Good News is that God loves you, he created you for a purpose, you can know God personally by trusting in Jesus, and he wants you to spend eternity with him. God has really long range plans for your life! Christmas is time to come back to God.

3. Its time to receive forgiveness! Next the angel said, Today a Savior has been born for you; He is Christ the Lord! If our greatest need was education, God would have sent a teacher. If our greatest need was health, he would have sent a doctor. If our greatest need was financial, he would have sent an economist. But our greatest need is forgiveness, so God sent a Savior. It doesnt matter what wrong youve done, Jesus paid for it on the cross. Accept his forgiveness.

4. Its time to rebuild relationships! Finally the angel said, Peace on earth, and goodwill to all people. Once youve accepted Gods forgiveness, He wants you to forgive everyone else. Who do you need to offer forgiveness to this Christmas? Its time to make peace!

Dick Nolan R.I.P.

...couldn't help but mention this one. Aside from "Aunt Martha's Sheep", my favourite is the Cod Liver Oil song which I guess was later recorded by Great Big Sea?

Also see here...

Dick Nolan, R.I.P. - He passed away at age 66 this morning. If you're a Newfoundlander of my generation, you know who Nolan is, perhaps because your parents have three or four of his old LPs in their collection. If you don't know who... [Daimnation]

First snowfall of '05-'06

Mother Nature gave us a windy blast last night, complete with 20 cms of the white "blessings" and the obligatory 5 or 6 hour power outage. Now they are calling for bucket-loads of rain overnight and into tomorrow. God bless Halifax weather...she's up and she's down...

click here for photos...

Oh me aching...

It's that time again...a little later this year because I've been away. The recent $500 oil filllup (75 cents per litre) was an eye opener. Time to get the old Vermont Castings Resolute belting out the BTUs...

Hope I can get it all stacked and stored before the snow flies...ya mule!!!

Blast from the past

Found this shot from the summer of 2001. this was taken by a keenly placed "moneygrabcam" in StoryLand, Glen New Hampshire. As you exit the ride, the photo is glaring at you from the big screen...pretty hard to say no thanks...one click by the requisite kiosk Goon and two sounds collide: the dye-sub printer, and the further emptying of one's wallet. (oh the bitterness)...

Mini Maglite L.E.D. Upgrade Kit

ometimes a nice idea comes along. Case in point; the Mini Maglite LED Upgrade Kit from NiteIze. It replaces the standard light bulb and reflector with a 3 LED arrangement. It claims to extend battery life to 4 times longer...probably true given the power requirements exhibited by other LED flashlights. It can be had at MEC for about 9 dollars. Not too bad considering a regular replacement bulb is 4 or 5 dollars at most places.

 

Boo !!

Another spooktacular Halloween this year. Debbie tells me she counted about 175 or so zombies, goblins, skeletons, ghosts, Jasons, Freddies, etc clammering up the front steps for a miserly 15g bag of Doritos, or some similar lame treat :) Both boys yielded a respectable harvest as well...

Stay away from "hostingr.us"

I'm not into badmouthing anyone, but the treatment that I have received from webspace provider "hostingr.us" was so unprofessional and pathetic that I must warn others. I had about 200 megs of files, photos, weblog material etc. hosted by them. From the time they were hosting my stuff, the service was miserable. Daily outages became common, some lasting a full day. Well now the last straw: the present outage lasted for several days, and they will not respond to pleas for help. I cannot gain any sort of access to any of my stuff. In other words it's all gone...kaput...vanished. Luckily I have everything backed up in several places, but it will be a little annoying and time-consuming to set it all up again. I have moved the "tomrowsell.com" domain but it may take 72 hours for the nameserver records to propogate adequately.
I'll be back !

The saga continues :(

...more problems from my service provider...looks like the entire site is lost this time. I am getting set up at a different location, and it may take a little while. All email accounts at tomrowsell.com have also suffered loss. If you have sent any email in the last few days, assume we did not receive it

Site working...

It looks like my service provider has indeed rescued me. Click anywhere on this text to enter my original site. As far as I can tell, their server ran out of temporary, or scratch space. I'll leave this up for now though, just in case.

No Time...

It looks like my site problems are many. I'll probably have to move everything, so this Blog will be "home" for some time. I just don't have the time to ramp things up on another server right now. Anyway, life is good nonetheless :)
Tom

Bad to Worse

Things are getting worse. The "support" people have resorted to "we don't provide support for 3rd part scripts". It looks like I'll be switching to another service provider. You can attempt to access my main site here. Most of the sidebar links etc. should still work, but the main center portion of the page is displaying "ACCESS DENIED". It's a problem with the MySQL database permissions, something that I believe they fooled up...of course it might also be my fault. I'm not yet beyond making brain-dead mistakes.

Site problems

I have been having some problems with my internet hosting provider over the last few days. Things seem to be getting worse, so for now, I've turned off my "old" familiar site. I hope to clear things up but it is getting increasingly painful to resolve things. I'll use this different Blog format for now...thanks to BLOGGER.COM for their simplistic implementation...

Teardrop

I went to an RV show, and among the usual array of monsters was this little gem. A nice little replica of the old teardrops from the 1940's. http://www.tab-rv.com is where you can find out more. The $16,000 Canadian pricetag was interesting. (that included the heatpump...what???). If your budget can't quite justify that sort of purchase, CLICK HERE to get a reprint of an old 1947 Mechanix Illustrated article for a "Trailer for Two". For a more comprehensive selection of plans go to this UK site. or...if you are especially ignorant, EBAY is filled with opportunistic goons willing to take your money for these freely available plans :)

Ottawa

Opportunity knocks, and sometimes you get to take advantage of it. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, four of us were together in Ottawa. It was a nice "retreat", enjoyed by all. On Saturday night we got to see a Senators game at the Corel Centre, along with 19,657 other clowns :) Other than that, we wandered, ate, relaxed, and enjoyed the time...Click here for some pictures
NOTE: I moved the photos to a better location. If you got fed up trying to view them, try again...

Star Princess...in St. John's

The thought of a 951 foot, 109,000 ton Cruise Ship maneuvering in and out of St. John's Harbour is almost mind-boggling. Click Here for some info on this Behemoth. 710 private balconies blew my little mind. Then again, that's what you can expect for a paltry 430 million smags. Check out the tour bus in the bottom of the first photo...that should help get an idea of the size. I hope the chart is accurate...

Thanks to T.O.D. for the photos...hope you don't mind me sharing them :)

Shipping and the Global Economy

Consider the following from the
International Maritime Organization...

Shipping and the Global Economy

Today almost no nation is fully self-sufficient. Every country must sell what it produces and acquire what it lacks. None can depend on domestic resources alone. Ships have always provided the only really cost-effective method of bulk transport over any great distance.

MORE THAN 90 PER CENT OF GLOBAL TRADE IS CARRIED BY SEA.

The transport cost element in the shelf price of consumer goods varies from product to product, but is ultimately marginal. For example, transport costs account for only around 2% of the shelf price of a television set and only around 1.2% of a kilo of coffee. There are more than 45,000 merchant ships trading internationally today, transporting every kind of cargo. The world fleet is registered in over 150 nations, and manned by over one and a quarter million seafarers of virtually every nationality.

Without international shipping, half the world
would freeze and the other half would starve.

Shipping and the Global Economy

Consider the following from the

International Maritime Organization...

Shipping and the Global Economy

Today almost no nation is fully self-sufficient. Every country must sell what it produces and acquire what it lacks. None can depend on domestic resources alone. Ships have always provided the only really cost-effective method of bulk transport over any great distance.

MORE THAN 90 PER CENT OF GLOBAL TRADE IS CARRIED BY SEA.

The transport cost element in the shelf price of consumer goods varies from product to product, but is ultimately marginal. For example, transport costs account for only around 2% of the shelf price of a television set and only around 1.2% of a kilo of coffee.
There are more than 45,000 merchant ships trading internationally today, transporting every kind of cargo. The world fleet is registered in over 150 nations, and manned by over one and a quarter million seafarers of virtually every nationality.
Without international shipping, half the world
would freeze and the other half would starve.

The "Situation"

I was a little surprised that I received this in an email from the wife of an American, (and you know who you are)..heh...But, given my helpless gravitation towards "less-than-tasteful" humour, and my interest in photography, I pass it on for your perusal:
This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where your priorities really are. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.You are in New Orleans to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photo journalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water! Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury...THE TEST:
Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's the President, George W. Bush. At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever. You have two options- you can save the life of the President, or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most famous men. Here's the question, and please give an honest answer....... Would you select high contrast colour film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?
For the record, I'd try to save the old goof :)

Ski ? Moi ???

OK so I tried my hand at downhill skiing, and I have to say that contrary to my preconceived misconceptions, it was an awful lot of fun !! The instructor must have been familiar with decrepit old fossils like me. He warned me that I was pushing myself somewhat hard and predicted that my eyeballs would be the only moving parts come morning...he was almost correct...

No skating yet :(

So far, the prospect of "pond skating" is not looking too good. Temperatures in Halifax have been bouncing between minus 10c and plus 10c, not exactly good ice-making weather. Last year we got at it by the middle of January, but this year is not looking so promising.
Last Years photos. We're still hopeful though.