Well, this is some turn of events! I have been trying to put up a new post here for a couple of days, all to no avail because of Win 7 complications. Then suddenly (apparently), the brain freeze thawed and it seems I have figured it out again. Problem is, I have also started up a whole new version of my blog, same name and everything (sounds like the Allstate commercial), so if this works, I now have a sort of ying-yang going on and does that murk up the soup! So time to let go here, try to publish this post and see if indeed I found my little kink of genius after all.. :)

TRYING OUT NEW THINGS…

USING WINDOWS LIVE WRITER

 

This is an online test of the Windows Live Writer. I have been using Open Office to write the blog and going through not a little bit of difficulty trying to place photos where I want within the body of the message. Live Writer is supposed to fix that. We shall see. First, here is a picture insert:

 

    Here is our son Mike

 

   And here is our daughter Holly..

 

This is just a test, but the pictures of the kids are good. More testing to come I imagine..

On the road again...

From back in September we have to fast forward now to almost the first of April. We are looking again to make the long, dusty mountain trip over Rte. 162 and FH 7 between the Sacramento Valley and the coastal highway 101 via a sleepy little mountain valley town called Covelo. There is still some snow up on the higher mountains, where the pavement ends and the road turns to the Forest Highway #7 (FH7), so we still have a few weeks before we can cross. But we are getting mentally geared up for the trip, and have even put new shoes and brakes on our faithful Ford Bronco, "Herman". The last trip was made in our small Ford Ranger, and while it handled the roads and climbs well, we also managed to pick up several pounds of fine dust that filtered in between the little cracks and crannies of the small truck. The Ranger is an '88, so it isn't quite as tight as it used to be. Of course our Bronco is only a '90, so I may have to carry a little shovel along with us this time too.

Sue and I like to venture out here and there, it lets us see little parts of the world we haven't seen (or seen for a while), plus it is a way I use to stimulate my thinking about how things could be made a little better here and there. That is really what I do, look for ways to make a better world for people. Much of it we look to do through some new technology we have been working on for many years, with of course some of that change also having to come from making changes that can help people make their own changes in the process. We call the whole process a "Better Way".

We have written quite a few articles on our Better Way process and some of what we believe is needed to make it work. In addition, we have been developing a technology that we call "Light Magnetics Technology", generally referred to as 'LMT'. Like the Better Way process itself, LMT is different, often so different that it will likely strain credibility for the reader. Well, in this case different is just different, and by no means is that a bad thing. We are thinking about possibly posting some of our BW and LMT articles to our blog here, but I haven't really worked that all out yet. We will more likely start by just noting a few points while we talk about some of the peripheral things that are related in some way or another with both the Better Way and LMT. You see, we don't really take trips just to vacation. For us they are working trips where we can see more of what there is to work with and possible things that can be done with that. In short it is a learning process. We go, we see and we try to listen very quietly and intently to whatever God might want to tell us about what we are seeing along the way. That is because both the Better Way and the technology, LMT, are really God's handiwork that we are simply trying to get done as we learn it from Him. Maybe below it would be suitable to have a little picture of a cat emerging from a little bag, but I don't have such a drawing at the moment. Still, you might get the point of what it would be saying..

One point that we would like to make has to do with the matter of my age. As of this writing I am 69 years old. In June I will turn that over to 70. Now that may seem like a bit long in the tooth to be embarking on a project that isn't likely to get done in a few short years. That is of course if we really are serious about actually trying to make a better world for people through our Better Way and LMT. Well, we are serious and have been since we began this effort. The fact is, we have been actively working on this since 1975, so it isn't really new at all, nor was I so old when I began. But one of the many salient points of all this is that among a lot of things associated with a Better Way is the prospect of continued living. That is, by processes one can learn, we believe it is possible to learn, develop, and continue living while you further develop to the point where you are able to regenerate. If you follow that, good. But don't make the mistake of calling it 'immortality', for it is none of that at all. For one thing, being created by God, people are immortal anyway. It is just that problems of aging, deteriorating and of course dying, serve to gum up the works. Part of a Better Way is learning how to fix those problems before they fix you. Accordingly, as you might by now suspect, we pretty well expect to plug along while we improve too. Not just me, but at some point, we expect increasing numbers of people to have the same working for them. Not only should people eventually be able to stop their aging process, they should also be able to in due course reverse it and set in an increasing degree of regeneration that will reflect their own continued development in the creative process. For the most part, that is the main problem people in this world have, they have interrupted their own creative process development. The Better Way process helps people get back on track and in so doing, get back into their own creative process. We think it is something not only worth thinking about, but doing something about as well..
More to come next time..

Here are a few pictures...







Above we take the Bronco and trailer out for
a little shakedown run.

Middle picture is Sue with our trusty Ranger.

Sue at the Wilderness camp along FH 7.

A Blog Is A Curious Thing..

A blog is a curious thing. For instance, has it ever occurred to you to wonder just how many people actually see your blog? Do you really know at all how many read your words of wisdom? I thought not. Well that is something that I began wondering about as I sat around trying to imagine first what I was going to write about next in this blog, then, more than that, whatever it is that I end up writing, will anyone actually read it at all. I mean like, why bother? Big question..


We bother because we think we have something worth saying. I guess that's it. Or it may be because we just wanted to see what it looks like up there in print. In other words, many of us really write because we do, having any one (or more) of a myriad of reasons for doing this. It can even thought to be fun to actually write something; almost anything actually, with little more inspiration or reason than that. Some people, me included, just like to carry on with pen and paper. Or, as is the case here, keyboard and screen. To support that, I have thousands of pages of pen and paper musings (not so sure they are always exactly that, but..) packed up in boxes around the house. I have thrown away thousands more pages that fell short of whatever standard I tried to apply to my writing. It is for sure that quantity like that can hardly make its way onto the pages of a blog, but still, the blog draws out the stirring that caused all that production in the first place. Yet, who reads it all? Few have read most of the boxed writings. Indeed, the large majority is unread by anyone else at all. Still we write. And when my son showed me how even I could write a blog, I fairly leaped at the chance to get to it. Of course, I spent little time wondering who might actually read whatever I was going to write, but that didn't matter much at all (still doesn't). But a few weeks into this new adventure, I have done some wondering about this minor detail of blogging, like just who reads it? So I decided that for this blog I would set that question out on the line and see if I could get any response at all. What I would like anyone who reads this blog to do is simply enter a reply. Make it as short as you like, or longer if you feel particularly prolific, but just give me a response of some kind. I would appreciate it, and I am curious. Since happenstance is the most likely way you have stumbled onto my blog in the first place, I don't imagine I will get many replies. But for whatever I do get, thank you..

September 29, 2008

It is a Sunny Day and the Cows have decided to stay in California after all..

This is the first time in a while that I have made an entry to this blog. For me it takes a little getting used to, writing in this format. One of the things I have wondered about is just who reads the blog in the first place. It seems like there are what, fifty billion or so blogs posted on the internet, and finding any one of them randomly looks to be one very remote chance. Thus it appears that self-promotion is an essential of blog posting. Truth-fully, I lack the enthusiasm for that. Just where that leaves me in terms of readership I don't know, but hey, life is full of unanswered questions..
I am also trying out a new (to me) text writer, a program called OpenOffice.org Writer. That rather laborious name is the result of some quirk where there is some other program called “Open Office”, so as I understand it, the longer moniker was conjured instead. Be that as it may, the program is free and seems to have a lot of interesting features that are less complex to understand and use. I have been using a program called Professional Write of many moons, like from the early 90's, and more and more I find it wants to balk at uses with the 'modern' operating systems like Win XP. The fact is, I can't even get the PW documents to print on anything more than my very old Epson LQ-570. So, facing a little reality, I find myself having to go a bit more modern. The fact that it is free for at least the basic version is not a small influence on my decision to try this program out.
Another effort we are trying to make here is to insert pictures!! into our blog. OK, so everybody else does it without sneezing, but remember I am a newbie, so it is an exciting venture to me. Alright, I could ask my son or daughter how they do it, since they do it all the time. Alas, I am a tad stubborn, and adventuresome, so I will go it on my own and see what I come up with. THEN I will ask..

SO.. The above is a picture of me eating lunch at a wilderness park in the Coastal Mountains of California. You get to this park by traversing several miles of winding dirt mountain roads. But once there it is one of the most serene experiences you may have felt in a while. It is national park, and fairly well maintained. That means there are campsites, rough toilet facilities and I think, running well water. There were a few RVs there, but it is all dry camping. We stumbled upon the camp by following some camp signs down a side dirt road where we found the site laced into the woods alongside a nice meadow with a small pond. It is not a casual drive to get there, but well worth the effort for those who like the peace and quiet of mountain retreat camping..

I expect I will have more to tell of this particular road trip in upcoming blog entries..

Journey's End..

This past month, July, 2008, my sister Marlene reached the end of her journey here on earth. She will be missed so very much..


Marlene Turner
1937 - 2008

That elusive "B"..

For several days I have been enchanted by that simple white on red "B" icon that showed up when I saved my daughter's blog to my Explorer Favorites list. BUT, try to find that sucker for use! I don't know, maybe it is the precious copyright material of some hopeful who imagines all will ante up big bucks to use it. If that's the case, then pathetic is the word that comes to mind. I spent hours trying to find a snatchable copy of it (I quickly learned you can't snatch it from the Favorites list, and besides, just today it disappeared even there, replaced by the mundane Windows "e" that is the universal MS symbol for 'exciting!'). I gave up in frustration. I slipped off to bed last night nearly a broken man, unsure that the world would ever reveal to me just how to gather up the little bits and bytes that make up the tiny "B" icon. Yet, almost like magic, the old days of Windows graphics began flittering through my troubled mind, and the little words 'icon' and 'bitmap' peeked out at me from behind mysterious dark clouds of nothingness (you know, that stuff that always gets in the way when you get to the good parts in your cluttered little mind). And, there I was, realizing that this was a horse that could be whipped, a mule that could be saddled, a hog that could be herded, a... well, you get the idea. In short, I knew I was onto something big and Windows was about to lose one more battle with the lessers of the world. I even celebrated my victory by daring to use the Windows useless Paint program that I am not sure I have ever used in over 15 years of Windowing. And when I did, I not only got a "B", I improved it so it is a black on red one. (OK, so I couldn't get it to go white on red. Maybe the guy that first made it has sent out vibes that turn things black when you try to make copies..) I eagerly attached it to my blog thingie on my desktop and hailed my wife, ready to proudly receive all the acclaim due my gallant effort. She came by, looked, said "that's nice dear", lightly pecked me on the cheek and sallied off to check on whether the dinner hot dogs were ready yet.

Is there no understanding or appreciation in this world, anywhere???