When Cathy goes on call

My wife is doing her medical residency, and that means she has to go on call at times (ranging anywhere from not at all to a couple times a week, depending on which rotation she's on). And for a medical resident, "call" means being at the hospital for at least 24 hours straight, sleeping if she's not busy, until the pager goes off.

The evening before call can be a full evening. She'll have three meals during her time away and prefers not to buy them at the hospital, so she packs a bunch of food in the evening. Maybe I try to help her out where I can or maybe I try to get something else done. But however it goes, there's less time to sit or walk together and just enjoy each other's presence.

The next morning we both leave for work, but my work day is a normal length. I come home to a quiet house--not unusual even on a non-call day, but today it stays quiet. I make myself some supper and have nobody to share it with. Later, maybe I get some stuff done around the house, or I get together with friends, or I do some grocery shopping. I'm more of an evening person than Cathy is, so I may stay up later than I normally would if she's home. Maybe I waste time on the internet. Sometimes I stay up later than I should. I may be more of an evening person than she is, but I'm not a big night person.

I fall asleep alone, wake up in the morning, and go to work. I know that sometime this morning, she will get off work and come home. She probably only got a few hours of sleep. But she doesn't sleep well in the mid-morning, so she saves the rest of her sleep for the afternoon.

When I get home from work, she's probably asleep still. I go to our bedroom and give her a kiss and she starts to wake up. After she wakes up, she holds me tight and gives me a kiss. Together we make supper and have some time for some good conversation. One or both of us may go out for some evening activities, but regardless, we do have some quality, relaxing time together.

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Making a difference in Alberta

For everyone reading this in Alberta, I want to encourage you to get out and vote today. Remember: your vote probably won't make a difference, but when a whole bunch of people do something that doesn't make a difference, it makes a difference.

A legalistic Lord's Supper?

It was Good Friday. Our church and another local church in the same non-denominational denomination held a combined church service at their church. Before we took Communion / the Lord's Supper, one of their pastors talked about what we're saying by participating. Here's a much abbreviated version, from my memory, so it's probably not entirely accurate:

By taking Communion, you are committing to three things:

1. You wholeheartedly commit to the covenant people of God, from Abraham [or Adam, I forget which], through Israel, to the church. Look at the people beside you. These are the people of God who you commit to.
2. You wholeheartedly commit to follow God's rules. Jesus made it simple. He gave two rules: love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind and strength; and love your neighbour as yourself.
3. You wholeheartedly commit to living and promoting God's Kingdom principles wherever you go.

As far as I remember, Jesus didn't make any special rules about taking Communion except, "Do this in remembrance of me." Elsewhere in the Bible, we have these instructions: "Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves." (1 Corinthians 11:26-29, NIV).

A question for any Christians reading this: was this pastor being overly legalistic in saying this, or are these obvious conclusions about what it means to examine oneself before taking Communion?

There is judgment for those who take Communion without self examination, or without recognizing the body and blood of Jesus. But as Jesus said, there's judgment for those who put unnecessary barriers between people and God. Is this pastor putting up unnecessary barriers?

May you have a happy Easter. Remember God's mercy. Take his commands seriously, but don't let anyone tell you you're not good enough to come to the Lord's table.

Come and mourn...

O love of God O sin of man
In this dread act your strength is tried
And victory remains with love
Jesus our Lord is crucified

--from the hymn "O Come and Mourn With Me"
Listen to a traditional version
Listen to a contemporary version

Kony 2012

I've been occasionally following the story of Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and their insurgency in northern Uganda since I visited Uganda in 2006. I was only in southern Uganda, with a group of volunteers connected with my church. I posted a couple of stories about that here and here. While I was there I met some people who lived in the north. Some had lived in internally displaced person (IDP) camps. I can't remember how closely they'd been affected by the violence.

So I prayed for the people of northern Uganda. I occasionally looked for news about it and was happy to read about a peace agreement later that same year. Things were never actually settled between the government and the LRA though, and some violence continued, but it decreased.

I read about some of the complexity of the issue of what to do about the LRA, and I wrote something about that here. It had more to do with reconciliation with the kids that had killed people (they had been forced to fight with the LRA), but also looked at how attempts at arresting Joseph Kony could actually perpetuate the violence. Unfortunately the links on that post don't work anymore.

After a while, I stopped looking for news stories about this issue. I can't remember if I ever wrote to anyone in the government about it or if I did anything else to help the situation, but as often happens when people care about events happening far away, I thought about this less and less.

Recently, the "Kony 2012" video produced by Invisible Children has gone viral. Joseph Kony is becoming a household name around the world, and I am reminded that the LRA is still around and that things in northern Uganda still haven't been resolved. I admit I haven't watched most of the video, so I can't comment directly on the video. But I have seen some thoughtful responses, such as this one by Rachel Held Evans. It doesn't give a firm opinion; it looks at the complexity of the issues and tries to avoid idealism and cynicism.

Once again, I'm praying for the people of northern Uganda. I don't know what else I'll do, or what I can do. Maybe I can find a way to advocate for peace, not on Invisible Children's terms, but on the terms of northern Ugandan civilians. Maybe there are other charities to support that work in a more constructive way with the LRA's victims. Does anyone know of any?

A few Android apps, rated for simplicity

I got my first smartphone in early December. It's an Android phone, the Samsung Nexus S to be exact. In that time I've downloaded and tried a handful of different apps, so I'd like to share what I think. When it comes to computer software, I appreciate simplicity. Sometimes the program with less features is the one I'd rather use, if it has the features that I want. With more features, the program can be cumbersome to use, and it's more likely to slow down the computer. So when I started looking for some Android apps, simplicity was one of the main things I was looking for. So without further ado, here are the apps I'm running and what I think of their simplicity, in alphabetical order:

3G Watchdog by Richard Gruet - 4.5 stars (out of 5) - free
This handy app tracks your data plan usage, and it can show your total on a home screen widget. You tell it when your billing cycle starts and what your quota is, and it will monitor it for you. You can also set it to turn off your data when you reach your limit and alert you when you're close to it. Not much feature bloat here. The only things stopping it from getting 5 stars are two buttons: one that advertises the paid version of this app, and one that advertises an unrelated app. (The paid version can also tell you which apps are using your data plan, but since Android 4.0 has this feature built in, I don't think I'll pay for it. Just need to wait for them to send Android 4.0 to my phone...)

AK Notepad by Catch.com - 4 stars (out of 5) - free
Probably the only feature my old phone had that this phone didn't come with: an app for writing short notes to myself. This one's pretty simple, and you can make it alarm at a certain time for certain notes if you want. It occasionally asks if I want to sync my notes with a Catch.com account, which is a bit annoying since I don't have an account with them. Automatic backups are a useful feature, but I don't really feel like signing up for another website, even though it's free. The app can export the notes to the phone's USB storage, which then lets me back up the notes myself, but that's more work.

Antivirus Free by AVG Mobilation - 3 stars (out of 5) - free
I got this app more for its anti-theft and phone location features, rather than for antivirus. Antivirus is good to have too, but doesn't provide perfect protection. Its anti-theft features allow you to log into a website and do a few different things on your phone: turn on the GPS and show the phone's location on your computer, lock the phone remotely, make the phone ring even if it's in silent mode (which seems to take a few minutes), and even wipe all the data from the phone. It also includes some tune-up features that are supposed to help you save power. It has some features that I don't use, such as a task killer (see this article for a reason why) and it takes an unnecessarily high number of clicks to reach the tune-up features, so its simplicity leaves something to be desired. I've heard that Lookout Antivirus has a simpler interface, but I installed AVG because the free version of lookout doesn't support wiping data from your phone.

KJV/NIV Bible by Tecarta - 4.5 stars (out of 5) - KJV is free; NIV is CAD$6.09 on its own or $5.94 as an add-on; other translations are available too.
This app makes it easy to navigate various Bible translations, view two versions side-by-side, and search the Bible for certain words. Clean interface, easy to navigate your history and take notes. It can read the Bible out loud to you, with a computerized voice. Some of the cross-references between verses are kind of useless, which is a mild annoyance. But overall it's an excellent app, and the cheapest one that I found for the paid translations. (Yes, there are some that get you free access to just about any translation, but I think most of those require internet access.)

LED Light by picolyl - 5 stars (out of 5) - free
Light goes on. Light goes off. That's about it. Use your camera flash LED as a flashlight. My phone isn't even listed on the list of supported phones, but it seems to woyrk. No feature bloat, no ads, and no cost. And you can put it on your home screen as a widget, so just touching the icon on your home screen once will toggle the light.

ScanLife Barcode & QR Reader - 2 stars (out of 5) - free
The first app that I ever uninstalled. It reads barcodes and QR codes. For barcodes, it can show you the price of the item you scanned at certain online retailers. And for QR codes it shows you the data in the code or takes you to the webpage referenced by the code. Most of the time it's a simple, easy-to-use app (although I've scanned numerous products that it couldn't find online), but occasional annoyances convinced me to uninstall it once I found a replacement app. When I first got it, it regularly asked me to go to the Android Market to rate the app. So one time I hit the "OK" button, went to the Market, then quickly exited out of it without leaving a rating. ScanLife shut up about that after that. But it still occasionally asked me to take a quick demographic survey, which I didn't feel like doing. (I'll post a review of the app that I got to replace this once I have some more time to play around with it.)

SlideIT Keyboard by Dasur - 4 stars (out of 5) - CAD$5.99, or 15-day free trial
I got this one when it was on sale for 10 cents. It's similar to the Swype keyboard that comes with some Android devices (but not my Nexus S). It replaces the touch-screen keyboard with a different touch-screen keyboard. This one lets you type by sliding your finger around the keyboard rather than touching each key individually. Then it searches its dictionary to figure out what word you were trying to type. If it's not completely sure, it gives you a number of words to choose from. After a while of using this, I think it sped up my typing. And it can import your contact list into the dictionary, so if your friend has an unusual first or last name, it's no problem for this keyboard. (In my limited experience with Swype, I don't think Swype has this feature.) Not much to annoy me here, except that it periodically contacts the developer's servers to confirm your software license. So it will use up a little bit of your data plan, and I'm not sure if it works if you're out of range or have data disabled for a long time.

All prices are in Canadian dollars, and may not be up-to-date. Keep in mind that my star ratings are rating only for simplicity; they are not an overall app rating.

That's it for now. I have some more apps than this on my phone, so I'll add reviews of those sometime later. And I'll try to keep this post up-to-date.

Oops!

After getting dropped off at the carpool meeting point after work, I noticed an extension cord lying on the ground in front of my car. I thought I should move it out of the way so I don't run over it. Then I noticed that my car was plugged into it.

In the morning I had unplugged the extension cord from the outlet, but I must not have unplugged the car from the cord. So I must have driven all the way to the carpool meeting point (about a 5-minute drive away) with that loooong extension cord sticking out behind my car. And in the afternoon, the block heater timer was nowhere to be seen. I'd assume it came off somewhere during the drive, rather than being stolen, because the prongs of the extension cord were a bit bent. The timer probably would've protected the prongs.

I tested the cord and it still works. So that's a bit of good news.