A day in my life

Greetings,

In my job here at Wycliffe Associates I do a great diversity of things. If I am not traveling I am helping out around the office. One of the main parts of my job is to set up equipment going oversees.
These past few work days I set up some computers going to Russian speaking countries. This provided some different challenges and I thought I would share a few of these with you.
There are a decent number of computers that we set up at Wycliffe to go oversees. Because of this volume, we use a master image to begin the process of setting up computers. Wycliffe Associates has recently created a new help desk system to work on any tech related stuff. This new help desk has completely changed how we receive work, inventory and catalogue our work. Because it is new it has quirks being worked out. In Tech Advance we have meshed our older system with this new help desk. Part of my time is spent seeing were the meshing is not smooth and fixing it.
One of the issues we faced was languages. You may have noticed language packs for windows in your updates. Well, there is a difference between a program having a language pack and a program coming in that language. A program like windows or Microsoft Office will come in a default language like English. You can then get a language pack to change most of the languages that program uses. However fundamental parts of the program will still be in the base language. So if you want to uninstall windows, or do other core procedures, you will see the base language and not the language pack. In a small number of cases this can impact the ability of someone oversees using the computer. So the question is, which base language do you use and will a language pack be sufficient.
Language packs are dealt with differently in different programs. So if you get a French language pack for windows, it has no impact on Microsoft Office. You will need to buy additional language packs for that separately. By they way only Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate have all the language packs for free. Anything lower than these will have a smattering of language packs available, but otherwise you cant use them (So your base language is important).
I discovered all this when I was given a computer with a French install of windows and word and was asked to make it useable in Russian and English. It is interesting to try to set up a computer in a language you don't know. For instance, when I had Office in Russian and was trying to activate it. I don't know Russian but I do know generally all the right buttons to push, so I managed ok.
At one point I was talking with the person I was setting up three computers for. She had some questions about how certain things looked and how to do a couple of tasks. I had to figure out how to explain all this stuff and quickly because it is not easy to connect. She did not have our internal video conferencing software (Vidyo), so I came up with a different solution. I used Join Me (https://join.me/), which is a free program online, to connect. Join Me lets you share your screen with someone else through a web browser and it lets either you or the other person control the computer through that browser. This also lets you call the other person for free through the browser. I stayed on the phone in this case, but I was able to show her the computer I was working on, answer her questions about how to do what she wanted and let her look around herself. She was able to set up an account on that computer from her own computer half way around the world. That was pretty cool.
There are plenty of other stories like that, but this is your sample of what life is like when I am working here.

Glass Museum Part II

Greetings,

Today I am going to post the second part of my glass museum trip. Last time my pictures were mostly from inside the museum. This section covers the work on a bridge outside the museum. There is a walkway over the nearby freeway connecting this museum to a number of others. Along the bridge there are several large showcases of glass works. It is pretty cool.

Two massive pillars of glass.

The next three pictures are all glass works in the ceiling, so you are looking up at them. It was cloudy, so not much light was coming through. However, still pretty neat.

My mother Anita and I

My mom Anita and dad Jon

The elevator outside the museum leading to the parking garage

After we were done, our family met up with the Dyk's to have some lunch.

Glass Museum

Hello my friends,

During my recent travels I was fortunate enough to visit the glass museum in Tacoma Washington. I thought I would share some of the pictures I took there. I was impressed by the works exhibited. The techniques used and the intricacy of work were sometimes amazing. One of the best parts of the museum is being able to watch glass blowers work live. They have a studio right in the museum.

If you have not seen it yet, I posted my first blog report of the year earlier today. Check it out in the next post below.

This would really look neat with water fountains flowing around it. The glass sculpture is just outside the main entrance.

The tea kettles in the picture above and below have impossibly small spouts, so it would take a while to pour your tea. However, they look neat.

This picture above was one of the most unique items I saw in the gallery. It is one of my favorite pieces there.

An acorn around 18" long.

This was an impressive glass sculpture. It is a little over a meter tall. The blue you see shifts as you walk around the glass.

There was quite a description on a few sculptures like this one. They were something about the conquering of nature over the material world. Kind of a funny thing to look at.

Here is a multi-layered glass work.

There was a visiting collection from Ireland. I liked the glass work, but not the paintings on the sides. They look like a kid had some fun.

We watched the glass blowers for at least a half an hour. They made a glass leaf and four glass acorns while we were there.

Every year, there is a kids competition to design a glass sculpture. The kids make a drawing and the visiting glass artists try to recreate the picture in glass.

Water shoots up out of these poles. They are around eight feet tall and would be nice to play around in the summer.

 

 

A New Year, New Possibilities

Happy New Year everyone!

We are half way through the first month already and this year looks interesting. Before I get to that, I will fill you in on what I have been up too these past few months.
After my trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, I returned to Orlando for about three and a half days before heading to Boise Idaho. Air France lost my luggage going to Congo, but just two days ago I was able to retrieve one of the lost bags. The other bag is in Paris France and I am still working on getting that one back here.
I had a wonderful time meeting my friends in Idaho. I was allowed to set up my computer in a room above the maintenance hanger. I attended the MAF Christmas chapel and was able to share my work and vision with some of my MAF friends. I even was able to go bowling with Ian Rask.
I then headed up to Spokane WA for Christmas. It has been a year since I last saw my brother and almost the same with my parents. I have been away for many years with just a couple short visits so it was nice to get back.
I began January with a week of meetings here in Orlando FL. There is a lot of exciting work going on around the world and plenty to come. One of the main points I took away from the meetings was concerning the difficulty of work. Lets compare all the Bible translations in the world to a tree. Of the 7,000-8,000 languages in the world around 6,000 have starts and around 1900 have yet to be started.  Basically, the low fruit of translations on the tree has been picked. The remaining languages are in places harder to reach or in countries much less open to Bible translation. A couple good examples are countries in the middle east. The goal most of the world translation groups are focusing is vision 2025. This goal is to have a translation started in every language in the world by 2025. This goal is possible but it will be harder to finish than it was to start.
Another take away I had was that there are multiple exciting ways the gospel is reaching those who do not have it. BILD is a group dedicated to training Christians from layman to Doctor. The idea is to educate the church so that it can be more effective in teaching and preaching. BILD has a huge curriculum that is being translated into many different languages so that Christians can be educated to preach and teach. India is a real focus of BILD at the moment, but eventually they should reach China as well. They also have a presence in many other countries of the world.
Distant Shores Media is another really cool group. They have created a platform somewhat similar to Wikipedia where Bible materials can be stored and translated all around the world. The Distant Shores platform shares the strengths of Wikipedia but not its weaknesses. It has means of making sure the content on its site are Biblically correct.
Tying together the training material from BILD and Distant shores with the Bible itself will create a library and education system for churches all over the world. The end result is a people who have more resources than ever before to understand and teach the Bible in more languages than ever.

So what is coming up for me? I am hoping to get back to Angola soon to install the equipment the national translation teams strongly need there. The delay has been getting permission from the local wireless company to install the repeaters we need. Hopefully we can get this soon. But we are also looking at alternative options.
I have been working on setting up equipment that national translators will be using oversees in the office here. We have quite a few teams who will be needing computers and other equipment and in the short term, that will be my focus.

I have been blessed by the work I have been able to do this last year and look forward to what is next.
I will leave you with a few pictures from my last few weeks.