I mispell things!
last night i discovered that adam had never seen the “between two pillows” scene from the movie “planes, trains, and automobiles.” that has been corrected now and we both busted a gut watching it.
another aside for the day. kathy from thule responded to my post on installing the roof rack on fred the sentra. i really appreciate the fact that thule responded. it speaks a lot to who they are as a company. it would have been pretty easy for them to completely ignore my complaint. after all i’m a nobody with a blog that basically only my parents read. i am sure that my little post wasn’t a major public relations scandal for them that had to be handled for the good of the company. so i appreciate kathy of thule taking time to respond to my complaint and it will be remembered by me when i consider future purchases.
just a quick aside here concerning my post from a couple of days ago “mr. mayor, i have a question for you.” the mayor’s assistant called today to setup a time for us to have coffee. so i’ll be asking the mayor my questions in a week and a half. actually i’ve already forwarded my questions to him so he can think about them. i’ll ask his permission to post how he answers the questions.
i feel like i know a decent amount about the point area (after all, it is difficult to love a city if you don’t really know the city) but i am really looking forward to the new directions this conversation might lead to.
much of tapestry’s communication is done online. a ton of social media, online presence, website changes, email, etc. this means i regularly post LOTS of links. some of them can get kind of long, which is, of course, why in the past i have used url shortening services like tinyurl.com and tiny.cc. i decided i wanted tapestry’s name to be in the url and personally have more control over the shortened name of each url without making the address super long. so i just installed yoURLs which make the tapestry website into our own personal url shortening service. now i can shorten url’s with the sptapestry.org address.
for example, thanks to wesley (one of the leadership team members) i have begun posting youversion “scripture events” each week. these scripture events are basically a way that people can easily see each week’s scripture, the power point slides, take notes, etc. this (bible.us/e/ICL) is the link to this week’s (as yet unpublished) scripture event on youversion. it isn’t a very long url but it makes no sense and thus is hard for me to explain to someone without writing it down for them. i could run it through another url shortening service and hope that the custom name i want is available or i could install (which i did) yoURLs on the sptapestry.org domain and know that the custom name i want is available. from now on the link to the youversion scripture event will merely be that sunday’s date. here’s this week’s sptapestry.org/2122012.
come on now, you know that’s awesome.
SIDE NOTE – we’ve actually determined that while youversion events are great, they are also actually not quite in step with our level of participation. youversion events allow individuals to slightly participate with the scripture of the message but they do not allow the church to participate with each other as we go through the scripture during the message. so drew is looking into developing an app for tapestry that will take the good we like of youversion scripture events and add a ton of interactivity for use during our worship gatherings. for example, drew is going to set things up where the scripture event becomes a conversation that you can comment on and then someone else can respond to your comment. youversion allows you to take notes and send me questions but doesn’t really allow for the threads to respond to each other’s responses and bounce reflections off of other people’s thoughts. this is going to be awesome. when he is done people who might not feel comfortable speaking up verbally during our worship gatherings will have yet another way to respond.
again, come on, you know this is awesome.
yesterday i ran into mayor halverson of stevens point while drinking coffee at emy j’s. i introduced myself, gave him my card, and told him i would love the opportunity to take him out for coffee and ask him a few questions concerning point. i’ve emailed his office a couple a times a year since we moved to the point area asking if i could take him to coffee and ask him the following questions:
i really hope i hear back from him because i really want to hear his thoughts on these questions.
part of what i need from a vehicle is the ability to transport my canoe. i like to fish and for most of the year that involves moving a canoe from spot to spot. this means that i need a roof rack and any car i use significantly. i bought one for my 626 and it has been sitting around since the 626 was sold for scrap. i recently started contacting thule to determine how to make this rack (which i loved using on my 626) fit fred the sentra. you see the roof rack is meant for a 4 door car and fred is a 2 door coupe. thule has a short roof adapter
those of you who know me might be surprised that i bought the higher end foot pack but at the time they were actually cheaper than the lower end feet. why? well i bought a refurbished roof rack. don’t ask me how you refurbish a roof rack. i have no idea. all i know is that it was significantly less expensive than the lower end foot pack and they have worked great for three years.
so i contacted thule through their support website to ask if it was possible to make the sra work with the 480xtr feet. i received no response. i sent another request for information. again, there was no response. i sent a third request and this time i was told that the sra sure would work if i bought new feet. of course the answer completely ignored my real request so i sent a final request and was told that i should call an unlisted customer support phone number. i called, was placed on hold for 10 minutes, and then told by recording that office hours had ended. i called again the next day and was told by a rep that he wasn’t really sure why but his forms said the sra wouldn’t work with the 480xtr feet and asked if there was anything else he could help with.
this just didn’t seem right. i looked at the sra and my rack feet and 
i was sure they would work together or at least that i could make them work together. so i found a used short roof adapter on ebay for $40 and ordered it assuming that if it didn’t work i could resell it and get at least $40 back. here’s what i discovered. the only thing that keeps the sra from working with the 480xtr feet is the plastic cover of the xtr feet. this plastic cover is purely 
aesthetic (pictured right). i can’t believe that this plastic cover does anything for the operation or structural integrity of the 480xtr feet. the short roof adapter works by small hooks fitting into each foot (pictured left). these hooks are pull into the feet by a center “fit kit” holding onto the back edge of the door frame. the plastic hood of the xtr foot blocks the hook from being able to grab a hold of the foot. removing the plastic hood from the 480xtr feet enabled me to use the sra just as it was meant to be used. without the plastic hood the hooks fit perfectly. i installed the rack and everything works perfectly.
surely thule knows this. i can’t believe they wouldn’t tell me such a simple fix. removing the plastic hood doesn’t appear to change anything about the structural integrity or operation of the rack foot. it ticks me off that their support’s advice was simply to buy new feet. my rack works on fred for $40 plus $15 for a used sentra fit kit off ebay. thule’s advice would have cost me $360 (new feet, new short roof adapter, and new fit kit) just to enable me to use the roof rack that i bought from them 3 years ago.
the next step for the roof rack is taking a dremel to the plastic hood to make room for the sra’s hook. then i’ll have the pleasing look of the smooth hoods on my rack feet again. this will make me even more happy.
next step for fred is working on the the exhaust system. there is a front exhaust pipe that needs to be patched or replaced. btw does anyone know how to weld? i’ll need some welding to fix the rusted out body sections at each rear wheel well.
if you are connected with me on facebook you may have seen the above video already. it is from the tapestry super bowl gathering at our home last night. the gathering was a great deal of fun. in fact, it always is a great deal of fun. this is the 4th year that we have had a super bowl gathering at our house.
the thing i found interesting last night is how few people actually watched the game. seriously there were probably only 8-10 people who really cared about the game. even those 8-10 were still mainly talking with the people around them. i have two theories on why this was so:
anyhow it was a blast last night.
i know this will hurt some of you but the saloon doors on the mudroom bathroom is officially done for now. we’ve been meaning to replace these for a while and have finally gotten around to it. pam will paint the doors in the next few days. pam has had this on my “honey do” list for quite some time. i can’t believe it took me this long to get to replacing the doors. when you visit our home in the future you want have to use the bathroom in a room where the door is open on the bottom and the top.
i also just finished replacing the rear deck speakers in fred. the factory speakers were trashed after 20 years of use. i replaced the front speakers with planet audio 4×6’s and the rear speakers with kicker d65 6.5’s. both of these speakers are inexpensive. the planet audio speakers sound nice (i put them in earlier during a lunch break) but the kicker speakers sound amazing. i have the option of putting 6.5 speakers in the front (the 4x6s fit into a 6.5” metal tray that fit into the door – not sure why nissan did this but it works out well for me) and i might replace the 4x6s later just because the kicker speakers sound so amazing.
i just finished posting the message from sunday’s tapestry worship gathering (you can find it here if you are interested) and walked upstairs to get some sweet tea before i started working on my d.min final project proposal again. this is what i found in the living room. montana can be a real pest when i am trying to work on something (like she was earlier today) but she is so darn cute when she is not being a pest that i can’t get mad at her.
when guests come to tapestry i like to take them out for coffee/ice cream at emy j’s or if need be at zest coffee house by uwsp. i do this to say “thanks” to them for coming and being a part of one of our worship gatherings, to hear their story, and to answer any questions they might have concerning tapestry (we are a bit of a strange breed). yesterday i visited with one such guest and the thread who is her friend.
one of the things i typically do when grabbing coffee with one of our guests is ask what other churches in point he/she has visited. we have quite a few excellent churches in point that i am quite fond of. my biggest concern for everyone who visits tapestry is that they find a community of faith that helps them to best connect with JESUS CHRIST. for some people that gathering is tapestry, which i completely understand because i love this group of people. for others it is one of the other fine churches in the point area. i believe that is one of the benefits of the many different churches in the point area – there is more variety and thus better connections to CHRIST for a variety of people. so i point out other churches that i hope they have or will visit to check out for themselves if they connect better with CHRIST through those communities of faith. again the main point here is for them to find a place that helps them walk in faith. of course, i try to reinforce over and over that i am not telling them to go to another church. i would like for them to connect with CHRIST through us but if that doesn’t happen then i want them to try other churches. so again and again i say “please don’t think that i am asking you to go to another church, i love being around the people of tapestry and i hope you will too.”
so yesterday i went through my spiel with this guest. around the third time i reinforced that i wasn’t asking this guest to go somewhere else the guest’s thread friend started laughing. i asked what was up and she said that some of her friends had heard that i recommended other churches to people and they thought that was odd. apparently i have developed a rep as the pastor that brags on other churches. i guess i can live with that rep.