The hailstorm this week was pretty impressive, albeit short!

My MedjoPangit self making MedjoPangit friends!

Adminisk8or

03/12/2023

Well, a lot happened this week, and honestly, I didn't expect it would, but I suppose that's usually how it goes.

Fun interesting events that don't require a lot of detail that happened this week include: a super hard hailstorm that was fierce and lasted about 5-10 minutes, and left a nice sheet of ice; going on a silent date with my wife, as she has lost her voice; riding my bike for the first time in months, and realizing how out of shape I am; figuring out an easy way to install MacOS Ventura on slightly out-of-date hardware with relative ease; watching signs of future flooding starting to manifest themselves in threatening foreshadowing, and as good old Shakespeare would say, "with bated breath". Not so fun things include my wife getting a cold that totally wrecked her voice.

And of course there were more escapades with my home network this week, as there always are. One such escapade was when early last week, I noticed I was having trouble reading a file on my server. After getting home from work that day, I rebooted my server, and to my horror, I watched it come back up with the entire database storage RAID array missing. I then had to shut it down and inspect more closely to realize that in my hard drive bay, one of the SATA cables had actually just gotten damaged. Not only was this thankfully an easy fix, but it gave me the opportunity that night to eliminate an old hard drive that didn't need to be in there, and also made me realize there was even one more hard drive that I thought was in use, but was actually part of an older RAID array. These fixes resulted in me removing some useless hard drives, finding a way to mount my water-cooled CPU fan INSIDE my case (hey, there wasn't any room for it!), replace a fan that I didn't even know was going bad, and getting to reconnect my DVD drive so I can continue to transfer some old CDs and DVDs to digital files! This tidbit would fit right in with my last week's spiel, but then again, this kind of thing seems to just happen to me all the time. There's even more I could mention, like several issues I had with UniFi and more, but most of them are minuscule and mainly uninteresting... well, except this one.

Before hitting the sack one night, I decided to change a bandwidth profile for my smart home Wi-fi network to 5Mbps up and down, to save on some bandwidth. On the mobile app, it recorded down speed just fine. I thought it did so for the up speed, as well; but when I awoke in the morning and noticed a bunch of Wi-fi issues, you would think my first instinct would be looking at exactly the thing I changed last night. But of course, I troubleshooted it in a slew of other ways, because I started thinking back to changes I made over the past few days and weeks, instead of literally the night before. What it turned out to be was, when I entered 5, it somehow perceived that as not 5Mbps, but 0.0005Mbps. So yeah... maybe just a little slow.

But the best thing that happened this week was by far the most unexpected. This morning I left my house alone to head to church, as my wife was still under the weather. As I approached my car quietly, by myself, I heard someone say something- and I almost blotted it out as background noise, like someone having a conversation with someone else. But the voice was just direct enough to my ears that it caught my attention, and I looked up, across the parking lot to see a man I had seen and assumed lived at the other apartment building. With hesitation but determination enough, he asked if I could give him a ride to the gas station. Naturally my instincts kicked in for a quick second as I thought, "wait, am I going to give a ride to a stranger?" But after a very quick moment of hesitation I said, "sure, hop in!" I then took him to the gas station so he could get beer and cigarettes. Definitely not where I pictured I'd be on a Sunday morning, but then we must remember, Jesus not only found himself, but voluntarily went to places we would not so quickly associate with spiritual atmosphere. And I was glad I could offer him a ride this morning, because not only did we have the chance to talk about how hard his relationship had been with his wife over the past little bit, and how it seemed like they were going to break up, but I made a friend that day, and although he leads a life and makes choices I would readily call questionable and even miserable, he is a friend, nonetheless, and I was glad to meet him!

In recounting this experience, I felt silly that I didn't invite him along to church- he probably would've politely declined, but still, for some in a situation like his, a peaceful atmosphere of spiritual rejuvenation is sometimes exactly the cure to what ails 'ya. I also chuckle to myself in saying that, because I will also readily admit there are a number of weeks I can count just in recent months where I didn't really feel like going, because I'm not a big socializer, and of course, there's the natural presumptions you formulate in your mind, that usually go something like "is today's Sunday school lesson really going to be anything new or interesting?", "what's one week" or "I don't really think I have anything to contribute this week, spiritually, to any discussions".

But all the same, whether it's church, day-to-day uplifting experiences or my own personal spiritual knowledge, I'm grateful to know what I know, and that I have the opportunity to help others if they wish it. I suppose, in a roundabout way, that's one reason I decided to start writing on this blog. I hope what I say week to week (and especially this one) doesn't come off as "preachy" or "high and holy", because my intended purpose is to admit that I am a MedjoPangit person who lives in a MedjoPangit world, and what little good I learn and attain, I hope to share and impart to those who wish to receive it. If I wasn't afraid of losing a number of people (whether by lack of interest, or by boring them to sleep), I could probably go on for many, many paragraphs about all the great and good things I've learned, and the lessons I've learned from mistakes made. But alas, I digress.

The point is, I am glad to be me- someone who isn't very good, but tries to be better- and that I had the opportunity to make a friend this week, and that I have what I have, and that I can share it, sometimes. Hopefully you find ways to share the light in your life with others around you, too. Until next week, see ya!