Deacon Dan Wright

Pope on Priests and the Digital Media

I was delighted today to discover that the pope is asking priests to begin making wider use of digital media such as blogs in order to evangelize. For several years now I have strongly held that the Internet provides one of the best means ever to take the gospel to the entire world.  

Electronic evagelization is something that all of us can take part in--I note the numerous blogs by Catholic laypeople and certainly the good number already in existence by priests (many fewer by deacons such as myself)--but the priest has a special call to take the gospel to all the world. Therefore, it is very encouraging to see the pope's support for priests in this area.

A number of years ago I recall hearing someone with far-reaching insight say that with the Internet we have to avoid the mistake we made with Television in terms of not using it to it's fullest potential. Of course there are notable efforts, such as EWTN and televised Masses, in existence already in terms of television, but there's room for much more.  

The pope speaks of the Church exercising a "diaconia" of culture, and of course this is something that we can all be involved in bringing about. I pray that whatever efforts I put in here on this blog will be an inspiration to all people--lay, religious, and clergy--to take a greater role in bringing the gospel to all the world. However, even more we should all pray that the media may be used to spread Christian values and culture in a world where more often than not the media serves purposes that are opposed to the gospel.

Here is a direct link to the Pope's message. 

Computer Problems

I've had some technical problems recently but I'm still blogging.  I don't usually blog about tech stuff but I figured why not since my particular problem took a good part of last night.  There may be a better solution, but if you ever have this problem you'll know where to go and you'll know that it doesn't hurt to try and do it yourself.  My dad would have been proud of me.

A couple days ago my desktop computer, which runs Vista Home Premium, began to shut down all by itself after about 20 minutes running time--not a crash but a systematic shutdown.  At first I thought it was a virus but on a hunch I took the cover off and discovered four years worth of dust accumulation.  Most likely the problem was overheating, and the websites I found on the problem seemed to confirm it. 

I got as much dirt out of it as possible using canned air until my hand was freezing, but it was still all gunked up.  I unhooked everything and took the computer to the Best Buy near my home where I bought it in 2004.  The Geek Squad guy was really helpful and took the computer out back and cleaned it with compressed air for $20.  It looked close to new inside when he got through with it.  In addition they ran a quick diagnostic at no charge to ascertain that the machine was virus free.  Everything looked good except for some adware that my teenage son had installed.

When I got back home I did the most important piece of work of the night.  I took a Phillips screwdriver and removed four screws from the heatsink and cleaned the CPU.  It wasn't as bad as I expected.  I removed the old silver thermal paste with a Q-Tip, paper towel, and some isopropyl alcohol.  The Geek Squad fellow had sold me a new tube of thermal paste for $15 and told me how to apply it.  After spreading a thin layer of paste on the CPU, I put the four screws back in and reassembled the housing.  Just to make sure that the shut down wasn't caused by a system error I restored it to a month ago and updated the virus profiles.  Now everything is running fine.

The counter manager at Best Buy told me that some motherboards will do a systematic shutdown to prevent thermal damage.  I did get a chance to ask him if I recognized him from my baptism class but he said that he was a Baptist and the son of a minister.  Still, it was good encounter.

Overall I may have saved up to $300 or better by doing it myself.  While I never was good at working on cars, I've discovered that taking computers apart isn't as daunting.  The hardware is basically just plugged in.  Although I don't typically take the cover off my computer, I'm glad I did it last night.  Also, the guy at Geek Squad deserve a big thanks.

A Glass of Ice Water in Hell

Okay, I don't normally blog about technology but I do have a category tab for "Web/Tech" that I don't remember ever using.  This caught my eye today and made me chuckle--it reminded me of my wife, who cares little for my installation of Vista on our home desktop:

(Computerworld) -- Apple Inc.'s CEO Steve Jobs compared Windows to hell in an on-stage conversation with the Wall Street Journal's personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg at the newspaper's D: All Things Digital conference yesterday.

After Mossberg asked Jobs about the popularity of Apple's iTunes music store software and Jobs said more than 300 million copies were in circulation, Mossberg replied: "So that makes you an enormous Windows software developer".

"We are," said Jobs.

"How does that make you feel?"

"We've got cards and letters from lots of people that say iTunes is their favorite app on Windows," Jobs said, then shrugged, paused and smiled. "It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell,"...

Read it for yourself here

Sure, at first there were some bugs to work out on my Vista installation--you may recall me blogging (complaining) about it late last year--and also, sure enough, iTunes didn't work on it at all for a month or two.  However, that's all fixed.  I found my Vista incompatible software and removed it; I was tired of it anyhow.  Vista works fine now.  Furthermore, I like it--a lot--and I wouldn't go back (though for now I'm keeping XP on my laptop out of sentimentality).

I learned computers on a Mac Classic and for years I swore that I would always be a Mac man, but somewhere down along the way I found myself trying to right-click too many times. I wrote all my grad school and seminary papers on my Mac using Write Now software, but eventually its 40 Mb hard drive filled up.  I've asked my techie friends how I might save that stuff to a Windows format but they just scratch their heads.

I've learned that in the inferno of technology ice water comes in handy in a lot of different places.