So what can be expected moving from the Okanagan Valley where you have super hot temps and semi desert conditions (cacti, rattlesnakes, tumble-weeds, black widows, etc) to the colder climate of Central BC (some would call this Northern BC)? Having been here for only 1.5 months I feel there are things to share now, before I forget about them which can only be expressed as a first impression.

- Cost of housing is 1/2 of the Okanagan

- Cost of land is 1/4 to 1/2 of the Okanagan

- Food prices are close to the same with some exceptions depending on the store(s) you visit.

- People are MUCH MORE friendly in general. There is a northern culture that just seems to inhabit most people and places I have visited.

- Winter plays with you in mid October for a few days.. melts away and comes back to stay mid November.

- Winter tires are non negotiable. In some parts of BC (basically ONLY Vancouver) you might argue that winter tires are not required. If you leave Vancouver then you NEED them in BC.

- Everything is VERY easy to find and laid out very well in the Prince George area. We were able to find everything without exception with no problems.

- The agricultural side here seems much more slim than the Okanagan and Lower Mainland. If you want to buy animals you may have to travel out of area to get what you are looking for. Likely due to smaller population than the areas previously mentioned.

- You’ll ONLY find U-Haul trucks in major cities Like Vernon, Kamloops and Prince George (Williams Lake or 100 mile house are NOT considered major cities).

- Prince George has nearly everything that Kelowna has, an Airport, A University, a College, a Regional Health Authority, a Costco, a SuperStore, Canadian Tire, etc.

- Prince George has a stigma for bad crime and very cold weather. Both of these are over-rated and sensationalized. But hey it keeps the masses from coming and raising property values and taxes so that’s ok with me.

- There are pockets of godly Christians in the area making it a good destination for Christian Fellowship. Of course it will take a bit of time to find them

That is all for today.

We have moved to:

9115 Salmon Valley Road

Prince George, BC V2K 5W4

Following our family vision we are now totally debt free! I just got high speed Internet installed today and all is back to normal (sorry for not having answered emails / dealt with all of the communications over the past month but we had to move 1.5 times and setup shop 800 KM away from where we once lived).

That is all for now.

There are two other females expecting, so hopefully this year we will have more success than last.

Here are a few pictures below:

1. Spiritual related:
- It takes time to progress in your faith
- It takes time to understand others and their views
- Love is a fore-most proof of Holiness
- If you're not progressing (which takes time) your regressing.
- Prayer is the key to having changes take place in this world.
- Prayer is ineffective without obedience.
- Obedience begins with a choice yes or no, then progresses from there.
- Most people are not overly interested in your faith, they are more interested in their own things.
- Time is precious, everyone wants your time. Give Him your time.

2. Technology related:
- Plugin architectures are great, flexible and save uncounted heartache for years to come when properly applied.
- Genericly designed systems and code reap uncounted benefits for years to come and help you to be "agile"
- Test driven development and related tools like FIT and Unit Testing are essential for the current world atmosphere, they allow change in any project within a very short time frame.
- Time is precious, everyone wants your time. Use it wisely.

Luke 6:44 For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.

Have been sinking deeply into my heart. I spend a lot of time observing life around me as I work. One can see many types of fruit, some profitable, some selfish, some harmful and yet all of these reveal the tree from which they have their origin. Recently I shared on a sunday afternoon a message regarding the standard of Christianity. Today admitedly many hate the Christian faith because many associate to it the hurt, killing and sin of those who call themselves Christians yet produce fruits of another kind. The forerunner of Jesus Christ was John the baptist who said:

Matthew 3:10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

The problem with non-christians is they don't properly attribute that the same people who display hypocrasy and fruits other than that of Christ are not Christs. Every tree is known by his fruit. The problem with Christians is they do not evaluate their own personal fruit to see whether it is the fruit of Christ or if they are even a Christian at all!

2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?

Now this comes to the point, if Jesus Christ is in you, you cannot help but live a life producing the fruits of Christ himself.

Galatians 5:22-25 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ

- Don't rely on built in testing in the BIOS (like memtest86). I had bad RAM (OCZ RAM) and had to RMA to get a good set. It was found via the freeware program prime95 using the torture test.

- WATCH OUT if you think you can easily update your KVM switch (keyboard mouse video switch for multiple computers). I updated my keyboard and mouse which now days seems like they only sell USB. This forced me to buy a new KVM switch because NO kvm switch seems to work with USB keyboards. YEs with a USB mouse… no with a USB keyboard. I got an IOGEAR GCS632U KVM and had problems initially because my new motherboard (from DFI) didn't provide enough voltage for stable operation. The only way to solve that was to purchase a PCI USB card and use a USB port from the card with the KVM. I tried a setting on the motherboard to up the voltage but had no change at all, thus I had to either ditcvh the motherboard or get the USB card.

- Experienced lots of DNS errors using the built in network connectors in the dfi motherboard and ultimately found out the retailer had installed ipv6 on the NIC's. Removing IPv6 solved that issue.

Ok now the REAL cheesy part. I moved my AOpen 56-SM software modem into the new system and suddenly callerid doesn't work. WHAT!!! I'm the author of a caller id application and now I can't even use my own app???? Well looks like the drivers from AOpen are so cheesy that there is no solution yet to the problem. CallerID info get to the modem but the driver flakes out and doesn't pass it through to windows. My windows modem log looks like:

01-16-2006 10:01:05.812 – Interpreted response: Ring
01-16-2006 10:01:05.828 – TSP(0000): LINEEVENT: LINE_NEWCALL
01-16-2006 10:01:05.828 – TSP(0000): LINEEVENT: LINECALLSTATE_OFFERING
01-16-2006 10:01:05.828 – TSP(0000): LINEEVENT: LINEDEVSTATE_RINGING(0×1)
01-16-2006 10:01:05.906 – TSP(0000): Enable Digit Monitoring
01-16-2006 10:01:07.125 – Recv:
01-16-2006 10:01:07.125 – Unknown Response
01-16-2006 10:01:07.125 – Recv: DATE = 0116TIME = 1000NMBR = 2507639079NAME = TOTL CARE SFTWR
01-16-2006 10:01:07.125 – Unknown Response
01-16-2006 10:01:11.625 – Recv: RING
01-16-2006 10:01:11.625 – Interpreted response: Ring

Notice the Unknown response from the modem driver!!!

NOW THATS CHEESY!!! Somehow the old driver worked FINE in win2k but that old driver DOES NOT INSTALL for XP. Until AOpen gets their act together (I posted in their support forums) I've added support for Soft-has CallerID to detect this scenario and snag the callerid info right out of the logfile… any it works.

THAT MY FRIENDS IS CHEESY!!! I feel disgusting having to write code to do such a thing, but hey… it works. So next release of CallerID will support bad TAPI drivers

And last but not least… In Canada we are one week away from a new government to be elected. I thought I'd let everyone know who I voted for. I voted many years ago… and it was my last vote… ever! I had placed my X on the name: Jesus Christ.

1Jo 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Heb 11:16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

1Jo 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
1Jo 5:5 Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
2Jo 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

Jas 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

Thats all for now.

]]> http://soft-haus.com/blog/2007/06/23/what-has-mark-been-up-to/feed/ 0 http://soft-haus.com/blog/2007/06/23/callerid-beta-2108-released/ http://soft-haus.com/blog/2007/06/23/callerid-beta-2108-released/#comments Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:00:00 +0000 Mark Vejvoda http://soft-haus.com/newblog/?p=14 We have updated CallerID with many updates, download the latest version to see for yourself.

- Fixes for web phone # lookup and web map lookup
- Working support for MySQL database server (requires a full install for new dll's)
- Proper shutdown of CallerID when shutting down windows
- Importing WAB contacts now works
- Network feature allows importing all contacts
- Network feature allows updating of clients using the servers version of CallerID.
- Speed improvements when a new call is detected
- Numerous other bug fixes.

- Moving everything to a web application is possible, but creates potentially expensive challenges for the unexpereinced.

- Moving to a pure HTML / DHTML provides a broad flexible potential audience of users, but is very expensive if you must provide similar usability of a legacy stateful application.

- Providing a web page with thousands of editable controls is not inherently usable, but if you "have to" do it you may consider this to speed it up:

]]> http://soft-haus.com/blog/2007/06/23/a-technology-summary-of-the-first-half-of-2005/feed/ 0 http://soft-haus.com/blog/2007/06/23/relentless-spammers/ http://soft-haus.com/blog/2007/06/23/relentless-spammers/#comments Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:00:00 +0000 Mark Vejvoda http://soft-haus.com/newblog/?p=17 Well not that I had anyone use the feature, but I had to turn off the ability to add comments to this blog due to spammers advertising their agenda in my space. Thus feel free to drop an email if you have comments to share.

Thanks

If sending us emails with support inquiries, please add extra details indicating what you were doing when you got an error. This helps us find problems more quickly, especially as our users grow in large numbers it helps to give as much detail as possible.

Thanks

- Jacob Boehme 1600's (The way to Christ)

- William Law 1700's (The Power of the Spirit)

- Andrew Murray 1800's (Absolute Surrender and With Christ in the school of prayer)

- Watchman Nee 1900's (The Spiritual man and Changed into His likeness)

- Brother Lawrence of the ressurection (???) (Practising the Presence of God)

Each in their own personality that God gave them describes a willing abandonment of man's self desire, and a taking up of the Will of God. This process requiring more than a mental shift, a completely new birth of life in the soul. The idea of the Words we read in the Bible, being so much different from the practise of the deep meanings they represent. The understand of the meanings of these Words, requires the will of man to be inhabited by God's Holy Spirit, which can only happen when a suitable temple or body exists for this to take place. Man in his surrender and waving of the white flag to God must resolve to every moment depend on this Power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the sin that surrounds him. To beleive this is the beggining in child-like faith on the path of the fulness of Christ. To dismiss as idealistic and impossible is to join with the disciples of Christ in their fleshly state and say "who then can be saved". I see now that the Christian faith always has been and always will be a simple act of faith and resolve in allowing Christ to live through our bodies via His Holy Spirit living in us. I repeat the words of Gerhard Du Toit, in the spirit of the great commisison "I want to see God walking around in black bodies", and I add in all colours of skin and types of creed. For God loved the whole world, and desires its entire salvation. Only the child will enter into the gates of Holiness. All the complexities and studies of theology will end in the same idea as the book of Ecclesiastes… of writing many books there is no end… but what is the sum of the whole matter? Fear God and walk in His way.

Many bugs have been fixed since monday night March 28, 2005. This beta will be released as a general release shortly. One new addition is under the help menu option "Test my hardware". This new feature is a section for testing your hardware for CallerID functionality. It will be developed over time to become more user friendly but its current purpose is to aid our customers in trouble shooting common problems.

Other bugs fixed:
- Properly saves record errors setting
- Corrected message about file missing during voicemail recording
- during software updates if the unzip tool is missing it will automatically be downloaded from our website to properly complete updates.
- New ability to save maps of your callers location. You may also paste images from the clipboard into the map for saving locally in your database.
- Likewise when sending tech support inquiries via the help/tech support menu option CallerID now attempts to compress the attached log files to save bandwidth.

*NOTE: If anyone reading this is using a Voice over IP VOIP provider for telephone service and using our software, please let us know by posting a reply to this blog via the comments link.

Thanks