June 2007

How Much Can We Really Do?
Confessions of a “can-do” high tech wizard

Dum-De-Dum-Dum.^[1]

Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent. It’s a story about God’s hand on one common ordinary person.

I work in High Tech. I carry a laptop. My name’s Pete.

I grew up in California… and in rural upstate New York.^[2] I’ve lived in Colorado since the early 1990’s. One wife, two daughters, three computers and more pets buried than I can count.

To understand this story, you need to know about two parts of my life.

The first part relates to all those computers. “High Tech” is my background, my giftedness and skill—some might call it an anointing from the Lord.

A couple of years out of college, I was burdened by the sense that God wanted all of me, not just some volunteer time and some dollars in the Sunday offering bucket. So on the day our first daughter was born, and with my wife Leslie’s blessing, I quit my job. My goal was to earn time for God as a computer consultant in Silicon Valley.

God has greatly blessed that side of me. I’ve had the privilege of helping create many of the products that have shaped our world, from phones to computers, diabetes monitors to accounting software, maps to market research.

He also blessed me with a very clear high tech ministry. In the 1980’s He directed me to lead the computer work that resulted in the 10/40 Window model, and to coordinate the equivalent of “market analysis” of global mission. In the 1990’s, our team solved the problem of worldwide group email for leadership teams. And now I lead a small team that’s moving from helping people talk to helping people truly work together.

Bottom line: I’m a high tech entrepreneur, a problem solver, a concrete “can do” guy. I praise God for His amazing grace to give me gifts and skills to solve almost any problem.

Accident Site, Pretoria South Africa

Now let’s jump to the other side of who I am.

Simply put, I exist as a miracle of God’s healing, and it’s time to boldly declare His power to easily perform what scientists might call “low probability events.”

Ten years ago I became one of those people you’ve read about: dead, gone to heaven, miraculously restored to life by God. I’ve been cautious about making the story public because I know how bad the hype can get. But after a decade, it’s time to share this story of God’s signs and wonders. The signs point us to God, and He gives us something to wonder about!

By the way, if you’re skeptical as you read this, please remember that I’m a skeptic too, well trained in science and engineering. So let’s just review the facts.

June 27, 1997, I was in Pretoria, South Africa to speak about technology at a huge global missions conference. I finished a prep meeting, across a residential street from one of the conference churches. I looked both ways and then started across the street. Suddenly, I heard “LOOK OUT!!!” and that was the end.^[3]

[What happened next is not my own memory. Eyewitnesses filled this in afterward.]

A “bull bar” similar to what hit Pete

A speeding car had rounded a curve and come over the top of the nearby hill. The driver was going much too fast (50+ km/hr) and slammed into me head-on. The blow crushed my thigh; my head smashed his windshield. Flipping into the air, I somersaulted a couple of times at least 20 feet off the ground, and crashed head first into the ground about 50 feet away. I was completely still, broken and bloodied.

More traffic prevented the man I was with from crossing the street for a minute. Reaching me, he found I wasn’t breathing and had no pulse (“cardiac arrest”). The church pastor’s wife also came running; they prayed against an overwhelmingly powerful sense of cold and death surrounding my body. A few minutes later, a passing doctor stopped to help. She verified that I was clinically dead, and said there was no reason to try “CPR” nor to call an ambulance.^[6]

For at least four or five more minutes, the spiritual battle raged—Pete lying dead in a bloody heap, and two believers praying with all their might.

Suddenly, my eyes opened! “What happened???” I asked. The intercessors immediately knew that the battle had been won, and I would be OK. (For those who like to count, yes I was clinically dead for at least eight or nine, possibly ten or eleven minutes.)

I’m told it took 1½ hours for the ambulance to show up, and during the wait my companions talked with me about how to notify my family. Sadly, I have no recall of any of this—in fact, the people with me during the accident were upset later when I didn’t follow through on whatever it was we had discussed! Perhaps I was in severe shock? I don’t know.

Here’s what I do remember; and can never forget. Lying there in a broken crumpled heap, I felt a wonderful sense of being cared for by God. “Wow, I’m on my way to heaven!” I thought. “This is going to be soooo wonderful. What peace! What a wonderful place! And not only that, I’m going to get a new body, and God is simply taking care of everything. Aaahhhhh….”

And then everything changed. I was heading back to earth. And it hurt. Horribly. As I began to scream, God “spoke” two things into me:

One, “what are you whining about?”

Two, “you think it is wonderful in heaven? I Am With You just as much on earth!”

And just like that, I was relaxed and happy. Yes, while in excruciating pain, I was happy.

I felt such peace from the Lord. Then I woke up, and began the rest of my adventure of healing.

Speaking of which, let’s focus on healing now, since this is a story about God’s power.”^[4]

Broken femur, before/after surgery

At AD2000 meeting, one week after accident

Camping at Turquoise Lake w/o pain, July 24 1997

First, what did the doctors expect?^[5]

• More than 8-9 minutes of clinical death, outside a hospital, and no emergency treatment. You’re dead. At best, you’ll recover as a vegetable.

• Shattered femur (thigh bone). The most painful possible break. Two to three years of excruciating pain before recovery.

• Overall leg condition (lost more than five units of blood, I had no muscle left in my upper leg, and no feeling in several parts of my leg and foot.). Five to six weeks in the hospital, three months in a wheel chair, three more months on crutches. In half a year, you’ll begin to learn how to walk again.

• Head trauma resulting from high speed vehicle-pedestrian impact. Severe concussion and some brain damage expected. Long term memory loss.

Here’s what actually happened:

Home with Leslie

• For two weeks, I couldn’t ignore God’s healing touch on and in my body. (I’m told thousands were praying!)

• A CAT scan showed I had no concussion or brain damage. The doctors were so shocked, that they performed a second scan just to be sure!

• I was discharged in one week not a month, and attended the final meeting of the conference. And I returned home in time for my 18^th wedding anniversary.

• In three weeks, all pain was gone (not three years). I didn’t even need Tylenol!

• In less than a month I was done with my wheelchair (not three.) I went camping with my family!

WOW! Did I, or the doctors, accomplish any of that? No.

God healed me. God did it, and spoke peace and joy into my life along the way!

How did it change my life? All the skills are still there, but I have zero doubt where they come from and who empowers me to use them. I need to be where He wants, and do what He wants, no matter how hard.

My life journey is completely tied to God. I can’t measure my life by human success… My goal is to hear and obey the leading of the Holy Spirit. Period.

“That’s fine for you Pete, but…” OK, you’re right. I have an “advantage.” Even so, I see something even more amazing every single day.

I’m surrounded by people who also know that God is with them, no matter what. My wife Leslie, my coworkers, our intercessors and more. They too walk in “hard” places. They too know the incredible joy of total dependence on God.

Come join us! You’ll only experience miracles when you are in a position to receive them!

So, that’s my story on this ten-year anniversary. I’d love to hear your story. How are you learning to totally depend on God, to follow Him no matter what?

[1] A hint

[2] God blessed me—burdened me might express it better—with many gifts and skills. Finishing high school in the 1970’s, I already had strong opinions: disgusted with how computers detract from real relationships, I determined to avoid computers for the rest of my life. (Really!) But I was fascinated by science and technology, and dreamed of making the next Six Million Dollar Man.

Neither dream came true: the expenses of college led me to begin a computer career the second half of my freshman year in college (even though I avoided computer-related classes.) And while I quickly absorbed my semiconductor “chip” classes, I bombed out on the pre-med side of things.

[3] Something that was a personal blessing to me: at the warning, I never really had time to react. Some assumed I looked the “wrong” way, because they drive on the “wrong” side of the street in South Africa. I don’t recall and it doesn’t matter. I did not even react. I’m told the car was going so fast, I could not possibly have jumped out of the way in time. So I have no horrible memory of being hit!

[4] Many other “unusual coincidences” could be shared from this one incident. Summarizing just a few:

• I was hit by the “perfect car” – rather than rolling over and crushing me, the “bull bar” broke bones and sent me flying.

• My accident was minutes from a just-built private hospital, specializing in bone surgery!
  (2019 Addition by Pete. I never shared the following until 2017, because I personally could not believe it! It was far more than what I shared here. Today in 2019, Pretoria East is (and for all these years has been) considered the very best hospital on the continent of Africa. I checked this myself in 2017: the only hospital in Africa with equipment and actively performing Davinci robotic surgery. So yes, not just nearby, but the best of the best!.)

• The insurance adjuster prayed for us, and arranged payment for my flight home (some call this the biggest miracle!)

[5] I’m no medical expert; I’m sharing what my care providers in South Africa and the US told me. I was treated by the best in the business, including the chief orthopedic surgeon for the U.S. Olympic team. He was not a believer but this sure made his jaw drop!)

(2019 Additional note for this paragraph.) I’m a stickler, so are my friends. Several have asked me to add up the time I was “gone.” To me this is not a big deal but I agree it is evidence. My understanding: (at least a min for first guy to cross)+(at least a min for pastor’s wife to arrive)+(at least 3 min for doctor to show up while they prayed)+(at least 4-5 min later I woke…. sense of people on the ground. (~1+)+(~1+)+(3+)+(4 or 5). Should be min 9-10, but let’s call in 8-9 minimum. And find more evidence

[6] (2019 Additional note) 20+ years later, we would question many things about a doctor who would not suggest CPR. Please remember, life was different back then worldwide. And Pretoria in particular was in turmoil.

ICTA has been given permission to offer you early access to Bible Islands, a safe, online learning game adventure experience for kids 4-99.
ICTA’s Christmas gift to you:  you and your family can all PLAY FREE in Bible Islands with a two-week family FREE Trial Subscription good through January 2nd (it becomes a one-week trial after that.)  Then if you opt to become a member of Bible Islands, using the ICTA link provides access to discounted 6 or 12-month family membership packages.  The makers of Bible Islands will also donate a significant portion of your family membership to ICTA ministry projects.   So check this out, tell us what you think…and pass along to others who may be interested.

More details below the fold…

Bible Islands is a hi-tech education experience for kids, designed to be an attractive and fun online gaming experience to reclaim an hour or two a day from that 4-6 hours a day kids are consuming mainstream media.

Bible Islands introduces kids to Bible stories, character building games and concepts, creative activates and also games in cross-curricular subjects of math, science, English and even Hebrew letters – all from the Christian faith and a “family values” perspective.

Bible Islands also has a completely safe and monitored online communication system for kids to send pre-selected text and picture messages to friends, parents and grandparents who are connected in the Bible Islands’ LINKO system.

Play special Christmas games and see Hermie’s “Meaning of Christmas” song in Bible Islands’ Glueworks Cinema

Bible Islands provides a personalized player account for each child, then it starts at their age appropriate level and grows with them to keep them challenged.  Parents also get a special account to play too, plus a special parent’s webpage to guide and monitor their child’s progress and time spent in Bible Islands.

Bible Islands features animated characters, stories and music from several popular Christian Children’s DVD series (Glueworks, Hermie & Friends, Gigi, God’s Little Princes, On the Farm, and many more.)

We would love for you to take advantage of the FREE Play Trial of Bible Islands and tell us what you think (even if you just want to play the Hebrew letter learning games for yourself.) Until January 3rd, you get a two-week free trial that includes Christmas-only games and videos. This is a very dynamic system, with more material being added all the time. (Note: you are welcome to share the link with others.)

It only took me five minutes to discover that Mac marketing hype has its limits.

Administrating a Mac server requires the ability to look at a variety of configuration files, particularly when doing anything beyond the bare basics.

So, one of my first goals was to make it easy to see the “hidden” files on the computer.

It’s easy on Windows. Just open up Tools->Options and change a checkbox or two.

How about on the mac?

Nope, there’s no option for this. It’s not in the user guide. Nowhere. I guess they just assume people don’t need to see hidden files.

So, I searched Google… and found a good set of instructions. Here’s what it takes:

1. Open Automator (in your Applications folder) and choose Service from the list of templates provided and click the Choose button.

2 In the left hand column under Library, select Utilities.

3. In the second column, drag “Run Shell Script” to the right hand pane.

4. At the top of the right hand pane where you dragged the Run Shell Script action, click on the right-hand popup menu and change “any application” to “Finder”. This sets the service so it only appears and can be activated by the keyboard shortcut when Finder is the active application.

5. Then click on the popup menu next to “Service receives” and choose “no input”. It’s important you do this step after step 4 because if you do the reverse, Finder won’t be available as an option in the right hand menu.

6. Copy and paste the following text into the empty text area of the Run Shell Script action:

7.

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
SHOWHIDDEN=`defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles`
if [ $SHOWHIDDEN -eq 1 ]; then
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool FALSE
else
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE
fi
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'

Completed Automator action, ready to save (click to enlarge)
8. Choose File–>Save, and give the new service a meaningful name like “Toggle Hidden Files” that will appear in the Services menu. Once you’ve done that, you can go to the Services menu (located in the current application menu, next to the Apple menu) and your newly created service should appear there. You can even run it, it’s already functional, just lacking a keyboard shortcut.

9. Open System Preferences–>Keyboard–>Keyboard Shortcuts and select Services in the left column.

10. Setting the keyboard shortcut (click to enlarge)
11. Scroll down to the bottom and under the General category, you should see your newly created service listed there. Select it, then Double-click close to the right side of the selected line to reveal a field where you can enter a custom keyboard shortcut. Enter “Shift+Command+.” (might as well keep it consistent with the shortcut used in open/save dialog boxes), and then quit System Preferences.

The good news: follow those instructions carefully, and you will now be able to view or hide the hidden files. (By pressing Shift, Command and “+” together.)

Update (March 7, 2011): A friend has discovered an easier solution, albeit still non-standard. The built-in Dashboard app supports several thousand user-supplied “widget” mini-apps. One of those apps is the Hidden Files widget. With that widget installed (and the Dashboard icon dragged to your icon bar), toggling hidden file visibility is as simple as firing up the Dashboard, clicking on the Widget, and re-hiding the Dashboard.

It is strongly recommended that you create recovery DVDs/media before using your computer for the first time.

(further explanation of why this is such a Good Idea…)

For complete detailed information on how to create recovery DVDs/media, see the “Creating Recovery DVDs/media” section in the electronic User’s Guide preinstalled on your computer.

Hmmm… the instructions are in the computer, but I need to read them before I turn it on.

Maybe I need to lay hands on the computer… like with a hammer?

I’ve certainly learned something from this exercise.

Stay calm…

Would you believe we’re learning a bit about Mac? … yes, the computer.

A friend was nice enough to donate a fully-redundant pair of high end Mac Mini servers, with all the accessories, to upgrade our decade-old Linux-based office infrastructure. Thousands of dollars of equipment, complete with full warranty, etc. THANKS!

The donor, as well as a few other friends who have heard about this, have asked me to share my experiences as we go through this adventure.

I know Linux, I know Windows, I know lots of older systems… but I don’t really know Mac at all. So this will be a great learning experience!

Our goal: move our existing Linux-based highly tuned email server (and everything that goes with it) over to the Mac server. And do so retaining as much of the vaunted user-friendliness of the Mac as possible along the way.

Our situation is a bit more interesting than some because of our very advanced custom email filtering: our underpowered decade-old Linux box automatically handles thousands of spam attempts every hour, plus up to 20 denial of service attacks per second on a bad day. And we have to be very conservative in our spam-blocking because we work with partners all over the world (yes, even Nigeria!) How do we do it? Stick with me and I’ll tell all…

Let’s get a few techie bits out of the way.

In this series, I’ll try not to submarine too deep into tech talk; after all, many of our friends are non-tech. So if you don’t understand something in here, feel free to ask. Even so, I assume this series of blog posts is of more interest to tech-savvy folk…

What’s a Mac Mini Server? It’s a tiny all-in-one computer about the size of two bricks side-by-side. It has a bunch of connector ports, and an on-off switch. That’s it. You can’t change any of the parts inside the box (at least on our version.) Some of the parts and ports of most interest:

• Two internal 500GB hard disks. One of them comes with the Mac OS pre-installed. The other starts out blank
• 4GB of RAM, which is plenty
• One Gigabit wired network port. That’s going to hurt because we’d like to have two parallel networks here
• One firewire port. We’ll use that to connect a redundant disk drive (two 2TB drives set up to mirror in case one goes bad) as the main system drive. That way if a drive dies we can keep running, and can replace it without losing the server. We may also use this for some other interesting tricks.
• Several USB ports. We’ll eventually attach a (regular 10/100) wired ethernet cable to one of them, to act as the gateway to our DSL service.
• One mini-DVI display connector. This requires a special adapter to connect to a screen; we’ve got all that as well.

That’s it. Some things I wish it had (but as Grandma used to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride…)…

• Regular VGA display connector so we could use our KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switcher. Not going to happen.
• A second Gigabit wired network port. Nope.
• A second firewire port

As for the Mac operating system (OSX 10.6.4, “Snow Leopard”)… it’s actually a version of Unix, with some Apple-provided GUI “eye candy” on top. Don’t disparage the eye candy too much — it makes things simple for casual users…at least some of the time. More on that later!

Initial Setup

The first step is to get one of the servers running, with a proper basic configuration.

Getting started was mostly a smooth process. After skimming about nine inches of System Administrator books we were given, I decided I didn’t really need to learn a lot up front. So, I plugged the parts together, fired up the computer, used the built-in utility to reformat the external RAID drive (into a 500GB “system” partition and 1.5TB of “data” space), copied the system files across (yup, just drag-n-drop), and told the computer to boot from the external drive. Not bad so far. ‘Twas as easy as using Windows

Next, I wanted to arrange some form of remote access since none of us in the office want to have to go to the server closet every time we need to do something. Even more so if everyone’s at home… or visiting India!

I tried several remote-access solutions, including the popular VNC (there’s a built-in VNC system in the Mac). Unfortunately, none of them worked well. Happily, our Bomgar remote-desktop system works VERY nicely!**

Before I finish this intro story, I’ll leave you with a puzzler…

Unlike other computers, if you unplug the LCD display from the Mac, it will no longer allow remote GUI access!

Anyone know how to fix this?

Please stop by and visit! And, if you see a current web page with our old/wrong address, we’d love a reminder to get it changed. Our new headquarters address:

ICTA
5555 Erindale Dr., Suite 205
Colorado Springs, CO 80918 USA
(tel) 1-719-785-0120

Mostly
harmless

Please comment on this post if you have any trouble… we want to know!

After tearing out a few more of my dwindling collection of hairs, I think site registration is now working for everyone. Had to create a plugin to fix it; tech details below!

For now, we’ve enabled comments even if you can’t register. Please tell us…

• Is registration working for you?
• Does the blog site look ok?
• Is anything hard to navigate?
• Do the private and/or public RSS feeds work?

Thanks!

Tech Details

This blog is built using WPmu – multiuser WordPress. There are settings that allow new user registration and even new blog creation. Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you is this: there’s no way to enable the setting that allows users to register themselves!

I’d love it if software designers put more effort into serving the needs of blog administrators, as well as you the blog readers. We’d call that a SLTy perspective: serving well.

Bottom line: a bit of web searching revealed the issue and the code I needed. Moments later, I had created a plugin that does what we need. It’s short and sweet:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: ICTA WPmu Registration Setup
Plugin URI: https://blogs.icta.net/plugins/
Description: Decipher users_can_register from WPmu registration setting
Version: 0.1
Author: Mr Pete
Author URI: https://blogs.icta.net/plugins/
*/

global $user_ID;

function wpmufrl() {
     $registration = get_site_option('registration');
     if ($registration == 'all' || $registration == 'user') {
         return true;
     } else {
         return false;
     }
}
add_filter('option_users_can_register', 'wpmufrl');
?>