danny’s space

Never remove a paper jam if you don’t know how to. Forced yanking will not fix the printer - it will tear the print head and cause black ink to run all over the printer stand and possibly the carpet. Thankfully black ink is water based and easy to wipe. Unfortunately it’s harder to wipe off your hands.

I came home yesterday to a post-it on the printer saying something along the lines of ‘malfunction, paper jam’. Sure enough, someone (I won’t say who) had tried to yank the paper out of the printer without knowing what the heck was going on, had destroyed the black ink cartridge print head, causing all 42mL of get black ink to stream out of the printer. It was bleeding ink.

Thankfully the printer is an HP, the 930C. Old-ish printer but has served us faithfully for many years, and it’s still going. A quick visit to the hp support website gave the answer (well, with a bit of tweaking). And now we have a fully functional, albeit dirty, inkjet again.

The right turn bay from Broadway into Mountain St was cordoned off this morning, and as the bus drove past there was police tape and fire engines galore. On closer inspection, the main hall of St Barnabas Broadway was burnt down, totally gutted by fire, tin roof collapsed over the historic stone walls. There’s an SMH article about it.

Please pray for the church. Pray that alternative places for services and activities will be found speedily, that the recovery effort will be efficient, that the investigators will have wisdom in determining the causes of the fire, and that the leaders of the church will wholly rely on our Lord for direction. Pray that the whole church community will show grace to one another and the wider community through such tragedy.

Destruction of a church building doesn’t destory the church, who are essentially Christ’s people on earth. Thank God that nothing can destory his church.

Thought it could never happen?

They’ve made a documentary series on the Science Olympiads, in particular the Biology program! It was filmed during 2005 and features the students and staff of the Australian Science Olympiads. The series airs on ABC starting June 15. Interesting info and student bios (as in biographies, not biology…) can be found on their official website.

Ooh, only 5 more weeks to go!

All thanks to a crazy State Transit bus driver.

The bus arrives at Town Hall outside Woolies at 8:30, the electronic sign at the front of the bus showing gibberish, but enough to discern the bus number, 461. A few people get on, and the bus is off.

After running numerous yellows and even a few reds (as good bus drivers do, you know, to get people to where they need to be on time) and driving through George Street with reckless abandon, a small white hatchback honks at the bus driver for cutting into the hatch’s lane after coming out from a bus stop. As you do.

Taking revenge, the bus driver nearly side swipes the hatch, and stops at a red (wow) with a hair’s breadth between the side of the bus and the side mirror of the hatch. If that wasn’t enough, the bus bellows out a honk before setting off once the lights hit green, leaving the hatch in its wake.

Then comes Railway Square, at around 8:35. Stops at the wrong stand, which I guess was warranted since there were too many buses piled up at the right stand, and everyone runs for the bus with confused expressions on their faces. As the last 2 passengers are getting on, the doors close and the bus drives off. And while navigating traffic on Parramatta Road and driving at the speed of everyone else, the driver fumbles around in his change tray for a passenger who stupidly didn’t buy a TravelTen. But there’s another passenger waiting in the no standing area after this first guy, and the driver finally gets the ticket to her 3 stops after she got on.

A few more yellows/reds, and thanks to no-one getting off (since the bus didn’t really stop for anyone even when they wanted), the bus got to the footbridge in record time.

Hey, it works for me. But I’m sure this is nothing compared to what other people have experienced.

Public transport stories don’t end there. Yesterday afternoon on the train home, this couple got on. The guy looked like he was just out of Long Bay, and the girl, well, I don’t know. A bunch of private school kids thought they’d be cute (or totally idiotic) and dare a friend to talk to this guy and ask how he was going and ask him for a cigarette (or something). So the kid goes up to Long Bay and has a bit of a chat, after which Long Bay gets fired up and screams at the kid. The kid cowers and runs away up the stairs, and Long Bay follows. Murmurs are heard, and Long Bay returns to sit down. After a few seconds, Long Bay screams at the kid at the top of his voice, and plays peekaboo disturbingly with the kid. Then he launches up the stairs again, takes his shirt off, reveals his well tattooed body, and throws his t-shirt down the stairs into his girl’s face. After a bit of a hustle and threats of bashing (Long Bay says to the kid, “I just got out of Long Bay”), another passenger gets up and fends for the kid who was no doubt cowering in the corner - I couldn’t see from my angle. The other private school boys promptly exit the carriage wearing smug smiles, leaving their friend to soil himself. After a bit of a chat between the two adults, Long Bay sits back down with his shirt off, and pulls out a ciggie, loudly asking the people in the carriage if they minded him lighting up. A woman puts up her hand, and he nods, seemingly respecting her choice. He playingly lights up anyway, but the ciggie actually catches alight, and he starts puffing, filling the carriage with noxious fumes. Thankfully it was nearly Gordon so I could get off. Another guy in a sling goes to tell the Japanese guard about Long Bay, and after a bit of a discussion everything was fine. I think.

It seems spammers have found my blog. And the spam protection of Wordpress isn’t that great. Don’t go for those cheap meds that they advertise in the comments.

In other news, nothing has really happened since my last post 2 months ago. Honours has been pretty tough, experiments failing left right and centre. I’ve started going into uni on Saturdays now so I can hopefully squeeze more work in, to finish everything by the August 25th deadline. I doubt I’ll finish but hey that’s honours for you!

A few interesting things over the last few weeks.

Sara and I went to Makoto (is that how to spell it?) in Chatswood last week, and were greeted with a nice public hair (minus the L) sitting atop a slice of lemon, wedged between two salmon sushi things. We spied it, and left it to travel on its journey around the conveyer belt. Lo and behold, a few minutes later, the hairy dish returned and it got too much - we had to tell someone. So we pointed it out to one of the waitresses, and she took a while to understand what was wrong - perhaps this kind of thing is not uncommon. Extra protein perhaps. The more shocking thing came later, when she presented the dish to one of the chefs standing in the middle area. He took the dish, and good on him for wearing gloves and protecting himself from the hair - he proceeded to remove it from the lemon slice and throw it underneath the bench. But he didn’t change gloves, and after putting the dish aside on the bench, resumed making the other sushi. Needless to say, we didn’t feel like eating there anymore.

In other news, this Da Vinci Code movie coming out seems like it’ll be fun for Christians and non-Christians alike. I’m surprised by how much the media and the public in general actually have to say about religion in general. Secular papers like the SMH have an article or three on religion every week. A few weeks ago, it was a dicussion on “whateverism”, what teens see these days as the religion of choice - “you can believe in one thing and change your mind, whatever” it went. Then a few days later on the front page was the revelation of the Gospel of Judas (I think), which was meant to challenge Christianity at its roots and present the view that Judas was a scapegoat and was actually commanded by Jesus himself to betray him. Interesting stuff.

Today in Stay in Touch, readers presented their thoughts on commandments for a new religion. Funny suggestions galore, at the end of the article was this: “Luke says we should stick with the Bible’s ancient commandments since ’science, the great god of the 21st century, cannot agree with itself for more than a couple of years’.”

And thanks to the Da Vinci Code, the SMH (in its typical antagonistic style) has put out a few articles such as the one talking about churches spending $50,000 on advertising spree to debunk the “offences and historical and theological errors” of Dan Brown’s book. One of the sites these articles refer to, challengingdavinci, is actually quite interesting and presents a realistic view on the issues presented by Brown’s novel. The other site, thedavincichallenge, also seems interesting and intellectually stimulating.

The Catholic church is massively protesting the launch of the movie, and is urging its members to boycott the thing. Other Christian societies say that the Da Vinci Code is a “wonderful opportunity for Christians … to discuss issues raised in the film“. And I think what Rob Forsyth, an ex-EU treasurer and now Bishop, says about the movie is good: “We’ve been surprised and challenged in that The Da Vinci Code has created a lot of interest in Jesus. We are not afraid of the film. We are not seeking to discourage people from seeing it.” I agree with this, in that Christians should not be afraid of the film, and should not discourage others from seeing it. The film may raise doubts, but with sound reasoning and proper intellectual understanding, Dan Brown’s work of fiction should not cause any major rifts. It should probably instead create many opportunities to talk about these issues with friends and family. Such an evangelistic tool, camouflaged though it may be, should not be done away with out of fear. That said, the faith of some Christians might not be able to withstand the battering that the Da Vinci Code presents, and therefore a stumbling block should probably be avoided by such people.

It would be good for Christians to be ready to talk intelligently about the issues the Da Vinci Code presents, and to give an account of the faith they possess. We know what is the truth, and so should not be afraid of things like Dan Brown’s novel.

It’s actually quite a good read. And I normally hate books.