according to jeff

A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
— Proverbs 15:1 (NIV)

Every now and then, I provide technical support at work. And every now and then, even though we have great customers, some customer correspondence is a mite, um, sharp. Some might even call it rude. And, believe it or not, we occasionally even receive criticism! Sometimes the criticism is deserved, and sometimes it’s not. I find the latter particularly difficult to respond to. At such times I have an opportunity to practice Proverbs 15:1.

Not unexpectedly, my experience has been that Proverbs 15:1 is an excellent guide to follow, even in the matter of providing technical support. (Another is James 1:19.) While I often regret harsh replies, I’ve yet to ever regret a gentle reply.

Gentleness doesn’t mean spineless or always giving in. Merriam-Webster defines gentle as “free from harshness, sternness, or violence”. I like that; a gentle answer is free from (verbal) violence.

Harshness comes naturally to me; gentleness does not. A few New Year’s ago, I asked God to help me grow in gentleness. I don’t know if you’d yet describe me as gentle, but my hope and prayer is that someday you will.

Way back in April, I wrote about my trip to the eye doctor for new contacts and new glasses. Now, several months later, I finally have a new set of contacts and some new glasses.

Since I’d worn rigid contact lenses for so long, it took several months for the shape of my eye to revert to its more natural shape, instead of the shape of the rigid lens. As a result, I went through several sample lenses — probably a new set every few weeks over the course of four to five months. I’m now wearing 3-month soft contact lenses, and am able to wear them all day and night. Yes, I can sleep in my new contacts! While that might not seem like a big deal to many of my readers, I’ve spent most of my life wearing glasses at the beginning and end of the day, not being able to clearly read the clock on the nightstand, and needing to put on my glasses if I get up in the middle of the night. Being able to see, without glasses, at any time of the day has been a real blessing!

Even though I wear contacts most of the time, as I previously wrote, it was past time for a new set of glasses. I offered my faithful readers the opportunity to offer their opinion regarding my frame choices. You’ve no doubt been waiting (though hopefully not breathlessly waiting) to learn my choice. So… I chose the time-machine-inventor-from-the-1800’s frames:

My Choice

My typical Friday includes lunch with my Laridian associates. This past Friday, our choice was Dry Heat BBQ.

Located on C Street Southwest, south of Highway 30, Dry Heat BBQ recently opened and offers the area another choice in BBQ.

The menu includes the standard staples, such as pulled pork, beef brisket, and ribs. The daily special also offered sausage and country (boneless) ribs. A variety of sides are also available. My choice was the pulled pork sandwich, with cole slaw and baked beans.

As suggested by the name, the barbeque meat is served dry (without sauce), but seasoned. Three different sauces — Memphis, Kansas City and Texas — are available at the table. I cut my sandwich in half so that I could try both the Memphis and the Kansas City sauces. Both were good — good enough that I don’t know which I preferred.

The baked beans were tasty. An associate thought that they were too hot, though would have described them as spicy instead of hot. It was suggested that perhaps I’d already burned out my taste buds and could no longer distinguish “hot”, so, when you go there, try the beans and let me know if you’d describe them as “spicy” or “hot”!

Here’s something I haven’t seen for a while:

Unfortunately, I had to leave Cedar Rapids to see it. (The Cedar Rapids prices is $3.39.)

Yippee! It’s here at last — International Talk Like a Cowboy Day. It only happens once a year, so let’s git right down to it. If you need some help with the lingo, listen to what these famous Cowboys have to say.

“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.”
— Tom Landry

“Confidence doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a result of something… hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication.”
— Roger Staubach

“Always, through my whole life, I’ve had a thirst for knowledge.”
— Emmitt Smith

International Talk Like a Cowboy Day is observed on September 20. International Talk Like a Cowboy Day Official Logo © 2007 by Jeff Wheeler. All Rights Reserved. Because Cowboys are Better than Pirates ™ Jeff Wheeler. Portions of clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com. Quotations from Brainy Quote

Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released a report titled Teens, Video Games and Civics. The report, dated September 16, 2008, reveals some surprising statistics. Like the famed Chicken Man, video games are everywhere.

• Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games.
• Fully 99% of boys and 94% of girls play video games.
• 50% of teens played games “yesterday.”
• Those who play daily typically play for an hour or more.
• 86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii.
• 73% play games on a desktop or a laptop computer.
• 60% use a portable gaming device like a Sony PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS, or a Game Boy.
• 48% use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play games.

The Iowa City Community Theatre just completed a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. Bethany was invited to play harp for the volunteer orchestra, so we attended two of the four performances. (Bethany, of course, attended all four .)

We attended opening night (Friday) with Bethany’s cousin, Grace, and her grandpa. And we attended the closing show (Sunday) with another set of her grandparents and some friends.

The three-and-a-half hour production was very good (albiet a little long). Those who played the parts of the king, Mrs. Anna, and Tuptim were especially good, with strong voices and excellent expression. Even one of my least favorite parts of the show — The Little House of Uncle Tom play — was well done and supported by some nice props.

The volunteer orchestra was also very good. The historic Englert Theatre does not include an orchestra pit, so the orchestra was situated immediately in front of the stage at floor level. The nice result of this is that the orchestra was entirely visible during the performance. We were able, for instance, to note when a harp string broke and Bethany had to replace it during the show!

It was a wonderful experience for Bethany and her harp.

(Two of Bethany’s friends attended on Saturday; you can read another review here.)

I spent a lot of evenings in Iowa City this past week and enjoyed a downtown ice cream shop: Whitey’s. Not just once, but, um, four times.

• Thursday: White Chocolate Raspberry
• Friday: White Tiger Paws
• Saturday: Praline Pecan
• Sunday: Mississippi Mud Revel

Whitey’s ice cream is soft and creamy, making it eminently lickable. It was easy to keep up and avoid the dreaded melt-down-onto-the-fingers problem that plagues many ice cream cones.

When you find yourself near a Whitey’s Ice Cream, do yourself a favor and stop in. Then let me know what you thought!

Every week, I use Microsoft PowerPoint to prepare slides for our church’s Sunday morning and evening services. I add the text for our songs and Scripture readings, then pass it along to another man who adds backgrounds and installs it on the projection computer at church.

This morning when I began to insert songs into the presentation, I noticed that all of the text was suddenly formatted in italic. After some investigation, I found that the Arial Black font was always appearing as italics, but other fonts worked fine. I then experimented with Arial Black in Word, and found that it worked fine.

“Time for the Internet,” I told myself.

Sure enough, I learned that Windows XP Service Pack 3 — which I’d installed earlier in the week — included an updated font that, when used in some programs, resulted in the bad behavior that I was seeing.

[Here are some technical details that will be of interest to a very few of my faithful readers. The code that a programmer uses to select a font in a Windows program is surprisingly tricky. One doesn’t just call a function such as LoadFont(”Arial Black”). Instead, a font is identified by various attributes (such as the weight, the style, the size, and the family name) and then Windows is asked to return the font that best matches the request. This article suggests that the font weight may have changed, which could change how a program would ask for the font. This also explains why the correct font is selected in some programs (such as Word) and not in others (such as PowerPoint).]

The resolution is to uninstall the new font — which isn’t backward compatible with some programs, including some programs directly from Microsoft — and install an older version of the font. The new font is version 2.40. The previous version is version 2.35. This resolution worked fine for me, and now the text is my PowerPoint slides is only italic when it should be!