The Link
The Weekly E-Newsletter of Disciples Christian Church
In This Issue
- Updated Prayer Requests
- Young at Heart – TONIGHT!
- Hurricane Ike – Damage to
Churches
- Relief Nursery of
- Trunk or Treat
- DCC Education Department News
- Ride for the Refugee ‘08
- Women of Virtue presents …
- From The TechnoManor
- Men’s Bible Study
- Disciples Regional Assembly
- Music Notes
- Children’s Sunday School
Updated Prayer Requests
- Rebecca Nilsen broke her fibula.
- Rosalie Dunham, Linda Gulick’s mother, was recently diagnosed with a
malignant melanoma.
- Jennifer Caughron, Rev. Diane’s granddaughter, is in evaluation for her gall
bladder as well as a liver transplant.
- Bill Ramsey is home recuperating from quintuple by-pass surgery
and an infection in his leg.
- Mike Bell is doing well after his exploratory arthroscopic
surgery on Friday, September 12.
- Paul Reed, friend of the
The prayer requests in The Link each week are recent
updates. A list of ongoing prayer requests appears in our worship bulletin each
Sunday.
This
Sunday, we will all receive a Pledge Card.
It is the time of year when we evaluate the church, its program and our
involvement and look ahead to what we want the church to be next year. What projects do we want to see happen? What programs do we want to continue or
add? Do we have some dreams for this
church that have not yet been realized?
What can we do about it?
Yes, this
is the time to consider what we can do about those hopes and dreams and desires
for the church. It is time for each of
us to consider how we will help to make it happen. For the church will only be vital if make it
that way.
You have
done great things in the past. You are
to be commended for that. And the future
holds great possibilities. Only you can
make them happen.
See you
Sunday!
Diane
Young at Heart – TONIGHT!
The “dinner group” will meet tonight,
Thursday, September 18 at BJ’s near
Collin Creek Mall at 6:30 pm.
Hurricane Ike – Damage to Churches
from Larry Ross
You can visit the NTA website at www.ntaccsw.org
for comprehensive news on ways churches can respond to the needs. This link
takes you right there: http://ntaccsw.org/pages/ike_news_information.
Specific ways already include:
1) Take a Week of Compassion special offering for
hurricane relief
2) Have
your church put together CWS kits
3) Funnel volunteers through the
4) Volunteer
or donate to any of these other groups:
The North Texas Food Bank will
provide food for meal preparation. At this time, they are not actively
seeking food donations, but monetary donations are always needed.
The Salvation Army will
provide meals at all mass shelter locations.
The American Red Cross
will manage and oversee shelter operations.
Relief Nursery of
Dear Friends,
As most of you know,
because I am often excitedly inundating you with information, the Relief
Nursery of Collin County is set to open next month! After nearly two years of dreaming and
planning and preparing, we have hired a
Board of Directors, incorporated with
the state of
On that note, I am
asking if you will please consider reading the flyer below. We are currently holding a raffle. Tickets
are only five dollars apiece for a chance to win a gift card ($25-$100 for
most) to a number of great, nationally popular businesses, such as Target, Home
Depot, and Barnes and Noble. Besides
helping us to open our doors to the families who desperately need a break from
their stresses and a chance to become stronger parents, you may win a card that
makes your upcoming holiday shopping a lot more fun! If you are interested, please email or call
me and let me know how many tickets you would like me to get to you.
Thank you for your
support! Laura Young, 972-744-9941
Relief Nursery of
Gift Card Extravaganza Raffle!!!
Celebrating
30 years of strengthening
families
and keeping children safe.
“Fast Facts”
•
The Relief Nursery program is being launched in two
•
The Relief Nursery of
•
The RNCC will play a significant role in the prevention of child
abuse and neglect in our community through early intervention that focuses
on building successful and resilient children, strengthening parents and
preserving families.
•
Once fully operational, the Relief Nursery will provide following
services to individuals and families in
•
Therapeutic childcare (the first such facility in the state);
•
Play therapy;
•
Individual skills development;
•
Alcohol and drug recovery support services;
•
Parent education;
•
Home visits;
•
Mental health assessments;
•
Counseling for children and families
•
Relief Nursery of
•
Fabulous gift card prizes include $100 gift cards to Mignon restaurant,
Target, Elizabeth Red Door Spa, and others including Mobil, Macaroni Grill and
Barnes and Noble.
•
The Relief Nursery of
•
Your $5 donation per ticket will benefit the Relief Nursery of
Trunk or Treat
Ten persons attended the first
Trunk or Treat planning meeting after worship on Sunday Sept. 14, 2008. A four-page handout plus comments by Nancy
Hall, coordinator, informed the group about attractions and assignments for the
Oct. 25th event. The expected deadline
for 14 cars is October 7. Plans are now
underway for the best Trunk or Treat so far!
Nancy Hall
DCC Education Department News
by
Youth News
- Sunday, October 5 – Bowling at Plano Super Bowl
immediately following worship.
- Saturday, October 18 – Habitat for Humanity
starting at 9 am. More details to
follow.
- Saturday, October 25 – Trunk or Treat event at DCC
at 2 pm (to work the youth station).
- Saturday, November 1 – BBPS Rummage Sale in DCC
parking lot. 7 am – 1 pm. Rain date
is November 8.
Adult News
n A Christian Men’s Fellowship group is being organized. Contact Mark Mueller for more information.
n Saturday, October 18 everyone is encouraged to participate at the Habitat for Humanity worksite. More details will follow.
n Saturday, October 25 DCC’s annual Trunk
or Treat event will take place on the front lawn.
Ride for the Refugee ‘08
Greetings to all,
It is quickly approaching the
time to roll with the Ride for the Refugee ’08!
We still need your help. We are
rolling with over a dozen riders and two semi trucks with trailers this
year! We still need your help. We need money for gas! We need supplies for SWGSM, and we need you
to participate in the ride itself!
Please check out the website http://www.fccpampa.org/RideForThe
Refugee/RFTRMain.html. I know the
dates are last year’s but you can still read about the ride and register to go
with us. You can also see the list of
supplies needed for SWGSM. The dates
this year are OCTOBER 1st – OCTOBER 4TH! Won’t you please come along side us in
ministry and help the neediest of the needy?
If you have any questions please call me at 806-669-3225.
Shalom, Barry Loving
“… on earth as it is in heaven …”
www.docblov.com
Women of Virtue presents…
The Women of Virtue group is
presenting their fourth monthly relationship conference for women and men. The topic is “Accountability” in relationships,
finances, and the future. The speaker is
Regina Renee Napper, a life coach, advisor, counselor, teacher and
motivator. The conference takes place on
Saturday, September 27 at 5 pm. at the
From The TechnoManor
From the Technomanor
(Part II)
Last week,
I was answering this question from my Inbox:
My new computer was great, but
lately it has become increasingly slower and more difficult to use. What can I
do to get my computer to perform better and faster?
This week
I’ll talk about tools and techniques to figure out what might be causing the
slowness. I’m preserving the order of
the causes from Part I, but omitting those where I have nothing to add.
Put on
your “propeller caps” and let’s get to work.
Be sure to have paper and pencil on hand. You’ll be writing a few things down.
Insufficient
memory (RAM)
To see how
much memory (RAM) that you have physically installed in your computer, follow
these steps.
|
In Windows |
In Windows XP: |
|
·
Click Start circle. |
·
Right click My Computer if
it’s on the Desktop.
|
|
·
Right click Computer. |
·
Select Properties. |
|
·
Select Properties. |
·
Select the General tab (it
may already be selected). |
|
·
Look down the properties page to the System section. |
·
Look down the System Properties page. |
|
·
Look at Memory (RAM). This is the amount of memory in the
computer. |
·
The amount of RAM is typically displayed as the last line of
information.
|
|
·
Click X to close the page. |
·
Click OK to close the
page. |
Extra
(unwanted) programs running in the background
To locate
extra or unwanted programs that may be slowing down your computer, we’re going
to use the MSCONFIG tool (a.k.a. System Configuration). With this tool, we’ll look at programs that
start after Windows starts, but before you are given control.
MSCONFIG
gives extra information about each program:
the program name, name of the Manufacturer (in
Do the
following to start MSCONFIG:
|
In Windows |
In Windows XP: |
|
·
Click Start circle. |
·
Click Start. |
|
·
Type msconfig in the Start
Search box. |
·
Click Run. |
|
·
Click msconfig in the
Programs list. The System Configuration
utility starts. |
·
Type msconfig in the Run
box. |
|
·
Click the Startup
tab. These are all the programs that
start after Windows but before you get control. |
·
Click OK. The System Configuration utility starts. |
|
·
Look at the list. |
·
Click the Startup tab. These are all the programs that start after
Windows but before you get control. |
|
|
·
Look at the list. |
Now, look
for programs that “don’t seem quite right.”
How can you tell? Basically
program names, program folders, or Manufacturers with names that are wrong,
unknown, or unfamiliar.
Following
are a couple of examples. To help you
get a better look, you should “grow” the columns in the System Configuration
dialog box. You do that by moving the
cursor to the faint line between column headings: like between Command and
Location. When you put your cursor
there, the cursor will change. Click
your left mouse button and drag the cursor to the right. It will expand the column so you can see more
information.
In the
first example, why do I have NeroCheck starting? In the second example, why is Corel Photo
Downloader starting? Where did these
programs sneak in. They don’t look
familiar to me. That also don’t look
necessary.
To learn
if you don’t need them, in the System Configuration dialog box:
- Uncheck
the box next to the Startup Items (e.g. NeroCheck)
- Click
OK.
- Click
Restart to restart your
computer.
Windows
restarts. Observe the behavior of your
computer. Answer these questions:
Is it any different?
Is everything working?
Is it faster?
If
something isn’t working as before, then clearly this program was needed. Start
MSCONFIG as shown above. Check the box
next to the Startup Item, Click OK, and Click Restart to restart your computer. This should restore the needed program.
If there’s
no difference in behavior, you didn’t need this program. If you’re seeing an improvement in speed, you
have found a misbehaving program that you really didn’t need!
Repeat
this process (start MSCONFIG and look for odd startup programs) until you have
exhausted the list of startup programs, have made improvement in your
computer’s speed, or are tired of fiddling.
You should
write down the names of the programs you have disabled. Ultimately you should uninstall them using
the Add or Remove Programs control panel.
But disabling them for now is sufficient.
“Bad
citizen” program
We can use
a similar technique from the last section to locate “bad citizen”
programs. The technique this time is to
boot Windows as a “clean” system, devoid of extra programs. Then add them back one at a time until you
notice Windows becoming noticeably slower.
The last one you added back is most likely the bad citizen.
Follow
these steps to create a “clean” system:
- Start
MSCONFIG using the steps from the last section.
- In
MSCONFIG, Click the Disable all
button.
Note: When you
disable all the startup items, you will also be disabling your security
software. Do not read email or surf the
Web at this point!
- Click
OK.
- Click
Restart to restart your
computer.
- Windows
restarts.
Observe
how your computer behaves. Windows
should be running much faster. If it
isn’t, then something else is wrong with the computer. Skip to the end of this section.
Now, the
time-consuming part. We’re going to use
MSCONFIG to turn on one program at a time, then observe how Windows works.
- Start
MSCONFIG using the steps from the last section.
- Check
one of the Startup Items.
(Start at the top of the list and work your way down.)
- Write
down the name of this Startup Item.
- Click
OK.
- Click
Restart to restart your
computer.
- Windows
restarts.
- Observe
how your computer behaves. Does it
feel sluggish? If it does, you have
found the “bad citizen.” The last
Startup Item is the culprit. You
can skip to the end of this section.
- If
there’s no difference in how your computer behaves, then repeat these
steps. If you’ve re-enabled all the
Startup Items, then there’s nothing else to do. There is no single bad citizen program. Something else is causing the computer
slowness.
This is
the end of the section I told you to skip to.
Whether you found a bad citizen program or not, let’s do a little
cleanup. Follow these steps:
- Start
MSCONFIG (you know how by now).
- Click
Enable All.
- Click
OK.
- Click
Restart to restart your
computer.
- Windows
restarts.
If you
discovered a bad citizen program, what should you do? First, locate the Startup Item name you wrote
down and any additional information. If
you need the program, check for an
update with the manufacturer. They often
have a Web site with a Download section.
If you don’t need the program, disable it with MSCONFIG, or uninstall it
with the Add or Remove Program control panel.
There’s no need to keep it around.
Disk
Full or Fragmented
To
defragment a hard drive, the steps differ between Windows XP and
|
In Windows |
In Windows XP: |
|
·
Click Start circle |
·
Click Start. |
|
·
Type defragment in the
Start Search box |
·
Select (All) Programs. |
|
·
Click Disk Defragmenter in
the Programs list |
·
Select Accessories. |
|
·
Click Defragment now in
the Disk Defragmenter dialog. |
·
Select System Tools. |
|
·
Make sure only the C:
drive is checked (uncheck all others). |
·
Click Disk Defragmenter. |
|
·
Click OK. |
·
Select C:. |
|
·
The Disk Defragmenter runs.
Time passes. |
·
Click Defragment |
|
·
The Disk Defragmenter is finished when the Defragment now button appears again. |
·
Time passes. Watch the chart
as disk space is defragmented. |
|
·
Click Close |
·
Click Close, when Disk
Defragmenter finishes. |
|
|
·
Click X (in upper right)
to close the Disk Defragmenter. |
Computer
ok but surfing the Web slow
You can
measure the speed of your incoming network connection using various tools on
the Web. I prefer to use one from
Verizon because of it’s simplicity.
Visit this Web site: http://infospeed.verizon.net/speedtest.
This speed
test will start automatically. Note the
number in the column: Your Speed in. Does this roughly match what you’re paying
for? If it doesn’t, then it may not be
your computer that’s the bottleneck.
You’re network connection is bogging down.
If the
speed of your network is ok, then it may be the Web sites you’re visiting. Sites that are laden with photos, graphics,
and animation can be slower because all that “eye candy” has to be produced on
their servers and downloaded into your computer.
Visit a
more spartan Web site such as www.google.com
or www.whatismyip.com. If they respond quickly, then the problem is
not your computer or your network connection – it’s the Web site you’re
visiting.
This
should give you some basic tools and techniques to track down speed bottlenecks
in your computer. There are other tools
and techniques, but we have to stop somewhere.
Also, there are situations when these don’t help. At that point, it’s time to call in a pro to
figure out the cause of the slowness.
Next week
I’ll be pawing at my Inbox, looking for your technical questions. Send them to me at:
I’ll
attempt to answer one question each week in
Dave
Gillen
Men’s Bible Study
Calling
all men! Come join us at IHOP (
The 2008 Regional Assembly for the Christian Church in the
Southwest will take place October 17-19 at University Christian Church and TCU
in
Music Notes
by Laura Young
Wow!
Twelve in choir Sunday! You are an awesome group. Trust me when I say that is a great level of
participation for a congregation of our size. Thanks to Mark Mueller for
providing harmony on guitar. For others
who want to join us, we have a newly-expanded
choir loft and we meet from 6:30-7:30 in the sanctuary on Wednesday nights and
warm-up at 9 a.m. Sunday mornings in the sanctuary before Sunday School. We have members as young as middle school up
through senior adults. Come and make a
joyful noise with us!
Handbells
will meet seasonally, beginning in plenty of time for Christmas. For planning purposes,
please let me know if you would like to participate in bell choir. We start in
just a couple of weeks, so call me this week if you are interested in joining
us.
Children's
and youth choirs will also meet seasonally. Please let me know if you have a child or
grandchild who would enjoy singing with us!
Upcoming
local concerts:
The
Plano Symphony Orchestra will present a concert on Sat. Sept. 20th at the
Keyboard Concert at
As always,
if you know of local concerts or school arts events which you would like to
have publicized in the "Music Notes" column in "The Link,"
please let me know. Thank you!
Laura
Young, Music Director, 972-744-9941
Audiences may know
Victoria Jackson from her years on Saturday
Night Live and her appearances on The
Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
But people may not know that
Her performance
will take place THIS Saturday, September 20 at 8 pm at the
Children’s Sunday School
ALL PARENTS,
GRANDPARENTS, AND KIDS!! A SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS FOR
PRE-K
THROUGH 5TH GRADERS MEET, AT 9:30 A.M. SUNDAY MORNINGS
ALL KIDS WELCOME
BIBLE
STORIES, ACTIVITIES, FUN, MAKING NEW FRIENDS
=
LOTS OF LEARNING AND GROWING!
For more information contact pharbaugh@verizon.net
The
In order to follow Jesus and worship God, we will serve our neighbors. We will
minister to our fellow Christians. We will live and tell the good news of Jesus
Christ in all we do.
Disciples Christian Church Staff
Diane & Galen Clark, Co-Transitional Pastors
Laura Young, Music Director
Linda Gulick, Preschool Director
Julie Chen, Pianist
Jan Carter, Administrative Assistant
Dave Gillen, Webmaster frenchygrey@gmail.com
Amanda Prince, Nursery Attendant
email: theoffice@dccplano.com
phone: 972-398-2240