The Link
The Weekly E-Newsletter of Disciples Christian Church
May 14, 2009
In This Issue
- Updated Prayer Requests
- A Message from Rev. Nordyke
- Young at Heart
- Disciple Women’s Ministry of
DCC
- Men’s Bible Study
- Summer Reading Group
- Women’s Spiritual Retreat –
God’s Grace
- From the TechnoManor
- Music Notes
Updated
Prayer Requests
- Agnes Pieper was in
- Earl Meuller, Gary Carroll’s daughter’s father-in-law, had surgery May 13 due to
internal bruising and blood loss.
- Prayers for people dealing
with the swine flu.
- Prayers for David, Kristina and family as they
prepare for the arrival of their baby.
The prayer requests in The Link each week are recent
updates. A list of ongoing prayer requests appears in our worship bulletin each
Sunday.
A Message from Rev. Nordyke
“My faith
looks up to thee, O God my Father.”
These are awe inspiring words that both encourage and challenge us to do
more and go further on our “faith” journey because of the Spirit of God, the
power within us, which enables us, by faith, to do more than we ever thought possible. And yet as great as this is, there are times,
perhaps more than we’d like to admit, when our faith isn’t looking to God but
the situation or something or someone else.
One would think that after experiencing God’s handy work in our lives
that we’d be more inclined to look up to Thee alone. Though we can see His fingerprint in details
of our lives, there’s still the tendency to look elsewhere to strengthen our
faith. Too often we seek revelation and
insight from alternate sources such as motivational speakers, great authors and
brilliant composers. It’s not that
there’s anything inherently wrong with that so long as we don’t look to these
sources more than we do our heavenly Father, more than we do Jesus.
Why then
are we so easily persuaded to take our eyes off of God and Jesus, the author
and perfector of our faith, why are we so easily distracted from Thee? The truth of the matter is I’m not sure. Perhaps it is our human nature to look
elsewhere when things don’t go they way we want or according to our
timetable. But whoever said faith was
easily attained or for that matter maintained?
Faith is demanding and trying and at times asks more of us then we think
we can offer. We should remember though
that this faith journey is just that, a journey that takes us through hill and
valley, twist and turn which causes us to exercise and strengthen our faith in
God, in Jesus and in their purpose and plan for our lives, even the smallest
details.
I don’t
know what you’re struggling with today or where you’re at on your faith
journey, but what I do know is that all of us, even the seemingly strong ones,
need a little encouragement from time to time.
As brothers and sisters in Christ may we continually offer encouragement
by standing beside one another and praying for one another, even petitioning
God on each others’ behalf. Perhaps it
will ease the journey enough that each of us might say with confidence, my
faith looks up to Thee, O God my Father.
Blessings,
In Christ
David
Young at Heart
Young at
Heart, the fellowship group for active seniors,
will have their May dinner on Thursday, May 21 at 6:30 pm. Dinner will be at Love and War in Texas on
972-964-0527
or at genahurst@yahoo.com.
There will be an organizational
meeting on Sunday, June 7 following worship to discuss this year’s
VBS. Lunch will be provided, so please
RSVP to the church office (theoffice@dccplano.com) so we know how much food
to plan on. We can use everybody’s
talents and prayers as we prepare for this!
Disciple Women’s Ministry at DCC
The
Disciple Women's group met on Tuesday, May 5, in the atrium at the
church for a salad supper and fellowship. Several projects and plans
for the fall were discussed. Watch for more details about upcoming
events and opportunities for ministry sponsored by the Disciple Women of DCC.
Men’s Bible Study
Calling
all men! Come join us at IHOP (
Summer Reading Group
The
Disciple Women are sponsoring a Summer Reading Group open to all members of the
church. The first gathering will be on Tuesday, June 16, 7:00 pm at the church. Our first reading
selection will be The Shack by William P. Young.
Women’s
Spiritual Retreat – God’s Grace
Date: Saturday, May 30, 2009
Time:
10:00 am - 3:00 pm (Lunch will be provided)
Place:
Richardson, Texas 75082 (Renner @ North Garland)
*What
to Bring/Wear: Comfortable clothes and an open heart!
**What not to bring: We
will be giving God our undivided attention….so, please leave your cell phones off and/or in your car.
Also, no need to wear a watch… We are on God’s time!
Name________________________________________________
Church:
___________________________________
Home Address:________________________________________
City_______________________
Zip_____________
Number you
can be reached at:___________________________
E-mail:_____________________________________
Return registration & check to Linda McMullin at either of the following:
Linda McMullin
fccwomensretreat@hotmail.com
Space limited to first 40
applicants
Forms need to be returned by MAY
15TH
If you have questions call Linda
McMullin at: 972 475-5414.
From
the Techno Manor
Ok, it’s
time for me to nag. Do you backup your
computer files?
Ahhh, I
see that sheepish look on your face!
Nope, I don’t want to hear the stories.
Like I said, I’m here to nag.
Side Note:
Only my wife can answer this question with, “Dave takes care of that.”
So, let’s
talk about backups today. I use the word
backup to mean the act of copying
your computer files onto something outside of your computer.
I’ll talk
about backups by answering some hypothetical questions. Let’s get going!
Why
should you do backups?
The reason
for doing this is to protect your valuable work in the event you accidentally
delete it from your computer, lose your computer, or the computer fails (taking
your files with it).
Oh, you
say those files aren’t so valuable? You
may be right. Let’s conduct a little
test.
Turn off
your computer.
Now, leave
it off for a day. (UhUh, don’t touch
it.) Leave it off for two days. (I said, don’t touch it.) Leave it off for a week. (Go about your life.)
Were you
able to leave it turned off for the week?
Did you need that certain email address only on your computer? That certain recipe? How about a photo of your kids on vacation
last summer?
If you
were able to leave the computer turned off for a week (or longer), then maybe
you really don’t have to worry about backups…and you can skip to the next
article! But if you’re like most people,
there was something you really needed that is only stored on your computer.
That is a valuable file. And once it’s gone…
What
should you backup?
I used to
think I should backup every file on my computer. Given the complexity of today’s computers,
though, that’s no longer practical. So,
here’s my advice:
·
Backup
all the data files that you have created on your computer. These are your photos, music, documents,
financial records, contact information, email, and so on. Basically, make a copy of a file if it exists
nowhere else.
·
Don’t
worry about the operating system or program files. You should have CDs or DVDs with the original
versions on them.
·
Backup
installation or setup files for software you downloaded from the Internet. While you may have CDs or DVDs for software
you purchased at a store or with your computer, the programs you downloaded
from the Internet tend to be forgotten.
That can be painful if you must recover a defective hard drive.
You say you’ve forgotten where all those installation files
are? Well, start a new habit, today, by
saving those files in a special folder like My Downloads under the My
Documents folder (or something like it).
How
often?
The answer
to this question is, “daily.”
Why? It’s good to get in the habit of backing up
your data often. If you do it daily,
then you don’t have to guess “when was the last time I backed up my data,” if
you have to retrieve a lost file.
What if
you turn on your computer only once a week to check your email? Well, “daily” for you means “whenever you
turn on your computer.”
What
tools can you use?
This is
where people’s eyes tend to glaze over.
You need
two kinds of tools: the external media
to receive the computer files, and a program to copy files to that media.
I suggest
one of the following media to receive the computer files:
·
A USB flash drive (see my 4/9/2009 article):
If you’re copying a small number of files (or small files), a USB flash
drive should suffice. Make sure it’s
large enough: like 1 to 4 GB in size.
You may want to use a few of them, like one for each day of the week.
·
An
external USB hard drive: these range in physical size from a pack of playing cards to
a hard-bound book. They plug into a USB
port on your computer and can easily be toted between computers (and safe
deposit boxes). They hold hundreds of
Gigabytes (GB). I recently purchased a
160 GB portable external USB hard drive for $70.00. Use one of these if you have a lot of photos
and music and a simple USB flash drive (“a stick”) is too small.
·
DVDs: These can be used in desperation. A DVD can hold only about 4 GB, and cannot be
erased (or not easily). You can buy a 4
GB USB flash drive for about $15, and use it repeatedly.
Don’t even
think of using a floppy! They’re too
small, you need too many, they become flakey over time, and most computers
don’t have floppy drives. They don’t
even make good coasters, either.
Following
are my suggestions about programs to copy files to the external media:
·
For
computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can use the built-in Backup
and Restore program. For the MacOS, you
can use the built-in Time Machine.
·
If
you’re using Windows XP (or don’t like your computer’s built-in software), your
choices vary. Most CD/DVD burner
software include backup programs. For example, I have the Nero Ultra Edition
software suite, which includes a program called Nero BackItUp. If you have CD/DVD burner software on your
computer, explore it to see if there is some backup software squirreled away in
a corner.
·
Many
computer security suites include backup programs. Norton 360 is one example. Start that security software and explore the
menu choices or online help to learn if yours includes a backup program.
·
Visit
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
and type list of backup software
into the Search box. A page is displayed
listing many choices for backup programs.
Following
are some useful characteristics about backup programs:
·
It
should run automatically, when you are away from the computer. Manually backing up files becomes painful
very quickly.
·
It
should tell you what files it copied, what files it could not copy (this
is important), and the overall results of the backup process. You want to check this information periodically
to make sure the backup program is doing what you asked it to. For the files it could not copy, you must
discover why (typically, you left a program running…like Outlook) and remedy
the situation.
·
It
should be able to show you what files are contained on the external media, or
you should be able to examine that external media to assure the copied files
are there.
·
It
should be able to (relatively easily) restore files from the external media to
your computer. You want to test this
from time to time, making sure the process works before a critical moment
occurs.
And if all
else fails, you could always insert a sufficiently large USB flash drive into
your computer and use Windows Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) to manually copy
your files to the USB drive. While this
is simple, it is slow and not automatic.
What
does Dave use? ...and
other exotic stuff.
Ok, I’m a
stickler about backups. I’m also
somewhat of an experimenter. Here is
what I use and my backup policies.
We have
six computers on our home network. Five
of them run Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare software. OneCare is a combination security, firewall,
and backup software. It’s a respectable
product. Unfortunately, Microsoft will
discontinue it this summer.
Every day,
OneCare wakes up in the early morning hours on each computer and copies all
files that changed in the last day. It
copies these files to something called a Network
Attached Storage (or NAS).
A NAS is a
special, dedicated computer, about the size of a toaster (in fact it is named
TOASTER1 on our network). It’s sole purpose is to provide disk storage to all
computers on our network. Our NAS has
two 320 GB hard drives inside (they kinda look like slices of toast). Both drives contain the exact same files
(they are redundant). If one of the hard drives should fail, the
other one has a copy of our files. The
idea is to lose nothing. If you’re
wondering, our NAS cost about $500.00 in 2007.
This is not for everybody, but might be the next step if you fill up a
portable external USB hard drive!
So,
OneCare performs a backup every night on five of our computers to the NAS. If I need to restore a file, I run OneCare to
copy from the NAS back to the computer.
If we had to evacuate our house, I would grab the NAS (after the
greyhounds, of course) on the way out the door.
Last
summer, the hard drive in my wife’s desktop computer failed. I replaced the hard drive, reinstalled
Windows and all her programs, then used OneCare to copy all her personal data
files from the NAS back to her computer.
She was able to immediately read her old email and use Quicken to check
her finances.
On my
netbook, our sixth computer, I manually run a program called Drive Snapshot
once a week. This makes a copy of the
entire hard drive to our NAS. If my
netbook should fail or be lost, I can use Drive Snapshot to recover the entire
hard drive or any replacement. This is
also somewhat experimental.
In
addition, I use a program on both my netbook and my desktop computer called
Windows Live Sync. This program keeps
folders on one computer synchronized on the other computer by copying changed
files back and forth as the files change.
It’s like a backup in real time.
I keep all my client files and technical files synchronized between the
two computers. So, if my netbook should
be stolen or I sit on it, a copy of the important data was already saved to my
desktop.
I hope my
nagging helps save you some mental anguish should your computer crash. Consider this article a compliment to my
07/18/2008 article on hard drive crashes.
Protect yourself now before you hear that sickening clicking noise
emanating from your computer.
Every time
I peek into my Inbox, there’s nothing inside.
I’m starting to get depressed.
So, spare me from email withdrawal by sending your technical questions
to:
I’ll
answer one each week in The Link.
Dave
Gillen
Music
Notes
By Laura Young
Chancel
Choir
May 17 (Sun.) TBA choir or handbells
May 20(Wed.) No Chancel Choir today
May 24(Sun.) Chancel Choir warms up
9-9:25 a.m. in the sanctuary
May 27(Wed.) Chancel Choir rehearses 6:30
- 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary
May
31(Pentecost Sun.) Chancel
Choir warms up 9-9:25 a.m. in the sanctuary.
Handbell
Choir is on summer break. You did a
wonderful job on Sunday, and I can't wait to resume in the fall! Thanks for a great year! Laura
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
Rev. David Nordyke, Senior Pastor
Laura Young, Music Director
Linda Gulick, Preschool Director
Julie Chen, Pianist
Jan Carter, Administrative Assistant
Dave Gillen, Webmaster frenchygrey@gmail.com
Email: theoffice@dccplano.com
Phone: 972-398-2240