Reignited my interest in the Amish culture, after watching the low rated Hallmark movie: An Uncommon Grace. In it, Swartzentruber Amish was mentioned. It's the most conservative kind (i.e.not even allowed to intermarry with other Amish communities). It's also interesting that wikipedia has this chart of what each affiliation of Amish communities allow in terms of technology:
Fertilizer: NPK = Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium = Shoots, Roots, Fruits.
Shown in Hebrews 1:8-9
喜爱公义，恨恶罪恶的上帝是圣子
用喜乐油膏（Acts 10:38）你 - 喜乐油就是圣灵。
上帝用上帝来膏上帝：圣父上帝，用圣灵上帝，来膏圣子上帝
4/3/2024 I've decided to purchase the Celestron NexStar 8SE after seeing it on sale $1.1k for used, on Adorama site. Probably from demo. This article on using this scope for astrophotography was helpful. This would be my 4th telescopes (Celestron Omni XLT 150, Meade ETX80, Evscope) and the largest aperture. I also bought a $40 Piggyback Mount adapter and $34 Battery (Talentcell 12V Rechargeable Lithium ion Battery Pack YB1206000, DC Output for LED Strip and CCTV Camera, 11.1V 6000mAh Portable Li-ion Batteries with AC/DC 12.6V 1A Charger) from Amazon, for hooking up my DSLR camera (Nikon D5100?), a solar filter $26 from Ebay (I don't know why they cost $60+ on most sites as they all use Velcro to latch on), and a $140 Angeleyes case from Ebay.
The choices of my scopes are basically so:
ETX80 - for highest portability, quickest setup. The motor doesn't run well and I don't really need it for the quick setup. Manual adjustment is fine.
EVScope - Probably the second in portability. 114mm (4.5inch) aperture is slightly larger than ETX80. Also for easy digital astrophotography, all operated by app, no manual.
Celestron OMNI XLT150 - For its conventional use. Newtonian mount. 6" aperture is the average desired size. Probably good for all kinds of customization, as I also motorized the mount recently, motors work, but untested with actually tracking.
Celestron NexStar 8SE - I highly depend on its 8" largest aperture I own as well as built-in computerized motors. Hopefully more advanced astrophotography will be done with this, along with a DSLR camera.
I first came across it in The Knowledge Project Podcast, where Bryan Johnson was interviewed for his Blueprint Project diet. There's been a lot of focus on Blue Zones (1. Ikaria, Greece, 2. Loma Linda, California. 3. Sardinia, Italy, 4. Okinawa, Japan, 5. Nicoya, Costa Rica) diet lately. Now that Doctor Mike interviewed him as well, as the man who wants to live forever, testing/measuring his body to the extreme, peaked my interest. I haven't watched Doctor Mike's interview but just putting the video below for reference. It's interesting to note that Bryan Johnson, of Mormon background, born 1977, was the one flipping Venmo for $800 million (sold to Paypal in 2013), after buying it for only $26mil.
Tainan, Taiwan introduction by Dodomen (I've also marked all the restaurants mentioned in google map):
4/1/2024 Run OCR against PDFs/images from browser. Using PDF.js & Tesseract.js via Ai platforms such as GPT-4 vision, etc. Simon Willison did it: https://tools.simonwillison.net/ocr
Just called Labcorp this morning and finally got confirmation that they've received my 1199 Insurance Company's Explanation of Benefit and that acknowledged that the patient's balance should now be zero, and not $286.65 as claimed by the email of delinquent status sent to me by Labcorp last Friday 3/29. She said she'll put in a note to get this changed and that I should just disregard the warning letter. This is quite a relieve, and I hope I don't see this problem resurrected.
Checked out Tractor Supply Co. on Route 35. They don't have chicken poop, nor live chicken. Staff said they used to have live chicks until Monmouth County banned it. She suggested me to go to Old Bridge branch.
3/30/2024 Fixed the flip mirror that fell off in my Meade ETX80 telescope. When that broke off, I felt urged to buy a new replacement telescope, perhaps an ETX 90 or 125. But the lack of backpack support like the ETX80 discouraged me to look into it later. The Flip Barlow is somewhat broken, the RA? motor has issue. Years ago, I had slightly damaged the built-in Barlow lens of the telescope when I attempted to project the Sun to the ceiling with it in my Flushing apartment. It practically melted some mechanism in there that the Barlow switch just wouldn't work to swivel the Barlow lens away. I realized today that I had forgotten about the built-in Barlow, that I could through the rear port of the scope, use my fingers to manually swivel the Barlow off the eyepiece holder while the flip Barlow switch still can swivel it back into view. So technically, I should have no issue with the built-in Barlow lens feature. After some help from the cloudynights forum linked above, I also managed to remove the Objective Lens cell by unscrewing the focus knob from within its chamber to the right of the eyepiece holder. I the super glue (one of those Dollar Tree Cyanoacrylate glue) to glue the flip mirror back to the flip platform in the telescope. It was a challenge as I couldn't really reach the platform by hand easily. So I basically aimed the glue to the mirror holder platform and drip to it through the tube of the scope. I didn't want to trouble myself by removing the fork from the tube to gain easier access as some had mentioned in the forum. Now that it's fixed, I should have no urge to buy a new scope as I can tolerate the weak motor of the scope.
3/29/2024 https://demo.hume.ai/ Probably not as smart as chatGPT but the first realistic voice to voice chat with an AI that I know of.
3/28/2024 Just learned this morning from Principal advisory chat that I could sign up for an account at ssa.gov to see my Social Security retirement benefits.
3/27/2024 quick exercises for those working in front of a computer.
3/25/2024 Free courses on AI by NVIDIA
Since Nadia is away, what better opportunity to visit places I would go but not her. A quick search last week showed good airline deals for Louisiana and Detroit. I think I lost the Louisiana deal very quickly so it was only Detroit, for $85. But then jetcost.com took me to other agency that didn't seem to have much reputation, so my fingers were crossed. Detroit's also introduced by Scott's Cheap Flights (AKA Going), a periodic newsletter I received in my emails.
First it was cheapeticket.com, I calling (855-311-0044) to confirm my booking from jetcost.com. Nobody picked up.
Chinese areas in Detroit: Troy, Madison Heights (Vietnamese), Novi (Japanese, also seems the safest), Ann Arbor, Canton, and seemingly less popular one is Warren.
Some fun facts: Matt from church, who had lived in Ann Arbor, MI for a couple years, suggested me to visit the beautiful University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He also mentioned the fast way to cross the river border into Canada was something called the FAST Card: Which is something specific to Canada & US only. Application's $50, takes 1-8 weeks to be approved conditionally, valid for 5 years (just like another Trusted Traveler Program called NEXUS), so really not for me as I'm not going to spend $50 every 5 years just for the sake of easy entry into Canada perhaps once every 2-3 years. Turns out there were 5 TTP different prices from $50 to $122.25, all valid for 5 years. Some Credit Cards offer to pay for your TTP but they also do come with high annual fee. For example: Bank of America's Premium Rewards would pay for TSA PreCheck/Global Entry, and like Travel Rewards card, it waved foreign transaction fees, but the card itself is $95 annually.
Because Detroit is now infamous for being the most dangerous city in the States, many seemed worry. But this is just like all the news you heard in NYC and California. I think most of them at church, with a few exception, were just being sissy.
After booking the flight, I learned and set these as top priority from top to bottom:
Museums: Detroit Institute of Arts, Henry Ford Museum
Sceneries: Detroit River, Belle Isle, crossing to Windsor, Canada.
Neighborhoods: Basically as many Asian ones as I could. The Japanese town Novi is rather far 2hrs bus, so I don't know about that, unless I take 24mins Uber. But I should at least visit University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Friday and Troy on Sunday church service, I am leaning towards selecting Chinese church, since there doesn't seem to be many reformed churches around.
Parks: Campus Martius Park (seems to be the major city park), Detroit Zoo? Sea Life Michigan Aquarium? (further than Troy from Downtown, I'll probably just pick the Zoo instead if I ever consider either)
I decided to ditch the idea of renting a car, seeing how high the crime rate in Detroit is these days. Yes, I can get paranoid too. Though Novi and Dearborn's crime rates are vast different. Therefore, no Grand Rapids tour this time. Even with Greyhound, it will take 4 hours one way (2 hrs with car) and the only good time to do this would be on Sunday, which I would have no way back to Detroit without a car for my Monday early morning flight. So, visiting my fellow URCNA and other Dutch Reformed buddies would have to be postponed. Am definitely still eager to go visit Calvin College and Joel Beeke's Heritage Reformed Congregation which also hosted Chinese Congregation under Rev. Simon Yin.
For hotels, I decided to stay close to the airport the night I arrived (8pm) on Thursday: Howard Johnson By Wyndham Romulus Detroit Metro Airport $64.25/night. Should be walking distance. The next hotel for two nights would be higher class, more secure in the middle of Detroit: The Gabriel Richard $294.10/2 nights. And the last night (Sunday) I am still contemplating sleeping at the airport (I'll know when I arrive) or find another hotel near the Airport.
I think I should bring my drone, if it fits. Spirit Airline seems strict on their free personal item size.
These 5 ingredients seem to work well:
sprinkle the whole thing with fried shallots.
Source:
https://mylovelyrecipes.com/recipes/chinese-cuisine/chee-cheong-fun/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFkdGCHMQU
It seems that the 3 pointers Tong used to give were not recorded by me. And since last Sunday School's topic is on the Will of God, I should really write this down which was way overdue.
The 3 verses that Tong used to discern if one is called by God full time ministry (Thanks to this source for helping me recollect the verses):
Philippians 2:13 - God placed the burden in our hearts.
Colossians 3:15 - Having no peace in Christ in our status quo.
Hebrews 12:6 - God's final discipline comes to those who's still trying to escape.
Of course, I may not interpret this as "FULL TIME" ministry. Though I can agree it tends to lean towards "FULL TIME". Because of that, it is important one should not find excuse to be part time, especially as a citizen of a country where the living standards already could afford such. I'm no citizen of this country, so I do not see this apply to me. I am mere pilgrim even in U.S. contrasting the pilgrim citizens here. However, I also do not liken myself to David Tong's definition of pilgrim, that somehow I should go back to Malaysia/Indonesia to serve. For David Tong's definition of pilgrimage, I view it from the aspect of being a Chinese. Thus it is culturally, not geographically.
So I asked around on FB. It turns out this is possible. Possibly in May. Make your own sugar water as opposed to Home Depot/Walmart brands. Change water every week (or everyday per some). Plant red & orange flowers.
Suggested plants:
Red Trumpet Vine (Scarlet trumpet honeysuckle/Honeysuckle?)
Petunias
Zinnia (or other butterfly plants)
Hibiscus
Beard Tongue
Bee Balm
Butterfly Bush
Catmint
Clove pink
Columbine
Coral Bells
Daylily
Larkspur
Foxglove
Summer Phlox
Red-hot poker
Lantana
Stephen Tong criticized heavily Josh McDowell's book: Evidence That Demands a Verdict (铁证待判) - evidential apologetics vs. presuppositional apologetics. Same kind of criticism by all Pressup folks like Sye Ten Bruggencate, Van Til, etc. God judges you, you don't judge God (whether he exists or not):
Tong: Great book, but totally wrong in apologetics methodology: Lots of great content, but these student ministry folks think that they did well in their ministries without deep training in God's Word against culture, without clarity of the ground and battle they stepped into.
https://us.jetcost.com/en: lots of controls to filter out what you need at low rates.
https://www.airfarewatchdog.com/: publishes great deals but you must depend on their selection of places and times.
