Disqus - Latest Comments for chrishansenhome

Re: When the homeless and mentally ill wander into church

chrishansenhome — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 08:04:30 -0000

If mentally ill or homeless people wander into your services, and it might put other people off, it's your responsibility as pastor to catechise the members of your congregation about treating all people, no matter what they are like, as friends, sisters and brothers in Christ. Too many congregations shun the mentally ill when they turn up, and thus lose their identification as part of the body of Christ in the world.

This does not mean that you must allow anyone on Sunday who is in need to go away needy. The clue in your essay is that there are no services for homeless or mentally ill people on Sunday. Perhaps it's over time that you got some services in on Sunday. Find a few people in the congregation who are willing to sit with these guests, pray with them, and perhaps find services that they need. All too often services for homeless/mentally-ill people take the weekend off. Could the presence of these people who are in need be a message that you and your congregation need to hear?

When I lived in New York City years ago, my parish was Holy Apostles on 28th Street and 9th Avenue. It had the largest soup kitchen in the country, feeding 1100 people in two hours each day. Our congregation on Sunday often had some of the guests whom we had fed during the week, and we embraced them. They became regular churchgoers, members of the congregation, and were valued and loved.

Re: All Things Linguistic

chrishansenhome — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 09:37:49 -0000

Don't forget one of Bush43's favourite epithets for Karl Rove: Turdblossom.

Re: Tech Socio Tech: Sugar, Fat, You, Your Bacteria, And Measuring It All

chrishansenhome — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 04:47:26 -0000

I've seen those sensors advertised, and they look quite affordable. It was something like £150 for the external things like the reader (a one-time charge). My GP and pharmacist recently gave me a new glucometer, which is not very good (design of the storage case is crap as the sticks are individually wrapped and the net pocket catches on the corners of the wrappers), but the GP said that they are going to be giving out new machines, and I suspect it's these new sensors. Will post about this when and if I get one.

Re: BREAKING: People jumping from windows to escape fire in Elephant and Castle

chrishansenhome — Mon, 09 May 2016 20:41:22 -0000

I live in this building. Flats 1-6 are now habitable. Two flats on the upper floor of the middle block are not habitable and Southwark Council has arrived and is taking care of them. I believe that flats 11-16 are also habitable. Unsure of 7-8. We are now back in our flat.

Re: Easter fire destroys New York Serbian Orthodox cathedral

chrishansenhome — Mon, 02 May 2016 18:02:02 -0000

I was in Holy Apostles Church building on 9th Avenue in 1990 when that church was heavily damaged by fire. I passed St. Sava many times when I lived in New York. Church fires are always devastating, both to the laity and the clergy. I hope that the congregation will be able to rebuild and I pray for them while they take stock of their loss.

Re: Missing Gay London Police Officer Found Dead and Dismembered

chrishansenhome — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:13:21 -0000

Semple was 59 years old.

Re: Nine Crazy Stories from the Funeral Industry

chrishansenhome — Fri, 29 May 2015 10:40:54 -0000

My great aunt died in 1973. She was an Episcopalian, but didn't work at it. So we called the Episcopal Church and the Rector agreed to do the funeral at the funeral home. On the day of the funeral we all assembled there. At the appointed time, no Rector. There was no answer at the Rector's home either when the funeral director called. 15 minutes went by, then half an hour, then three-quarters of an hour. The funeral director was frantic. After 45 minutes we called the Roman Catholic rectory, and the priest there agreed to come and perform the rites for her.

When we finally got hold of the Episcopal priest, he'd totally forgotten about the funeral and was at the golf course. In those days before mobile phones, he couldn't be reached.

The funniest part of this was the funeral director, who was pacing around and sweating bullets. Everything ended up OK, though.

Re: Can you help me stop the cyberbullying on my blog?

chrishansenhome — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 13:03:07 -0000

I have written IT Equipment usage policies for several companies, and there is always a clause making it a disciplinary matter to use company equipment for harassment or other inappropriate communication. The examples I always use are obscene jokes or pictures sent from a company email address, but harassment would also "qualify". Having harassing and inappropriate email and comments coming from company equipment can expose the company to both legal action and public opprobrium. It wouldn't matter whether the harassment could be coming from personal computer equipment under other circumstances. If the company involved had such a policy, then this person was violating it.

Re: Can you help me stop the cyberbullying on my blog?

chrishansenhome — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 03:47:15 -0000

There is a difficulty here. The offender, if stopped by his/her employer, can just continue on a personal computer at home or a smartphone. So contacting the company is probably not going to produce the desired result. This is possibly why the company is ignoring her requests for assistance.

The only way to stop this behaviour would be to enable comment moderation for all comments (not just the ones from this particular individual, as s/he can just log in with a different username and continue to offend). This will not spare the blogger (sadly) from the hurtful comments. However, such comments will not be shown on the site to others.

Once the offender realises that his/her comments are not being shown publicly, it's likely that s/he will lose interest in paying attention to her blog.

Re: Do I really have to pay this “congestion” charge in London?

chrishansenhome — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 15:46:44 -0000

To be really fair, that is a fine, not a user's fee. Totally different. I don't think you'll find UK diplomatic cars evading the tolls on the Manhattan bridges and tunnels. Fines are judicial charges for not paying something that was due or committing a crime that's not serious enough to warrant a prison term.

Re: Do I really have to pay this “congestion” charge in London?

chrishansenhome — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 11:34:24 -0000

The really sad thing about Americans and the congestion charge is that the American Embassy and US diplomats who drive here refuse to pay, refuse to pay the fines, and when their cars are clamped or towed get them right back. The US Government, scofflaw that it is, claims that this is a "tax" that they do not have to pay under international law. The UK Government says that this is a fee, which the USans would have to pay. Stalemate. I say tell the lawyer to get lost and pay his fines and drive more intelligent next time.

Re: The time the casket “blew up”

chrishansenhome — Sat, 03 May 2014 16:25:55 -0000

A Roman Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn, Archbishop Brian McEntegart, was buried in the crypt at Huntington Seminary on Long Island, but the crypt wasn't vented. Thus gases built up in the crypt and he exploded and blew out the front. I've seen the cracked and repaired stone there.

Re: Joke of the Day

chrishansenhome — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 18:36:15 -0000

That's the long form. The short form:

Mozart was a great composer
Spent his life composing.
Now that he is dead and gone
He spends it decomposing.

Re: http://www.londonshopfronts.com/post/5444779604

chrishansenhome — Fri, 13 May 2011 05:25:30 -0000

It's on Camberwell Road, not on Newington Causeway.

Re: Tech Socio Tech: HP Slams It Out Of The Park

chrishansenhome — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 04:07:07 -0000

I too have had many frustrations with HP software integration with their hardware. When it works, my HP Photosmart 3300 is great. But whenever things go wrong, they go massively wrong. The software they plant on your PC is extremely slow to install and meshes badly with the PC. I used to have several requests from it to reinstall software that it couldn't find every time I rebooted or turned the printer on. This is not very suave. It worked great with Bluetooth, but insisted on creating a separate printer for Bluetooth which then intruded when I decided to go back to Ethernet. I needed to get a virtual stake through its heart to kill it.

Now HPalm may be a great OS, and the smooth working of the calendar is something I can only long for with iOS. But until HP can get its act together from a software aspect, I'm leery of switching.

Their timing is also infelicitous, as another commenter pointed out. I just renewed my O2 contract and got a free iPhone4 for my troubles. Much faster than the 3G, the camera is 100x improved, and they still don't have the calendar sorted. The speakers are also better. I won't be free of this contract for 2 years, by which time there will be an iPhone6 that, I hope, will have the calendar sorted out.

Re: http://pierregoh.com/post/1726358993

chrishansenhome — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:27:55 -0000

Show us a "before" and an "after" picture; we'll decide!

Re: App Stores Are Not A Blessing

chrishansenhome — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:58:23 -0000

A closed system is bounded, it can theoretically be exhaustively tested for all circumstances and button-presses.

While the word "theoretically" is correct, practically there is no way to test all permutations of even a closed system without spending millions of pounds and an unlimited amount of time. The economics of testing prescribe that only a limited number of interactions and combinations of button presses will be tested.

I think that the tendencies you note above will work themselves out in time. The reason is that buggy systems cannot support the development of extensions very well since the bugs will likely interfere with the operation of the extensions. Those systems that are too buggy will then be crowded out in the development arena by systems that are less buggy.

There will also be disputes between the handset manufacturers and the extension developers as to who is responsible for the bugs. The handset people will use the mantra "It's working as designed." and the extension people will wail, "But it doesn't work with our extension!" and this will degenerate into lawsuits and acrimony.

As a business model, the handset with an app store is basically the same as the printer with ink cartridges. You sell the phone, then you get people to develop apps for it and charge them for access to your app store in some way, so you make more money from the app store than you do from the phones.

Re: Consumption

chrishansenhome — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:50:16 -0000

I wonder why the user's needs and wants wouldn't be part of the context? If I happened to want a Thanksgiving dinner at 4 pm on a workday, I should be able to get one. And the entity providing my snack should be enabled to ascertain that I want one.

The only way that the content provider knows your context is through your browser, the machine you're requesting content on, where you came from before you requested the content, the URL you sent it, and suchlike.

So the challenge for repackaging is to correctly and fully deduce the context from the information they have.

So, for example, when I type "http://news.bbc.co.uk" into Safari on my iPhone, the BBC doesn't seem to know that I'm on an iPhone and it doesn't seem to be able to find out (or interested enough to find out). So it serves me up the same full news page that I get on my computer at home.

If I type "http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile" it serves me up its mobile news page without further ado.

How stupid of it not to ask (politely) what kind of browser and machine I'm using in some way. This could be transparent to me, the user. The only hitch is if I actually want to see the full BBC news page occasionally on my iPhone.

If the people who want to repackage everything for every possible platform would just concentrate on determining as much of the context as they can and tailoring their "snack" accordingly.

Or is this my lack of caffeine at 6:49 am talking...