I  David Paul Marshall believes,
within the Marshall family, Gloria, my oldest daughter, may have just given
birth to the first child ever born in Asia. She was told to have labor induced
2 weeks ago and yet she believed God would give her a “natural”
birth. Tomorrow, because of Gloria’s somewhat dangerous and irregular heart
rate, the doctor decided she must have the baby. Being a NP (nurse
practitioner), she knew medically she didn’t have a swollen ankle to stand
on!!!!Rapid weight gain due to water retention which is a symptom of her heart
concern was also causing great discomfort.

How women have one child and then turn around and do it again is the second
greatest miracle of child birthing! This sentence looks accurate based on my
observations. All I remember from Gloria’s birth, once we were in the delivery
room, (her head was showing in the parking lot!), was my wife’s tender words,
“Quit touching the bed!!”

Today, Gloria’s water broke, they arrived at the hospital, the Doctor gave
her an epidural and within minutes the baby was heading for the
“light” that shines in her parents! Gloria and Clive moved to Taiwan
as missionaries last summer, taking my two grandsons with them! The epidural
didn’t take effect until long after Everett “Paul” was in Gloria’s
arms; so the doctor didn’t charge for the one thing insurance doesn’t cover!

Gloria and Clive trusted God to, in his perfect time, make the path
straight.

My first name is David and Gloria’s first and now 5, is Carter
“David” Hsu. Hudson- 3 years old- is Hudson “Marshall” Hsu,
and now the ultimate triple crown for an extremely proud grandfather that
ponders the question; what will this child, Everett “Paul” Hsu, be in
the hands of a loving God?

And guess what little “E” Paul’s nickname is going to be? It will be based
on the verses, “I lift up my eyes until the hills (mountains), from where
my help comes.”, “How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of him
who brings good news.”, and on his grandfather’s tightly held dream that
was laid away in memory at 9 years of age; becoming a “dream-come-true” when
his own mother was 9 years old. “

“Everest’s” brave grandmother ventured off on a “second honeymoon” with a
fear of heights which was overpowered by a love for little “Everest’s” grandfather!
(Our first honeymoon was spent entirely at sea-level, bass fishing in the
Everglades What kind of husband would do that! So I figured my wife deserved
something a little more “HIGH” class then fishing!”

As I stare at this beautiful child today, I find myself dreaming that one
day little “Everest” will make his first trip to “see” what his
grandfather thought was the completion of a tightly held childhood dream; to
sit at the base of the world’s tallest mountain, and to gaze spellbound at the majesty
of God’s creation, only to discover that what I saw as a completion of a dream
was simply  God’s beginning of something
far more amazing then a mountain; to share Jesus’ love with the needy people in
the valleys  of the majestic Himalayan
Mountains.

That “trip-of-a-lifetime” turned into 37 more visits and eventually Nepal
became the focus of my missionary work and it continues today through the lives
of many wonderful American and Nepali friends.

Lord I pray that you place dreams into this child’s heart, which will each,
one day become a “Dream Come True” beginning of something only God could have planned.
As you show Everett life’s “Everest”, may he always see the face of the
individual in the harvest fields in the valleys.

“Everest Paul, I pray that one day you will be known for your “hiking
Hsu’s”.

We moved here, to the Detroit area the summer of 2001. I cam without a computer and felt no burden to own one. We bought our first home on American soil since 1980. The home we moved into sits on a gorgeous acre of land with big trees and just 3 homes from Lake St. Clair. It is a private circular Archway entered haven. I was warned though, early on that the one thing I should think through before buying was what many called, “The neighbor from Hell”.

It wasn’t long into our settling in that I didn’t see “Hell” written on his forehead; but I caught a glimpse of the rumors I had committed to distruction. As time went on it was if the effort to destory planted ideas about a man I had never met, started to reassemble into something many would have described as the work of Dr. Frankenstein!

After two years of his riding lawn mower taken my lawn to the dirt as he did some strange figure eight ritual that all of my pleading was actually fueling bigger 8’s! Finally I planted a 150 foot row of $4,000 dollars of shrubs between our homes, and in one winter he strangely decided for the first time to shovel snow of his back patio!

His brother lives in our “Desperate Housewive’s” picture book lane and the two brothers haven’t spoken in 28 years. His brother apologized and said, “I am so sorry you have to be his neighbor”.

After nearly 10 years of silence, today I went to the mailbox and passed “Sunshine’ shuffling out from our very inflated forcast. In that moment a still firm and small loving voice said, “Ask him how he is doing as a builder in the worst city in America.”

He answered.

I immediately was aware of Jesus promise, “Do not worry about what you are going to say for I will give you the words when you need them.” Before I knew it I was asking for his forgiveness for not asking him for his opinion on the row of shrubbery that he would have to look at and inconvienced him as the path way from front to back was now narrowed. Even though they were all legally on my property and a sufficient distant from his property line, I knew that there was something that I could do bo allow love to cover a multitude of sin. It didn’t matter whose list of “wrongs” was longer or shorter. It didn’t matter that I spoke nicely to him from the beginning and that never changed. It didn’t matter that he broke a Guiness Book of World Records for the most different foul words strung together to describe a neighbor.

Only one thing mattered in that moment. God loves and always has loved my neighbor. And He had placed us next door to make the message clear. I apologized for planting and not asking. I apologized for not mending our “world record” verbal bash. There were no buts. No diagragms of the increasing size of the “scalping figure 8’s”. Just, “Please forgive me and lets see what we can do to make it a relationship that will surprise us both.”

And then he started to talk, surpassing 10 years worth of words in 2 mintues as he described how wonderful it was to be a grandfather.(daughter had a high school son). He couldn’t contain the joy and I left that ordained moment knowing that I had experienced what Paul said in the New Testament, “From now on we no longer regard others from a human perspective…….We see people the way God does.”

I walked into the house wondering why it took me so long and then letting go of that thought and smiled.

Some are mentioning that RS is in decline. If we run RS like I did with my neighbor it is bound to lead to a decline. But when I think of my neighbor tonight, I can’t wait for our next conversation. I picture him in my own telling stories about grandchildren.

We will make it but you know and I know where it has to start. I have missed this place and my friends here. I have missed those that “left” and I miss having missed the opportunities to see no one on this site from a worldly point of view.

I’m getting older but still have a good 20-30 years to finish well as I journey home and that journey goes right through the RS and the many friends and dear people that I think I will be seeing from a different point of view.

You all are special people, who are of great value.

Thank you for patiently waiting for my return. My wife just came through serious lower back surgery and now we both are out of work; but couldn’t be in a more joyful state.

GB     No proofreading, so feel free to tell me!!

What would the outrage be if Dell sold a line of laptops stuffed with bloatware and loaded with a buggy Windows OS?  OK, so maybe that happens alot.  But what if they then told you, you were not allowed to access the C drive, you were not allowed to remove ANY of the bloatware, and you couldn’t run ANY other OS except the one they give you?  Then imagine they release a Dell blessed OS update.  When you install this update on your laptop (that you removed bloatware on) it bricked your device.  I am pretty sure that would be pretty big news, right?

So where is the outrage at Motorola?  I will back up a little.  I purchased my first “open source” Android phone a few weeks ago.  I have the Moto Droid X and it is spectacular.  As I taught myself about the phone by joining a few forums, I learned about things like rooting, renaming apps (to remove them) and custom ROMS.  Knowing the danger of rooting the phone I chose to go ahead and do it.  I am pretty handy with technology and have no real fear that I will brick my phone.  When a leaked 2.2 OS was released, I was one of the first to load it up.  It made a HUGE difference over the buggy 2.1 released at launch.  Over the next few weeks I was able to use a great phone to its full potential.  Those who chose NOT to root and update were stuck. 

Than came this morning.  The official OTA 2.2 was released.  Knowing the dangers of possibly losing root, I decided to wait this one out.  I am SO glad I did.  Many others were not as fortunate.  When those who rooted and removed a file or two from the main drive tried to update, the update failed.  No big deal right?  We can always flash back to factory settings (thanks to the SBF file leaked from Moto).  NOT SO FAST!!

If you try to SBF from the OTA update, your phone is bricked.  I mean REALLY bricked.  Who knows if we will ever be able to fix it.  Many top developers believe it will take a 2.2 leaked SBF file to fix these phones.  So what happened?  Motorola changed the signature on the bootloader during the final days before release.  I know because I have a leaked version of 2.3.15 (the final OTA version) without the updated bootloader.

The ONLY reason I can think to do this is simply to brick the phones of those who chose to root.  I do not mind if Motorola chooses NOT to support my phone if I root it, but don’t intentionally break it.  Why do you even care what I run on MY phone?

What happened to Android being open source?  Wait a minute…Motorola is cool with taking an open source software developed by Google and then locking it down for their customers?  Then breaking the phones of those who do not follow their rules?  I am sorry, but this is plain wrong.  If Dell did this, Micheal Dell would be in front of congress.  I still love my phone and have a lot of faith in the developer community, but Motorola are a bunch of D bags.  I hope they are sued.

I never thought Motorola would make Apple seem like the open source company.

I try and check sources, but that is becoming increasingly difficult to do. So let me go on record as saying this, “If Lou Pritchett didn’t write the follow open letter then what is written here does a fare job of expressing my very similar sentiments. I pray for our President as God says to pray for our leaders. As I pray forward I pray for a leader that has the wisdom of Solomon as he leads, firmly backed by a constitution he knows so well that he is capable of bringing back the life it breathed into a growing nation and we need him to come soon or in a few more years maybe the “Author” is right.

So regardless of who the author is- how does this message provoke you, not to reaction, but to a deeper thought about who are we, and where are we headed?

 

You Scare Me   AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

 

Claim:   Lou Pritchett penned an “open letter” to President Obama.

CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED

[May 2009]

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike

any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about

you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive

Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no

visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth

growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus

don’t understand it at its core..

You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming

others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned

yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to

publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’

crowd

and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European stylecountry where the government

sector dominates instead of the private

sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with

a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly

capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose

that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of

living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics

against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from

challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider

opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both

omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything

you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs,

Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative

points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will

probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

 

Lou Pritchett

Origins:   Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter &

Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his

retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book,

Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed to us that he was indeed the author of the

much-circulated “open letter” quoted above:

I did write the ‘you scare me’ letter. I sent it to the NY Times but

they never acknowledged or published it. However, it hit the

Internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

Last updated:   31 May 2009

The URL for this page is

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/youscareme.asp

 

 

 

First posting could be as early as tonight!  Guesses on the very first “Flog” topic? This could be our first step to world-wide recognition!! Laugh, but I would rather Flog than Twitter, “The lettuce just fell off my sandwich! I will never eat here again!”Do people really spend time ready that kind of posted information? It explains how we got a president elected; clueless people tend to vote for clueless people.