It's Not Luck, It's Answered Prayer

I don't believe in luck. In order to believe in luck, someone has to acknowledge that there is both good and bad luck. Those who have good luck have the leg-up on those with bad luck. Those with bad luck might as well be cursed. That's a simple explanation for why I don't believe in luck. There's a lot more than just that, but that's not what I am writing about.

Because I don't believe in luck, when good things happen, I attribute them to another source. I believe in a merciful, loving God, who hears and answers prayers - often in ways we don't foresee, understand or can explain. The scriptures say that "every good and perfect gift comes from God," so when something good happens to me or those around me, I try to remember to say an audible "thank you" to Him for it.

With that in mind, I want to share something that happened today and say a thank you to God for His protection and providence.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to get my son's car in to get an oil change. It was well overdue. Well, I finally was able to get it in today. As we were leaving, the tech told us we needed to check the serpentine belt because it looked like it was "split" and was in terrible shape. I cautioned Chris for his drive home to not do anything out of the ordinary. When I got home, we picked up another belt and got ready to install it. Of course, we had to take off the old one in order to install the new one. When we took the old one off, this is what it looked like:

I would venture to say that when this car belonged to my parents, they probably never changed the belt, which was why it was in the condition we found it in. You can see from the pics that the belt was literally falling apart. Yet, somehow it didn't. Was it luck? Some might say so. I can't.

Every morning, when my kids leave for school, I say a quick prayer "God, protect my kids." So we find out today that they had been driving a car with fan belt in that bad of a condition. They had been driving with it like that for quite some time. Is it a coincidence that we happened to find out about the belt before it broke and left my kids stranded somewhere along the road? Maybe. I suppose that people could see it as a coincidence. I don't. I believe that God intervened somehow and caused that rotten fan belt to keep from falling apart until it could be found and replaced.

It's nice to know that the God who cares for sparrows, as well as people, also cares about kids driving old cars with old, worn out parts and keeping those kids from being stranded until their cars can be repaired. Thank you, God.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Let Off Some Steam

For folks who know me, I'm usually a level-headed guy who can take everything - up to a point. That "point" often varies, but it always comes after dealing or putting up with something until I just can't anymore. I reached that point yesterday at work. No, I didn't lose my cool and punch somebody or get myself fired. No one was hurt in the course of this little adventure. Maybe I should tell you the story...

Last May, I was at work and was assigned a ticket for a teacher's computer in one of the computer labs in our district. It was doing something really weird when she tried to print and it would only happen in 1 particular application. I went to her room to see if I could replicate the problem myself. Sure, enough, it did the very same thing when I logged in on her PC. I worked with it for about 15 minutes and decided I should try replacing her PC with an identical replacement. When I placed that PC in her room, it did the very same thing. I was stunned. What was even more frustrating, when I took the original PC back to our office, it actually worked properly. "What the heck?!"

I went back the the teacher and told her what was going on and I came up with a work-around to get her by until I could figure out what exactly was happening. This had been working until about a week ago. Not only did she have the original problem that I could not resolve, but now she was having other problems - all of which were just as unexplainable as the original one. So, I went into her room with another new PC. I plugged it up and, wouldn't you know it, it STILL didn't work. "What the heck is going on here! I had to get this fixed.

I restarted the PC (I had rebooted the PC several times already) and this time noticed a funny flash of words on the screen. I went back and restarted the PC again, but this time I opened set up. When I did, it was trying to log me out already. (The Escape key is the exit key from set up, in case anyone didn't know). So, I pressed the Escape key and, wouldn't you know it, I found the problem. The key was stuck on the keyboard. I replaced the keyboard, brought back the user's PC, started it up and magically, all the issues the user had been experiencing just went away. We talked briefly afterward and she told me that the Escape key got stuck right about the time all of her problems got started. I passed the word on to my boss and co-workers and got an "atta-boy" from them.

But there was the issue of the keyboard.

With a bad key, it would never knowingly be allowed to re-enter the production floor of our campuses. I needed to dispose of it, but throwing it away was just too easy. This thing had been the bane of my existence for over 6 months. There had to be some sort of payback for this pathetic, inanimate object for all the grief it had caused me.

I thought a lot about what to do. It was plastic, so burning it could be potentially hazardous to my health and those around me. I could run it over in my truck, but that just wouldn't be satisfying enough. It needed to be something with my bare hands. I thought about a baseball bat, but all of mine are wood and the plastic would hurt the surface of the bat. I went back to doing it with my bare hands. After a lot of stomping, swinging it around by the cable and smashing it on the ground, this is what it looked like:

Notice, there is no Escape key anywhere to be found.