Travel, Tech, Thoughts…
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Kubuntu 22.04 – How to Reset Plasma 5 Desktop
Kubuntu is my distribution of choice. I really like the flexibility of the KDE Desktop. But, pretty much every time I install Kubuntu, something goes haywire with the desktop, typically it is panels behaving strangely. For instance, I have dual monitors. I like to have a panel on the far right side of my two…
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Norway Trip – Part 2 (of 2) – Stranda
Day 9 Sunday, June 5th, we drove from Bergen to our second AirBnB, which was located near the Sunnmørsalpane Skiarena Fjellsætra (you can ski directly to the house where we stayed). The drive took somewhere around 6 to 7 hours. It was rainy and driving in a foreign country is a bit stressful, but manageable…
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Driving in Norway – June 2022
We spent just over two weeks in west-central Norway in June 2022. We rented an Audio E-tron and drove all over the place. Here are a few things I noticed while driving in Norway. Driver’s License Some European countries require an international license. From what I can tell, international licenses are basically a scam to…
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Norway Trip – Part 1 (of 2) – Bergen
My wife, Debi, had an opportunity to contribute to a workshop run by a professor at the University of Bergen. Her involvement helped pay for her travel and lodging for a week, so we decided to make a trip to Norway our family vacation for the year. We booked a week in Bergen and a…
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Google Calendar Time Zone tricks
I regularly collaborate with scholars around the world. One problem that arises from that, however, is that we have to coordinate time zones. As a result, I have picked up a couple of really nifty features of Google Calendar that manage that for me. Here are the two I use most frequently. Add a Meeting…
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Credit Cards, Two Factor Authentication, and International Travel
We recently traveled to Norway for a combination of work and vacation. As a tech enthusiast, I’m all about ways to make life easier and tech can often accomplish that. But, there are some downsides, like the one I’m about to describe. I have three credit cards that don’t charge foreign transaction fees, one of…
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Cell Service and SIMs in Norway – May 2022
What follows is a detailed description of our experience getting pre-paid SIMs for our cell phones in Norway. I had looked up the major carriers in Norway thinking they would all offer prepaid SIMs. From what I could find online, I decided to go with Telenor as it has good coverage and I knew we…
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Norway – Galdhopiggen
I was in Norway on vacation with my wife and son (see here and here). We did a fair amount of hiking, and I originally thought we would all do this hike. But I caught a trip report a couple days before I did the hike that indicated it was still mostly covered in snow.…
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Questions to Ask Missionaries and Evangelists
I was hurriedly walking to a meeting across my campus about a week ago when a young man stopped me and asked, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Without waiting for me to respond, he asked, “What church do you go to?” When I told him I don’t go to church, he…
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A bridge too far: The failure to capture ‘spiritual fitness’ in the US military
After massive resources have been spent trying to assess spiritual fitness in the military, scholars now admit it is not a meaningful concept.