Travel, Tech, Thoughts…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Norway – Galdhopiggen

    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.…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • Backing Up Files to Prevent Data Loss

    Backing Up Files to Prevent Data Loss

    It took years to figure this out and it’s not free, but I don’t ever lose files anymore. Not losing files is worth the $240 I pay for these services per year. Do note that I use Linux as my operating system, which is part of the reason why I chose the software that I…

  • Does religion really improve educational outcomes?

    Horwitz makes the claim that religiosity is beneficial for working-class young men when it comes to their educational attainment. The claims in the article are clear illustrations of two logical fallacies – faulty generalization and cherry-picking.

  • Replacing Paragraph Breaks with Double Paragraph Breaks in LibreOffice Writer

    Replacing Paragraph Breaks with Double Paragraph Breaks in LibreOffice Writer

    Here’s the problem I was facing. I had a document with a lot of text that I had to analyze. The text had been copied from a spreadsheet and pasted without formatting to get rid of the cells. As a result, there was a single “return” or “paragraph break” between each passage of text. That…

  • LibreOffice Calc – Conditional Formatting

    LibreOffice Calc – Conditional Formatting

    I haven’t used this feature of spreadsheet software as much as I probably should, but I have a spreadsheet I have been working with a lot lately and conditional formatting has been key to helping me orient myself in the spreadsheet. However, in the process, I realized that I am really a noob when it…

  • How To Fix PDF Forms Not Showing Contents in Okular (Linux)

    How To Fix PDF Forms Not Showing Contents in Okular (Linux)

    I have had this problem happen twice now, and I don’t know exactly what is causing it, but I found a solution. Here’s the situation… I received a PDF that has forms. Typically, that isn’t a problem as Okular is able to open most PDFs with forms and show both the forms and what has…