Zulu Incomplete

I feel as though a year should come and go with a certain amount of fanfare, despite the fact that the actual date for our Gregorian “New Year” was rather arbitrarily selected (the history of calendars makes a fascinating study).

I missed posting for two months this year for the first time since I started the blog back in 2006, I never really had a strict schedule of when I would post, but I was kind of proud of that unbroken chain.

Ultimately though I just want to marvel at varied my life was this last year. I lived on three different continents and some umpteen different homes , I learned a new language, I ate camel intestines for the first time (I prefer brain as a delicacy), I ran TelePrompTer in a different language, watched my little brother get married, and other things that I’m forgetting at this time.

Anyway, goodbye 2008, welcome 2009, you hold promise of being even more trying and diverse.

In the month since the last update  I have been busy. The Christmas season is always busy and it’s hard to stay on top of things when schedules fill right up to the brim.

To start the month I spent considerable time identifying and squashing bugs in the new Arabic site design I am working on, they are nearly all taken care of. Meaning we are approaching launch. Right now the biggest road block is the fact that not all of the videos are ready for the new site, which brings me to what I have been doing the last week, which is digitizing cassettes. I only have another 25 hours of tape to go through.

I have also been making preparations for my imminent trip into West Africa. I have nearly all the gear ready, I have one more dose of typhoid inoculation to take, the malaria pills purchased, African visa and passport, all the necessary travel tickets. All that’s left really is a little more paper work and packing my bag. On Wednesday afternoon I am taking a train ride up to Madrid and then flying out Thursday morning.

Last night was the first all night games night of the year. The turn out wasn’t huge, but it was a good time, and the youth were as usual appreciative.

It’ll probably be another month before I write an update.

I don’t know that anyone else has every wanted to do this, but I wanted to be able to retrieve recent comments from a category and display them along the archive listing for that category. So I wrote a little function that accepts two arguments $num is the amount of comments you would like to retrieve and $cat is the category they should come from. If nothing is specified it will just retrieve the 10 most recent comments.

function recent_comments($num = 10, $cat = 0) {
	global $wpdb;

	if($cat == 0){
		return $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title, comment_author, comment_id, comment_author_email, comment_date, comment_post_ID, comment_author_url, comment_content
			FROM  $wpdb->posts, $wpdb->comments
			WHERE $wpdb->posts.ID=$wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID
			AND $wpdb->comments.comment_approved = '1'
			AND $wpdb->comments.comment_type = ''
			AND comment_author != ''
			ORDER BY $wpdb->comments.comment_date
			DESC LIMIT $num", OBJECT);
	} else {
		return $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title, comment_author, comment_id, comment_author_email, comment_date, comment_post_ID, comment_author_url, comment_content
			FROM  wp_posts, wp_comments, wp_term_relationships, wp_term_taxonomy
			WHERE $wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID
			AND $wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->term_relationships.object_id
			AND $wpdb->term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
			AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id = '$cat'
			AND $wpdb->comments.comment_approved = '1'
			AND $wpdb->comments.comment_type = ''
			AND comment_author != ''
			ORDER BY $wpdb->comments.comment_date
			DESC LIMIT $num", OBJECT);
	}
}

Perhaps you might like to see it in action:

<ol class="commentlist">
<?php $comments =  recent_comments('10', $cat_object->term_id ); ?>
<?php foreach($comments as $comment) : ?>

	<li class="comment" id="comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">

		<?php echo get_avatar($comment); ?>
		<div class="description">

			<hr>

			<p class="commentMeta">
				<cite><?php comment_author_link() ?></cite> &larr; <a href="<?php echo get_permalink($comment->comment_post_ID) ?>#comment-<?php echo $comment->comment_post_ID ?>" title="<?php sprintf(__('Read comment on %s'), $comment->post_title) ?>"><?php echo $comment->post_title; ?></a><br>
				<a href="<?php echo get_permalink($comment->comment_post_ID) ?>#comment-<?php echo $comment->comment_post_ID ?>" class="date"><?php comment_date(); ?></a>
				<?php edit_comment_link(__('Edit'),'<br>',''); ?>
			</p>
			<?php comment_text() ?>
		</div>
	</li>

<?php endforeach; ?>

</ol>

Almost two months have gone by without a single “weekly” update. Shame on me.

In the last update I mentioned that I was moving the following Sunday. I am proud to report that I have now been living in the same apartment since that day. Eight weeks in a row, a new personal best for the year It really has proved to be a good location and the roommates are good company.

In these last two months I have been working furiously on a redesign of Malaga Media Centers (MMC) Arabic outreach site, toiling endlessly to perfect the user experience of the media portion of the site. It’s getting really fluid, I’m proud of what has been accomplished, a few details remain that need working out, but they should be finished this week. That said, I am presenting the new design tomorrow morning at the department meeting.

Once I finish the media site I need to align the forum design to match, which promises to be an arduous process thanks to the archaic architecture of the vBulletin forum software.

Also, I have been making preparations for a work trip to West Africa in January. The Avant Recruitment Director and I will be scouting some new territory for Short Cycle Church Planting Teams and I will be recording video and taking photos to send back to North America to be used in recruiting materials.

As part of preparations there are visas to acquire, inoculations to acquire, and a myriad of other concerns to address. Last Friday (American Thanksgiving, which I was forced to celebrate, I mean enjoyed) in the morning I went to see the Department of External Health here in Malaga (the place where you can get needles full of tropical viruses) and received three inoculations, most importantly the one for yellow fever, I’ve been ill ever since. Actually, to be perfectly honest, of the last 36 hours, more than 24 of them have been spent in bed.

The doctor said side effects like this could last up to four or five days, meaning I should be coming up on the end of it. Let’s hope so.

Where is it? Where could it be?! I thought to myself as I frantically rustled through each and every single one of my pockets and carefully examined it’s contents. It didn’t turn up, not even after turning them inside out. What a time to be wearing cargo pants.

The day before I had gone to the bus station in Madrid to buy a ticket for the following days night bus to Malaga and I still had it that morning when I stuffed it my jacket pocket along with my camera and iPod. And now, while the camera and iPod where still in the pocket, the ticket was nowhere to be found. It must of fallen out of my pocket at some point while I was taking the camera out to take a picture, somewhere in central madrid, sometime within the previous 12 hours. There wasn’t realistically any hope of finding it, it was only a little more than an hour until the bus left.

So I went back to the ticket window and told the clerk there that I had lost my ticket and asked if there was anything that could be done. He said not really.

I got the visa card and he asked me if I knew what seat my old ticket was. I thought, Oh great … this bus is going to be full. My thoughts must have become audible because he assured me that there were still seats left. I told him I thought it was maybe number 18, he told me definitely not.

He asked me where I bought the ticket, I said right in very same ticket window in which were talking. He asked me when I bought the ticket, I said  the day previous in the afternoon. He asked me if I had bought it from him, I told him I sure didn’t recognize him.

I got out my credit card and he got out a hand written ticket. He gave me the newly created ticket and said I didn’t owe him anything.

I couldn’t believe it. I was certain I was going to have to pay twice (which still only amounts to half what a train ticket would cost) and he was letting me on the bus with not much more than my word! Amazing! I did not expect so much grace from a bus station ticket clerk at eleven pm on a Saturday night.

At any rate, I believe there is a lesson here to be learned. My advice to myself is that in the future, I should use my little pocket camera to make a quick and disposable copy important papers, such as bus tickets, in case I once again find my pockets quite hole-y.

Ultimately though, I just want to thank Daibus for being helpful and not making me pay for my seat twice. That really made my day.

A common theme in my life. I am switching websites. In the future look for updates at jamiefehr.tumblr.com

I am tired doing software updates to the website and tumblr.com is capable of doing what I want it too so there you have it. This is the last post you’ll see her and once my hosting subscription expires this site will disappear from the web.

It is time again to revive the weekly status updates. Originally these were created by me and specifically for me that I could see that tasks were being completed and that if they weren’t, that I would be publicly shamed into being more diligent. However after I left Spain in May 2007 it seemed pointless to carry on with the updates on a weekly basis, as I didn’t have regular employment, tasks, schedule, or really anything, even up until now. So it was changed to “Intermittent Status Updates” and updates came when pertinent and, at best, intermittently.

This week, the first accomplishment was that I found a place, signed a lease, and now have keys in hand. I had sent out an email update saying that I was moving a few days ago, but as nothing happens too quickly in Spanish culture that has been postponed until Sunday. Moving won’t be difficult, I have naught but a backpack full of essentials and a box filled with non-essential books, clothing, kitchen supplies, and etc..

Secondly, I did my first ever round of english tutoring last night. I gave an hour lesson to the son of my former Spanish teacher. She’s even rounded up a second possible client for me if I feel I have time.

Thirdly, there have been meetings to attend, software updates to apply to the websites I “master” and glitches in the software that powers the websites that have needed to be diagnosing and repair. I am trying to get onto doing some redesigns, but as our web presence grows more and more of my time gets consumed in maintaining what we have.

And as it’s been a while since I’ve made any sort of Public update, I’ll include an event from last Friday. Myself and Mikell (The Assistant Director) hosted an all night video game party for the youth of my church (ICE Renacer) as well as a few other friends. We had almost 20 people show up and connect to the LAN to play Counter-Strike between 22:00 and 08:00 Saturday morning. It was a lot of fun and most people made it straight through the night and some of the kids even made it right through the next day.

This will be quick. Some weeks ago I went and I tried to put some money on my phone. Everything appeared to work and I left with a receipt and waited for some money to actually show up in my phones account. A few days later I still didn’t see the credit (it never takes that long) on my phone but I had to move so I gathered my things and moved on down the hill. 

A few days later I was leaving for the alps for two weeks and I still didn’t have any credit on my phone but it was too late, I was out of the country and had to make do with €2.20 that I had. It was enough for the trip, but now I’m back and I only have €.20. Enough to make a 40 second phone call or send one text message.

So last Saturday I went to try again and put some money on the phone but after six attempts with the machine at the local bookstore all ending in “Error General (19)” I gave up and said I’d come back on Monday and give it a go.

Yesterday was Monday. I went to the book store and tried another six times all ending in the same error. So I decided I would try at a different place downtown. I thought surely it will work there. So I hoped on my recently acquired bicycle and proceeded to downtown.

Halfway down the hill one of the pedals fell off. Anger.

I never the less made it with one pedal to the phone store where I had previously bought credit for my phone. They tried twice. Error. ERROR. They told me go. Great.

I decided to eat and had fast food for the first time in two months. It was moderately satisfying.

I then called my phone service provider and asked them to fix the problem. They told me they could do nothing for me. Great. You guys are awesome Yoigo (with all due sarcasm).

I took my broken bike to the bus stop and waited 15 minutes for it to show up, only to be denied entrance. Apparently (but not really to my surprise) you can’t take a bike on the bus. I explained my situation. Still I was denied entrance.

So I walked my bike an hour up the hill still not having any credit on my phone with which to make a call and I can’t find the receipt to prove that there is something wrong. It was a very frustrating evening but I hope you can laugh about it.

It’s hot. We’ve arrived at the point in the summer where the outside ambient air temperature exceeds my core body temperature and I’m just left wishing that my shower was capable of producing colder water. All this is to say that I really don’t feel like doing anything these days.

That said, I have several websites, a video, photography, and translation to do with a big conference coming up, so I am kept busy.

Also, I am contemplating continuing to update this site at my current pace and using email as my main platform for major updates and facebook as the way to find out what’s going on otherwise. If you want to get onto my regular mailing list send a message to the address listed on the contact page.

This was too wild an experience to not be publicly documented. My pilgrimage to Essaouira, Morocco for the Gnaoua Festival (Music Sample) began halfway through my fifth tour of Morocco in Rabat and while I had bothered to make a few plans about how things were going to happen, there was nothing very concrete. So it was no surprise to me when all my Moroccan friends who had talked about going backed out and what had existed for plans all fell through. I was on my own for accommodations and transport, normally not a daunting task for a seasoned traveller such as myself, it was just that this was a small city with a very limited number of hotels and transport options that was grows exponentially every year for this festival.

So it came time for me to decide if I still wanted to go and I decided that I make a go at it and see what could happen. I still had a possibility for accommodations, an american girl I had meet on the train Tangier offered me to stay with her some friends for the festival. I made the call and the result was inconclusive, but not being one to hesitate I went to the train station to get a ticket.

I already knew that trains were only available as far as Marrakech and after that I would have to switch to a bus. And I guess in the back of my mind I didn’t expect that there would be an available bus to Essaouira that night because I didn’t feel in the least bit shocked that my request for a first class passage to Essaouira turned into a second class passage to Marrakech.

What they hey? I thought to myself. Let’s go to Marrakech. So I boarded the train and got into a cramped un-air-conditioned cabin bound for the edge of the Sahara desert. There were some interesting Moroccans in the compartment who were very surprised to learn that I knew some arabic and made every effort to convert me to Islam. I declined as politely as I could.

As the train was pulling into Marrakech, I just couldn’t let go of the awe I was feeling. The scenery could only be described as other worldly. It was wicked hot (42 degrees Celsius or better) and the scenery reminded me most of some of the Mars photos I’ve seen. I had been to Marrakech before, but somehow this time was different.

And for the record I don’t think that Marrakech is a fun place to hang out in by ones self.

I went and found a cheap hotel without air conditioning or even a fan on noisy side street on one of the hottest nights I’d even experienced. I really didn’t think that hell could be much different. And early the next morning I went to the bus station to see if there was an available bus to Essaouira.  There wasn’t until nine that evening. I was ready to give up. I wanted to leave the heat and the uncertain state of lodgings for cleaner, cooler, quieter Southern Spain (I didn’t honestly think I’d ever utter those words in reference to Southern Spain), but an american guy and his girlfriend convinced me and some French/Moroccan to catch a grand taxi with them to the Festival.

It was on the taxi ride at the last possible moment when I got a text message from my acquaintance (really, to say anything more than acquaintance would be exaggerating) from the train that I could indeed stay with them for the two nights of the festival that remained. The only thing was that she wasn’t going to be there until the following day and someone I totally didn’t know was going to be there to let me in.

So I got to the apartment we all were going to be staying at and introduced myself to the group and realized quickly that I in every way an anomaly. Firstly, I was the only guy, secondly I was the only one that didn’t have a masters in something or other, and lastly I was the only one who didn’t know anyone else from a hole in the wall. The only common factor was that everyone was 24. Pretty random eh?

So in the end I did get to end the festival, the city, the beach, live Moroccan hip-hop music until four in the morning, fresh Moroccan khobz straight out of the oven shortly there after and just some beautiful sea-side summer weather. The only other really weird thing that happened was hearing my name called out while wading through a crowd of fellow concert goers only to find out that it was some Moroccan guy that I really didn’t remember. Yet he knew enough about me without me volunteering information that I accepted him as a friend and we hung the whole afternoon. He also tried to convert me to Islam but to no avail.

Wait. I am almost forgetting the strangest part of the trip. 

After leaving the festival I took an air conditioned bus (thank goodness, I almost never get to travel with A/C in Morocco) to Marrakech where I got to see the half of the Euro Cup game between Spain and Germany and then caught an overnight train to Tanger where I was going to catch the ferry into Spain.  

When the train arrived in Spain I had only a half to get from the station to onboard the ferry, not a lot of time, but I still managed to make friends with a hurried Moroccan man who also desperately wanted to catch the eight o’clock ferry. I boarded the boat with him and as we were looking for good seats a hawaiian man randomly starting conversing with me and I shared a little bit about where I’d been and he where he was at.

He told me he was traveling with an Egyptian man who was living in Spain and that they had been seeing his friends. I said that was nice and continued to talk with my newest Moroccan friend. But then I saw this Hawaiian guys egyptian friend and realized that I had met him before on a small and far away Mediterranean Island over a year ago. I got out of my seat and gave the man a hug. That’s just how good of friends we are.

So I spent the morning with those two and they gave me a ride from the port in Tarifa to Malaga. I was really grateful for that, but it really is a small world.