HansMast.com

Wedding Sampler

Hans Mast — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:24:44 +0000

I’ve uploaded a gallery of 90 pictures that contains a sampling of various weddings I’ve shot. As always, any suggestions or feedback is welcome.

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CNet Download.com Scandal: Virus-laden Files

Hans Mast — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:57:02 +0000

One of the primary points of using a site like CNet’s Download.com to download little freeware programs is that they are a trustworthy company that has established a solid reputation for ensuring that all the software is virus-free. They even include a little blurb “Tested spyware free” with every download. Their Software Policies page says the following:

We test all software products submitted to us against a comprehensive set of criteria. In addition to screening for common viruses and spyware, we also look for other threats that might interfere with our users’ security, privacy, and control. [...]

We will not list software that contains viruses, Trojan horses, malicious adware, spyware, or other potentially harmful components.

Now I realize that it’s very difficult–nearly impossible in fact–to detect a custom-written virus made to be distributed in a certain program, especially if the virus/program writers are smart enough to time-delay payload delivery/internet communication.

However, detecting a standard-issue, in-the-wild, generic virus like Win32/Funlove which was first discovered in 1999 is beyond easy for a company like CNet.

Therefore it is inexcusable that they are hosting a program (Wave To Text 5.5890.9831) that is a delivery tool for this virus. It puts their entire inventory of files into doubt and shows that their testing procedures are not adequate.

Beyond the aspersions it casts on their testing procedures, they apparently don’t even do rudimentary monitoring of the user-ratings of the software. This piece of software (which CNet editors rate as five star) has a 1.5-star user rating with most of the ratings screaming “Virus!”Similar Posts:

Elam Stoltzfoos – Beachy Youth Fellowship Meetings 2010 – Midwest District, Huntsville, AR

Hans Mast — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:16:39 +0000

We had an amazing time at the Midwest District Beachy Youth Fellowship Meetings in Hunstville, AR. Great friends and great services! It was a huge blessing!

Elam Stoltzfoos was the speaker and he proved to have an uncannily insightful understanding of the conservative Mennonite youth psyche. He incisively identified five different types of perspectives that we have in our conservative Anabaptist circles, mostly segregated by age. He showed why these perspectives were formed (as a wise response to the times and issues in which that age group grew up in), why they are valuable perspectives to the church as a whole, and lots of practical advice on how the different perspectives can relate to each other in a Godly, loving, mutually beneficial, and upbuilding way.

I believe that every young conservative Mennonite person (or middle-aged or older person that is interested in learning to effectively bridge the generation gap in a way that brings every age group into a spirit-unity for an effective and healthy church that is building the Kingdom) should listen to these messages. I think you should listen to them all and I’m quite sure you won’t regret investing time in listening to them all, but if you must listen to only one, please listen to the first one (“The Church and Its Youth”).

These are some of the most uniquely insightful (and practically helpful) messages I’ve heard preached about conservative Mennonite (and perhaps it has broader applicability to other denominations) youth thinking and what we need to do to effectively serve the Lord in our churches. I have not been this excited about hearing a set of sermons in a long time!

Benji Mast (my brother) and Gideon Yutzy both gave outstanding devotionals that I recommend as well. Benji especially had a good talk about how we establish a “Moral Authority” and a right to speak up about church issues in a way that the older folks will respect and appreciate what we say.

Gideon Yutzy – Devotional
Friday
17:45 – 4.06 MB

Elam Stoltzfoos – The Church and Its Youth
Friday
1:01:42 – 14.1 MB

Benji Mast – Moral Authority
Saturday
13:24 – 3.06 MB

Elam Stoltzfoos – The Golden Opportunities of the Youth Years
Saturday
1:24:24 – 19.3 MB

Jonathan Miller – Devotional
Sunday
10:41 – 2.44 MB

Elam Stoltzfoos – Youth: The Light of the World
Sunday
1:02:19 – 14.2 MB

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Pang Klang – Lisu People of Pang Klang

Hans Mast — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:00:56 +0000

Here are some pictures of the native Lisu people of Pang Klang, a Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel, a couple from our church are living. (I previously posted this and this and this from their village.)

A neighbor and her kids

Giving sister a bath

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Pang Klang – Misc

Hans Mast — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:00:41 +0000

Here are various pictures from Pang Klang, a Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel, a couple from our church are living. (I previously posted this and this from their village.)

Enjoying treasures from the U.S.!

Craig demonstrating how he teaches English in the “town hall”

Rosene’s darling little munchkin

Neighbors’ house

Josh explaining with his signature expressiveness

Cutting pineapple

Contemplatively surveying the village from his doorway

Visiting Craig and Rachel’s first home in Pang Klang

Standing in front of their starter castle

Craig and Rachel standing in front of their current home in the setting sun

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Pang Klang – Cooking

Hans Mast — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:22:14 +0000

Here are some more pictures from Pang Klang, the Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel are living as workers. (I previously posted a picture of Pang Klang’s shaman.)

The reason there’s a whole post on cooking pictures is because that comprises a large part of Craig & Rachel’s day. Cooking over a cook fire takes just a bit longer than popping something in the microwave!

Picking some food from the garden for lunch

Making toast over the fire!

Melting and buttering toast

Starting a cook fire

Splitting wood for the fire with a machete-like knife

The finished product!

Sitting down to eat

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BREAKING NEWS: SMBI Night of Music moved

Hans Mast — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:43:26 +0000

The Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute’s annual Night of Music is being moved from Antrim in Greencastle, PA to the SMBI campus here in Harrisonville, PA. (Because of the blizzard moving in.) Please pass the word around and link here so people can get any updates. The service is still happening at 7:30 PM, Feb. 5.
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Lisu Shaman in Northern Thailand

Hans Mast — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:52:01 +0000

The shaman of Pang Klang, the Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel (a couple from our church) are living

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Xi’an Cityscape

Hans Mast — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:16:01 +0000

This is the view from our hotel in Xi’an, China. Technical details: 2 exp HDR + Lucis, f/8, 30sec (+2 EV) & 8sec (0 EV), ISO 200

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Stupid Drudge Headline: $2.2M A Word

Hans Mast — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:14:13 +0000

Drudge simultaneously lambasts the health care bill for being too long and complex (”Pelosi’s biggest one yet! 1,990 pages…”) and for having a high money/word ratio (”$2.2M A Word), which is contradictory. A simpler/shorter bill will have a higher money/word ratio.Similar Posts:

Amazon Offers International Kindle Refund

Hans Mast — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:04:32 +0000

I got the below email from Amazon this morning after having ordered a new International Kindle. They’re giving me a $20 refund because they decided to drop the price! This cements my status as a very loyal Amazon customer. I have an Amazon Prime membership, getting free Second Day Air shipping and Overnight Shipping for $3.99 per item. Their prices are excellent and I don’t need to waste time driving to town and shopping, so what’s not to like? When you find WalMart contacting you after a purchase, offering to give you a $20 refund because they just dropped the price, let me know. In the mean time, I’m even getting some of my groceries from Amazon. The email:

Hello,

Good news! Due to strong customer demand for our newest Kindle with U.S. and international wireless, we are consolidating our family of 6″ Kindles. As part of this consolidation, we are lowering the price of the Kindle you just purchased from $279 down to $259. You don’t need to do anything to get the lower price–we are automatically issuing you a $20 refund. This refund should be processed in the next few days and will appear as a credit on your next billing statement.

We’ll also send you a follow-up e-mail to confirm the refund once it has been completed.
We hope you enjoy your new Kindle. Please send us your feedback at: Kindle-feedback@amazon.com

Sincerely,

The Kindle Team

I’m pretty sure Amazon is hitting back against the Barnes & Noble Nook ebook reader announcement as well.Similar Posts:

Bad Dreams

Hans Mast — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:30:58 +0000

I dreamed last night that Cuccinelli and Bolling lost and McDonnell squeaked by with just a single percent. Talk about bad dreams… Similar Posts:

Political Hypocrisy Catch-22

Hans Mast — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:19:32 +0000

I chuckle every time I read something like the following paragraph in a WaPo editorial:

REPUBLICANS ARE upset that House Democratic leaders may try to get the D.C. voting rights bill passed by attaching it to the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill. They argue that it would be wrong to include controversial legislation in an unrelated bill. Do they really think everyone has forgotten that they used the same ploy to sabotage voting rights in the first place?

[...]

Bravo to Mr. Hoyer for his continuing commitment to District rights and for calling out Republicans on their hypocrisy.

This story plays itself out often. The Democrats are doing something that Republicans did when they were in power. When the Republicans were in power, the Democrats condemned the GOP’s actions on principle and the GOP defended it on principle. Now that positions are reversed, the Democrats are defending the very actions they condemned and the GOP is condemning the actions they defended.

But what adds a further layer of absurdity is when someone tries to make the argument that one side or the other is hypocritical for their current stance because of their previous position. The truth is, that in that situation, by definition, both are being hypocritical. To criticize just the Democrats or just the Republicans is to ignore the essence of the situation.

This simple lack of logic by the WaPo editorial board strikes a strong blow against those that would claim that it is evenhanded and non-partisan.Similar Posts:

Helping People

Hans Mast — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:21:29 +0000

I had a fun Sunday afternoon helping some folks in need! Some missionaries from a hard-to-reach African country called Golden Rule’s 24/7 emergency hotline for help. They had been scheduled to return to the U.S. for furlough on 15 Oct, but their daughter in the U.S. is having pregnancy complications at the 6 month mark, so the mom needed to fly back as soon as possible, which in this case is Tuesday. So, I tried to change their tickets, but was unable to because the space was just totally sold out on that airline from Europe to the U.S. But because they were on our flexible, refundable, missionary, non-profit tickets, I was able to refund their tickets and purchase other tickets on a different one of our missionary/non-profit contracts whose schedule was better and actually saved them about $150 after the refund penalty! It’s so satisfying to be able to help people out of difficult situations! In all it was about a 2-3 hour job, but it was lots of fun and quite fulfilling!Similar Posts:

Carter, Obama on Race, ObamaCare

Hans Mast — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:14:21 +0000

Excerpt from this month’s Newslines column in Sword and Trumpet:

Jimmy Carter stated that, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.” Those who are strongly against a socialist health care system were not impressed that they were being dismissed as racist, when they believed strongly that a socialist health care system was bad for America. I think this is validated by the same animosity from the Right toward white folks like Sen. Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and others from the Left that have advocated government-run healthcare. Obama has been commendably honest on this issue, rebuking Carter by saying, “Are there people out there who don’t like me because of race? I’m sure there are. That’s not the overriding issue here.” Excellently stated.
Sources: AP, Washington Post

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