We left at 9:15am for District Council. Since this is transfer week, usually we wouldn't hold the meeting, but Anziano Mayer wanted to do it, so off we went. Even though it interrupts our scarce down time at home, we really enjoy being with these wonderful young missionaries. They asked Dee and me to share some "wisdom" with them. Once you have gray hair, everyone assumes that you are wise 😉😀. Dee first asked them what wisdom they felt they had gained while serving as missionaries, and they each had insightful comments, talking about the joy that comes from service and the fact that being happy is a choice, not a condition. As always, we went over the status of missionary work in our ward, and Anziano Mayer did some nice training on how to better study the scriptures. The meeting was short but worthwhile--just over an hour long.
From there we went to Lidl on the way to the Institute. Dee hadn't yet decided what she was going to make for dinner on Friday night. While in the aisles there, she decided on pancakes and sausage, so we filled up the cart with the food and other necessities, including some stuff for us at home. It was overcast with intermittent rain all day, considerably less warm than in recent weeks. Fall is slowly coming. We got to the Institute by 12:30pm and started unloaded the very full car.
Somehow in the process of lifting one of the shopping bags out of the car, I managed to tweak my lower back. This happens once or twice a year, usually from some silly little movement. I knew immediately that it was going to be bad, and sure enough within an hour I was very uncomfortable. The pain was constant but not horrible. I made an appointment with a chiropractor near our apartment for Thursday morning. This will be my first time trying one here in Italy, and hopefully she will be as wonderful as Mike M, our long-time chiropractor back in Carlsbad. The rest of the day I treated my back gingerly and did ok. To add insult to injury, when we got home at night the parking was full everywhere nearby (summer vacation is over!), so we had to park up at the top of the hill. In the dark I managed to step on some ultra-smelly dog poop and slip; I didn't fall, but my knee got tweaked. So walking the final few minutes I was limping from my knee and my back, and my shoe smelled awful. I gave him a plastic bag to put over his shoe since his feet don't like to be on the hard floor without shoes. It was hilarious to see him bent over trying to hold up the bag. I have had better days!
During the afternoon, Sammy and Francesco showed up and hung around. Riccardo was also there to work on his thesis, along with a fellow student from the Philippines, so there was some nice visiting. I asked Sammy and Riccardo if they would be willing to proofread a revised Italian translation of Mike Ash's book Shaken Faith Syndrome. Ugo and I collaborated on the project, getting permission from Mike and hiring a professional translator, as we have done with a couple of other books before. We hope to make the book available in electronic form soon to all the members in Italy. They were both willing and interested.
In the afternoon, I worked on the new FamilySearch computer, which had still not completed its configuration. Obviously something was wrong. I had brought in some cables from home to use in connecting everything. It is interesting -- the first months here I accumulated a lot of geek stuff: cables, chargers, etc, which are always useful for me. Now we are on the downhill side of our mission, so I am starting to use them and not replace them, hoping to empty my tech drawers, at least partially. With some help from Christian, our local FM guy, and then a long call to the LDS global tech support number, we were able to get the new router/firewall configured and registered as a FamilySearch center.
With the firewall in place, I tried rebooting the computer to see if the auto-configuration would work, but no luck. I read the instructions, which said that you could restore the computer to the way it was shipped, so I did that. Well, not quite. Turns out that it restored a pristine copy of Windows 10, but wiped out all the LDS FamilySearch software, which is certainly not what the documentation implied. So now I was very far away from having a working FS computer. I spent an hour or two emailing and talking on the phone with support folks in the US. Because we have a strange setup here (not a meeting house, but not quite a full Institute either, with a FH center), they didn't know what to do. I got lots of irrelevant help suggestions and emails. Finally a senior tech in Utah called me back and gave me a path to get there, which involved going to one of the local FH centers at a stake center here and running some software to download a full disk image to copy to the new computer. That would have involved coordinating a time to get that center open and spending many more hours just to get ready. Sigh. And it's not close to the Institute, either.
Fortunately, my geek paranoia saved me. I had done a full image backup (using Acronis) of the computer before ever booting Windows, so I just decided to try restoring that image. After doing so and rebooting, the FamilySearch config worked fine. It took all evening, but I think that things are in place to finish up on Thursday. I basically missed the entire evening's activity, a missionary evening where kids reached out to friends on Facebook. I got to see the kids a bit, but didn't really have time to interact with them much.
I went to the dentist for my 2pm appointment, going by metro and tram. When I got there, no one was in the waiting room. After forty minutes, I asked if they were going to see me, since the last time I went, they had me wait a long time and then told me they wouldn't see me that day. This time, they brought me in. The dentist wasn't there. In fact, the cleaning lady and the fish tank cleaning lady were working. An assistant checked the fit for my upcoming implant and then I was on my way.
On the way home, I bought more metro tickets, and enjoyed a moment to visit the Piazza del Popolo, a favorite spot. There was a cool African drummer there. Here are a few seconds of his playing.
Doug is doing amazing things with the FS computer. He just took it on without saying a word and has spent hours and hours trying to get it running. It will be so great when all is said and done, but it's not an easy task.
I needed to reimburse my sister Donna for something, and we agreed to do it with an Amazon gift card. The next day, I found out I had never clicked through to send it. So I tried again. Then Chiara sent Donna a thank you for her Amazon gift. Eek, did I send it to Chiara instead?? No one is sure what happened there, but now Donna has her gift card. Sheesh.
Francesco went with me to talk to the copy shop downstairs about new business cards for the Ganziani. They would love to have a card with all the institute activities printed on it. However, we found out that 2000 cards would cost 600€. They seem to have a very different system.We need to talk to somebody else.