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Sunday greetings everyone!

As you probably remember, a week ago I drove the pickup over to drop off a load of branches and yard waste — and couldn't unload any of it because the tailgate refused to come down. Today Grandma Cybersalt and I drove back over, and the gate behaved itself. The brush and yard waste are finally out of the truck. I did give the mechanism a generous shot of WD-40 between trips, so that may have made the difference. Then again, it might just be that the truck was afraid to misbehave with Susan around. Either way, I'll take it.

Today's video share is about a rare micro blue moon that's happening tonight — and as the saying goes, this is a chance you only get once in a blue moon. If the sky is clear where you are, step outside and look up.
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Enjoy the rest of today's Digest.

~ Pastor Tim

Oh look, Chicken Thursday!

For the last couple of weeks I've been teasing about a pair of companies I was buying. The transaction is now complete and I've started the freshening-up work the websites need. They are energizethemes.com and virtuemarttemplates.net, and between them they sell close to 100 templates. The idea is simple: when you're building a website and you don't want to get bogged down in the design side of things, you grab one of these and you can get on with the rest of your business. Energize Themes makes templates for Joomla — which happens to be the same software my own websites are built on — and VirtueMart Templates is the ecommerce side, since VirtueMart is the online-store add-on that runs inside Joomla. Both domains have now transferred into my name, and I have begun updating every one of those almost-100 templates to the latest versions of the software they run on. I'm very excited about this opportunity and having a lot of fun.

Today's video share is a funny little look at the quirkiness of human beings — but stick with it, because it ends with a really sweet message.
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Enjoy the rest of today's Digest.

~ Pastor Tim

Happy Saturday everyone!

Grandma Cybersalt is away for the weekend at a church retreat, so I've been taking the chance to put in some long hours on a stack of work projects I've had on the go. I did take a break yesterday though — and a milestone break at that. When I broke my arm just over seven weeks ago there was no way I was going to be driving the pickup truck — it's a standard with a great big shifter coming up off the floor. But the surgeon's follow-up X-ray this week showed the bone has healed enough that I can finally start building strength back up. So today I figured it was time for a little test drive.

The truck mostly sits parked next to the house, and one of its main jobs is to wait for Susan to load it up with branches, grass clippings, and yard waste so we can run it over to the city works yard — they let citizens drop it off for free. Felt like a perfect short outing to test my shifting arm. I was very pleased to find it was up to the job. What was not up to the job, as it turned out, was the tailgate. I backed up to the dump spot, hopped out, and... the gate would not open. Now this isn't unheard of — the gate gets stuck once in a while, and the usual cure is to lurch the truck forward and back a couple of times to shake things loose. I tried that. Nothing. I tried pulling on the gate (my arm wasn't up to that one). I tried climbing in and kicking it. Nothing. I drove around the yard, which sits on a bit of a hill, hunting for bumpier patches to give the truck a good twist. Back to the dump spot. Still nothing. A kind fellow came over with his two good arms — between us we had three and a half arms — and even that wasn't enough. Closing time rolled around and I was the last one in the yard, so I drove home with a full load still in the back.

You can see where this is going. I backed up to my normal parking spot beside the house, walked around, gave the latch a little wiggle and a couple of taps — and the gate dropped open like nothing had ever been wrong. I had to laugh out loud. Of course. A good soak of WD-40 is on the assembly now, a bit of grease to follow, and Lord willing next Saturday's run to the works yard will be a little less interesting.

Today's video share is one I'm not even sure how to describe. It's probably one of the craziest creatures I've ever seen — and then partway through the clip you find out it isn't one creature at all, it's many creatures, which takes the whole thing to a whole new level.
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Enjoy the rest of today's Digest.

~ Pastor Tim

Oh look, Chicken Thursday!

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I was excited about buying a couple of companies. Well, the domains for those websites finally transferred into my hands yesterday, which means the purchase is officially complete and everything is now in my control.

There's still a bit of fix-up work to do on those sites before I make the full announcement — and when I do, I'll share the links here so you can have a look. The whole process has been a lot of fun, and I'm hoping this purchase works out as well as the one I made back in January of 2024.

Today's video share is almost a public service announcement — at least for those of us who get the heebie jeebies the moment we see anything in the fridge that's past the printed date. As it turns out, "best before" doesn't actually mean "throw it out," and a lot of things on our shelves are perfectly fine to eat for a good while after that little stamp.
Click Here To Watch

Enjoy the rest of today's Digest.

~ Pastor Tim