| moving - 14 June 2008 |
| hey everyone, if you've bookmarked your websites at jrenich.com/home.php please redirect them to blog.jrenich.com. i'm moving everything over to some new tech. bed time for this old blog. JR |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| news - 12 June 2008 |
| my new favorite news site: the big picture |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| iphone 3g - 9 June 2008 |
| new iphone = meh... |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| hiv test - 9 June 2008 |
| had to get an hiv test (again, had one for french wedding...) today for my long term visa. it cost $1.80. i think when i had blood tests at the doctors office in the US i paid like $200. many more tests but still... and it took a while to get the results, had them in 5 minutes here... go mongolia. |
| 1 word | it's now or never... |
| gps for good - 7 June 2008 |
| the point has got a little campaign running for edurelief here: you can pledge money towards the campaign, doesn't charge you unless enough people pledge to meet the goal. nice. |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| happenings - 7 June 2008 |
| two amazing things happened to us today in mongolia. 1) we were hiking up in the hills around erdenet (checkout my flickr page for photos) today and there are many little dirt roads going up and down and through the hills. we saw this car trying to go up into the hills but most of the cars here are so worn out they can't really do hills all that well. this driver had found a solution by turning around and just racing up the hills in reverse... it was quite the sight. 2) around 9pm there was loud banging at our front door. usually when it's loud banging we don't open it cause it's going to be a mongolian we don't know wanting something or asking something we don't understand (yet). this time we had a mongolian guy over working on our bathroom so i went ahead and opened up the door. some guy handed me a mini newspaper that was obviously for the upcoming elections, he then looked at me and asked, "do any mongolians live here?" to which i answered, no, sorry, just us white westerners... (well, i didn't actually say that, but i said no mongolians lived here...) he then just reached out and took the newspaper back, said goodbye and went to our neighbors door and began pounding on that... no need to waste election information on westerners who can't vote hey? haha thus is life. |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| mailing address! - 30 May 2008 |
| we have a mailing address! Jonathan and Marielle Renich POX-670 (95820167) Erdenet City, Orkon Aimag Mongolia we love letters, tea (especially herbal as it doesn't exist here! + good black tea), herbs (basil or herbs of of provence) and other treats... =) |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| wha? - 28 May 2008 |
| a motorcycle just drove by with two guys, a huge bag of rice and a massive sheep (probably dead) laid between the two guys. it drove up over the curb and right down the field infront of our apartment towards the city center. welcome to mongolia. |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| mongolian internet! - 28 May 2008 |
| thank you g-mobile for having the best internet service in erdenet! thank you anyData for providing the mac drivers that were not available in mongolia! thank you to the big information center floating above me that i can now access at 800kb/sec! never though mongolian internet would get like this! wooooo!!!! speeding along from my apartment on swift wireless internet! J + M |
| 2 words | it's now or never... |
| it lives! - 27 May 2008 |
 swapped out SIM card. works like a charm! checkout that carrier setting! |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| airports - 17 May 2008 |
| my life's experience with airports in chronological order: Scary awesome Difficult easy vanity regular normal boring annoying frustrating scary |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| getting on the plane! - 17 May 2008 |
 Got our bags packed, visas and apartment sorted… here’s to two and a half days of flights and layovers! See you soon Erdenet… |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| marielle genevieve - 15 May 2008 |
| we found a gem. hidden on a backup CD marielle and I discovered the following photo. for the sake of historians everywhere it should be noted that this is the photo that I saw before I met Marielle. never the less it was enough to make me fall hopelessly in love and decide to marry her before i even met her. that's what she said.  |
| 1 word | it's now or never... |
| i hacked vista - 12 May 2008 |
| it's not always microsoft's fault that their software is lacking in terms of excellence. installing a logitech webcam that worked for XP in Vista proved impossible. seems logitech thought it'd be smart to release vista capable software but no driver, frustrating webcam owners enough to purchase newer "vista compatible" webcams. fortunately, some "smarter-than-money-hungry-tech-company" hackers came up with a solution, even if it did take a basic rip and hack, force vista to accept the XP driver, then use the Vista software... problem solved. the truth: tech companies make hardware that works just fine with new software like Vista but instead of being loyal to their customers and providing free software updates they tell them they need to buy newer equipment. see? it's not only microsoft's fault... |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| trade it up - 6 May 2008 |
| i just traded this for that. gotta love ebay... |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
| pas facile - 30 April 2008 |
| running a non profit is hard. seems so especially as of late. trying to launch a new website, moving to onsite projects, designing stuff, a team that's not solid yet in their roles, helping organize fundraising events in other countries / cities... i feel like i am having to know how to do everything. not that i'm doing everything, there's great people like my brother doing the website, other people designing things or running events back in eugene. but since there's not a team of full time people a lot of stuff just really comes back here. we want to grow, we want to expand, the possibilities of making a massive difference are there but just not catching cause sometimes it takes a while to get stuff moving... i just read a book, leaving microsoft to change the world. it was hugely inspiring about a guy who left his job to start a nonprofit that helps kids go to school (hey... like us!). it's gotten huge, i was encouraged but also discouraged, the guy works 60+ hours a weeks, travels like a madman, is not married, doesn't sleep, knows tons of rich people, etc... my question is, to change the word, to help a mongolian child, to i need to be like him? somehow i think it can be done otherwise, but just for the record, running a nonprofit startup is NOT vacation. my back hurts, i'm frustrated, tired of designing mini-icons for the new website, and i just want to sleep. poo poo poor me. ;-) JFR |
| 0 words | it's now or never... |
