The Lord recently blessed me with the first new laptop that I have ever had. My Samsung R540-JA08 has already been a tremendous help to me in many ways!

I look forward greatly to how this tool will help me to minister much more effectively in the years ahead, D.V.

Praise God for answering prayer!

This year, I have been tutoring two young home school students in Math and Science. Because they need help learning their math facts, I made a worksheet with macros in it in Excel that randomly gives them 100 multiplication problems at varying speeds.

The program first puts two numbers in the first two boxes and then shows the answer after a specified amount of time.

Here is a picture of the sheet:

The student can choose from four options:

Slower – gives them 3 seconds before showing the answer

Medium – two seconds before giving the answer

Harder – excludes the numbers 10 and 11

Instant – gives the answer at the same time as it puts the numbers up

Using this program, my goal is to get them to where they know well all their multiplication facts for 1 through 12 times 1 through 12.

Praise God for providing such useful features in Excel!

Today, I began working on increasing my reading speed. I decided to use a two-pronged approach.

First, using an audio MP3 CD with the KJV on it, I listened to Exodus 33-34 played by Windows Media Player on a high-speed setting of 2.000

while I also read the same chapters in my open Bible.

Second, I used a computer program that I made to speed read the same chapters (approximately 1800 words) at a speed of 663 words per minute.

At that speed, reading these chapters took me around 3 minutes to read.

Using this dual approach to read the Bible, my goal is to train both my eyes to read text faster and my ears to hear a faster rate of reading without any loss of comprehension in either way of receiving information. I hope to increase gradually my overall reading speed through this program so that I can read both important materials faster and less important materials even faster.

I also hope to speed listen to large sections of the Bible as a part of my exposing myself thoroughly to all the Scripture every year.

I like games like Pictionary but find using the hourglass timer frustrating because you always have to wait for it to completely shift the sand from one end to the other. To solve that problem, I made this simple game timer in Excel (with some help from my brother-in-law).

To use the timer:

1. In the cells next to the “Time Setting,” I set the time that I want to run the timer for (minutes, minutes and seconds, or seconds)
2. I click on the “Timer” button to load the time.
3. I click the “Timer” button to run the timer
4. I click the “Timer” button again to reset the time

Good stuff!