My daughter of 1 year and 4 months died a week ago in a tragic car accident, so this time I’m going to mix Apper (KPackageKit), packagekit-qt2, aptcc, print-manager and religious in one blog post. Sorry if you don’t like religious things, you can skip it if you want but I hope this might help someone passing through a situation like this. (BTW there is an Open Source projects tag so planet.kde.org can filter the next ones).
It’s been a while since my last post, since the end of the last year I’ve been preparing to move from Brazil to Argentina as my wife was studying there with our twins, and I was missing them a lot. As she got a job in the university we thought we would be able to pay the bills with that plus selling books on vacations.
The travel to Argentina was really disturbed, in short we decided to go by car instead of air plane so we could carry more things, our first try was frustrated by an small car accident where the front glass of the car got bitten and my wife broke her arm, the air conditioned was also with a few problems so my parents helped to change the Ford Fiesta to a Chevrolet Prisma, when the travel started again with the brand new car (0 KM) the air conditioned stopped working, we drove to an assistance but they could not find the problem, also compared to the old car the stability in the road was very poor, the suspension was too soft for me.
After 2600 km and 4 days travelling we finally got in our destination, my wife started her classes (giving and taking). On the next vacations we had planned to go and sell books to pay the bills but as we were getting stressed by the money going away we decided to sell the car. As the car was from Brazil we could only sell it there. The car assurance had expired so we went on Friday to renew it and our kids played a lot, had fun eating ice cream it was a really nice day.
The next day Saturday 9, we got up, packed things and started the travel, when we were close to the next city a white Megane in front of me started to reduce the speed, I was distant so I reduced just a little, as no car was coming in our direction (the road had a way to go and another to come) I thought that or the car would go left at once, or at right and wait for me to pass, but instead he stopped completely on the road. I hadn’t predicted such action and our speed was too hight to break so I went left and while passing it the car started to turn left. To avoid the collision I had to put the car on the roadside which was made by earth, the next moment I decided to put the car back on the road because I was a bit fast to go on an earthly made roadside, but when I did this the car started to drift and in a moment it crossed the road to the other side going down in a place with grass and hit the back part of a stopped truck, when it hit the truck the car turned right (the right doors where facing the ground).
My son and I where on the left side of the car, the side which hit the truck but we only had a few scratches, my wife and daughter where on the right side and the sock that the turn made did a good damage. My daughter had a head trauma and was taken to a terrible hospital (although my wife asked the cops to take her to the one on the city next to it), them another cop took me there too and thankfully they transfered us to a better one (but still completely inappropriate to a small child). An hour or so left the doctors were tired to reanimate her heart and she died.
Here is the link to the local news web site, the position is me driving at left with son back, and my wife front right with my daughter back, every one was using a safety belt, and the kid using those special chairs.
The future.
I had never experienced a death so close before, my grandfather died when I was 4 and my uncle and grand mother when I was older but I wasn’t close to them.
I can assure to you it’s really painful. Only a parent that passes through a situation like this can understand how hard is it, there are no words to express the anguish and the miss of someone so close, especially when they are so young. I have been a religious person since I was born, my mom and daddy where religious already and no other thing in the world had ever made doubt of what I read and believed.
This was the moment I really felt like being tested, having my faith being really tested. Did I really believe in what I said to others? About Jesus, His great power, miracles? This reminded the Job’s event where God let the Devil test him because God knew Job was faithful. I asked to myself am I really faithful?
Lots of people question Gob saying “Why did He let this happen? Isn’t He the almighty, why there is suffer with good and innocent people when there are so many criminals killing just for fun?”
God himself left many questions like these answered, some others not. But first you have to believe that the Bible is an inspired book, and the best way I my opinion is by reading it, and when it comes to prophesies you see many of them coming true.
For the above question I have in my heart and according to the Bible that God is in control of everything, nothing happens that he is not aware, this being true why bad things happen? Well the Devil wants bad things to happen, Satan is the only one guilt for this, God allows us to suffer because he has a better plan for us, our place is not in this world anymore. It’s not God that made bad things He allows that because He knows that even in moments like these good things might happen.
“But those who die in the Lord will live; their bodies will rise again! Those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy! For your life-giving light will fall like dew on your people in the place of the dead!” (Isaiah 16:19 New Living Translation)
What a wonderful promise God leaves here! One who dies on the Lord will be risen again! Does this mean I shouldn’t cry for my little one? No, I am human, it’s not natural to not have our beloved ones taken from us, we miss her so much. In one moment we played hide an seek and in the other she is gone.
When this will happen? In the future, after a few more prophesies have being fulfilled:
“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” (Mathew 24:29-31 NIV)
and then
“… ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 24: 4-5).
Oh Jesus, come soon to wake up Geovanna!
Surely one will say: “I don’t believe in Bible, God and any kind of religious things. There is no proof of any such things”
You might deny but you have to have even more faith to believe that this is not real, that this is not true, because all human theories have huge gaps, one can’t calculate the probability of the protein being made on the age scientists give to the universe!
It’s sad that one prefer to believe in something just because it seems more scientific but still proof less. I don’t want to start arguing here, free will is given in many countries so believe in what you study and have true conviction of being true.
Think about what do I loose if am I wrong and you are right about God existence?
– I die and life goes on and nothing changes, you might be remembered in future that you were right, but still you won’t be there to receive a prize.
On the other hand:
– I die (or not), and I follow my life happy, with hope to see my little daughter and my whole family again, spending the eternity learning how God created the world, how Quantum Physics really works 😛 …
Really I don’t want to open a case with you. I just want you to take part of something good, pretty much as we do with Linux and Open Source stuff, we invite our friends to use and develop because we really like it, because it makes live better, sharing is something that God teach us too.
After this sad event I realized my live wasn’t being helpful to abbreviate Gods second coming, I fell like Jonas that flew from God and ended in a big fish stomach. I had thoughts to help God with my own talent but never did any thing. I must admit something, I’m a bit addicted to computers and this forbids me to spend more time studying Gods words and talking to others about Him.
My wife always wanted to marry a pastor, and I always said ‘no way’. And this came to my head and I said ‘why not’? Computers are a powerful tool nowadays and having another graduation is something important in this area. To be honest one of the things that always made me scared about being a pastor is the subjects, learning Hebrew, having to read lots of books, pretty much what I am not good at, I like math and was really bad at history on my school.
I do believe that God made people that do not have talent to have so I’m willing to learn something completely new, something I never thought I’d have to learn. I also will have to learn Spanish as I’m living in Argentina, I could go to Brazil but this way my wife can finish the Medicine school and I Theology.
The prays of a whole village of friends have given us strength to go on, I hope this sharing helps you is you are passing through something similar.
Geek stuff, well as you know I am the maintainer/author of Apper (KPackageKit), packagekit-qt2, aptcc and print-manager… and unfortunately won’t have all the time I had before, to be honest at first I decided to gave up on everything, but as I still want to use Linux (It’s not nice for a pastor to start getting angry when the computer freezes because of Windows) I decided to code it even slower…
But this is a calling for help.
Packagekit-qt2 is almost done (have to commit it still)
Apper is almost done too, but it needs to be ported to the above lib, which is similar but not so much.
Also I started to use plasma kjobs structure, BUT having to close the notification every time you do
a search or install something or refresh the cache is hassle so a patch in this is needed too.
aptcc needs to emit repos while refreshing the cache, install package files and emit downloadLeft()
packagekit needs to have downloadLeft() propertie
print-manager needs some C guy to get python code written in C so Gnome and Kde stuff can share code…
I have no idea of when will I have time for those, right now I need to learn Spanish and read the Bible in Spanish so I get used to the terminology, If someone is willing to take care of these stuff please ask and I tell and help in what is needed so that Apper can be finally released.
Thanks all, and yet if you didn’t like this post in planet kde please just ask then to filter the next ones by the tag used in this one and forgive me but I’m too busy to ask someone to do so (and it’s 1 am). Though I’m not sure I’ll blog much about geek stuff…
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