Technically Speaking

I am so very thankful for you and on this special day I want you to know how much you mean to me. I don’t know where I’d be without you!  I look back and am amazed at how God has used you in the lives of so many.  From students, to street leaders, to parents, and most importantly to our family!   You have a special gift and I enjoy seeing you use it as you relate to those around you and share the grace that God has shown.

We want you to know how much we appreciate all that you do for us and how much we love you.  You are the world to us!

Ah to be a 10 year old boy again! There is something very special about the 10 – 11 year old range for boys.  They have grown enough to be able to learn to play sports with actually skill, to be able to understand the rules of the game, to be able to demonstrate good sportsmanship, and to have  a heart big enough to care.  At this age they are not yet permanently distracted by the female gender and raging hormones.  The focus is on enjoying life and having fun.

As my wife and I had the privilege of watching our son grow this past year, I was reminded anew of this special time in life. I think there is something that draws most men back to that time in their life.  While we cannot go back in time, I do believe having fond memories of this period of your life are an extremely important foundation for the next (more challenging) stages of adolescence and young adulthood.  I am extremely thankful and grateful to have had the opportunity to watch Rowan experience that and be a part of helping make it happen.

This past week was the end of the 2010 season for Naamans Little League.  Rowan’s team made it into the playoffs and while they didn’t win, they did have a great last game as described in the write-up below.  Thanks to team manager Rob Mullen and coaches Bo Pagleili and Gregg Donahue for the skills they taught the boys and for being such positive role models to them!

The Phils jumped out to a 7-1 lead through three innings then had to hold on to withstand another Dodger rally to win 7-6 and advance to Saturday’s AAA Championship. The Phils got off to a fast start with three runs in the first courtesy of Jake Mottola’s 2 RBI double to the wall and Ryan Maffia’s steal of home. Two innings later Mottola tripled in Jake Steltz and George Steinhoff to put the Phils up 7-1. After three quiet innings, the Dodger bats came alive in the visitor’s 4th with 4 runs, with the key blow being Jeremy Hartnett’s monster 2 RBI triple to the wall in left center that pulled the Dodgers within 2 runs at 7-5 before the Phils escaped further damage. Down to their final three outs, the Dodgers mounted one last charge. With one out, Rowan Davis legged out an infield single and stole his way around the bases to pull the Dodgers within a run before Phillies’ pitcher Austin Leshock retired the side on a Mike Pagliei’s comebacker and a strikeout.

Mottola led the Phils with 4 RBI and three hits, plus 7Ks on the mound. Ryan Maffia scored a pair of runs, and Matt Hetrick blasted a ground rule double to balance out the attack. Hartnett and Harry Geisenberger (2-3, double, 2 runs) led the Dodgers offense, and Tommy Donofrio pitched a pair of scoreless innings to keep the Dodgers in striking distance.

Congratulations Rowan on a mighty fine season and I hope you will always look back on this year of your life and thank God for the fond memories!

Here are a few posts and other sites I found noteworthy this week that you might want to check out.

• A good article regarding the 4 Myths About Using Technology in the Church.  Do you think you know what they are?
• Google announced 2 weeks ago their concept of Google TV.  Tim Stevens is asking us to ponder if that may now actually bring church to our living rooms.
• With much new coverage about the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, you may not have heard about the bad storms in Central America or the enormous sink hole that was created in Guatemala. This think is scary!
• Need a Friday chuckle?  Check out this visual Twitter Parade.  Just put in your Twitter username and watch how your followers create a parade with you in the lead!
• So, AT&T has finally made plans for 4G service and true tethering (using your iPhone to give your laptop internet access), but has also taken away the unlimited data plan option for new customers.  Guess that’s one way to solve your network problems!
• In an interesting move, Amazon has now gotten into the wireless phone market. No longer to you have to buy your mobile phone at carrier’s store. The prices look incredible as well!

I thought this was funny enough to share with everyone. Enjoy!  [credit: The Oatmeal]

So which one are you?

In the previous post in this series on backups, I talked about a great tool for backing up a Joomla! website. Now, I’d like to highlight another awesome tool that makes backing up your Wordpress site a snap. The plugin is called Automatic Wordpress Backup.

It is a breeze to setup and get running and the plugin can be configured to run automatically for you and backup your site to Amazon’s S3 Web Services. If you don’t yet have an account on Amazon created, you can create one on the fly as you walk through the settings of the plugin. Once you have setup your Amazon S3 account and linked it to the plugin, you are pretty much good to go – it is dead simple.

You can set the backup schedule (I do mine daily) and then forget about it. The plugin will do the rest for you. You don’t have to worry about remembering to run your backup, it happens for you according to the schedule you set. You will have the peace of mind of knowing your backup is made and available in the event something bad ever happens to your site and you need to recover.

If you have a Wordpress site, you really should have this plugin. No excuses when backups can be this easy! Check out the plugin website for more information. In this video clip, they even walk through the basic set up for you.

Here are some interesting things I have stumbled upon over the past week.  Enjoy!

• Michael Hyatt answers a great leadership question – How can you keep inspiration alive in your team or organization?  Clue – it doesn’t involve creating more rules or policies!
• Should Jesus be thought of as a product? The knee-jerk reaction might be worth a little more examination. CMS challenges with this question and why we need to think about it.
• Speaking of challenging conventional thinking, Tim Stevens poses a very thought provoking idea in his post on how churches have a statistical problem.  The coming decade is going to require some different thinking and for some churches to take some risks to try some new methods.
• Do you realize that your office chair may be killing you? This could explain a lot!
• Facebook has been under a great deal of heat and pressure about their privacy controls. This week they made another change to try to simplify it for everyone.  What do you think? Any better? [Here is the complete update from Facebook]
• You can now measure how much your Facebook Page is worth with the Social Page Evaluator.  Looks like a great idea, but lacking in some specifics.
• One of the great challenges with new technology and gadgets is what do we do with all of the old stuff?  Apple has an excellent marketing and environmental idea – ship them your old stuff for free and they will give you credit to the Apple Store or Gift Card.  Even if there is no monetary value to your old computer (mac or pc) or other devices (ipods, mobile phones, etc) they will still dispose of it in an environmentally responsible manner.
• iPhone users – you can now access your desktop Firefox bookmarks right from your phone.
• This post by Ron Edmondson about the differences between leading people vs controlling them wasn’t new, but I just saw it for the first time this past week.  If you are responsible for a group of people in any way, do yourself a favor and read this!

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Today is Friday. At many work places this means “Casual Friday”.  In my 20 years of being in the work place, a lot has changed in regards to dress code. I remember when I first starting working full time in 1988 men were still required to wear a suit everyday. Today that is almost hard to believe and I am glad that has changed!

The 90’s ushered a radical idea – “Casual Friday”. Where I worked, it was a summer-time only experiment, but the foundation was laid and there was no turning back.  In a few years it became year-long and in the past decade, many places of employment allow business casual dress not only on Friday, but Monday through Thursday as well.  Where I work, “Casual Friday” is now “Jeans Day”.

What has been most interesting to observe during this radical change is how so many people just don’t seem to be able to really understand what is appropriate to wear in the work place and what the definition of  ”business casual” really is. This seems to especially be the case in my industry where I am around folks in the technology profession – Geeks.

So in honor of casual Friday and Summer being around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to help spread the word as to what business casual is and what it is not.  Do everyone a favor – make sure you understand this!  Here are the official guidelines from where I work, but they are a good guideline for most places.

Business Casual wear means clean, neat, professional clothing.
Anything you would wear to the gym, beach, and trendy bar or to clean out your garage, should not be worn to the office. Business Casual dress does not mean wearing your most comfortable old clothes or your favorite old jeans to the office. Rather it is a chance for you to take a more casual approach when dressing for work. We ask everyone to use good judgment when determining if an outfit is appropriate. When in doubt, don’t wear it! A lot of this is just good common sense.

Business Casual is:
For women: Skirts, dresses, pant suits, casual dress slacks, Capri or cropped pants, blouses, knit tank or short-sleeve tops, sweaters, blazers, appropriate sandals.
For men: Casual dress slacks, Khakis, sweaters, dress shirts and golf shirts. Ties and jackets are optional.

Business Casual is not:
Camisoles or thin-strapped tank tops, t-shirts, shorts, skorts, jogging suits, sneakers (tennis shoes), rubber thong sandals or workout clothing. These items are inappropriate in an office environment at all times.

This week I got to tour the future home for the world headquarters of my employer, VWR International.

The building is actually being completely gutted down to the cement structures and being remodeled. Everything from new heating and cooling, flooring, lighting, walls, and cubicles. It will basically be a new building when we move in (scheduled for this Fall).

A few things I’m looking forward to in the new location:

I believe there will be a definite moral boost for everyone once we into the new digs. After all, who doesn’t like that fresh new building smell?  Somehow the environment you are in can do wonders for your attitude, motivation and outlook.

The only thing I’m not looking forward to will be the new commute. It will probably be adding another 10-15 minutes to my daily drive and into heavier traffic. I’m staying hopeful that adjusting my work hours may help avoid the worse time of rush hour, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Have you ever had a work-related environment that you either really liked or didn’t like?  How did it impact you or others?

I attended the Whiteboard Sessions 2010 conference in VA Beach on Friday, May 21. These are my notes from the various speakers.

Dr. Albert Mohler serves as the 9th president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Big Idea: You are going to die. I am going to die. Everyone else is going to die and there is nothing you can do about it. We ought to do ministry every day in light of this fact.

We are born and we die and in between is all of this earthly life we will know of it. So is this all there is to it? Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we will die?

The reality is that there are two deaths and certainly there is no way to avoid the first one. Death is a hallmark of ministry and the work of this life will still be unfinished business. It is a constant work-in-progress.

Christianity can handle the subject of death as it gives light to physical vs. spiritual death.
1 Cor 15 – Paul points out that if Christ did not raise from the dead, we of all people are to be pitied. But if he did, lookout!

We prefer to try to put death out of view and out of mind. But we should keep in it view because it frames the reality of this life and the importance of the Cross. Time and life is short and goes by in a flash. There is an urgency to the work we are doing. The work is never done and we work until we die and then someone else comes and takes our place, but we are okay with that (or we should be).

People fear the first death, but it is the second that they should really fear.

So What?

Dr. Mohler used to keep a skull sitting on his desk as a reminder of this idea. [To keep Death in the Picture] In generations past this was an understood symbol of death, but not as much now (thanks to Halloween decorations).

A few key reminders: