A Network Computer

I imagine the idea of putting a computer in the hands of every foreman would appeal to ANY IT guy. I think at $150 it bears some appeal to the bean counters as well. I have already ordered my first K-Oss Thin Client computer, and plan on ordering more soon if they allow us to truly have real world data submission from our field employees. This will be Awesome!!!

God Is Good...All The Time

I want to thank all of you are praying for my mom. It has been a nerve wracking week, and I imagine that is MUCH more true for her and my dad, than for us kids who are getting the information second hand through them.

On Tuesday, when she was supposed to learn the details of the stoke, she was told the Cat Scan results were never sent from the hospital to the Neurosurgeon, and it seemed she had been prescribed the wrong course of action for the diagnosis of the stoke.

In spite of this she FEELS great. I believe that in response to the prayers offered on her behalf she was healed, and the action by the ER doctors, though seemingly incompetent, was irrelevant thanks to the power and blood of the great physician.

Please continue to pray for her ongoing recovery, and I will update again when I know more.

Nextel Usage Report

I Manage a 120 phone Nextel account. Anyone who is in my shoes understands the trouble my previous statement carries with it. Nextel billing is unacceptably poor, and nearly impossible to read and detail out. Nextel does offer a program called "Smart CD+" that has a few included reports, but these reports are as difficult to read as the bill itself.

A Nextel Bill is printed with a minutes used column that can be VERY decieving. This column totals all minutes used for the month, with no regard for special programs you may have contained in your contract. Items like "Free Nights and Weekends" and "Free Mobile to Mobile" are not accounted for, and all used minutes end up in this dump. When you try to read the detail on a Nextel bill you can not since only charged calls have their detail printed, yet the minutes column totals for ALL minutes.

I however have written a report, that we have been using for several months now, and I have tweaked it for general usage. This report uses the included database each month from the smart CD and shows a summary of only "CHARGEABLE" minutes for each phone. I sent this file over to my Nextel reps so they could use it with their customers, and I am posting it here on my blog as well.

Written is Crystal Reports 9, this report demonstrated to us as a company that we were paying for over 70,000 minutes when in reality, less that 30,000 minutes of our total usage was billed minutes. Using this report with the Smart CD+ data will save us as a company tens of thousands of dollars a year.

I would encourage any Nextel Administrators to download this file and follow the instructions included in the archive for using your monthly Smart CD data.

My Mother's Stroke

I am at a loss for words as I type this post. My dad called me about an hour ago, to let me know that he was at the hospital with my mother, that she had a stroke.

I am overwhelmed as I ask you to join with me in prayer for the healing I believe the Lord is already sending. Our heavenly father is the great physician and I have full faith in his power to heal.

Inspired By... The Bible Experience

Mark O from Youth Specialties had a link to Inspired By... The Bible Experience on his blog post today. This is a large scale, high quality production featuring top names in today's entertainment field.

I love Max McLean's "Listners Bible" and have it on my Napster. However based on the audio sample up on their site, I definitely think I will be switching to the their recording of the word.

How To Buy A House For A Paprclip - A Craigslist Story

Man Using Paper Clip to Barter for House - Yahoo! News

President Bush: The Music Thief

Gizmodo reports this morning that President Bush has admitted to Brittish news agency Sky News to having stolen music on his IPod. That is right... get all the silly sorrid details for yourself. You can also watch the video confession.

My Lovely Wife

I am a lucky manwho married an absolutetly beautiful woman. She is usually against pics during pregnancy but today she asked me to take a few for a Yahoo group she is on, so I did, and I decided to post them here as well.

A Self Councious Explanation

I am a speaker not a writer. I wrote this post because these are the ideas I have been focusing on during this period of lent. This is meant to be the 4 points of my easter sermon, but since I am not preaching, I needed to convey it this way.

When I write, I usually speak out the thoughts and then convert them to text. Writing an essay takes me about 2 hours since I am much more comfortable speaking than writing. This was typed out as straight thoughts, with no editing. It is meant to be more of a flow of counciousness, a conclusion to these thought processes for me.

I hope you can take the gold from these four points and be blessed by it as I have ben blessed by the lessons I learned this season of lent.

Part One: A Son and A Daughter
Part Two: A Barren Woman
Part Three: The Lord Kept Vigil
Part Four: A Teenage Birth and A Premature Death

We are going to a friends house for Easter dinner. When I get back I will fix up grammar and spelling, but I am keeping the flow of the language in it's natural progression. God bless you and happy Easter.

Easter Reflections: A Teenage Birth and A Premature Death (4 of 4)

The rebellion of God's children.
The hope of the miracle of a child to barren woman.
The Lord serving as night watchman to the freedom of his people.

How these stories all show such beautiful aspects of God's lovelorn for his people. The most precious of these stories is of course the miracle of teenage girl's unplanned pregnancy and the death he would die at the hands of the religious elite of his day.

Israel was an occupied land. His people were without hope. The temple did not bear the glory of God, and the king was not the Lord himself, but a surrogate vassal of the pagan Emporer of Rome. This was not the dream of "promised land."

Into that world, God sent the eternal hope of all mankind to the humble home of a man and his young bride to be. This child, the King og Kings and Lord of Lords grew up in an insignificant family, from an insignificant town, in an insignificant region of Israel. The hope of the world, the voice of creation, the king of peace was in livining an indistinguishably simple life from those growing up around him.

The children of Father were created by a miracle of dust ond the breath of God. The child of Sarah was born from the miracle of renewd womb. The birth of the nation of Israel was a miracle that led his people from slave to citizens. Now, the hope of the world, was born of a miracle of a young virgin bride to be.

This young Mary raised him, taught him, and sadly watched him on this day, the day of his premature death. This day when he would be called to a mountain, to face a death that would bring a final freedom to the slavery of all people.

I think Jesus must have remebered the pain in Abraham's heart as he watched him prepare to sacrifice young Issac on altar. His thoughts in gethsemane must have drifted back to those of Abraham as he scaled that mountain with his son of God's promise, knowing what he had been called to do.

"So take me to the mountain, I will follow where you lead.
There I'll lay the body, of the boy you gave to me.
Even though you take him, still I ever will obey.
So maker of this mountain, please make another way."

Holy is the Lord, Holy is the Lord
And The Lord I will Obey
Holy is the Lord, Holy is the Lord
And The Lord I will Obey
Lord help me I don't know the way.
-Andrew Peterson

It was Jesus there who said, "Let this cup pass from me... but not my will but yours be done." It was that child of the miracle who stared down the gauntlet of death and remembered the hopes, the dreams, the tears, the songs, the journey's of his people and submitted himself to that one True Will, to that one Final Hope, which would reunite the father to his rebellious children; that would end the pain of of dreams shattered by the fall; that would bring freedom to all slaves, of all kingdoms, for all time; that would finally break the curse of death. One death to end them all!

Our entire story. God's entire passionate pursuit of his people would be finished once and for all. Hope would be be ressurected that first easter morning. God's people would finally begin their song that would be sung for all eternity. "Holy is the Lord, Holy is the Lord..."

My Lord, died on a cross that this rebellious hopless slave might live to sing with the voices of eterinity. Easter morning, Christ arose so that the celebration could begin. Am I living everyday as a part of this celebration?

Easter Reflection's: The Lord Kept Vigil (3 of 4)

Buried in the passover story of Exodus 12 is one of the most precious verses in all of scripture. It is Exodus 12:42 - "Because the LORD kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the LORD for the generations to come." Eugene Petersen in "The Message" writes, "GOD kept watch all night." This night, passover night, God was Israel's night watchman.

I must admit something to you all. I can be scared of the night. I can be terrified as I awake in the stillness of darkness with only myself and my own thoughts. I can hear the sounds of branches and passing cars and manifest them into rapist and murders coming to attack my wife and children. I can spook myself in the darkness and lonlieness of the night.

This night, one of the most precious night's of our gospel story, is a story of protection. A story of a mighty guardian who spoke into the pain and captivity of slavery with a message of freedom. Coming into the darkness of an Egyptian desert, God served as the night watchman for this motley crew of slaves.

I relate well with the slave language of Romans 6. I have TRULY been trapped as a slave to sin. I have repeated the same sin, and struggled with the same sin patterns for years beyond count. I have been unable to change my behavior, because as Paul says, I am a "slave to unrighteousness."

God's heart, has always broken as he looked on the slavery of his people. He sent Moses as a messenger of this hope to his people in Egypt. We celebrate this day because of a death, because of another passover night, when the Lord would keep vigil to pay the most awesome of prices to redeem his people from a slavery worse than that of Egypt. We celebrate because of a love we can not even fathom. I think Tracy Chapman captured this love well in her song Change.

If you knew that you would die today
If you saw the face of God and Love
Would you change?
Would you change?
If you knew that love can break your heart
When you're down so low you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

The Love of God, the miracle of freedom from the slavery to sin, is a story that calls us to change because for us, the Lord kept vigil.

Easter Reflections: A Barren Woman (2 of 4)

Our story is a story of children. From the first children not born, but created a miracle placed in a garden, to a barren woman who so longed for a child that when she could not believe God when he spoke of the miracle placed in her womb, this is a story of...

My grandfather always said, "They can take everything from you, but they can not take your hope." He was a man of so much hope. I learned hope from him, and from the myths, the stories, and the legends that surround his life at our family gatherings. You always dreamed big dreams on his lap. His 40 acres is a sacred place to me. I remember sitting in his lap with the milk and honey dripping from my lips (OK it was actually the juice of fresh picked peaches) and him listening, so preciously and so intently to the fantasies and dreams I rambled on about. You could hope, dream, and wish for anything when you were on his lap, on his land, in the prescence of his hope.

Our world is not like my grandfather's 40 acres. Our world is a place of brokeness, shattered dreams, and hopelessness. Yet God's story, our story, is a story of children who were born out of hopelessness. A story of the miracle of hope in a hopeless place.

The story of Sarah is a hopeless story. The story of Sarah is the last dreams of a broken woman. Weary and worried, she had lived a long life. A life filled with pain and disappointment as she was unable to concieve a son for her husband. Sarah had been a good wife. She had followed her husband from home to live as an alien in Cannan. She had mourned with him as Sodom burned. She had given her maid servant so that he could have an heir. But she had lived the defeat of never giving him a son, by his own wife, to fulfill the promise he had built his hope.

Long after we are dead and gone
A thousand years our tale be sung
How faith compelled and bore us on
How barren Sarah bore a son
So come to Canaan, come

Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron's hills are amber crowned
Oh, Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan bound
-Andrew Peterson

The story of God never ends in hopelessness. God's pursuit of his people never ends in their hopeless broken place. God is the God of hope. God's lap is the place where the miracle of hope is realized. It is the Lord's presence that makes his land sacred. It is the hope of his promises that Sarah learned as an alien in Canaan. It is the Miracle of the child that bridges the river between a woman's hopelessness and God's hope.

Easter Reflections: A Son & A Daughter (1 of 4)

As I think about our Lord's pursuit & passionate love of his people I am overwhelmed by this our Easter story.

Our Easter story starts that 6th day of creation as God spoke into the beauty of his perfect unfallen creation and created the first children. The story of God's children, is most definitely our story. From the innocence and beauty of those precious 2 in the garden as their Father, looked on them

I love Stephen Schwartz's, Children of Eden accounting of "Father" looking down on these first two children.

"Sleeping there like angels
Innocent and simple
I think she's got my nose
I think he's got my dimple

In my own image
From my likeness are they sprung
They will keep me company
They will keep me young

That's what it means to be a Father
Planning their future as you watch your children sleep
That's what it means to be a Father
I never knew that I could feel a love so deep"

How his heart must have broken as their story became a story of rebellion. How he must have wept with a lover's bittnerness at his lifemate's grave. The pain that pierced his heart like a spear, would be a pain he would later come to feel much to literally.

A Message For Bonnie

This will not concern most of you. But to Bonnie... I need an email address to reply to you. I'd love to help you get your Blog working.. but I don't have your email addy.

No Time For A Decent Post

I have not had time in weeks to write a decent blog post. I have had a few comments, a few surveys, so general news and updates. As for writing something meaningful, I have just been to swamped with life and other commitments to sit down and devlop an idea the way they need to be developed.

This morning, I present an amazing post to you, that is perfectly developed, and speaks to the serious issues of our world. I did not write it however. It was written by my favorite blogger on the net, Milton over at "Don't Eat Alone." So please jump over and read "Life Giving Things."

He has a good follow-up this morning that was an obittuary to Rev. William Sloane Coffin.

Freecycle - A Cool Resource

I am in love with Freecycling!!! Have you done this. It is WAY to cool to pass up if you have never been involved. It is an organization dedicated to matching people with needs to people with things. I have just recently learned of Freecycling, and am wondering "WHERE HAS THIS BEEN!!!" I am a pack rat. I keep things I will NEVER need again. The reason is simple. They are perfectly functional, and I can not dispose of a perfectly functional item even if I have no need for it. So my shed has been full.

That is until this weekend. I cleaned it out and offered all our collected junk up on Freecycle. Hereis my page that lists all the things I offered. My shed looks GREAT and all that wonderful stuff stayed out of the landfill, and will be used by people who will enjoy is, as I did at one time or another.

There is another member of our church who saw my post and sent me an email questioning why I did not take all the clothing up to our church. I thought about this, and I had my reasons. I felt it was better to offer it freely as a complete set to someone who had need than to have it all divided up and placed out for the "mad rush" of a free clothing day. These clothes were nice, and as a complete set, they could really be a blessing to this individual.

There are legitimate arguments against my decision, but I still stand by. Our church does not have an exclusive hold on clothing distribution, and I defend my choice to be a part of this community.

I don't know, maybe I am concerned with something that means nothing.

Tonight I am going to pickup 116 paving stones.... Awesome we were already planning on building a patio this Summer!!!

A Few Thoughts on Appendix A

Andrew Peterson has released a Bootlegs and B-Sides album. I recieved it in the mail today and I wanted to include a few initial thoughts.

Land of The Free - I have always thought this was AP's best song. I am glad to have so much easier access to it than as a hidden track. I wish he had not "cut" it up with all the concert locations.

"I'm just a little jealous
of the nothing that you have
You're unfettered by the wealth of
The world that we pretend is gonna last"

Flesh and Blood - This has not been on any previous album. It was 1/2 way through the song when his point hit me. I restarted the song and was amazed at the wonder and revernece he demonstrated toward the great sacrement. If you have ever doubted the importance of the communion meal.. this song will explain it in a way you will understand it's importance.

"Hallelujah for the bread it is his body
And the wine it is the blood that binds us now
And the living bread remains
it is the communion of the saints.
Sing the mystry of faith
Flesh and Blood"

Alaska or Bust- This is just a plain great song. The story of his uncle makes it all better.

Miss Jaime - This is the great fun that makes an album like this so precious.

Three Days Before Autumn - Since AP is one of the few people who shares Rich Mullins skill for song writing hearing his tribute was another highlight to this album.

Doxology - What a wonderful song. AP says in the liner notes he would like to see Churches using this song. I truly believe he will see that. It is a beautiful reminder of the GLORY of our God.

Isn't it Love - I was working away at my desk and this song came on with his BEAUTIFUL arrangement for the album. Then he came to this line and right there in my office my eyes welled up and I could only cry at the AMAZING love of our God.

"Isn't it love to look down from the sky
to see you only son on the cross asking why...
somehow let him die that way
and not call the whole thing off. "

So in essence what I am saying is buy this album, especially if you are an AP fan.

A Vyew.com -Meeting

I tried our Vyew.com - Free Web-Based Collaboration today. It is a Free offering to compete against Goto Meeting and Web Ex. It is definitely still a Beta and has a lot of growing to do. But for the home user. It is a really neat tool, that can be real useful in planning family events, and troubleshooting with friends. Definitely worth a check out.

Easter Photos

Official Easter Pictures

Click Photo To Visit Picture People and Order Prints

Easter Bunny Picture

Click Photo For Full Size Image

Password Incorrect!

It is that time of the year to celebrate the Easter season in pictures. There is nothing cuter in this dad's opinion than his little girls in their Pastel sun dresses. In the case of the Easter Bunny pic, the Preschooler has a Stye in her eye, and the toddler has a black eye from falling off a chair at Ikea this morning. But they are still darn cute. Please use the usual password to see these awesome Easter pics of the girls.

Enter Password For Photos:

If you don't know the password drop me a line and I will give it to you.

A Taoist Once Again

I STRONGLY disagree that Christianity is a LEFT brained rational religion. But I am still posting the results of this quiz.

You fit in with: Taoism Your ideals mostly resemble those of the Taoist faith. Spirituality is the most important thing in your life. You strive to live by all of your ideals, and live a very intellectually focused life. 70% spiritual. 0% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

The most intresting part of this to me, is that when I went through the period of my life which I MOST questioned God I pursued "the Tao" and I