Just posted some new photo albums online:

My Trip to New York City
My Mom's 60th Birthday Party

When Cathie and I were out in Palm Springs, we saw a T-Shirt that really confused us at first. It said:
I am we todd did. I am sofa king we todd did.

I didn't have a clue what it meant, I thought it was a weird movie quote at first. Eventually I bust out laughing when I figured it out.

Great example of why my family makes me laugh and how I grew up to appreciate sarcasm. My dad sent out this very touching story that's a metaphor for Christ's sacrifice for us. My brother's responses:
Jon: I don't get it, did we have a brother that died in the Vietnam War?
Dan: No, but i'll give $10.00 for the Iowa farmhouse painting. (A painting my parents have in the living room.
May not be funny to you, but I love it. E-mail gives my family a whole new way to engage in their gifts of sarcasm and mockery.

This is a wild newspaper story about a friend of my brother's, Chuck Wing, who was in an accident and lost his leg last week.

Check out this story of a kid who googled himself and found out he was kindnapped:
CNN.com - Teen finds his picture on missing children's Web site

We headed over to Ground Zero today to see where the World Trade Center once stood. It was a giant hole with a fence around it. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, but it wasn't what I expected. From there, we walked over to Battery Park to check out Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. On the way there we walked by The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange buildngs. I'm not an architectural buff, but I'm constantly in awe of the beautiful buildings here in NYC. The old and the new styles just continue to blow me away, and they never stop. They're everywhere.

We're heading over to the AIIM expo to spend the rest of the afternoon there before I fly out tonight. I think I get into Kansas City around midnight and I'm flying out sometime on Thursday.

This morning, I got up and went over to the Today Show studio. I hung around outside for a few minutes and got on TV. Al Roker, Matt, and Ann were out there doing some different segments, and I was standing behind Ann during one of them. The monitor was right in front of me, and I saw my face on the screen as she passed by. All of them were very nice and spent a lot of time talking to the crowd.

Last night we went to a brazillian resturant called Currascaria Plata Forma. I had eaten here 4 years ago when I visited and I couldn't believe I found it again. It started off with this huge buffet of exotic foods and then on to the meat. You have a disc in front of you with red on one side, green on the other. As long as you have the red side, waiters come by with huge skewers and knives and carve off meat for you - from pork loin, to beef tenderloin, I had no idea there were so many kinds of meat. The food was amazing. After that, on the walk back to our hotel, I bought a knock-off watch, a Tag Hauer. The negotiations were the best part, this guy was amazing at how he tried to weasel the price on me. Worse than any used-car salesman.

After hanging out at the AIIM Expo yesterday, we took some time to tour New York. We had lunch at the infamous Stage Deli. Sandwiches the size of my head. From there we went to Radio City Music Hall and then went on a tour of NBC Studios. The NBC tour pretty much blew, with the highlight being seeing the Saturday Night Live studio. At the end, they take you to this huge domed room to show off the future of HDTV. The picture quality was worse than a regular television. Nice waste of $15.

I started listening to some of the messages from Mars Hills church out in Seattle. They have their messages in a downloadable MP3 format, so I can burn them to CD or listen to them while I'm running. So far, I listened to great messages on youth and leadership, drinking and one on habilitual sin.

One thing that always horked me off about Willow Creek and other churches was how they'd sell their messages online. I can understand covering the distribution costs, and I know all about intellectual property rights - but here's a very unique position that Mars Hill has as an Open License Agreement:


Thank God Jesus Didn?t Copyright the GospelWhy We License Our Audio the Way We Do
All the material found at MarsHillChurch.org has been licensed under the Electronic Frontier Foundation Open Audio License. We have chosen to bypass the traditional copyright and publishing structures because they are incompatible with the spirit of the music and other recorded material created within our community. Traditional copyright and publishing systems focus exclusively on seeking profit from all form of duplication and usage and consider any form of trading or sharing illicit. This model is outdated and incompatible with the current technology (mp3, peer-to-peer file sharing, CD duplication). On a basic level we must question what life songs of worship have when disconnected with the local church. More so, we must question the most prominent business models for music distribution (?Christian? or otherwise) ? models where usage is entirely dependant upon an exchange of currency (CCLI, ASCAP, BMI, etc.). The Open Audio License (OAL) basically states that you, the worldwide public, are authorized to use, copy, publicly perform, distribute and create derivative works from all materiel covered under the license -- provided you always credit the original author information. That includes: the symbol (O) for the EFF Open Audio License, the identity of the original author, the title of the work and how the first listed original author can be contacted. The OAL also states that any derivative work produced must also be released under the OAL. The license borrows language from the open source software initiative and the free software movement to create a community of sharing that benefits both the creators and the public while encouraging creativity through relational distribution. We believe that this is a much more current business model for music. It acknowledges that there is no way to control how people use our materiel. It also acknowledges our lack of interest in seeking that control. This is especially appropriate as it relates to songs of worship.

I flew into New York City this afternoon. The inbound flight path took us right over downtown Manhattan on our approach. It was amazing. I'd never seen New York City from this angle. It was breath-taking. I flew into LaGuardia and met up with the customer that I'm out here with and one of my co-workers. We cabbed it over to the hotel and spent some time walking around Time Square before dinner. My hotel is right in Times Square. My window literally looks out over the area. I'm staring at a 300 foot high picture of P.Diddy as I look out my window, and I'm eye-level with that big Wall Street Ticker they show in the movies. Time Square is amazing. At night, it's lit up like it's daytime. Tomorrow we're going to see Anne Mulcahy (President and CEO of Xerox) as the keynote speaker at the AIIM conference, and then I'm showing my customer around the exhibits. Anne came out and visited this customer last August. She's a great woman, and a great leader.

Check out this Webcam right down the street from where I'm at.

Funny enough, The Bone Yard site has the same mission statement as I do:
" . . to glorify our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to provide a gateway to the Poultry Industry which will enhance your ability to perform your mission."

I've been going through the gospels over the past two months, trying to get excited about them, trying to dig into them, and it's been so dry for me. I'm telling the kids in Fusion why they should dig into the word of God while I'm struggling with it myself. I've heard the stories in so many ways, that tend to read them like I do a fiction book at times. I've tried different versions of the bible - the message, study bibles without different results. When others have been in this place, I've always had advice to give like "Pray before hand and ask God to speak to you" or "Try a different version of the bible" or "Journal on what you're reading". Not much help. I started reading the Psalms this morning and it really connected with me.

This is my kind of hotel. I got back to my room, the bed was pulled back, a robe laid out for me, mints on the pillow and the TV on. They knew I woulndn't want to turn the TV on for myself! How 'bout that!

These Smoking Gun letters to the FCC about the Janet Jackson thing are hilarious.

I'm learning more and more about the Creole/Cajun culture every day I'm down here. New sayings "Hows-yer-momanthem?" (How's your momma and them?). You can have open alcohol in the car down here. As long as some one else holds the class while you're driving, you're fine. I knew you could walk the streets with alcohol, but I didn't know it went to that extent.

I had a great creole dinner tonight. Found out that cajun food is more the Lafayette area, creole is a combination of French, Black, Mexican and American food, where cajun is more a southern french food. Tonight for dinner we ate at a dive on Bourbon street in the French Quarter. I had oysters on the half shell, boiled crawfish, fried crawfish and turtle soup. Great stuff. From there, I grabbed a daquari and wandered up and down bourbon street, people watching. What music and culture. The Zydaco music, the blues, the jazz is amazing.

I was running on the treadmill this morning and I was going crazy. There was no TV, no music, I didn't have my MP3 player. I had 30 minutes of quiet - time to think about how much I hate doing cardio.

I watched the movie Glengary Glenross last night on the plane. Great movie about sales. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris. It deals with the leveraged insecurities of people in the field of sales, and what ends they'll go to for success.

I did not win an Oscar.

Looking back on the three days I took off work last week, i learned something. I need to be more intentional with my vacation time. Because I was home, life still happened. I had stuff going on Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday night - not to mention stuff during the day. All good stuff, lots of church stuff, lots of christian stuff. But I made it more important than my family, which is why I took the time off work to begin with. Next time I take off work, we're either going away, or not doing stuff, unless it's with my familiy.

Helped someone from my small group move on Saturday. Didn't really want to, but I'm glad I did. It went pretty smoothly, and I had a good time connecting with the the guy who was moving, who's a recent addition to my small group. From church there was Will, Matt Gielow and Joe helping out. We made it fun.

I just flew into New Orleans, staying at the Marriott a couple of blocks from Bourbon street in the French Quarter. I've got meetings tomorrow and Tuesday here and in Baton Rouge, and then I fly out Tuesday night, back around 8 or 9, home the rest of the week. I've got a couple of my co-workers, natives of N'Leans, showing me around tomorrow.

I had a poker party on Friday night. Had a bunch of guys from my small group over along with a neighbor and a guy from the gym. We started off with a Texas no-limit hold 'em tournament and then played poker the rest of the night. It was a good time. We played in my garage, which still reeks of cigars. The kitchen chairs that I had in the garage reek of cigars. Can't have a poker party without cigars.

Went to see the Passion on Saturday. Cathie and I got there about 45 minutes early to get a good seat and waited in line. There were about fifty people in front of us, so I figured we'd get a good seat. By the time we'd gotten into the theatre it was full. FULL. People had rushed in, saved 5 or 6 rows at a time. This sounds petty, but it pissed me off. I went to take a seat and was stopped by a man who told me he'd saved the seats and the manager said it was alright. I explained that none of the 100 people he'd saved these seats for had waited in line, and to be fair to eveyrone, he should probably let them grab their own. He disagreed, I expressed my great displeasure, and I sat elsewhere, before I made too big of an ass of myself.

I thought the movie was very well done, very graphic, very true. Can't really say it was "great", but it made me think. Aside from the brutality of the whippings and the crucifixion, the thing that struck me the most was Mary. Seeing her watch her son tried, beaten and crucified made me think about how I would feel if I were in her situation, having to stand by and watch my son go through this and be powerless to stop it, knowing he was doing it of his own free-will. It reminded me of a time about five years ago when it finally clicked to me that God felt this same way about his son; that he loves Jesus as much as I love my kids. That this was as hard or harder for him to watch as it would be for me. Because of his infinitiy, I figured he could process it much differently than I would.
I

Maddie had a follow-up doctor's appointment to see how she's doing today. She'd been having some headaches the past few days, but apparently because she wasn't resting enough the past few days.

We had our storyboarding meeting the other day. Every month or so, a group of us get together for dinner and to workshop the upcoming series that we're doing at Crossroads. Joanne Ickes facilitiates the whole thing, which is an amazing feat in and of itself. You've got a group of ADD people (myself one of the worst) blurting out ideas, some good, some bad, some neutral - jumping from one idea to the next, interrupting, bouncing, and playing off of each other. Joanne is able to facilitate this in such a way that people feel listened to, productive and loved. While all this is going on, 5 people are on their laptops, searching the internet, their archives, song lyrics, instant messaging, etc. It's chaotic, but a great time. I look forward to this every month.

I'm speaking at a conference tomorrow - The Internal Auditor's Group, in Lansing. Should be a hoot. Here's what I'm presenting on.

Had a scare today... I was at the library working on my presentation for tomorrow and I got a call from Cathie telling me that Maddie was hurt. Turns out she'd been in the back yard playing with a friend when she fell off the swingset and hit her head, right on the temple. She came running in, and lost conciousness. From there, she went in and out of conciousness, and then complained that she couldn't see well out of the eye near where she'd been hit. Cathie took her into the emergency room where they checked her out and did a cat-scan. Looks like everything's okay - she has a concussion, but that's about it.

Interesting perspective on Christian Music Marketing:
Open up the latest Newsboys disc, "Adoration: The Worship Album," and out pops an ad pitching "The Official Bible of the Newsboys." The book is the "NIV Student Bible," and the leaflet includes a bold quote from Newsboys frontman Peter Furler: "The NIV Student Bible has been and continues to be my daily read."

Cathie and I went to see the movie Fifty first dates last night. I thought it was a good movie, not great. Adam Sandler was really the straightman in the movie, but not as serious as Punch Drunk Love. The movie's about a girl who forgets everything from the previous day, each morning when she's awake. We went out for coffee after the movie and we made a list of everything we would tell the other first thing in the morning if the other had this condition.

I'm in town all week. I'm speaking at a conference tomorrow afternon and then I'm off the rest of the week while the kids are home for mid-winter break. The following week I head down to New Orleans for a couple of days and then to Kansas City, back Wednesday. The next week I head to New York City for a couple of days, back Tuesday night.

Got this idea from Noel:
Step 1: Open your iTunes or other music player.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first 20 songs it plays no matter how embarrassing

Tourniquet by Evanesence
As Lovers Go - Dashboard Confessional
I Don't Know - Ozzy Osbourne
Irish Day - Iona
Lady D'Arbanville - Cat Stevens
Busted Stuff - Dave Matthews Band
Angels - Shaded Red
Together - 100 Portraits
A Different Drum - Peter Gabriel
Supermodels - Kendell Payne
I'll Talk to You tomorrow - Calibretto 13
What if - Creed
It's raining Men - The Weather Girls
Lady Wisdom - Earthsuit
Jesus, Mary Star of the Sea - Zwan
The Spirit of Radio - Rush
Just as I Am - Acquire the Fire
New Year's Day - U2
Say I - Creed

Hmm.. Looks like I need to go through and prune my collection of stuff I don't like anymore... (It's raining men is NOT included in that mix)

My dad ran into a guy I knew back in High School named Miguel. I can't exactly remember how I met him, but I remember that he hung out in our Campus Life club and we hung out together occasionally. My dad ran into him the other day at church and he asked how I was doing. He told my Dad what an impact I'd had on his life, and said that I was one of a few people who'd really made a difference for him. Go figure. I guess you never really know the big picture of how you're life's going to impact others. I look back at that time and just remember what a hypocrite I was and all the things I wish I could have done differently. I guess God can even work with that stuff towards good.

We went to the Buck Enterprises concert last night to see Dan perform. Dan's the worship leader at Crossroads and founder of the band. Buck is a ska band that's been around since 1994 and has a great horns section. I'd asked him to dedicate a song to me, and sure enough, he did. Just not the song I was thinking. Midway through the concert I heard "This next song goes out to Dave" at which point in time they launched into a cover of the song She's got a way by Billy Joel.

Spam sucks, everyone knows that. Ameritech is my ISP, and they use Yahoo's e-mail system, which has a pretty decent Spam filter. It takes care of 95% of the spam for me - approximately 350 messages a day which I don't have to see. The ones that are annoying are the other 5%. At home, I use Outlook, when I travel, I use Yahoo's web client, so I needed a package that would interact direclty with Yahoo to filter out the 5%. I was reading a review in the Wall Street Journal the other day about a product called ChoiceMail. Two things make this unique:
1.For addresses that it doesn't know, it uses a challange and response technique to validate who you are. Obviously a spammer can't/won't reply to these e-mails. There's a little bit of maintenance up front to get this working, but after a while, it works very well.
2. It works with web based mail interfaces - filters out the non-spam even further.

Check this site out for a bunch of reviews on Spam Filters.

I'm in Kansas City this week. Went to the casino last night. Lost. I've never seen so many overalls and Carharts in a casino in my life. It was a late night, and I had to do a big presentation this morning to fifty people, after only about 2 1/2 hours of sleep. Apparently, I do a better job when I'm groggy. I'm back tonight, going to see Buck/Insyderz tomorrow.

This is just weird.

I upgraded my TiVO system with a new hard drive. I'd purchased the 40 hour Hughes DirecTiVO system along with a 200GB drive for $100. I used the following definitive How-To for the upgrade and was successful. The whole operation only took about 5 minutes. It basically goes like this: Take the drive out of the Tivo, Hook it up to a PC, boot from CD, backup the TiVO disk, restore it to the new drive, replace the drive and Whalla! You can put two drives in teh system, and it will recognize up to 137 GB per drive. Each GB gives you about 1.2 Hours of viewing time. My next task is to figure out how to put it on my home wireless network, so I can update the programming and functionality remotely, instead of having to pull the hard drive out everytime.

Friday night we had a meeting about Crossroad's capital fund drive, we went out with three other couples: The Niemis, Girards and Reynolds. It was the women's job to plan the thing out, so they jumped in one car, the guys in another and we followed. We headed down Grand River, and they turned down the seedy eight might strip, keeping us guessing. We ended up back in Farmington Hills where we played Laser Tag. We finished the night up at the Rhino Dance Pub (nice name, huh?) in South Lyon. If you've never been there, it's a nice place. Setup like a martini bar, but with a DJ and dancing on the weekends. The girls had fun dancing (I even got out there a couple times, much to my own embaressment and lack of rythm) while the guys hung out and talked. We got in around 1, stayed up until about 2:30AM and I got up to work out with Kirk at 6:30. Four hours of sleep made for a long day.

When Bob told me he'd found me front row seats for Annie, I figured he meant towards the front. Madeline and I were literally sitting in the very front row at the Masonic temple, watching the musical Annie yesterday. She and I went as a Valentine's day date, and had a great time! We got dressed up in our "fancy" clothes and she couldn't believe how "fancy" the theatre was. If you've never been to the Masonic temple, it's beautiful on the inside, but it's in a horrible part of detroit, with burned down crack houses right across the street. You don't want to park too far away from the theatre if you can avoid it.

I've been listening to the new In the name of Love CD, a U2 tribute album by CCM artists. I like U2 - I'm by no means a die-hard, I mostly prefer the stuff from Rattle and Hum and prior. I've always been a big fan of cover songs - when they tweak the songs, the style, whatever. I'm sure the U2 purists will scream herasy, but I like it.

Interesting excerpt from a review on The Passion:
This is not a movie that anyone will "like". I don't think it's a movie anyone will "love". It certainly doesn't "entertain". There isn't even the sense that one has just watched a movie. What it is, is an experience - on a level of primary emotion that is scarcely comprehensible. Every shred of human preconception or predisposition is utterly stripped away. No one will eat popcorn during this film. Some may not eat for days after they've seen it. Quite honestly, I wanted to vomit. It hits that hard.

Interesting intervie with James Caviezel', the guy who played Jesus in The Passion.

Now that it's February, Northwest resets their Worldperk's program for everyone. It's been nice because having Gold status this year means I get upgraded to First Class just about everytime I fly, at least for now. I'll probalby fly between 50-75k miles this year, most of it with Northwest. Northwest has the most generous of the frequent flyer programs out there, but their planes are the oldest out there, and their stewardeses aren't the friendliest.

I've got some extra spring in my step today. There's a shoe place out here in Kansas City called Bob Jones Shoes Warehouse. These are the shoes I got. Last year, against my better judgement, I bought a pair or dress shoes at Men's Warehouse, after the guy assured me they were a good quality shoe. They blew. These are the nicest shoes I've owned, for darn cheap. I almost bought some pimp shoes, but the guy I was with moved me back towards these

I'm heading home this morning. Our team had a late night, trying to pull together a deliverable that we have to present to our customer this morning. We're on a very tight timeframe, implementing a multi-million dollar system across a large university by June 30th. I've got a great team, managed by a friend of mine Sandy, who used to be a customer of mine. I brought her over about 3 years ago and we've worked together quite a bit. The sales person, her and I all have a great relationship and the additude flows through to the team. She's very organized and helps keep me on task with any details that might fall through the cracks otherwise. We've been on this project together for almost a year and a half, so you get to know a person pretty well spending 12 - 15 hours a day together over that time frame.

I've been reading through the Gospels and it's really stood out to me how much Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God coming, and the tone which he talks about it. Jesus sees it as a huge celebration and the people around him, including his disciples just don't get it. But then again, I'd probably wouldn't of either. I'd of been the one in the back asking the dumb questions after his parables.

I'm very embaressed to say that I watched the Westminster dog show last night. There was nothing on the hotel cable channels, except MSU losing badly to Illinois, so one of my co-workers IM'd me to watch it. I watched the finals, kibitzing back and forth with Gab, one of my co-workers. If you've ever seen the movie Best in Show, it's that much funnier to watch. FYI - Josh won.

I read this article on Who Killed Jesus? while sitting on the can (I love having web access on my phone). I found it to be pretty one sided.

People often ask me what I do for a living. This is probably the best metaphor for my job:
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud toward him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?" The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. Then the young man opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC-connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly 1586 sheep." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep" says the shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the shepherd says to the young man: "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" "You're a consultant." says the shepherd. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answered the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't know crap about my business... Now give me back my dog."

I'm in Kansas City for the next few days. We've changed over to an Embassy Suites, which blows away the AmeriSuites we were staying at, plus I get Hilton points.

Check out this entry in Noel's blog about churches using The Passion movie as an "evangelism tool".

I listed my old WebTV satellite receiver on eBay yesterday. I figured I'd get about $50 for it, since the thing is four years old. So far the bidding is at about $255 and still going.

It looks like there's a Simpson's Movie in the works!

I just got my new DirecTV TiVO receiver installed today. I had DishNetwork's WebTV DVR (Digital Video Recorder) system for about four years, loved the interface, but it was old technology. I got a dual receiver system, one of them being a TiVO one a standard receiver. The TiVO system is easy to upgrade. I picked up a 200 GB hard disk for $100, which gives me the ability to record about 240 hours of TV, plus there's all sorts of great hacks out there to tweak the functionality and capabilities of the system. TiVO has a very cool home media option that Directv doesn't support yet, which sucks. It allows you to share shows between TiVO's, listen to music, view pictures and schedule shows remotely. I'm working to get mine on the network with the upgraded hard disk and then I'll start messing with some of the other hacks. I'll keep you posted.

Cathie, Jes and I watched the movie Thirteen on Saturday. Good movie, but very disturbing from a parent's perspective and from a youth pastor's perspective. The movie was about a thirteen year old seventh grader in a single parent home outside of LA. Throughout the movie, you see a girl who wants to be accepted by cool kids, and ends up being systematically being dragged into drugs, shoplifting, sex and rebellion against her Mom. I was really uncomfortable while I was watching it. I kept thinking of my kids, and the kids in Fusion, wanting to save them, save this girl from what's going on. It's a movie that I'd reccomend for some parents to watch with their kids - and talk about at the end. There's some great teaching moments out of the movie. It does a great job showing the consequences and the gradual slide of someone based on a few bad decisions.
One of the girls who wrote this was, Nikki Reed, was thirteen at the time.

Since Alias wasn't on last night, Cathie and i watched The Surreal Life last night. If you haven't watched the show yet, it consists of Vanilla Ice, Tammy Faye Baker, Erik Estrada (Ponch) and Porn Star Ron Jeremy. The whole cast came in expecting Tammy Faye to spend most of the time preaching at them, but instead, she's done nothing but love them in a non-judgemental way. The whole cast went to her book signing, which consisted largely or fundamentalist fans, transvestites, gays and lesbians. The crowd geniunely loved her and it showed based on how she connected, loved and communicated with them. The clip ended with Vanilla Ice talking about how he expected something so different from a Christian, but instead saw someone who was so loving and caring - blew him out of the water. Erik Estrada and the others had the same kind of feedbcak. The group proceeded back to the house where Ron Jeremy had invited over a bunch of his Porn Star friends, who she talked with, hung out with, and headed inside once they started taking off their clothes.

So we had the big sleepover on Friday night. I took the boys to chuck-e-cheeses, to laser tag, and then back home for our video game bonanza. I'd setup the projector for Xbox and PS2 and the boys played bayblade, watched movies and played video games until about 1 in the morning. I went to bed about 1:20 after I didn't hear anything more from them. I'd forgotten how much fun laser tag was. We played out at Zap Zone in Farmington and I had as much fun as they did. The boys were tormenting some of the high school girls playing in there, stalking them like little gnats, four of them hovering around one or two of them getting them from every angle. It was hilarious.

It's been nice to not have traveled all week. I've gotten a lot done, plus stuck pretty closely to my exercise/eating plan. Big turn-out for survivor last night - Matt, Anne, Katie, Will, Tim, Phil, Jason, Jason, Megan and Jess. Watched the first one and the new one. Richard Hatch is a bastard. I want to see him get kicked off right from the beginning so he gets as little publicity as possible.

Kirk, Dan, Will, Joe did our performance training this morning. Crazy workout involving one legged hopping, throwing medicine balls, bear crawls and crab walks. I've worked out with him four days this week and I'm feeling it today. Just about every part of my body aches.

For Nate's birthday, he's having three friends spend the night tonight. We've got a guys night on the town planned - starting with chuck-e-cheese's, laser tag, big screen video games and ending up with late night scooby snacks. It should be fun.

I'm traveling the next two weeks - next week Tuesday - Thursday and the following week Wedesday and Thursday. Not too bad - down to Park University.

Even if you have no idea who Mike Yaconelli is, you'll probably appreciate this article on how get started doing what he did: Yaconelli, the Early Years

Too much time on your hands? Check out the Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse

Got this from Will, damn this is fun.

Jason has done his bi-annual blog update! Sure it was just one sentence - and not very interesting, and only pointing out the splinter in someone else's eye - but we all appreciate the token effort.

Where else could you get this much information on mullets?

This is an interesting reference guide on church-speak. My personal favorite: Get your end-times latter-rain double-portion covenant seed-faith blessing.

This is a really interesting discussion thread on how relevant and edgy youth pastors need to be in order to be effective.

What a great stress reliever!

The guy who wrote this Top Ten List: "Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian" list is a little bit bitter.

I received
Dear Citibank-Online Cleints,

This_ EMAIL was se-nt by-the Citi-Bank serevr to veerify _your Email address_.
You must cotplmee this pcoress by clicking on the_ link _below_ and enntering in the smal window your Citi _Debit_ full card_nummber and _pin_ that you use_ in_the Atm_machine.
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So I clicked on it, gave them my credit card number, social security number, bank account information and blood type. Was that wrong?

Okay, forget the superbowl commercials. these commercials from Quizno's are my new favorites.

Thanks to Jon for this great way to waste time! My best time is 26 seconds...

I missed the new Terry Tate "Sensitivity Training" commercial last night during the Super Bowl. Some of the best lines:"You can't cut the cheese wherever you please!". "Any questions? You're fired". "It seems that even Human Resource executives might be human after all."

This is the view Cathie and I had from our hotel room last week.

Watched the superbowl over at Ted's house last night. Great place for watching the game with a beautiful DLP wall projection system. Lots of Crossroads people and a few of Ted & Sherry's friends from work. It was interesting watching the large group from Crossroads and how they connected and communicated with people outside of our "group". My favorite commercials were the budweiser horse farting and the budweiser dog biting the guy in the crotch.
Brad and I had a little wager on the game to make it interesting. I picked New England with 6 1/2 points. It made the last quarter very interesting. I lost the bet, but then we did double or nothing on a coin toss. I chose tales. Brad had to listen to his son Jim chastise him all the way home on why picking "heads" is always a suckers bet. You can try it for yourself here. Brad can prove his Jim wrong with this.

I had a great weekend now that i've reacclimated myself to family life after being on the road for 10 days. On Saturday, we celebrated Nate's birthday. (Check out the pictures here.) It consisted of my whole family, Will, Jes, Jason and the Thompson clan. These are always a great time filled with lots of kids, and they go on until late in the evening. It was a little lower key than ususal with the absence of Dan, Jon and Kevin. Dans in Korea for business, Kevin had to coach basketball and Jon just doesn't like the family at all. We hung out, wrestled and talked until about 7. At the end, our house is trashed, we're whooped, but had a great time across the board.

If you haven't read Eragon yet, check it out. Will turned me on to this book, and I like it better than Harry Potter.

How often do you see a dead whale explode?

I rolled in about 4 this morning from a scene right out of Pulp Fiction. Two of my co-workers and I went to one of the casinos here in downtown Palm Springs to play some blackjack. We sat down at a table with three other people that we proceed to spend the next 7 hours of our life with. On my right I had a guy who could of been Ving Rames brother, Darrel. On my left I had Toni and Terri. Terri and Toni were friends, out celebrating Terri's 76th birthday. It was a fun table, lots of winning, high-fiving and cocktails going around. Toni was betting between $500 and $2000 per hand, tipping the dealers hundreds of dollars on winning hands. During some of the high fiving, a drink got spilled on the table and the pit boss started getting ticked at us. Toni proceeded to take our whole table back in the high-roller room to a private table with VIP service. We joined a couple more people - a man and his "escort", and we played some pretty high stakes cards (at least for me). I went from $10 hands to $100 hands, and somehow managed to win. Anytime I'd run out of chips, Toni would throw $100 chips to me to keep me in the game - with no expectation of repayment, probably gave me around $600 throughout the night. The whole thing was surreal, the other players were buying meals, rooms and everything else for our table with their comp points. As a table, it was non-stop playing and celebrating until about 4, when I figured I was ready to call it a night. The people in our group could have been out of comic books - such a weird scene, spending all that time with them and then never seeing them again.

Cathie and I had a pretty laid back day. After doing some of the conference stuff, we headed out shopping. I've needed to pick up some long sleeve shirts. Being in the desert, it gets down in the 50s at night out here and my short sleeve shirts aren't cutting it. There was a california style outlet mall not too far from us, which really fits in with the Palm Springs genre. It had a Prada, Donna Karin, Barneys New York, Armani and a host of other high end stores with some good deals. The weather is beautiful again toady as I sit out on my balcony and type this. Cathie heads home tomorrow morning, back to the snow, the cold, and 3 hours time difference.

These are my favorite commercials.. Here's the whole list. Check out "Mr. Bowling Shoe Giver-outer".

One of my favorite movies of all time.

What a beautiful day! Cathie slept in until about 8 (11am EST) and I was up bright and early about 5:30. Our room looks out over the pool, and behind that the mountains, so when I woke up, I read for a while, and I sat out on the balcony watching the rising sun hit the mountains. It was about 70 degrees and sunny today. We had a pretty lazy day, hanging out for a while, walking around Palm Springs, and then going to visit Cathie's cousin out in San Bernadino, about an hour away. Cathie's cousin's husband Brian is a professor at San Bernadino State (one of the few conservative Political Science professors around). He's an interesting guy to talk to, who's published quite a bit, and is part of the Claremont Instituite, a conservative think-tank. He was showing me just blocks away from their house where the fires burned last year. Amazing how close they got. Cathie and I are heading down to a reception tonight, and then going out with some of my co-workers. Should be fun.

I got in Friday night around 9:30 after having plane problems in Washington D.C. The past 5 times I've flown United, 2 of them have had major aircraft difficulties. There planes are nicer inside than Northwest, their flight attendants are friendlier, however either their maintenance crews are SO thorough that they catch stuff Northwest just lets slip by, or they really suck and should fix the stuff before it breaks. Anyways, I got in late, packed, went to bed around 12:30 AM, and we got up at 4:00 AM to get to the airport for a 7AM flight. Our flight was pretty uneventful, except for the time it took for us to de-ice in Detroit almost made us miss our connecting flight in Minneapolis. Cathie took my seat up in First Class and I sat back in coach.

We got in, checked in and headed out to Joshua Tree National Park, about 40 miles away. It was breaktaking, but cold. It was about 40 degrees out there, with a stiff wind, but the scenery was worth it. We drove around, climbed on the rocks and watched people free climbing some pretty ridiculous stuff. It's been nice just taking it easy, no kids, sleeping in and enjoying ourselves so far. We're heading over to see Cathie's cousin Jenny today, who lives about an hour from here. Cathie heads out on Tuesday morning, and I come home Thursday, after speaking at the conference on Wednesday.

Anyone know what a welsher is? I've heard of a welcher....

Nice of picture of Will and I dancing.

Washington Dulles Airport has the goofiest way of getting you from terminal to terminal that I've ever seen. They have these giant cargo trailers on wheels that dock at one end of the terminal, a driver then takes you to another terminal. To make them look odder, each one is mounted on huge 4x4 truck tires and has two giant fins sticking out of the top of them. Apparently trams weren't invented, or else someone is making a killing off the annual maintenance contract on these things. As you go from terminal to terminal, you'll see at least a 100 of these things cruising around the tarmac. Odd.

I'm in Landstowne, VA for the next couple of days, right outside of Washington D.C. at the National Training Center. It's a maze of a complex that used to be owned by Xerox. People would come here for a month straight for training at a time. It was created to be an environment conducive to education - meaning they purposely make it tough to figure out where you're going. The place is literally a maze - color coded tunnels and floors running in a complex pattern that I've yet to figure out. I made record time finding my room at check-in. My previous best time was about 30 minutes - yesterday I did it in 10. It helped that my room was 5 doors down for where I stayed last time I was here. This is a kick-off meeting for the team I'm a part of, which is a completely virtual organization. I talk to these people all year long, but we're lucky to see each other face-to-face annually. It's a place where a lot of networking happens over the course of two days. You're a lot more likely to help the guy who calls you up that you've spent some time with, over the one who you don't know from Adam.
I'm here through tomorrow, getting home around 9 PM or so. From there, Cathie and I pack things up and head off to Palm Springs. Cathie's parents are watching the kids Friday and Saturday, and my Mom and Dad are coming on Monday and Tuesday until Cathie comes home.

A friend of mine was at the Young Life conference last week and had a chance to watch Mel Gibson's new Passion of Christ movie. He said he was blown away by it. He was telling me that he's as desensitized to TV/Movie violence as the next guy, but the the scene where Christ is beaten is so graphic that he had to turn away. I asked him about the subtitles, and he said they don't really take away from the power of the movie. James Caviezel, the character who played Christ spoke to the group as well which he said was excellent.

I had my driveway shoveled by three Mormon guys yesterday. The Mormon guys who'd visited me a couple of weeks ago had stopped back by two or three times while I wasn't around. As I'm sitting on the can yesterday, Cathie knocks at the door and announces that they'd returned. I invited them in, this time with a new guy. The new guy was about 6'5" 270lbs - I figured he was their muscle. We sat down in the living room and started talking. Last time they'd stopped by, they left me with the book of Mormon and had asked me to ask God to reveal to me his truth as I read it. They asked if we could begin with prayer, and I said sure, mind if I pray? So I prayed for the four of us and we began talking. I asked them to tell me about their super-secret underwear. They told me that it's not something they can talk about - even new believers in LDS (Ladder Day Saints) don't find out about this stuff until they're a mormon for a year. I mentioned that I thought that was kind of different, because in my faith, nothing is really hidden from us - no secret handshakes or rituals. I asked them about their inheriteance of universes, polygamy and being saved by works. We kept talking about what I saw the differences being between our two faiths, but it never turned into a debate. It was interesting, they continued to try and convince me that there really was no difference betwee our two faiths. I asked them if they'd ever seen the Mormon South Park episode, and none of them had. We had a chance to talk about their two year missions, and I was impressed at the priority they place on missions - during those two years, they go door-to-door 6 days a week and isolate themselves from all secular music, television, movies and books. They asked if our youth group or church needed help with any of our missions projects and if knew of any local help that was needed. When they left, they asked if I needed help with anything, and volunteered to shovel my drive-way. They did an amazing job on it, even getting that crusty stuff that'd been packed down by our cars.

This is the hotel Cathie and I are staying at in Palm Springs.

Emily came down today after playing with Madeline's dress-up eye shadow and said "I beautiful Mom. I painted my eyes like a peacock."

Last night we had a "fancy dinner" at home. Madeline created special menus and we broke out the fine china, crystals and candles. We all got into our "fancy clothes" and used our best manners, acting like we were at the nicest of resturants. We all had a lot of fun with it.

Very interesting letter from Brian McLaren to Chuck Colson.

I got back in from New Orleans this morning at 1:00 AM. I've been down there since Tuesday at a kick-off meeting for the group I support. It was 67 degrees and beautiful! We ate at Antoine's, a famous Creole restaurant in the French quarter. They're the creators of the original Oysters Rockefeller (created for john d. Rockefeller way back). I figured I need to try it. I was presented with what looked like 8 piles of puppy poop, piled on top of oysters. It tasted good, but presentation was lacking. This was my first time on Bourbon Street, the infamous home of Mardi Gras, and I was blown away. It was phenomenal. There was so much energy - and it was just getting started at midnight. You'd walk down bourbon street and see every kind of person - transvestite, mimes, funky people while the bands played in the open air bars. We hit Pat O'Brien's, home of the infamous hurricane drink. Between every bar there seemed to be a strip club - men, women, travesties - you name it - just about every appetite could be met there. We had a blast walking up and down bourbon street with our hurricanes people watching and checking out the different bars with the cajun music.

A commercial from the ever-irreverent Kevin Smith. IT was supposed to be in Dogma.

"I want to be dangerous to a dull and boring religion. I want a faith that is considered "dangerous" by our predictable and monotonus culture." --Mike Yacconelli

Cathie came down with the flu Friday night. We were hanging out with the Niemi's, Girard's and Reynold's and next thing I know, Cathie's sick and we headed home. She had the stomach flu in a bad way for about 24 hours. Emily had something nasty, that made her into a pretty miserable human being. On Saturday, Jes watched the kids while I went to my sister-in-law Kris's Grandpa's memorial service. On Sunday just about everyone started recuperating. Today, we're almost back to normal.

Cathie and I are going to Palm Springs for a mini-vacation while I'm speaking at a conference out there for FileNET, a business partner of Xerox. I'm looking forward to going to the Joshua Tree National Park, which is right outside of Palm Springs.

I leave next Wednesday for a team meeting in Leesburg, VA and come back late Friday night. Cathie and I then fly out on Saturday morning and Cathie's coming back on Tuesday, me on Thursday. Long time away from the kids, but at it'll be fun for Cathie and I.

My mentor have started stepping through Jim Collin's book From Good to Great on our calls. We started going through the idea of Level 5 Leadership. Level 5 leadership is defined very specifically as a type of leader whose ambition is focused on other and the organization - someone who takes the ego, ambition and self-interest out of the picture. This book is different from others in the sense that it's not just his opinion. It's based on huge amounts of research, historical and financial data behind the companies, their performance and their leadership. My mentor is the closest thing I've ever been in contact with that exhibits this type of leadrership. As I've read this section of the book, I came to the conclusion that I'm not sure I want to be this type of leader. From what I've seen, when you put that much time into an organization, something has to give at a personal level - typically your family. I asked my mentor about this and he shared with me that he knows he's made sacrifices, but he doesn't know how to do it any differently. He's worked with other level 5 leaders - 4 star general, joint chiefs of staff, and said he'd seen the same thing. It was a cool thing to hear someone that I respect so much tell me that I have the potential to be a level 5 leader - and mean it. For someone I respect so much to tell me that they expect me to be in their position within the next couple of years was very flattering.

I used to love Donkey Kong!

Jason loaned me his DVDs of the first season of Smallville. I'd never seen it before, but so far, I dig it.

Turns out that I wasn't quite ready to fly out this morning. It might have been too soon to start eating non BRAT foods (Bannanas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast), because I'm still hurting. I asked around, and I was the only one in the room having hot flashes and feeling light headed, so I'm guessing I'm not completely healthy yet. At least I'm back tomorrow.

I've got a crazy travel schedule coming up. Next week I'm in New Oreleans, the week after that in Virginia, then to Palm Springs and the back to Kansas City. Yeehaa!

We went out on Saturday night to a Sweet Georgia Brown's in Greektown in downtown Detroit. It's a pretty elegant resturant with lives jazz and great food.... Or so I thought until the next morning. Apparently either the crab, lobster or filet didn't quite agree with my intestinal tract. I was pretty much out of it all day Sunday with a nasty case of food poisioning. I was planning on flying out on Monday to Kansas City, but when I woke up, I found my large intestine was still liquified. One of my co-workers was on the filght I was supposed to be on, and it turns out that between the snow storm in Michigan and the Ice Storm in Kansas City, she was on the plane about 5 hours. If I'd been on that plane, I'd have owned the on board bathroom.

I woke up Saturday morning and could barely walk on my left foot. Turns out I have Plantar Fasciitis from putting some weird stress on my foot while wall climbing on Friday. Hurts like a mother. For the record, Jason diagnosed it properly from the beginning. Turns out shoe salesmen do know something.

My parents were staying at the Sheraton in Novi yesterday, so we all visited and hung out at the pool. After that Cathie, myself, Jon, Madeline and Emily went to Galyans where we hit the climbing wall.

Monkeys+Typewriters=Shakespeare