Fortune magazine's eighth annual "Global Most Admired Companies" survey put Xerox No. 2 in the "computers" industry category, behind only IBM. Xerox achieved an overall score of 6.98, up from its 2004 score of 6.75 and No. 4 ranking:

To compile the lists, the Hay Group, a management-consulting firm, surveyed more than 10,000 directors, executives, and managers at 357 companies around the world, in one of 30 industries. Each respondent was asked to rank the other companies in his or her industry on nine attributes -- innovation, use of corporate assets, globalness, quality of management, employee talent, financial soundness, long-term investment value, social responsibility, and quality of products and services -- on a scale of 1 to 10.

I've just updated my blog roll with a few new blogs for your linking pleasure.

I've just updated my blog roll with a few new blogs for your linking pleasure.

Over the past 4 months or so, I've been working through Dallas Willard's book, The Divine Conspiracy. Every day, I'm struck by something in this book. The stuff that it's teaching is affecting me at a really core level of how I think about my faith, my world and what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. I read something today that flipped on end something I've always thought about 1 Corinthian 13, the chapter in the bible that gives us this huge, all encompassing definition of what love is. When I read this, I always felt like I need to strive towards all of these great qualities to be a loving person. Here's what I read:

People usually read this and are taught to read it, as telling them to be patient, kind, free of jealousy and so on - just as they read Jesus' Discourse (sermon on the mount referred to earlier in the book) as telling them to not call others fools, not look on a woman to lost, not to swear, to go the second mile, and so forth. But Paul is plainly saying - look at his words - that it is love that does these things, not us, and that what we are to do is to "pursue love" (1 Cor 14:1). As we "catch" love, we then find that these things are after all actually being done by us. These things, these godly actions and behaviors, are the result of dwelling in love. We have become the kind of person who is patient, kind, free of jealousy, and so on. Paul's message is exactly the same as Jesus' message.

This was probably perfectly clear to everyone else, but it struck me.

I got up at 5 to go to the gym, giving my self plenty of time since it was about 5 miles from the hotel. It was a beautiful drive, going along the St. Charles River, watching the rowing crews, right through Harvard Square - all as the sun came up. Would have been better if I didn't get lost again. I finally made it to the gym and back. I need a freakin GPS system. A friend of mine, Mack, has a GPS (can't remember which one) system that ties via bluetooth into his Treo 650 phone, so all of his maps and directions are displayed on his phone, as he's driving. The maps can be stored on your SD memory card. I'll put this one in the "nice to have" category, unlike the Treo 650, which is in the must-have-to-be-happy category. Like Will, I'm considering switching over to Sprint now that they've got some of the bugs ironed out of the 650. Yesterday's WSJ had an article talking about the different cell carriers and the number of complaints per user. Verizon had about 1/4 the complaints of all of the other carriers.

I was up at 4:30 this morning to fly out to Boston. Boston's my favorite city, but I hate having to drive there. I try and take a taxi, subway or train whenever I can. I found my way out to the customer site without too much of a problem, but it took me about 90 minutes to travel the 5 miles to my hotel. Needless to say i was horribly lost most of the time, with almost no maps. I finally asked for directions about 85 minutes into it. I checked into my hotel, the Doubletree in Boston, and they upgraded me to this pimped out two story suite on the top floor, complete with vaulted ceilings. Not sure I really need two floors. I can jump onto the couch from the upper floor.

I'm crashing early, and there's nothing on TV. I'm bored enough to watch American Idol. Never seen the show before, never wanted to. I quickly switched to watch MSU women's basketball. Not sure which is worse. I should probably just go to bed.

Project 311's Blitzfest web site is up. We're putting on this event for about 5,000 people, 75 bands, 7 stages, professional skate team. It'll be huge. E-mail me if you want to help out. We need about 300 volunteers.

We had a great Easter weekend overlaid with great basketball. On Friday night after our Good Friday service, Will, Brad, Jim and Joe came over to watch the game. What great basketball! I loved seeing us beat Duke. I know lots of Duke fans, and it was a pleasure seeing them lose. Mike Thompson gave me the run-down earlier in the day on why Duke would win, and why all of the analysts were wrong, and posessed by Satan. I gave Mike a call on Saturday morning about 7:30 to tell him he was wrong.

On Saturday, Nate, Will and I headed out to my parents to help them in phase 1 of their move. It was one of the hardest moves I've done, and it was only 2 rooms of their house. We moved stuff from their basement and garage, filling up a whole moving truck. Will, Dad, Jon, Nate, Matthew and I made hundreds of trips up the stairs, while my brother Dan "oversaw" the move. He's always been good at packing. I got back around 2 , napped, dyed Easter Eggs and hung out with Cathie, watching the movie Garden State. I loved it. Great Soundtrack.

Easter Sunday is one of two days out of the year that I don't wear jeans or shorts to church. The girls love getting all dressed up, and this Easter was no exception. We did pictures afterwards and Cathie cooked a huge dinner. Will, Brad, Joe, Jim, Mark and I watched the baseketball game while my two girls danced around in their cheerleading outfits, cheering, making signs and serving us drinks. It was such an intense game to watch! We went into two overtimes because of Will. With ten seconds left, I saw the players all locking arms so I figured that we should do the same. We all did, except for Will. I let him know ahead of time if we lost, it was his fault. Needless to say he locked arms at the end of the second overtime.

I thought this was fun to watch. It's a slideshow of different people's computer desktops.

Another useless but amusing site. This will take your text and create ASCII banner text out of it.

This is kind of a cool application called MusicBrainz Tagger. You can run it against your music library and it will look up missing MP3 tags based on the acoustic signature of a song. I'll let you know how it works.

Thanks to Will for this. If you know Mark Butler, this is a video of him a few years ago. Very funny.

They found my luggage! When I think about it, as much as I travel, I've never lost my luggage. Of course, I normally don't check it, but that's beside the point.

It's been one of those days. I was up at 4:45 to catch a flight, didn't get bumped to first class, and almost missed my next flight because this one was late. From there, they lost my luggage and based on the Low Tire Pressure indicator I had on my way to the airport Monday, I'm looking forward to changing a flat tire. One of those days. If only I had a time machine....

I want one of these!

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to pop a water balloon in space? Read about it here.

I was flipping through channels in my hotel room last night, and there on PBS was John Tesh. He was playing a concert at Red Rocks. It was called"Worship with John Tesh at Red Rocks". John doesn't sing at all, he just plays the keyboards. It was like a car accident - you know you shouldn't watch, but you do.

We've had the same person baby-sit for us over the past 6 years and she's become a part of our family. I'll refer to her here as Margret - I'm not naming names, because there are a lot of baby-sitter pimpers out there. You know who you are. The type of people who get a name and then start using that person, and making them unavailable when I need them. You know who you are.

My girls look forward to her coming like they look forward to anyone in my family coming over. She watched the kids Saturday night for us and an hour before, they were watching for her at the window. Emily told me I should go pick her up. I told her that Margret had a car and I didn't need to, and Emily explained that if I picked her up, she'd be there sooner. It's such a great feeling to know you have babysitters who care so much about your kids, and really like them. Nate dug her boyfriend, because he plays video games. I asked her if they should get married, and he didn't think so. He said that her boyfriend should marry another babysitter, who also plays video games with him, so they'll both be able to play video games with him. Okay, kinda tunnel vision, but hey, he's 8.

I'm traveling on and off over the next couple of weeks. Houston, Boston, Kansas City and Cinncinati.

Cathie and I sat down this weekend and put together a list of everything that needed to be done in our house to get it ready to sell. We have a really big list. I'm outsourcing most of it to a friend.

Take this Typing Test and report your score. I scored 120 WPM on three different tries.