Joe pointed me to this posting for a Senior Pastor position for a nearby church that I found funny. Po-Mo-Noel (as his friends call him) qualifies. Repeatedly.

You probably connect with today's culture if your iPod is part of your wardrobe, if your play lists include U2, Black-Eyed Peas, Moby, and Coldplay, if your library shelf contains N.T. Wright, Leonard Sweet, Bill Easum, Jim Collins, John Grisham and John Steinbeck, if your DVD collection goes beyond Disney to Cohen brothers, Oliver Stone, and Mel Gibson; and if you can successfully order at Starbucks without tripping over your tongue or holding up the line. (NAME WITHHELD Community Church is seeking a subversive teacher/communicator and team player who can connect with the inquirer, as well as the seasoned Christ-follower and who accurately and passionately exegetes Scripture and culture. This catalytic leader must guide the ongoing theological and cultural dialogue while exploring different approaches to ministry. Five years experience in an emergent church would be ideal as well as a master's degree and/or seminary training. Please send resume accompanied with DVD of a RECENT speaking engagement to...

A cool free tool for sharing large files called Dropload.com. It lets you upload files for one other person to download. Good way to go if you don't have your own FTP site. Files have to be 100MB or less.

I thought this was a cool idea... Creating a huge collage of pictures, called a Life Poster. Instructions how are here.

Buck called me today to share this prolific bumper sticker with me:
"Try JESUS. If you don't like him, the DEVIL will always take you back."

I thought this was an interesting photo essay from Time Magazine on the top 25 Most Influential Evangelicals. I didn't see Jesus anywhere... but the guy who sold 19 million copies of his book was #1. What about the guy who wrote Prayer of Jabez?

These comments are silly in light of the post Jason Shinn put out here. Jason actually wasted a whole entry once ranting about the fact that he's not cynical. In my opinion, that's the equivalent my creating an entry about how I hate technology.

I had a fun weekend, but it was too much in too little time. Madeline went down to Cedar Pointe's new Castaway Bay indoor water park Friday night and Cathie went out with friends, so I got to watch Barie Prince and the Pauper with Emily and after she went to bed, Nate and I had a guys night. We watched guy movies (Indiana Jones and the Temple of doom) ate guy food (Hungry Howies Pizza and Cinnamon Bread Sticks - which the girls don't like, so it's part of our guy's night to order them), we drank guy drinks (for Nate this means Mountain Dew or any other caffinated pop) and did guy stuff (video games). We were going to go midnight sledding, but it was 2 degrees out.

On Saturday afternoon, I bummed around not doing much productive, except reading a new book Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Late Saturday afternoon, four friends from work road-tripped down to a suprise birthday party in The Flats in Cleveland for a friend's suprise birthdy. It seemed like a great idea when we planned this to hang out for a while and drive back that same night. Bad idea. The party took place at The Dive Bar in The Flats and was a blast. We left about midnight and hit snow on the way back. I was hurtin bad the next day. After church, instead of kicking back and relaxing, I got it in my head that Cathie and I should remove wallpaper. Man I hate doing that. It was a border in our kitchen and was tedious and painful. After that, I took a well-deserved (in my own mind) nap.

I'm heading down to New Orleans tomorrow for work. My travel just-so-happens to concide with Marti Gras. In between meetings, we're going to a couple of the parades. My hotel is right off of Bourbon Street and the sales rep I'm working with is a local down there and a great person. Should be fun... I mean a lot of work.

A buddy of mine sent me these pictures that a friend of his took out west. He said that the lion had been stalking them for the better part of the morning on the way out to a hunt. They were pretty sure it was after one of the dogs. The cat ambushed them, and the mule tossed its rider and went into attack (defense) mode, the horses scattered and shots were fired but no one was sure if they hit the cat or not. He said that the battle was decently long, and it wasn't until it was almost over that one of the guys started snapping pics. The mule finally stomped the cougar to death after biting and throwing it around like a rag doll. The dogs wouldn't even come close until the mule settled down.

Click on the picture to see rest of these.

If you google the name Brad Jeffrey you that this picture of Pastor Brad and Sue Jeffrey. My friend, also named Brad was thrilled with this and the amazing similarities in their hair styles. Clearly a mullett.

I heard a great story from a guy, Dave, while on a conference call today. Last year, Dave was traveling for work and got into his hotel room late. He walked in, set his suitcase down and headed into the bathroom to get ready for bed. He unpacked his stuff into the closet and came into the other part of the room to go to bed, partially undressed. He gets ready to climb into bed and finds another guy already laying in the bed. The guys sees him, screams and tackles Dave. Akward. I laughed really hard when I heard this.

If you've got an iPod, or if you're only using iTunes, you need to check out Podcasting. Podcasting allows you to subscribe to an audio show the same way you can subscribe to a blog for feeds. The application downloads the updated shows on a scheduled basis, loads them into iTunes and in turn syncs them up to your iPod. There are some great shows out there - everything from DJ'd music shows to talk radio. I've been listening to a show called Geek News Central which is basically a nerd, talking about technology for 30 minutes or so. It's great stuff.

You first need to download the Podcasting software here. You then need to subscribe to feeds from one of these aggregation sites: PodcastBunker.com or PodcastAlley.com. You can learn more about postcasting on this FAQ.

If you're not using the firefox browser yet, you should be. It's a free web browser that you can use instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It's an open source application, meaning it was created by a bunch of programmers that came together to make the world a better place, and don't make a penny off of it. It doesn't have all of the holes that Internet Explorer has and it has a ton of great extensions that can be added to it to customize and add functionality.
Here are the extensions I've added in so far.

• Clone Window - Let's you duplicate the window or tab that you're currently viewing, complete with content and browse history.
• Spellbound - Adds spell check functionality to your text.
• A9 Toolbar - Provides A9 search capability in the browser
• ForecastFox - Inline weather forecast, giving a three day forecast in the bottom of your browser toolbar.
• Yahoo Companion - Integrates in with my e-mail and yahoo portal functionality
• Bloglines - Let's me easily add blogs into my bloglines.com RSS reader account.
• Stock Ticker - Shows my stocks in a ticker at the bottom of my browser window.

You can find a million more at this firefox extensions site.

I thought this was cool . Amazon's new search engine, A9.com has new yellow pages capabilities. Nothing new and revolutionary in that, except for how they've implemented it, which they call Block View. Check this out:

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.

Will and I just got done watching the movie Troy, based on Homer's Iliad. A little long, but not bad. There was a character in the movie that thought the world revolved around him. Everyone he ever fought kicked the crap out of him.. He talked a big game, but when it came time to fight he ran. Ironically, his name is Paris.

My favorite line from Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearing, as she reminisced about the good old days in the state department:

"Back when people were still using Wang's in certain parts of the state department. Not that there was anything wrong with Wangs."

I think she's referring to the computer brand.

Paris Hilton's blackberry got hacked. Not a huge deal, until you read the quote from Paris:

"It became obvious to her what was going on," says the source. "She was pretty upset about it. It's one thing to have people looking at your sex tapes, but having people reading your personal e-mails is a real invasion of privacy."

Article: Hacker reads Paris Hilton's e-mail

I've been using bloglines as a web-based RSS/Blog reading client and so far, so good. I'd been using the product pluck for a while which is a thick client that essentially did the same thing, only it only worked with Internet Explorer, which I don't use anymore. Bloglines has firefox browser integration and a good interface. If people are using bad RSS XML templates (Noel), then the feeds don't come across correctly, otherwise, it works great.

This has potential. Google has released their new video search engine:

Google Video is a new product that enables you to search an index of transcripts from recent TV programs. It's just an early-stage beta product at this point; you'll only see stills and text snippets from shows that match your search terms, and you can only search shows from a few channels, dating back to December, 2004, when we started compiling the index. But we'll be steadily improving Google Video in the months to come, so as they say in the TV biz, stay tuned.

PETA will hate this, but it's amusing for about 2 minutes. My best score is 297.

I sat down at the dinner table tonight and Nate pet our dog Riley and asked "Why's she all wet." Cathie laughed and explained that Emily had locked Riley in our downstairs bathroom and proceeded to give her a "bath". Thing is - our downstairs bathroom doesn't have a bathtub. Cathie explained that she used toilet paper and toilet water to rub Riley down. For some reason, Riley hasn't liked being around Emily lately. Not sure why.

Is it over before it really got started? Jason started his blog up two weeks ago, and its already been dormant for a week. Is it dead? How long between posts before I nuke it from my blog roll?

The final chapter in our flooded basement saga..... The insurance company came through, we got our check, we got our carpeting ordered and they're coming to put it in. Meanwhile, we live in chaos with the contents of our whole basement spread throughout our house and me trying to find a place the house to work that's comfortable and not freezing cold, like my currently cement basement.

We got home from church this afternoon and the kids and I headed outside to play. It was a perfect day for it: Cold enough for the snow to be good, but the sun was out without wind so that we could have fun playing. We first built a huge snow fort, and then without anyone to fight or defend it from, we started another project. We created a huge pile of snow right off the swingset. Nathan and Madeline took turns climbing on top of this (about 9 feet) and launching off it into the pile of snow. We made snow angels, tracked rabbit footprints and sledded down the driveway. The backyard was pristine when we started and by the end, you could tell that we'd had fun.

This quote from Napoleon Dynamite made me laugh:
"You know, there's like a butt-load of gangs at this school. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bowstaff."

For Christmas, Cathie got me tickets to go see Rent with another couple and we went tonight. The downside was that we're in the midst of getting dug out of a major snow storm and the musical was in downtown Detroit at the Masonic Temple. We drove out there and the roads sucked. We were supposed to meet two other couples out there (Reynolds and Girards) but the earlier show they were going to at 2:00 got cancelled due to weather. We had dinner at an old Italian Resturant called The Roma Cafe. The food was good, but I'm not a huge fan of traditional Italian food. They offered a shuttle to the Masonic Temple, which we took. If you've never been to the Masonic Temple, it's a beautiful place, the largest Mason Temple, whatever that means. It's in a horrible area, surrounded by Crack Houses, but inside it's awesome.

Rent was amazing. Easily in my top 5 of all time musicals, with Les Miserables, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair and Tommy. The music blew me away, great story, great cast. I've heard a lot of people complain about lots of overt Homosexuality in the musical. It's there, but it's not central to the plot, it's not what it's about. Sure, there are gay relationships in it, but the plot revolves around relationships, and some of them just happen to be homosexual ones. It's a strange audience - almost a cult like following. Much younger, very interactive. We sat next to two girls who'd been to see it 3 times. One of them was deathly afraid of Midgets, which I found interesting. Driving home was a lot of fun. Apparently the City of Detroit still hasn't gotten the whole plowing the roads thing down - which should make the Super Bowl interesting next year if we get any snow.

Madeline lost her first tooth yesterday. This was a huge deal for her. She's been having "phantom loose teeth" for the past year, having us check her teeth every few weeks with a new potential loose tooth. Her brother Nate helped her pull it out.

She left her tooth under the pillow, and the tooth fairy forgot to visit. Oops. She wrote a note telling the tooth fairy she forgot, and received a note back from the tooth fairy along with some money. $4. I think I got a nickle when I was a kid and I liked it.

Today was the culmination of weeks of work. We had Nate's Cub Scout Space Derby today. Each father/son team makes a balsa-wood rocket that's powered by a propeller and rubber bands. When you see a rocket that's a perfect replica of the space shuttle and the kid is in first grade, you know the dad did the work. I'm not the handiest, and ours wasn't the prettiest, but at least it looked like Nate and I worked on it together. We didn't do well, but we learned a lot. Here are the top four things learned for next year:
1. Lightweight and thin is the key. One guy used a lathe to make a paper thin cylinder that still had enough strength to not collapse.
2. Small fins at angles are important. The fins we had on our rocket were big and created lift, which put the belly up and caused more drag on the rocket, and also put uneven weight on the guide-wire, slowing it down. You need to have small fins that stablize and don't create lift.
3. Being wound last is key. They would wind the rocket 25 turns, and the one who got wound last, would typically win.

This year we're writing off to lessons learned.

We've got the pinewood derby coming up, which is a blast and something my brother did with my Dad growing up. The kids have to follow strict guidelines on what they can do with the axles, base and wheels. They've got a "Geezer League" for the dad's where it's anything goes. Last year, one guy hooked up a high power fan and created a hover-craft type device and blew everyone away. I'm going to try and outsource the building of it overseas, maybe India... I should be able to get it built for a few Rupees.

I went on a field trip today with Nate's class to the Walled Lake Nature Education Center. It was really well done and a lot more fun then I thought it would be, based on the fact that it was about 2 degrees outside. We sat through 3 45 minute classes that involved listening to a speaker and then going outside (in the 2 degree weather) and doing some kind of related activity. If seeds, deer and hibernation are ever Jeopardy topics, I'll be the next Ken Jenningers. I got to eat from a sack lunch and hear about how animals transport seeds with their poop. Where else do you get that?

I had dinner on Wednesday night with a guy who works for the Army's Battle Command Lab, looking at new technologies to use with the army. He was telling us about a Flexible Display conference he's going to in Arizona. He was saying that the it will be at least five years before the small flexible display technologies hit the consumer market and even further out for the larger ones. Check out some of the background information here.

I thought these were an amazing series of Pictures of Tiger Woods golfing off of the Heli Pad of the world's largest hotel in Dubai in the United Arab Emerates. He received $1M to hit the golf balls. Not a bad gig if you can get it. Click on the individual picture for an expanded pic.

I flew into Kansas City last night and it was almost 50 degrees. They'd been having the same 0 degree weather prior to this, but now they've hit a warm spell and it feels like spring. I'm back tonight and I think I'm in town all next week.

I was in the Detroit airport this morning and who did I see? The Rev. Al Sharpton. My brush with fame.

Will and I watched the movie Donnie Darko tonight. It's an older movie, can't believe I haven't seen it before. What a great flick. Great cinematography, great plot, kinda dark. The main character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal who was in the movie Bubble Boy, which was a little tough to get beyond, but he's great in this movie. There's actually a fake online book called The Philosophy of Time Travel which is referenced in the movie that helps explain a lot of the crazy stuff going on.

I've probably put this in my blog a few times, but it strikes me every time I read it. Its the best part of philosopher C.S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce. The book is a fantasy, a metaphor to describe the differences between heaven and hell. The part in this book around The Red Lizard of Lust is the greatest parable for our lust and how we deal with it before God. This excerpt is worth the five minutes it takes to read it. I don't think you necessarily have to have the context for the book for it to make sense.

Google released version two of their great free photo organizer and touch-up software. You can get it here. The new version has updated photo retouching capabilities and a tweaked interface. If you have a digital camera, this is some of the best software out there for managing your photos - and it's free. Google's foray into owning search content at a desktop level.

Will and I went to see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou last night. When picking the movie, I shared with Will that I'd heard it wasn't very good from a number of people. Will responded that everyone he'd talked to loved it. On the way out of the movie, I asked Will who specifically he'd talked to that gave him good reviews on the flick and he said that it might of been that he'd only previews that looked funny.

The movie is done by Wes Anderson, who did movies like The Royal Tannenbaums and Rushmore. I liked those movies, but it took watching them a couple of times and letting them sink in to really get them. All of his movies have really ecclectic soundtracks to them. The Life Aquatic was all David Bowie songs, done in Portuguese. I read that he'll actually design scenes around the music that he's got tagged to be played in the background. He uses music a lot like the movie Harold & Maude does.

I walked down into my basement and my feet got wet... Which I've learned in the past is a bad thing. It turns out something in my basement that contains water, had water come out of it.... Good guess, eh? Haven't narrowed it down to either my sump pump, an outside drain, my hot water heater or my water softener. Cathie called a carpet cleaning company and I called my friends Joe and Brad to come over and help me quickly get all of the crap out of my basement. I had to disconnect my office, which means all of my computers - consisting of well over 100 different cables of different types, so I could move it all upstairs. We had some guys come out and soak up a lot of the water (about 200 gallons) and I tore up the carpet and threw out the padding. We've got lots of fans and dehumidifiers going. Meanwhile, I called the insurance company. If it has to do with my sump pump, they'll cover nothing. Nice of them. At this point, I honestly can't say where the water came from, but I want to be as honest as possible with the insurance guys, even if it means me not getting coverage.

I got back from Circuit City at 9:30 tonight. I'd brought my car in at 1 because of an annoying hiss out of one of the speakers in the stereo I bought 3 months ago. It sounds small, but it was the most annoying thing to me. I'd get in the car and the static would tick me off - because it compromised the sound quality and the principal of the matter - it just shouldn't be there if they'd done this right. This is the second time I'd had to bring it back after the original install. The first time I took it in, the guy tried to convince me it was my EQ settings. After explaining to him he was nuts, he replaced the stereo, it worked for 1 hour and then went back to doing the same thing. I brought it in this time and a different guy was working. He took one look at how the other guy had wired it up and apologized. It took them 8 hours to not only rewire the whole system that the original guys had screwed up but to run it through the amp (the other guys had bypassed it) and give me a brand new set of front speakers along with a new wiring harness so I didn't lose the car control functionality that came with my factory stereo. They were very apologetic, gave it to me for free, and proudly told me they'd taken extra time to make sure everything sounded great - and it did. I'd go back there again based on how they took care of me this time... Just making sure I don't get the original tool who did the install.

Jon called me last night and told me to go to Noel's blog to check this out:


It's called Guess the Dictator or Sit-Com Character. It's like 20 questions with just these types of people. It correctly guessed B.A. Baracus from the A-Team and Sidney from the show Alias. I could waste a lot of time trying to beat this.

My friend Jason (guy on the left) has started his blog backup. It went into "hiatus" for a while and it's back. J's a great writer, providing a somewhat cynical view of the world.

I'd never seen the part of Napoleon Dynamite after the credits. It's a scene where Kip is singing a song to his new wife Lafawnduh after they're married... I'm working on learning this to sing to Cathie:

Kip: Why do you love me? Why do you need me? Always and forever... We met in a chatroom, now our love can fully bloom... Sure the world wide web is great, but you, you make me salivate... I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... But I STILL love technology... Always and forever. Our love is like a flock of doves, flying up to heaven above... always and forever, always and forever... Why do you need me? Why do you love me? Always and forever...

I'm still plugging through this book and it's slowly working it's way through my brain. I think the book's main point is to say that a faith that is only about eternal life is missing the point as much as a faith that is only about the hear and now in terms of social justice. It's somewhere in the middle of the continum. Jesus's famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) make so much more sense in this context, looking at them with the idea that they are a summary of his teachings on how to actually live in the reality of God's present kingdom which is available to us right now in the world around us. I'd always looked at this teaching as more of what a perfect world would look like, but the message, as I now understand it is more about the availablity of God to everyone, through Jesus. They're not really teachings on how to be blessed or instructions on how to do anything...they don't state conditions of God's approval, salvation or blessing. This was news to me. They're all about clarifying Jesus' fundamental message: "The free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all of humanity through the reliance upon Jesus himself, and the person now loose in the world among us." It's good head knowledge, but I'm trying to figure out to make this applicable to my real life. It hasn't gotten there yet.

Apple just announced this new Mac for $499. This would be nice for home use. I know, I know.... I'm not buying stuff right now...

I mentioned earlier that I've been looking at my love of "stuff" and I came across this in my reading this morning that really hit home:

Galatians 5

¹⁹It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; ²⁰trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; ²¹the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

Paul continues on talking about the flip side of this....

²²But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard--things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, ²³not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. ²⁴Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good--crucified.
²⁵Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. ²⁶That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

I've been looking at switching from Verizon cell phone service to Sprint for the last couple of months, but haven't pulled the trigger. On one hand, Sprint's a lot cheaper and they've got a great deal on the new Treo 650 phone. I'd save almost $100/month on my plan at Sprint. The downside is that I've heard mixed reviews about their coverage and customer service. Verizon's coverage is second to none and their customer service is phenomenal. I've been with them ten years and they treat me like a king. I may switch to Sprint on a temporary basis and see how the coverage works for 30 days and go from there before I cancel Verizon. A friend of mine, Greg Kandra, is the master at this. He's tried at least 6 different providers, most of them for 30 days, and then switched back when he wasn't happy within the 30 day window.

The video from the infamous Napoleon Dynamite Dance Clip. If you haven't seen it, you need to. One of my favorite parts of the whole movie.

Here are the top search engine that people are using to find my blog:

• costume jacket epilets
• napoleon dynamite youth meetings
• jen and brad's breakup
• pics of napoleon dynamite
• dave kurt blog
• galveston strip clubs
  

This is very funny. Conan O'Brian "interviewed" Bill Gates as a part of the Microsoft product release at the recent CES show in Vegas. Apparently, none of Gate's stuff worked and Conan O'Brian had fun laughing at him. Watch the video here.

Also, check this new digital media center that was announced by HP. The interface and features on this thing rock. It could truly make me happy for at least a couple of weeks. I must have it.

pic05325

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This is one in a series of lego pictures of cathedrals. The guy obviously has waaaay too much time on his hands, but it's amazing to check out the detail. Click on the picture to see the whole series. Check out brickshelf.com to see huge collections of lego creations that people are so proud of, they take pictures of them.

I love gadgets and "stuff" in general. When I take a look at how much and how quickly I buy stuff online, it's pretty amazing. Rarely do I want for something for too long. I was talking with a friend of mine Matt in Kansas City who suffers from the same thing. We agreed that during January we would fast from buying stuff. Even for the short time I've been doing this, it's amazing how quickly apparent it becomes some of the "why's" behind my buying become apparent. Sometimes it's because I'm having a bad day or even a good day, and sometimes it's because there's a part of me that really believes that this or that "thing" (book, toy, technology, gadget, etc) will really make me happy. It's amazing once I get them how little time the joy around the stuff I get lasts... I move on to wanting the next thing. I've actually put a bunch of the junk I had laying around out on eBay.

I'm working out of Brewwater's this afternoon, the local coffee shop with free wireless internet access. A friend of mine (and fellow Xeroid) Will Brown happened to show up and sat down on the couch next to me. Here we are sitting side by side, plugged into our iPods, laptops on our laps, IMing with each other when we want to talk. We could be a commercial for something.... but I'm not sure that something is good.

We started watching the Surreal Life this week, season 4. Last season was pretty lame, with Flavor-Flav and Bridgette Neilson being the only highlights. We didn't finish the season. The premiere of this season's show on Sunday was promising. It's got big a great collection of has-beens: Big-time wrestling Diva Chyna, Peter from the Brady bunch and Mini-Me from Austin Powers. Mini-me gets stumbling drunk on the first episode. Go figure - TV using drunk midgets to premiere a new season.

I've got a lot of books going at once. Typically, I'm reading one fiction book, one or two business books and two or three books arounds spiritual formation at a time.

Fiction:

Tripwire
My brother Dan turned me on to this series of eight books, all with the same character, Jack Reacher. Jack is a man's man, a hero's hero. Great books that combine a little CSI with a little Tom Clancy.


Mount Dragon
This is a new author that the librarian turned me onto when I was looking for more Lee child books - thinking I wanted Lincoln Child. Apparently Preston and Child write together quite a bit, and the result is great. This book could have been written by Michael Crichton. It's about a genetic lab facility in the desert that could destroy the world. Good read.

Business:


How Full is Your Bucket?
Good, quick read that paints a great picture around the residual impact of your interactions with others and their interactions with you. Nothing new in this book, but for some reason, reading this has made me very concious of what I leave behind in the smallest situations - cashiers, doormen, rental car staff, etc. A friend of mine, Dorla gave me this book a few months ago and it was worth the 60 minutes I've put into it. I still have to make it throught the last chapter.


Execution
Apparently I'd rather read books that tell me how good I already am at what I do. This is a tough book. It's very straight forward, but it talks about the difference between theory and execution and how bad most people are at it. This can be a huge gap for me when the length of execution extends beyond a month or two. I've been going through the book chapter by chapter with a guy I'm mentoring in our company and getting a lot out of it.

Spiritual:

Divine Conspiracy
I've been plugging through this for the past month, reading it with a friend of mine, Brad. I think that Dallas Willard is a lot like C.S. in terms of how revolutionary the stuff he puts out there. The first two or three chapters of his books are really painful, though. He has to lay all of hte philosophical groundwork for what he's going to talk about and it's like eating paste. This book deals with the idea of the Kingdom of God and what it really is. He spends a lot of time digging through the beattitudes and the reality of them. Great stuff. It's the kind of book you read 10 pages, think about it and pick it up and read another 10. I'll probably be done with this is a month or so.


Searching for God knows what
Will got me this book for Christmas. This is written by the same guy that wrote Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality. The first one was great, I'm only a few pages into this so far.


What every father must know
It's a tiny little book written specifically for Dad's that gives you a thumbnail sketch of Eldredge's three other books: Sacred Romance, Journey of Desire and Wild at Heart. It's a great book to give to any dad to walk away with two key ideas of what every little boy and little girl need from their dad. If people resonate with the message in this, they'll likely dig Eldredge's other stuff.

Matt sent me this commercial straight out of a men's room...

Bill Keith Dave Mack Black Olive Picture

3 others dressed alike. Bill Belanger, Keith Rouser, Myself and Mack. Apparently, this was the outfit du'jour.

It was also a pretty safe combination of colros as many of us got our pictures taken as part of our executive bio's. They had to do a full thing of makeup for us and the makeup gal spent an additional 5 minutes trimming my eye-brow hair. She left my ear-hair alone.

Mack and Dave Black Olive Picture

Nothing like dressing like another guy, right down to the color of your t-shirt. I got a chance to spend some time last week with Mack, whose been a mentor and a boss for me over the past couple of years. He's also responsible for turning me onto the show 24, which started off last night and is on again tonight. I'm hooked. As my friend Will puts it, 24 is like TV Crack.

Dave and Will Bangham

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I met this guy last week and had to have a picture taken with him, just based on name: Will Bangham.

Tsunami before and after satellite pictures.

In the meeting we were in today, they showed a video to 400 of us of one of the great leaders of Xerox, Joe Wilson from 60 years back. In the video, Joe talks about his comittment to the people and customer service. Great video, no big deal - until the end. After doing his spiel, Joe Wilson says, "And now and I want to turn it over to Dave Kurt...." and the video ends. There was a mumble and a lot of people looking at me to see if I had a clue what was going on. I didn't. Apparently, there was a great leader at one time here named Dave Kurt. I probably found this more amusing than anyone else, just because people have no idea whether it was a joke or actual.

There's a new virus out there, called the "It Takes Guts to Say Jesus" virus. Apparently if you open it, it will erase everything on your hard drive.This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than
"Melissa," and that there is NO Remedy for it at this time.

I'm fairly sure this virus actually came FROM Jesus, because he got tired of people sending out those stupid freaking "Forward this e-mail if you love Jesus as much as I do" e-mails.

Apparently Evil Knievel can't take a joke.... Knievel loses 'pimp' appeal

After having a photo appear on a web site calling him a pimp, he sued, lost and an appeals court responded:

Considering the target audience, the Knievel caption "was most likely intended as a compliment,'' said Judge A. Wallace Tashima, citing one Web site's definition of pimp as a slang term whose meanings include "cool.'' At the very least, he said, any reasonable reader would have considered the caption "an attempt at humor.''

But Bea said a jury should be able to consider reactions from a more diverse audience. "What about those dowdy corporate bourgeois who are Knievel's clients and who allegedly have abandoned him because of the photograph and caption?'' he asked.

I just like the fact that they were able to work the term "dowdy corporate bourgeois" into a sentance.

One other highlight from the meeting yesterday was when one of VP's, Rich, quoted Napoleon Dynamite in his presentation.... The part about going back in time to replay the fourth quarter. Cracked me up.

They brought in Outward Bound tonight to lead some team building activities. There were about 30 teams participating, 10 people each. The things they gave us were youth group games - like buliding a tower out of newspapers and throwing balls. The Outward Bound team did an amazing job of facilitaing a huge group - enough to make any youth pastor proud.

Interesting day today. The company brought in a consultant from Disney to talk through some of the theory behind Disney's customer experience. In one example, he shared the magic behind how they help guests find lost cars. Seems impossible when people barely remember what their rental car looks like, let alone where they parked amongst 100,000 cars. What they do is ask the guest when they arrive, which most remember. As the cars arrive in the morning, they mark down every five minutes where they're parking people. All the attendant has to do is match the arrive time with the appropriate location and whallah!

A good friend of mine who I happen to work with (Bill Belanger) was a part of a roundtable discussion in front of the group. If you don't know Bill, he's about 5'2" tall and built like a tank - a hockey player. Bill goes to sit down in the raised chair on the stage, but the chair is too tall for him, so his feet dangle down like a kid sitting in an adult chain. Everyone laughed, including Bil. He has a good sense of humor about his height, but I figured Will, Brad and Noel would appreciate the story....

I was asleep before 11 last night, which was nice. The nights get longer and longer here, so I'm getting my sleep while I can. I got up this morning at 5:45 and played raquetball with a friend of mine, Matt. He beat me pretty badly both games, but it sure beat running on a treadmill for 40 minutes. The weather is amazing here - 60+ degrees!

I know I didn't blog much last week, but I had an amazing week at home. My days consisted of going to bed late and sleeping in, all while hanging out with the family throughout the day, doing very little that was productive. I watched a lot of movies, played lots of games with the kids, took some naps and read a lot of books. I was so recharged by the end of it, but it made it that much harder to go out of town for a week.

I got together on Wednesday with a couple of guys from work at BW3's and then had my family came over later in the day to go sledding, but weather didn't premit, so we just hung out for a while doing. We had a fun new-years, but pretty low-key. We hung out at the Reynold's house with a bunch of friends, ate a lot and laughed a lot. The next couple of days were just spent recharging. I ate like a pig throughout the whole holiday season. On December 26th, I decided I needed to shed some weight, as I was topping 210lbs. I went to the gym every day and hit it hard, doing hard-core cardio and weights every day. I finished up the week getting down to about 203 and feeling a little better about things, but still needing to change my eating.

I'm in Leesburg, VA at the National Conference Center for our company kick-off meeting all week, outside of Washington, D.C. I hate this place. It was designed back in the 70's with a maze in mind, to create a "learning environment". They were fools. If you check out the web site, it shows a very kind and simple map that would fool the ignorant. It took me a long time to find my room and even longer to find the cafeteria. Each room is like a self-contained dorm room, 12x12 with a bed, bathroom and desk. I've been coming here on and off for the past 9 years and it's gotten better over the years. We no longer share bathrooms with our wall-mate.

I'm still laughing from watching Napoleon Dynamite a few days ago. Some of my favorite lines, most of which will be meaningless without watching the movie.... Actually, they're pretty meaningless even watching the movie, but they're much funnier with Napoleon's delivery..

Napoleon Dynamite: Pedro offers you his protection.
--
Deb: What are you drawing?
Napoleon Dynamite: A liger.
Deb: What's a liger?
Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.
--
Napoleon Dynamite: You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.
--
Napoleon Dynamite: What kind of bike do you have?
Pedro: It's a sledgehammer.
Napoleon Dynamite: Dang! You got shocks, pegs... lucky! You ever take it off any sweet jumps? Napoleon Dynamite: [Cut to Pedro jumping] You got like three feet of air that time.
--
Kip: Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.
Napoleon Dynamite: Since when, Kip? You have the worst reflexes of all time.
Kip: Try and hit me, Napoleon.
Napoleon Dynamite: What?
Kip: I said come down here and see what happens if you try and hit me.
--
Jock No. 1: Hey, Napoleon. I hear you're in a club for girls.
Napoleon Dynamite: Shut up, I am not.
Jock No. 1: Yeah? Why are you in the Happy Hands Club then?
Napoleon Dynamite: Cause I didn't have a freakin' choice. All the other sweet clubs were filled up. GOSH!