Something I read...

I've been going through a reading list I made up. I got the lists of books from several different folk that I respect, and put the whole list together in my Amazon wish list. That's now where I point friends and family when they want to know "What do you want for..." I recently ordered four of the books on my list and this morning I started reading As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.

There was one part that I read this morning that really struck home to me. He says

A pure-minded man does not fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power. Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.

That part really struck me. When we find ourselves in our toughest hour. When things are the worst we can imagine...who shows up? Can we look back on times we were in those circumstances and be proud of our response or do we look back and are ashamed of our behavior?

Do you disagree with this premise? That during our hardest times our real character shows through...weather good or bad? I think sometimes we don't want to accept this premise because we have not been proud of the way we handled adversity in the past.

The good news is while past behavior is indicative of future results, it does not guarantee them. So if a situation was handled poorly in the past, that does not mean it will be handled poorly in the future. Take the opportunity today to review the last time a tough situation presented itself and your response to it...can you do better next time?

Bombs Away!!!

Wow, was that fun! I have always wanted to learn to fly a plane and yesterday I had a fantastic experience driving one! I've flown radio control planes, but never have been in a small plane before. This was a great experience and I had so much fun driving the thing a bit in the air!

We started out by preparing 10 Twinkies with 5' long streamers to slow them down as they are dropped from the plane.



Then we headed to the airport to fly in the pilot's club's Cessna 152.


We took off and headed towards Benjamin. Luckily, we had scouted out the way it looks from the air with Google Earth and were ready for the way the terrain looked from the sky. My wife and two of my kids were standing in the pasture waiting for the Twinkies to arrive. We took the first pass from North to South to make sure we were ready, then we began to drop the Twinkies on the next pass.


And we dropped them! The kids had a great time, and I had a blast being in the small plane. What a great way to fly around. It's a lot like riding a motorcycle...there's enough to concentrate on that you can do it with tuning everything else out and get some good thinking done.

Life on the Farm

I mentioned on Sunday that I live on a small farm. We have a web site at Bullhead Ranch and raise lamb, chevon and eggs. Mostly for our own consumption, but we do sell some to folk on lists we keep. A lot of people have told me their great memories of being raised on a farm and how excited they would be to have a small farm these days.

Unfortunately, the reality of living on a farm sometimes gets in the way of the romantic notion of being on the farm. Last night was one of those times.

We had a couple of rogue chickens that had gotten out of the coop and made their way to the garage. We hate that because they poop all over the garage. My wife grabbed the chickens and began to make her way to the coop to return them. I was sitting in my office at the time when she came back to the house to tell me there was a dog out by the coop growling at her. I grabbed the shotgun and flashlight and took off to protect the animals.

Quick aside here. You may think it is cruel or somehow not right for me to go after critters that threaten my animals in such a violent matter. Maybe it would be better to scare them off. Maybe it would be better to call the dog catcher to come and get them. Well, you very well could be correct. In my world, I am looking to solve the problem quickly and cleanly. I in no way want to harm an animal, but I have been placed as a steward of the resources I have and I take that responsibility very seriously...to the point of killing a threat if necessary. It certainly is not the only way, but it is my way.

So I head off towards the chicken coop and don't see a thing. Slowly, I make my way around the end of the shop, on the side of the shop by the 5th wheel and there are a pair of eyes staring at me. Smaller than a dog...maybe a mink or skunk. I take a couple of steps towards it and it steps towards me...I'm wondering if my wife heard a skunk or mink growl (do they vocalize?) and I fire...it was a feral cat. My wife insists it was a dog she heard by the coop, but no dog was found last night...just the feral cat that won't be having chicken for dinner.

Sometimes life on the farm is harsh, but at least for tonight the 14 chickens we have left will be safe.

The Twinkie Bomber

In Spanish Fork, one of our local legends is Gail Halverson, the candybomber. During 1948 and 1949, he wanted to spread some happiness to the children of Berlin so he dropped candy with little parachutes to them from his plane.

One of my friends is a private pilot and wants to drop twinkies with streamers on his son who has a birthday on Saturday. Before he can do it, he wants to test it though, and that's where I come in.

Tomorrow I will get a couple of thrills. Firstly, I will be able to go flying with him in his flying club's Cessna 172 and he's going to let me drive a bit. But also we will test out the capability of a flying twinkie by bombing my home with them!

My kids are thrilled to death that for lunch tomorrow they will go out to the pasture and wait for Daddy to fly by in the plane and drop twinkies on them.

Bombs away!

Meet the Geek

So this has been the week that the company I work for, Novell, puts on a conference known as BrainShare. This is a week long conference for hackers and IT folk to come out and attend a bunch of sessions and learn about where the company is headed and how we can help out. Each year, Novell sponsors an evening called "Meet the Experts" or as we like to call it "Meet the Geek." This is where us programmers all head to BrainShare to meet with the folk using our products and answer any questions they may have. Last night was Meet the Geek so I was called on to show up.

The best part about this was the food...man it was good! We had five different buffets each with different foods. The first was the meat buffet with buffalo sausage, rattlesnake and rabbit sausage, duck sausage, london broil, sourdough bread and the best part was the BBQ sauce. Have you seen one of those chocolate fountains? Like this
Now take this fountain and don't fill it with chocolate, but rather fill it with BBQ sauce...yeah, that was the meat buffet!

Then we had the sandwich buffet with eight foot hoagies in meat and veggie varieties along with these fantastic thick potato chips and a spicy minestrone soup. Just down from this buffet was the mushroom buffet. They took a variety of mushrooms, sauteed them with oil and butter and onion and garlic and cheese then served them to you with garlic sauce and hot sauce as condiments. MMM...dragon breath!

On the other side of the area they had chicken drumsticks in a great sauce and potato cakes. Then they had the ice cream buffet. This was some premium vanilla ice cream and to put over it they were sauteeing bannanas, peaches, butter and sugar. When I say sautee it isn't in a 12" pan on a cooktop either...this pan was easily 4' across! Then you had caramel or fudge to go over the top of the whole thing.

Needless to say, the food made a great impression on me!

In four hours of being there I only had three customers come over. Two were external customers just telling us what a great job we're doing and one was a Novell guy with a question that we were able to help.

But the food was good!

If you want happinesss...

you have to look outside yourself.

I was speaking recently with somebody who asked me

How can I be happy? What does that look like?

And that has been rattling around in my brain ever since. If we continue to look only at ourselves and our circumstances and have everything be about us, then we will never really be happy. Real happiness comes from looking outside ourselves and helping others.

At RCC we have two huge opportunities to be a real help in peoples' lives. Not just a feel good, here's a quarter kind of help, but really provide some necessary items to people who have nothing. We are willing to spend $4 on a foo foo coffee from Starbucks, but then we balk when the church talks about an opportunity to give. Altogether too often, somebody is complaining again that...

church was okay today, but they started bugging us about money again

That is because they have made church about them. At the 0900 meeting on Sundays, there are around 40 people that have made church about everybody else. They are the ones who understand how to be happy!

The first opportunity we have is with Sri Lanka and our friends Chuck and Dhammika there. They are still recovering from the tsunami and still need help. We have an opportunity to fill an entire container with medical supplies to ship over and be used by a church in Sri Lanka to meet peoples' basic needs and it will only take $15,000 to fill this container up and ship it to Sri Lanka. What a great way for us to actually follow Jesus and meet a person's needs right where they live!

The other opportunity we have is to help orphanages in Mexico. A couple of ladies from RCC are heading to Mexico to scout out some orphanages for a possible missions trip later on in the year to take some of our youth on to help out. They want to go there with a bunch of gift cards for Wal-Mart so they can purchase basics for these children. They need diapers, bottles, pacifiers, formula, blankets, wipies, etc and we can help them out. How hard is it to put a $10 gift card in the cart the next time you are shopping so these kids can have some of the basics? They aren't asking for cell phones or cable TV or Tivo or an iPod, but rather they need a diaper to change when a baby gets dirty.

You want happiness? Start living outside yourself and your needs and look for opportunities to help others. Here are two. Only then can you really experience happiness.

More info care of SWMBO

My lovely wife sent me an email today to point something important out to me. She said:

read your blog. it was cool and if i were loggin on, i think i would be confused. you give no point of reference about the conference ‑ what kind of conference was it, where was it, why did you go?

So, I wanted to give you more information!!!

I went to the NSCA expo. It was a conference about technology that we use in church. My main focus was on live video and all that entails, but they had video stuff, lighting, sound, monitors, desks, wires and all sorts of other stuff! As a nerd, it was great! There were all sorts of gadgets to play with!

The conference was held in Las Vegas, NV and I was there for a couple of days. I took off mid-Wednesday for the 6-hour trip to Vegas, then we crashed that night at a dumpy motel, Thursday morning was up early scouting for a Starbucks. With that quest complete, we headed to the show checking everything out. There were a couple of breakout sessions that I enjoyed mostly the one about lighting. That night we headed to the forums at Caesar's Palace...not to purchase anything, but rather to experience it.

Yeah, you heard me right, I went there to experience it. Now before you think I've gone soft on you, let me tell you I went there with a couple of close friends of mine...one of them is almost completely my opposite in every way. I will refer to that one as Bizarro Tom (BT). Now we both love God tremendously, but other than that we are well and truly opposites!

So BT wanted me to experience the forums and Wynn Las Vegas to try and translate this experience into a web page.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Thursday evening. So after that, we enjoyed some excellent jazz by Ghallid Ghallab. This guy was off the hook! I really enjoyed him and am planning on dropping some $ at iTunes to put him on my playlist. After that, it was back to the Roach Motel to crash another night.

Friday was hitting the vendors we needed more information from at the expo, then a run to the Wynn Las Vegas to experience that, a quick buffet and hit the road for another 6-hour journey to return. Got home Saturday morning around 0100, took a bit to clean up, then crashed.

Saturday was getting the kids back, making dinner for the in-laws and preparing for Sunday and that was the trip!

I'm back!

Whew! What a whirwind couple of days! Drive down, get settled, spend the next day wandering around the conference, then go to some speakers, eat dinner, sleep, wake up, more conference, frantic phone calls to see if this is a good deal, another couple of speakers, pack it up and drive back.

It's good to be back!

And I had fun at the conference. There was a lot of information to get in a short period of time and there were places there that made me feel like a total idiot, but overall I walked out of there understand things a lot better and with a good understanding on where I need to go to get the work done.

Now to implement!

Live video is out number one goal at this point...we need to get the band on the screen and the speaker on the screen so we can help people connect and so we can start getting the teaching on a DVD for our other venues.

It seems our biggest learning curve on the live video portion is lighting...that is everything and we are not where we need to be on lighting. It's no fault of those people who are helping us on lights, they just aren't lighting people. We need to get somebody in to consult with us on our lighting needs so we can make the image on screen look right.

One of the speakers I listened to spoke on lighting for the video...he talked about 3D objects being lit from all sides...that one rang true, so if you attend RCC regularly be on the lookout for lighting changes coming up in the near future!

I'm a lioney beaver...

or a beaverly lion?

I took a personality quiz last night from Gary Smalley that put us into four categories. They had a lion, a beaver, an otter and a golden retriever (equivalent of his captain, navigator, social director and steward). After determining your personality type, they listed the good and bad traits of each and it turns out I'm nearly equally a lion and a beaver while the worst I am is an otter followed closely by a golden retriever.

There! Now you know!

Ugh

Yesterday I remembered that one green strand and this morning I'm wondering if that piece of grass is completely out of whack...we've been hit with another snow storm! And we're taking off around noon to a technology conference...SIGH

Well, the news says the snow should let up by the time we leave.

The onset of Spring

If there is one really spectacular thing I enjoy about living in Utah it is the change of seasons. We not only get triple digits in the summer, we easily go to zero in the winter. I enjoy the diversity of our seasons and weather...it makes it fun!

Now that we have been living on the farm for a couple of years, I find myself enjoying the natural rhythm of the seasons. Winter time is when God puts a blanket over the Earth tucking it in for a while of rest and we spend time indoors playing games with the kids, making hot cocoa and going sledding. It's a time of recharging the batteries, catching up on office work and preparing for the coming Spring.

The other day I had the opportunity to walk through our pastures with the kids. We just held hands and walked around looking at the fences that need repair and spending some time squatting down by the tufts of grass looking for a touch of green. Spring is nearly upon us and the grass knows it. This is one of the times I really enjoy...I appreciate being able to see God's amazing hand not only in the large miracles of creation around us, but there, in a tuft of orchard grass in my pasture, way down in the middle by the dirt and mud and animal scat, the grass knows Spring is coming. The grass is starting to turn green with chlorophyll and begin to awaken from Winter and start to make food for itself which in turn will feed our animals which will eventually feed us.

Some days it is too easy to just stomp on that piece of grass and keep moving, but we all need to take a moment and pause and enjoy the wonder of one green strand.

My time in the tube

What an interesting morning!

When I got up, there was a light snow on the ground that was fairly crispy on top because of the cold. The sun was coming up and the sky was a brillant blue...not a bad start to the day, but I am looking forward to Spring.

Then I remembered...today was my MRI.

Now one of my friends who is claustrophobic going through the tunnel up Provo canyon recently had an MRI and I worked hard to help alleve his claustrophobic fears...things like "I hope the power doesn't go out while you're in there" and "have you watched the scene in 'The Incredibles' where they try to stuff him into the tube?" and items on that nature. Well, being my supportive friend, he assured me my feet wouldn't fit in the tube and I'd probably get stuck on the way out!

Unfortunately for him, I enjoyed my time in the tube! My cell phone was locked safely away where it couldn't annoy me, my computer was locked in the same closet. I couldn't hear a thing with the ear plugs in and the machine whirring and whining around me. I laid there in my drawers and johnny with a blanket pulled up snug around me wondering why they bothered to tell me not to move when there obviously isn't any room in the tube to move and had 20 minutes of peace and relaxation.

It was like an enforced mini-vacation!

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing excellent

I am such a nerd. I've really been putting forth the effort recently for the connection group podcasts. I want very much for these to have some useful information for our hosts and facilitators so I've been working at setting up my home office in such a way I can record them at home rather than on a Sunday morning before church, and since I have that working, I've been taking notes.

These podcasts are turning more into a radio program. Today's podcast has five seperate segments laid out that should end us with around an 8-minute podcast (you'll have to check after I get it uploaded in a couple of hours).

The thing is, if it is worth doing these podcasts to help our and get things going, then doggonnit they are worth doing right and having the best information available!

Hope you enjoy them.

Under the weather

I've been a touch under the weather recently which has led me to a bit less blogging. I'm hoping this passes by and I'll be back at it and raring to go for this weekend!

The View from Black

As I mentioned before, as a leadership team at RCC we've been reading Susan Scott's book, Fierce Conversations and one of the items she talks about in there is the concept that no one person owns the truth. If we're talking about work, we all see things differently at work. The CEO does not see things the same way a mail room clerk does and they can both see truth. Susan's uses the analogy of a beach ball...that while it has different colors all around it, the CEO is standing on his own color that that changes his perception of what is going on at the company while the mail room clerk is standing on his stripe of the beach ball and things look different to him.

My wife has determined my stripe of the beach ball is black. Now before you get all worked up, it's not some evil thing, it's just my preferred color is the glom of all colors...black.

So I was reading all the blogs I follow on Bloglines this morning and on one of the nerd blogs I follow, Rand brought up an idea that made a lot of sense to me. I have NADD (warning: link contains language). He says:

Stop reading right now and take a look at your desktop. How many things are you doing right now in addition to reading this column? Me, I've got a terminal session open to a chat room, I'm listening to music, I've got Safari open with three tabs open where I'm watching Blogshares, tinkering with a web site, and looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I've got iChat open, ESPN.COM is downloading sports new trailers in the background, and I've got two notepads open where I'm capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to do lists. Oh yeah, I'm writing this column, as well.

Folks, this isn't multi-tasking. This is advanced case of Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder. I am unable to function at my desktop unless I've got, at least, five things going on at the same time. If your count came close, you're probably afflicted, as well. Most excellent.

Just to write this blog, I have a window to Blogger, a window to my blog up so I could make sure I am not describing the beach ball concept again, a window to Amazon so I can hot link to Fierce Conversations, a window to Rand's blog and a window to Wikipedia. That is just so I can blog this! I also have windows open to Bloglines to read the blogs as they are updated, I have four forums up with windows, a window to Linux Journal and another article that I'll be forwarding to some people. THAT ISN'T EVEN WORK! I have another window with my editor for work that has the current bit of software I'm writing in it along with (yes, I just counted) 19 other files that have software I'm working on. I have my program that does change management for my code up, I have a box to build the project in, I have work email, work IM and three other IM programs. My laptop is also running a browser and three other email addresses that it checks.

WHEW!

I have NADD and I have it bad! This is how I function...this is the world I live in. Just writing this blog is occurring between other functions. I'm still keeping up with email, I'm building my project which takes about 200 seconds per build, I'm writing software and speaking with co-workers as they come and go. I'm enjoying a lovely cappuccino from Cecelia, hash browns and an egg over easy from Javier at the same time!

The world I grew up in drove me to NADD. When I was in school, I think I may have the only guy in the 7th grade who VOLUNTARILY took typing. I knew to be good on the computer, I needed to learn how to type, so I took the class and left around 75 wpm later. NERD.

In Middle School, I was always the guy running the A/V equipment. During school plays, I worked the lighting and curtains. I would rather spend time working in the media lab on Atari 400 and 800 computers than attend the school assemblies. NERD.

The presence of NADD in your friends is equally detectable. Here's a simple test. Ask to sit down at THEIR computer and start mucking with stuff on their desktop. Move an icon here... adjust a window size there. If your friend calmly watches as you tinker away, they're probably NADD-free, for now. However, if your friend is anxiously rubbing their forehead and/or climbing out of their skin when you move that icon 12 PIXELS TO THE RIGHT, there's NADD in the house. BACK AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER.

Oh, yeah, don't TOUCH my computer! Not only that, but don't put your fingerprints on my monitor! I HATE that and immediately have to clean it off.

So there's the view from black. You are right, my world is strange, but this is how I can function and feel comfortable producing on a Sunday. I don't obsess over the smallest detail, I can look at the lighting, the presentation, the presenting computer, the preview monitors, live video, switches, cued DVD and audio all at once as well as listen to what is being said....AND I like it!

A Day Off

Ahhhhh.....

It seems strange taking a day off from church. But for me, church is an experience where I go to serve others. It is about taking time from my day to try and make the best presentation of the gospel that I can do and it generally is a fairly stressful day for me. I'm up by 0520 to get to the mall by 0630 and try to have most things running by 0800 so the band can begin practicing. By 0900, we have the volunteer meeting, at 0930 we open the doors for people to come in, at 0945 the band starts playing and at 1000 I'm up welcoming people to church. At 1100 we are done, but that leaves only 1130 to tear everything down and get it packed away. I'm usually talking to people for a while and don't leave the mall until 1200. That's a 5.5 hour day on the weekend.

This Sunday, I took a day off.

Not just me, but the entire family. And we played out on our farm. I was able to take time this weekend to walk around the pasture with the kids fixing fence and pointing out how the pasture is starting to get some green to it. I enjoy the manual labor involved in farming. It's good to work with our hands and actually accomplish some task. It was a fun weekend!

But I'm back now! We had the production meeting this morning to discuss what went right and what went wrong on Sunday as well as put together the run for the upcoming Sunday. While I enjoyed the time off, I still missed church. I'll be back next Sunday!

A Home Run

Dean's brother Keith knocks one out of the park with this post.

What a great perspective on the issue and a wonderful understanding of the idea that God is Open Source.

I particularly like the part where Keith chose to not offend a person and a year later that person was still chewing over what he was told. Powerful stuff, Keith.

What stops us?

What stops us from helping people out? Is it our not wanting to help? Is it our inability to do the job?

I don't think so. I think sometimes one of the things that stops us from helping people where they are is our fear that we don't have the answers.

That's a good thing, too. Because we don't.

I was talking the other day with a gentleman who was telling me how worried he was about people he hangs out with asking bible questions to him.

To some extent, I think this is healthy. It can help motivate us to study more and learn more and try to have more insight so we can help others out or provide some insight or input to a thought.

But the flip side is the concern that we have to have all the answers when people ask.

That just isn't true. I don't know is a valid answer and we should be able to say it. It is truthful, shows humility and is very honest with people. Of course, I believe it should be immediately folowed by and I'll find out by our next meeting so people aren't ran headfirst into a brick wall.

And here's the big deal. While I don't know and I'll find out by our next meeting is a valid answer, we better follow up! Not coming back with a better thought on the subject is just dropping the ball and not being honest.

Einey, meeney, meinie, moe

At RCC we have been going through the Wisdom for Dummies series and we've been asked to continue to read through the book of Proverbs during this series. Since there are 30 chapters in Proverbs, it is very easy to read a chapter a day depending on the day of the month.

Since March starts today, I'm ready for a new version. I've read it in the NIV, the NAS, The Message and the CEV versions, so I'm wondering what is next. I'm leaning towards the NCV for March, but I also want to read it in the KJV soon.