Slacking

Last week I said I'd link to all the new podcasts available and I haven't done it yet...I'm a slacker! So here we are and I'm ready to link to them. On all of these pages, you can just click on the header like Episode 1 or the date and it will begin playing. If you'd rather subscribe in iTunes, just search for it under podcasts and we're there!

Pastor Dean's Weekly Audio Blog
http://www.rockcanyon.org/blogs/dean

Rock Canyon Church Weekly Message
http://www.rockcanyon.org/blogs/message

Spike Speaks - Weekly connection group host and facilitator training
http://www.rockcanyon.org/blogs/cg

Real Time - A show about something real relevant, real accurate, real responsive
With your hosts Tom Buckley and Marlys Jackson
http://www.rockcanyon.org/blogs/podcast

Now that's pretty cool...

Cold Stone Creamery is offering free ice cream tonight. Details here. They are doing this to benefit the Make-A-Wish foundation and this is Cold Stone's fifth year hosting the event. So if you live near a Cold Stone, head on over tonight from 5-8 and they'll dish you up a 3 oz. serving of a special mix designed by a 10-year-old as his wish!

Time out for fun!

Sometimes we need to take a timeout. Your brain is fried working on some problem and we need a distraction so our head can continue to work it out in the background while we have some diversion in the foreground. Well, all of that said to say, here's my distraction today! http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40255643/

Mexico Humanitarian Trip

Well, it is over and with all the help they raised over $2000 to help out the orphans. How fantastic was that? A whole ton of Young Living farm employees donated their time, then purchased raffle tickets beyond their time to help out. The orphans are going to be well taken care of in January when the crew heads down to help out. The raffles are over, but if you want to donate to the trip, you can Paypal giving@rockcanyon.org. Just indicate it is for the Mexico trip and all funds go straight to that.

It all goes around

It seems nearly yesterday that we were going around to other churches meeting in a movie theater to see how they did it. We were welcomed in and they allowed us to see the inside of how they do everything as well as answered followup questions via email afterwards. Well, now two years later we have folk coming to check out how we are doing things and we have the opportunity to help them out. Since here at RCC we believe God is open source, we carry that thought throughout this ministry. We want to be able to help other churches with getting things setup and not having to make the same mistakes we have made. I was thrilled to be able to chat with a couple of folk from the new church plant about what we do and what we did wrong as well as offer them some time to show up and see how we pull this all off on a Sunday. I may have offended when I used the term Church Nerd but I never meant to offend! I consider myself one of the church nerds here at RCC!!! It just means I'm comfortable with things that plug into the wall!

Just a few hours left!

to purchase tickets for the raffle. Details are in this post here. Also, hope you've decided to come to the farm for the fundraiser to help the orphanage in Mexico...details here. The chef has promised to make his awesome potatoes...let me give you a hint about these. There are equal amounts of potatoes on one side and butter/cream on the other...mmmmm

Real Time Episode 2 is out

You can find it here and the wiring is complete. We are listed in iTunes as well if you want to subscribe with your iPod.

What's on the iPod?

I read a blog entry this morning where some guy was talking about podcasts and how when his iPod is in his ears he doesn't want anything but music coming through. What?! I would have to guess about 85% of the time my iPod is running there's a podcast coming through! This was my main reason for it, but even before the iPod, I listened to talk radio most of the time. With all that said, Brooks & Dunn's latest album, Hillbilly Deluxe is playing right now!

So much going on!

I am swamped busy. I mean there isn't time to turn around any more! A couple nights ago, I got the photos off the camera for the upcoming raffle for the orphans. Now that doesn't seem like much, and maybe I'm just slow, but it took a while to get them off, go through them all and choose the right ones along with researching Paypal to find out how to put an automatic link in...as you can see, that didn't work! Then last night we recorded episode 2 of Real Time. I don't know why, but that is a tiring process...making the podcast. It's sort of draining. Anyway, if episode 1 is any indication, this episode will take a couple of hours to process in post production. Then tonight, the Connection Group Host and Facilitator on-the-job training podcast is revived! And while I am not doing the training, but rather our pastor of CGs is, I'm helping on the technical side with running RCC's podcasting studio. I'm really excited to see this training starting up again to help out the hosts and facilitators of the CGs. In addition, I still need to get a couple of S-Video to RCA converters for church on Sunday and test the video mixer output and remember my soldering iron to fix the countdown timer!

It is alive!

Well, The Podcast is done. The first episode is available and we will be podcasting weekly. The link is right here to check it out, then just click on the title. I'll be wiring it to Feedburner and iTunes shortly so it is easy to subscribe and tsee the updates. I'd love to hear feedback or requests on topics you would like to see covered.

Raffle for the orphans

In conjunction with the fundraiser at Young Living Family Farms this upcoming Saturday to raise money for the humanitarian project in Mexco, there is a raffle. This raffle has two seperate ticket pools...the $1 tickets can win silver bracelets from Mexico or a small Mexican wool blanket or a 3 month membership to Dumbells gym or an Aztec wall calendar.

You can purchase a $1 ticket by sending Paypal to giving@rockcanyon.org and just indicating how many tickets you want.

The $5 raffle tickets are for the bumper hitch cargo rack, a $25 gift certificate to McGrath's a $30 to Ruby River, a $25 to Urban Retreat Salon a $25 to Costco or a large Mexican wool blanket

and those $5 raffle tickets can also be purchased by sending Paypal to giving@rockcanyon.org

If you do Paypal in for the tickets, please indicate how many of each ticket you are purchasing! I'd hate to have you send in $5 for five $1 tickets and instead get one $5 raffle ticket! Also, get it sent in before noon on Saturday, September 23. After that I'm headed to the farm and you will no longer be entered into the drawing. You don't have to be present to win, so if you do win you will be contacted...make sure your information comes through on the Paypal. Thanks for helping out the orphans!

Stuck in a rut

This morning I had a moment that really told me that I'm stuck in a rut. I put my pants on. Well, that's normal and not rut-like behavior! The difference was I put my pants on prior to putting my socks on. That's not my normal behavior and I found out it feels wrong to put them on wrong. I found myself actually pausing in mid-operation with my brain screaming that something was wrong! This got me thinking about other things as well. Do we get in a rut with our prayer life? Is it the same prayers for the same people at the same time in the same order every day? Do we need to come up with some new thing to knock us out of the rut sometimes? Is that good or is the rut good for us? I like the rut most of the time...it's comfortable, it's known. But sometimes I think it's good to pull ourselves out of the rut and do things differently for a while...not to make a new rut, but just to give the rut a break and go down a different path for a bit.

Mexico Humanitarian Trip

I've blogged about Maria and Kim before about their trip to Mexico to help out the orphans and orphanage down there. Well, this Saturday is the big fundraiser for their next trip in January 2007. They are headed down with some guys from church who are going to finish up a couple of rooms in the orphanage and they are going to take down a bunch of stuff the kids need. They need basics like diapers, wipies, toys and stuff, so this Saturday is the big fundraiser. If you want to be a part of this, you can call the church office at 801-374-5725 and get the information. I know it is being held at Young Living Family Farm in Mona. There's fun stuff for the kids to do and there is food! Hope to see you there!

After the storm

Yesterday we had a fairly decent storm come through Utah. The rain and wind cleaned up the air, and when I stepped outside this morning to head into town this was the sunrise that greeted me. I really enjoy living here in Utah.

The Podcast

That's right, it should be said with that kind of weight as well

The Podcast

I have been thinking about and talking about and brainstorming about this thing for around two months now. It started out as a basic maybe it would be useful if we thought and eventually turned into an actual podcast with segments, thoughts on bumper music, hosts and ideas. Fairly amazing if you ask me. So I'm editing it slightly...none of the content will go, but I need to add some interesting music and clean up the audio the best I can, then we'll post it. The name is still in negotiations, so I'm not sure what it's going to be yet, but we're close...close to a name and to posting it...stay tuned!

This morning...

started out pretty much like any other. Maybe it was a bit earlier than normal, but it was basically like every other morning. I headed to my home office to check email and edit some photos so I can put them up here and talk about Charlotte the spider that lives in my shop.

Unfortunately for me, my internet connection was down. How frustrating is that? I wanted to call in on it, but I'm thinking qwestdex.com to find the number not actually touching paper! So I fretted about not checking email and not using biblegateway.com to check my proverb for the day. It certainly got me out of the house and into work earlier!

I messed up...again!

On Sunday, 10 September we debuted a number of new things at church. We had two services. We moved the connection center. And we had our very first video message.

We've been talking about moving to two services for a month. Every morning, during our Connection Notes time I have mentioned that we are moving to two services. Some people didn't understand why still, but they came up and asked questions and we were able to help them with the overall vision.

We've been talking about video messages and how they fit into the overall vision as well, but not from up front on Sundays. Our talking about video messages has always been in connection with the vision we have of RCC having multiple locations. While those multiple locations would be physically in different places, their uniting item would be the message received would be the same at every venue. The teaching pastor for the day would be either live or video at each and every venue. This allows us to unite each location with the same teaching so all of our Connection Groups are doing the same homework and every person gets the same, consistant message. At every service in every venue we would always have both live worship and a live point pastor.

This is my role at Provo. I am the point pastor. I think because we only have the one venue right now people don't really understand all of that. That even though Dean is the teaching pastor most days, I am the point pastor. That's all part of the learning experience, but each venue would always have a point pastor live who would uniquely care for the RCC'ers spiritual needs who attend that venue.

So here's where I messed up...I didn't tell anybody the video service was coming. That's right, even though everybody knew on 10 September we were having two services, nobody was told that the second service would not be live, but rather Memorex. It wasn't malicious, it was because it just didn't cross my mind. I know, that sounds fairly lame, but remember I'm talking about video services and how we are going to be able to pull this off in a harware and software and personnel way all the time. This is an ongoing discussion I have constantly. Even on Sunday we weren't sure we were going to be able to record the first service until it actually started...things were very hectic! Then the decision to show the video for second service was not made until 0955...10 minutes after the pre-worship time of second service had started. Dean and I had a hurried meeting in the hallway discussing whether or not we were going to go with the video and decided it was important enough to get it started.

So that was my mistake. I did not give people notice that this service was going to be different. And I feel bad about that. I really should have told the church that was changing before we made the move. Of all the comment card received, only two had something negative to say about the video service and of those two only one was really negative. I know if we had answered some of these questions beforehand it would have been a better experience for all so I'll have to discuss it a bit more on Sunday.

The Harvest

Well, Fall is rapidly approaching here on the farm and that means we get to harvest. Our garden this year never got put in with other things going on, so there's nothing to get from that but it doesn't mean there isn't work. We've been putting stuff to compost in the garden all summer long so we need to till it all under and put the garden to bed for the Winter. Our chickens are doing well, but we'll have to start thinking of replacing some of the older laying hens next year since they will begin to peter out on their laying by then. Our sheep have been growing nicely, and we've observed our males doing their jobs as well! The lambs will be ready for slaughter in another 4-6 weeks and they are all already sold. The plums are heavy on the trees right now...both our red/yellow ones and the purple ones. The red/yellow plums are just a few days from maximum sweetness (just before they start to drop from the trees) so we'll be picking them this week and making some jam (maybe some jelly as well) from them. The purples usually go into October before they are ready. Because the bee hives are situated right out by the plums they get pollenated very well in the Spring...in fact standing out by the trees then is a strange experience. The trees look like they are alive because of the amount of bees in them...each flower may have more than one bee in there trying to swill nectar. The honey harvest started on Saturday and was completed last night. The apiast we have who takes care of our bees came by on Saturday to remove the boxes of honey that are for us (the bees get to keep some) and took them home to spin out. Out of our two hives this year, we realized about 17 gallons of honey! What a great return on our investment in the beehives! We're going to let the honey settle inside the house for a few days so all the little bubbles can get out (they cause the honey to crystalize earlier) and then we will be canning honey for a while. Some will be for sale, but most will be kept here for us. We find ourselves using honey instead of sugar in recipes and to sweeten things and just as a treat for the kids.

It always seems like there's more work than time, but this year hasn't been as hectic. Maybe we're finally getting on top of the farm this year. There's work to do to put this place to bed for the Winter, but nothing overwhelming. I know where I'm going for hay to keep the critters over the Winter and I need to till the garden under, but other than those couple of items, there is really no pressing work to do. Things will certainly get busy in the Springtime though! We'll be lambing around March. We will need to give haircuts to all the sheep in Spring as well, then get the pasture subdivision fences back up and operating, get the garden ready and planted...ugh, I'm going to not worry about that stuff until March!

Pay it forward

Okay, intrepid reader, it is time to pay it forward. I need some input, insight, thoughts, help, direction or whatever you can give me. This Sunday will be our first video service. The 0830 service will be live and the 1000 service will have a video'd message. We will also (hopefully) be feeding the audio and video to the connection center out in the theater's main lobby. The extra bonus prize I have is a DVD at the end.

This is where all of you come in. I want to take this DVD copy of the service and convert it to H.234 format so I can vodcast the service as well as our normal podcast of the service. I an unencumbered by a religious affiliation with a particular brand of computing. While SLED10 is my normal desktop, I also have Windows XP and a Mac running OSX 10.3 in my home office. What do I do? Is there a simple converter program that'll just magically do it, run the audio through a compressor, normalize it and spit out the other side a file I can post?

Help me!

Surreal

Blogging is a somewhat surreal experience for me. I just toss out my thoughts here and there and it helps me think them through by putting them down. Some people prefer talking things through, but for this nerd, typing them out helps me put them into context and think them through. The surreal part is people actually read my thoughts. Heck, with some of my friends and family, this blog is my main method of communication! It's gotten to the point when people are talking to me about what's going on in my life I need to start answering by asking them

have you read my blog?

if the answer is in the affirmative I know what they are already aware of and what I can skip over. If not, then there's a lot I need to go over! Just yesterday a friend I haven't spoken to in a while asked me about what's going on and he didn't even know about my back surgery! So I just sent him the URL to my blog so he can catch up. Boy, am I a nerd. Anyway, here's a perfect comic for what's going through my mind a lot of the time!

Exercise

Most of you know I've seen a whole ton of doctors recently about my back. If you don't know why, there's a post back in April or May that describes the new hardware. Anyway, I go to my various docs for followup visits or to the physical therapist and they all ask me about what light exercise I do. My answer is the same that I live on a small farm and that gives me exercise. Well, they all nod knowingly and make approving grunting noises as if that's all the answer they need.

Being a nerd, though, that has become unsatisfying to me. I needed to know really how much exercise being on the farm really does for me, so I paid attention to the work I did this last long weekend of Saturday, Sunday and Monday. In those three long days of work, I did the following

• Walked to the golf cart (25')
• Rode the golf cart to the fence
• Walked the fence fixing it (20')
• Rode the golf cart back home
• Walked to the sheep tangled in wire (300')
• Free said sheep
• Walk back (300')
• Walked 5 gallons of water to the garden (15')
• Repeat
• Repeat
• Again

That's it. In three days, that is all the exercise I received working on the farm. I'm thinking my docs believe there is more effort put out on a daily basis, but they are wrong. Oh, maybe I need to fill the trough with water, but that's just turning the hose on. Maybe this weekend I'll put up more netting for the chickens, but that will be maybe another 150' of walking...certainly not even a 100 yard walk! I think I need to start walking the pasture or something to make sure everything is okay.

Six Days?!?!

Well, actually five days now!

I have five days to get my outline done for the next time I'm speaking at church. Additionally, I have a total of 12 days to complete the talk!

Now I know for Pastor Dean and my friend OT this is nothing. They can put a talk together without too much effort, walk up with a page of very loose notes and give their talk, but not for me. I'm too much of a nerd. I've estimated that my average talk takes me around 20 hours to put together. That may be an average, but my last talk took more like 30 hours to put together. I study, go down various rabbit trails, study some more, brainstorm some random thoughts, study some about them, kick out a draft, talk it through, make adjustments then I'm finally ready to present. Well, I better finish this blog post now...I have studying to do!

The quest

With the three day weekend, you would think I could find time to get the podcasts posted, wouldn't you? Well?

I thought so as well, but it turns out there is a problem. When the master of the service was put onto the CD recorder's hard drive...it wasn't. That didn't make much sense...it never made it to the hard drive. The copies passed out were last week's message. A pretty good message, if I may say so myself, but not the proper one. I went through our storage room looking in the CD boxes, the hospitality box and on the CD recorder and couldn't find it. Then I tore into the sound board and still could not find it. I have a call in to our recorder to see if she knows where the master is. The intro has been recorded, so all we need is the master and it'll be up. Don't give up hope!

Goodbye, Steve

Back when we had cable TV, I used to love watching Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. He's a complete nut, in my mind, but he loved his work. This man was passionate about the animals he worked with daily, and more than just his enthusiasm, he lived it. He went out into the wild to help animals that were encroaching on humanity, and was active in Australia to keep the animals he loved from being hunted down.

He messed about with not only crocs, but aligators, the deadliest snakes, sharks and most recently stingrays. Unfortunately, the stingray was his last animal. ABCNews.com reports on 4 September, he was stung in the chest and the barb hit his heart and Steve passed on. He leaves behind his wife and two children. My condolences go to the family, and I'll miss your enthusiasm for God's creation, Steve.

My legacy...Stubbornness

I'm a prideful, stubborn man. That's me. I've struggled mightily these last 18 months with my back hurt and not wanting to ask for help. I want to, and sometimes I actually can do it, but most of the time I am just too stubborn and I can't do it.

And I have passed on my stubbornness. That is my legacy for my children. In certain instances, being stubborn is good. That is what gets work done especially when everybody around you is saying it can't be done. Stubbornness in that situation is good and necessary to get things changed. Sometimes, like when my back is acting up, it is bad.

Today, I took my kids to a play center and as I watched them, I realized I have passed on my stubbornness to my children. One of my kids was in one of the kiddie playgrounds. It is a huge affair surrounded with netting and having many rooms that had other playthings in them. One was a trampoline, one had soft things from the ceiling, one had things to bounce on like a horse...and one had a slide. Not just a plastic slide, but something more flexible like silicone. My kid went down the slide then decided to go back up. Now this slide is slippery, very slippery. He was in his socks and couldn't get a grip on it to climb. Other kids without socks could climb it, but those in socks just went around the proper way to get back on the slide. Here's where my stubbornness is. My kid refused to go around. I suggested to him that he go around, and he looked at me with this look in his eye...he looked like me and said

no

then he proceeded to claw his way up that slide. Other kids went up and down and up and down and up and down many times while he clawed his way to the top. This kid could not walk up it, so he grabbed the netting on the side and dragged his entire body up this slide. Every time he tried to walk, he'd slip, but never let go of the netting until he finally made it to the top. He turned around, grinned at me and slid down again!

Now that was a good thing in my mind...he never gave up. We use words like grit or determination to describe that when it's good, but the reality is my kid is stubborn. Stubborn just like his Dad. That's my legacy. I hope he uses it for good!

Now I like the stuff...

but this is just too much!
I work at Novell, so it is natural that I would be a fan of our latest release of Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED10). Or if I wasn't a fan, I would at least be quiet about it. But Ted is a nut! He received the moniker reverend because of his impassioned speeches about his product and pounding the lecturn as they were delivered! He took his fairly normal Dell laptop (in silver) and had this done to it!
I like the stuff, though. I see this as a real breakthrough with finally a new desktop available for anybody. Linux has usually been the world of uber-nerds and those with too much time on their hands. I know, I've been there! I have installed all sorts of different versions of Linux through the years, but with SLED10 Novell has taken a giant leap forward in my mind. It not only looks really good, fit seamlessly and all, but it also installs easily. That might not seem like much, but the first time my parents have to take instruction like

computer>su
Enter root password:
computer#vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
:wq

their heads might explode! But now SLED10 installs with not knowing anything about it, but as easily as other operating systems, I'm excited. This could be the move to get application developers to move their proprietary software to a Linux base.

Free download of SLED10 here...don't call me for tech support! :-D

Blogger is frustrating

Blogger has been frustrating me recently. When I posted the 0900 blog it took me two full days to finally get it to post, and after I did it, I found that the week before had posted itself 6 times! Now don't start thinking I just don't understand how to use the interface or something, I am a competent computer user...for some reason I just have struggles with Blogger. Then I had the same problem posting the message from last week...it posted itself 4 times which I had to delete 3 of them. I think it all is finally working again, but this isn't the first time Blogger has done this to me. I've seen so many people using typepad that I'm considering the move...I'm just overall fairly lazy.