Friends

So What’s Been Going On…

I think I’m going to work my way back on this one. I’ll start with today and work my way backwards. (ok, as I start I realized it’s much easier to start at the beginning of a day and work through it, so this is going to be kind of weird to follow, oh well) Before I begin I have to say, the saying that “dogs are a man’s best friend” is so true. My dog Sweetie is so awesome. Show me a cat that picks up on the meaning of “It’s time for bed”. Dog’s have all the smarts, they’re awesome.

Today I was able to get up at like 5:30, and this gave me a good amount of time. I did some devotions but I really need to get up at like 5 to make the most of it. Got into work and started the day. Most everything was typical, some computer problems cropped up that I tried to resolve quickly so I could get back to the data entry work. I had a short time of talking with Todd. We’re suppose to have an actual meeting on Mondays but unless there is something in perticular we need to meet about it’s not really needed. I guess it’s a matter of us making it a priority. I did share with him about my feelings about the great ministry need with youth. I finally got my ShutterFly and Kodak iPhoto pictures. They actually came on Friday but after I left for the day. Basically the Kodak photos won, they were much more vivid. I think I might try the same 4 photos through SnapFish and Wal-Mart to get a good comparison of the services. I’m sure someone has already done this, but sometimes it’s good to see first hand. I really don’t know how much I’m going to be actually deveolping photos. I may do a photo Christmas card or something. My photos are up on my blog for all to see, so I see no sense in developing them. I usually have my iBook with me wherever I go so I can show people on there too. John O. stopped by my office and we got his PocketPC working on the secure wireless system. I was happy to see that our setup is versatile enough. After work I finally got my pickup load of leaves taken to the dump. I’m getting used to driving my truck again, which is good. Boy is it a difference to go from power-steering to no power-steering. After that I did some supper. Then came the catchup on entering my receipts and doing my bills. I really need to get back to entering my receipts into Quicken each day rather than waiting. I pretty much know what I have for money but I don’t want to miss something. After that I got an IM from someone unexpected. Actually it was someone that found my blog through Technorati. Right at that same time my friend John called. I’d been waiting for his call for a week or so. He had an idea for a garage sale website service. We walked about ecommerce and online businesses a bit and caught up a little. He told me that he and Melissa are expecting a baby! Wow, i wasn’t even sure if they were going to have kids. It’s awesome. i’m going to try to get together with him over Thanksgiving. After that I got back to the IM that I got. She did a search for eHarmony cause she’s a member also. She had let a comment and then IM’d me seeing that I was online via my blog status indicators. She was really just wondering where I got the IM status indicators but our conversation went on for awhile. I checked out her blog too. It’s kind of funny, looking through her blog, she’s seems like someone that has a lot of similar interests as me. She’s a Christian too. We determined that one reason we haven’t been matched up on eHarmony is cause I put no drinkers, and she does drink. That’s fine, I’m just looking for someone who also doesn’t care to drink. It was a good talk, I look forward to any future converstations. It got me think how Technorati is really bringing us back to how the Web was originally intended to be. It was all about information linking to other information, thus Web. Technorati does this and allows people to connect thie way also. It’s pretty sweet. Well then it was to the blog. Oh yeah, I also got the movie Hackers encoded to MP4/AAC to play on my Palm. It was actually the second time, the first time I tried H.264 encoding and it was totally choppy on the Palm.
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Expectations, Communication…When Life Gets Too Busy

Well I got a rather unfortunate email today. I’ve basically been let go for the website project I was working on. The truth of the matter is there were things that myself and the company that hired me didn’t do very well. I kind of feel a little frustrated as I thought I made myself very clear how busy my schedule was before they agreed to hire me. Apparently I didn’t do a good enough job. It would also seem as though they really didn’t read the contract before they agreed to it. It clearly states what I was expecting. I guess I’m fine with not having to worry about it any more however, I just feel as though they could have done a better job in their communication too. I asked for things and hardly got a response. It was obvious that I should have explained the development process so they understood clearly how important it was for me to get the things I asked for. They seemed to think a website can be designed out of nothing. I will accept equal part in the blame for what happened. Things came up, and I made some choices that prevented my from completing things in the time frame they wanted. It still bothers me that they feel I basically lied to them. I guess perhaps I’m dealing with people that don’t feel there is anything more important in life then working. My hope is that there won’t be any consequences that end up in some kind of court battle or something. I suppose the word will get around that I shouldn’t be hired for this kind of work. Although at this point in time I’m not looking to take anything like this on for a long time. Side jobs are nice for the extra money but not at the expense of taking over your life and having no time for people.

Well, not much else to talk about here. One pretty great thing that happened today was I got our first blogger going on the new, still in beta testing, CLB Blogs. I got Jeff Olsen who is pastor that is working to start a church down in Florida, Grace Community.
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Playing A Little Catch-Up…Busy Days

So I didn’t get a post in on Monday, and I really need to be getting to bed now. LOL, just as I explained to Crowser, I get to a point at night and then I’m wide awake. If I would have went to bed at like 9 or 10 when I was tired I’d be fine but nope. Anyways…

So Monday was a pretty good day. My friend Chad was in town for a meeting so we went out for lunch. It was great to catch up. He is a great friend, he was asking me how things were really going for me. His wife reads my blog and tries to keep him up to date on what’s going on with me. We talked a lot about my depressing & alone feelings. And also how I don’t think very highly of myself. He’s a social worker, and works with mental health, so he’s got an excellent background to know what I might be needing. He though it might be good to go to a therapist a few times. The other thing he got me thinking about was my activity level, like excersize, and how that may be having an effect on me. I got to thinking back when I was still in college and living at home and I really got into excersizing and things were pretty good then as far as sleep and my general outlook on things. This is something I definitely need to think about. We also talked about some relationship stuff too. Of course, my conversations always seem to end up going that route. He really got me thinking that just going on A “date” is not something that needs to be a super serious thing. It can simply be getting together to get to know someone. I fine with this so long as that is the mutual understanding. No pressure or flawed expectations. I suppose I could give this a whirl?
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Youth Group Kickoff…

Well, today work was pretty normal. Nothing too special. We had the youth group kickoff and things seemed to go pretty well. I got over to the church about 5:15 or so to get the sound system & projection equipment all setup. I worked on fine tuning OpenSong a little during break at work and then finished up with adding some announcements Andrew had. Maralee was willing to run presentation. My only problem with OpenSong thus far is that it has slow transitions. I still think it’s a pretty good tool for free on the Mac. We had a good intro meeting as small group leaders. We’ve got a great group of leaders this year, we always do, it’ll be fun working with them. The “Bigger & Better” scavenger hunt was fun. The guys that joined me seemed to have a good time. We didn’t win but we got the youth group another TV. The team that won had gotten a truck topper. It was the closest to a whole vehicle anyone really got. The praise & worship time went ok, the area got a little crammed with all the scavenger stuff around, and I felt like I rushed things too much. I really don’t know that I do a very good job of leading. I’ll keep it up until God brings someone else along. Afterwards I had a good time connecting with youth about joining the praise team. Annalisa was telling me a little about her summer at camp, sound like she had a great experience. I talked guitar with Tommy, and that was loads of fun too. Michael was very interested, I hope I get a chance to get to know him. More >