Women of Faith

My wife, along with a few other EBC Ladies left today for a 2 day event in Charlotte, NC called Women of Faith. Pray that they have safe travel in the wet weather. I know they'll have fun and learn lots.

Since us Men are home with the kids by ourselves, we wanted you to know that we do take donations of food, candy, and babysitting services.

Dean

ps. wonder why they're bending down in the front? :-)

We need the rain....

The arrow points to my house. Thank you Lord for the rain! We desperately needed it.

Although my yard would make a great truck/mud race, I appreciate the rain and will not be upset! I don't get that "city water"...I need my well to stay full. :-)

Looking for a home?

I have a great friend on the south side of Florence trying to sell his home. Check it out at http://www.2121twinbridge.com/

Tell him I sent you so he'll buy me lunch. :-)

Email to Snail Mail?

Anyone know of a service that offers to receive E-mail then snail mail it to someone? I have a couple of people that I work with that don't have a computer (GASP!) and I really can't remember each time I send a group email to print and hand deliver their copy.

Help!!!


UPDATE: People I work with AT CHURCH... not at ACS! :-)

Being a Christian is like a pumpkin?

I get lots of emails about Christianity and how I should forward that email to all my friends. Rarely do I. However, since I'm in the middle of some serious decisions in my life, I found this one speaking to me. I'll spare you all the forwards and all the ">>>>>" on each line. Here's what it boiled down to:

Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you out of the field, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, reaches deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff-- including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see.

Marriage Enrichment Weekend

We had 45 couples at Ebenezer this weekend learning how to strengthen our marriages and families. Here's what I got out of it.

Terri and I got 2 meals and free childcare for $25 (we got in early! Everyone else paid $30).

I enjoyed reminiscing with my wife about our first date, first kiss, where I proposed.

We talked about finances. We're not in terrible shape. This is a good thing. This guy would be proud of us!

We talked about raising our children with biblical principals.

I gave my wife a new engagement ring. We recommitted our marriage. I was hoping she'd say yes!

In the words of my friend and pastor, It was AWESOME!

Update on Sunday School Controversy

Welcome to all the new readers of my blog. Apparently, my post on Monday got some new readers. There may be one more post coming on this topic, after today, but I certainly won't labor the points unless more issues flare up.

I now know the fastest way to get to the truth in a situation is to blog about it. Apparently, as expected, someone who DOES read my blog started calling around to those who DON'T normally read this blog for the entire purpose of getting them to read what I posted about on Monday.

Here's what I found out.

First, Once I had an idea of who I needed to seek out and discuss this matter with, I approached them. My wife and I have talked with many people this week regarding these issues.

While the birthday party was an issue for some, there were bigger issues. The birthday party stuff was simply the catalyst. We will not mention the party again. There were reasons, feelings, attempted healing. We're moving on. Proverbs 17:9 Anyone needing to discuss this further, please call me.

I was deeply disturbed by the lack of people willing to talk directly to me. If you believed that I had made a mistake, then come to me. Matthew 18:15 I'm very level headed and will not get angry. I want to grow and therefore the only way I can improve is when someone points out areas that I cannot see for myself. It takes family and friends to improve.

I am still bothered by the names that keep coming up who had nothing to do with this. Seems to me from the outside, they just wanted to stir the pot. Wanna know what God thinks about that? Read Psalms 101:5.

I was unaware of the issues undermining our class. Instead of silence, I would have loved to have discussed it with someone. Now that I know how people feel, I will work with those people and find a resolution thatjavascript:void(0)
Publish Post works for us all.

Bottom Line: I have been sharpened.

Server Virtualization

Andy from ACS today sent me an email with some virtualization thoughts in it. I thought he did a good job of listing a one sentence thought on each of the players that we considered. So, I'm stealing from him. Here's to all my technology friends that are playing in the Virtualization world. By the way, this is not inclusive of the freebies (VMWare, and MS Virtual Server)

VMware ESX Server (Most Expensive Solution, but tried and true) -

Virtual Iron (About a third of VMware, with 95% of the functionality) -

XenSource (The cheapest of the three for now, Citrix just purchased them so the price will probably go up)

Thanks Andy.

Outlook/Firefox issue

I've been having an issue in Outlook lately that gives me this error when I click on a link/URL in an email:

I get a message box with "General Failure." Occasionally I'll get a "Locate Link Browser" message as well.

Recently I updated my FireFox to the latest 2.x and this began.

The issue seems to be some of the old Windows DDE stuff where a DDE message is sent to an application after it started up to pass information - in this case, the URL.
I don't understand DDE, nor will I pretend to. Here's the quick fix for me.

Open Windows Explorer (Not Internet Explorer) click on Tools|Options|FileTypes. Go to the ones marked (NONE) and start with URL:HyperText...and go to Advanced, then Edit the Open action and clear out the DDE Message TextBox.

I've been putting up with this bug for quite a while. It pushed me over the edge this morning. It's gone now! Thanks to Scott Hanselman

Malicious intent? Absolutely Not

Tonight, Terri (my wife) and I find ourselves in the middle of a slight controversy. Apparently, we, and possibly others, have upset some friends and acquaintances by not inviting them to our daughter’s birthday party. If for no other reason, let me say it here and get it out.

Two different people have communicated to us that they are disappointed that their kid was not included in the party. My largest problem with this is that neither has come to us personally. Both instead have chosen to talk with others about this and we’re hearing it all through the grapevine (which I do not like).

Let the world know two rules of this issue:

1. We did not wake up one morning and say to ourselves: “Let’s see how we can hurt someone’s feelings today.”
2. We limited the number of children, outside of family, that our child could invite to 10.

Here’s what happened:

Naturally, when we allowed our child to create the invitation list, she picked the children that she spends the most time with. We ended up allowing 11 kids due to a sibling being a friend also.

We invited her grandmothers and cousins also.

Throw in the parents and you end up with 35 people in my back yard!


The logic is simply this:
1. I want my children’s birthday party to be made up of the people they truly considers to be friends. We don’t want any family to feel obligated to come to a party or to feel obligated to buy a gift for a child, especially ours, when they are simply an acquaintance. It costs enough to live life now without all the extra birthday gifts.
2. I can’t fit too many more people in the yard and/or house (you have to have the Plan B in case it rains).
3. We had a pool party. The liability of a drowning child was weighing heavily on me. The fewer kids the better. Frankly, I pushed Terri and Breanna to shorten the list. They couldn’t. I caved.

If anyone is to be blamed for this, it’s me. I am deeply sorry and disappointed that this has occurred. However, if I had it to do all over again, I would not change any of it.

Therefore what?
Terri and I have approached both couples in the last 24 hours. We have attempted to talk it over with them and feel we have tried to talk this through in a Godly way. Please pray that this will be put behind us so that we can get back to making a positive difference in the kingdom of God.

Thank you for listening.

October 3rd - I missed my day!

I missed Techies Day! Here's the official description

Techies Day is your chance to give your friendly technician(s) some well deserved appreciation.

The office technician may be a geek. But, when your PC goes down, or gets a virus, that geek is invaluable. He's on top of his trade, and can get your system back up and running faster than you can say "gigabyte".

Not to be left out..... This day is for all technicians, not just computer techies. There are many highly skilled technical jobs out there that demand high quality people oto assess equipment of all kinds. Let's give a big hand and a thanks to all techies, from all fields, on this special day.

Make sure that your techie knows that he, or she is appreciated. Give them a big "TY". Maybe a token gift, or just send an ecard. Taking good care of your Techie will reap you dividends when you need him.

Here's wishing my Techie a very Happy Techies Day. You're the Best!

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Friends

Friends

I’m not sure why anyone would want to go through life without friends. For those that know me, you are fully aware of my outgoing personality. Having this personality has caused me to develop some great friendships over the years. Unlike some people who may claim to have only a few friends and a few acquaintances, I have many friends and even a greater number of acquaintances and even more business associates that I would call friends! I was reflecting on these last few weeks and how I’ve had to call on these friendships to make life happen. Let me explain.

I was flying and the final leg of my flight was cancelled. I had to call on my most important friend, my wife, to come get me from the airport in Charlotte. It’s a 5 hour round trip. Thank you Terri!

I was fortunate enough to get a ticket to see Van Halen but I was in Granger, IN. Once arriving in Charlotte, my friend Scotty came to the airport, picked me up, took me to dinner, and dropped me off at the Charlotte Bobcats arena. Thanks Scotty!

I needed to get home from that concert so I was able to ride with several friends from Charlotte back to Florence. Thanks Jimmy, Justin, Tory, and Little Jimmy for the ride!

Once home (after we slept), I needed to get my vehicle from the airport. Terri had a parent teacher conference with Breanna’s teacher. I had Breanna and was also obligated for Doughnuts for Dads at Tripp’s school. So, I called Josh who promptly met me at Tripp’s school. He watched Breanna for 20 minutes for me, then drove us to the airport to get my vehicle. Thanks Josh!

This weekend was scheduled for a family portrait. I personally believe that a good digital camera with some creative settings can be as great a picture as a professional photographer who charges sitting fees. So, I called James, who has always been intrigued with photography. Both of our families went to the beach for the magic day. I took photos of his family. He took photos of mine. Thanks James (and family)!

We needed a place to stay at the beach. I called my cousin Nikki and Joe. They have a nice place down at Garden City. What a wonderful place. Thanks Joe and Nikki!

I could go on for quite a while telling you little anecdotes regarding friends and family. Bottom line: I am blessed to be a part of a “family” that cares about each other and doesn’t get hung up on the small stuff.

Admittedly, I love helping others and find it hard sometimes to ask them for assistance. Apparently, from all the need I’ve had in the last few days, I’m breaking out of that guilt that comes about when I ask for help.

Thank you to all my friends!

Spiders, Frogs, Rats, and Algae

What do these have in common? They seem to live in my pool! I took a long lunch today to clean them all out in hopes of maybe one or two more days in the pool with the family. We'll see.

By the way, Mustard Algae is a BEAST to deal with. Frogs, Spiders, and dead rats are launch-able! They find a new home deep in the woods.