blog.stuco.me

I probably won't have the opportunity to write another post today, so to everyone who has visited Casting My Net since I started it 186 entries ago and to those who have made it a part of your regular online reading - Happy New Year and God's Richest Blessings to You in 2006! Some good things are lined up in the next few weeks as I make some adjustments to my online journaling habits. As I told myself at the end of 2004, 2005 was going to be the Year of the Blog and I've had fun ( lots of fun ) exploring the blogosphere, meeting many folks who share my interests and developing cool friendships. In 2006, I hope to make blogging a more useful tool in my life online and offline. So however you ring in the New Year, be safe and I'll talk to you next year...

"We've fallen and we can't get up!" Really, this post should be titled "Fun with... (already broken) Holiday Decorations". No clay snow people were intentionally harmed in the making of this photograph.

It's very hard to believe that eight years to the day have passed since our family increased from "just the two" of us to "we three". We love you Ian! --Mom & Dad Mmmm. Birthday Waffles! One of our family traditions. Waffles, raspberries, ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, maple syrup and/or bananas. Oh, and the special Birthday Plate.  &nbsp  :)

Watching all three of our boys grow from babies to toddlers and then into little men, It's amazing to see how quickly the world comes together in their heads. So at three-and-a-half, Myles has fully grasped the concept of Christmas, but it's the combination of innocent wisdom with a raw eloquence that makes kids say the darndest things. For example: " Bethlehem " becomes " Buffalo Ham " " Feliz Navidad " translates to " Felee Smelly-Dad " We have explained and corrected the pronunciation of Jesus' birthplace, but I'm afraid the whole "Smelly Dad" thing might be around for years to come. With the whole family... and now, probably the entire extended family. Felee Smelly Dad, Y'all!!

Do you remember the Folgers Coffee commercials they used to run at Christmastime many years ago? The All-American son comes home from college and sneaks into his parents' house before anyone is awake. Then he makes a pot of coffee and before too long, the bleary-eyed mom and dad shuffle into the kitchen wondering why the coffee is on. Suddenly, they catch a glimpse of their boy and, well, yeah... time to get the tissues. I've never had the opportunity to "come home" from too far away during the Holidays, but little by little family and good friends are coming home, here to the Dallas area and it's giving me that homecoming feeling. My sister is back from France;  I saw 3 siblings at church yesterday - all home from college; a good friend and his family are coming in from Cheltenham, U.K. this week - we'll get a chance to see them, I'm sure; and at a Christmas party Lisa and I went to this weekend, we saw lots of folks we hadn't seen in a while. Yup...

Took this picture yesterday morning from the inside of my truck. Thought it was just too cool not to. Click on the picture to see the detail.

My Grandfather often used the expression "Class with a Capital 'K'" when remarking on things that were done with unique excellence. So it was no wonder that the phrase came to mind once again when a mysterious black envelope arrived in the mail... sealed with a 'K'. Our name and address was handwritten in silver ink, no return address and a silver wax seal on the back. I tried to think of everyone I had ever known with a last name beginning with 'K'. I came up blank so I opened it. Inside was an invitation to a New Year's Eve 'Black & White Affair' from Keystone Church . Now that's Klass!

My sister Jacqueline (y'know, she's in France for a year as a teacher) started her own blog. She warned us that it was just her random thoughts, but from the looks of things she's found the exact purpose of blogging. Go check out her scene at http://tangledshadow.blogspot.com

7 tables 10 laptops 13 people Laptops are gaining.

Yesterday, I grabbed the wrong drink at Starbucks, but luckily it worked out to my favor and now I have a new favorite drink. Thanks to the markings on the cup sleeve and a keen interpreter, I can not only explain what it is, but can confidently order more. It's called a " triple tall, two raw sugar, extra hot, extra foam latte ". Triple - 3 shots of pure Starbucks essence - BOO-YAH! Tall - In a tiny cup Raw Sugar - Takes the edge off ('raw' is a bonus word that makes it sound rugged) Extra Hot - Makes it last more than five minutes Extra Foam - After-drink reminders? (...urp!)

This morning I hit "Shuffle Songs" on the iPod and am enjoying the surprising great mix of music. I'm on song number 31 out of 2629 and the "spin it" to "skip it" ratio is about 95%.

... and everyone is letting me know (sigh). I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving or for those of you who are overseas, a great Thursday. ;) I've been away from the full-time grind since November 17 and totally unplugged (literally) the entire week of Thanksgiving. I tasked myself to paint the dining room so that we could host both sides of our family at our house - a 3-year tradition, but the first actually in the dining room. The dining room was the "study" so the computer had been totally without electricity up until Thanksgiving and we decided to leave it off for a few days after. I must say, as much of a computer geek as I am, the hiatus from the PC was very refreshing. On Saturday, Lisa and I did something that many of you may be shocked to find out. Let me preface by saying that we don't watch TV hardly ever. Really. Our routine (if it even exists) is catching Conan O'Brien, re-runs of Raymond and maybe Mythbusters on The Discovery Channel. So Saturday, ...

Yesterday, my resume grew by one bullet-point and although tech-related, it was in an area I have been purposefully letting others take care of - eCommerce. As an Information Technology generalist, I know my limitations and their realization has often come to me after I've earnestly tried to "give it my best shot", but ended up putting in too much time and trouble for very little gain. Network cabling is one of those areas where I'd just as soon pay someone to get it done than do it myself; web design and web programming are others. One of my clients is a business that provides worship resources to churches and recently, they brought their eCommerce website in-house. The migration went very smoothly, performance and reliability increased, but there was one small item that eluded the web programmer - how to make the little lock on the browser appear when a customer made a payment. Welcome to the world of SSL Certificates. Because no one had any answers and customers we...

Hummer H2 - I'm seeing an awful lot of these monsters on the Dallas/Fort Worth streets these days and I'm wondering how can a person afford the monthly payments on a $60,000 "car"(??) HHR - I guess it's Chevrolet's answer to the Chrysler PT Cruiser, but it's UGLY to the bone. The Andy Dick commercials were funny, however. I don't know why but sometimes, he makes us giggle out loud. Mini Cooper S - I saw a mint-condition original (from the `60's) yesterday. It looked great and much, much smaller than their more recent descendents. I remember my mom having a red mini in the `70's when we lived in Standish; seems like it was when Leyland Motors were making them. I could be wrong. She reads my blog and might have to correct me.

I just got through pricing the hardware, necessary upgrades and software to replace a 5-year old boat anchor of a server for a church with eight users. I decided for the sake of cost to go with a 3GHz Pentium 4 Home PC (eMachine, specifically) with a 200GB SATA drive, 512MB of memory and a 16x DVD Burner. The cost: $499. I added another Gig of memory and a second 200MB SATA drive for mirroring for $300 extra. After I add in the 3-year PC warranty, APC UPS, Windows 2003 Small Business Server (Charity), Symantec Antivirus with Groupware protection and a 300GB Maxtor OneTouch drive for backups, I should be sitting at a little over $2000. Still, I'm saving well over $1000 by not going with a server-class chassis. I took a chance with the exact same solution for a ministry about three months ago and it is flat-out fast! It runs their Exchange mail, an eCommerce web site and a very active FTP area with ZERO downtime or performance problems. Has anyone else tried to make a bargain PC into...

At church yesterday, the message rocked - it was about having victory over the Storm of Worry . Halfway into the talk, our Pastor urged us to refer to the audio of a past message about prayer called "Text Message: Using Your Anytime Minutes" either directly from the Keystone website or podcast via iTunes. I made a note of this in my bulletin and was going to download it to the iPod, but since our family became members of Keystone just recently, I didn't know how far back to go to download it or if iTunes had already rolled it off the list. To my pleasant surprise this morning, I discovered that yesterday's message AND the one Brandon referred to were the first ones queued up to download - AWESOME! This isn't just an example of how sweet technology is, but rather a testament to people putting their bits and bytes where their mouths are. Thanks Brian !

My friend Jim Walton had fun with some Googling on his site by searching for the phrase "Jim needs" (with quotes) and seeing what was returned. You can read his list here . Here's my carefully selected list courtesy of Google of what "Stuart needs". Stuart needs a really good scare. Stuart needs an ambulance! Stuart needs to fly his little plane. Stuart needs someone who can implement and execute. Stuart needs some answers. Stuart needs little or no introduction. Stuart needs adventures. Stuart needs to be overhauled. Stuart needs to be properly displayed. Stuart needs to return to the 19th century in less than a week. And my favorite... Stuart needs another payday.

Expense Reports - It took me a month from my last trip to get around to filing them. Completing an entire itemized web page on each little receipt (even the travel agent's fee), then photocopying everything and sending it off to the Expense Reporting Department (I guess that's what they are) is just plain torture to me. My prayers are with the people who try to make sense of this stuff day after day. I'd have to be institutionalized - definitely not my spiritual gift. Migraine Headaches - When one of these babys hits (like today), there's no amount of Excedrin that'll cure it. The only thing that works is a few hours or an overnight sleep. I thank God for my wife and family, because they understand when Daddy has a headache - it's an awful phenomenon. I don't get them too often, but when I do they can totally K.O. me.

I was preparing some 'How-To' documents for a church on my laptop and was thinking of printing them at their location using one of their printers. But then a feeling of dread came over me at the though ot plugging in and Windows XP telling me that I have to download the drivers from the manufacturer's website then install the bloated "extra needless software printing suite" just so I can print a regular black and white piece of paper. Bleah! Aren't we at the stage in technology where every printer (even the cheapies) should come with a base, stable, no-frills driver loaded into its firmware and when we plug in the USB cable or try to attach to it through the network it has just enough logic to be able to push the driver through the cable to our systems so that we can instantly print? I mean come on! Isn't that was Plug-and-Play is all about?

...I need to spend my time with God. Was gently reminded yesterday that my God-to-everything-else ratio is off-kilter. I doubt I'll go AWOL from the blogosphere, but I do need to adjust how I spend my "idle" time.

I'm having lunch today with fellow Keystoner Jim Franke somewhere in Grapevine. Somthing's telling me to take a notepad with me - probably a good idea even if it wasn't with Jim. We've known Jim and his wife Jan for many years and they have a great heart for the Lord and teaching. Jim is a software developer by profession, but lately God has both of them traveling to churches teaching them how they can make their 'first impression' to guests really effective. They call it a Connection Ministry. I'm looking forward to our lunch.

Normally, I use Windows Server's Routing and Remote Access (RRAS) as a VPN Server so users can remotely work from home or wherever and I can remotely administer the server and network. With Windows 2003, this just works - haven't had one problem. Yesterday, I was at a church getting them set up for remote administration and proceeded to set up their Windows 2000 server for remote access. The Wizard is practically the same as Windows 2003 RRAS, but the behavior is much different - it shut down their entire Local Area Network!! Once RRAS was disabled, everything was hunky-dory again. (???) I Googled for a while and even logged into a Windows 2003 server that has RRAS working perfectly to check settings - EXACTLY THE SAME. Today, I'll be Googling some more, but I have a feeling that it has to do with the DNS and/or Active Directory. Somehow, most of my problems with Windows networks lead me back there. Another option would be to let the VPN-enabled firewall handle the remote ...

What can I say? "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

How about instantly? I'm changing the email address for a ministry and so last night I logged into the Customer Area of 1&1's website, created the new domain, a new subdomain for mail and pointed the subdomain's A record to the customer's public IP address. This morning I went to check the parent domain's MX records and nothing had changed. Hmmmm - Oh MAN! I could have kicked myself because I forgot to point the parent domain's MX record to the subdomain. I thought, "Great! Now I'll have to wait until the next day for this change to take effect." However, I decided to do an NSLOOKUP immediately after I had hit the 'Submit' button y'know, just in case. To my shock, I saw that the MX record for the domain had changed!! I logged into the customer's site and used their name servers to check and sure enough, it had changed there too. Still not believing, I hit three different DNS checking websites and they all confirmed that the chan...

U.K. Pastor and Blogger, Ron Whiteway mentioned on his site that he was going to be a guest on a local news radio show earlier this evening (or afternoon U.S. time). He invited his readers to tune in over the Internet and so I scrambled to download and install RealPlayer, but unfortunately, realized I was two hours too late and the show had already ended. Not wanting to waste the 15-minute investment in making sure my laptop could receive BBC Radio Shropshire , I decided to give it a listen. There was a music show on called Mel Hill's Jazz Beat that played two hours of classic jazz - it was great stuff. I love all kinds of music, but this mix was just what I needed to get me through to the end of my workday. Tomorrow at the same time, there's another music show called Fretwork which plays an eclectic mix of folk and blues. Being a guitar enthusiast, I'm sure I'll like that too.

Well, this is yet another night that I have had to be up until almost dawn because of work. Toward the end of the year, people start taking long vacations for Thanksgiving and Christmas and they want to make sure that all projects are completed so that when the New Year comes they can start fresh. Application Developers are slinging database code for me to execute at a blinding rate, Systems Administrators are migrating all Windows servers to Active Directory which means all of my database accounts have to be modified, and in all of the rush, details get overlooked and these activities tend to break other processes which then in turn need fixing. It all adds up to a very busy season. I can't just blame other groups for my having to work late, though because I'm on vacation next week until after Thanksgiving, so I'm trying to get all my projects done too!

... The McRib IS Greatness!! I haven't ever disagreed with my Pastor before, but today, in a well-executed illustration while delivering a powerful message on the subject of Temptation, he put forth the "I don't get it" declaration about one of my beloved sandwiches of all time. Don't worry Brandon, my wife doesn't get it either, however I feel confident that you're both in the minority. :) SAVE THE McRIB!!

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night to readers in the U.K.! This year marks exactly 400 years since the infamous "Gunpowder Plot" to blow up the Houses of Parliament was foiled when Guy Fawkes, the man who was supposed to light the fuse, was caught lurking in the ground floor vault of the House of Lords around midnight on November 5, 1605. If you need to brush up on your Bonfire Night history, the BBC website has some really cool articles covering the details of the conspiracy. You'll also discover why bonfires are associated with Guy Fawkes Day. (Hint: it isn't because he was burned at the stake like I believed, because he wasn't. All of the conspirators were hung, drawn and quartered Braveheart -style. My apologies if you're eating while reading this.) For those of you who are Stateside and have no clue what I'm talking about, here's a very good introduction from Wikipedia .

I wrote a post a couple of months ago that my sister had just left for France to embark on a year-long teaching assignment. The opportunity of a lifetime. Well finally, weeks after she ordered it, she now has Internet access. I wrote to her this afternoon and it seems like she's loving her new life in Vesoul . She replied: "I'm having loads of fun...I love my job and my kids...I'm such a teacher this is what I am supposed to be doing..." We love and miss you Jackie, but at least now we can keep updated regularly! BTW, are you coming home for Thanksgiving?

This month marks one year that I've been actively reading and subscribing to blogs. I owe my indoctrination into the blogosphere to NeoWin , a UK-based site focusing on, but not limited to Windows and PC news. Prior to that, I had only read and participated in various technology forums for the purpose of researching solutions to specific problem. But NeoWin wasn't a forum like I was used to. I experienced a website that was updated almost hourly with fresh news and people were busily "talking amongst themselves" about the topics posted. I was intrigued and wanted to find out more. Soon I discovered that many of the people posting comments had blogs of their own and that's when the "World of Blog" was opened up to me. It didn't take long for me to stray from reading pure-tech blogs to reading blogs of real individuals around the world who actually had lives away from work. The ones I gravitated toward were honestly, passionately and authentically writ...

This will be a (mega) multi-part post as I'll be gathering my thoughts about the IT work I currently perform for several churches and ministries, then architecting a better framework. My workload is steadily increasing and in the next few months, it's going to explode so changes will need to take place for survival and sanity. Right now, when I think of how things are done now, then envision where they need to be to handle the increase, I see that there's... ...too many tasks, not enough projects... ...too much randomness, not enough standards... ...too many priorities, not enough prioritization... ...too many pipe-dreams, not enough strategy... ...too much enabling, not enough empowerment... ...too many workarounds, not enough solutions... ...too much routine, not enough innovation... ...too much implementation, not enough integration... ...too much repetition and not enough consolidation... ...too much doing, not enough delegation... ...too much reaction, not enough struc...

Today in Microsoft SQL Server , I discovered first-hand that defragmenting indexes, especially on large tables that experience a high volume of INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE transactions, can really improve query performance. In my case, it took an update transaction that was running more than 6 hours before it failed down to 24 minutes with successful completion. First, I ran a DBCC SHOWCONTIG ( table_name, index_name ) statement to reveal that the index was 46% fragmented. To place that in perspective, industry experts say that 30% is too much. Next I defragmented the index using the DBCC INDEXDEFRAG ( database_name, table_name, index_name ) command. This only took 15 minutes, but it chewed up 8GB of transaction log space so I had to keep a close eye on it in the Taskpad view of Enterprise Manager and adjust the growth limit on-the-fly as the space was quickly diminishing. After that was complete, I executed the update transaction and was blown away with the 97% increase in speed. I...

I for one am glad that Halloween is over. It seems that this year it was dragged out for more than a week with all of the community festivities, different businesses putting on events and the local zoo doing their part. Don't get me wrong, I'm not down about any one event - they were all great. I guess I'm just worn out. However, our boys had an outrageously good time as well as dressing up in three sets of costumes. In looking for some good in a notoriously evil holiday, I did come across the interesting origins of Halloween. It seems that before the Roman Empire invaded what today is Ireland, Britain and France, the Celts occupied the lands. The Celtic New Year was November 1 and around the end of October the weather started getting really miserable and folklore said that the harvest crops were cursed by dead souls roaming the earth. So they combined a New Year's celebration with festivals to drive off evil spirits all on October 31st. Druid priests called upon their ...

I've got a lot to blog about from everything that happened today and have decided to list each in its own post rather than one huge entry. I'm prefacing them this way because they're being uploaded to Blogger at the same time and I don't want you to miss any of them by thinking that that number 3 and 4 are much older posts. With that said, the preceding four (4) blog posts recap our family's day on Saturday, October 29, 2005. By the way, if this method of telling you what's below is helpful to you please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

I’m working tonight for my full-time job doing a Disaster Recovery test for two production databases. There’s databases in Nevada and a mirrored instances (standby) in South Dakota . I’ve stopped the transaction log shipping from the primary database to the secondary, brought the secondary online and am now waiting for the application testers to “do their thing” as they attempt read and write operations against the standby. Mmmmm, fun! I’m noticing that two-o-clock in the morning is approaching, so I’ll raise a glass (of milk) to toast the beginning shorter days.

Today Keystone Church hosted the second annual Fall Festival with a ‘Trunk or Treat’ in the growing Woodland Springs area of Keller. Lisa decorated the minivan in a Hawaiian Halloween theme and we passed out candy to the neighborhood kids. Because the church is a plant and we celebrated our first anniversary last Sunday, the pastor and staff have been getting to know as many of the area's organizations and businesses and today their efforts over the past year were evident. There was a large number of booths setup and people from all over Keller stopped by to visit. Brandon and I were talking about the great turnout and he said that the owner of one business represented today had participated in two other Keystone sponsored events, but just a few moments ago, he pulled Brandon aside to ask for more information about the church. Seeds are being planted in the lives of these sweet people, God’s Harvest is coming and our family is so excited to be a part of His plan!

Cabela’s is the new mega outdoors store in the Alliance Corridor of Fort Worth. Today they hosted Kid’s Day festival that we’d been planning to take the boys to for almost a month. Since there were other activities we were bound to today and our collective family time was limited, we decided to split responsibilities so I took Ian, Trevor and Myles to the event. As we came in and passed by other folks fishing in the mini-lake at the front of the building, we all decided to do that first. I signed out two rods that were hooked and sinkered for us by a couple of “fishing dudes” and took them and they boys down to the lake where another Cabela’s employee put the worm on for us. Ian and Trevor had the best time just casting, watching the bobber and reeling the line back in. They must have fished for a solid hour while Myles was content to pretend that he was driving the dock out to sea and, at times, yell at the water as if commanding the fish to jump up on to the dock in surrender. Next...

This morning I was out of the house early to experience a genuine honest-to-goodness Burma-Shave with a straight razor. On Church Street in Colleyville, TX, Back-n-Time is an antique barber shop where everything from the chairs to the cash register are fully restored collectors’ items from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. Their haircut and shave services are authentically from much simpler times and the atmosphere is just like you’d expect right down to neighboring tenants stopping by to sit and talk endlessly about nothing. As for my experience, I’d have to say that from start to finish (45 minutes) it was a great shave and I would probably do it again. However, as I’m writing this and rubbing my hand across my face, the five-o-clock shadow is reminding me that it’s a luxury I shouldn’t afford too frequently.

Accurately identifying and blocking spam is becoming very tricky these days and I'm constantly on the lookout for tools at the server level to stop the annoying infiltration. This year I was introduced to a fascinating service called AppRiver that very effectively filters all of your domain's incoming mail for spam and viruses. Mail bound for your organization is first routed to AppRiver's servers, filtered and then they push it to your mail server's IP address. Because they filter a huge amount of mail for many companies, their up-to-the-minute accuracy in identifying bad mail is pretty good. For a 100 mailbox subscription, AppRiver charges around $1,000.00 per year and has 10% discounts for non-profits. For a "set it and forget it" solution, that's very reasonable cost in my mind. Recently, though, I had a church approach me who were trying to cut costs on all fronts and asked if I knew of a lower-cost solution. Well, there is, although it's only sp...

Every year, the Fort Worth Zoo has a week-long Trick-or-Treat program leading up to Halloween called "Boo at the Zoo" and every year my parents take us and the boys to it. You don't really see any animals, but thousands of costumed kids and parents flock to it every night and it's just a ton of fun. Ian, Trevor and Myles decided months ago that they wanted to be Batman this year. They had a great time and all fell asleep on the way home. Thanks Mom and Dad! We love you!

Yes, it's a real product. Yes, you can buy them ($12.95 USD). No, I probably won't be getting one.

We have a good friend who had been a very casual buyer on eBay for a couple of years, but when she learned that we had sold much of our old stuff on eBay, her interests were piqued and she began asking the usual questions. "Is it difficult?", "Is it safe?", "Do you get ripped off?", "Are the buyers real people?", and the classic "Who'll want to buy my stuff?". After we had got her more excited about becoming a seller rather than quelling her fears, she jumped in with both feet and put a couple of pieces of furniture and some clothes up for auction. About halfway into the auction we caught up with our friend and she was a bit bummed. "Nobody is bidding." she said. "I got some of my family to bid on them, hoping it might drive the bidding, but nothing." We told her that most of our auctions started to generate activity in the final day and one had even gone sky high in the last 30 seconds. I think she was encourage...

Yesterday on NeoWin , I read that OO.o 2.0 had been leaked, supposedly prematurely. Today, it appears to be true and there are links to download it (ftp, BitTorrent and ISO). This one phrase intrigues and excites me about the potential for deployment in our churches: Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source. I'll be downloading it to see if it's a viable replacement for MS Office.

I like automation as much as the next Systems Administrator and any time a server, PC, network switch or printer can tell me that it's having a problem before many people find out, better for the users and better for me. I'm also a sucker for trying virtually every "helpful" feature that comes on a device these days. I found an option on the Dell laser printers where I can have the printer email me when it's out of paper, so I turned it on... and turned it off 9 hours later after 20+ "out of paper" emails. Nice feature, but really not necessary since virtually every person whose been exposed to a printer in the past 30 years can probably tell when it's out of paper. An "Low Toner" email is more useful, especially if it goes to the person in charge of purchasing office supplies. Don't you think?

Lisa took Ian, Trevor and Myles to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie today on their last day of Fall Break. Our family are big fans of Nick Park 's animations. We own a couple of Wallace and Gromit short films and have practically worn out the Chicken Run DVD. When I came home from work, the dinner time conversation was mostly about the movie - everyone had a great time. Fast forward a couple of hours, Ian and I are at a Cub Scout meeting and tonight's activities are learning about the American Flag, proper handling of it, the history behind it and a few hoists up and down the flag pole (the flag, not the kids). When their Den Leader was explaining how to attach the flag to the latches on the rope, he said "...and these brass holes, boys, on the side of the flag are called "GROMETS" . Ian instantly caught my eye and we both stared at each other for a few seconds with a silly smirk on our faces fighting back the giggles. Such fun.

Adventures with Fellowship One is an online journal (alright, "blog") tracking my and others' experiences with the fastest growing Church Management System currently on the market - Fellowship One . The site will feature step-by step tutorials, tips, tricks and other things that might have otherwise made you go mad had you not known about them. The reason why I'm doing this is four-fold: (1) document what I learn; (2) share knowledge with others; (3) provide a discussion point for churches who may be considering Fellowship One; (4) connect with fellow "F1" users. Although Fellowship One isn't a perfect one-size-fits-all system, I do see massive potential for its future because of what I've seen first-hand in the company's commitment to innovation, excellence in customer support, and passion for helping churches. Need a disclaimer? I do not work for Fellowship Technologies nor am I being compensated by the company. Some of my views or opinions ...

Just got back from lunch with Steve Pruitt and Mike Hankins at Cheddars in Irving. What a great time we had! We got to know each other a bit better and finally saw the people behind the blogs. We talked about blogs, church, Bloglines, xangas, Justice League , RSS and ... blogs, church, etc. As soon as I have some time to organize my thoughts, I'll post about some of the topics we covered. The food? Monte Cristos all around! As soon as Mike saw that it was on the menu, we all dog-piled on it. WHERE ARE MY MANNERS? Thanks, Steve for lunch. Next time it's my treat. Next time it's Podcasting!

I had to be in the office bright and early this morning for a meeting, so I didn't have time to make or grab any breakfast. Boy, am I feeling it right now! To be honest, I think the lack of coffee is mostly contributing my feeling of malcontent. To add insult to injury, the snack machine's ability to accept dollar bills is broken - AAArrrggghhh! OK, now I'm about to go over the edge, but I have another meeting in 10 minutes - no time to go anywhere. Better grab a nasty cup of joe from the break room that might get me through until lunch which, thankfully, is early today. Lesson: Eat your Wheaties!!!

My schedule is PACKED tomorrow and it mostly filled up in the last 12 hours. But there's one thing that's been on the schedule since last week; a blog-focused lunch with Steve Pruitt from the Sprybot blog . Steve is a Youth Pastor at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, TX who I've never met in person, but he contacted me through my site to see if we could collaborate on setting up a blog for his Youth Volunteer Workers to keep them updated as to what's going on within the department. I am totally psyched and honored to be helping you, Steve!! Although I'm not any great RSS guru, It'll be cool to share what I know about blogging and internet technology in general to help a local church out. As a bonus, Steve's bringing intern Mike with him (who got him hooked on blogging in the first place), so between the three of us, we should be able to kick around enough good ideas to get a viable solution together. Can you tell I'm totally stoked?? I'll l...

I'm having a slight anxiety attack, because during the lunch hour my Bloglines feeds have all gone away. Not even the containers that organized them are there. Everything has disappeared!!! Has this happened to anyone else? Did it ever come back? A quick Google search revealed that this has happened to others in the past, but nobody has said if it ever resolved itself. Note to self: Backup your data, backup your data, backup your data. :-( UPDATE: They're back now and unharmed :-) That was freaky.

We have a higher-than-usual fence in our backyard, because our house borders and is downhill from the "old neighborhood". The two yards behind us that meet in the middle of our fence each have very unruly ivy vines which intertwine with the other and creep over to our yard. The benefit for us is an attractive cascade of green foliage. If you were to ask me where one vine begins and the other ends, it would have been impossible - until last week. That's when one neighbor decided to uproot his ivy leaving the branches on our side to wither and die. Within days, the cut-off branches turned brown, dried up and revealed how deeply they had crossed over into the other vine. It is here in my own backyard that John 15 is illustrated. 5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are pi...

Three months ago this week, our family started the journey of looking for a new church home. After what seemed like "wandering in the desert" forever, My wife and I along with the boys have discovered that God is beginning to pen the next chapter of our spiritual legacy at Keystone Church in Keller, TX. If you don't know much about Keystone , go check out their websit e , my post about our initial visit , or some of the members' blogs [1] [2] [3] [4] . Also, there'll be regular posts about the church here in the days, months and years ahead. Also, if you're a blogger that attends Keystone, send me a comment or an email to stuartcowen@gmail.com and I'll be sure to put your link in the margin. It'll be a great way for the family to stay connected.

I just checked my website traffic stats at Statcounter and noticed something peculiar, yet refreshing. 7-and-a-half hours into Sunday and nobody has touched the Casting My Site - all zeros accross the board. In the past, even if I happen to be awake at 1:00am, at least a couple of visits have been made, but not today. And refreshing, why? Because it lets me know that the people I'm connecting with actually have a life away from the computer screen. But on the other hand, what does that say about me.... ?

File this under 'Simple Saturday Afternoon Pleasures'.  Get a nice ripe Haas avocado, cut in half around the pit and scoop out the insides. Discard pit and the soft shell. Add garlic salt and white pepper then SMUSH IT until creamy. Add more garlic salt and white pepper to taste and grab a bag of corn chips. Chill (you) and munch (the guac). Life is good.

Under ' My Subscribed Blogs ' in the right-hand margin, you'll see that I have significantly beefed up the list of blogs I read regularly. These folks have been my inspiration, they are my fellow sojourners in Christendom and technology, and are, most importantly, my new friends in the blogosphere. I look forward to adding to this list as I keep on Casting My Net.

Jason Powell has a very interesting post on how they're considering switching the products that protect Granger Community Church 's computers and networks from viruses and spyware. I was very surprised at the antivirus contender. http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2005/10/switch_our_anti.html

The new James Bond actor was named today - Daniel Craig . "Who??" My thoughts exactly. A quick scan of his filmography tells me that I really don't know who is, so from now until November 2006 I'm gonna get up to speed on this guy and see if he has what it takes to be a 007. Already though, he has a few things going for him: he was born in 1968 (same as me) and grew up in Liverpool. I was born in Liverpool, but was raised near Wigan. And that's were the similarities abruptly end - ah well. Bond has been a HUGE part of my movie-going life and I'm very curious and partly fearful of how the new movie, Casino Royale , will turn out. Ever since Dr. No with (the Greatest) Sean Connery, James Bond as journeyed along with us seemingly changeless in character, but adapting appropriately to the times. But just as Batman Begins took us to the very genesis of the Dark Knight, so Casino Royale (at least in the book) introduced 007 to the world. I desperately hope that this...

Eight months before I landed my first professional position in Information Technology, I started an "in-between" job as a courier which was exactly the hiatus I needed. After my first early morning mail delivery in North Dallas, I had an hour to kill before my 'bank route' started so I decided to drive east on Royal Lane toward Preston Road to get to know the ins and outs of the city. It was there at the Preston-Royal Shopping Center in October 1995 that I entered for the first time a business I had only been introduced to on TV Shows and that you actually had to search for to find - STARBUCKS COFFEE . Back then I didn't know about lattes or machiattos, but being married into a Christian family who largely hailed from Minnesota, I knew coffee. My first sip was exactly how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz described it in his book 'Pour Your Heart Into It' - it nearly blew my head off! And the rest is history...

If you have XM Radio , then you automatically have access to their online streaming service which includes all of the music channels, none of the cable news or talk stations, and a few *bonus* channels. Yesterday, I noticed that XM has partnered with AOL Radio and the list of extra channels has increased by 10. Although 9 of the new channels don't particularly excite me (All Elvis, Hawaiian music, Country, etc.) one station makes the trip to the very bottom of the playlist worthwhile. 1 Hit Wonders!!! From the last four decades these are "Flashbacks from the where-are-they-now file." I've been listening to it for the past 3 hours - absolutely fabulous!

My post about protecting your Windows-based PC from Internet Trash (hey, another 'IT' phrase) was written with a deliberate technical bent, but Chris Marsden 's comment brought to my attention that I neither recommended any products nor was my explanation of NAT routers particularly sufficient. I felt that a follow-up post on what products I like and use was in order, so here it is. NOTE to Brian Glass : Yes, Linux would be best protection, but we all know that the evil Microsoft still has this world by the short hairs. However, as soon as I download the Fedora 4 distro and load it on another LPAR, I'll write a geeked-out post on the penguin, just for you. :) Firewall: Any NAT Router (aka Broadband Router) NAT is an acronym for Network Address Translation. The basic concept is that it takes your public IP address issued by your ISP, translates it to a private IP address range so that no casual hacker can directly access your PC. For a really good and in-depth explana...

Whenever ideas for enhancements to Fellowship One come to mind, I usually submit them via the support area of the F1 Portal. Shortly afterward, I receive a very nice email from Lisa Morris stating that it would be a great idea and then she forwards it on to Fellowship Technologies ' Product Manager, Curtis Harris, for further consideration. Today's epiphany, however, doesn't exactly strike me as a slam dunk no-brainer, hence the reason for this poll. Consider the following situation as it relates to your church and let me know if it seems like a project for the good folks in Irving, Texas. For historical purposes, should a 'closed contact' in Fellowship One retain the name of the original person assigned to follow up with the individual or household even if that person no longer serves at the church and is subsequently deleted as a user from the system? Currently, if a Fellowship One user is deleted, ALL of their contacts become 'Unassigned' or they can be ...

I'm doing a partial restack of computers from office to office at a church in Arlington and I'm noticing that the older laser printers and some inkjets are connected to the network with external print servers from Hawking, Linksys, and Netgear. I can remember when HP Jetdirects cost $500, so I'm thinking that the previous IT guy was smart to do this since you could buy the non-HP print servers for a lot less. Well, he was (and is) a smart guy, but ever-curious, I decided to do a little "shopping" to see if today's external print server would still be cost effective versus a built-in network printing solution. I was surprised to find out that virtually across the board, the difference in price between the major manufacturers' "with or without" network printers was a C-note ($100.00) HP Laserjet 2430 - 649.00 HP Laserjet 2420 - 549.00 Lexmark E330 - $399.00 Lexmark E332n - $499.00 HP Laserjet 1022 - $199.00 HP Laserjet 1022n - $2...

I've often told people that I type 35-40 words per minute, but can backspace 160+ wpm easily! I never took a typing course in school and as a Systems Engineer, I haven't had have the need to type quickly. These days however, with my email and blog load increasing, I desperately need to learn how to type - properly. I feel it would really improve my productivity and free up my time to do other things or more writing. I have access to Mavis Beacon Typing Tutor (version 15, I think). Has anyone used this method of typing or any others you can recommend? Thanks!

I’m amazed at the number of PCs that have been thoroughly trashed by viruses and spyware. I’m even more amazed of how many of those computers already had virus and spyware protection installed, but not updated. It seems that a lot of people choose to be “reminded later” rather than renew their antivirus subscriptions right away. Or with spyware removal, they install it, run it once, then never again. I run into situations all the time where Spybot Search & Destroy is installed, but no updates have been applied. We absolutely have to be fanatical and vigilant when it comes to keeping the trash off of our Windows-based computers. The following method of protecting PC works best when you completely rebuild the hard drive, but it’s still better than nothing, especially when you have nothing. Get a broadband (NAT) router even if only one computer is on the Internet. It’s the best inbound firewall you can buy. Install Windows XP SP2. Install FireFox Install ...

Me and Ian are on our first campout with the Cub Scouts at Sid Richardson Boy Scout Camp miles away from any civilization. It's the first time I've been camping since I was a Boy Scout twenty years ago. Right now it's dark and the dads of the pack are sitting around the Coleman lantern while the boys are expending the last of their energies before lights out. The stars are simply amazing! God's majesty is displayed in its entirety without the hindrance of city lights. The Milky way is directly above us and a moment ago we saw a satellite cross the sky. It's light's out now and the only thing illuminating our tent is my Blackberry as I post this blog. The crickets are loud and the cool night wind is wafting over us. This couldn't have beena more perfect experience. Ian really responded well to "roughing it" and had a ton of fun with his friends, some of them from school. Tomorrow, we'll be packing up early and heading back to town for chur...

Today was the designated day for our older sons' school to go to the State Fair of Texas in Dallas. We've done this every year for four years so, it's getting to be a tradition and an indication that Fall is officially here and the Holidays are coming. Also, this is the first time that all five of us have gone. Ian and Trevor both got free tickets from school, so with a combination of newspaper offers and a McDonald's "free child" coupon, we only paid for one adult's admission. And that's where the deals stopped. Because all rides and food take tickets, we decided to go "hog wild" and purchase 100 tickets for $50. Here's how (quickly) they were spent: 12 - Kiddie Airplane Ride for Two 21 - Bumper Cars for Three (kids' tradition) 7 - Bag of Cotton Candy 55 - Texas Star Ferris Wheel Ride for Five (family tradition) REFILL!! Purchased 40 more tickets ($20) 12 - Two Orders of Cheese Nachos 14 - 2 Corn Dogs (a must) 8 - Ear of Roaste...

Landed back home yesterday afternoon. It was good to sleep in my own bed last night. Talk about a change in the weather; I left Texas at 95 degrees and returned to it at 50 degrees. Perfect!

So I’m here in Sunnyless Jacksonville , Florida and woke up to the news that Tropical Storm Tammy might come ashore today, maybe tomorrow. All day it rained and I was in meetings, but when the workday ended, so did the rain – temporarily. The sun same out and I was determined to collect some sea shells from the sea shore for the boys back home. When I got to the beach (Atlantic side), there was much ado about Tammy. Although the picture doesn’t show much, these waves were really swelling and breaking harder then I’ve ever seen in real life. But the rain was pretty light and surprisingly warm, so I stepped out onto the grey sand to carefully harvest some nice unbroken shells. I even ventured out to the water’s edge conspicuously dressed in black shoes, black pinstriped pants and a blue long sleeved shirt. Yep, just me, the TV crew and surfers - lots of surfers.

I'm in the lounge waiting to board Flight 644 from DFW to JAx. I haven't flown in more than eight years and I felt lost initially with the "new" airport security procedures; but I went with the flow. I had my laptop specially scanned and my laptop bag rescanned in the x-ray. No biggie - everyone was so courteous and in the end, the experience was painless and very efficient.

A long time ago when I was a new Christian, a seminary student who realized his calling later in life told me that I needed to take good notes during the preacher's message, because the rest of my week should be spent studying, pondering and searching deep for God's word specifically to me. Many times in yesterday's message, the Spirit of God caught me squirming in my seat and I was reminded to make a point of really letting it feed my soul this week.

It's October. Autumn is in the early morning air, so that means it's time to drag this tired body around 2.1 miles that is the neighborhood in my annual effort to lose weight, boost energy and feel better that I usually do in the Summer. Saturday was the first run/walk of the year and yesterday my legs reminded me that I forgot to stretch. Whoo-man did I hurt! This morning I did remember to limber-up, although my still-stiff muscles were cursing me. I did a little bettertoday ; run, walk, run again. I've decided that running is the one exercise I can always do. The gear is cheap, the "track" is right outside the front door, I'm a morning person, and once the runner's high kicks in, I can almost hear the Chariots of Fire music in my head.

Heard an awesome quote at church today by the worship leader . "What man creates, man must maintain. What God creates, He will sustain." Today's message was about hypocrisy and living a genuine Christian life from the inside-out. Scripture was Matthew 23 and the preacher pulled no punches throughout the entire chapter. Listen to the audio for October 2 - you'll be challenged for sure. After church, the family went to Cabela's to pick up a tent and sleeping bags for a Cub Scout camp that Ian and I will be going to next Saturday. Cabela's like the IKEA of outdoors gear; HUGE and has everything you need and lots of stuff you don't. We ate lunch at the cafeteria and I had the elk sandwich. It wasn't bad, but I think I'll try the buffalo burger next time. Lisa and I picked up my parents from D/FW airport at the newly constructed (and very confusing) Terminal D. They flew British Airways from London Gatwick and after "chasing the sun" for 9...

Well, it's been a while and there's definitely no shortage of stuff to talk about. How about I fill you in on the events of last weekend? Larry, a friend of mine who runs the business side of G3 Worship Music , called me from Florida Friday morning frantic that their web host abruptly dropped their account and stated in an email that they would not be reinstated. Their website (and email) is a lifeline not only to their business, but also to 2,000+ plus churches who rely on downloading sheet music, split tracks, drum loops, etc. Larry had been disappointed with this company's lackluster service and support for a while, but had no compelling reason to go through the pain of switching web hosts... until now. Larry now wanted to bring the website in-house so I arranged for one of his employees to meet me at a CompUSA locally in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to go shopping. 45 minutes later, we walked out of the door with the following server configuration for a very nice $2,100: ...

I may be tired and stretched right now, but I'm more aware and excited than ever before of my real purpose. Had a crazy weekend that started at 8:45 am Friday and won't stop until after church tomorrow - and possibly beyond. I'll tell you all about it when I can get a few minutes, but I just wanted to check in with you guys. Cheers and goodnight!

I hadn't listened to this CD in over 10 years, I bet. But now that it's on the iPod, I rediscovered it tonight while driving home (well after rush hour). Man, what a hugely FUN soundtrack from classic flick! The classic "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin, "Danger Zone", by Kenny Loggins and the "Top Gun Anthem" by Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Stevens (Billy Idol's Guitarist). There's not a song on here that I didn't like. Oh sure the soundtrack wreaks of 1980's Pop/Rock, but the "flying songs" are just flat-out kickin'! "You're writing checks your body can't cash!" "Negative, GhostRider!" "Yee-haw, Jester's Dead!" Thanks to Gary Lamb for starting the Nightly Soundtrack blog posts.

So how long can a laptop battery last on 1% juice? So far it's going on 15 minutes. I'm currently "reconditioning" the battery by letting it drain all the way and then charging it overnight. The IBM web site says I have to do this 3 times to increase the battery life. Does that really work? Not that the battery has terrible life right now, but if I can extend it, then all the better. I'm currently getting about 2 hours at full strength power consumption - not bad. Whoops, the graph just went to 0%. Better post this before it goes completely dead. UPDATE 1: Just passed 5 minutes at 0%. UPDATE 2: Now 10 minutes at 0%. (how low can you go?) UPDATE 3: 20 minutes. I think the meter is CLUELESS! ------- FINAL: 28 minutes at 0%. Now I know how far past the 'E' the needle will go :)

My baby sister left the U.S. yesterday to spend a year as a school teacher in Eastern France. She'll be teaching the French kids how to speak English. What an awesome opportunity. I love you, Jackie! I'm still going to try to get you to start a blog, but at the very least, email as often as you can. Oh, and send lots of pics :)

A few years ago, a former pastor introduced the church to a concept called Prayer Walking. If I remember correctly, prayer walking was born out of the need for Christian beleivers and missionaries in persecuted  countries to dicreetly gather for prayer. The outward appearance just looks like people walking down the street having a conversation. Now, whenever I get up early and walk/jog around the neighborhood (which will be a lot more frequently, says the bathroom scales), I always make that a time of prayer. Well I can add blogging to the list of "walk and do domething at the same time", but this will be a lot less frequently as it's taken me 2 miles to write this much. Actually, I hadn't planned to Blog Walk this morning, but I had to fire off an email before church starts to the Kid's Minister at High Point Church letting him know a Checkin printer is now working. So with Blackberry in hand and sneakers laced up, I set off and thought it'd be cool to wr...

I often tell people that I work in Church Technology, but I think I'm done with saying that. The majority of folks, especially church employees, tend to think of the Audio, Video and visible "Big Church" technology. But I'm an Information Technologist within the Church: computers, software, networking, databases, Internet, email, etc. Bits and bytes, not knobs and switches. I know that many of my Church IT buds do both Computer and A/V; the very talented Jim Walton is one of them. But for you others who are strictly Information Technology, how do you tell people what you do? Oh one more thing, I don't do phone systems either - yet...

I'm doing some late night work for the Full-time Job and I grabbed a handful of Dove Dark Chocolate squares out of the candy jar to keep me going. I just noticed that the wrappers have little bon mots or "fortunes" printed on the insides: Remember your first everything. (I got this one twice) Laugh uncontrollably... it clears the mind. Sometimes one smile means more than a dozen roses. (emphasis probably on sometimes) It's not much, but it sure does beat the "Sorry you're not a winner. Please play again." message I usually get on the insides of candy wrappers. I hope you feel encouraged and enlightened.

If your aggregator shows pictures, then yes, that IS my In-Laws’ Dell Inspiron 1200 that I was raving about 2 days ago . Only now, obviously and grotesquely, disassembled. Here’s what happened. Yesterday, I was setting up my laptop at work and plugged in my Cingular GPRS wireless card . After firmly plugging it into the PCMCIA slot, I noticed it didn’t go in all the way. Not thinking that anything might be damaged in there, I tried plugging it in again - only HARDER. It still wouldn’t fully insert. It seems a little rubber pad from my old laptop had found its way from the bottom of the bag into the PCMCIA slot and resulted in severely bent and broken connector pins. Oh, the fun that ensued… Last night, I decided to remove the slot assembly and only after I had taken the whole assembly apart (again, note the above picture) was I able to unplug it from the underside of the motherboard. I needed a replacement so without hesitation I called DELL. The first person I spoke to (can you see wh...

Thanks to Neowin for reporting on the new games coming to Windows Vista fresh from PDC 2005 . Solitaire and Mindsweeper get new updates, Chess is new, blahditty-blah, blah... and MAHJONG!!!! Whoo-hoo!. I Love Mahjong - don't ask me why, I just do. I've been a computer Mahjong fan ever since I got that EGA screen for my 286 computer with the 25MB hard drive. Now those were some good computerin' days.

I don't normally include gaming news on my blog, but hey, the Xbox 360 launch is on my birthday!! So if you need any ideas for a present... :) :) [Article: Xbox 360 launch date is November 22 Source: Engadget]

Picture as promised. Tom Henricks and my future space explorer :)

Although that's the motto of the Salvation Army , it can also apply to the Southern Baptist and Southern Baptist Men's Convention who have helped to feed millions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. [Article: Southern Baptists Help Feed Millions After Katrina. Source: RedCross.org]

Robert Scoble has been playing with Google Blog Search today. You can read his adventures here , here and here . Scoble is thoroughly impressed. OK Dude, I'll bite. A search for yours truly, Stuart Cowen, sorted by date is super fast and pulls up the very latest post 32 minutes ago. "Casting my Net" yields the same results and a few othr blogs that have linked to me. But wait, I use Blogger ; I'm on Google's servers. OK, let's try somebody else - um, BetaChurch.org has something pretty fresh (about 5 hours ago). Yup, Google pull that up too. HOWEVER, a Google blog search still looks like a Google search; pretty blah. Or is that the point - "Just the facts, Ma'am"? It just seems to me like Technorati has made blog searching more fun and more like a community with a few more options. I'll throw my hat down for you to add your 2 cents.

[BBC News: Google unveils blog search site] It was only a matter of time before we saw this coming. But then again, why did we have to wait so long? By virtue of mentioning them, the article suggests Google as a future threat to current blog search leader Technorati (which I use daily). I hope it doesn't get too ugly. It also goes on to say that " Google will index all blogs that publish so-called feeds that automatically tell readers when they are updated." Does anybody else read that as Google maybe going after the Bloglines market too? I especially like Technorati founder Dave Sifry's attitude when he said that he welcome d Google to the blogosphere party and said the move was a "validation" of the blog writing phenomenon. Good on ya, Dave - Keep the Dream Alive!!

Like most of you whose blogs I read, I love all types of music with the exception of one - Country music. But this post isn't about my lack of excitement for C&W, but rather my long standing love affair with Movie Soundtracks, particularly the instrumental music scores. I love the way you can amost experience a movie's plot (if it's a good flick) from the sudden crescendos of epic battles or high-speed chases to the tender moments of romance or death scenes. It gives me the boost that I need when I'm in a funk at work (that and a triple-shot latte). My favorite soundtracks are all of the Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek 2, Braveheart, The Rock, Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. My favorite movie score composers are John Williams (the Master), James Horner, Howard Shore, Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer (a genius).

It looks like I'm within 72 hours of becoming a laptop owner again, so I wanted to give my impressions of the laptop I have been using (thanks to my gracious in-laws) for the past 2 months. The Dell Inspiron 1200 is Dell's entry laptop model that starts at a price of $549 and is the one most featured units in Dell's ads in the Sunday papers and on the back of the Parade magazine. The first time I saw it in person, I thought to myself how basic it looked; black plastic casing and very square, but a clean design. Nothing about it would make you say "Wow!", but then nothing about it would make you cringe. It's just basic. Under the hood, it has a Pentium M Celeron processor running at 1.3 Mhz, 256 MB memory, 30GB hard drive, combo CD-RW/DVD drive, built-in modem/Ethernet, a nice bright 14.1" XGA screen and Windows XP Home Edition. That's the model for $549 - no wireless and virtually no warranty (90 days). Add a 3 yr. warranty and a PCMCIA wireless car...