From Halloween to All Saints Day

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 gods and the pagans danced around in dead animal skins in what must have seemed like a highly confused and macabre scene.

Now along comes the Roman invasion and Pope Boniface IV decides to replace that Celtic mess with more Christian events. In doing so he designates November 1 as All Saints Day (Alhalowmesse in the original Middle English) to honor the saints and November 2 as All Souls Day to honor those who have passed on. So the day before Alhalowmesse is Alhalow-eve or Halloween. So there you go, a little bit of history courtesy of my source for this post, The History Channel.

Saturday Recap

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!

Happy Standard Time!

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.

Woodland Springs Fall Festival 2005

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

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 Ian and Trevor tried their hand at supervised archery with a couple of pretty sweet compound bows. Their target was a poster of a Grizzly. Trevor shot it right in the heart and Ian got him in the neck. Then we perused the “General Store” (aka, toy shop) before heading to the BB Rifle range and although not nearly as successful as archery, they had a blast nonetheless. Overall, the father-son-son-son bonding experience doing very manly things was a huge success. Also, a big Thank You to the entire team at Cabela's for making us 'City Slickers' feel like real Outdoorsmen.

My First Barber Shop Shave

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.

Spam Filtering

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 spam filtering and requires more of your on-site intervention (because it's installed on your mail server), but it happens to be my personal favorite. The tool is MailEssentials by GFI. It comes with multiple fully-configurable ways of identifying junk mail, but the most intriguing method uses a logic algorithm called Bayesian Analysis. Basically, the system learns what is good mail from your users' sent mail stream and mixes it with universally known spam from a central downloadable spam list and spam that your users can report. Then it applies the Bayesian algorithm that actually identifies present and future spam tactics with remarkable accuracy. MailEssentials can also create a database of incoming and outgoing mail that lets you create custom reports to tell you how you're doing. The first year cost is $675.00 for 100 mailboxes and the annual subscription thereafter is $135.00 (10% discount for non-profits also applies).

AppRiver has a 30-day free trial.
MailEssentials will give you a 90-day trial if you request it.

Boo at the Zoo Fun

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!

iBelieve: Replacement Cap for iPod Shuffle

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

eBay vs. Debt

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 encouraged - a little.

Yesterday, we saw her again and she couldn't wait to tell us that everything had sold and that the bidding got really rowdy on the last day. She garnered a little over $300 from the experience and the best part was she was able to make the last payment on a credit card she'd had since college. eBay is helping to kill the debt monster!

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released

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.

Nice, But Not Necessary

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?

Inside Joke

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.

New Blog

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 might not necessarily reflect the views of the management or the staff of Fellowship Technologies.

The Lunch of Monte Cristos

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!

Most Important Meal of The Day

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!!!

Tomorrow's Blog Lunch

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 let you know how it turns out and what we come up with.

Who Emptied My Bloglines???

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.

Of Branches and Vines

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. ⁶If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

Although city ordinances restrict me from burning anything, the "cut off" branches are bagged up and waiting to be hauled off on Tuesday.

Our New Church Home

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 website, 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.

Flatlined

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.... ?

Simple Guacamole

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.

Finally Updated the Blogroll

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.

More Talk About Antivirus & Anti-Spyware

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

A New Bond Begins

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 doesn't crash the whole franchise.

10 Years Ago This Month

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...

New XM Radio Channels - Online Only

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!

Vigilant Redux: My Favorite Products

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 explanation of how a NAT router operates as a firewall, check out Episode 3 of the Security Now! podcast [mp3 or transcript].

Currently, I use the Buffalo Wireless Cable/DSL Router. The one I have is an older 54 Mbps model, but it looks exactly the same. I like this model, because when I bought it 2 years ago, it was the best looking (white and no ugly antennas), it had the best wireless range of the pre-Cisco Linksys and Netgear routers, and for a company who also competed on the Enterprise level, their consumer products were comparably priced.

Antivirus: NOD32 by ESET
Prior to 2003, I used Norton Antivirus because it was decent. Since then, Norton Antivirus and the absolutely horrid Internet Security Suite have earned both of my thumbs down. McAfee's in the same boat. Because they try to do everything in one product, it bogs down the computer and until the built-in outbound firewall is "trained", you spend a lot of time telling it how to treat every little piece of unique traffic and you don't even know if what you're telling it is correct. NOT user-friendly and unnecessarily cumbersome.

NOD32 is a terrific antivirus program, nothing more and nothing less. It's very lightweight, costs $40 per year and downloads new updates daily. Conversely, I've waited up to 4 days for a Norton update.

Spyware: Spybot Search & Destroy
I used to use Lavasoft Ad-Aware and it still is a decent spyware/adware/malware remover, however not my first choice anymore. I prefer Spybot Search & Destroy that can be freely downloaded from www.safer-networking.org (not .com). Both Spybot and Ad-Aware remove annoying and malicious spyware and you have to periodically (weekly) download updates of newly discovered threats. The advantage of Spybot is that it has an immunize feature that places a list of known spyware website addresses into your Internet Explorer so that it will automatically block any attempt from those sites that attempt to infiltrate your system. Still, it's not perfect and it requires diligence in running regular scans and regular updates.

If you're looking for a "set it and forget it" spyware solution, I've heard that Spy Sweeper is good, but it costs $30 per year and I haven't had any experience with it. As for Microsoft's Antispyware program, I've found that it breaks some programs and doesn't come close to catching all spyware objects.

I hope this helps some of you and, as always, feel free to throw in your 2 cents and add to the conversation.

FellowshipOne Poll: Closed Contact Items

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 manually reassigned to a different user. While I think this is an appropriate action for 'Open' (not yet visited) contacts, I don't see that passively removing the names of former workers who have already (positively) impacted the lives of families in the church is a good idea.

What's your take on this and should Fellowship Technologies work to retain such historical data?

Printers

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 - $299.00

Dell Laser 1710 - $199.00
Dell Laser 1710n - $299.00

In order for an external print server to be almost worth the trouble for me, I figure that I should be able to get one for $50.00 or else no deal. Sadly for the externals, $50.00 was the starting price and went up to $150 (wired or wireless were the same prices).

Conclusion: if the printer you want comes in a network version, go for it. However, if you want to put a cheapie inkjet printer on the network, then get an equally cheap external print server.

Typing

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!

Vigilant

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.

1. Get a broadband (NAT) router even if only one computer is on the Internet.
1. It’s the best inbound firewall you can buy.
2. Install Windows XP SP2.
3. Install FireFox
4. Install the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer.
1. Yes, there’ll be times when you have to use IE.
5. Apply all Windows Security Updates
6. Purchase and install a good antivirus program
1. Set the auto update to as frequently as possible
2. Schedule full scans once a week
3. IMMEDIATELY renew every year as prompted. Budget for it if you have to!
7. Install a spyware protection program and manually do the following:
1. Update definitions
2. Immunize your browser (if available)
3. Run the scan and remove the discovered threats.
8. Delete temporary files using Disk Cleanup
1. Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools
9. Verify steps 5, 6, 7 and 8 weekly!!!

I can’t stress enough how disciplined you need to be when it comes to keeping your PC clean. It’s like your lawn; you have to care for it weekly otherwise you’re stuck with tall grass and a ton of weeds. If you don’t, it gets harder and harder to push the mower.

Scouting

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 church. Boy, I'm tired. Goodnight and God bless.

Fair?

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 Roasted Corn (my tradition)
11 - Kiddie "Lift and Drop" Ride for Two

Combined with a couple of carnie games which were cash only, we spent over $100 without breaking a sweat. No, the prices at the fair are not fair, in fact it's a complete rip off at every turn - always has been!! So why go? Our children and building a family tradition. They boys had an absolute BLAST and because of that so did Lisa and I. 100 bucks blown in a little under four hours, but priceless in the Grand Scheme.

Home

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!

Storm

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.

Waiting

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.

Nourishment

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.

Running

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.

Sunday

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 hours, they ended up with a 30-hour Sunday. It was a whirlwind tour of the U.K. and Europe for them while getting my sister settled into her new life-for-a-year in Eastern France. Needless to say, they were pooped.

My In-Laws took the boys to Joe Pool Lake for some pole fishing with minnows for bait. Lisa and I had a date just bumming around Downtown Dallas that was capped off with an awesome meal at Houston's on Preston Road. During our married life, we've almost eaten there about a dozen times, but never actually made it. I gotta tell you, it was well worth the wait. I highly recommend the Spinach Dip appetizer and the Evil Jungle Thai Noodle Salad.

The kids are now asleep and I'm getting ready for a busy week that includes a 3-day trip to Jacksonville, FLA with the full-time job. This will be my very first business trip ever - away from Lisa and the boys. Your prayers for all of us are highly coveted. On the bright side, there'll be plenty of time to blog. :)

Plenty to Talk About

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:

3Ghz Pentium 4 PC
200GB 7200 RPM SATA drive
2 GB RAM
Windows 2003 Small Business Server with Exchange
Symantec Corporate Antivirus with Groupware and Spam protection
90 minute APC UPS
Netgear VPN Firewall

Incidentally, the guy who was an great help at CompUSA asked what business the equipment was for. When we told him it was for a supplier of church worship resources, he told us that he was a pastor of a church plant in Irving called Refuge Fellowship. Thanks for the help Brian and many blessings on your ministry!

All in all it took me a day-and-a-half to get the server and email setup. The static IP addresses were allocated by Friday afternoon (cBeyond did good considering they were busy with incidents from Hurricane Rita), the nameservers were routed back to Network Solutions within hours, and by Noon on Saturday, all 'A' and 'MX' records were pointing to the new server. Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, the web team of Rob Herman and Aaron McClung were able to get the website fully functional again and this past week was spent making sure that redundancy and backups were in place.

Oh, the reason why G3's former web host suspended their account was for repeated complaints of spam. Upon further research I was able to find out that G3 used Microsoft's List Builder service to send mass emails to customers and (surprise, surprise) many of the List Builder servers are on some pretty influential blacklists. I guess we'll be rethinking that strategy too.