The LOST Blog

http://www.filmfodder.com/tv/lost/

A must-read companion to watching the highly addictive TV series. Each new post in this brilliant blog is a very in-depth summary of the last episode along with the authors' observations and theories. The comments (hundreds per episode) are priceless!!

The blog is so good, you could even skip an episode (NEVER!) and just read about it on Thursday.

For Jud Stone

I don't have your email address and I'm not sure if you would see my reply comment, so I'm going to use this blog in it's purest form - to communicate with you :)

Keystone Church is at www.keystonechurch.com. The website is by far the primary way the staff communicates with the membership and visitors. The guys that maintain it are maniacs at keeping the content and information fresh.

As far as outreach ministry to the homeless or orphaned, we have partnered since our inception with Christ's Haven for Children in Keller. As Keystone is a little more than a year old, I don't believe there is an internal ministry organized for that purpose (Trey, correct me if I'm wrong). But naturally, as we grow and God draws more volunteer-leaders with various burdens, talents and passions, then there will be a number of outreach ministries that Keystone will be involved in.

Feel free to shoot me an email at stuartcowen@gmail.com and when you and Kelly visit, Lisa and I serve in "Camp Keystone" - you better give me a big manly Christian hug!

Debt Beat

This time two years ago, we were a two-vehicle family with finance payments of around $1,000 per month. As of November 2005, we still have two fully-functional, perfectly running vehicles and we owe $0 - Zip, Zero, Zilch. There's nothing magical to this success and we still have a long way to being completely debt-free (including the home mortgage), but we systematically paid off Lisa's minivan after 5 years and, with the help of our buddy Dave Ramsey, I saw the folly of keeping my SUV payment. I sold the Isuzu Rodeo, paid off the note and am currently driving a purple (yes purple) Ford Ranger that's been in the family for 12 years, but runs like a champ.

Lessons learned:

We will never again have a car payment.
We will always save and pay cash for a car.
We will always buy used from a private-party sale (better deals)

Because:

A car is not worth 5 years of debt.
New cars are not worth the amount of depreciation 5-minutes after the sale.
People really don't care what you drive.

Bedtime Storytelling

It's amazing how effective short yet creative bedtime stories can soothe savage beasts and over-tired 3-year olds. Myles was getting pretty upset with me tonight because I wouldn't turn on the light and read a book for bedtime, but the light was extra stimulation we really didn't need. So taking a cue from the Master "Totally Made Up Story" Teller (that would be Lisa), I whispered three very short stories where Myles, the key character, was a brave knight, a policeman and big bear hunter. In less than five minutes he was calm and seconds later, sleep had K.O.-ed him for the night.

Blackberry: After the Sky Has Fallen

I'm not usually a "doom & gloom" person, nor am I saying that they sky is falling (yet), but for those of us who can't live without our Blackerry mobile email devices, February 24 could be the day when Research in Motion's legal luck runs dry and they're forced to cease sales and wireless email service in the United States. Let me say again, I'm not panicking, but should the hammer fall, other means of getting email pushed to a different mobile phone must be considered and I believe that the hour of decision has to be well before then.

A little background. I've been using various incarnations of the Blackberry for years, even before it was a phone. Despite many of my colleagues in the IT business ditching theirs in favor of a more tranquil email existence, it's been very successful for me and I've learned to play the "keep `em guessing" game well as to my digital availability.

So what is the other option? A Windows Mobile device with a similar thumb-driven keyboard is the next step for me. Since the insane success of the Blackberry, Microsoft has (once again) said "anything you can do we can copy and eventually do better" and now has their own version of push email conveniently and very freely bundled into Exchange Server 2003. Its a combination of Outlook Mobile Access on the server side and Exchange Activesync on the device. Recently, I had the opportunity to set this up for a friend of mine on his Treo 700w from Verizon and I must say, it's not bad - it's not bad at all. Some additional benefits of a windows mobile device include cool ringtones and camera in a very enviable touch screen phone that also sports a slick Outlook-like planner, MS Office document reader and Windows Media Player.

Why the rush - why must I decide now?? Demand, pure and simple. Should Blackberry's plug get pulled, the alternate devices would quickly become quickly scarce. Now, I love my Blackberry and I really don't want to see it go, but my allegiance is to my customers who need to know that I'm listening when they speak. If I need to go on to the next thing, then so be it.

Full Circle

Occasionally, I listen to the Leo Laporte's radio show from Los Angeles over the Internet. One of his sponsors is a great web hosting company called VizaWeb and, because I needed a web host a few months ago, I decided to purchase a basic plan from them. Later, I found out that VizaWeb is based in Minneapolis, but they lease their servers and data center space from another company called The Planet in Dallas. Today, I met the husband of a Ministry Assistant at one of the churches I work with - he works at The Planet.

215 Day Sanity Check: Welcome to my Blog

That's how long Casting My Net has been on the Internet and I thought it would be a good idea in the middle of the blogging year to set this ship back on a more meaningful course after an extended excursion into the shallower pools of randomness (like you hadn't noticed).

To get you acquainted, my name is Stuart Cowen and, as my bio states, I am married to Lisa, my beautiful bride of thirteen years. We have 3 growing boys: Ian 8, Trevor 5 and Myles 3. I am an IT (Information Technology) Professional in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of North Texas and I make my living as a Database Administrator for a very well-known company, but it's my "on-the-side" work of providing computer and technology services to local churches that gives me the most joy and purpose out of what I do.

In this blog we discuss family life, Christianity, cool computer technology, and enhancing the mission of today's church through creative, yet sensible uses of technology. And if you enjoyed the more "right-brained" content, we'll be doing that too - just not as much. So welcome first time readers and long time friends. I hope you enjoy the ride.

HSDPA-ddicted

A year ago this month, I decided to bite the $80 per month bullet and invest in GPRS wireless service for my laptop - the Cingular EDGE network. It's a service that uses a PC card with an antenna to traverse the cellular airwaves so that you can connect to the Internet from anywhere that you can use a cell phone. I use it to connect to church and ministry customers' networks and perform remote administration - the cost is a justifiable business expense (Oh, yes it is). The speed? It's about 3 times faster than dial-up, not terribly fast, but capable of meeting my needs.

Fast forward to December and Cingular announced that they had launched their new 3G network called HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). On the website, it boasts speeds of 400K-700K with bursts up to a full megabit (translation: way fast). The bonus about this service is that it runs alongside of the existing EDGE network and is automatically available to EDGE customers. All I needed was a new HSDPA card and since the price of the new card was $199.00, I was going to wait a while to buy one. However, a buddy of mine at the office scored a $99 deal on one and was evil enough to loan it to me for about 30 minutes (Uh-oh). Wow! In a number of speed tests I was consistently seeing speeds of 1.1 Mbps, file downloads averaged 140Kbps, full-size QuickTime movie trailers were able to download way ahead of the playback, and Remote Desktop to my clients' servers was much smoother.

So naturally I ordered one for myself (er BUSINESS), it arrived today and now I'm working on the Internet at DSL speed without a lick of Wi-Fi to be found anywhere. Ah, the world is my hotspot!

Absolutely, Positively Mad

I've been waiting for a package to arrive at my house since Thursday - FedEx is the carrier. While I'm sure that FedEx has some measure of 'method to their madness', the online tracking tells a very comical story. Here are the travels of my goods... so far.

Fort Worth to Dallas
Dallas to Fort Worth
Fort Worth to Dallas
I live in Euless

The most direct route between Dallas and Fort Worth runs right through Euless. FedEx has 27 hours to meet the delivery deadline and I'm wondering how many times my package will pass by before .

Dancing Skeleton

I stole this from the Shared4U blog and Rob says...

I nicked this from ants blog

Click here and watch the Vid
Like he says.... it's hilarious ..

sorry for the theft ant ...but then again I am a scouser :-)

... and technically, so am I :-) :-)

It Rained... Finally!

It's been dry for months here in North Texas. So dry so that grass fires have been keeping every fire department on their toes. You may have seen reports of our more larger grass fires on the news in your area (I know it made the BBC World News). So last night around midnight, we hear the most welcome pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof. It rained quite hard for a few minutes and then slowed to a steady pour which lasted for the next 15 hours. Nothing like a good soaking on the parched and thirsty land.

Image stolen without permission from Jason Elam and Aaron McClung Design. I know Aaron and I think he'd be cool with that :)

Tech I Use: EverNote

EverNote is one of those "less is more" tools that combines a simple idea with a few thoughtful features wrapped in a great looking interface. It's probably the best and easiest-to-adapt-to note-taking tool for the computer I've ever used. Other note-taking software titles have been too difficult to navigate or too flexible in their organization that the hierarchy gets too deep. Before Jim Walton at Church Tech Matters turned me on to EverNote, I had come full-circle back to the lo-tech, but very trusty spiral notebook.

EverNote is like the spiral notebook in that it's a never-ending "tape" of one-time notes. You type something and it's automatically timestamped and saved. After a comfortable pause in typing, another blank note is generated awaiting your input. Combined with a simple convention of titling notes, the search function is especially powerful as it groups together the notes that match your criteria as you type. The program runs in the background and with the push of a couple of "hotkeys" from within any program, EverNote instantly generates a new blank note. There are even one-click toolbar plugins for Internet Explorer and Firefox that capture whatever you select from a website right into a new note.

There's much more to EverNote, but if you're into journaling the activities in your work and life, I can't recommend it enough. The best part about EverNote is that 90% of it's full functionality is absolutely FREE.

Recover Lost Emails from Exchange & Outlook

Many thanks to MSExchange.org for this in-depth article where I distilled the following quick-n-dirty tutorial.

Scenario 1 - Person Deletes an Email and Empties the Deleted Items Folder
Step 1: In Exchange System Manager, verify that the 'Keep deleted items for (days)' option in the Limits tab of the Mailbox Store properties is populated with a number. In Exchange 2003, the default is 30 days.
Step 2: In Outlook, click on the Deleted Items folder, pull down the Tools menu and click on 'Recover Deleted Items...'. This will show all of the permanently deleted emails going as far back as the number of days specified in Exchange (Step 1).

Scenario 2: - Person Deletes an Email using Shift-Delete, Bypassing the Exchange Recovery Folder
Step 1: Close your eyes, meditate on Scripture, pray and drink some herbal tea.
Step 2: Calmly tell the hasty, yet beautiful user person that their email has gone to a better place.
Step 3: Next, check out Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #178630 and enable the DumpsterAlwaysOn registry key. In the future, 'Shift-Delete'd email will not bypass the Recovery Folder, thus enabling individuals to use 'Recover Deleted Items...' in Outlook (Scenario 1, Step 2)

Windows XP Media Center 2005 is on the Domain

See, this is why I love the Internet. If you have a computer problem, no matter how obscure, somebody in the digital vastness has been there and has shared or will share the solution. Such is the case with my Media Center predicament a couple of posts ago.

The Lowdown: A friend of mine is an independent graphic artist (and a darned good one) who shares office space with another business which has a server on a small domain. Desperately in need of a PC upgrade, my friend found a Gateway (specs posted earlier) with two 20" widescreen HiDef monitors. The whole setup cost less than $3,000.00 - not bad and very nice looking. It also came with Windows XP Media Center (MCE) 2005 which, as we've learned, cannot participate on a domain. Even Microsoft says "Nope, not gonna do it!"

Never say "Never"!

After an hour of research, I found a brilliant individual who has it all figured out with published instructions. The steps were fairly tricky, but the premise was genius. If an upgrade from MCE 2004 to MCE 2005 keeps the domain option enabled, then why don't we trick the 2005 version into thinking that it's been upgraded? Fifteen minutes later - Bingo! But again, not as straightforward as one might think.

The end-result? Simply Magical.

Bespectacled!

Trevor got glasses yesterday and follows in the footsteps of his near-sighted father and older brother. Isn't he handsome?

Two Irritations: Gateway & Microsoft

First, Gateway's GX7022E is a sweet Intel Dual Core 3Ghz, 2GB of RAM, 320GB of SATA storage media monster at a very decent price. The best PC I've seen from them in years. However, their decision to stop packing tangible Recovery Disks in the box in favor of "U-Burn 'em Yourself" from a hidden partition on the D drive wouldn't be so bad if the Create Recovery Disk utility actually worked and Gateway's support wasn't so deplorable. I've been hearing these sorts of complaints and other horror stories about Gateway's Customer (I Really Don't) Care department. Guys, you've always come so close to getting it right - shame.

Next Microsoft... I was fine with all the various editions of Windows XP (Home, Professional, Tablet and Media Center) and I'm even good with the fact that Home Edition will be desupported at the end of this year, because it's exactly like Professional without the ability join a domain network (still not sure why that is). Anyway, color me happy! So why do they release Media Center 2005, a trumpeted superset of XP Pro, with the domain functionality disabled??? Wait, it gets better. Media Center 2002 and 2004 could join domain networks and even if you upgraded from either of those to MCE 2005, you would still have the domain ability. But a full install fresh from the box (or on certain Gateway system) and nada! Bupkiss!

One word sums up this post - AAAARRRrrrggghhhhh!!!

Mission Accomplished - Mavs Win!

114-95 Final. Oh yeah, it was the Milwaukee Bucks :)

Going to a Dallas Mavericks Game

The Men's Ministry at Keystone Church is having a b-ball outing at the American Airlines Center to see the Dallas Mavericks whoop the Milwaukee Bucks. At least that's who I think they're playing... Hey, I'm a computer guy not a sports nut! Anyway, tonight's going to be much fun and I will get into the game (always do). I'll also get to meet some guys from Keystone that I don't yet know and that's always a good thing.

Right now, I'm standing at the train station waiting to hook up with the guys on the Trinity Railway Express in 5 minutes. The train is awesome. I live just 2 minutes away from a station and it drops off right in front of the stadium.

Blog Post #200!!!

The madness started on June 24, 2005. Good Times.

Blasphemous Detergent?

Lisa came home with a new laundry detergent the other day and it made me do a double-take. "all mighty?", I read. I then saw the tiny "small and" tucked between the two words of the "all Small and Mighty" product. So is this marketing designed to stir up controversy that might result in selling millions to the edgy, shock-starved college "gotta-do-my-laundry, man" crowd? Probably not. Anyway, they know their place - the 'a' is lower-case.

Lightening Fast Text Messaging

I have and probably will continue to have a Blackberry or some sort of full-keyboard email/phone device. I love the fact that I can send and receive emails from my primary email account no matter where I am. In the past, a few of my friends have text messaged me and, because of the full keyboard, I have had the tendency to reply with all the wordiness of an email. Recently though, I've discovered how quickly the Blackberry can tap out a much shorter SMS message (which, by the way, stands for SHORT Message Service) and how much more appreciative people are of my new-found brevity. It even works better while driving - just kidding :) cya l8r - k?

A Shout-Out to Sandi

Hey! Lisa told me a few weeks ago that someone she worked with in Camp Keystone was reading (and was quite amused by) my blog, but I didn't know who YOU were until yesterday. Sorry if I seemed pre-occupied when we passed each other, but I was trying to herd my little "Band of Brothers" upstream through the exiting crowd. Thanks for your kind words and I hope you keep reading.

Happy Saturday!!

A day for doing around-the-house projects.

Helpful Note: Change Your Own Password

If you are on a Windows domain in your workplace and your Systems Administrator hasn't disabled the ability for you to change your password, then you can take control of your own security issues (or insecurity as the case may be) and change your password with relative ease. Here's how:

Press the Control, Alt and Delete keys at the same time.
Press the 'Change Password...' button.
Type your old password in the first field.
Type a new password in the second field.
Type the new password again in the third field.
Press OK.

That's all there is to it - Consider yourself empowered.

This Day Belongs to Enya

Playlisted and mixed-up on the iPod, because the state of "chill" is not coming naturally today.

Gotta Get a TiVo

From Thanksgiving until the New Year, Lisa and I started watching Season 1, Episode 1 of Lost and got caught up with Season 2, Episode 9. Now we're in sync with the rest of the world and ready for Episode 10 (which aired last night), right? Not quite... 'Prime Time' in our house is bath, jammies, goodnight stories and bed. 'Mommy & Daddy Time' doesn't start until 9:00 or 9:30 - Lost is on in the Central Time Zone from 7:00 until 8:00. Problem.

Solution: record it! Another problem: No blank video tapes. Question: When in the World did Video Tapes become totally EXTINCT?? I went to a grocery store once known to stock blank VHS tapes only to find blank DVD's and squatty VHS-C tapes (what the??). Then I went to Radio Shack to find some. Slam Dunk? I think not. With the blank stares the staff gave me, I might as well have been speaking Klingon when I said the word 'video tape' (although, these dudes probably would've understood Klingon).

Trey, I think you were speaking truth when you said "TiVo will set you free". Meanwhile, I need to get boned-up on this whole TiVo-thing.

Paper Throwing Party

I'm copying a lot of files at work today to create a standby server in Colorado. At one point, I had so many of these "Copying" windows open that it looked like a horizontal ticker-tape parade.





On another note, Big Brother is back from vacation.
Looks like my employer has shut down access to GMail due to the potential of "non-work related communication/activities." And their point is...?

Oh, Bueller-land

'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' - Bueller...Bueller...Edition is being released again on DVD January 10! This time it'll have all of the Bonus goodies that the first DVD skipped in 1999. We don't have a large movie collection in our house (15 titles at the most), but I will definitely have to sacrifice a few days of Starbucks to own this. If you attended public high school in the mid-Eighties and you saw this movie, you absolutely cannot deny that Ferris Bueller was your hero. SAVE FERRIS!!!

Swede Dreams

They're made of a Hopen, a Hamar in the middle, a Lade underneath, a Hagalid for support and maybe a Tubevo for extra comfort. If you guessed IKEA, you're right. If you're really clever and guessed that our 8-year old bed bit the dust yesterday prompting a mad dash to the IKEA store in Frisco and a near all-nighter trying to get it assembled - then go ahead and give yourself some extra points! As we cruised the aisles, we were getting giddy trying to pronounce the names they give each product, hence the confusing intro.

CES 2006 is on!

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas Kicked off last night with a keynote from Bill Gates. CES is where all of the newest and coolest gadgets, TVs, computers and just about anything else that has a chip in it are showcased (or rumored about). I had three blogs lined up that I was going to scan throughout the four-day event, but so far, only Engadget is delivery the fury of news I was looking for . If anyone knows of another active blog focusing on CES, drop me a comment.

Awesome Thoughts

I'm reading through the bible this year (that's the plan, at least) and on this third day in 2006 I should be starting Genesis 8, but I find myself "In the beginning..." And so I'm reading through the Days of Creation and in the sidebar of my mind I'm imagining how spectacular it must have been and if Peter Jackson ever decided to do a movie about Genesis, that it would be an IMAX experience like no other... but I digress. Picking up steam toward the end of Chapter 1, I swing the doors open on Chapter 2 and STOP!!! Never before had I read Genesis 2:1 quite like this and it challenged and changed my view of the universe.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. (NIV)

That's it. By the end of day six, the heavens (the universe as I understand it) and the earth were completely done. Scientists keep telling us that the universe is ever-expanding. Or is man's grasp of the universe the thing that is ever-expanding? You see, God is infinite - in power, in wisdom and in love. He has the ability to create something in an instant that would take ten million of the brightest human minds ten million years just to scratch the surface of understanding about. My friend, Brian Burton tells of a Christian documentary where in one part, it attempts to animate the vastness of the universe. After the CG camera passes through umpteen galaxy's at a blinding rate, the narrator says, "That's just one of God's thoughts. YOU are another."

Taking that statement further, I would say that the universe is a thought that's six verses long (Genesis 1:14-19). YOU are the reason the entire Bible was written. Pretty awesome, don't you think?

Hello Again Old Friend

Call it a resolution, but I'm calling it a reaquaintance. Three years ago I put aside a regular gig as rhythm guitarist in the church worship band "only for a season" (we thought) as rehearsals were at 7:00am on Sunday mornings and my wife was having to get our newly-expanded family ready for and transported to church by herself. Although Lisa is truly a Super Mom, we decided it best that we all arrive at God's House together as a whole family unit. In short, the blessing of that decision far outweighed the sacrifice.

Today, a layer of dust has settled on the softshell case, the callouses on my fingertips are completely gone, and my chops are, well let's say choppy at best. We're also not at the same church anymore and I have no plans to return to a band environment, but that's OK - it'll just be nice to get to know my Old Friend once more.