Month: July 2007

  • In the middle of a customer service nightmare

    Manpullinghairout2754970
    This was a big weekend for YMX. If everything had gone to plan the site would have undergone major structural upgrades and no one would have really noticed.

    I wanted people to login on Monday morning and say, "Hmm, that’s cool. They have a new promotion… wait, something about the site seems different." I had hoped that they would have to go to the Announcement area to find out exactly what all the fuss was about.

    But it didn’t go down as scheduled. My 4 hour Saturday morning project is now in its 3rd day. Here are the 3 things we are changing:

    1. Upgrading our server environment. This will eliminate 95% of our errors on the site. We paid for an upgrade because we want to have a stable environment for the community to grow on.
    2. Changing our site structure to search engine friendly URLs. Other than our web addresses looking prettier, this wouldn’t benefit users at all. But it would mean that our site gets a high search ranking on Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines. Which is like gold!
    3. Announcing our new weekly resource giveaway. This was something we’d been cooking a while and we were using the downtime to create a little buzz before its launch this morning.

    Instead, our site is mostly down. I’m trying to get it sorted out with our host… but in the mean time our customers are not getting the services they’ve paid for. Right now, there is no benefit to the enhancements we’ve put in place because something with #1 went horribly and terribly wrong.

    In short, I am frustrated. I had hoped this weekend would be a home run. And so far this project has been a pop fly.

  • Forbidden Blizzard

    I don’t know if I’ve properly talked about my addiction to Mynameisbill.com. But it’s fascinating to see this filmmaker make his way around the globe and video blog his experiences. Today’s installment is unreal. To think of being able to get Starbucks and even DQ in the once forbidden city.

  • Saturday Tunes

    Saturday_tunes_2These are the next 10 tunes on my shuffle this morning as I do this little project at YMX. Complete with my ratings…

    1. Mat Kearney– Renaissance (Acoustic iTunes version) *****
    2. Five for Figting– 100 Years (Acoustic iTunes version) *****
    3. Aaron Shust– Worthy ****
    4. U2– Vertigo (Live from Milan 2005) *****
    5. Mike Farris– Sit Down Servant ****
    6. U2– Elevation (Live from Milan 2005) *****
    7. U2– City of Blinding Lights (Live from Milan) ***** (Man, quite a streak of U2 here. Loving life)
    8. Robert Glasper– One for the ‘Grew ****
    9. Jeremy Camp– Feels Like ****
    10. Survivor– Eye of the Tiger *****

    Every time I do that I kind of hope I won’t get too embarrassed. And each time I’m always a little shocked what happens when I press the shuffle button.

    What do you listen to when you do projects around the house?

  • Glutton for Punishment

    Yeah, I’m spending my morning doing site maintenance and a big upgrade. I even had to take the site and forums offline to make this happen. So far so good… a little bit of sitting around and waiting for stuff to happen.

    Equally bored or just morbidly curious? Watch what I’m doing… live!

    Licensetowed
    In other news, Kristen and I went to see License to Wed last night. Robin William was stinking funny. There were many moments when you could hear the audience roar with laughter. I think I may be putting together a proper review for the site. I thought it was worth seeing, cute, a little crass at times but not over the top. Actually, while there was some good pre-marital counseling sex talk there wasn’t a lot of cussing. And as someone who has actually done pre-marital counseling… there were many new ideas to implement. (Yeah, right!) There were some sacrilegious moments as well but not over the top. Long story short… it was a good date flick.

  • When Local Government does its Job

    You know, a lot of people whine about local government. And where I live we whine about living in a village where I have to pay 40% more municipal taxes than my neighbors just 150 yards to the north.

    But today is exactly why I love the Village of Romeo. For the past two weeks we’ve had an issue with our waste water backing up in to the basement. It wasn’t a major issue but it was starting to get annoying and a little worse. Each time we did laundry or something significant using water, a little would end up on the floor. 

    So today I stopped into the Village offices to report the problem. See, there is a major project going on in my block where they are putting in new water and gas lines. And I inquired as to whether it was possible that the digging they had done could have disturbed something in my sewer line. Literally within 15 minutes 2 guys were at my house looking around. Within 30 minutes they had a camera device running down my sewer line and determined that there was indeed a clog right about where they had been digging. And right now, less than 1 hour later, they are doing just about everything they can to clear the clog.

    Here’s the thing. It’s likely that this was caused by their digging. But it could have also just been a coincidence. They didn’t blame anyone, they didn’t suppose it wasn’t their fault. These two guys just got to work.

    This is why you live in a great place like Romeo. Sure… it’s not cheapest to live here. But it is great to have these services available when needed.

    Dsc02864
    Update:     The guys have left. At one point I think there were 10 trucks and 20 people here working on our problem. They have completely installed a new sewer line and blown/sucked out every bit of goo all over our house.  While they did indeed discover that one of the contractors had broken our sewer line they did fix it quickly, were extremely apologetics and professional. In fact, our plumbing is in better condition now than it was before. What’s more, it didn’t cost us a dime and they offered to pay for any costs we did incur. (We didn’t have any that I know of.) And as a bonus, I get to keep a front-end loader. They said I could sell it too if I wanted to. First person here with $15,000 gets to keep it. As is, no keys or pink slip.

  • 3 Free Tools for Your New Website

    3freetools
    “I just signed up for hosting, now what do I do?” This is a
    common question that we receive at YMX Hosting, so we’re happy to help
    you turn your dream of a self-hosted blog or youth ministry site into a
    reality. The best thing is that if you are willing to learn you can do
    most things for free.

    Unlike free website options like Blogger
    or WordPress, a self-hosted site is much less limited. You could use
    web publishing tools like Frontpage or iWeb, or you could use one of
    the many Open Source programs that are quickly dominating the web
    world. (Open Source translates practically to “free.”)

    For novice users, we strongly recommend choosing from this list of free tools.

    (more…)

  • 47

    That’s how high Paul (not quite 4) counts. he used to get stuck in the 15 range but it seems like numbers and letters are starting to click for him.

    Kids say funny things.     Paul has been telling us he’s going to be a mountain climber when he grows up and I believe him. He is fearless and brave to a fault. He also told us that he only wants to climb mountains with snow on them and that what he likes most about mountain climbing is that you don’t have to do it everyday. Some days you can just lay in bed and not go to work. (If it weren’t for the heights, I’d have the same goal.)

    Megan doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. She doesn’t want to be a gardener or a farmer. Nor does she want to be a vet like I would guess. She just knows she wants to get married and have kids in a house of her own where she can make the rules. If I had to put money on what Megan is going to do when she grows up, I’d put her in the education field. She loves school, she loves her teachers, and she really loves learning and reading and being around other kids.

    One thing I try not to do is paint my kids into a corner. I want them to be whomever God creates them to be. It wasn’t like Megan popped out and I said "Megan, my doctor!" And Paul popped out and I said, "Paul the police officer!" I just want them to serve God in whatever they do. I want them to love who they are and to love their life as much as Kristen and I love ours.

    One frustration I see a lot of in youth ministry is parents who are unwilling to allow their children to grow into who God is creating them to be. It’s as if mom/dad are God and they get to decide what their children will do with their lives. It’s an odd thing to be a third party to as well.

    I wonder how much of that I’ll do.

  • Steve Jobs on Youth Ministry

    Saw this over at Tim Schmoyer’s site, thought it applied to more than youth ministry… what do you think?

  • Ratatouille

    RatatouilleI just got back from taking Bradley, Paul, and Megan to see the new Disney/Pixar movie, Ratatouille.

    Film synopsis:
    Remy is a sophisticated rat with a high dollar palate. In other words, he doesn’t like to eat garbage like the rest of his family. His pursuit of quality food leads him into an adventure which lands him in Paris at the kitchen of famous chef, Gusteau. The rat befriends an emerging cook Linguine. The friendship gets both of them into trouble… and great fun ensues.

    My thoughts:
    Both the kids and I liked the movie a lot. In typical Disney style, they did shove a bit of their philosophy down your throat as "anyone can do anything they want." Beyond that… it’s a fantastically fun story with the characters we all have come to expect in a Disney flick. The kids loved the mayhem scenes, but got a little lost in the dialogue. It was also a little long for kids under 6… they started to wiggle and get ready for a nap at points. It was also clearly a Pixar film as it didn’t have the characteristic musical elements of a Disney movie. (Would have been too much like American Tale if that had happened.) Also in Pixar form, there were a few adult innuendos in there but not too many to distract.

    Over all, I enjoyed it. The kids enjoyed it. That makes it worth 4 prices of admission, 3 sodas, 2 tubs of popcorn, 2 bags of skittles, and a box of snow caps. (Paul originally got Sour Skittles but asked if I would go get him regular ones… I think he thought they were the tropical ones.) Thank goodness for the awesome matinee price at the Romeo theater. It was a summer sized treat.

  • My next 10 songs

    Top10_2
    Been about 6 months since I’ve done this. Here are the next 10 songs shuffling through my ears on my Nano. No cheating, ratings included.

    1. Consuming Fire (Hillsong United) *****
    2. Sing to the King (Passion: Sacred Revolution) *****
    3. Mercedes Baby (House of Heroes) *****
    4. Waking Up (Charlie Hall) ****
    5. Grace Like Rain (Todd Agnew) ****
    6. You Are My Joy (DCB) *****
    7. Clocks (Coldplay) ****
    8. What Have I Done (Adie) ****
    9. Lightning (Eric Church) ****
    10. Surrender (Dave Lueben) ****

    How about you? What are you listening to? No cheating. I’m tagging some readers on this one… Jason, Gerrard, Knotter,  Brian, and Jeremy.