Month: October 2007

  • On the tarmac in seattle

    Well… we made it here to seattle. I have never flown this far in my life and not left the country. this is the same flight time as going to dublin from detroit…

  • We are here in atlanta

    Nothing really to share. boring flight and a micro-layover. our flight to seattle leaves in about 1 hour.

  • At bishop airport, flint


    Well… step one of our adventure has gone pretty smooth. the kids are safely tucked away with grandma and they seem pretty much fine with our trip so far.

    next stop is Hotlanta. we are scheduled to get to SeaTac about 11 EST.

    this is our first flight out of flint. the shuttle service from the parking lot was unreal. the little bus was there by the time we got out of the car. and with parking at just $30 and about half as far as DTW I think we will have todo this again.

    more later from ATL. peace out. A-town

  • Soccer went a little better


    Paul still isn’t fully into it. but he did go on the field today… with mom in tow. there are lots of other pictures in the mobile pics area.

  • Saturday Tunes

    Saturday_tunes_2Saturday’s in the fall means a couple of things. College football, soccer with the kids, beginning the winterization process around the house, (tough to do when it’ll be 90 today) and otherwise enjoying hanging around the family. The packing has begun for our cruise… we leave for the Seattle area right after church tomorrow.

    With all that stuff cooking, here are the next 10 tracks pounding their hellish lyrics into my frontal lobe this Saturday. As always, no cheating ratings included.

    1. The Middle, Mat Kearney *****
    2. By His Wounds, Mac Powell ***
    3. O Worship the King, Chris Tomlin ****
    4. Postcards from Italy, Beirut *****
    5. Can’t Go On, Group 1 Crew *****
    6. Make it Easy, Lusine ****
    7. Tears of the Saints, Leeland *****
    8. Alibi, Michael Tait *****
    9. Life is a Highway, Rascal Flatts ***** (this country is for you Dawn)
    10. Sleeper, Everyday Sunday ***** (a song based on my life verse, doesn’t get any better to me)

    How about you? Who’s rockin’ your pod today?

  • Operating Systems and Browsers

    I’m into dorky stats… so this will only be interesting to me.

    Here’s an interesting trend about Mac vs. PC users at Youth Ministry Exchange. (PC is the larger number)

    • Jan-May 2007: (90% vs. 10%)
    • June-August 2007: (85.5% vs. 14.5%)
    • September-today: (84.5% vs. 15.5%)

    So, Mac is gaining on PC among YMX users, the growth has just stalled.

    Here’s an interesting trend about the 3 ost popular web browsers used to access the site.     (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari.. combining Mac + PC numbers)

    • Jan-May 2007 (46-48-4)
    • June-August 2007 (47-44-5)
    • September-today (55-36-7)

    So, more and more YMX users are actually switching back to Internet Explorer.

    There are more stats that I could share to bore you to death. But the point here is that the trends are not what you would think they would be. Based on the advertising and the hype that is out there it would be easy to determine that Mac has taken a bigger chunk of the users from PC… but that trend doesn’t hold true among YMX users. A 5% increase is significant, but not a shift.

    Likewise, the shift away from Firefox and back to Internet Explorer (and the 3% increase in Safari users) is surprising. (Shocking, really.)

    Snapshot stats… (year to date)
    Dial-up users: 5%
    Absolutely unique IPs accessing the site: 55k
    Average pageviews by a visitor per session: 10
    Average time per visitor: 10:55

    All stats are provided by Google Analytics. All are based on pageviews.

  • CSR: VistaPrint.com

    Csr_bad
    Recently I purchased some stuff through VistaPrint. While I’m 100% satisfied with the products and price of the printed materials I purchased, I am 100% dissatisfied with a marketing tactic I will call, "Spam gone wild!" (See warning at bottom)

    Location:
    www.vistaprint.com (The products I received were printed in Western Michigan)

    Description:
    This is a low-cost online printer. There are a lot of them out there for loads of other things, but they seem to focus on the simple business cards, letterhead, and promotional items.

    Service:
    This would more accurately be labeled, "Lack of customer service." To keep costs low they don’t have a decent website for customer service. In my case I purchased a product and then realized for the same price I could purchase a better product. So, within 10 minutes I placed a new order and tried to cancel my original one. Needless to say, I wasn’t allowed to cancel it and got stuck with the worse product as well as the charge. What a crock! (Yet it was still so cheap that I don’t care all that much.)

    Cost:
    Cheap. Nice packaging, fast delivery. I paid for the upgrade to overnight delivery so I actually paid 400% of the printing cost in shipping and handling, but it is nice to have an option to get stuff printed and delivered in 24 hours.

    Vistaprint
    Rating:
    I can’t give VistaPrint a good rating. In fact, they must receive a "bad" and "avoid" because of their spam practice. After checking out you are asked if you’d like to receive a coupon for 50% off your next order. It is masked so well that you would gather that it is an opt-in coupon from VistaPrint. However, it is not. It is from a scam that uses your personal information  to charge you $15/month for access to coupons online. Since I purchased 2 separate products from VistaPrint, I accidentally opted into $30/month in coupons.

    No problem, right? Just click the link and cancel it. Treat it like any other spam. This is where the "Spam gone wild" comes in. They have already recieved my credit card information from VistaPrint… which I didn’t authorize, and will bill you within 30 days if you do not call their 800 number to opt out. I did this before the deadline, but the process of doing so was not easy. I’m not sure how this practice is legal, but clearly they are getting away with it. Can you imagine how many corporate buyers don’t notice the spam attack, or worse… how many spam filters pick up the notice and you start getting billed $15/month. For most corporate credit card users it would take a few months to notice that devious practice.

    This is why I am recommending my friends to avoid VistaPrint. Their customer service represents the worst in predatory practice. While their actual printing services are good and the prices are excellent. Their company has no way to cancel unwanted items and shares information with a scam.

  • move

    In the past few weeks I’ve heard a number of people… students, adults, business people, and youth ministry types use a phrase that I don’t believe in.

    "I’m waiting for the Lord to make it clear."

    This is a classic Christian stall statement. It makes me sick because it blames our inability to be decisive on God. God isn’t, by His very nature, indecisive.

    I don’t believe God calls Christians to stall.     I believe God calls us to act. The very core of our role as believers is found in the Great Commission and the key word is a verb… GO.

    • I think I want to look for a new job, but I’m waiting for the Lord to make it clear.
    • I like Joe but he’s not a Christian, so I’m waiting on God to make it clear to me.
    • I feel compelled to reach Mary for Christ, but I don’t know how to start so I’m just waiting on the Lord.
    • I want to make this deal but I just don’t know…. I’m waiting on the Lord.

    So, what are you waiting for? Are you blaming God for missed opportunities? (Which is the next step, isn’t it? "I was thinking about a new job, one became available that looked great, but I decided to wait until God made it clear to me, but then the job offer expired… so God closed that door.")

    Take some action.

    • Turn that prayer request into a first step.
    • Stop liking the boy who isn’t a Christian… God wouldn’t want you to sin.
    • Get some evangelism training.
    • Pursue the deal.

    I think a lot of the people I know are indecisive, not because of a character flaw, but because they lack the actual skills to make good decisions. I’m not an expert, and I make mistakes, but this is how I make decisions.

    1. Consult the Word. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many times something that makes perfectly good sense is actually taught in the Bible. Make a good decision would never involve my sinning.
    2. Seek counsel. Seriously, I never skip this step when it comes to big decisions. Heck, I even seek the counsel of my friends, pastoral-types, Kristen, parents, and the people in my life whom God has placed for MINOR decisions.
    3. Self-evaluation. When I hear what God’s unshakable word says, then listen to the counsel of the wise people God has put in my life… I evaluate the decision.. is this the best decision for me? Do I have to do this now? Is this too good to be true? Is this as bad as it looks? What kind of emotions is this bringing about? Is this a distraction from my life’s mission?

    When all 3 steps are done. Boom… I make a decision.

    I trust you Lord. I trust that His ways are better than my ways. And I trust that His path is better than my path.

    While I never want to be decision happy… I also never want to counsel people to blame God for their inability to get stuff done in their lives. I believe God has equipped each believer with the ability to make the best/wisest decisions and make stuff happen. It’s our role to trust God’s leading.

    Let our yes be yes and our no be no. But let God’s people be decisive.     God’s name is "I am." You don’t have to wait for "I am."

  • Great discussion

    As I made mention of the other day, Youth Ministry Exchange is raising it’s rate. Part of the rate change is that we offered existing members a small window where they could get 3 years of our service at a great price.

    A little side benefit of this has been an amazing side discussion that has caught fire about the very nature of our online community. It’s quite fascinating to hear why different people use our site, what they expect from the site, as well as their assumptions about how the site operates.

    My one hope is that we are as transparent as we can possibly be.

  • 30 days for 90 minutes

    That’s what it takes to pull of a MainStreet. It takes about 30 days of resting, creating, evaluating, tweaking, practicing, imagining, motivating, managing, designing, dreaming, and promoting the next MainStreet.

    Tonight was MainStreet. It was a good one. But here’s the thing… the next one is already just around the corner.

    The question isn’t, "How do you keep creating new and fresh stuff every 30 days?" That’s too obvious. The real question is "How do you implement a process that sustains creativity every 30 days 11 times per year, year after year?" That’s the trick.

    So, what is the answer? A good team. A willing team. A team who has fun. A team who feeds one another with enthusiasm. And a team who is feeding themselves from God’s Word.

    Ultimately, our creativity point back to a creative Creator, doesn’t it?