• Buy a Good Lock for Your Luggage

    lost luggageAccording to a recent Fox news story, the TSA knows that $31 million in items have been stolen from bags since the agency took over airport security. To highlight, here is how it goes down most often.

    1. The most dangerous time for your luggage is the time between your initial check-in and departure.
    2. Typically, just one person works in the baggage holding area sorting luggage onto various carts, creating the perfect opportunity.
    3. Since luggage isn’t locked, that person can take items like expensive shoes, perfumes, and cameras easily.
    4. To distract from the crime, that person can then misdirect your luggage to another airport to cast the blame on numerous other people if it is reported.

    TSA JacketThree tips for keeping your valuables safe while you fly.

    1. Carry valuables in carry-on.
    2. If you must check valuables, the article suggests not having brand new or matching luggage as that is a clue to them that your bags are valuable.
    3. Put a TSA approved lock on your bags. This won’t prevent crime completely but it may encourage a would-be thief to go after an easier target.

    Top 5 TSA Approved Luggage Locks

    1. TSA Approved Lock with Search Indicator by Travelaccessory. This has an indicator light to tell you if you bag has been searched. If it is red and you didn’t get a TSA notice, you know your bag has been tampered with.
    2. TSA Approved Set of 4 Brass Luggage Locks by Master Lock. This is perfect for a family. Not only are the locks high quality brass, with a single key unlocking and getting unpacked couldn’t be easier.
    3. TSA Pelilock – 1506 by Pelican. This combination-style lock is simple and does the job perfectly every time.
    4. TSA Accepted Cable Lock in Multiple Colors by Master Lock. For those with luggage that locks better with the cable style latch, this is excellent. With 5 different colors to chose from, might as well accessorize.
    5. Strapsafe by PacSafe. If you’ve got big luggage and need to lock it down with straps this is the best. With straps extending to 74 inches, this should do it for anyone.

    HT to Boing Boing

  • A new wave of ringtones

    I think I’d like to get this one.

    HT to Marko

  • Pancake Saturday Expands to Stoney

    We have a spoiled dog. Stoney, our family yellow lab, loves our children most for their leftovers. There is almost nothing that Stoney won’t eat so he patiently waits for Megan & Paul to finish knowing there is a likelihood his bowl will acquire what’s left.

    But in the last two weeks Kristen has  taken this to a new level of spoiled. She now makes Stoney a pancake on Saturday mornings too. No wonder he likes her best. 

  • Interior Signs are Here

    This is something someone like me gets excited about. We ordered new interior signs for the church building… and they are here! The pictures here are from my phone so the quality doesn’t do them any justice. But when we get them mounted it’s going to look smoking cool.

    kidstown welcome signinterior signs 3

    The big one of the left will go behind the welcome counter to our kids ministry. It’s HUGE and the quality of it doesn’t come through in the picture. It’s so much cooler than we thought it would be. When Jimmy and I picked it up we sounded like broken records… “That is so cool.” “Wow, we love it.”

    The picture on the right are the signs for the elevator. Obviously the one on top goes in the “adult area” and the one below is for down in KidsTown.

    And for those who live locally, you’ll be seeing stuff that looks like this around town soon.  If you haven’t been to Romeo in the last two years or so, the interior is not like you’ve seen before. Most of the public areas have been completely remodeled. Shoot me an email and I’ll show you around.

  • Light Force All Night Party Promo



    There is really no reason for the monkey, I just thought the colors and all were a lot of fun. So, Light Force students… expect me to stuff a handful of these in your hands Sunday morning.

  • We have an overnighter on March 7th

    I saw this video in an email earlier in the week. With an all night party on the agenda in just 10 days or so… it really touched home for me. To quote our worship leader, “I was like a cowboy as one lonesome tear ran down my face.”

    Of course, the stuff he talks about has never happened at Romeo. Our all-night parties have always been fun, clean, safe, etc. But generally about 4:00 AM I start to question my sanity as the cozy, warm bed becomes increasingly desirable with each passing minute.

    So why do I do it? It’s for the students, duh!

    HT to Josh

  • The Road Trip from Hell Winner

    road tripMy students know that I love a road trip. There is nothing quite like climbing into a church van and driving to a destination. So a few weeks back YMX decided to have a contest to find out “Who has the worst road trip story?”

    It turned out that my NYWC buddy Chris Wyatt of South Carolina (and an adoptive parent newly back from Ethiopia) had the craziest story. This beats any road trip nightmare ever! Read the rest of the stories. If you like ironies, check out how Gospel.com avoided using the word “hell.”

    Here’s the winner:

    We’ll start with the fact that the last 20 miles of the trip took 2.5 hrs, driving over steep, curvy mountain roads in a whiteout. It snowed three feet in those two hrs. I was driving a loaded van, pulling a 10 ft. trailer, leading a caravan of several other vehicles. We couldn’t pull off of the road, and cars were going into ditches all around us. So, after 12 hrs of driving, we finally get to the lodge. We wake up the following morning to 18 degree temps and strong cross-winds. As we are walking to get the kids their skis, we start down a set of steps. One of our chaperones promptly falls on an icy step and breaks her ankle. Badly. I wrap my coat around her, and take off looking for ski patrol. We hook her up to a sled, and get her the infirmary. I then have to dig our van out of the snow (more than an hour), and go off the road twice driving to the infirmary. The nearest hospital with the facilities to help is almost two hours away over icy mountain roads. We FINALLY get to the hospital, and they tell us she needs surgery. They don’t have the facilites to do the surgery. So they put her in an air cast and send us back to the lodge. We get to the lodge and there are no wheelchairs, so we have to carry her to the room on a luggage rack. We get her settled in and drugged up, and my phone rings. It’s the ski patrol office. I have another girl with an injury, and one of my boys has been in a collision that required the other party in said collision to be airlifted out with a kidney injury (NOT my kid’s fault). So he’s been stuck in the patrol office all day, as he can only be released to his legal guardian (me for that trip…the other party tried to sue him for the wreck, and it went to court…our kid won). I take care of the injury, get the kid back on the slopes. The following day weather is so bad that no one can ski. Every kid at the place was holed up in the lodges. For a whole day. We start the trip back the following day. Our chaperone with the shattered ankle has never been in the mountains before this. She is doped up on painkillers. We are about 10 minutes into the trip when she suddently projectile vomits – right into the back of my wife’s head. There’s nowhere to stop for another 20 miles or so until we get to the bottom of the mountain. We finally stop, and I clean vomit up off of the van while my wife goes into the bathroom to try to clean the chunks out of her hair. Well, you know what happens when a van full of people has to smell vomit for hours. Everyone started chunking, and we had to stop every 30 minutes or so to empty out plastic bags full of barf. One of the vehicles broke down, another got lost from the caravan. It took us over 15 hrs to make what SHOULD have been an 8 hr. trip. On top of that, three kids ran out of money, and I had to foot their meals on the promise from their parents that I would be repaid on arrival. Did I ever see that cash? Nay.

  • Will you pray for my ministry?

    Tonight we are starting something new. In a lot of way I wish I had access to this new thing years ago. At Romeo, we say “small groups are where life change happens.” And I am entering into this new study, Life Hurts… God Heals, truly praying to see that come to life. I long to see this study connect hurting students to a God who heals.

    Will you pray with me that life-change will occur as we help our students deal with some realities in their lives? Will you pray that as we deal with the “real stuff” in their lives that they will open themselves up to the healing that comes from God?

    Why are you teaching this? Let’s face it, 100% of us and 105% of our students are hurting somehow. I want to equip them with the skills to face their “stuff” and I want to equip them with the skill to help their friends face their stuff.

    Want to learn more about what we’re teaching? Check out this link

    Want to see your student get involved? We’d love to hear from parents or students, shoot me an email or leave a comment. mclanea@gmail.com

  • Blog notes

    Careful observers of adammclane.com will notice that I constantly tinker. Anyone who has met me in person knows that I’m a total gadget geek. I sat next to a friend at a meeting yesterday and she kind of laughed at me as I casually hooked up my gadgets. I turned my phone into a mobile wifi router, popped open the macbook, and posted notes about the meeting on my twitter account. (Appears here as the mini-blog) That’s the kind of thing I do all the time. I am a relentless multi-tasker. And I have a serious appetite for all things web-geek.


    So, a couple changes worth noting.
    – I tweaked the about me page as I saw it was getting read a lot.
    – I added my rules for blogging to the tabs up top.
    – I created an ability to rate posts. It’s super simple to do, completely anonymous, and a fun way to tell me what you think of a post.

    These are all pretty minor. But worth pointing out as I rearrange the furniture here and there.

  • The highlight of the Oscars

    If you missed the Oscars last night, this is the can’t miss moment of the night. Kristen and I watched this film… great story. (A little too much music for me) But the song is incredible.

    HT to Kristen and First Showing