Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Friday Funnies: Napoleon Gates

Check out the spoof video from the Microsoft PDC conference this week ... Gates and Dynamite ... wonder how much he got paid to do this spot with Bill?

The audio is bad so I found turning down the bass made the audio much easier to understand.

Kick Butt Kiosks part II

If you haven't already checked out our flippin' sweet kiosk units see them here

Since that post there have been some additions ...

Doors added...

Kiosks can now be attached together via partitions.  This will be a big help during workshop registrations as now there's a convenient place to store registration materials and such.  The partitions install and remove in under a minute and can hold 100 lbs easily.

We worked with a local company to design the kiosks so we don't have the blueprints.  I believe they will be marketing these kiosks in the very near future.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  Here's the contact info for the shop that made our kiosk units...

http://www.cornerstonecabinetry.net/

Farewell Terry Chapman

Terry Chapman, IS Director over at Fellowship Church, just posted that he's retiring from the blog world. 

Farewell Terry ... we'll miss ya and look forward to your come-back season down the road ;-)

Terry was one of the inspirations for me to start blogging and I do hope someone on the IT staff at FC will keep us updated on stuff they're doing to move ministry forward.  It's always helpful to hear what churches a few steps ahead of you are doing.

New Switchfoot - Nothing Is Sound

New Switchfoot album, Nothing is Sound, came out today!

I kept checking Yahoo Music for it to see how soon new releases would show up.  Finally at 10:30am it appeared and I immediately started listening :-)

I'm halfway through the album, but will reserve comments for after a complete listen through.

Just another thumbs up for the Yahoo Music service ... ok, how many of you are sick of hearing about Yahoo Music?  Ha!  I need to work out some sort of advertising deal with Yahoo :-)

Terry interviews Tony on church bloggin'

Terry Storch just interviewed my boss, Tony Morgan, over on bloggingchurch.com http://www.bloggingchurch.com/home/2005/09/podcast_intervi_1.html

Some fun and informative stuff about Tony, Granger Community Church, and how churches can utilize blogs to impact ministry.

Tony even remember to mention me ... suwheet!!! :-)

Friday Funnies: It's a big ad

Very creative and funny beer ads ...

Big Ad - http://www.bigad.com.au/

Small Ad - http://www.smallad.be/

Goodbye iTunes/iPod Part II

Goodbye iTunes/iPod Part 1 - for those that missed it

Seems like every blog I've read in the last 2 days is yakkin' about the new iPod Nano ... big deal I say.

I predict that unless Apple comes up with a subscription based service like Yahoo, Rhapsody, Napster ... that iTunes popularity will take a nose dive in the next 6-12 months.  Even more so if Yahoo gets a Mac client released.  However for Apple to come up with a way to manage digital rights within the MP3 format...well, let's say it would be a huge undertaking.

I've officially switched to Yahoo Music (signed up for the year subscription today) ... and I've influenced at least 3 other people to do the same in the past week ... (where's a referral program!)  When you do a side by side comparison it really does make sense.  Subscription based services are the future.  Look at the popularity of cable TV and dishes ... look at the huge surge in DVD subscription services like Netflix and BlockbusterOnline ... music is next.

Yes, Yahoo Music is a subscription based service.  Meaning you can download and listen to anything in their 1M+ library, but you don't own them.  To burn them to CD you pay .79 and it's yours.
No, their is no Mac software available yet.
No, it doesn't work with iPods because it's not MP3 format.
Yes, you can import MP3's and other formats into Yahoo Music.
Yes, the audio quality is very good (192kbs WMA format).  I'll try a blind test in the future and see if I can tell a diff between this WMA, MP3, Apple Lossless, and Real CD.

And the kicker .... Yes, after 30 days any songs you've downloaded will stop playing if you're no longer a subscriber.  The WMA format has built in DRM (digital rights management) required for subscription based services.
WHAT?  You mean I cancel and all the tunes stop working!!!  Well in that case I'm not interested.
Hello!!!  Why would you cancel?  It's $5/month or $7/mo if you pay month to month.  Why would you cancel?  How many songs are you buying on iTunes at $1/song?  For $5/mo you have access to over a million songs (and growing) and can download as much as you have space for.  It's just like cable TV.  I'm not cancelling cable.  I want to watch the Discovery Channel so I fork over $13/mo for basic cable.  If I cancel cable I loose the Discovery Channel.  I mean really it's $5/mo.

I've already found several new artists I'm diggin' because I have access to listen to whatever I want ... I'm enjoying new-to-me tunes from Casting Crowns and Shane and Shane ... plus I'm enjoying some old Police albums I don't have.  How much would that cost to do with iTunes?
Oh and yes, the new Switchfoot single, Star, is available...and it rocks!

I am sad that although you can buy the DMB albums they are not available 'yet' to listen to.  Not a biggie as I have most of the CD's already...but I hope that changes.
Ed and I both agree that the Yahoo client isn't nearly as refined as iTunes.  It's version 1 so I'm sure it'll get much better as time progresses.

Try it out and see ... Yahoo has a free 7 day trial ... go nuts!  If you don't like it that's OK.

Here's Engadget's take on Yahoo Music ... and you can scroll down and read the many comments left by readers which actually helped me make the switch from iTunes/iPod.  I thought this comment in particular was good :-)

I'd love to hear from anyone that's given Yahoo Music a good workout.  What are your thoughts?  Are you going to subscribe?  Why/why not?

New Lotus Exige coming to US

New Lotus coming to the US...

After the success of the Lotus Elise being sold in the US the past year, Lotus modded the Elise a bit and created the Exige (shown above).  It's slated to arrive in the US next year ... drool!

This may be one of the best "real world" sports cars out there.  Why?  Check this out...
* It's not large like most other sports cars ... easy to park and takes up less garage space than your normal sedan.
* It's very fuel friendly ... averages 32mpg with up to 41mpg on the highway!
* It goes like stink ... 0-60mph in 4.9s (that's Porsche 911 territory!) ... 147 top speed ... 8350rpm redline ... from a 1.8L 4 banger!
* Handles like a dream ... racing tuned suspension ... big brakes ... basically a street legal race car
* Tires won't cost you a fortune unlike the big cars ... 195/50/16 front and 225/45/17 rear
* MSRP around $53K which is an incredible deal for this level of performance.
* Only 350 will come to the US and many of those will only see track time ... so you be driving something very exclusive.

Talk about a killer commuter car ... sweet looks, fast, and doesn't guzzle gas!  And on the weekends it would be a killer autocross car.  See, I don't need some mega-dollar exotic car to make me happy.  This simple and reasonably priced beauty would bring me so much joy.  I look forward to receiving one from you my faithful readers.  Please make the color silver as you see here and include the optional Limited Slip Diff.  Thanks in advance.

Catalyst Conference ... anyone going?

Got my flight itinerary today (thanks Tim) for heading out to the big Catalyst leadership conference in Georgia Oct 5/6.  This years speaker lineup looks great!

Andy Stanley ... Senior Pastor North Point Community Church
Erwin McManus ... does he really need an introduction?
Malcolm Gladwell ... Tipping Point author
John Maxwell ... well duh, it's his conference afterall :-)
Donald Miller ... Blue Like Jazz author
Louie Giglio ... Passion Movement founder
Bill Hybels ... Hmm, can you say Willow Creek?  Bill rocks.

I got to go to Catalyst in 2003 and it was incredible.  First time I'd ever heard of Rob Bell and he blew me away.  I'm very stoked to get to go again this year...though unlike last time it will be without my wife :-(

There's still time to register for this event ... if you need some recharging this will do it!  7000+ people worshipping together is just amazing.  Then pile on some excellent teaching ... brutha, it's goooood stuff.

Anyone else out there going?  Would be fun to meet up if you are.

Disaster Recovery ... what's your plan?

With the tragedy in South it got me thinking recently about DR plans (disaster recovery). 

There are hundreds of churches that just got demolished and my heart goes out to them.  It didn't hit me until today that I'd wager almost all of them had no IT DR plan.  How can I say that?  I've yet to talk to a smaller sized church that has a good backup system in place let alone any DR plans.  Their membership database is on the secretaries PC, their financial records are on the Finance Directors PC, etc.  There might be a floppy disk at someone's home with a database backup ... and we all know how reliable floppies are.  My hope is that with the advanced warning, churches got their critical data off to a safe place.

Does your church have a DR plan?  Block out a day this week to focus on creating one ... seriously, do it!  Sit down and think absolute worst case senarios ... if you came back to work tomorrow and your building was burnt to the ground what would you do?  Where's your critical data?  How would you get systems up and running? Don't forget about phones.  Ministry still has to occur even if your computers/servers are black and toasty.  In this age, staff rely on technology so if you're responsible for your churches IT you must have a DR plan regardless of church size.

At Granger we're immune to hurricanes and flooding, but tornados are a real threat as well as fire.  Our DR plan isn't by any means perfect, but we have a plan and periodically we tweak on it and test it.  I'll go over our DR plan in several installments over the next few weeks lest this be a flippin' hugely long post.  ;-)

PART 1)  Power Outages - suddenly the power goes out in your building!  Yup, though it seems very simple, this is part of your DR plan.  Servers should never, never go through a hard shutdown.  Make sure your critical equipment is plugged into a good UPS (Uniterruptable Power Supply).  We use APC UPS products.  Great, so now your servers are on battery backup.  What happens when the batts tank?  A good UPS unit will have an interface to connect to a server/PC.  This allows you to schedule what happens when the battery reaches a certain level.  So when the batt hits say 10% the server will shut itself down properly.

Last week Ed and I actually tested part of our power outage strategy.  We yanked the plugs out of wall for the server rack and waited.  The main UPS picked up without any hestitation.  It's a 2200VA unit powering 5 servers, 1 switch, 1 monitor, and 1 DLT tape drive.  Within moments of going on batt power Ed and I both received Nextel text messages and emails telling us the servers were running on batt power.  Our main server is connected to the UPS unit and we have 2 events set in the power management utility.  Upon going on batt power a simple script runs which sends the messages (assuming our ISP's are not down). 

Once the batt reaches 20% remaining capacity (took about 12 mins) a second script runs sending us messages that the servers are shutting down, then the script tells all the servers to power down.  One by one the servers do a gracefull shutdown until the rack is ghostly quiet and all blinking lights are dark.  So should we have a power outage for longer than 10 mins it's very comforting to know that the servers will shut themselves down nicely and send a little message that they are doing so.

We didn't get around to testing the IDF which has our ISA box, but it's setup pretty much the same.  We also didn't test all the switches from the server rack to the CSU/DSU which must be up if we are to get the text messages...not critical, but it's certainly nice to have to get the heads up if we're offsite.

We'll be budgeting for more UPS power next year...I'd like to have 30 mins of runtime for the servers.  I'd like to also have UPS units for our checkin PC's so in the event of power outage you could still run child checkin ... again assuming our ISP's are still available.

So there's Part 1 of our DR plan.  Stay tuned for more...