Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Perimeter Bound

Ed and I are leaving for Atlanta tomorrow (Thursday) to spend a few days with Tony Dye and his IT staff at Perimeter Church.  We don't often get let out of our cage so this is a special treat :-)

We're looking forward to hanging out with Tony's gang and yaking about VMware, SANs, and general IT challenges we both face.  I'll try to remember to take some pics along the way.

Uber volunteer Dustin is on call should something blow up while we're offsite.  Thanks Dustin!

So far it looks like the weather will be COOLER in GA then the insane heat we have in Indiana currently ... that's crazy.

Gone Fishin'

My Dad and I took the boys fishin' Sunday evening at a nearby pond.  The Blue Gills were biting like crazy ... we even landed some nice big ones.

My Dad and his catch of the day

Jacob caught something quite unexpected ... as he was reeling in he accidentally snagged ...

... a huge bull frog!  The hook just nicked the frogs rear leg.  He was pretty pumped to have caught something nobody else had :-)

Ok, quick survey ... how many of you have ever eaten frog legs?  I did once back in high school ... seems like they tasted like chicken.

(no animals were harmed during the making of this post ... err, well, ok so a hook in your lip or back leg probably could be considered as harmful ... so let's say no animals were severely harmed.)

Adobe finally offers non-profit pricing

You may already know, but this month Adobe finally announced it's going to offer non-profit discounts.  About time!  I was worried when Adobe bought Macromedia that discounts on the Macromedia line might be in jepordy ... thankfully that didn't change.

So now instead of paying $700 for Photoshop, you can get it for $300.  Instead of $270 for Acrobat it's $100.  Or how 'bout the Creative Sweet Premium for only $400!

Details (what little I could find) about the non-profit program on Adobe's site here

Vader to Palpatine - I have some bad news

If you're a Star Wars fan you'll love this video ... Vader calling home to explain how he kinda sorta let the original Death Star get blowed up.

From the TechRepublic website:  Once again, be in awe of Robot Chicken, which does a gut-bustingly funny video send-up of Vader calling home to explain how he kinda sorta let the original Death Star get blowed up. Pay close attention to the opening dialogue, which features Palpatine explaining how he pwned Yoda in Episode III. YouTube^?, you'll be the death of us all.

Not surprisingly, since Palpatine is an egomaniacal galactic despot, everyone's favorite Skywalker-stalking Emperor is blatantly violating several basic rules of disaster recovery, management best practices and meeting decorum. No wonder the Empire fell to Indiana Jones and that whiny farmboy!

WARNING ... not kid friendly due to language

Friday Funnies: Pres Bush and impersonator

Got this one off David's blog ... very funny video of Bush poking fun at himself :-)

You've never seen this used on a laptop before!

So we've got several older Dell C610 laptops ... and 2 or 3 have screen hinges that can barely keep the screen held up.  After talking with other people that have worked with C600 series laptops, even our local Dell repair guy, the consensus was there is no way to tighten the hinges...you have to get new hinges...or do you???

A while back Ed had one the laptops apart to show our intern the problem ... which then led to looking at the hinge one last time to determine if there was anything else we could try before breaking down and buying some hinges.  This particular laptop would no longer even hold up the screen at any angle.

I suddenly had a crazy idea ... let's use bolt cutters! ... yes, you read that right ... bolt cutters to see if deforming the hinge a bit would increase the hinge tension.  We all started laughing, then I called our maintenance guys and actually went and got one :-)

It was pretty hard to hold the bolt cutter steady while laughing.  I applied some pressure and what do you know ... the hinge was tighter!!  So I applied some more ... even better! 

Then I applied a little more and ... well let's say the hinge was so tight that the hinge pin would no longer move and it sheared the part that holds the screen to the hinge clean off :-)

So we called this a successful failure ... a beta test if you will :-)

So Ed found some used hinges on ebay for $20-25 per hinge (after shipping) unfortunately it requires pretty much taking the entire laptop apart.  Just our luck that the hinge we got wasn't very tight enough either...grrr.

So out came the bolt cutters for 1 more try.  This time I used very small pressure increments and on both hinges.  It seemed to work, but after opening/closing repeatedly it loosened up again.  Nuts.  More pressure ... it would be tight then loosen after opening/closing ... again more pressure ... then finally snap!  Another busted hinge ... rats!

We're left now with trying to find someplace that sells new hinges.  We haven't yet called Dell to see what they have available, but I'd think they'd have some for any C600 series still under warranty.

Soooooo ... I'm betting that I'm the first person to ever use bolt cutters to work on a laptop!  Doing it old skool baby!!  I'm so bummed it wasn't a permanent solution though.  Oh well, we got some great laughs out of the whole ordeal.

Public Beta of Office 2007 Available

I've not been checking other IT blogs ... but in case they're not covering this or you've not seen it ...

Tuesday Microsoft made available for download to the public the beta 2 release of Office 2007

I've been using a prior beta version for a while on my laptop and it was quite stable for early beta software ... Outlook did cause some headaches though.

Tonight I downloaded Office, OneNote, and Visio 2007 betas ... and I'll start using them tomorrow on my new IBM/Lenovo T60p laptop.  Hopefully beta 2 has worked out the Outlook bugs 'cause I really liked the interface and some of the new features.

I'm looking forward to this new release of Office and I'm convinced the new user interface, although quite different, will really help users do more with Office.  We'll probably wait about a year after it's released before we upgrade all our computers.  That should give enough time for us to benefit from the knowledge pool of all those early adopters :-)

New Hoobastank ... 2 thumbs up

I'm not a Hoobastank fan ... in fact ask me to name or hum one of their tunes and I'd just give ya a blank stare.  Yes, play "Reason" or "Crawling in the Dark" and I'd recognize the song, but I wouldn't know it was by Hoobastank.  However, my buddy Mark sent me an email last week telling me I "MUST" listen to their new album entitled Every Man for Himself.  Mark was my college roommate at Taylor University for 3 years so we know each other's musical tastes even years ( wow, too many now ) later.

So I fired up Yahoo Music Engine, typed in Hoobastank, selected the new album and was soon listening ... and was immediately hooked.  Wow, great music and some well written lyrics ... sweet!
[Oh, and I should mention that I didn't have to purchase the album to listen to it ... $5/mo and I listen/download whatever I want :-)]

Out of the gate the first 2 songs blew me away ... especially "Moving Forward" ... I really dig this song.  It starts off with some excellent accapella riff ala Queen followed by music that continues to build to the end infusing yet more Queen style with some Journey-ish na na na's.  This song has hooks galore and you can't help but to sing along ... it's been playing in my mind all weekend.

I figured as I got deeper in things would fade, but the album continues with more great tracks ... not a dud in the bunch and I really dig the wide musical diversity ... some crunchy ... some soft ... great vocal harmonies throughout ... sweet guitar riffs ... even some nice horns here and there.  These guys seem to be really singing from the heart ... they're searching ... I pray they find the real Truth.

Lyrically, track 4, "Inside of You", is the only one that's sexually suggestive ... the song has an incredible groove though.  If it's not already getting massive radio play, it's just a matter of time.

So if you're looking for some great music (with no swear words) with some well written lyrics indicative of today's culture ... Hoobastank's Every Man for Himself fits the bill perfectly.  For a "secular" (grrr, I really dislike using such labels) album I give it 2 thumbs way up.  Umm, does that now make me a Hoobastank fan?  They're playing in Indy on 7/02 ... hmm, I might have to go see these guys live.  Road Trip anyone?

Moving Forward is my favorite track ... and for those interested lyrics follow ...

At least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward...

I stand before, a road that will lead,
Into the unknown. At least unknown to me.
I want to go, but I'm paralyzed with fear.
Fear of a choice, where the outcome isn't clear.

Nooo, but still I gooo.

And I take, the first step of a million more.
And I'll make mistakes I've never made before.
But at least I'm moving forward, at least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward...

I wonder if, the journey will be,
Short as I hope, or much longer than it seems.
But either way, I've made up my mind.
I'm through feeling scared, I'm leaving that behind.

Sooo, Now it's time to gooo.

And I take, the first step of a million more.
And I'll make mistakes I've never made before.
But at least I'm moving forward, at least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward...

All the while I'll be singing,

Na, nana nana

And I take, the first step of a million more.
And I'll make mistakes I've never made before.
But at least I'm moving forward, at least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward, at least I'm moving forward.

And I take, the first step of a million more!
And I'll make mistakes I've never made before!
But at least I'm moving forward, at least I'm moving forward.
At least I'm moving forward, at least I'm moving forward!

Mo-ving, for-ward.
Mo-ving, for-ward.
Mo-ving, for-ward.
Mo-ving, for-ward...

Na, nana nana

Church IT Roundtable registration is open ... emails sent

Registration is now open for the Church IT Roundtable at GCC Sept 20th.  As mentioned before this is "by invitation only" at this point.

This morning I sent out replies to everyone who emailed me asking to be notified when registration opened.  That email included the secret link to register ... shh, it's a secret :-)

If I somehow missed getting an email to you please shoot me an email with the subject "IT Roundtable" to gccjason (at) gmail (dot) com

Looking forward to meeting many of you for the first time.

Did you miss me?

Geepers!  Almost 3 weeks without a post...how pitiful is that!

Life just got itself in a big ole hurry ... and I'm riding out the storm.  Nothing major, just lots of stuff going on and some items had to take a backseat.  I hope you all except my apology.

I've got a bunch of stuff to blog about just no time to do so presently.  I'm seriously considering just yakin' into my sweet new Treo 700w and posting the audio file for those interested...that's a lot faster than typing :-)

I'm so far behind in reading blogs it isn't funny.  I may have to just mark everything as read in bloglines and start fresh.  Anything good I've missed?

So if you've emailed or called me ... I will reply ... eventually.

Geeks for Jesus!!
Jason