Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Church Tech's Biggest Loser 2 Contest Results!

Thursday was the end of our Church Tech Biggest Loser 2 contest.  37 people signed up to participate this time making the total cash pot $925!  Also, Alan Hunt of VR6 Systems (EqualLogic, DataDomain, and Dell Storage) donated a Garmin Nuvi 200 as a prize as well.

BL2 ran from May 29-Aug 28 (13 weeks) and in the end the total weight lost across all participants was 444.7 lbs!  Wow!

A HUGE (yes, pun intended) CONGRATS to Steve Huffman, Network Admin at Blackhawk Church, who was our biggest loser this round ... 43lbs / 17.13% loss!!  Steve walks away with 75% of the cash pot!

Here are our winners and those that broke the 10% lost mark. Way to go!

17.13%
Steve Huffman 1st Place! 75% of Pot
43 lbs

13.23%
Sunny Thomas 2nd Place - 20% of Pot or Garmin
25 lbs

12.81%
Jared Barden 3rd Place - The remainder of 20% or Garmin
26 lbs

12.06%
Chris Blair 4th Place - 5% of the Pot
24 lbs

10.90%
Matthew Irvine (yes, this is the guy that won our BL1 contest)
23 lbs

10.73%
James Shultz
25 lbs

10.03%
Matthew Peters
29 lbs

And no ... I didn't loose anything this round ... in fact I went up a few lbs ... rats!  Summer is a tough time to loose :-)

Congrats to all the losers and get ready for Biggest Loser 3 coming in October. 

GCC IT Roundtable Sept 17th!

It's just over 3 weeks until our annual IT Roundtable event here at GCC!  Are you coming?  It's only $49!  What a deal! :-)

Register here ... and though not listed on the registration page, we have an optional dinner (free!) the evening after the roundtable so schedule your travel accordingly.

Our IT Roundtable* is part of GCC's Innovate conference that runs Sept 17-19 ... check out the schedule and bring a friend or 3.

What's a roundtable like?

Last year's GCC IT Roundtable

Big list of past roundtable topics

* not to be confused with the IT Roundtable at Seacoast in October

Weekly Twitter Roundup

This past weeks tweets filtered for mainly IT content for your viewing pleasure...

8/18/08

• 08:50 Heading into office. Today is close tickets day so we can create some room for brainstorming this week.
• 09:47 Our total ticket queue is down to 18...I am ticket man this morning!
• 12:58 @wantmoore just left in a rush to go grab his new iPhone :-)
• 13:44 Once again our backup space (7.5TB!) is maxed out..grr. My call=stop backing up ALL music and video files for now.
• 14:01 twitpic.com/86go - @wantmoore just arrived with his new fruitPhone!
• 16:00 took Ed and Justin to Ciber/IBM open house..hearing about IBM storage.
• 16:17 twitpic.com/86wq - Uber IT vol Tom starts giving us a tour of the new ciber datacenter
• 16:37 twitpic.com/86z0 - The aqua colored fiber is 10GIG!
• 17:05 twitpic.com/872x - This datacenter has given us ome great ideas for future
• 17:23 @DellTechCenter I asked if the data center was a coke free zone :-)
• 17:35 Heading home..even with 2hr offsite excursion this afternoon..finished the day with total open ticket count down to 11!

8/19/08

• 09:03 boo..got 4.5hrs sleep last night..grr..even with Melantonin :( Oh well. Time to get going. Ticket count to be single digits by end of day.
• 13:57 I just closed a ticket that's been open for OVER a year. That feels good :-)
• 15:28 @mattmetzger is hangin' with us this afternoon. Much Linux stuff happin' up here today between him and @wantmoore
• 17:41 loving blockbuster online..walked into store with 2 return DVDs..walked out with 2 free rentals and now my next 2 DVD's should ship pronto
• 19:15 @thejrod I can view twitpics on the i760
• 22:59 hat tip curtissimmons: this Dark Knight spoof is AWESOME! tinyurl.com/625nw6
• 23:04 @timlytle interested in being on the ChurchITPodcast this Thursday 10pmEST? Would love to hear about all the cool IT stuff behind F1

8/20/08

• 09:15 Tweaking final list of stuff to buy for multisite and self checkin. Order MUST B Placed TODAY!
• 09:46 @amitry I get daily MozyPro emails and check our bandwidth graphs from overnight to see that the upload ran as scheduled.
• 09:52 @2sean2 What are the drives for? Time Machine? User personal files? Curious minds want to know!
• 10:09 Lots of brainpower in the room for a meeting regarding Community Center checkin and data procedures/processes
• 15:29 Mega props to @deanlisenby and crew for giving us a quick show-n-tell of Promise arrays.
• 15:32 FYI: We've rescheduled the Fellowship Tech IT Team for the Sept 4th Church IT Podcast since DREZ is still in recovery.
• 16:17 Upgrading to Firefox3..I've been told it's much better for folks like me that have 40+ tabs open all the time. We'll know shortly.
• 16:37 twitpic.com/8e7g - Vista isn't stable? I disagree. 44 days uptime. Sadly I do need to reboot now for a firefox3 install issue.
• 16:54 w00t!!!! Single digit helpdesk queue!! And a couple are just waiting on other people to reply back. w00t!
• 17:18 Ffox3 installed and Justin has all my plugins working except for IE Tab..the d/l link is b0rked..booo. Oh well, time to head home.
• 17:24 @timastevens Just remember the helpdesk queue is WAY diff than the project queue!
• 21:09 @dawnnicole So far so good with FF3. Seems to do a better job with using less RAM. I keep LOTS of tabs open and FF2 we easily eat over 1GB
• 21:25 twitpic.com/8fbj Tell me we've not been bustin' a move on the helpdesk queue recently! I love seeing graphs like this :-)
• 22:20 @deanlisenby It's still free..you just have to dig to find it. free.grisoft.com
• 22:26 Anyone up for a little Rockband action on xboxlive tonight? JudiciousJason is my tag

8/21/08

• 09:04 This is one reason I love GCC tinyurl.com/6j3jw7
• 10:08 Don't forget..ChurchITPodcast tonight at 10pm EDT. Open forum. Bring your topics/questions to ask the group. Deets at www.churchITpodca ...
• 12:04 Interesting: Microsoft hires Seinfeld to bite Apple tinyurl.com/6rhz4e
• 14:36 Multisite meeting..talking through procedures/processes..Sept14th is our first preview Sunday. <GULP>
• 16:07 @kemmeyer Use Windows Live Writer for blog posts. You'll thank me.
• 17:10 twitpic.com/8ij4 - Our HP t5730 XPe thins are here! Now to figure out how to manage them and start testing checkin

8/22/08

• 00:54 Fun IT podcast tonight. Good dialogue on several topics. Listen at www.talkshoe.com/tc/6983
• 09:51 inbox zero! Of course I cheated and just moved the 1700+ items into a diff folder. But it's a start right? ;-)
• 11:15 Local PBS station is "looking for someone who is knowledgeable about the latest in teleconferencing and multi-media communications"any help?
• 13:02 College students..Office Ultimate only $60! tinyurl.com/6xogbt HT scottgagon
• 17:04 A new lesson in pain..try to setup iSCSI iniator in sever08 core! Shoot me now!!! Uh, give me GUI please!
• 17:30 Fun afternoon talking Equallogic,virtualization,and IT with guys at Pinnacle.
• 22:04 catching up on tweets from 2day..wondering if @ebuford and @wantmoore actually accomplished anything 2day while I was away. Hmmmmm
• 22:27 Weeks end reveals only 7 tickets in the helpdesk queue! Love that! Me HAPPY! Go TEAM! Now to tackle the project queue...
• 23:23 Glad I still remember algebra..just solved this equation T - Tp = C for p to help with a quote I'm working on. What answer do you get? :-)
• 23:29 I'm actually looking forward to helping my kids with math homework as they get into Algebra and Geometry and beyond. I taught both in '93/94

8/23/08

• 00:25 If you answered p = (T-C)/T you are correct! For those interested here's the steps involved twitpic.com/8p10 :-)
• 11:56 Getting advice from trusted IT peeps on the iPhone..considering the switch if I can get iPhone users to come over and test signal strength
• 12:15 Any Yahoo Music Jukebox users out there? Have you trans to Rhapsody yet? Did your songs actually trans over as they claim?
• 13:15 @beckycallender my house which is right on the IN/MI line which seems to be a black hole for good cell service :(
• 14:29 Meeting @wantmoore at BasneyBMW at 2:45 for Susan Komen Cancer "drive"...they have lots of new bimmers you can test drive..it's free!
• 15:45 twitpic.com/8rrn - My first drive the 550 .. Twas nice!
• 16:30 twitpic.com/8s01 - Car 2 a 750Li..a pimpmobile..AC in the seats and a massage! For a boat it moves.
• 18:51 twitpic.com/8stq The BMW's we got to choose from today. twitpic.com/8str only "select" people got to drive the B7..rats!
• 18:57 twitpic.com/8sus This 335i was my last drive..and it was the best of the bunch. Twin turbos rule!
• 19:15 twitpic.com/8swj My dream car..the M5..uber family hauler! Well,my M3 may be old but she makes me smile daily twitpic.com/8sz6
• 19:19 @beckycallender She said she got the same that Justin got..no bars to start with then suddenly like 3. What the?? Looks like ATT is good.
• 19:22 See when the BMW Cancer Drive is coming to your area and drive some sweet cars!bit.ly/4uniDM
• 19:38 twitpic.com/8t3q - My final drive of the day..not nearly as fun as the other vehicles
• 20:17 and for the record..beemers are BMW motorcycles..bimmers are BMW cars.
• 20:44 So 2 iPhone peeps stopped by house 2day. Both got no bars initially then it went to like 3. Huh??? But it appears ATT/iPhone is possibility

Weekly Twitter Roundup?

I think I'm gonna do a weekly 'Twitter Roundup' blog post of my IT related Twitter posts (Tweets) over the past week.  It will require little time on my part (thanks to LoudTwitter) and it will hopefully provide some value to you all as to what we're doing at GCC ... as well as give a wider audience to some of the questions I've been asking via Twitter.  Consider it a peace offering since my actual blogging content has been rare lately.

Let me know your thoughts pro/con on this.  Again, I'm going to strip out most all the non-IT tweets so that should provide a good signal to noise ratio ... I'll keep in a few funny tweets here-n-there for good measure :-)

This first 'Twitter Roundup' will cover the past couple weeks ...

7/30

• 16:02 Something you don't hear at church everyday: "pick a porn site and try it" ... Ed Buford wanting me to test our new content filter :-) 
• 16:20 After using it at home for long time, GCC is now using the free OpenDNS.org content filtering for our private and public internet usage. 
• 16:28 @davidrussell Yup, sonicwall content filter disabled after causing issues ... OpenDNS.com to the rescue. Free baby! 
• 16:59 @TRKnight From the OpenDNS site they "say" they have very large organizations using their service including school systems. So far so good. 
• 17:04 @TRKnight as for customizable it's OK ... wish you could do more with the default blocked page look/feel. Good enough 4 our needs though. 
• 17:04 @christiaanv I laughed when he said it and figured other would enjoy it as well :-) 
• 17:07 During testing we blocked youtube for a few minutes and immediately our helpdesk hotline got a call about youtube being blocked ... ha 
• 18:35 Anyone installed ESXi on a Dell 2600 or 2650 yet? Curious if it'll even install just for testing. 
• 21:27 @Bruceericatdell Thanks! You might want to check out our www.citrt.org community site. Geeks for Jesus! 
• 22:10 @darylmcmullen rt-click speaker icon>playback devices>speaker properties>enhancements>disable all enhancements 
• 22:57 @darylmcmullen fixes an annoying snapping/popping issue on some D830's during audio playback

7/31

• 01:40 @Bruceericatdell sweet! We'd love to get Dell involved somehow at our big fall roundtable in Charleston, SC see www.citrt2008.com Thoughts? 
• 08:56 today is kiosk updates..now to figure out how to modify this F1 'skin' we got from Terry Chapman years ago to work with v2.5 
• 11:13 BEFORE you start talking to Dell or another VAR about EqualLogic you really need to chat with me. I have hookups and can save you $$$$$!
• 16:39 More kiosk updates..can't figure out custom skin app work arounds so removing it for now..bummer
• 19:31 Fun vchat with Don at PinnacleofIndiana.com about EqualLogic storage. A possible partnership with VR6 Systems in the makings? Hope so :-)
• 23:05 watching cgreentx take apart his macbook live via webcam www.ustream.tv/channel/cgreentx ..in the real world Macs DO have problems

8/1

• 07:20 Ashlee was up at 5:30am and I couldn't sleep afterwards ... so I'm heading into work at 7:20am. Bleh 
• 07:45 3 last kiosks to update and I think we're fully F1 v2.5 
• 08:34 If I don't find a mt dew this morning I'm going to be asleep by 9am..kiosk updates are not the most exciting. Need thin clients! 
• 08:58 bit.ly/szvYj these new small Dell "studio" PC's are sweet. Hmm, wonder how consistent the hardware is for image management?
• 11:13 Just placed an order for 4 D830's and couple monitors. Wish I could order 2 new smokin' ESXi embedded servers.
• 14:12 I rarely use Skype. Just noticed they have IM function. Nice! My skype is gccjason for those that might want to IM me on occasion.

8/2

• 00:43 have i meantioned before how much I dig wmwifirouter.com? Curious to see if anyone else will snag my mobile hotspot since hotel charges for wifi 
• 00:54 @mattmetzger wmwifirouter turns the phone into a wifi router. I've had 3 unique computers connected to my phone at one time no problem. 
• 01:00 @mattmetzger ad-hoc only is a setting you can enable/disable ... see support.wmwifirouter.com/documentation/
• 01:03 potentially not good..just got my 3rd TXT message from Postini today can't contact our email server and getting "undelivered" email alerts 
• 01:18 another Postini alert at 1:15am "email spooling iniated". Hope it just a temp glitch with our ATT pipe. Guess I'll know in the morning. 
• 09:33 ATT regional outage last night. Glad it wasn't GCC specific issue.
• 12:39 I'm in chicago..Ed's supposed to b off today to head to MI..now he's fighting outbound email issues thanks to ATT and I'm running comm :(
• 23:35 Busy day..stressing over email issues killed my Ikea experience..oh well. Field Museum was good. Now at our old neighbors in Kenosha, WI

8/3

• 10:37 5yrs ago on this weekend we said goodbye to our Kenosha friends and moved to Granger to join staff at GCC. NO REGRETS! 
• 11:15 seeing a missed vmail from senior pastor always makes me freak a bit. Thankfully not a crisis just a heads up. Sheew!
• 13:08 Explaining to my buddy Al Kruger what Twitter is and updating his wifi router. 
• 13:30 Watching "Twitter in Plain English" with Al..GREAT video on what Twitter is. Trying to convince him to join the cult O twitter :-)
• 14:03 crud..postini spooling alerts..Just asked @dhannifin to see if he can troubleshoot while Ed and I are out of state. Dustin rocks! 
• 14:20 Looks like out ATT pipe is down. Glad we have a backup ISP for child checkin and basic surfing. 
• 14:27 Just verified the backup pipe is working. Dustin says his ATT DSL line is down as well. 
• 15:06 done all the troubleshooting I can do for now remotely..we're gonna go hit the local pool with the Krugers
• 16:58 4:45pm and ATT pipe is back online..that's 2 days in a row with downs of several hours..me not so happy.
• 23:31 ATT line is up but outgoing emails are not flowing once again. Of course it has to do this on a weekend when we're outta town...arrgh 
• 23:50 @dhannifin I'm actually logged in as Ed just to see what's stuck in the queue. Go for it if you can find the problem :-)

8/4

• 00:30 After midnight and outbound email flowing again..at least for the moment. Here's when outsourcing support or hosted exchange would rock.
• 00:18 @davidrussell I've been using google IMAP for personal and some side clients for long while. Works very well. 
• 00:40 Praying for safe travel for @wantmoore and family who will be making the trek to Indiana around in the VERY early AM. 
• 11:36 @wantmoore's new desk area is all cleaned and ready. Sadly his new D830 is still in transit from Dell. Great days ahead for GCC IT. 
• 11:39 NO church IT podcast this Thursday.. it's our 15yr anniv and wife takes priority :-) 
• 16:17 Had impromptu 1.5hr meeting with Beeson(senior pastor) today. It was a total treat to get to spend that 1-on-1 time with him. w00t!! 
• 16:44 A users laptop is having issues ... my initial diagnosis: having a completely full hard drive could be the problem? ;-) 
• 20:52 twitpic.com/6kwk - At the @wantmoores new home doing a little unpacking 
• 20:56 twitpic.com/6kx6 - Hmm .. What are the child labor laws in IN?
• 23:27 @DerekSchwab laptop goes with me everywhere. If we loose power I figure it will serve as a temp light source :-)

8/5

• 09:16 @ebuford If you can't get that image onto the bigger drive soon just slap the old drive in and we'll schedule another time to swap it. 
• 10:13 Wondering if @wantmoore is gonna start that drywall project today. 
• 11:24 Chattin' with Ryan C over at North Point about how we use Postini. Mmmm, love me some Postini! 
• 13:36 twitpic.com/6n6l - Gettin' some lumber and drywall for @wantmoore at Lowes. Time to build some new walls for the new home. 
• 15:00 twitpic.com/6ni5 - Powell's mobile lumber service ...
• 23:32 As seen at 11pm ... GCC IT/Drywall crew twitpic.com/6pa6
• 23:52 @davidrussell All my domains are with godaddy. What u not liking? 
• 23:58 @davidrussell ... ahh, I only use them for domain names ... not hosting. No sFTP is stupid. Their webmail sucks too (no IMAP). 
• 01:51 I'm awake so working on a friends laptop they dropped off for me to look at. Dell diag reports drive failure. rats. Spinrite to the rescue?

8/6

• 09:13 Today marks a new era for IT at GCC. @wantmoore joins our team and I couldn't be more excited about what the future holds. It's a GREAT day! 
• 11:20 twitpic.com/6qi4 - @wantmoore day1...getting more space into our clonezilla box 
• 12:24 twitpic.com/6qqc - Got to intro @wantmoore and @gotmoore at our all staff mtg today ... w00t! 
• 19:42 testing PockeTwit on the phone...kinda iPhone like with a touch screen phone 
• 20:16 twitpic.com/6sjy - Another night of drywall and painting at the Moore's. 
• 20:28 twitpic.com/6slb - @wantmoore is hammering away on this breaker box. Will he survive? Stay tuned...
• 22:52 twitpic.com/6t3e - Oreo break!!

8/7

• 00:26 12:20am and getting home after working all night on Moore manor. Looking forward to Leadership Summit tomorrow. Wonder how many wifi users? 
• 08:50 Celebrating 15 years of marriage today! 
• 10:02 Leadership Summit at GCC! My big questions of the day: how many wifi users will we have and how slow will the internet be? :-) 
• 10:42 watch the summit tweets roll in from around the globe: tinyurl.com/56fcck
• 11:12 Only 58 wifi users right now. Time to go setup the guest internet kiosks. 
• 12:37 Anyone know if a Dell D830 would work well for running MediaShout? 
• 12:50 anyone tried booting XP on macbook (not a VM) 4 mediashout? My guess is someday we'll move from MediaShout to ProPresenter or ProWorship 
• 13:07 Mediashout IS supported on Mac hardware via bootcamp www.mediashout.com/support/mac/ ... nifty. 
• 13:38 @kerner MS is what we use in all our classrooms currently. Gotta keep it all standardized. Yes, ProWorship created here. 
• 13:39 @PeterBishop ProWorship/ProPresenter/ProVideo for auditorium, MediaShout for classrooms 
• 15:26 @modernscience kewl ... thanks for the info! D830's will be option B 
• 17:01 Retweet @dhannifin: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games - Powered by SharePoint - bit.ly/WOQrK

8/8

• 11:29 @beckycallender I know macs don't crash, but mine does. Of course I'm sure it's somehow my fault and not the macs. 
• 12:28 72 wifi devices on the network currently ... 28 of them on 1 of the access points in the auditorium 
• 16:12 twitpic.com/704f - New laptops have arrived! 
• 17:47 ...and yes those Dell boxes contain only 1 laptop ... but do include a docking station ... thus the mongo size 
• 17:49 @watermarkgeek thought about waiting for E series, but want to make sure new stuff plays with everything we already have in place. 
• 17:58 Retweet @TRKnight: A rap all of us geeks, engineers and especially physicists can appreciate - bit.ly/9GwkF
• 23:10 thank you NBC for making lots of event streams available online..fun to watch the other sports that don't get TV time bit.ly/4rX4TA

8/11

• 09:37 Bored? Come watch our all day IT meeting live webcam www.ustream.tv/channel/jpowellcam Fun starts at 9:45am-ish
• 09:44 twitpic.com/7c63 - Whiteboard is never this clean! Preparing for day of 'this is the GCC network' for @wantmoore 
• 12:22 After a morning of network infrastructure brain dump it's time 4 wings with @ebuford and @wantmoore! We have much more to go after lunch. 
• 14:03 Starting up the live webcam again around 2:15pm..now with 100% more audio! The GCC IT brain dump continues. Fun to go over our entire layout 
• 14:06 webcam streams at www.ustream.tv/channel/jpowellcam and www.ustream.tv/channel/wantmoore
• 17:08 twitpic.com/7dhb - Whiteboard is full at the end of the day. My brain hurts. Yes, it's a bit blurry on purpose :) 
• 21:15 @DerekSchwab For basic imaging clonezilla is OK. It's NOT a ghost replacement though. 
• 22:04 Apple calls me every week now that I've downloaded one of the IT webcasts. Geesh, I'm not returning your calls cause I don't want to talk.

8/12

• 11:13 ESX and ESXi users! Alert! Major bug in Update 2 release. read tinyurl.com/66hcaj
• 11:53 I just heard @wantmoore cursing linux ... and he really likes linux! Must be time for some lunch :-) 
• 11:55 @timlytle That bites! I'm sure there's some major chewing out going on at VMware today over this. 
• 12:00 @deanlisenby OMW, what do you have to eat to hit 8000-10000 cals !? 
• 13:24 new Dell E series laptops have backlit keyboards...nice! That one of my fav features of the macbookpro. Dang, now I'm wanting a new laptop. 
• 14:06 tinyurl.com/66zjfq Dell E-Series PPT overview. HT @ tracep 
• 15:21 I am a ticket closing machine this afternoon! 
• 15:54 ESXi licensing chat over at Dell TechCenter tinyurl.com/5rq2ff in a few minutes. 
• 17:35 Official VMware press release on the ESX/ESXi update 2 issue tinyurl.com/629m4r they will be providing updates every 2 hrs. 
• 17:51 @DellTechCenter Thanks for hosting the talks. I had to leave at the start for impromtu meeting but I'll check back over the transcript. 
• 17:55 Retweet @TRKnight: Dell has moved into Twitter full force. bit.ly/1CaJ5k I'm also following several other Dell dudes on twitter. 
• 17:57 @ebuford U R FUNNY ... not get to bustin' a move on those tickets! :-) 
• 18:17 My Dell D830 made it just over 20days before required reboot (docking bay issue). I'm tracking uptime because of all the Vista stability FUD 
• 20:05 Just sent email to @kemmeyer and @timastevens that I hope will make them smile about self checkin option 
• 20:27 Looking for a Verizon Mobile Broadband Router..any recommendations? I really want something that will do .11a, but that doesnt seem to exist 
• 20:40 @lwasik I'd recommend downloading the free AVG antivirus free.avg.com/ assuming it came with none from Dell
• 23:58 bit.ly/3KbF6f This ZyXEL mobile router does a/b/g and lots of other nifty features. Puttin' it at the top of my list for multisite

8/13

• 01:29 @clifguy happy anniv! 
• 06:52 6:45am and we're all up for the first day of school. Yeehaw! 
• 07:26 Our 3rd and 5th grade boys just got on the bus. Time to hit the treadmill for first time in 3+ months. Still got 20lbs I wanna delete. 
• 10:38 I so love internal instant messaging. Makes life much easier although less personal I suppose. My office IS a LONG way from everyone FWIW 
• 10:56 twitpic.com/7jno - Our IT office space .. Ed and Justin Rock! 
• 13:13 comm/web/IT team is back to 11 peeps .. yes! We now go to eleven! :) HT SpinalTap 
• 13:33 twitpic.com/7k72 - I've gotten more comments about why I am wearing a pink shirt today..hey, wife bought it..I wear it 
• 17:50 Brainstorming over storage strategies for certain GCC staff that chew up a TON of disk space. Tomorrow morn we'll try to whiteboard it :-) 
• 20:16 Best Buy to offer iPhone starting Sept7 bit.ly/3X0MvI
• 21:25 Had to move my XBOX360 into DMZ to get XBOX Live to work correctly. Any known security bugs I should be aware of?

8/14

• 08:07 Office to the office early to get ready for morning of storage discussions. 
• 08:41 If anyone has built your own SecureGive kiosk give me a ping. Wondering what hardware is working best for scan/print 
• 10:13 running home to get my Zune player..yes, it's needed for important testing procedure..always something new at GCC :) 
• 11:41 twitpic.com/7nnr - AV guys testing a new projector..olympics look awesome on HD proj..benefits of sharing office with TechArts :) 
• 14:42 I've been a Zune user for a while, but I've learned more about it's syncing today than all prior time combined. Justin in time learning :-) 
• 14:59 @bnpositive luv the Zune..wifi sync rules! Wish it had a few more options, but overall great product and experience. 
• 15:10 <vent> Server SPACE! Need more space! Where's my easy button! Need more space on a zero budget! <end vent> ah, feeling better ... 
• 18:05 Trying to decide on possible low budget storage solution. MD3000i vs Promise VTM610i. Each has pro and con. Price is biggest factor. Hmmm 
• 22:39 bit.ly/Qpa0n 1TB enterprise class hard drives for $220? It's amazing how drive prices continue to fall. Wish gas would follow suit

8/15

• 07:28 2weeks left in Church Tech Biggest Loser2..several people with some great loss this round..I'm not in that group..time for treadmil :-) 
• 10:59 @jermtech Yup, I just use UltraVNC. You do have to turn on VNC at the mac first. 
• 11:54 I'm so stoked about our IT support team! @ebuford and @wantmoore rock! I love what they are doing and thinking about for future. Go Team! 
• 11:55 Oh and @mattmetzger rocks too! Even if he's not IT "support" ;-) 
• 12:29 @jamiruth My Strength Finder results tinyurl.com/6eat4n
• 14:41 Reading Promise M610i Manual to see how it compares to our sweet-o-licious EqualLogic arrays. Already see some major differences as expected 
• 17:56 impromtu dinner with @wantmoore and @ebuford fams at our home this evening. Burgers and corn on cob. Yum! 
• 21:49 twitpic.com/7uwj - @wantmoore is practicing his drumming for fall roundtable rockband competition :)
• 22:32 So it's been over a month since iPhone release ... are we safe to assume Apple/ATT won't kill activesync on the non-enterprise data plans?

8/16

• 16:47 Wife deleted .net2 from her laptop 2 free space 4 pics. Now her pic software is borked. Hopefully a hand install will make it happy.

8/17

• 11:58 new tiny twitter version out..couple new features that are nice touch 
• 13:44 First time I've been called outta church service to do tech support. Thankfully it was very minor and didn't take very long. 
• 15:49 @darylmcmullen it was working, Tim just didn't have user/pass. COR is doing live Flash streaming. cyberentomology could give us the low down 
• 16:13 twitpic.com/8320 - Ashlee just lookin cute on her trike 
• 16:13 twitpic.com/8324 - Dang, Ashlee can shovel like a crazy woman .. In her Sunday dress no less 
• 19:15 @wantmoore FYI: the budget for our live stream is $9/mo..oh and it's not officially "supported" either ;-) 
• 21:21 checking out www.wowzamedia.com/ Flash Media Server
• 22:38 Blockbuster Online is finally getting into the movie download market www.blockbuster.com/download

IT Position at Seacoast Church

Trace just let me know he's posted a full time IT Position at Seacoast on his blog ...

We now have a full-time I.T. position available here at Seacoast. It’s 40 hours a week; balancing the hours as a help desk tech (installs, repairs, upgrades, user distress calls, etc.) and assisting me with network and server needs.

The work hours are during normal business hours and being on-call.

If you’d like more info, or would like to apply, here’s the job description and the application. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Trace is a great guy and this is a great opportunity for the right person ... and talk about a sweet place to live :-)

Belated Welcome Justin Moore To The GCC Team

It's a week late, but here's the all staff email I sent out this morning ... a week after Justin joined our IT team ... better late than never right?  Last week was pretty crazy with Leadership Summit so I have a better-than-lame excuse :-)

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls...

If you missed the introduction at SWAT last week … it’s my most excellent joy to welcome the newest member of the GCC IT Team ... Justin Moore!  Justin joins our merry band of geeks as our new IT Specialist.  That means once he gets settled in, he'll be your initial contact for tech support issues as well as working on all sorts of uber kewl IT projects so amazing your head would explode if we told you about ‘em.  So I will protect your cranium by refraining from further details.  Yes, I’m just that thoughtful.

Here’s a few insider tidbits about Justin (and his wife Bonnie) ...

· Was born and raised “in the sticks” – Polk County, NC. And no, there is no town name – it’s just “Polk County”

(If you want to sound like a native, say “poke county”)

· Loves sweet tea and Sun Drop (if you don’t know the joys of Sun Drop, think “Mountain Dew, but sweeter and with more caffeine”)

· Always thought he’d marry a Southern Belle.

o Bonnie’s last address before us getting married was Brevard, NC.

o However, she was born and lived the first 11 years of her life in Lincoln Park, NJ.

o That’s right – married a Yankee!

· Justin and Bonnie have been to Russia 3 times for missions work … see http://www.wantmoore.com/archives/archives/category/missions/

· Strength Finder Top 5

• Belief
• Strategic
• Connectedness
• Self-Assurance
• Ideation

· Big Dave Ramsey fans … Justin lead a Financial Peace University small group this past Spring at their prior church

· All their pets are named after techie stuff: Two cats, Apache and Pixel and female Chocolate Lab named Java.

o Yes, we’re “one of those couples” who call them our children.   See http://www.wantmoore.com/archives/2007/11/19/happy-birthday-java/

Like the rest of the IT team, Justin has a blog and twitter … you can learn more about him via:

Blog: http://wantmoore.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wantmoore

So please welcome Justin (and Bonnie) to the team ... we're so excited to have them!  …and please help convince them winter is a fun time in Indiana ;-)

Jason ... pondering a career in Men’s synchronized swimming … NOT! ... Powell

Jason Powell
IT Director
Granger Community Church

My Blogging Frequency Diminished Due to IRC, Twitter and Life

Ah life ... it's been one of those extended seasons in my life where it seems no matter what I try I can't keep up.  Basically I'm living in a mode of the most critical stuff gets dealt with while all else fades into the background.  It's not pretty or efficient, but it's working well enough for now.  A number of you have emailed me various questions over the past few months ... I got your email ... I will reply ... it just won't be anytime soon ... sorry :-(

I've even stopped reading blogs for the past several weeks unless I get a ping via my google alerts ... aren't you curious what alerts I have setup? ;-)

I'm bummed I don't have more time/energy to be blogging more frequently, but I've found 2 outlets that feed my need to be "connected" with others in the church IT world ... IRC and Twitter.

IRC: Typically a few times each day I poke my nose into our Church IT Roundtable IRC channel ... it's basically an online chat room where a number of church IT staff and volunteers hang out.  Here I can catch up on the latest news, ask questions, give answers, and just get to know better my fellow IT peers.  A contributing factor in my recent hiring of Justin Moore was from being able to interact with and watch him interact with others in the channel almost daily since last winter.  You can learn a lot about a person by hanging out in a crowd together, even if that crowd happens to be virtual.

So I'd strongly encourage anyone involved in IT (yup, we have non-church IT guys/gals joining us as well) to get involved in this virtual community.  Together we can accomplish so much more! Here's a link you can bookmark that will take you to the chatroom with a single mouse click...nothing to install...that's about as easy as I can make it for you.

TWITTER:  I know a number of you think Twitter is stupid and pointless...I did...then I started seeing it's potential value.  And I'm happy to report it's return has been greater than I expected ... even moreso if you tie Twitter to your Facebook status (I rarely visit facebook anymore so this was a big plus).

So, I don't have/make time to create blog posts to keep those interested up to date on what we're doing IT wise at GCC.  I DO have the time to blast out quick 140 character updates throughout the day.  I've also asked for help via Twitter and gotten almost instant feedback ... even from vendors!  Now that's service!  I'm diggin' that 2 way instant interactive aspect of Twitter.

You can easily get overwhelmed by the amount of "noise" flowing back and forth in Twitter.  You have to determine what your acceptable signal to noise ratio.  My suggestion is to add people you "follow" slowly and strategically.  And no, you don't have to follow everyone that follows you.  I'm VERY selective in who I follow right now.  No offense to anyone if I'm not following you (yet), but I've only got so much space right now :-)

So while you wait for future blogs posts ... you may want to follow my Twitter.

There ya go ... Twitter and IRC make me feel like I'm still able to contribute to the IT community even if time is scarce and their reach is not near as great as the number of people subscribed to this blog.  There are other neat social aspects to of each of these as well, but I'm out of time for now to tell ya ...

What A Week Full of Special Events!

Monday ... marked the 5 year anniversary of my employment at Granger Community Church! This past year has been the most challenging year on so many levels, but I wouldn't trade all the stuff I've learned/experienced. God, help me to grow as a leader.

Wednesday ... Justin Moore started work at GCC! We're are just so ridiculously excited to have Justin on the team. Fun and exciting days ahead for GCC IT! God, help me to grow more and stronger friendships.

Thursday/Today ... 15 years ago Kim and I were married in Auburn, IN! Kim, I LUV U!! God, help me grow as a husband.

*No Church IT Podcast tonight due to above anniversary :-)