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The End Has Arrived

The first video on this page starts slowly, but if this is any indication of where we’ll be in about 5 years (technologically speaking), we’re all doomed.

“I’m on vacation,” will no longer be a sufficient excuse for the overworked employee; “I can only be one place at a time,” will lose its reliable final-appeal status; “I’m not a robot,” will be a plea of the past.

Or–and this is the optimist in me hoping against hope–those who are permanently homebound will now have a way to get “out and about,” and no one anywhere will turn this into a productivity-increasing, humanity-reducing machine.

Anyblog – Home

Why We’re Adding Facebook To Our Already Busy Lives

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The Coolest Video of a Water Heater Failing You’ll See Today

Anna and I had a water heater fail at one of our apartments in Phoenix.  It was located outside of our apartment in a tiny storage closet on the porch, and the tank ruptured.  It burst a hole through our living room wall and sent a jet of water twenty feet across the apartment, flooding our residence and the two floors below us.

When it popped, we were at the Grand Canyon with Anna’s folks, and we missed most of the excitement.  So, when I heard Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) say that failing water heaters made for his favorite explosions, I had to look for the video evidence.  I can honestly say that seeing this makes me just a little bit happier that we weren’t home.

The whole video is good, but the real action starts at 3:25.

Anyhow, have fun checking your T&P valves!

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

A Brief Note for Everyone

The Mayer Community Church Doctrinal Statement

So this is cool.  Wordle lets you upload whatever text you care to upload, and then it spits out a randomly generated word cloud.  I found it to be an enjoyable diversion.  Linked below, you can see the results of uploading the Mayer Community Church Doctrinal Statement.

Feel free to check out the original at the Wordle site, or to upload your own.  Have fun playing with words!

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

A Brief Note for Folks Who Use the Internet

Okay, so here’s another brief note. It’s becoming more and more important to maintain your online identity in ways that serve you when you are considering a new job opportunity, or when you regularly meet new folks (which happens quite a bit in ministry). Employers are more and more frequently checking every applicant online before proceeding with an interview, so it’s critical that your online identity is easy to find in the search results, that it distinguishes you from all the other folks with your name out there, and that it presents you in an honest and helpful light. With that in mind, Anna and I chose to do the following:

1. Set up a website and maintain it
2. Select an e-mail address that identifies us rather than our hobbies (It can be distracting for HR to respond to an e-mail address such as supermans1973corvette@someplace.something, unless you are indeed Superman’s 1973 Corvette. In which case, fly on, man. Fly on.)
3. Establish a locked-down Twitter account (Limit who you follow and who follows you; make this a helpful place to shoot quick messages to close friends and family. Although, I’ll admit that I do follow Bill Cosby and Bill Gates.)
4. Create landing pages (You can use these to aggregate your various internet presences into one place, making it much easier to list your online contact information on a business card; you can see what I mean here and here)

An example of Flavors.me

I’d recommend against social networks that don’t allow you to maintain careful control of the content that gets online. It’s a little worrisome that someone from high-school can post a photo of the one time you TP’d a home and everyone on Myfacespacebook can link that to you. Suddenly, potential employers find this picture at the top of the search results instead of a helpful site with your resume.

Simple sites that allow you control and let you retain ownership of the content are the best. If you are aiming for free solutions, consider the following solutions: WordPress, Blogger, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flavors.me, Google Profiles or Chi.mp. These are just a few of the options out there, but they all meet some primary goals of online activity. They are simple, they are low-maintenance, they leave control and ownership in the hands of the user, and I don’t ever find myself asking, “How did I waste a whole morning on such-and-such.” (Facebook, you know exactly who I’m talking about.)

Have fun with your online life!

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.