Yes! Friday!

Well, Friday is finally here. Today at work was fairly uneventful. There weren't many people in the office at all. You would have thought the place was deserted. I spent most of the day working on the AssetCenter upgrade we have going on. Not to go into too much detail, but we are trying to "migrate" as little as possible. We will use Connect-It for most of the work.

Have I mentioned that I happen to be a Conservative? Well, I am, and I am proud of it. Because of this, I get terribly aggravated at "traditional" news. If I watch the news, I only watch Fox News. When I read the news online, I typically limit reading to WorldNetDaily.

There is one thing that is bumming out my Friday. My college roommate and his wife were supposed to go out with me and my wife to see Flight of the Phoenix (I thought the original was a very interesting movie.). Monday, it was playing at the local cheap theater. Anyway, I go to look online today, and the movie isn't playing. ARG! I guess I'll have to wait for it to come out on video. Oh well, I was worried they would butcher it anyway–why do you think I was going to the cheap theater.

I'm debating about going to a professional resume writer to have my resume redone. Since the outsourcing announcement, people have had their resumes at work, and I'm beginning to think that I'm selling myself short with mine. If you want to see mine, it's right here (You will need Adobe Acrobat reader to view it. If you don't already have it, you can download it directly from Adobe here. I don't know if it is worth the money or not; however, I have a co-worker who has used one. I really like the way her resume looks. Right now, my big debate is how to go about this job search, and where I think God is leading.

Blog Comments Working!

Comments are now working!

Be forwarned, I will read the comments and delete those that contain profanity, etc… (remember, this is a Christian site). Also, I have not implemented the rel="nofollow" tag. If I start seeing link spam, I'll put it in.

[Update 10 March 2007] I'm migrating posts from my old blog to maxsons.org.  This doesn't apply here. 

What I’m currently Reading

This will be fairly ho-hum because I’m only really reading one book: Constitutional Chaosalt by Judge Andrew Napolitano. For those who don’t know, he is the senior judicial analyst for Fox News. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about limitied government. The entire book details problems we are experiencing in this country because the government doesn’t respect its own laws. The one question I have over and over as I read this book is “How do we recover?”

How do we recover? The judiciary has thrown the Constitution in the trashcan over and over. We need to figure out how to erase these bad precidence setting rulings. I don’t know the solution, unfortunately.

In addition to the Judge’s book, I receive various computer industry publications such as Info World, Software Developer, etc….

[Updated 2011-01-09 22:19:09] The link to the book was pointed at WND’s store, but they changed URLs.  Since I really like the Kindle, I thought I would link to the kindle version.

Blog Comments

Ok, here's the deal right now with comments. I have them working, sort of. That means that everything is set up, but they don't work quite yet. I'm waiting on my hosting provider to set some permissions on a directory for me. Once that is done, comments should be up and running.

As if you can't tell, I'm using the pollxn discussion engine to do comments. The code didn't do everything I wanted, so I modified it. Just like the blosxom code I'm using, I'll post it in the store for download.

[Update 10 March 2007] I'm reposting from my old blog to Maxsons.org.  While I'm working on comments for maxsons.org, this doesn't apply here. 

Grammar Rules

Ok, I admit it. I am not an expert on English. Sometimes, I misue commas. Sometimes, I even spell words wrong. However, it seems like your average person no longer cares about writing correctly. I get e-mails at work with many misspellings, improper punctuation, and–yes–even incorrect word use (your for you’re, there for their, etc…). These people are making basic mistakes that they should have learned about in the 5th and 6th grade. I came across this site today that talks about gramatical rules. If you notice, it is a .uk domain, so the content is not geared for American English; however, I read it and think that most of the rules are the same. They do use some different terminology (full stop for period) and they have several words spelled the “British” way. Enjoy!

[Update 2012-12-26 15:04:18] The “this” site mentioned is now a dead link.  It went to http://www.bim.napier.ac.uk/~hazel/gen_ho/rules_conv.htm

Job Update

Well, I found some more NiSource documentation about the outsourcing. You can find it on their website buried in the investor relations section. This is the same presentation they showed to the Wall Street analysts. Here is another interesting presentation you may also want to look at.

As you can see, I have a calendar control up now. Right now, I’m happy with it, but we’ll have to wait for a couple of months worth of posts for me to really decide how I like it.

Well, I went and talked to the MetroColumbus Baptist Association today. About six months ago, I pitched the idea to them that the local association should have an IT guy on staff to provide technology help to all the churches affiliated with the association. At the time, they didn’t have the money, but I was able to volunteer to do some stuff for them (primarily their website and the website for their Bible Institute. The answer was basically the same now that it was then: giving is down so they cannot really afford to pay someone. However, I did make some inroads into talking to him about the association sponsoring me as a NAMB Mission Service Corps. If you know anything about this program, please contact me and let me know.

I also talked to my boss at work, and told him that I was actively seeking other employment. His reaction was muted, but what could you expect? Just about everyone here that I can think of is looking since the outsourcing announcement.

At youth group tonight (did I mention I go to Highland Baptist Church in Grove City, OH?), Paul Pyle had a really good message. One of the things he pointed out was that God does have a plan for our lives. Jeremiah 29:11 has this to say:

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

Thanks BibleGateway for the lookup of the verse

Right now, I think that the Lord has something good in store with my idea and Christian Computer Solutions. Can you join me in prayer for this? That God will reveal his will to Cyndi and me so we can do what he wants.

[Update 2012-12-26 14:47:14] The mission service corps link was dead.  I’ve updated it to the correct one.

First Post

Well, I finally have Blosxom set up and configured. It took some work because it is written in Perl and meant to run under Apache. My hosting plan at Halfprice Hosting runs IIS on windows. It seems that IIS has some problems with the PATH_INFO variable.

Initially, I tried to get Halfprice to change their server configuration. I didn't give them much time because I decided it was easier to edit the code. I only had to change one line. When I get time, I will put my updated code in my store for download.

I only really have one more thing to do, and I'll be pretty happy with the layout of this blog, and that is to add a calendar plugin to the right-hand side of the screen showing dates I have made blog entries. That way, as things scroll off the bottom, you can still get to them. Since I'm talking about it, why don't you send me an e-mail and let me know what you think. My contact information can be found here.

I don't really know what I'm going to talk about in this blog. Proboably anything that interestes me at the time. I set it up more just because I was interested in seeing if I could set one up. The challenge now is to keep it up to date so people want to read it. I'll probably blog a bit about religion, computers, politics, anything I can think of. Just to let you know ahead of time, I probably won't post more than once a day (hopefully I can keep that up!). If you have anything in particular you want me to talk about, just send me an e-mail. My contact information is here.

I started Christian Computer Solutions in 1999 (I think. Man does time fly!) to provide computer consulting services to churches, christian organizations, etc…. Since then, it has allowed me to be involved in some interesting things. If you are curious what I have done, just take a look at my projects.

My real employer NiSource recently announced that they were looking to outsource all of Corporate Services. Basically, that includes everything not core to the company (HR, IT, Accounting, etc….). They made the announcement on the most recent Wall Street earnings call. A link to the call can be found here on the Yahoo! finance site.

So, while I'm not out of a job yet, I soon may be. If you, your church, or other Christian organization needs any kind of IT assistance, feel free to contact me. Again–I know, it is getting old typing it too–my contact information can be found here. If you want to have a peek at my resume, go ahead. You will need Adobe Acrobat reader to view it. If you don't already have it, you can download it directly from Adobe here