place of nathan.

I was reading and came across this description:

The trial period is virtually endless, you do not have to pay anything for this site. We have taken care of that for you.

If we expect people to:
1. read
2. understand
3. remember
what we write, a good start is to be clear and concise.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to say:
We have purchased a free endless ‘trial’ membership for you.

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I just got a phone call from a telemarketer. But it wasn’t bad. I actually really appreciated the manner in which they called. This is the way the conversation went:

ME: Hello?
(pause)
ME: Hello?
You: Is this Nathan?
ME: Yes it is.
You: This is Mediacom calling to see if you would be interested in hearing about our home phone service available.
ME: Nope.
You: Okay, thanks for your time.

Now, that is the way a call should be. It lasted about 12 seconds, literally. I didn’t mind it at all. They didn’t try to argue with me about the benefits of it, and just let my answer be the answer. In fact, i actually have a better opinion of my cable company now than i did ten minutes ago!

Have you ever had a ‘good’ telemarketer experience?

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Growing up, i always thought we (DeKalb County, Indiana) were living in the Ohio River Valley. (that means, our streams empty into creeks which empty into rivers which flow into the Ohio River)

I know i’ve heard it on the news from Fort Wayne. Here is a map of the Ohio River Valley:

But it turns out, we aren’t in the Ohio River Valley at all!
Cedar Creek empties into the Saint Joe just north of Fort Wayne. The Saint Joe meets up with the Saint Mary’s River just off downtown (just south of the water treatment plant), and forms the Maumee River.
The Maumee empties into Lake Erie!

So it turns out, we are in the Maumee River Valley…

did you know that? did you ever think we were part of the Ohio River Valley?

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This week on Monday, i gave a phone call to a guy, and asked him to give me a call back.
I had talked to him on one occasion previously, a few weeks earlier, but we’ve never met. I’ve heard really good things about this guy from someone i look up and respect. I have nothing but positive thoughts about this guy.
So i was kinda surprised when i didn’t hear back from him until Thursday.
He called, and he was obviously down in the dumps. he was pretty depressed, and it was obvious. He apologized for not getting back with me sooner, as he and his wife had been in Indy taking care of health problems with their one-week old son.
Before we hung up, i said, ‘I’ll be praying for your son.’ and immediately, he perked up. He lit right up, got energized, and told me several times how much he appreciated that. His son’s name is Michael, if you want to keep him in your prayers as well.

I say this just to mention how much a really little thing could mean to someone. I can only imagine if I was in his shoes, i couldn’t wait to go home and tell my wife that some guy i’ve never met volunteered to be praying for our son. That would energize me like nothing else.

Let’s always be on the lookout on little ways to encourage those around us. i need to do more of it myself!

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I’ve been meaning to write this all week, but things happen.

Anyway, emily’s brother and sister in-law are in the process of adopting a little girl from Kyrgyzstan, i believe. They are currently there, and working on completing the paperwork.
If you want more details on how things are going for them, or look at photos of Baby Anara, check out their blog.

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This is a screen shot from one of the videos we’ve produced for our upcoming weekend series, Myth Busters. It will be pretty cool, i think. This weekend is themed: SUPERPASTOR. You’ll want to check out the video of Jamie and Adam busting this myth…they caught some secret footage of Pastor Diehl in action…i GUARANTEE you’ve never seen Pastor Diehl like this before!
Check it out this weekend, 6 p.m. Saturday or 8 and 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

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This past weekend, the Washington Post ran a very interesting article on an experiment with Joshua Bell, the nation’s most prolific concert violinist.

The Post article put Bell in a mall, playing classical music, with an open violin case at his feet. he played for 45 minutes, and more than 1,000 commuters walked by. very few had any idea who he was. few even flinched. he was given a total of $32 by 27 people…

what do you think that says?

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Last week, i finally upgrades our Microsoft Office suite to the newest version. Microsoft Office Small Business 2007. Prior to that, we were still using Office 2000 on all our clients. (although we did have Office 2003 on our projector computer).

But about four years ago, i personally stopped using Word to construct any projects. I found InDesign to be much better suited, as it didn’t try to ‘fix’ things for me that didn’t need any fixing to begin with (like the crazy Outlines! I also was using OpenOffice.org as my office suite for a while.

So today, i thought I would give the new Word 2007 a shot. Remember–i haven’t done much with this program in about FOUR years!

It was all going really good, and i found a lot of features very helpful…until i tried to edit an outline! yikes! Word does it’s own thing again, trying to ‘fix’ what doesn’t need fixing! errrr!!!! agrivating, to say the least.
But it’s good for me, so now i can better answer any support questions if/when they come up.
But i don’t think i’ll be making any switches back to Word any time soon! i’m glad i’m not pinned down to it for sure!

Have you had any experiences with Microsoft Office? Is anyone using OpenOffice.org?

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If you like to beta test things, than i have a great opportunity for you!

I have recently integrated online giving to the New Hope Christian Center website, and it has been in Alpha (pre-beta) testing for a couple of months, and things are going smoothly. So we are now looking to add a few (no more than five) more online givers before we open it up to everyone. If you’re interested in being a beta tester for online tithing, please emailing me and i can provide you a link. i would like feedback on usability–especially the usability (user-friendliness) if you don’t know anything about computers at all!

We offer one-time and recurring giving. My wife and i set up the recurring giving a couple months ago, and we’ve really appreciated not having to hassle with writing a check before service every week. We have liked it a lot. Let me know if you’re interested by emailing me (nathan) at NewHope.in

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did you hear that i won an orange county chopper motorcycle from Motel 6? check out the article here!

i am still waiting for them to send it to me, though!

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The Joomla! forums just went over 100,000 verified users!

Congrats to them! The forum is the largest (user count) of any open source project. sweet.

And, if you’re interested, there are more than 750,000 posts in 145,000+ topics.
more than 1,200 posts per day!

Congrats and hats off to the Joomla! open source Content Management System.

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