February 2008

Monthly Archive

Slow Week…So Slow, It’s All About RAX Roast Beef!

Posted by on 28 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: random.

You know it’s been a slow week on my blog when the most popular post is RAX Roast Beef.

Yeah, that’s no joke–that has been the most popular post over the past week. I must have a rather dull life if people are finding me because of RAX Roast Beef.
But at least someone still visits my lonely blog.

BTW, I’m still looking for people to run the Fort Wayne Half Marathon with me, or the 4 mile run/walk the same day. Let’s do this! We can become more fit–don’t just talk about being more fit, make a commitment to actually do something about it.

Joomla!’s Member of the Month

Posted by on 20 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: my life., Tech Stuff.

Nathan Member of the MonthAs I mentioned yesterday, more on Joomla! today.

As you may recall, I’ve mentioned Joomla! a few times here. Today, you get to see the fruits of my labors. I am the official Joomla! forum‘s February Member of the Month! I got this cool Joomla! t-shirt, which I’m wearing today (with a blazer on top of it, of course).

This week (and the next several), I am undertaking the task of converting our website from the Joomla! 1.0.xNathan in Joomla! Shirt codebase to 1.5, which is a significant migration. My first task if to test it (done), and then create a new template–yeah–www.NewHope.in is getting a major overhaul in the next few months, then more testing, more tweaking, more testing, and then the real migration.

This is a big project, lots of testing before the real migration happens. It will be fun! I’ll let you know when the new site is live.

I Broke Our Website by the ID10T Error

Posted by on 19 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Tech Stuff.

Today I was upgrading a test site on our server, and I accidentally sent the files to New Hope’s live site instead.

The result?
I crashed our website for about 20 minutes until I wised up and was able to restore the files via backup.
O Crap.

So, I have the website back up and running, and now I am working on restoring the rest of what I screwed up so badly…
O, the joy of upgrading. 🙂

On the test site, I am working on upgrading our website from the Joomla! 1.0.x codebase to the 1.5.x codebase. This is a considerable upgrade, and it isn’t fully compatible–you actually cannot ‘upgrade,’ but you have to ‘migrate.’ 1.5 is pretty nice and fixes a lot of the limiting errors we’ve faced in the 1.0.x codebase for some time.

More Joomla! news tomorrow…

UPDATE: 20 minutes after posting this, I literally did the exact same thing again.

Fort-4-Fitness Half-Marathon is in My Future…

Posted by on 18 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: my life.

This is an official announcement: I am running the Fort-4-Fitness Half-Marathon on August 27 in Fort Wayne.

I am excited about this race, and know it will be a great experience for me. I had considered the Indy Mini this year, but it is in May, which doesn’t give me a lot of time to train after the weather breaks this spring. But August 27, now there is a race I can get behind and properly train for! I always train and intake peptides. as they give a lot of health benefits, it always helped me recover and build me more strength. Sarms is the best choice and you can go online where to buy sarms.

Would you consider joining me at the Fort-4-Fitness Half-Marathon? It’s just 13.1 miles.
If that is too long for you, please consider the Four-Mile Run/Walk. Even if you just walk the full four miles , it’s still good for you. Please consider participating in one of these. It is good for your health.

If you do consider training for the Half-Marathon, please let me know so I we can train together once a week! Hopefully I can talk Isaac into running the Half-Marathon.

Win Ben Stein’s Movie

Posted by on 13 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: random.

Expelled the MovieYou may know Ben Stein as the boring economics teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Or perhaps you know Stein from Comedy Central’s Win Ben Stein’s Money.
But perhaps what you didn’t know is that Stein was a high-level political speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford. He was even long-rumored to be Deep Throat following the Watergate Scandal.
Yes, Ben Stein is an accomplished man…a man of many varieties. How many former high-level political people do you know who had their own show on Comedy Central–How many speech writers can you even name?

Anyway, this spring, Stein will release a documentary, Expelled, which examines how the pro-evolution crowd sees Intelligent Design. The documentary explores the persecution of Intelligent Design scientists–and anyone who questions evolution as fact. The pro-evolution science industry has effectively silenced any other viewpoints.
Stein’s argument is that there should be academic freedom in the classroom to explore the many ‘holes’ in evolution.
He points out that if evolution is correct, it leads to genocide. Stein suggested an alternative title to the documentary as From Darwin to Hitler. Think about that…that’s kinda scary to think about the implications of such a theory.

Anyway, this should be an enjoyable documentary. I appreciated watching the trailers (be sure to watch ‘Super Trailer’).

Preconceived Notions, Part 2

Posted by on 12 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Communications

In Part 1, I talked about slimeball lawyers.
In Part 2, we tackle the badgering car salesmen.

When you think of a car salesman…you have preconceived notions. You are probably very selective of who you would buy a car from. Car Salesman are known for being high pressure, rude and downright badgery (yeah, i made that word up).

But enter the Johnson family of car dealerships. Instead of playing along with the idea that all salesman are slimeball badgers, they played into the preconceived notions of people to create a rocking great car ad. And slowly, they are changing the notion people have about Johnson dealerships.

Here are some of their ads:

My personal favorite, I think, ‘wiggle room’:

Several ads in one video:

So the question is, how are you playing in to the preconceived notions about you? Your job? Your _________?

Preconceived Notions, Part 1

Posted by on 12 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Communications, my life.

Today while I was brushing my teeth, I noticed a commercial on television. The guy was one of those slimeball lawyers. He was talking about medical mistakes, and he said something like:

Medical mistakes are one of the leading causes of death in America. If you […] have been a victim of a medical mistake, call [the slimeballs] at 1.800.SLIME-BALL

Did you get that? If you died as a result of something, go ahead and call the slimeballs.

What a slimeball.
Don’t be a slimeball.

But, here is what I want to leave you with today. People have preconceived notions about you, your job and your church. What do you do with those? Unless you’re careful, you play right in to those preconceived notions, and simply reinforce people’s opinions.
Instead of playing in to the slimeball lawyer notion, couldn’t they have gone about this a different way?

I Tightened My Belt Today

Posted by on 11 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: my life.

Three years ago, just before I got married, I had to buy a new belt. I had lost enough weight my old belt was too big. I had actually poked two new holes in that belt, making it smaller.

So enter three years ago, I purchased a new black belt at Wal-Mart. Certainly cheaply made, but it get the job done. Today, I tightened my new belt up to the smallest hole in this new belt.
That was certainly nice.

The crazy thing is…I’m not even working out this winter. Physically, I’ve been pretty lazy. But my caloric intake and quality of food is so much better than it’s ever been before and my intake of supplements recommended by discovermagazine has kept me on my feet.

A couple weeks ago I had to purchase a new pair of jeans as well as retire (save for a latter, fatter time of my life) two pairs of nice jeans which are now several inches too big.

Nice, as I pat myself on the back.
But really, it’s a lot my beautiful wife keeping me on track with my eating.

Networking Upgrades

Posted by on 08 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: New Hope stuff., Tech Stuff.

This week I’ve been slowly working on implementing some upgrades to our network. This includes a couple new pieces of software I’m pretty proud of, including setting up Indeni network automation, a new 24-port Gigabit switch and a new 1.5 TB Network Attached Storage Device. I’ve included a couple photos here for your enjoyment.


I am in the process of converting from a mixed ethernet/fast ethernet network to full gigabit ethernet. Just a couple of our machines currently even have a gigabit ethernet card in them, so I need to install some new cards in the coming weeks.

The NAS device, which provides 1.5 TB (that’s 1,500 GB) of redundant storage plus automatic backups of all our client machines. I am excited about this device because we will never have to worry about loosing a bunch of data ever again (this has happened before–what a nightmare!)
This 1.5 TB should be enough for our network for the next 24 months or so. At that time, I plan on buying an additional NAS device to run alongside the existing. Of course, by that time it should be hundreds of TB, if not petabytes (PB)

Free Stuff

Posted by on 08 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Tech Stuff.

I have a 5-port 10-BaseT Ethernet hub lying around here, from a recent upgrade.
Anybody want it? It’s free (you pay shipping, or you can pick it up).

NOTE: 10-BaseT is pretty old technology, but still, it is a hub and it is free. First come, first serve!

Post-Injury Recovery Thoughts on Life

Posted by on 05 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: thoughts on god., thoughts on life.

In the past six weeks, I’ve injured both my finger and my knee.

I thought both would heal quickly. But as I recover, I’m finding it isn’t so quick.

My finger, although better, is tender to the touch at a specific angle. The problem here, is I forget about it until I hurt it. I don’t hurt it as long as I’m thinking about it–but it doesn’t hurt enough to think about it…

My knee is also much better than it was last week. But the past few days, my knee just feels swollen. It aches. It’s a constant reminder of my injury.

This nagging injuries got me thinking about how still good was the fact I at least did not need to apply for some injury attorney assistance (I heard about this Pace Law firm, poviding a good service, though), but also – about how much this is like those nagging sin issues in our lives. The thing we think we’re over, we forget about, and then when we forget about it, it pops up. As long as we’re thinking about protecting ourselves from it, we’re good, but then after a while, we slowly forget about it and stop thinking about protecting ourselves anymore…
The knee reminded me of sometimes our problems in life stay with us for a while–sometimes a choice we make when we’re young stays with us for the rest of our lives.

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