You are here: Home / 2006 / Archives for April 2006
post

Attitude Makes the Difference

April 30, 2006 By 1 Comment

I had to laugh.

I got up a little early this morning to take care of a couple things before I went in to help out with church set up. At 0630 the phone rang calling me in to work. Yesterday they assured me they wouldn’t need me until after 1200 at the earliest. Go figure.

So it was a quick shower, coffee-up the travel mug, grab a snack, and off to the port. On the way I activated my contingency plan.

Now I’m a big fan of contingency plans. It bugs me when I get left hanging because someone else didn’t think ahead a little so I try not to do that to other folks. And since I knew I was first on call this weekend, I’d made arrangements to cover my church commitments, “just in case.”

Well it all worked out because I only had to make a couple of phone calls, and there was one slightly out of the way stop to drop off some stuff, and I still got to the ship before they were even ready for me. The whole thing went fairly smoothly.

The most stressful part was when the phone first rang. I forgot that the phones at work had been forwarded to my cell phone when I crawled out of bed. Normally I try to take my cell out of the bedroom in the mornings that the phones are on me so that, if it rings, it won’t wake Gorgeous up. I ran back to the other end of the house as soon as I heard it. But there is no way she was going to be able to sleep through that racket! Oops.

Anyway I got my work done and made it back to church about 20 minutes after service started, which was pretty good overall. At least I was able to help tear down and put some things away after service.

Then at lunch one of my friends said, “Man, it stinks that you had to go to work today.”

That’s when I laughed.

I told him he had it all wrong. “I never have to go to work. I get to go to work.”

You see I’ve been unemployed before and I remember what it was like to not be able to go to work. No one holds a gun to my head and says you must do this job now. It’s completely my choice.

I get a little frustrated with folks who chronically complain about their jobs. No I know that everyone has an off day from time to time. I’m not talking about that.

But the folks who seem to never have anything good to say about their job and who go on and on (and on and on and on) covering every detail of how absolutely horrible everything about their work place is, those people drive me nuts.

More often than not I’ll cut someone off in the middle of a rant like that and remind them that they live in America. If they don’t like their job, go out and find another one. No one is making them work where they are. They are free to leave and go somewhere else where they could maybe be happy.

Since I have been unemployed I understand what it takes to get a job. And, yes, I’ve done some things that weren’t so fun simply because I had bills to pay. You do what you have to do. But even then I didn’t complain (too loudly) about it. I knew that I was free to move on whenever I chose.

The truth is that the chronic complainers would probably still find something to complain about even if they switched jobs to one that had none of the problems they are whining about now. They really want to complain more than they want to do the hard work required to improve their situation.

Life’s too short to get sucked into that kind of thinking. Besides, no one wants to hear it.

Deal with it. Fix it. Or move on.

Your attitude makes the difference.

Of course I fully expect Gorgeous to remind me that I wrote this the next time I start feeling sorry for myself and go off on a rant. And she’ll be right, too.

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , ,
post

Its Official – I’m an S.O.B.

April 29, 2006 By 4 Comments

Well, I had a ship last night and didn’t get in very early. Since Friday is supposed to be date night with Gorgeous, we took in our weekly dose of Doctor Who compliments of TIVO and then turned in because I had to get up and head into work for a full day today.

This morning I got up a little early for a Saturday because I was off to work, fed the boys, and fired up the computer to check a couple things out before I headed in to the port. Checking my stats real quick on my way to perusing through my morning bloggage and I saw that Liz Strauss over at the Successful Blog not only linked back to me here (which is a treat in itself because we like links) but she actually had the audacity to call me out as an S.O.B.

I nearly spit my coffee on the keyboard.

But it’s not what you may be thinking. Liz highlights folks that she feels are Successful and Outstanding Bloggers (or SOB’s). Here’s her definition of an SOB:

They take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.
I thank every one of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on. Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

So I’m celebrating my nice little honor by posting this official SOB logo here at CREEations. Named Successful and Outstanding Blogger by the Successful Blog – They take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.And thanks Liz for appreciating what I have to say here.

Although I have to admit, I feel a little like the Dad from A Christmas Story with my major award. Fortunately my major award is much better!

Enjoy!

Announcements Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Imagination Power

April 28, 2006 By 3 Comments

You ever walk into something and have your expectations overwhelmingly exceeded by the experience? I did just last night.

Gorgeous and I went to the Savannah Arts Academy for their first student film festival to support Emily who is a student there and one of the key members of our tech team at church. Now Gorgeous and I don’t have any kids, but I remember school plays and band concerts from when I was in high school. I remember them being the kinds of things that, if you didn’t have a connection with someone directly involved, you’d rather be somewhere else, anywhere else, maybe even the dentist.

Boy was I wrong. My first clue could have been that the school has its own Wikipedia entry. Or maybe I should have noticed when I walked up that I was a tad underdressed with my khaki’s and a polo shirt. The school did a great job making the kids feel honored and important, giving them the whole red-carpet treatment. It was nice, and fun, but I’m not about the hype. I go for substance, baby.

Well when the thing got started, the school had arranged the evening to be emceed by pairs of local news anchors from no less than three different stations. Cool. Then again, I’m not about the hype.

But when they started showing the film clips these kids put together I was completely blown away. The categories were commercials, public service announcements (PSA’s), and music videos. With the commercials and PSA’s the kids only had 30 second of film time to get a message across. And man did they deliver.

Some of the best work was in the PSA category. The imagination poured into the creative ways the kids told stories to get their message across was incredible. You could tell they were passionate about the causes they chose to represent. And the best of them had a hook at the end that either wrenched your heart or made you burst out laughing.

These kids may not have put together something as technically polished as what you see on TV (it was real close though), but I’m telling you the stories they told in those 30 second spots were more powerful than anything you see put together by the Ad Council. Someone there should get a copy of the DVD and take some lessons from these kids. Or maybe hire some of them.

What made their work so good?

Gorgeous and I were talking about that on the drive home last night. I think that the best ones were where the kids took a really ambitious idea and went for it. The higher they reached the better the results.

And then this morning I stumbled across an article this morning by Curt Rosengren called Finding your Infinity where he says

So many of us are obsessed with our limitations. It’s almost as though we can see nothing but the reasons we can’t do, or be, or achieve what we aspire to.
What if we flipped that on its head? What if, instead of our limitations, we focused on the amazing potential and possibility that stretches far beyond what we can see from where we stand in the moment?

Man, those are great questions. It is something Gorgeous and I both struggle with. It is so much easier for us to look at all the reasons why something can’t work rather than putting our energies into reasons and ways that it could work and work big.

It ties in with a question J.R.R. Tolkein, once asked C.S. Lewis (thanks to Mark Batterson)

Maybe lack of faith is really a failure of imagination?

Ooch!

Jesus put a high value on belief. He said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

What’s the take-away? Learn from the kids at Savannah Arts Academy.

Ask “How can I make that happen?” and stop worrying about why an idea might not work.

Use your imagination.

Exercise your flabby faith.

Change the world.

Enjoy!

Interesting, Life Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

Warning: Your Internet is in Danger

April 27, 2006 By 3 Comments

What if BellSouth (or Comcast, or Verizon, or AT&T) decided to block your access to internet sites based on whether or not the owners of those sites were willing (or able) to pay each of them an access fee?

How would that change your access to information?

Do you maintain a web presence? A blog?

How much are you willing (or able) to pay so that everyone has access to your site?

Right now these companies make their money largely from subscribers like you and me tapping into their networks to access content. They don’t also charge people who provide content via other “connections” to get their contact through to you from the other side. Because the law says they can’t.

But that is in danger of changing. Soon.

If you use the internet at all you need to learn about this before it’s too late and you get locked out of content, or if you’re a blogger, you get locked out of potential readers.

Take another hypothetical: What if you live, say in Savannah like me, and you run a blog that is hosted on a computer somewhere on the West Coast. And what if neither you nor the company that owns the computers that host your blog are willing (or able) to pay your internet provider at your home for access through them.

You could find yourself in a position where you can’t even access your own web site!

If you think this doesn’t really matter to you because you don’t really use the internet all that much you are exactly wrong. Us little guys will be impacted the most if we loose Net Neutrality. The big companies like Amazon.com will simply ante up and pay the fees. The little people will be left out in the cold.

Get educated. Holler at Congress before it is too late!

Start with Randall Bowman’s great (non-technical) post Threat to the Net.

I first read about Net Neutrality on Liz Strauss’ Successful Blog post Net Neutrality is in Jepardy. Also see Do you trust Congress & AT&T to run the internet?

These posts have links to others where you can see all about this.

If we do nothing we will be the poorer for it in more ways than one.

Update: Visit SaveTheInternet.com for the complete round-up on this issue.

Misc Tagged With: ,
post

Important Visitor

April 26, 2006 By Leave a Comment

We were told at the very end of the day yesterday that the President of our company will be at our office first thing today. Hello! It sure would have been nice to get a little advanced notice to spruce the place up a bit.

Oh, there are so many lessons in this situation. Here’s just a few:

Keep your space tidy. You never know who might be popping in for a visit. Having your desk (house, car, etc.) cluttered or dirty doesn’t put your best foot forward when you host the unexpected guest.

Communicate with your team. I’m sure the president’s flight wasn’t booked yesterday afternoon. Someone must have known he was coming but the information didn’t trickle down to the trenches until the last minute. People appreciate being in the loop, especially about unusual circumstances.

Be flexible. There are times when you just plain have to rearrange your day to accommodate the goings-on around you.

It is amazing the extra effort we often go through to accommodate an “important person”. In truth we should treat everyone as though they were important. Because the reality is people are very important.

Jesus gave us some great examples of this principle in action. He was chronically criticized by the cultural establishment for hanging out with the wrong crowd. “He’s a friend of sinners” was one of the slanders they used. Reading through the gospel accounts I see that even His disciples didn’t get it right away.

Over and over we see the disciples trying to “protect” Jesus so that He wouldn’t be “bothered” by some kids, or a sick person, or (gasp!) someone who was not Jewish. Jesus responded each time by making time for the culturally little people.

I think we could easily miss the take-away here. We could easily think that the “important people” don’t rate special treatment and we should just treat them just like everyone else. But that misses the point.

The real lesson is this: We should treat everyone just like we would treat the important people. Don’t lower your standards of treatment for the VIP’s in your effort to be “no respecter of persons”.

Rather raise your standards for how you value everyone else.

Jesus summed it up this way:

“Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them.” (Matt. 12:7)

Enjoy!

Jesus, Life Tagged With: ,
post

Starting Conversations

April 25, 2006 By 2 Comments

Liz Strauss posted some great advice last night on her Successful Blog about Conversation Starters.

It’s a topic that is especially important in the business world where the ability to make new contacts can really make a difference. Gorgeous and I have been learning tons about conversing with folks and getting to know strangers better because of her business.

Gorgeous has always been a great conversationalist. Over the years we’ve been married I’ve come to call her my master interrogator because she finds out all kinds of obscure stuff about people she’s just met. And the best part is people love her because they never feel like their privacy was violated. (She could work for the CIA or something. I’m serious. She’s that good.)

Why don’t people feel Gorgeous is invading their privacy? Because she is genuinely interested in learning about people around her. In her case it’s not something she has to muster up. She just likes meeting new people.

But, outside the business world, why should we bother improving our conversation starting skills?

Well for starters it makes life more interesting. I am naturally an introvert. Until I get to know you, that is. After that you can’t shut me up. But very little freaks me out more than walking into a room of complete strangers. The way I’d cope with that was to become a wall flower, which only added to the freak-out factor the next time.

But when you choose to work at learning how to start conversations without being awkward it comes easier and gets less scary. Gorgeous and I make a game out of it now. “Guess what I learned about the new guy?”

The other thing is that you never know how you might connect with someone new unless you talk with them. Just last week I found a connection with a guy. But it only happened because I was genuinely interested in learning about him. Who knows what might come of that one day?

One last example of someone who is a master connector: Our pastor is one of the best conversation starters I know. You might think that that should come with the job. But most of the pastors I know tend to be at least a little introverted or, if they are outgoing, don’t really connect with folks.

But not so with our pastor. We have more folks coming to our campus because they had a conversation with him, which he started, than because of any other person. I’ve watched him “work his magic” and I am continually amazed. For him it just flows naturally. He mixes it up and doesn’t rely on any one technique to get a conversation started. But it flows out of his sincere interest in other people.

What’s the take away?

Get interested in other people.

Go out and start conversations. You never know who you might meet.

Enjoy!

Life Tagged With: , ,
post

Train Tracks

April 24, 2006 By 2 Comments

We’ve got some train tracks near our house. There’s two sets actually. They are far enough away that you can ignore them pretty easily, but close enough that there is no problem hearing when a train comes by. They cross a road around the corner so the whistle is a give away. Sometimes when I’m outside and its quiet I can hear the bells on the crossing gate even before any train noise. If Gorgeous is around, I’ll try to impress her by saying, “Train’s coming.”

I’m not sure she’s impressed. But its got me thinking. How often do I do things that really bring no other value to the table other than my attempt to impress someone?

There’s a passage in Proverbs that one translation says this way:

Pride first, then the crash, but humility is precursor to honor.

Ooch!

How many of us are approval addicts? Looking to find our value in the opinions of others?

How many times are we thinking of some impressive fact to throw into the conversation rather than listing to what the other person is saying?

Here’s another interesting thing about trying to impress others.

It can actually hurt our performance and hold us back.

How so? Well if we are comparing ourselves to others and what they are doing as our standard, simply doing better than them in order to impress someone may in fact be less than our best effort.

The bottom line is that we can only really find any kind of fulfilling significance from God, not in impressing other people. It kind of takes the pressure off. Can you imagine God ever being impressed by anything we were to do? So we don’t have to try.

And the good thing is God values us already. We don’t have to impress Him. He’s done the heavy lifting for us already.

God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much (Colossians 1:13)

Enjoy!

Life Tagged With: ,
post

Encouragement

April 23, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Dad called yesterday. We had a long talk. He’s my go-to guy on all things computer. I suppose I may put high expectations on him, but he sure does know a lot. He started programming computers back in the days of punch cards. I’m pushing 40 and I grew up with computers in the house since elementary school. By rights I should have gone into the industry somewhere.

But I was a rebellious child. I wanted to do my own thing, which is pretty much how I ended in the maritime industry.

So I pretty much pick Dad’s brain when I have any kind of computer related question. Although I may start tapping into my little brother soon. He’s studying computer science at R.I.T. I use the term little purely in reference to our age difference. We’re within a couple months of being 20 years apart, which is a bit weird I suppose, but the kid is way taller than I am. He’s in that small segment of the human race that actually can make me feel short.

I floated an idea for a new topic oriented blog that I have been kicking around to get Dad’s take on it. I nearly didn’t mention it to him. We don’t see eye to eye on the whole religion topic and I’m thinking of writing about a Christian oriented theme.

But I’m glad I did. By the time I finished describing what I had in mind, Dad was telling me that I should get started writing it down because it sounded interesting and that way I could get started gathering material even before I was ready to launch the blog.

Talk about encouraging!

All I can say is Thanks for the thumbs up DAD!

It really means a lot.

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Food Frenzy

April 22, 2006 By Leave a Comment

I had to run by the grocery store this evening. It’s not something I really like to do. My shopping skill level is very amateurish, especially compared to Gorgeous. Good thing for me she’ll be back tomorrow.

But it wasn’t soon enough to avert a grocery crisis big enough to force me out into the shopping night.

I was out of creamer.

First of all, let me be clear. When I say creamer I really mean half-and-half. It absolutely must be liquid at the very least. Gorgeous is, after all, from Wisconsin which we all know is the dairy state. (State Motto: Come smell our dairy-air!) Use of powdered creamer-like substances is considered blasphemy in our household.

Not that we had any of that on hand either.

Tomorrow, being Sunday, I’ll have to hit the ground running. There’s a lot of volunteering to be done to get our Savannah Campus up and running on Sundays. (God thing for us we’ve got a great team of people committed to make it happen.)

And that means coffee will need to be consumed. (mmm… coffee…) I can’t seem to get started most mornings without mass quantities of the warm stimulating beverage.

Anyway I had to go to the store. (Focus, Chris!)

The trouble is that I have a hang up with the name of the closest grocery store to our house. Piggly Wiggly is just too weird for me. Fortunately for us the one in our neighborhood is very nice. Besides the choice was them or Wal-mart, which should have been a no-brainer.

Except that the Wal-mart is right across the street from our local Backyard Burgers. And I was having a craving, don’t you know. With Gorgeous not around, I knew I could get the onions on it. I mean I could get them when she’s around, I suppose. But then she wouldn’t get within 10 feet of me. Not that I blame her even. So I figure what’s the point of having Gorgeous around if she isn’t around, if you know what I mean. I usually skip the onions.

I went to the Pig anyway. Then to BYB.

I was glad I did. As I was poking around, looking for something to go with the left over Reddi Wip in the fridge from last Sunday, I found that Breyers Ice Cream was 2 for 1. How cool is that?

Of course now I feel like a bloated tick. But it was mmm… oh, so good.

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , ,
post

Friday Free-For-All Change is in the Air

April 21, 2006 By Leave a Comment

You may have noticed some changes around here. We’ll work on going through what’s been updated here after a while.

Gorgeous is out in St. Luis with her companies national training conference for the latter part of this week and into the weekend, which has given me an opportunity to stay up waaay too late and do some research on various things.

I am looking at taking the blogging thing to the next level. It would mean moving away from a (free) Blogger platform to something which would have to be paid for. Since Gorgeous keeps us honest with the budget, I will have to come up with a way to pay for my hobby. Wise woman, that Gorgeous.

That is why I’ve put some ads on the site. I’ll experiment some and see how it goes. I checked my account and I’ve made exactly one penny since last night. :o At that rate, I’ll be able to afford to upgrade in about, oh, 10-15 years!

That’s OK. I’m learning a bunch about this whole blogging thing and it seems to be a good fit for me. Tomorrow after I get a good night’s sleep, We’ll get back to our regular postings.

The boys are getting a bit obnoxious because I’ve let myself get sucked into the computer screen here basically since Gorgeous got on that plane. I get the feeling that they may be anxious for her to get home. What do you think?

Boys On Watch

Cats, Sleep Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts