"So...." (National Treasure 2)

Wow. December 12 was the last post. Hmmm. I've been a little busy preparing and getting things ready for Christmas Eve and beyond. I'm running a cool little light show as part of the Christmas Eve services at The Rock. A night before the big show, and I'm pretty calm. Check back at 4:59pm tomorrow to see how well I'm holding up. Just kidding.

Here are some numbers for you:
2 - Days prepping and arranging the system
3 - Services @ 5:00, 6:30, & 8:00pm on Christmas Eve.
4 - Number of Christmas Eve Services at the current location.
5 - Number of Christmas Eve Services I've been to.
11 - Hours spent programming lights for one event.
16 - Additional dimmer channels used (96 total).
28 - Intelligent lights utilized.
64 - # of light cues for song.
195 - Seconds of accompanying song.
200 - # of feet of additional socapex cable.
800 - Watts of power per channel on dimmer rack.
8000 - Watts of some "special" components.

We'll just see tomorrow what all those numbers add up to. ;-)

"With great power, comes great responsibility." (Spider-Man)

Just go here.

Watch the videos.

That is cool, coming from someone who loved the game growing up. I used to play for hours on a Mac SE.

Some things have come down the pipe that I'm very excited about. The big one is Mitosis 08 in April. We have a direction graphically and a theme. It will be a different type of conference that the Church needs. Not TRC, but the Church body as a whole. And our speaker line up is awesome.

Stay tuned.

"By the power of Greyskull!" (Hot Fuzz)

Last week I was at the Performance Racing Industry tradeshow in Orlando, FL. Awesome. Lots of shiny go-fast parts. The amount of product literature is astounding. I think we came back with 10 inches of catalogs, pamphlets, and fliers. That is a lot of info to trudge along with for 8 or 9 hours.

I could tell at the tradeshows which companies had a strong European base, or were European, just by the display booth. Some were obvious, like Brembo, but I didn't know AP Brakes was from the UK. The booths were clean, crisp, and brighter.

"I don't want to sell or process anything that's been sold or processed." (Say Anything)

Sometimes my defense turns into offense. But sometimes on purpose. On The Rock Church's YouTube channel, some "stirring" conversation about one of the videos led to this post:

User Oneak: no, i dont. Have you ever noticed that the idea of god has to be preached and tought over and over? It also must be engrained in a person from a young age, or shown to a person at their most desperate hour.
However, things that are ACTUALLY facts, like Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, only needs to be tought once.
The very fact that jesus needs to be injected into EVERYTHING at ALL TIMES just shows the fagility of the belief. THE TRUTH IS NEVER FRAGILE.

And that prompted my response:
fyi, facts are taught over and over and over. it's called school. and there's the famous quote "people who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
and other facts, like how to spell "taught" "fragility" obviously are needed to be "ingrained" over and over.
thomas edison took many (over 2000) iterations before he successfully created the incandescent light bulb. it didn't happen over night. he had to fail numerous times before he was successful.

And I did look up "ingrained" and it can be spelled either way. Also in my haste I placed a space in overnight.

The comment "The truth is never fragile" caught my attention. Truth isn't, but our preconceived notions and expectancy of truth are.

"Don't confuse me with the nice guy." (The Contract)

Communication 101: Sort a hierarchy-based interactive tool in accordance to urgency, then by most requested.

Example: The second option in the second menu should not be "If you are calling for emergency roadside assistance, press 2".

Keywords: emergency and assistance.

I could see this spiraling out of control. "Thank you for calling 9-1-1. If this is not an emergency, please hang up and call your local police and/or hospital for assistance.
If you are calling on behalf of another person, please press 1.
If you are in need of protection or are reporting a crime, please press 2.
If you are reporting a noise nuisance, press 3.
If you are reporting a missing or trapped animal, press 4.
If you are reporting a missing child press 5.
If you are a lost child, hang up and yell "mom".
If you are having chest pains or difficulty breathing, press 6.
If you are missing extremities like hands, feet, or ears, press 7. By the way, if you are missing a hand, great job on calling 9-1-1!
If you are bleeding profusely from an artery or are missing a limb, and you are still conscious, press 8.
If you wish to speak to a live operator, press 9.
To hear these options again, press 0."

"Legen- caution for those who are lactose-intolerant- dary!"

1. What is the "animal spirit" on the left? Face of a bear, arms of an owl? Huh?
2. I don't know if having a mascot with a tattoo is a good idea, especially when these are obviously aimed at children.
3. The creature on the right is a "sea-bear". Apparently a panda and an otter got it on?

"She doesn't look Druidish." (Spaceballs)

Here's a bit of information confusion. Google.com is a search engine. It helps users find content/information on the Internet. Content owners are slowly loosing identification because people are instructing "Google this" and "Google that" (myself included).

The removal of ownership is usually stated like "I don't know where I got it, but I found it on Google."

We can all remember Google, but we can't remember ics.gov.us.com/sosus/secret/conspiracy/23957393kdijerklfglkjf=?.html.

So what's it mean to be a true information owner? If anyone can use a search engine to find your content, doesn't that mean you've partnered with a distributor? It's not like everything on the Internet has a market (someone that wants it), so a distributor is a good thing to have. And do you pay the distributor? How does the distributor make money?

Oh, yeah. The form of ad revenue, which is triggered by your content. So if the distributor is making money, why aren't you? If you don't make money off your content, that means it must be free. If there's no monetary value for your content, why would it matter if someone copied/used/lifted it? It's not like you use it for livelihood.

That was my little rabbit trail from someone's comment about finding information on Google.