New GM Scott Pioli… acquired from the New England Patriots himself, has traded for Mike Vrabel, linebacker, and now QB Matt Cassel, the Patriots “Franchise Player.”
Obviously the Patriots believe Brady will be 100%, and they have their eye on someone in the draft. That number 3 position was evidently too much to pass up.

Guess I’m rooting for the Kansas City Patriots this year.

I’m told the owners are great people, and they really care about helping teens find the right college to go to. They are a principal and a teacher…

With SugarCRM, I am becoming more organized and efficient while servicing my customers much better. I dig it.

But… I need to learn more. I’m not in a financial position at the moment to spend over a grand a class for CRM training, so I’m giving SugarCRM for Dummies a try. I’ve really liked the Dummies series for other things I’ve needed to learn about (in fact, that’s how I first learned to make web pages… html for dummies!).

At any rate, SugarCRM could be used for churches, small or mid-size businesses, independent contractors, or… for anyone who needs to track information about customers and organize tasks and responsibilities.

I’m trying to learn more about sales forecasting and such, but even without understanding that facet I’m extremely happy with what I’ve been able to get out of SugarCRM.

Oh, and it’s free for the community version. I love Open Source!

I’ve recently received an education on identity theft. Fortunately, it is not because my identity was stolen.

Burn out hit me at the end of 2008, and I just could not continue to have most of my work time be spent on a computer. I’m not one to spend 15 minutes talking to a client for every 10 hours of work by myself at a computer. I just can’t do it any longer.

So I’m going back to a business I was extremely happy with, and I only left because of HUGE life changes (divorce, going back to college, etc…). Once I graduated from college, I started doing web dev and pursuing acting and did not give my former business much of a thought.

Now I’m transitioning back into it full-time, and they’ve added a new product. Identity Theft Shield. It’s pretty amazing, but I thought people who paid for identity security products were just paranoid… until I started getting my education.

According to the FTC, half of all Americans in 2007 (2008 numbers not in yet) had their information compromised due to 446 major corporations having their information stolen. Just today, I see an article about another gigantic security breach.

“St. Louis-based Heartland Payment announced yesterday that hackers gained access to the machines it uses to process roughly 100 million credit card transactions every month. The company handles transactions for 175,000 separate businesses and bills itself as having “the highest standards” and “the most trusted transactions.” Despite that, the company has no idea how long its systems were being monitored, saying only that it was “longer than weeks.”

Full Article: Millions of Credit Card Numbers Nabbed in Payment System Breach

So as I said before, I sell an identity theft product. So take this information as coming from someone who could make a few bucks by pointing out such things.

I can honestly say whether you buy it from me or not, get Identity Theft coverage!

And my short little sales bit is this: If you are a victim of identity theft, we have experts which do the restoration for you. This is much better than the monitoring services your credit card companies, banks, or tv advertisements are pitching to you.

Contact me if you are interested in this low-cost product

The problem is, not a single day passes where my phone does not reboot itself at least once. And that is normally when I am either receiving or trying to make a phone call.

And, if someone does not leave a message, I do not even know who tried to call me.

Palm Support is utterly useless on this issue. They tried to blame it on third party software, but I removed EVERYTHING, and guess what… it still happens.

Of course, I let them talk me into keeping it and now it’s past the 30-day return period.

I upgraded to the 755p for one simple reason: the 700p rebooted itself frequently. I wanted this problem fixed. I was missing important calls, and I was tired of it.

The new phone was great for about two weeks. Then it begun. The reboots. With the 700p, it was normally when I received a call while already on another call or if I was playing a game on the phone (which was too often… the person who developed Tetris for Palm OS should be shot!). Now with the 755p, it seems to happen most often when the bluetooth is connected. I’ve used three different bluetooth headsets, and the Treo 755p has the same issue with all of them.

I am thinking about switching to the Blackberry Storm. I want to stay on Verizon’s network, and it still irritates me that Apple made their exclusive deal with the worst cell phone service provider in the United States. I think the Storm has gotten harsh reviews mainly from people who wanted the Storm to be something it’s not. I’m going to try to play with one at a Verizon store early next week, and if I like it, I will forever be done with Palm.

To keep my conscience clear, I felt like I should warn all my dear readers to avoid Palm units like the plague!

Others I know just follow their gut feeling. I usually fall into this category, as it seems every time I have not followed my gut I’ve gotten myself into big trouble regardless of the way I came to my decision.

Some follow this gut feeling only after intense prayer (if the decision is weighty enough, add fasting to this). This can be accompanied by requests of others for prayer, and the word “wisdom” usually pops into the prayer as the primary request.

Others will ask advice of nearly everyone they know, hoping someone will offer the perfect pearl of wisdom to make their path clear.

And probably nearly everyone uses a combination of the above in their decision-making process.

I recently had to make a very tough decision. While I don’t ask everyone in the world about different decisions, I do turn to a few close friends for advice. This situation reminded me how important it is to have people in your life who can speak to me the wisdom I pray for.

Your close relationships play a vital role in life decisions. In this instance, not one single person provided the end-all be-all answer to the question I faced, but each person I talked to helped paint the picture and reveal what was truly my gut feeling. I had strong desires which were trying to drown the inner voice telling me now was not the right time.

My girlfriend, having faced nearly the same situation just a couple of months ago, pointed out what I would be giving up if I tied up more of my income. A close friend simply noted he does not go forward with things if he has major unease about the issue. Yet another voice pointed out the difference between what I want and what I actually need.

Adding the wisdom of people who know me well helped me make the right decision. For me, when I want something badly enough, I am too selfish to hear the voice of wisdom on my own through prayer. God uses the people intertwined in my life to lead me down the right path.

There was a time when I just did whatever I wanted, and I believed I was listening to God’s voice (in spite of what those around me thought or said). That way of making decisions led to some of the most painful periods of my life.

Even now, the desire to do what I really want nags at me. But the community of people I live my life with helped me to see the timing is just not there right now. So I wait and believe when the timing is right, those same voices will help make that apparent to me as well.

Yes, there were some good years under Carl Peterson. Unfortunately for Chiefs fans, success in the NFL is about Super Bowls… the Chiefs have not appeared in one under Peterson. Not one in his twenty years. With such a tremendous record of wins-losses in the Peterson era, the Chiefs are either the unluckiest team in football or the GM has failed to put together the personnel to even get to the big game.

His biggest flaw has been his choice of coaches. With the exception of Dick Vermeil, not a single coach who has headed up the Chiefs under Peterson has ever been part of the Super Bowl. Vermeil had the best chance of getting there, but he also failed to put together a complete team.

As a Chiefs fan for the entire Peterson era, all I can say today is, “Hallelujah!”

Had the price of gas stayed where it is at now over the entire Bush administration, there would have been roughly two trillion dollars shifted from oil companies elsewhere…

I’ve already let my opinion on Legislating Morality be known, so I won’t rehash it now. The time has come for Christians to shift from talk and reliance on governance to take action and really make an impact on sin.
Our hope is not with the Republican Party, nor is it with the Democrats. But we have an opportunity with Barack Obama, a professed Christian whether you believe in his views or not, and a Democrat-controlled congress.

Opportunity to Reduce Abortions

While the Pro Life movement has focused on trying to reverse Roe v. Wade and enacting laws which push the limits of the High Court’s decision, many Pro Choice people have repeatedly emphasized a desire to reduce the number of abortions. Two of those persons would be Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But the Religious Right does not take any statement on reducing abortions seriously unless it is accompanied by effort to make abortion illegal. There is extreme mistrust whenever a pro choice person says they don’t like abortion but believe it should be a woman’s right to choose.

It is time to call them on it. But doing so requires setting aside the primary focus of the Pro Life movement to repeal Roe v. Wade and replacing it with assisting women in unwanted, unplanned pregnancies. I personally believe President-elect Obama and Mrs. Clinton when they say they do not like abortion but believe it should not be made illegal. If they are lying to try to lessen the impact of their pro choice position, we will find out if we try to team up with those who are pro choice and try to help women deal with their unwanted pregnancies in other ways.

One of the more liberal shows on network television, Boston Legal, recently had an episode nearly entirely about abortion. The power of the episode was in the lack of propaganda. It told a story which brilliantly displayed the complexity of the issue. A young teenage girl sought a court order to allow her to get an abortion. One of the liberal attorneys, Shirley Schmidt, did not want to represent her because she had an abortion when she was young.

When Shirley spoke of how it haunted her and stayed with her forever, you could not help but to feel her pain. Shirley is pro choice, but she did not want to interfere with the mother’s desire to refuse an abortion, because she believed there was no way a teen could fully understand the ramifications of having an abortion. And she strongly suggested that although she thought abortion should be legal, no woman, under normal circumstances, should choose to have an abortion for the horror will stay with her for her entire life.

There are many, MANY pro choice people (if not even a majority) who would work side by side with pro life Christians to help pregnant women who may desire to choose an abortion.

Will it be easy? NO! Of course the pro lifers will want to keep abortion completely off of the table and the pro choice persons would not. There would have to be compromise in both camps for a partnership to work. The issues are numerous, but the benefits are tremendous: fewer abortions.

Maybe even fewer pregnancies.

At some point, focusing on overturning a court decision for 35 years rather than engaging the issue at ground zero brings responsibility for abortions on those who are so opposed.

I really believe that. If the pro life movement had even split the efforts evenly between the legal solution and building a support network for women, the number of abortions which have taken place over the last few decades would be dramatically less in number.

When a group in Colorado Springs consulted a film production company for continuing their advertising and expanding into tv ads, they were convinced to steer from the “abortion is murder” mantra and move towards helping women. What happened? The number of abortions went down. I forget the exact numbers my friend told me, but my understanding is the number of abortions were more than cut in half.

Not just abortions

The opportunity with Obama goes far beyond the issue of abortion. He claims (and I, again, believe him) he wants to work with the 47% who did not vote for him. If evangelicals take the high road and team up on other issues, Christians will have the chance to shape the policy and programs enacted by the Obama administration.

That doesn’t mean they will look like conservative Republican plans, but the finger of Christ can be involved in deep ways as Christians humble themselves and shift from fighting for a legal system which exacts their morality to exemplifying the care for the oppressed, the fight against injustice, and the love for all people modeled by Jesus Christ.

This post is already longer than I planned. The opportunities are vast for the Church to shift from political agenda to getting their hands and feet dirty with the downtrodden, the castaways, the broken. The current political and cultural climate has yielded us a chance to get back to being Christ to the world. Will we take it?

Prices dropped throughout October, and… I predicted it. I proclaimed often this spring to all of my friends that gas prices would drop incredibly before the election. The oil companies know who is good for them, and since Republicans are linked to big oil, lower prices mean less angst about oil connections.

Does it make a difference? Probably not in this election. But in a close election, 1 out of 100 persons could be all the difference in the world.

Gas prices have dropped more than twice as much in the fall of an election year under Bush as they normally do.

Here’s another prediction: Gas will be at least a dollar higher than current pump prices by Dec. 15.

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

This is the time where human sexuality, abortion, gay marriage, etc., rule the voting consciences of many Christians. It comes down to a simple principle:

The religious right believes you should legislate morality.

For many voters, this principle goes unquestioned. But is this compatible with the Christian faith? I personally don’t think so.

One simple question states my case pretty clearly. If over night, we were able to pass every single law the religious right would have enacted, would that make our country Christian?

Here are a few more questions to get your minds going: Would it change one single heart? Would it make one single person a follower of Jesus by the enactment of these laws of morality?

Or how about this different set of questions: Would it make those who do not follow Jesus hate his followers even more? Would it close the minds of those already hardened to the message of Christ? Could it possibly increase sin all the more?

Since Christians cannot simply enact all the laws they want over night, these questions could be written off as unnecessary fantasy. But if those questions apply to my fictitious scenario, they could also apply at varying levels to the actual situation.

When one “legal victory” is gained by the religious right, does it draw people closer to Christ or repel them for being forced to follow a morality they do not understand? Does it instill Christian grace in this country, or does it bolster a sense of legalism which both those in and outside of the church strongly sense in today’s evangelicalism?

The attention on legislating morality also hinders Christians from positive political activity which would be in line with their faith. Helping shape the government of the most powerful nation in the world in to a grace-giving, compassionate, force for good would be a real possibility if the religious right were not so obsessed with keeping gays from being married.

Assisting those in need and helping women most at risk for unwanted pregnancies would practically reduce the numbers of abortions. But instead, a war is waged which may never be won. It’s all or nothing for the religious right. How does this match up with what we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus? It doesn’t.

And what about ending corruption in our government? Why aren’t prominent Christians asking the difficult questions about why our civil liberties are vanishing before our very eyes and no one seems to be doing anything about it? Why aren’t our religious leaders questioning how oil companies have made record profits while the country is lead by an oil baron president? That fact isn’t enough to convict George W. Bush of any wrongdoing, but why aren’t they even asking the questions?

How is it I can cross the border and pay $2.83 a gallon for gas, but the cheapest station in my area has gas for $4.49? How does a company once run by the Vice President make billions off of a war most of the country no longer wants us to be in (and if we weren’t told it was unpatriotic wouldn’t have wanted us in in the first place)?

By now, you’ve already resonated with my questions and comments, or you probably aren’t reading any more. Let me just say, for the record, I am not a Democrat. I am no longer a Republican. I will most likely vote Democrat for the first time in my life for President (I voted Green Party last time because I could not respect either candidate from the major political parties), because Obama’s political concerns line up more closely (not anywhere close to perfectly) with my religious beliefs than John McCain’s. A part of my religious beliefs are that you should vote for the person who will do the most good for our country and our world. I am not interested in McCain’s stance on gay marriage, abortion, or any other moral issue a politician could seek to legislate. I am interested in both candidate’s ability to help those in need, respond compassionately to a world filled with strife, and to pursue the best path for the most powerful nation in the world.

San Diego Downtown Gaslamp District Hotels

Hotels in the gaslamp district can be a bit pricey, but the area makes up for it. When you can find a good deal, you want to jump at it. We had dinner plans at Candela’s, which was (according to my girlfriend) voted the #1 romantic restaurant in San Diego. The ambiance was pretty good, and the food was amazing! So to go back to our hotel and relax, maybe watch a movie, would have been ideal.

When visiting friends in San Francisco, I used Hotwire to land the Parc 55 hotel. It was amazing and truly worthy of the four star rating. So I turned to Hotwire once again for our San Diego excursion and found a four star hotel for $100 for the night! I pounced on the deal.

Truthfully, the hotel was not bad enough to ruin the weekend, but I would hesitate to give it a three star rating, much less a four. And evidently others have felt that way, since it dropped half a star since the time I booked it to getting a “rate your hotel” email after the trip. Figures.

At first glance, the room was okay. It certainly did not impress, but it was adequate. Upon our romantic dinner (and taking a bike taxi ride back to the hotel), we were pretty exhausted from a long day and just wanted to relax.

First, the room was frigid. No big deal for most hotel rooms, just turn up the heat. Except the heater did not work. It just blew cold air. It said it was on, but every setting we tried blew cold air. So we let it run for awhile, thinking it must need to heat up. Nada. Just cold air making the room even colder. The only thing which warmed the room up a little was shutting it off. At 11:30 at night we did not want to have a technician in the room and decided to deal with the cold.

So I got ready for bed. As I brushed my teeth, I realized the water was making an extremely loud clunking as the water went down the drain. I’m not exagerating to say it if were a human voice, you would think someone was yelling at you. Clug. Clug. Clug. Clug.

Just when I thought it quit, the clugging went through a whole nuther set of pipes underneath the bath tub. Clug. Clug. Clug. Clug. And it kept going and going and going much longer than I felt I had the water running.

The next morning, the shower provided a whole new kind of fun.

The first visual cue something was off… well, I snapped a picture from my Treo:

No big deal, after all it doesn’t really affect the function of taking a shower, especially if you are not handicapped. Just a little visual annoyance for our supposedly luxury hotel experience.

Of course, then there’s the shower head. Yeah, a “four star hotel” has the type of shower head you hold in your hand? I suppose that can be a convenience for some people, but I personally think it’s tacky. But, at least you can mount it high and use it like a regular shower, right?

Maybe you need a closer look:

Yeah, that’s a broken holder. So my downtown San Diego luxury hotel experience included me holding the shower head the entire time I bathed.

To be fair, the exercise room and the pool were slightly above average. Of course, we used them right before we checked out, and even though we called for an extended checkout (which they would not give us the night before… told us we had to call back in the morning), we were locked out of our room. So I got to stand in the lobby of our luxury hotel in my bathing suit waiting for personnel which was nowere to be found to get a replacement key.

The good news is, my girlfriend is so amazing all of this stuff bothered me more after the fact (though I was perturbed enough, obviously, to snap off a few pics). We had a wonderful weekend in spite of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown San Diego.

Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has some great tongue-in-cheek sarcasm about the Gospels.

You could get a lot of wrong ideas reading the Gospels too much. You could start thinking that Jesus is in favor of some kind of social gospel where people give away lots of things, live in community, get in trouble for their radical compassion and stand outside of the religious establishment much of the time.

In fact, really….the Gospels have some good stories, but wouldn’t we be better off to study things like Romans 3 more often, so we really know what the Gospel is about?

Spending a lot of time in the Gospels could make you a person who is confused about discipleship as compared to grace. We should go to church, hear about grace, and leave much happier. If we read the Gospels too much, we’ll get the idea we’re supposed to do a lot of things that we really don’t have to do to be saved.

Let’s be careful with the Gospels. Don’t go overboard with them. They could mess up your whole religion.