***

Can I borrow $25?

A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his 5 year old son waiting for him.

SON: Daddy, may I ask you a question?

DAD: Yeah, sure, what is it?

SON: Daddy, how much money do you make an hour?

DAD: That’s none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?

SON: I just want to know, please tell me, how much do you make an hour?

DAD: ‘If you must know, I make $50 an hour.’

SON: ‘Oh,’ the little boy replied, with his head down.

SON: ‘Daddy, may I please borrow $25?’

The father was furious, ‘If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I don’t work hard everyday for such childish frivolities.’ The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.

The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy’s questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money? After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think. Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $25.00 and he really didn’t ask for money very often.

The man went to the door of the little boy’s room and opened the door. ‘Are you asleep, son?’ He asked. ‘No daddy, I’m awake,’ replied the boy. ‘I’ve been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier’ said the man. ‘It’s been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here’s the $25 you asked for.’

The little boy sat straight up, smiling. ‘Oh, thank you daddy!’ He yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills. The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father. ‘Why do you want more money if you already have some?’ the father grumbled. Because I didn’t have enough, but now I do,’ the little boy replied. ‘Daddy, I have $50 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you.’

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness. It’s just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts.

I recently experienced some severe down time with Layeredtech and Tweeted and ranted about it. Eventually after a month after the incident I got 1 month free hosting. A token amount for the amount of downtime they caused me.

Now I’ve got some criticism to level at ING Direct (a post coming soon), but I’m left thinking how much does it actually avail to “smear” a company publicly. I think in many ways it is important because it takes time to clean up a image online. And as much as companies don’t like it, if you search “ING Direct reviews” and you see some crummy reviews cropping up, you lose business.

Companies should know that when they shaft their publics, they deserve to be shafted in return. The one thing companies should do is engage their publics directly and in the initiated forum, instead of going quiet and retreating into their shells. This will show folks that they are actually sincere about improving their performance and services. By not engaging your publics, you only make yourself look worse.

• I’m going to begin deploying some Exchange/Sharepoint solutions on our network and wanted to see how it really affects our end users.
• I need to do some page layout over the next months and Linux does not have a good solution for this.

So my Windows 7 OS runs my mail and all tasks and I have Linux now solely as my development center. I’m working on a write up of the difficulties moving from Linux back to Windows 7 as well as the positives.

The one real nasty aspect of moving to Windows 7 is my bluetooth doesn’t work. I’ve tried everything outside of installing the 30-day trial Toshiba BT Stack to no avail. I can’t get any of my bluetooth devices to properly connect. I’m runing on an Asus G1S so if anyone has ideas of how to get bluetooth running properly. LMK.

And a rant against ASUS, for a laptop that came with Windows Vista, and was for gamers/high end users it seems logical to release Windows 7 drivers!!!

On line 479, replace:

if (!empty($box["name"])) {

with:

if (!empty($box["name"]) && (substr($box["name"],1)!="(") && (substr($box["name"],-1) != ")")) {

Now you can simply set the Display Name of the extension you want removed from the directory to be enclosed in parentheses such as “(John Doe)”.

But the waves are calling out my name
and they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I’ve tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
time and time again
“Boy, you’ll never win,
you’ll never win.”

But the Voice of truth tells me a different story
the Voice of truth says “do not be afraid!”
and the Voice of truth says “this is for My glory”
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

Oh, what I would do
to have the kind of strength it takes
To stand before a giant
with just a sling and a stone
Surrounded by the sound
of a thousand warriors
shaking in their armor
Wishing they’d have had the strength to stand

But the giant’s calling out
my name and he laughs at me
Reminding me of all the times
I’ve tried before and failed
The giant keeps on telling me
time and time again
“Boy you’ll never win,
you’ll never win.”

But the voice of truth tells me a different story
the Voice of truth says “do not be afraid!”
and the Voice of truth says “this is for My glory”
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

But the stone was just the right size
to put the giant on the ground
and the waves they don’t seem so high
from on top of them looking down
I will soar with the wings of eagles
when I stop and listen to the sound of Jesus
singing over me

But the Voice of truth tells me a different story
The Voice of truth says “do not be afraid!”
And the Voice of truth says “this is for my glory”
Out of all the voices calling out to me (calling out to me)
I will choose to listen and believe (I will choose to listen and believe)
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

I will listen and believe
I will listen and believe the Voice of truth
I will listen and believe
‘Cause Jesus you are the Voice of truth
And I will listen to you.. oh you are the Voice of truth

by Casting Crowns

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Isn’t Christmas supposed to be a happy time? Of course folks who are down on their luck have it rough, but do we really have to read about?

Someone recently remarked to me that there’s “no moral value or reason to read tear jerking stories about the less fortunate during Christmas”. I disagreed with them. We read these stories for various reasons:

• to remind ourselves of the unfortunate out there and how fortunate we really are
• to remind ourselves to pray and help those who may not have the means to give their gleaming eyed children the perfect Christmas
• to pray for those who are lost and in need of the salvation, help and love of Jesus
• to remind us that even when we are at the lowest we feel we can go, there’s a God who watches, loves, cares and can change circumstances as He sees fit

So as you pick up your Christmas story this year, let it take you on a different journey. Ask God for eyes that will allow you to see the beauty of that Christmas story and what He wants to show you. Don’t have it be “just another Christmas story”, make it a story that will touch your life and compel you to do more for Christ, more for those in need of Christ and more for those in need of help — those less fortunate than you.

• I got an iPhone 3Gs. Still getting used to the device but it’s definitely been a boost for my connectivity and responsiveness. Let’s see if it will help my blogging too.
• Relaunched My Conclusion with a new thrust and archiving old material. Worth taking a look. Should get interesting. And My Conclusion is also twittering in case you didn’t see.
• Getting down to the wire on a big project but just waiting for a new logo and some imports and testing to be complete.
• Gave OpenID a serious spin in the last few weeks trying to plug it into activeCollab. About 75% progress but still have a few issues to hammer out.
• Going on vacation starting tomorrow for 3 weeks so maybe I’ll have more time to devote to my social life. We’ll see.