Tom Squared

I was at a meeting recently where employees of a company were told that the billable rate was based on them working a 42 hour work week.  There's the expectation that a 40 hour work-week is the minimum hours required to work, below standard.  Working the 42 hours will ensure the company is making the correct amount of money on the employee. Didn't sound like such a big deal, it's only 2 hours a week, right? Then I began thinking about it some more. 2 hours over 52 weeks (yes, there are 52 weeks in a year) works out to 104 hours.  In more simple terms, that's about 2 1/2 extra weeks of work, more than half a month. I was reminded of something I used to do quite often.  I'd say that the care has a whole bunch of time little problems all piled up and around each-other (in other words, it's majorly broken).  Little things can add up to huge things in very little time (maybe that's why I love square roots, they're a constant reminder of this fact). So, I...

Recently I've been thinking about the problems in my life.  My cell phone was randomly turning off and I began thinking about an upgrade.  I'm going to be driving much farther each week for class and could use a car with better mileage.  Or the constant struggle we have getting Rachel to bed at night. Today I was reminded yet again that 99.9% of the world would wish they had my problems. There's a man I talked to for a while during lunch who is going through a very hard separation and only wants what's best for his wife and daughter.  Then there are those people who don't have a home, much less a car to have a problem with.  Or the couple who wishes they could even have a daughter, regardless of whether she'd sleep well. I wonder what other problems I think I have that are really only problems because I let them. What problems do you have to let go of? Peace, +Tom

I've always, and I do mean always, had an aversion to meetings.  If we don't have a clear task to accomplish or To-Do items coming out of the discussion they are a waste of time, since it's likely a discussion best convened between two or three people, not all meeting attendees. Then I came across Tony Morgan's review of The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni.  One of the quotes he mentions is this. For cohesive teams, meetings are compelling and vital. They are forums for asking difficult questions, challenging one another's ideas, and ultimately arriving at decisions that everyone agrees to support and adhere to, in the best interests of the company. I can't tell you how much this resonated with me. Over the past year I worked on a project team of four people.  I can say, without a doubt, that this was the best team I've ever worked with in my working career.  We could meet for 2 to 4 hours straight, work together or o...

Way back in January, and a blog host ago I made a couple different predictions , one which I knew would happen this year.  Turns out I was right!  The Wii will soon have a game called Wii Fit which has you spinning virtual hula hoops, skiing and rolling marbles with your body.  I'll probably pick it up, but it may hurt this finely tuned belly o' fat I've been proudly forming the past few years.  I'll just have to play in moderation I guess. Peace, +Tom

As a side job from my lucrative blogging career, I'm also a Web developer and project manager primarily in ASP.NET technologies.  With that in mind, this will be a slightly technical post. People bad mouth Microsoft all of the time.  I'm not saying they're right all the time, and I am considering switching to a Mac sometime in the future since Parallels  integrates so well (I'm just sick of my computer getting slower and slower over a year of use).  With all that in mind, Microsoft does have some incredibly great products and has recently been making it easier for me to recommend them to people. I was reading Scott Guthrie's blog about the upcoming Visual Studio 2008.  While Visual Studio has previously really focused on using .NET technologies to build applications (some may say I'm wrong, but it's clearly true), I think that's changing with VS 2008. Scott has this post about how VS 2008 will provide JavaScript intellisense (it'll pop up avai...

My Pageflakes page had the following quote from Quotiki: I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ. - Mahatma Gandhi I can definitely relate to this statement.  When I look at some of the infighting going on within churches and denominations I have to come back to the same thought, that we call ourselves Christians but we still don't get it. There is one primary teaching Christ brought which changed everything .  We must love one another as he loved us.  We must live our lives in love and as an expression of that love for each-other. If someone is letting their responsibilities slide we must find a time to meet with them face to face and lovingly figure out what is going on and find a solution.  Avoiding the problem never helps and it's certainly not what Christ taught. I was talking to someone recently as we looked at some options for a leadership position.  One of the concerns came up that we need to find a pers...

I've been listening to the Grammar Girl podcast for a couple of months now, and I highly recommend it.  Turns out I was apparently educated well since I follow almost all of the grammar suggestions she has without really thinking about it.  While I rarely use ellipses, turns out I've been using them incorrectly, they need a space before and after and should correctly be written . . .  I'm also not so great with semicolons. In any case, Erin and I are now listening to the podcast on the way into work and I think she likes it as much as I do; as evidenced by the fact that she actually stayed awake all the way into work. There were some great things in the episodes we heard today.   We heard about spoonerisms and a whole bunch of other things.  But one what struck home and got me incredibly excited was the interabang (interrobang is a variant)‽ What is it you ask?  I used to like to be surprised or questions and say something like, "What were yo...

No one took me up on my offer of checking out the 7-Eleven turned Kwik-E-Mart in Maryland after my previous post.  Thankfully there are more people in the world than read my blog.  So tonight at 9 we headed out to the Kwik-E-Mart about an hour away. This really is what I love about churches and the community which forms.  Here are a bunch of people who have stuff to do tomorrow but decide after 1 second of deliberation, if that, to get in the car and check out the Kwik-E-Mart advertising the Simpson's movie. After a car ride over watching my brother on Judge Joe Brown (apparently he has a TON of my mannerisms according to the teens), talking about gay porn (no so much talking as just shouting out the term randomly), talking about movies and God knows what else, we got to the store. Believe it or not, the place was pretty busy.  There was a long line of people checking out with an incredibly frazzled yet also incredibly kind and considerate woman checking us out (...

I posted two videos up to YouTube over a month ago but only now realized that I wanted to put them into a blog post.  There are a bunch of teens at St. Matthew's who have graduated and are heading off to college.  Two of them, Alex and Christine, gave sermons on youth Sunday.  In case you were interested, here they are. Alex Christine These guys are great! Peace, +Tom

I'm sure this has been done many times before.  But since I know so little about 3D rendering and such, I figured I'd mention How a traditional Chinese painting looks in 3d...  and animated . While the animation and such is pretty cool, I was more struck by how the animation really offers a completely unique way to become a part of the painting. I watched the stupid fish who couldn't catch one pellet of food while the flowers swayed in the back.  I watched the lady feeding those fish as she sat by the pond and read.  More than anything though, I experienced that painting in a way I never have before. Just like being in an art gallery might sometimes give you picture overload and you gloss over pieces, I doubt you'd be able to watch more than one or two of these at a time to get anything out of it.  The painting is all about the emotions and the story it evokes in you.  This video reminds me how important it is to really dive into what you see. Peace, +...

Rachel has always had a hard time going to sleep.  There have been spurts where she does well, but in general we'll have to go back into her room again, and again, and again, and again, and...  well, you get the picture.  Sometimes this lasts for up to two hours. Yesterday we finally figured out some of what is going on.  She told us that she didn't want to be left alone.  That tied with a conversation we all had at a friend's house connected the dots and we figured out that Rachel is afraid to be left alone without the option of having companionship. In my life I've been blessed to be able to know a lot of different people.  People from all different walks of life and with all sorts of different opinions from mine.  Some of the greatest times in my life have been those where I get to know someone so well that I get to take part in all aspects of their life.  From all of these interactions I've found a couple commonalities which flow across al...

I was reading What Is Anglicanism? , a great article about the Anglican/Episcopal church and the current state of our problems.  There's a timeline of how we ended up here, why Anglicanism is great and some ideas on where we really need to focus.  There's some real hope and promise here. It's too bad no one is going to read it. This article is 9 pages long.  Ok, there's a small buffer on the side with navigation, so let's put it at 7 pages of 8 by 10 single-spaced text.  That would equate to about 14 pages of a paperback book. Let's say you read at an above-average speed.  Say 1 minute per page, all you speed readers can just shut-up.  It will take you 14 minutes to read this post and understand it. Hold that thought while I digress. I've been reading through Getting Things Done by David Allen.  I definitely recommend you pick this book up, I came very, very, very close to purchasing this for all the college students in our study group.  If ...

Any idea what this is? Apparently that's me? Honestly, to read the description that's pretty spot-on.  The most interesting part to me?  That big block of yellow and the relatively small block of light blue.  Go on, mouse over them and see what they mean.  I can't say I was surprised. It's a pretty neat personality test from PersonalDNA .  I always like taking personality tests, since I do believe the core of people doesn't change much, but out own experience does change how we view and interact with the world.  I'd definitely recommend giving it a try, it's pretty thorough. I guess it's time for me to go invent something. Peace, +Tom

I was talking to my friend Mason last night after watching Transformers (definitely worth seeing in the theater) and we somehow got to talking about my previous post about Visions of the Empty Church .  I'm not even sure he realizes it or not, but one of Mason's great gifts is the ability to take a purpose or vision and come up with practical solutions to make it a reality. We began the conversation about how there's no way to really make money from my previous thoughts on bringing technology to churches.  He then proceeded to come up with a couple of ways to make the service succeed.  Among the ideas were: Providing advice/reviews of products for free for people to implement such as Drupl, MOSS, Google docs, etc.  (I wonder is this could be done as a blog) Offer organized collaboration to connect churches and let them communicate online to discuss items, possibly in forums or some other collaboration software. Come in and give technical advice for a fee ...

I came across A dozen 7-Elevens transformed into Kwik-E-Marts to promote Simpsons movie .  Loving the Simpsons as I do, I have to check our local one out.  It's at: 4199 Kenilworth Avenue Bladensburg, MD 20710 I knew this was coming, but now the official location list is here !  One of our semi-local 7-Eleven stores has been transformed into a Kwik-E-Mart, with employees acting as characters and everything. Anyone up for a field trip with me? Peace, +Tom

We had a great visit with my friend Melissa and her family in New Jersey.  On the way home I had this thought. Good friends are the ones whose house you can visit for a weekend and take over so completely that you can't tell where the owner ands and the visitor begins. Now that's hospitality. Peace, +Tom

I was thinking the other day about what I'd love to see as a company vision/mission. To identify or create cost-effective solutions that meet the specific needs of non-profit and religious organizations. I was thinking the other day that the majority of churches want need some sort of way to find a way to stay up to date with the current world, but they don't have much (if any) money to do things. At St. Matthew's we have gobs of information floating around on about 7 different machines.  I say about because we have volunteers with their own computers and their own data which isn't backed up or even known about. When we have a budget of pretty much nothing, there needs to be someone who can inexpensively offer solutions which focus on meeting the need instead of making money. In the example I gave above, this company could work with multiple organizations and churches to create a requirement that all church volunteers creating content for the church must have Mozy...

No one's in our guest room.  We're not in anyone else's guest room.  We're going out to dinner.   It's nice to be home.   Peace, +Tom