Many of you know that I recently moved. Though some of my furniture is unpacked boxes of books, for the most part we are in a livable state of unpackedness and enjoying our new crib. Fortunately, moving day went rather smooth at first, then unfortunately, everything crumbled into frustration after lunch; which continued the whole week as we slowly moved our seemingly never-ending amount of boxes from our old place. Moving day is a pain for everyone, including the friends you suckered into helping you out, but there are some things that can make it easier.

Here are some tips that I learned along the way to help others on their moving day:

1. Never Unpack Next To An Open Toilet - One of the first things we moved over to the new place was bathroom supplies. While unpacking those supplies in our new bathroom I didn’t think to shut the lid of the open toilet. Lesson learned. Thankfully it wasn’t anything important (or large, or mine ), so fishing was not necessary.

Continue Reading…

I’ve spent a good portion of my phone calls with my parents troubleshooting computer issues. The biggest gun of any IT troubleshoot and the first question I always ask is, “Did you try restarting it?” I believe I’ve given GeekSquad a serious competitor with that one and only question. More often then not, this solves the issue.

Computers need breaks. After running multiple programs and working with your erratic clicks, computers may start to make mistakes and simply need a restart to gather its composure and with a clean slate.

Sometimes I need a restart.

Continue Reading…

The Monday Morning High Five
Continuing our list of all things 5 to hopefully bring a smile to your Monday.

Christians love their coffee. It’s possibly the only thing that we can become completely addicted to, and it’s still ok. We have socials gathered around it. We bring people to our house to try our coffee. Our hangouts are shops entirely devoted to selling and making coffee. And I’m pretty sure if Jesus wasn’t more specific, we’d have espresso for communion. So what happens when something goes awry with the coffee pot before church service? This last Sunday, there was a delay in coffee due to shorting out electrical breakers. (I guess we run a lot of coffee) How do you do you deal with it? Typically, us coffee drinkers all follow five steps in working through the “No Coffee Today” at church announcement:

1. Shock and Denial – “What?” “No, it can’t be.” “But why?” You can hear these murmurings from the congregation as they try to whisper through their disbelief. “Surely, this must be a joke” you say to yourself. “I bet there’s pots and pots of coffee as far as the eye can see back there, and the pastor is just playing a sick joke.” You envision a barista giving you a hug, then turning into a giant cup of Americano. No coffee? This…this just can’t be.

Continue Reading…

John Saddington and his team are at it again, and this time they are taking the “best coded WordPress theme ever”, and making it better. Over the next few days, you may notice some cosmetic tweaks here and there around GS. That would be due to updates to the Standard Theme to 2.0, and me wanting to play with all the new buttons.

For those who don’t know, the Standard Theme is a theme built for WordPress and you can read my initial review on the Standard Theme here. It’s great out of the box, and even better if you like to customize your site’s look. When I first heard of the Standard Theme 2.0, my initial thought was, “How much can they improve?” Somehow it did.

Check out the video after the break!

Continue Reading…

Feeling the heat yet of summer? This past week, it’s been sweltering hot. A great way to cool down is a nice cool drink, and a great way to keep a drink cool is, yep, ice.

One of my favorite online retailers, Think Geek, has some cool ice straw trays that you can pop into the freezer and bring out for some icy summer drinks with pizazz. Each tray is $7.99, and makes six 8” straws. Currently, they are out of stock with an estimated restock on Aug. 17th.

If you can’t wait that long, there is a cheaper, do-it-yourself version that you can roll your DIY sleeves up on. All you need are some water bottle ice cube trays, some drinking staws, and some molding clay.

Continue Reading…

The Monday Morning High Five
Continuing our list of all things 5 to hopefully bring a smile to your Monday.

There are times in my day where I can’t remember what life was like before smartphones and apps. They really change your mentality when you are stuck with a problem and you’re away from a computer, from helpless to helpful! Like instead of calling my mom to walk her through a Google search because I have no idea what the address is I’m heading to, there’s an app for that. Or that hilarious YouTube video about two rainbows everyone keeps telling me I need to watch, well, there’s an app for that too. From catching sports scores, to monitoring my diet, to finding coupons and keeping my Netflix queue under control, smartphone apps can be awesome helpers in my day-to-day.

But what if there were some apps that would help with my walk with God? Sure I have YouVersion’s Bible app, but I envision some more app posibilites. Of course all of these would be free and available on all platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and even *sigh the Palm Pre). Here’s five that I’m thinking about:

1. Sin-O-Meter - Start this app to keep track of the sin in your day. Sin-O-Meter utilizes the mic to catch gossip, lies, and other spoken sins. Also tracks your web browsing history to ensure you’re not hitting up any improper sites. Running too high on the sin that day? Danger, Will Robinson! Sin-O-Meter has the option to lock the phone until it is unlocked by a trusted third party. At the end of the day, Sin-O-Meter lists out all the transgressions for an easy to check-off forgiveness prayer.

Continue Reading…