The Server Is Down!

They say your brain is split in two and one side of your brain is where all the creative thinking happens and the other side is where all the technical thinking goes on. Well, no surprise I haven’t been able to blog for quite a few days, the server at work where I run the software program that I manage went down, so, this past week has been all technical thinking going on my head. Even when I wanted to blog, nothing would come to my head, crazy, huh?

Today after work I going camping, yay, I haven’t gone camping for a while. Bunch of guys, having fun and being just guys. It’s gonna be fun. Hopefully I will be able to leave work at work and get my creative thinking going. Have a nice weekend.

Safari Not Ready Yet

I hope Apple’s programmers are working overtime right now because there have been reports of many holes in the Windows’ version of Safari, specially one that give total control to a hacker to your pc blah, blah, blah…The last few hours I’ve been using it I have noticed a few hiccups from time to time, but we need to remember the browser is still in its beta stage and I think Apple has a lot of reputation on the line. Hopefully they will get all those little things fixed soon. It has been released for how long now? 24hrs or something…

Two Good Things In One Day

Well, maybe most of you know by now that Safari was released for Windows. I’ve been wanting to switch to Apple and I’ve been trying to convince my self that it won’t be chaos. Supposedly Safari is pretty much the best browser around and Apple computers are great to do creative stuff (photography, video, music, etc) so, that’s basically the reason why I’ve been wanting to switch. To kinda’ give my self a taste of what it would be like I installed Safari on my PC. How is it going? So far so good, who is not going to like it simplistic design?. It works great, although other than the looks I see no difference compared to, say, Explorer. 

Another awesome thing was to get an invite for Joost, thanks to my friend Paul, he sent me the invite and I was able to install Joost in my computer. Joost is a new concept on the TV business. Basically it’s TV over the Internet. It’s in its Beta stages right now and it’s pretty good so I guess it will just get better. My laptop didn’t meet the system requirements for just a few MBs in RAM, but the program runs pretty well. Although it skips a little bit and my wife says the laptop is slower that what already was. Maybe that changeover to Apple will come sooner that expected. I gotta’ admit I’m already hooked on Joost, great selection of channels and almost zero commercials, just one every now and then. The video quality is great, hopefully they’ll keep adding more channels and keep the commercials just like they are. If you are nice maybe I’ll send you an invite. 

Goth and U2 Church

I believe a church needs to be relevant to the people is aimed at. A church in China can’t be the same as a church in the US. Jesus made his message relevant to the culture of his day and that’s why he used parables, he wanted to make it relevant to the people around him, like Pastor Rob once said you can mess with the packaging as long as the product remains the same.

Seems like the church in Europe is trying to reach out to those who are not into the traditional church, so they have a Goth Church and a U2 Church. I think the concepts are really interesting; as long as it sticks to The Word anything goes.

Check the video here: http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/world/2007/06/08/finighan.rock.and.roll.religion.cnn

6 billion Others

“6 billion Others” tries to draw a portrait of contemporary mankind by asking questions about universal values. What is happiness? What lessons can we learn from life’s difficulties? What’s the meaning of life?

6,000 Interviews, 65 Countries, 4,500 Hours of interview filmed… 6 billion Others is a website worth visiting, is one of those feel-good project that makes you love the world, the differences, the diversity. Although the project is still in the making there is some material available, if you have a heart for people and for different cultures you will enjoy the testimonials and the different points of view about the same questions asked over and over in different countries.
I think it doesn’t only celebrate mankind but it also celebrates how God made us all different and equal at the same time.

thr3e

I saw this movie was being shown in the theatres a while ago and the trailers made it look really interesting. Thrillers are my favorite kind of movie so I was looking forward to get this movie on the mail (Netflix). Today I finally got it and I watched it, I have to say I was very surprised to realize that it is a Christian movie, based on a book written by christian author Ted Dekker. The movie has a really good story, which I guess the book is really good, but they definitely didn’t know how to make it into a movie. Very low budget production and the acting was not convincing. On one side I’m really glad christian filmmakers are getting very creative and trying to produce films a la Hollywood, on the other side it was a little bit disappointing to see that there is still a long way to go to match the quality of Hollywood movies.

On the DVD were a few trailers for some other thrillers movies based on books by Frank Peretti who is a very good writer, his books are good stuff. However I guess the same thing will happen again, a good story ruined by a low budget movie. I guess I’ll have to say like a famous politician once said back in my country: “Estamos mal pero vamos bien” which roughly translates: “We are doing bad but we are on the right path”

How to Please Your I.T. Department

This is so true. If I could only send this to everybody who calls me….

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01. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children’s art. We don’t have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

02. Don’t write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.

03. When an I.T. person says he’s coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won’t be there when we need your password. It’s nothing for us to remember 700 screen saver passwords.

04. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what’s keeping you from getting it. We don’t need to know that you can’t get into your mail because your computer won’t power on at all.

05. When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it at once. We’re just testing.

06. When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his des k, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

07. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

08. When the photocopier doesn’t work, call computer support. There’s electronics in it.

09. When something’s wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person’s chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

10. When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don’t have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

11. When an I.T. person tells you that he’ll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: “And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?” That motivates us.

12. When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

13. When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them i s bound to work.

14. Don’t learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by “My thingy blew up”.

15. Don’t use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.