Superhero or Career Option?
When I was little, I used to ride my tryke past the back steps and under the porch. That was the “Bat Cave”. When I got older I stuck feed sacks (yes, we really had those growing up!) in my shirt collar like a cape and jumped off the garage roof. It was built into a hill so it wasn’t that high. That was about the same time I would stand in an open field and yell “SHAZAM”. Why? Because when you are five or ten Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel and all the others aren’t fantasy superheros. They are career options. “This could actually work.”
If Evil Knieval could jump a motorcycle, then all I needed was my old stingray bike, dad’s tool box, a six foot long 2×12 and a hill.
These days I find myself doing the same thing sometimes. Someone will come up with an idea, or a wish and my first response is “yes”.
“How?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet. But I am sure we can do it.”
The challenge arises when we get over committed or go too far. The trick I believe, is in knowing when and where to step out in faith and trust God for the outcomes - and when to realize you are trying to do something God never intended.
Phil Viscer of Veggie Tales fame tried to build an entertainment empire. To “out Disney, Disney”. That was too far. It wasn’t what God intended for him. When it all fell apart he realized that God really didn’t create him to build an empire. God created him to tell stories.
He went back to creating and consulting on stories. Since then, there has a plethora of Veggie Tales stories to teach, entertain and inspire. But if he had never tried, if had never really given it a serious go in the very beginning -all those stories may have been nothing more than goofy characters on some films in the basement. He needed to go “too far to find where he was supposed to be”.
Are we willing to occasionally risk “going too far”?
At the same time, are we listening to that still, small voice that says “this is not what I intended”?
Superhero or Career Option? I guess only God can decide.
Shameless Plug Friday 3-27-09
Here’s a return to shameless plugs:
1. Guys getting together to eat.
My Wednesday night men’s group finished our current study and decided to take a one week break to just relax and have a fish fry. We had tilapia, home-made baked beans, potato salad, and three or four different kinds of dessert. It’s pretty hard to beat a night like that.
2. People who pray. I may have said it before, but it merits repeating.
Last week I had to send out two emails I’d have rather not. One related to a staff member whose wife miscarried and another related to an elder whose cancer had returned. The response we received back was nothing short of overwhelming.
3. 360 desktop. For those of us who like to have a clean desk when we walk in in the morning, a clean desk when we leave at night, but anything can happen in the middle, this is a handy tool. It effectively expands your monitor desktop by about 3-4 times and scrolls 360 degrees. (if you have a window maximized, it stops the scrolling). If nothing else, when you are having one of those moments when you really need to mentally work through a problem, just put your mouse to the right edge of the screen. The constant loop as applications go by like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the visual equivalent of white noise.
4. Explaining twitter. You have to admit it is fun. Turns otherwise rational humans into four year olds:
“What’s twitter?”
“It’s a 140 character message about what you are doing.”
“But why?”
“So people can see what you are up to.”
“But why?”
“To share information in real time.”
“But why?”
“This way you don’t have to send an email.”
“But why?”
“So you can link it to automatically update your blog or facebook.”
“But why?”
“Here’s a cookie. Go play.”
5. E-Sword. This has been my bible study tool of choice for about two or three years. I saw one of my collegues posted a shout out to it and realized I should as well. It is a free, no add desktop application. Get it and download all the free resources including Strong’s Concordance and Henry’s commentaries and you are good to go. Since it is a desktop app, the only thing you can’t do is link to a verse.
6. Blu. This is the first Silverlight application I have seen for twitter. Similar to tweetdeck, just more visually appealing and minimalistic (IT speak for “missing some features).
AccessACS, G-1 and mapping
Here’s how I stumbled on to this one:
One of our senior staff members is on an extended health leave. Since I live “in that general direction” I offered to drop off some food. I had been to their house once when they first moved in but that was four years ago. I thought it best to look up their address.
So I hit the icon on my G-1 that opens AccessACS. It works much like making a desktop version of Facebook with Chrome. Browser app outside the browser kind of thing. Tap the login button, roll over the search field to search by last name, type a portion of the last name and up comes the whole family.
In the process, I rolled over their address with the thumbwheel by accident.
It highlighted.
Huh. Might as well click and see what happens.
Up pops Google maps with a pin on their house.
From there it is as simple as tapping the address, selecting “directons to this address” and “route”.
All while driving a stick in stop and go traffic. (Bad, I know).
Here’s what I know and what I don’t know:
1. If you happen to have a G-1 and open the web version of AccessACS (not the .mobi app) and are logged in as an Administrator, Staff, or Lay Leader, when you look up someone’s address you can select that address either via thumbwheel or a well placed finger tip. It works just like a selecting a phone number will automatically dial if you click on it, or an email address, etc. Popping up the map function in the same manner as the dialer function was quite the surprise.
2. It’s pretty handy if you are the type of person who makes member house calls.
3. You can do it while driving, but I don’t recommend it. (insert insurance disclaimer here). I only say that to illustrate that it is very easy.
4. I don’t know if it works on an iphone, Windows mobile, or Blackberry. I would be interested in hearing from someone who has one of these. One ACS staffer gave it an unsuccessful run on his iphone, but I did not verify his login creds.
5. I DO know if your credentials are set to “Member”, the addresses will show, but not as links you can select.
Being able to search a member address from a phone is cool. Being able to search a member address and map to it from current GPS location: Awesome.
