davesacre

At my last job, we sat around conference room tables did our jobs, and chatted a bit throughout the day. We weren’t always working on the same things, or the same projects, or even in the same area of the business. We were coworkers though and we got our jobs done and had some good conversations as we went along.

How do you duplicate that when you work from home or are a freelancer? It becomes difficult. There are companies out there built around this concept of “coworking” for freelancers/work-from-home types. I’m not interested in starting a company just yet to do that, but I thought it would be cool to get some local people together and do some coworking.

The idea is this — we all have our own projects and our own stuff to do, so let’s get our own stuff done, have some interaction with one another, and have some coffee. If you’re interested, David Murray (@DaveMurr) and I will be at the Biggby on Novi road at Grand River in Novi, MI on June 2nd to kick this off.

And, as with all things twitter related, we need a hashtag. Let’s call it: #SEMIcowork



See you there!

There is a local Michigan company giving away $10,000 to a charity. They are letting people vote for the charity that gets the money, and I thought it would be awesome for us to get Raincatchers the money. They have been nominated to participate in this contest and for them to win, all we have to do is get Raincatchers the most votes. There were just over 400 charities nominated for the event, so it will take some work on all of our parts. I would really appreciate you forwarding this email (or writing your own) to all your friends/families to vote for Raincatchers in this event. If you are in a small group, please forward it on to your small group as well.

If you have known me for any period of time, you know that I have a heart for the people of Haiti, and specifically the work being done through an organization called Raincatchers. Raincatchers provides families in the area of Seguin, Haiti, a water collection system. The people there have to walk 2 hours each way to get clean water, and can only bring back what they can carry (think about carrying a 5 gallon bucket of water 4 hours a day just to stay alive). Raincatchers provides families with the abilitiy to collect 55 gallons of rain water from their roof.

If you have not heard stories from anyone on a Raincatchers trip, or seen pictures, please check out the video i linked to below. They are an amazing organization doing some awesome things for the people of Haiti. I am proud to be able to tell you about them and what they are doing. Please check out my blog entries from my first trip as well. The blog entries are here: http://www.davesacre.com/category/haiti, and go forwards. I also have pictures from both trips I took to Haiti on my (old) blog (look at the top right hand side of http://www.grillmasta.com for links).

I’m not asking you for any bit of money, but for 5 few minutes to watch a video and to fill out 4 fields + 1 selection box on a web form. This will really help Raincatchers continue helping the people of Haiti. To vote for Raincatchers, please visit the link provided below. Once you are there, select the P-Z categories, then pick Raincatchers and fill out the 4 identification fields.

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14zHxzEBGs
Here is the page to vote: http://www.miproconsulting.com/mipro-gives-back/finalists/
and here is their website: http://www.raincatchers.org

Thank-you so much for your help! You are showing your support to an incredible organization doing incredible things in Haiti.

-dave

So, Laura and I (me especially) really enjoy visiting churches and seeing what they are doing to reach people and help them take next steps with God (Laura, with her 8 years of leading kids ministry, also enjoys checking out the kids stuff). One of our things though, is that we like to keep Bo with us. Introducing him to a totally new environment by just dropping him off and leaving is really tough on him at this age. One of the things Laura and I have agreed upon is that we will always sit in the back, close to the doors. We don’t think it’s ok to be a distraction in the service, so Laura sacrifices being in the service for me, to take our son out of the service if needed. Usually he just falls asleep ’cause we go around his naptime. If she does need to take him out of the service, she usually just strolls/walks him around, or some churches have a cry room, or even a family viewing area with a live video/audio feed.

Sunday morning, we walked into a church service, and some volunteers showed us where to go — over to this table by the kids area. We smiled and said that we were just visiting this one time from michigan and didn’t plan on checking him in, but were just going to sit close to the doors at the back of the worship center. They responded and said they had a really good kids program where the Bo would have a great time. We said that sounded pretty great, but we were just going to keep him with us. The smile dropped from the volunteers face and they said “he’s not allowed to go in the service with you, it’s our policy.” We walked away a little confused, we’d never heard this type of policy, didn’t see it on their website, and didn’t know what we did to make this person unfriendly to us. As we were walking towards the doors to the service, a greeter stepped in front of us, smiled, and said “hey, are you new here?” we responded that yeah, we were just visiting from michigan. The greeter said to us “how old is your son? we have a great children’s program for him.” Laura responded “he’s 14 months, but we’re just visiting and going to sit in the back here, close to the doors, just in case he starts fussing.” Just like the last person, the smile instantly dropped and the volunteer said to us with a stern look “it’s our policy not to let kids into the service.” At this point, we were pretty offended because we had two people who were fairly rude to us and gave us no explanation of anything, except that they were very serious about banning kids from the adult service.

We were standing around, talking about what to do, and the Director of Kids Ministry came up to us and had a chat with Laura. She seemed friendly and asked if there was anything she could do for us. Laura explained her experience in leading kids ministry, explained that she understood that there had to be policies in place in kids ministry, and then explained how we were treated by the 2 volunteers. The kids ministry director then responded to Laura with the same attitude that we received twice before and said that keeping kids out of the service was their policy and they would not bend it for anyone, then turned and walked away.

Laura, who is an awesome wife, told me to go into the service anyways and she would hang out with Bo in the lobby so I could check out the church. While I was sitting there in the service, i felt awful that my wife and child were not allowed to come in the service with me, and really started pondering the policy and why it would be there, i even posed the question on twitter.

We chose this church because a friend of mine goes there, so we weren’t going to leave, even though both of us wanted to. We gave everything else a fair shot. Laura said, while walking around most of the volunteers were super nice and really friendly to her and Bo and some even gave him some stickers! The 2 people who initially talked to us were not friendly after that, even as she was walking around. I really enjoyed the service, and would totally recommend it (except, of course, letting you know what to expect on the kids front). The sound was mixed well, the production was done well, transitions were done well, media was ran well, musicians were outstanding (DEFINITELY on par with the band at my church!), and the speaker was great. They did a lot of cool things for being in a conference center with low ceilings too.

After the service, we spoke with my friend and his wife. They explained the policy a little bit, and felt really bad about how we were treated. He also let me know that he and his wife disapproved of the attitude that policy comes with and were apologetic to us that we had to experience it.

I asked the question on twitter about kids in church and got a TON of responses from people. Most people were extremely supportive of having kids in church. I know kids learn better when it is spoken in a manner that they understand, using words they understand, and stories they understand. I agree that it is better for a child to be in the kids service, and everything should be done to encourage parents to put the kids in their service, because that, overall, is best for the kids AND the parents in most situations. It helps for a distraction free environment too.

Couple thoughts there…

• Distraction free environment: If you’re going to provide a distraction free environment by not allowing kids in the service, then the adults shouldn’t be getting up and moving around and going in and out of the service. In other words, take the distraction thing all the way, don’t just pick on the kids.
• Adult service is designed for adults: Kids will not understand what’s going on in the service because it is content designed for adults, but what the kids do see is their parent participating in corporate worship with other parents.

This brings me to the thought that it’s really not best to have kids in the adult service… After spending some time pondering that, I have come to the conclusion that it is ok for a church to ask parents to participate in the service at a different venue — family/other viewing area, or a cry room, and have a distraction free environment (including kid-free environment) in the main worship service. Where my issue comes in for a church that has a “no-kids-allowed” adult service, is when the policy comes along stated with a degrading attitude towards the parents. I also have an issue when the church basically says to the parent with child that they cannot participate in the service at all, by not allowing an alternative venue for that parent with child.

What are your thoughts? Am I missing something? Do you agree with me? Am I crazy?

It’s been a few months since i’ve blogged. I come to my site, read my last post, laugh (because it’s still funny to me), and then say “I need to keep blogging.” Life has been awfully crazy the past few months and needless to say, blogging has taken a back seat. I had a pretty good stretch there, let’s see if I can start it up again.

So i’ll catch you up with the latest on my life. If you haven’t heard yet, I was laid off a couple months ago from Blazent. I was really disappointed because it was a great company to work for. My boss was incredible, the people are awesome, and they really treat their employees well (and i got to work with Turbo). They treated their employees so well that they decided to prepare and build up the team of people that knew and understood their product, so the team didn’t have to work 90-100 hours a week for months at a time when all the work came in. Long story short, the “economic crisis” hit, and the deals weren’t closing as they had anticipated. They had no choice but to cut costs quickly to prepare the business to get through this stage of the game.

It was a little weird for me to get laid off, but I really had a huge peace about it. In 2008, God started working on my heart to be wiser about how I spent money and how i saved money. Laura, my beautiful wife, was also in a cool spot in her own heart where she was feeling that she needed to be really wise about how she helped run our house. We both talked things out and really tried to listen to what God was saying to us. I’ve always been a spender, so it was really hard for me, but we started taking steps to spend less money, save money, and be better prepared down the road for whatever life threw at us. (One of the things we did was cancel cable — best. thing. ever. — we watch only the shows we want with limited commercials on Hulu now)

One of the things I’ve always had in my heart to do was to do my own thing — freelancing, starting a company, short term project work, something like that. With enough non-retirement savings for a few months of living and a lot of time on my hands, we decided we would pursue that direction while looking for another job. Tony Gambee, a good friend of mine, hooked me up with some work right away, my sister hooked me up with a friend of hers who needed some custom programming, and Kara, a friend from cell group, was able to get me in to do some proposals (and some work) for her company. So exciting!

A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a recruiter that found me on Facebook a few months back. She said she was getting in a lot of requests for people with my skills and would like to get me signed up with them so they can contract me out. In the middle of interviewing there and filling out the employment paperwork, one of her associates said she received a call that morning about a need for the kind of work I do. I interviewed at that place that afternoon and am currently on with them through the end-ish of January. Huge answer to prayer! That will help us get through another couple months while I continue to work on proposals for new clients. I also have another couple leads on possible contract opportunities after this one ends, so that is super exciting as well.

God says that He will provide all of our needs. He has certainly done that and more for us through this time. I know that He will continue to provide — whether it is with more freelancing work, a side business that kicks off, a new job, or some more contract work. My plan is to keep listening and keep moving forward with what He has planned for us. I have found that one of the way God provides is through the friends and family, and that has been a huge blessing with the leads, thoughts, and prayers. We appreciate that SO much. We are blessed to have a great network of family and friends and we continue to ask for your prayers as we’re figuring out this new chapter in our lives.

Thank-you!

…and I guess, while i’m at it…if you know of anyone that needs some web or tech work done, shoot them over to simplData.com where they can get in contact with me.

So, the other day, I was at my brother’s house helping him put in sewage lines for his bathroom. We got to a point where we wanted to use the sawzall (for those of my readers who don’t know, it’s basically a power saw that can cut through anything), but none of us knew where the family sawzall was. I swore my brother borrowed it, he swore i still had it, and my dad knew that one of us had it. So, Peter went over to his neighbors to borrow one.

I went back home that day and looked around the house at places that I would have left it. Like I said, I didn’t have it. So I called him up and told him to look around his house because, like I said before, I didn’t have it.

Rewind to me in the middle of refinishing the basement…When I rebuilt the basement, I took into consideration all sorts of things. One of those things was a shelving unit for storage.

Fast forward to today. I started clearing out the other half of the basement so I could finishing painting the half of the basement with all our stuff. Now, I started pulling out all the rubbermade containers that were sitting in my office. I looked up and found the sawzall — organized on the shelf with my other big tools. *sigh*

Seriously, who can find things when they are organized? It should have been left out in the garage next to some other things on the ground around my work bench.

So, I called my dad, and he laughed at me. I called my brother, but he hasn’t called me back yet. He will laugh when he reads this post though.

You are probably wondering what those have in common.

Well, let me tell you about this morning. Sitting in my conference room at my conference room table, i stood up to go get a snack. As soon as I did that, my flip flop came apart. I thought to myself: “Wow, that’s weird. I guess i’ll just have to put my flip flop back together.” I looked at my flip flop, and it had completely broke. The little rubber piece holding the flip flop strap to the sole, broke right in half.

I was very distraught. Here i was, sitting here at my conference room table, 15 minutes from heading to lunch, and i didn’t have a working flip flop. Worse yet, it was raining outside, so it would be really awkward walking barefoot to my car and then through Old Navy.

So, I thought to myself: “hey, i can probably rig something up Macgyver style with a safety pin to hold these together to get me to old navy to buy a $2 replacement pair.”

I rifled through my bag — no safety pin.

“What’s this?” I thought. “A tooth pick? I could totally use this to fix these Macgyver style.”

So, I spent about 5 minutes trying to stick a toothpick through the piece of crappy old navy rubber to hold the rubber strap to the botton of the flip flop. It worked. Although, wasn’t very strong. I then saw a keyring in my computer bag. “This would totally work!” I thought to myself. So, I spent another 7 minutes trying to thread my flip flop into my key ring.

Laugh all you want, It worked.

I then went limping (because i didn’t want to chance breaking my flip flops again) to my car to go to Old Navy to buy another pair of $2 flip flops that would break in a couple months. I drove to Old Navy, and then limped into the store all the way to the sparse flip flop section (because, apparently, no one needs new flip flops in the fall in Michigan). I picked up a pair of black flip flops to match my outfit (because your outfit has to match, right?). I then limped over to the cash register. When I got in line, I realized that I had picked up blue flip flops instead (in my defense, they were dark blue!). So I limped back to the sparse flip flop section and realized there were no black flip flops!

What was I to do? Well, my outfit had to match, so I limped (because, again, i didn’t want to be stuck w/o footwear in the rain) over to TJ Maxx, which is right next door. I limped to the men’s clothing section instead of the footwear section (because for some reason i didn’t think they would keep flip flops in the footwear section). I found a pair of flip flops (in the clothing section — not the footwear section. Can someone explain this to me?) that were not only black (to match), but were the same kind as my pair of brown flip flops that I bought (for $15) for my honeymoon 2.5 years ago — which I love AND have lasted way longer than my $2 old navy flip flops. And I got them on sale for $10 — my wife will be happy.

Now, for all of you who are crazy and do not wear flip flops all year around, I don’t want to hear it. For everyone else, TJ Maxx in Novi has some great pairs of $10, black, Oneill flip flops.

I make this a lot for myself. Laura isn’t a big fan of spicy things, so this is usually made when she’s not home. It is INCREDIBLY tasty. I stole the recipe and modified it to my liking from a guy I play poker with — he made this for one of our poker nights.

Ingredients:
2 -cans stewed tomatoes
6 – Hot Italian Sausages (Cut up into 5 or 6 pieces each)
3 or 4 – Bell Peppers (Multi-Colored for presentation)
1 – Large white onion
4 – cloves of garlic (minced, pressed, whatever — i press them) — you can add more if you want
Chili powder to taste (i probably put 1 tbsp in)
Salt and Pepper to taste (probably ends up being a few tsp of each — few more tsp of pepper)

Directions:
1) put everything in the pot
2) let it simmer — the longer the better
3) taste
4) add more chili powder/salt/pepper to taste
5) let simmer for more

In the end, I’d let it simmer for at least an hour, but if you can let it simmer for 4ish hours, it’ll taste even better!

Serve:
I serve this over noodles (whatever we have in the house — usually bow ties)

This can totally be refrigerated and then reheated the next day — and it’ll taste even better. I recommend reheating it on the stove instead of the microwave and letting it simmer some more before you eat it. If you do make this, and change the recipe at all — let me know, so I can try it out!

What a weekend! Laura and Bo were sick, so I worked from home on Friday to help them out. They both slept pretty much all day except for when we went to the Dr.’s to find out they both had ear infections and Laura also had a sinus infection. They weren’t much better Friday night (not a surprise), so I stayed home to help out. Saturday morning was an early morning and then went over to Peter’s house, broke up some concrete, dug a hole, cut into the soil pipe, went to home depot, replaced the pipe with some Y’s and added a drain for a sink and a toilet for his bathroom. THEN mowed my front lawn, hung out with Laura and Bo for a bit and then took off to BCPA to setup for church.

On my way to BCPA, my car started to overheat. I pulled off to the side of the road — checked a few things out, let the car cool down, drove for another mile or two — i did this a couple times limping myself to BCPA. There, I parked the car and then went to setup for church. I was just not interested in dealing with it then, because we had church to setup for! We did a really cool setup in the auditorium for Sunday morning. Jeff will post pictures on his blog in the next couple days.

In the midst of setting up church, I talked to Kevin and he said I could borrow his car this week because he was headed to chicago. That was awesome news! Also, Jason let me borrow his car to get home Saturday night. I have some great friends!

So THEN I drove home at midnight, woke up at 5:30, and was back at the school by 6:30. Church went GREAT. We had over 1200 people there! We had a few complaints about it being too loud (it was 2-3db’s louder than normal for 1st service and it was the same volume as it always is 2nd service — what the heck?). After service, my buddy Greg drove me over to Costco to get Kevin’s car (’cause that’s where he parked it). When I got back to church to start tearing stuff down, I called the tow truck. I got my car towed home, and then crashed for 2.5 hours. Longest weekend ever. When I woke up, I took Bo out to work on the car with me for a few minutes. We found that we had to get some new tools, so I went to Sears to pickup some Craftsmen tools. Got back home with some pizza for Laura, Chris and Natalie. We all hung out and watched some TV for a couple hours, then I went back outside to finish pulling out my Thermostat. Got the thermostat out, cleaned up, and found that it was midnight. Ugh. Midnight 3 days in a row with early mornings.

Needless to say, it was not a restful weekend. And there is the reason I didn’t blog at all. My downtime was spent with Laura and Bo or my car or sleep. The good thing though, a lot of people heard about letting God take control of their lives, and if someone meets God because the time and effort we put into setting up at church, it’s all worth it.

Over here at davesacre.com, we try our best to accommodate, or at least acknowledge all the complainers out there.

Today, someone mentioned that I had not posted my pictures from my August trip to Haiti yet. I planned on getting it done, i just hadn’t taken the time yet to post them. I have a new job, you know, and most of my spare time has been spent with my family, working on the house, or doing church stuff. This does not leave a lot of room for fun little things. So, in my effort to be a good blogger, I WILL update my pictures and my blog for all of you friends, family, and cyberstalkers alike.

So, i leave you with my pictures from Haiti.