Visit Jesus Connect on the Web

Once upon a time Jesus Connect Ministries had a vibrant and dynamic ministry website.
What happened you say? The server that it ran on was taken away from us due to the ISP we were co locating it at went into sudden financial problems and the management company where the ISP was located took possession of everything without any warning to us. POOF. Server was confiscated and we found out too late that we did not have good backups of all our data and configurations. That was 10 years worth of work down the tubes. So, in the background Jesus Connect ministry has been reborn and a new administration program that fully automates how it is administered and recreates what users see on the front end is finally done. There are still some bugs that need to be worked out but all in all it is ready to be taken out for a serious test drive.

That is where YOU come in. Go to Jesus Connect Ministries and poke around. Prod here and there and see what you can get into. If you see something that you would like to be added just let us know. :) Add links to our Linkbase and within 24 hours I will approve them. Check out the Jesus Connect Message bases and see if there is anything there of interest.

Well, that is about it for my Jesus Connect Service Announcement. :)

Here comes Ivan the terrible

Can we say it did but then it did not? Can we pretend Ivan is just not out there and that the storm will not kill anymore people than it already has. Sigh... I guess that works only if you are a scientologist. Did I spell that right?? Did you know that Tom Cruise is a scientologist?? I did not know until just recently... I know, more worthless trivia to forget...

My son Jeremy wrote friends and family an e-mail telling us his new phone number , e-mail and blog. I am so proud of Jeremy! Go Jeremy GO!! You have a LOT of people praying and pulling for you so you go get em son!!

I had my second interview today in two days. I think that sets some sort of job search record for yours truly. I wonder if the newly recreated resume that my friend Kimberly did for me has anything to do with it? I am sure that it had some bearing on the initial interest anyway. I interviewed for about 60 minutes and I think that the conversation went pretty nicely. This particular company is a family owned computer consulting firm and they are looking to fill one position to help out the owner with his client needs. We shall see if they pick me or not pretty soon.

Jay Leno has the worlds oldest chicken on his show tonight. What is up with THAT? How do you tell the age of a chicken anyway? Who CARES how old the silly chicken is.... Please no show of hands here ok ? LOL...

I slept until 11:30 am yesterday morning so I got a late start on my day. That means that since I am used to staying awake from 6:30 am until 1 am the next day that I am wide eyed and bushy tailed at 12:22 am.... Go figure. I have to be at work at 7:30 am which is ONLY 6 hours away. Sigh.... Anyone have some extra tooth picks? I am going to need them. LOL

Hey, I know what I could wake up all the puppies and take digital pictures of them for the blog.... What an AWESOME idea... NOT. I do NOT want to hear them yammering for the rest of the night because I was desperate for something else to do at 12:30 am. LOL... I will take the pictures later. Hey Jeremy, speaking of taking pictures dude, how about a webcam for my favorite son? That would be cool, if you had a webcam in your dorm room.
Be sure to throw all the junk in the closet before your mom views the webcam though. LOL

The OLDEST chicken in the world is 14 years old and has a birth certificate. The average age of a chicken is supposed to be 7 to 8 years. The owners were looking for a chicken for their magic show in Alabama. I am going to spare you with the rest of this mindless drivel... LOL

I have to say this , the chicken, Matilda, is put in a parrot cage and has toys. Sound familiar Patty? This is a Bantee chicken?? Oh my goodness.

My mood matched the weather this morning. When I got up I suppose it was cloudy but I really dont know because I was still in CHUD mode trying to wake up. I did the usual routine as I always do and settled down in front of the 21" NEC CRT to warm up to my E-mail inbox. Before I know it the rain starts to come down. Luckily for me there was no thunderstorm just more liquid falling out of the sky. When the rain came down this morning I found myself feeling depressed. How irritating is that I asked myself as I stared into the monitor reading this and that. Why in the world do I feel depressed after getting out of bed? Well anyway, who knows, I don't have any magical answers other than I was just down in the dumps. I picked up the phone to call a friend of mine but the answering machine greeted me instead of my friend so I just hung up the phone. I really wanted to talk to a human being in the flesh. Do not get me wrong, I am an Internet junkie and cyber citizen from way back but there are times when talking to someone in IM when you need to really talk and make a connection verbally that is when cyberspace just does not cut it. Justin got up around 3:30 am with a hacking cough, sniffles, runny nose and sore throat so Katy wound up staying awake for most of the night and was asleep at this time. There was no way I was going to wake her up over this especially when I knew that this would pass eventually. I suppose depression is not something that most folks want to talk about or even admit to experiencing it. I guess it is sort of like admitting that we have a weight problem or some sort of addiction. We don't want to say those things to our families or friends because we are admitting that we have a weakness or character flaw or problem. Well, anyway, depression sucks anyway you cut it. Oh yeah, before I get away from this thought one of the reasons I knew I was depressed this morning is because my motivation level was at subterranean levels. I was barely motivated to breathe much less do anything else like get out of my chair and take a shower and get ready for my day.

When I could not think of anyone to talk to in real life (on the telephone) I reverted back to the computer monitor and noticed that one of my friends in Oklahoma was online in Yahoo IM. I wound up talking to my friend for about 15 minutes or so until he had to log off and tend to his wife this morning. One of the things that I did other than talk to my friend and admit that I was down in the dumps was to fire up Launchcast on Yahoo IM and listen to my favorite Christian Contemporary Music channel. Talking about things (banging thoughts into words on the keyboard) and listening to some upbeat music helped to quench the feelings of despair, gloominess and depression.
I finally got to the point where I needed to change my environment in hopes that doing so would help me to get a new perspective on things and shake off the dumps. After running myself through the upright water sprinkler device in the bathroom I felt better and decided that my hair DOO needed some improvement. It is amazing to me how Katy could use the clippers to snatch me almost bald you would think that the hair would grow back evenly. That is not my luck however so off to Wallyworld for a hair cut. After the hair cut I went to lunch with a friend of mine and we got caught up on life and ate some wonderful home style cooking. After lunch was over I received a phone call from an employer who wants to interview me. Actually, this is the second employer in the last two days that has responded to my sending them a resume. I am thinking that the resume that my case worker at WIA did for me is really getting me some serious results. Way to go Kimberly!!!!

The next step of the process is to sell yourself to the employer in person. That is the hardest part of the whole process in my mind. You are always faced with the questions like "why would we hire you over the other five million applicants who also responded to this job ad??" or " tell us one quality that you poses that would make you different and more suited for this position than the five million OTHER applicants for this job". Well anyway, hopefully I can make a decent impression on an employer in the VERY near future so that our deflated budget can find new LIFE. LOL....

For the first time in about 5 days the sun peeked out from amongst the clouds and began the process of turning our soggy mosquito filled tundra into a large greenhouse. Speaking of mosquito's I find that I miss this one thing about Texas. The mosquitos in Texas are so large that when they fly you can hear their wings. It sounds like a helicopter coming in and atleast you have time to move out of the way or grab a base ball bat and take a swing. The mosquitos we have here are as bad as the flying teeth (noseebums). They are all flying around in stealth mode. The only way you know you have a bug sucking you dry is the tiny prick you feel when they first bite you. If you don't feel that you are in trouble. I walked outside the other day to put Angel (our lab) on her chain and 20 of the bothersome blood sucking pests decending upon me. I could not get back inside fast enough.

Speaking of Angel that reminds me of PUPPIES. I am off tomorrow and one of my tasks will be to utilize the technology at hand to MARKET my puppies to you and everyone I know locally that has an E-mail address. These puppies are loveable, cute and are BEGGING for a NEW home. Could you imagine having to wake up and have to see the likes of me every day? Please, find it within your heart to either SAVE THE PUPPIES by giving them a new home or help me spread the word to your friends and families to see if THEY might NEED, WANT a new puppy. LOL....
That means that I will post some new PUPPY pictures for all to see sometime tomorrow so stay tuned.

I am currently in a holding pattern with regards to what method of study that I am going to undertake with regards to going back to school Twenty years ago the only method of going back to school was to do just that, go back to school and sit in a classroom with a teacher and take notes , do homework and take tests. Now that is not the case. I can either attend class at Trident Tech OR I can obtain CBT materials and do what is called SELF STUDY. There is a company out of Florida (I wonder if they are still around after this storm) who is attempting to become a verified school source for the state of SC so that they can provide me with all the curriculum on CBT and books for my MCSE certs. If I go to Trident Tech I will have to pay almost 7.000.00 for all 7 courses and exams. If we go the CBT route I can get the entire taco (minus the cost of the 7 exams) for less than 2500.00. I am also entertaining the idea of getting an associates degree in Information Technology and I am sure that within those two years that I will also gain some Microsoft Certifications also which will be nice. That of course requires grants and student loans and attending class on campus. No matter what I will eventually do I am ready to get the show on the road while I have the motivation to do something.

Well, it is time for me to get off of my behind, get out of this chair and wander out into the sauna and race the mosquitos up into the parking garage so I can make sure that all is safe and secure for our customers. OH JOY!! Talk about motivation to GET OUT of this dead end job folks. LOL...

What a mess we have on the East Coast. Frances is headed into the Gulf and we have showers and tornado watch in affect until 8pm EST today. JOY