trying to believe

May’s been an interesting month for me. We’re busier than ever at work. Our new house is almost done. I’ve experienced levels of stress I hadn’t thought possible. But I’m still alive. I thank God for that. There’s a lot I’d love to try and write about, but time isn’t as readily available as I might like.

• Backups are Essential. I’ve been lucky enough to only have one major hard drive up until recently. We had a mission critical drive fail on us here at work that didn’t have a recent, viable backup and we had to send it out to a data recovery service. It really sucks when a drive you manage dies and it affects those you work with. Keeping regular backups is absolutely critical. I found this out the hard way this month. If you’re going to be obsessive over one thing, it should be in how you keep copies of your work. Backup, backup, backup. I can’t stress it any harder.
• Make decisions that glorify Christ. This isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but it’s amazing to see people that have truly let Christ rule their decision-making process. The flesh can corrupt our decision-making process, because it’s the easy thing to do. When we consider Christ in our decisions, we challenge ourselves to the difficult thing. We take the road less travelled, if you will.
• Lead by example. I have an amazing boss, that I truly admire. The best way to get the job done is to lead by example so that others might take up your lead. Jeff does this on a daily basis. He empowers his employees in such a way that they are able to do their job to the best of their ability. He continually puts others ahead of himself. He builds people up instead of tearing them down. That’s leading by example, and it’s definitely a model I should strive to get better at.
• Design is collaborative problem solving. Designers are problem solvers, yes, but they are nothing unless they truly understand the problems they are trying to solve. The only way to do this is to collaborate with clients and/or other designers to make their work better. When you involve the client, you’re ensuring their voice is heard.
• Patience is a virtue. Six month olds don’t know any better. When they fight going to bed, laugh about it. You were probably like that as a kid, too. Yeah, you probably want to sleep, too, but that doesn’t really matter anymore. After all, his smiles, his coos and his giggles are well worth the sleep depravation.
• Find balance. This is something I continue to struggle with in my personal and professional life. It’s hard to strike a balance between your home life and your work life. I keep in the back of my mind what I learned when I read Choosing to Cheat. You have to find a balance. You’ve got to make time for the things that are really important.
• Jump on hand grenades. I read about this concept some time ago, but it’s relevant each and every day here at work. We’re all going to have hand grenades thrown at us. It’s how we deal with them that truly makes the difference.

The latest X-Men is out, and being the fanboy that I am, I went to see it on opening night. When it comes to comics, X-Men holds a special place in my heart. I’ve always loved the ferocity of the character Wolverine, and I loved the dynamics of the X-Men team in the comic books. I read X-Men comics throughout my teenage years. I especially loved the whole Age of Apocalypse story-arc that took over the Marvel Universe back in the 1990s. But I digress…

X-Men III was’t a disappointment. It definitely lived up to my expectations. I had seen both X-Men movies up to this point. As movies based on comics, I think they were great. They really brought all of the characters to life, and all of the roles were perfectly cast. (Especially Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier. That man was born to be Professor X.) X-Men III was no different. It was a great comic book movie. I stress the comic book part, because unless you’re a kid or a fan of comics, you’re probably not going to care for X-Men III much.

Would I see it again? Well, now that I know that I missed something… maybe. Otherwise, I would probably wait for it be released on DVD.=

Well shucks, the comet fragments didn’t hit Earth yesterday, causing massive tsunamis in the Atlantic! *shew* I was scared there for .0003 nanoseconds. (Not.) I guess Save Lives in May jumped the gun, huh? Perhaps the “psychic” that predicted the event meant another May 25, 2006, or something? I don’t know.It’s amazing that people like this get any sort of press at all. It seems like any crackpot can make outrageous claims, and people on the “interweb” eat it up. When are we going to wake up, people?

Yes, the world might come to an end someday. How it will end and when it will end is not for us to know. The only question you need ask yourself is “Will I be ready“?

Is it going to happen like Eric Julien predicts? Probably not in our lifetime. Should you be worried about debris from a comet impacting earth? Nope… because materials from space impact our planet on a daily basis. Larger impacts are few and far between. Catastrophic collisions are rarer still.

Lesson learned here: don’t put your faith in psychics.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Tuesday to fine employers who hire illegal immigrants up to $20,000 for each unauthorized worker, providing teeth to a broad immigration bill before sending it to a final vote later this week.

Employers would have to check Social Security numbers and the immigration status of all new hires within 18 months after money is provided to the Homeland Security Department to expand the electronic system for screening workers. Read Full Article on CNN…

America is nothing without its immigrants. I’m not for returning America to isolation, but we need to do something to solve the problem of illegal immigration into our country. This is the best proposal I’ve seen thusfar, though one problem remains: enforcement. Unless Congress comes up with a way to enforce this, it’s all bark and no bite.

Taking SlideShowPro a step further, DomineyDesign just released SlideShowPro Director, a browser-based application that let’s you manage slideshows. It installs on any Linux server with PHP/MySQL, has an intuitive Ajax-driven user interface for managing all your photos, creates thumbnails in a snap, plus a whole lot more. The demo is quite impressive. I hope compatibility with Windows servers comes soon. I’d love to incorporate it into a few projects I have coming through the pipeline.

I caught a late showing of The DaVinci Code last night. Other than my experience with the The DaVinci Code Quest on Google and the tidbits I’ve seen on TV over the past few months, my knowledge of The DaVinci Code was limited.

As a work of fiction, I think it was a great movie. It was entertaining. The action was consistent. The storyline was very engaging. I really enjoyed it from start to finish.

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Nevermind the mess. I’ll be updating the look and feel of the site live over the coming weeks. I’ve been toying with a few concepts in Photoshop, and have finally decided on a direction to take. I had hoped to just unveil a new design, and I certainly still could… but I feel like this route is the saner way for me to go. (Plus, it fits into my schedule better, which is entirely too hectic sometimes.)
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If you printed out an email that you had received and it had a ‘Reply’ button on it, would you assume by pressing the button, you could respond to the email? I seriously couldn’t have taken that support call… God bless our email support guys. More

Cork’d is a delightfully refreshing niche site devoted to reviewing and sharing experiences with wine. Developed by Dan Cederholm (SimpleBits) and Dan Benjamin (Hivelogic), Cork’d allows you to rate the wines you’ve tasted, keep track of the wine you own, and shop for the wines you’d like to buy.

I’m going to be honest here: I don’t drink a whole lot of wine these days, but I will enjoy a glass or two on special occasions. I don’t think you have to be a hardcore wine afficianado in order to use Cork’d. Quite the contrary, actually. I think this is going to be the perfect site for people who have been a little afraid to try out new wines, because they didn’t know what to expect of them. (I’d tell you about the time I first sampled a Pinot Grigio, but I’ll refrain. It’s just too painful a memory.)

I have bought wine in the past that I truly enjoyed, and forgotten what it was. I have bought wine, based on the design of a label, or the uniqueness of a bottle… only to be completely and utterly disappointed by the taste. Now, I can see what others think about wines, before I bite the bullet and buy a bottle.

If you sign up, add me (cdharrison) as one of your “Drinking Buddies”!

So, let me get this straight, Apple… It’s $1299 for the top-end white MacBook, and it’s $1499 for the black MacBook, and the only differences being the enclosure color and 20Gb extra hard drive space? You’re not serious, right? Should we expect black to cost more in the future on all Mac products?
Sure, one could argue their supply of black MacBook’s will be in higher demand, hence the higher price… but it couldn’t be that much more to produce … Certainly not $200 more to produce. What’s the deal here???