J&D, the creators of Bacon Salt and Baconnaise, now bring us…

Mmmvelopes, bacon-flavored envelopes!

And something else I missed is…

BaconPOP, bacon-flavored popcorn!

Bacon, FTW!

Is 2009 really over? I cannot believe how quickly it has passed! It’s been quite a year, with a lousy first half but an truly awesome, action-packed and busy second half.

High/lowlights from the year include:

• Seeing a good friend get married/bachelor party fun
• Much personal and spiritual growth; learning about and experiencing God’s grace and mercy
• Being trained as a challenge course instructor
• Gillispie out/Calipari in as head coach of UK’s basketball team
  (starting off the season with a 13-0 record…so far, and getting UK’s 2000th win)
• Being given the opportunity to serve in a leadership position at my church
• Being diagnosed with diabetes
• Meeting and getting to know a very special girl
• Solo road trip to the Northeast and Acadia NP
• Return trip to Catalyst
• Getting an unexpected promotion

My goals for 2009 were as follows, with my grade for that goal:

Goal for the year: Cook more!
Grade: C+
I have cooked more than in previous years, but not as much as I expected when I set the goal. Baby steps…

Goal for the year: Complete 10 credit hours towards my M.B.A.
Grade: F
I only completed 2 credit hours before putting my pursuit of a M.B.A on hold for various reasons.

Goal for the year: Develop habit of tithing at least 10% and be giving to charities/others at 5% of my monthly income.
Grade: B
I’m tithing at 10%, but haven’t been consistent with other giving.

Goal for the year: Memorize the Biblical book of James.
Grade: F
I got 10 or so verses memorized before becoming unfocused… I did memorize other verses throughout the year, but not as much as in the previous year.

Goal for the year: Do something with my passion for creative ministries, puppets in particular.
Grade: F
There was some talk about getting a team together, and a friend started writing a script, but other priorities took over and there wasn’t enough time left to pursue this.

Goal for the year: Quantify/qualify my strengths and find the sweet spot where these can be applied to my career.
Grade: D
I’ve learned more about my strengths and weaknesses in a job setting thoughout the year, but have yet to fully apply these to my career path.

Not a very good year in terms of reaching my goals, but I still consider the year a success based on the growth I’ve had and lessons I’ve learned. Quite the year overall, with many memorable experiences. 2010 should be just as memorable, if not more so!

This is really cool, and really good.

Side-by-side comparison with the movie:

[Via human3rror.com]

Christmas is fast approaching! Seriously, where has the time gone?!? Stores have had Christmas decorations out for several weeks now, and the sales are starting to hit. From Facebook and Twitter updates, several of you have already begun, if not finished (!!!), your shopping. Being one who is not a fan of shopping in general and specifically during this crazy time of year (when we should be relaxing and spending time with family and friends instead, but that’s a rant for another time), I find myself too often waiting until the last minute to shop. For whatever reason, I’ve been motivated and have gotten a jump on shopping this year. And by shopping, I mean online shopping I’d much rather look for deals online and have everything delivered to my door rather than driving all over town and braving the maddening crowds and traffic. I do enough of that getting to and from work every day…

***We interrupt this post to bring you this commercial***
If you shop online, consider shopping via Amazon.com using the search box below or in the sidebar. If you make a purchase using my website (using your check/debit card of course!), I’ll receive a small referral fee (at no additional cost to you), which will be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
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I’ve been tempted on several occasions to start putting up Christmas lights, but going to hold off a bit longer. In the meantime, I’ve been cleaning out my basement, desk, etc. Wow, lots of junk! My basement alone needed a good cleaning. I had five computer cases, with only a few parts left in each, that I’m going to find some place to recycle; tons of boxes of many shapes and sizes; model train stuff scattered everywhere, that I would like to work on but haven’t had the time in years; old, beat up furniture; and just about anything else I haven’t been able to throw away, thinking I’d need it one day but years later still haven’t used. Nothing like a good cleaning to give you the feeling of new-ness!

[Well, apparently the Amazon search box won't stay working...oh, well...]

Presenting Lucy and Ricky Ricardo!

Part of our network is down at work, thus giving me a few minutes to actually write a blog post! Can’t believe how long it has been since my last post, and even longer since I’ve written a meaningful post. I’m actually not sure what to write about now, so I guess I’ll just do a recap on the last…two months.

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I’ll start with the yucky part of this time. Both Kristy and I were sick mid to late September, though with different things. Kristy was off work almost a week and I missed two days. My sickness started off with flu-like symptoms then turned into a sharp, stabbing pain in the back of my head that led to another medical first for me this year – an MRI. Thankfully, the MRI was negative, and though I never got a diagnosis of what caused it, the pain went away on its own after 3 or 4 days. It was not a pleasant experience, and it was frustrating to have to free time yet not be able to tackle my to-do list. Being sick definitely makes it difficult to manage diabetes, too…

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Once again this year, I attended the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta early October. I was really looking forward to it since I was introduced to so many great speakers last year, many that I’ve continued to follow via books, podcasts and Twitter since. This year’s line-up was at least on par with last year’s…but I’ll write more about that in a separate post.

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I was blessed enough to be offered a ticket to UK’s Big Blue Madness by my friend Robin. To say I’m extremely pumped about this upcoming college basketball season is an understatement! After a dismal few years, it’s hard to believe how much the program has come so far – and the season hasn’t even started yet! The anticipation is running high for all of Big Blue Nation. BBM was my first “madness” and quite an event. It was obvious from the scrimmage that the team needs a lot of work, but there is more than enough raw talent to take us far this year. I just hope all the egos can be managed, but if anyone can do it, Calipari can. Looking forward to the season!

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Apart from being sick and Catalyst, Kristy has been keeping me plenty busy. There’s never a struggle to find things to do when we’re together, and we often have to make an effort to just have some down time. usually we have trouble finding the time to do everything we want to! Over the past two months, we’ve…

…played paintball
…eaten at Montgomery Inn (Kristy’s first experience there)
…gone to a Reds game
…attended Lincoln Days in Hodgenville
…witnessed a wedding of Kristy’s friend in Indianapolis
…watched a high school band contest
…gone to the Ohio Renaissance Festival
…cheered on the UK football team to a win over ULM
…and so much more. We have a lot more in store in the coming months as well, including going to UK’s first exhibition basketball game against Campbellsville, which I’m quite pumped about!

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The unveiling of our Halloween costumes happens tonight at the annual McFarland Halloween party. It took us a while to figure out what to dress as, mainly because we put so much pressure on ourselves to find something that would beat the Harmons, the perennial winners. We actually had a pretty great idea, but the implementation of it was complicated and not everyone would “get” it, so we opted for something else. We’re happy with the costumes (Kristy put in a lot of work making my shirt) and they’re much more fun and enjoyable than trying to come up with a winning idea. Pictures will come later… Your hint for now is: Bobalu!

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Well, that’s about all I have for now. Hopefully the next post won’t be months away…

Trying to keep my blogging momentum going… Today’s post is all about randomness.

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There’s a fun and travel-intensive weekend ahead of me! Friday, Kristy and I are heading up to Indianapolis for my yearly fix of DCI. This year I’m going all out. Rather than heading to a local show, we’re going to the DCI World Championship semifinals! Let’s go Phantom Regiment! (Unfortunately, after winning it all last year, they find themselvs in 9th place at the end of the “regular season” this year… )

Saturday we’ll be heading to Western KY to spend some time with my family. Every year around this time, before school starts, my father’s side of the family converges on my grandparents’ farm, south of Henderson, KY. This year I’ll be bringing a special guest. Kristy will get to meet the entire paternal side of the family…all at once. She graciously accepted the invitation and seems to be up for the challenge of meeting everyone! Yep, she’s a keeper

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There are rumors of a Quantum Leap Revival. Yes! That would totally make my day! Quantum Leap is one of my all time favorite shows.

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I’ll follow that with an interesting report on a study that concluded Opposite financial habits attract.

Eli Finkel: We found that when looking at spending patterns, spendthrifts and tightwads tend to pair up.

Tess Vigeland : And though singles say they would rather marry someone with spending habits like their own, they often don’t. Finkel says it has a lot to do with trying to address the pain we each experience. Tightwads actually don’t like spending too little money and spenders don’t really like spending too much.

Finkel: On those rare cases where we have a trait about ourselves that we dislike, those might be the cases where we would seek somebody who’s the opposite of us. So, if I’m somebody who spends a great deal of money and experiences some pain about it, I’ll dislike it enough in myself that I may well seek the opposite in a partner.

Vigeland: Of course, if you disagree on finances, the research also shows you may experience “diminished marital well-being.”

The actual study can be found here: Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction: Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Marriage

Considering that the number one cause of problems in marriage is money, and 50% of marriages end in divorce, I’m not sure if this is a good thing…

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Here’s an interesting website to which I wanted to bring attention: givinganon.org.
In a nutshell, the site let’s you give anonymously to others.

Giving Anonymously is a non-profit organization facilitating generosity between people. We are a volunteer organization; each of us donates our time without pay to keep Giving Anonymously running.

We began with a few goals in mind: We wanted to relationally connect people through giving, to make it fun, and in the process protect relationships from feelings of obligation. Giving to others in need can be full of mixed motivations and our hope is to facilitate Pure giving.

Anyone who enjoys putting cash under a friends door or in their mailbox will often times not know if their friend actually got the gift and they cannot hear what it meant to them. So, we came up with an idea to have a messaging line where recipients could call after receiving their gift. When a recipient doesn’t know who gave the gift to them they are even more free to express their gratitude and we capture this through voice files that we email to the donor.

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And the last bit of randomness for today – I completely missed my 1 year anniversary at Medpace! I started July 28th, 2008 and the past year has been a good journey. I’m not doing much of what I was originally hired to do, having instead stepped into a more specialized role with a different system. I’m thankful for this opportunity and appreciate the challenge of establishing new processes and reworking old processes to streamline the flow of getting the system up and running. The company itself is great. They definitely have employee morale in mind by providing word day activities such as cornhole and pop-a-shot tournaments, ice cream socials and lunches, as well as outside work events such as the Christmas party, paintball, golf outings and more.
It has been a welcome change from my previous employers!

This past weekend I had the privilege of being trained as a low ropes/challenge course instructor for the Girl Scouts of Western Ohio at Camp Stonybrook in Waynesville, Ohio.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting into but I thoroughly enjoyed my two previous ropes course experiences (which were both high and low) – one with Norse Leadership Society at NKU and the other with the college/career class at Latonia Baptist Church back in the day when I attended that church.

The training began bright and early on Saturday. A group of ten volunteers were present at the training, and as has been the case often lately, I was the only guy (other than the trainer). ERi conducted the 2-day session, which consisted of several different areas, including initiatives, spotting techniques, basic operation of the low course elements and processing the experience. We went through the individual elements of the course ourselves first, then learned how to facilitate each, from safety to providing guidance along the way to debriefing afterwords.

Some of the challenge course elements at the camp were: All Aboard, Islands, Spiders Web, Mohawk Walk, Whale Watch, Wild Woosy, Trust Fall and The Wall.
(Examples of these can be seen at http://www.high5adventure.org and http://www.pa.org.)

Some of us stayed overnight at the camp, which was great for me, as I very much needed a night away. It felt good to just hang out and relax and get away from technology and the hustle and bustle for a bit. We did play several rounds of Sequence. I’m happy to say I beat Mindy – once…then she dominated the rest of the night. I did manage to accidentally knock her over during one of the outdoor games, though, so maybe I had that coming…

I think I’m going to enjoy facilitating the Girl Scout troops as they tackle the course. My first session as instructor will be this coming weekend, when I’ll be co-facilitating along with Mindy.

…maybe I should have considered a little more seriously Paul’s comment regarding the iPod Touch being a “gateway drug” for the iPhone. After using the Touch for a week, I’ve returned it, drank the Kool-Aid, jumped on the bandwagon and am now an iPhone owner.

Having been behind the times in regards to mp3 players and smart phones, I really didn’t know what I was missing…until I saw and played with a snazzy new touch screen and WiFi connected technology in a portable device. Not only did I enjoy the Touch as an mp3 player, but I really loved the touch screen interface (compared to button mashing), the apps (which very much increased its usefulness and productivity) and it did away with my desire to get a notebook/netbook computer. The Touch has WiFi connectivity, so as long as a connection is available, I can check email, blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. wherever I am. The iPhone offers WiFi connectivity in addition to 3G, so I’ll be connected most places I go. I feel so empowered!

The only reasons that were holding me back from flocking to the iPhone like so many others was a) the cost of the phone itself, b) the cost of the phone/data plan, c) being stuck in a contract and d) being very interested in Google Android devices.
–Turns out the 16GB iPhone 3G costs the same as the 16GB iPod Touch, so that cancels out the first reason.
–The data plan for the iPhone is quite a bit more than what I was paying through Cincinnati Bell, my previous service provider, but ATT’s data plan is unlimited and a cheaper phone plan, which will be sufficient for me, will mostly balance out the cost and result in only a minimal increase in the monthly bill, enough to not make this an area of concern.
–I’ve never had a cell phone contract. I’ve been with Cincinnati Bell since my first mobile phone in 1999 and it’s always been a month to month deal. I hate the thought of being stuck with something. However, I’ve talked to some people and read articles/reviews on the interwebs and ATT seems like they won’t be a hassle. Considering I was with CB as long as I was, 2 years shouldn’t be all that long. I can always pay to break the contract if things really get that bad, which I don’t anticipate happening.
–I don’t know how long it will be before a really nice Android model is released and I don’t know which company it will be through, so rather than wait for these unknowns, I decided to go the instant gratification route. Who knows, maybe ATT will get a model (doubtful, though) and I can “upgrade” to it if I tire of the iPhone.

I switched over to the iPhone/ATT yesterday and I’m still getting used to it. It’s bigger, thicker and heavier than the Touch, but not any thicker than the RAZR I was using. After a scare last night when it errored during a software update and had to be restored, I’ve gotten it mostly personalized/customized as I had done with the Touch. Still playing around with it, getting used to the phone interface and tweaking it, but I’m going to like it. It’ll be nice to just carry around one device for my phone, mp3 and web connectivity needs. Web, music, games…all at my fingertips! I just hope it can take my abuse..

I caved…I bought the iPod Touch on Sunday. I was tired of doing research and agonizing over the decision. By being so frugal and stingy about making purchases, I get stressed and take much of the fun out of things. At least when I do make purchases such as this, I can pay cash and not have to pay for it (plus interest) for months to come. It had been quite a while since my last “major” purchase, though, and after the rough past couple of weeks, it felt good to treat MYSELF for once. Hey, if the government thinks it best to spend its way out of the recession, why not spend my way out, too.

Much of my hold-up regarding the Touch involved the cost-to-capacity ratio. I could have gotten a Zune with 8x the capacity for less money. Flash based players such as the Touch are much more expensive that hard drive based players, such as the Zune and the Zen. I played with the Zune in the store and wasn’t all that impressed with it, though. Couldn’t do much with the demo product, but based on what I could do I wasn’t all that thrilled with the product design or the interface. In the end, I figured that since I already have a hard drive based mp3 player still in working order, why not go flash this time.

So I did. I sprung for the 16GB iPod Touch (second gen). So far I really like the it!

Quick hit thoughts…

- My first impression: very thin! I guess after years of looking at my large, clunky Zen, anything else will look smaller, but given that the Touch has flash memory rather than a hard drive, it can naturally be much smaller. The Touch feels and looks slick and sleek and futuristic compared to the Zen. The user interface is SO much better and intuitive, and now that I’ve gone touch screen, it’s going to be hard to go back. It’s really nice not having buttons to press, sometimes accidentally, and with the touch screen interface, there are so many more options.

-Love the Wifi connectivity. When coupled with apps, it practically does away with needing a notebook computer.

-The apps add a lot to it. Like the iPhone, apps are available to download and install on the Touch. There are a ton of them available, some junk, some incredibly handy, some free, some costing a couple bucks. There are apps that will only feed my online addiction, such as those for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Pandora, as well as apps that will be handy resources (dictionary, language translation, Bible) and many games that will help me kill time.

- Big negative for me is playlist management. There’s no way to create a playlist or add to them from the Touch itself; it has to be done via iTunes, presenting a problem at the office where I can’t install the program. It’s also frustrating and not easy to queue up a list of songs. something I frequently did with the Zen . There is an “On-The-Go” playlist that tries to mimic the behavior I want, but it’s a long way from what I’m used to. I’ll have to check out the app store, as there may be some that will help with playlist management.

- Another downside is the limited capacity. 16GB really is not that much when it comes to multimedia files. I could have opted for the 32GB model, but flash memory is expensive. It was tough to be forced to pick and choose which music I wanted to load on the Touch, rather than just dumping everything I own onto it, which is what I did with the hard drive based Zen. I still plan to keep the Zen handy and loaded with older, less listened to music, so this isn’t a huge deal for me right now.

As Paul commented on my previous post, I see how the iPod Touch can be a gateway drug to the iPhone. I’m even more tempted now to go the iPhone route, but I’m still going to hold out for an Android-based phone. One thing that isn’t in doubt is that I need a separate music player, rather than player/phone combo, By having the Touch, I can get much of the awesomeness of the iPhone in addition to the awesomeness/perks of an Android-based phone at a later time.