About to cash in your change jar? Read this first.

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Not too long ago I decided it was time to cash in the change that I had been saving in a jar for the past few years. Brea and I had just replace our desktop computer, so I figured we could use the extra money. I wasn’t too excited about this process, because the last time we cashed in our change it involved first wrapping all the coins before taking them to the bank. I did not want to this again.

I decided that I was going to take the coins to a coin counting machine that I knew was at a local grocery store. There was going to be a service charge, but I was willing to pay the money to save the time and effort it was going to take to wrap the coins. When I went to the grocery store the coin machine was out of order. At first I was upset, but it turned out that this was a blessing in disguise.

While driving around trying to figure out what to do next I drove by a Century Bank and remembered that I had seen something about them having a coin counter. This turned out to being one of the best investments I have ever made. Century Bank does not charge a service fee for using their coin counter. On top of that, they will give you $50 for opening a free checking account with a minimum $100 deposit.

I had about $300 in coins saved up, so here’s the math:

Coin Star: $300 in coins – 8.9 cents service charge per $1 = $273
Century Bank: $300 in coins + $50 for opening accound = $350
Difference = $77 or about 28% increase

That’s good money. If you happen to decide to open an account after reading this, please mention that you heard about it from me (Kevin Rossen). They give a $25 credit for every person you refer to them, so that little out of order machine might end up making me even more money.

We’re Having a Girl!!!

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A week ago, Brea and I found out that our baby is going to be a girl.

It’s an amazing thing seeing our unborn child on the ultrasound. The sonographer, or whatever she’s called, was looking at all the blobs of light on the screen and calling out what she was seeing. “There’s one of the kidneys…here’s the brain…there’s the lungs.” There was no way that I was going to be able to pick out any of those things on that screen. Part of that is due to my total lack of knowledge about human anatomy, but that’s another story. It was so cool sering our baby girl moving around months ahead of her birth.
I’m glad I have a few months to prepare for being a dad for a girl. I don’t really worry that much about taking care of her the first few years of her life. Taking care of girls is not that much different from boys in the early years, at least that’s my theory. What I’m glad I have time to prepare for is the fact that I am going to shape the spiritual and emotional well-being of someone who will one day base most of her understanding of God, life, and men in general on her relationship with me. That’s scary!

As a man, I feel much more prepared to raise a boy. After all, I am one. I know that one day a boy will basically need tough love. He will throw a fit, be mad for a little while, but eventually get over it, just like most boys do. A girl, however, is another story. I’m worried that when I raise my voice she will start crying. Tears from a girl are good tools of daddy-manipulation. Thankfully, I’ll have a few years to figure that one out.

Overall, I’m really excited. It’s going to a challenge, but it’s going to be incredible becoming a dad.

Close encounters of the “Me Planet” kind

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While standing in line for food at the Mavericks game tonight, I ran into the kind of person that Brian Regan describes as “Captain Me Planet.” I was the next person in line to order at the cash register when a guy, who sounded like he was from either Europe or New Zealand, came marching in front of everyone. There are some situations in life that this would be anbr accepted practice, such as if you were at Chick-Fil-A or another one of your favorite fast food restaurants and you are only needing a quick refill of a drink. I’m not sure why it has become this way, but most people accept this as an acceptable reason to barge in front of everyone.

But that wasn’t why this guy was jumping in front of everyone else. He came marching up to the cash register to boldly announce that his buddy had just dropped all of their food on the ground. I’m serious. That’s what he was telling anyone who would listen (on a side note, I’m not sure why a guy was carrying food for another guy, but that’s another story). I don’t normally make it a practice to make fun of my friends to complete strangers (this might be common in British humor, which I just don’t get), so this struck me as odd. He didn’t say that his friend stepped on a slick spot on the floor that made him lose control of the tray of food. Nor did he say that an employee shoved the tray of food off the condiment counter laughing hysterically at him. Basically, his friend was a klutz and he wanted the food service at the American Airlines Center to pay the price. I don’t really blame him for this, seeing as it costs $3.75 for a bottle of water, but is seemed very presumptuous to assume that they would just give him free food.

It turned out that the AAC is in the business of paying for other people’s mistakes. They gave this guy complimentary replacements for everything they ordered. I guess this just goes to show you that it never hurts to ask. However, if you make the same mistake one day and devastatingly drop all of your precious gourmet AAC food on the ground, please wait in line to ask for replacements. There are other people in the world than just you.

Still worried about the Mavs?

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Last week I told you that it’s too early to be worried about the Mavericks. In case that post did not convince you, here are two more reasons why:  1) they have won four games in a row and six out of seven; and 2) there are only two teams in the Western Conference with a better record (San Antonio and Phoenix) and Dallas is 2-1 against them this year.

That said, it’s still too early to get too excited about how well they are doing. If I did that I would be contradicting myself.

I’m getting prepared for the end of Palm OS

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For about the past six months I’ve been coming to grips with the fact that Palm will be coming to an end…soon. I had hope for them, both as a company and a maker of the mobile OS, but that hope disappeared with the Foleo fiasco. Not that the product was a terrible idea, it could have been useful for a lot of people, but they were so way out of touch with what the general public was looking for in mobile devices that I realized their time was up.

Ever since that day, I’ve had the feeling that it was time to start thinking about what my next mobile device would be. I really like a lot of what the iPhone has to offer, but I have a great phone plan with Sprint that I want to stay with them. Google’s announcement of the Android OS and Sprint’s joining of the OHA has given me motivation to wait until at least mid-2008 to replace my Treo 650. I’m really starting to look forward to that day that Sprint releases their first Android phone.

We switched our email to Google Apps earlier this year and it has been great. They have the best calendar software I’ve ever used. The email platform is so good (KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS!!!), and I’m starting to use the Docs feature more and more. With these things in mind, I’m thinking the Android will be the perfect phone for my situation. With that in mind, here’s what I’ve figured out so far: Google calendar will be my main calendar (not Palm) and Remember the Milk will be my task manager. With those two figured out, I don’t really think leaning Palm will be too hard.

If you’ve switched from Palm to something else, let me know what you miss, what you don’t miss, and any advice you have.

Free Countdown Timer for Churches & Public Speakers

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[UPDATE 2/21/09]
I’ve made some changes to the timer. Here is the updated version. You can download the flash file here: Stage Countdown Timer.

—Original Post Below—
Earlier this year I was trying to figure out how to get a countdown clock setup for Barry, the preacher at our church. I did a lot of searching around trying to find a software program or an inexpensive decent clock. The best ideas I could find were using a clock that we use for our children’s basketball league. I didn’t really like that idea, but it was the best idea we could come up with.

Since necessity is the mother of creativity I decided I needed to make the countdown clock myself. I already had a program called SwishMax, which is basically a Flash animation program. I did some searching on some forums, made quite a few unsuccessful attempts, but finally was able to get the clock to do everything we were looking for. It’s a simple Flash animation that we run on an old laptop in the back of the Worship Center hooked up to an LCD monitor sitting on the front pew that only the people on stage can see. There are buttons to set the clock to different times. It also changes color to yellow when there are three minutes left, red with under a minute, and flashes at 30 seconds until zero.

It’s been helpful. I’ve uploaded it and you are free to download it and use it however you please. If you already have SwishMax you can download the swi file to edit the clock if you want.

Download Flash file (swf): Countdown timer
Download Swish file (requires Swish program): Countdown timer (original file)

Here is a mini-preview of the clock:

UPS = Innovate Thinking

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The NY Times has reported that UPS, the delivery company with the brown trucks, has reduced “28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.” How did they accomplish this? By not turning left (when practical). The concept is that they have those huge, gas-guzzling trucks and sitting in the left-turn lane waiting for the green light needlessly uses up excess gas (and time).

This kind of thinking is brilliant. It’s not something that would be world changing for an individual, but when done at the scale of UPS it is. How many little changes like this could churches make that would have a significant impact in our culture?

Should the Mavs’ slow start worry you?

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I’ve had a few people ask me if I’m worried about the Dallas Mavericks having trouble early in the season. They have lost games that they should have won and are not showing much chemistry. This is making some people say that they should have dismantled the team after last season’s embarrassing defeat to the Golden State Warriors. I do not think that it is time to dismantle the team, yet.

Let’s take a brief look at how the Mavs are doing in comparison to recent history. Currently they are 13-8 and trail San Antonio by 4.5 games. At this point last year, the year the Mavs won 67 games, Dallas was 14-7. Two years ago, the year the Mavs went to the NBA Finals, Dallas was 15-6. The Mavs are only 1-2 games worse this year than they were either of the two previous years.

Let’s take a quick look at San Antonio, last year’s NBA Champions.  21 games into the season last year they were 15-6. It turned out pretty well for them I would say.

Overall, I think it is way too early to hit the panic button on this season. There is just WAY TOO MUCH basketball still to be played. History has also shown us that the regular season has very little impact on what happens in the playoffs. So, should you be concerned about the Mavs’ slow start? Not yet. They definitely have a lot of areas in which they need to improve, but I would much rather they figure those things out closer to the end of the regular season to gain some momentum for the playoffs.

Hmmmm

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Audible.com is an online audio book store. You can listen to the books on ipods and other devices. I was browsing their titles in their Christian book section and noticed that they have an unusual number of Christian books. Coincidence? Irony? Practical joke? See for yourself in the pic.Audible Christian Books