Thinking about choices
Recently Julie was in Wal Mart going through the self-checkout lane. In front of her was a teenage couple purchasing a box of condoms…trying to sneak through without being seen. Well…Julie saw them…here’s how the conversation went.
Julie (to the guy): Does her dad know?
Guy [stammering in disbelief that someone would actually say something]: Uh, uh, uh…
Julie (to the girl): Does your dad know?
Girl [also stammering]: Uh, uh, uh….I’m 18!
Julie: Is your Dad okay with this?
Girl: Uh…he wouldn’t care.
Julie: Really? Can I have his phone number so I can call and ask him?
Girl: Uh, uh, uh…
Julie [turning to the guy]: I’m a Mom, and if she were my daughter…I’d hurt you.
Keep in mind, my wife is not an intimidating person…she’s 4’11” and sub-100 pounds. This little couple knew they were doing something they shouldn’t…as evidenced by their trying to hide what they were doing. Julie simply cared enough about them to try to get them to think about the choices they were making.
Interesting "Notebook Accessory"
Just for grins, I was configuring a Dell laptop this afternoon to see what my current laptop wishlist would cost. On the last page, there were a couple of “Notebook Accessories” that I could add to the cart if I wished. One of them was a quite interesting “accessory” for a laptop.
Now…what accessory pray tell would cost nearly $8000? Well, glad you asked…
Say what? THAT’s an interesting “accessory”.
Hurting People
This week I’m in Pennsylvania. Our daughters stayed with Julie’s parents while we were at a conference in Colorado. In flying back to pick them up, it was tremendously cheaper for us to fly into Philly and get a rental car than to fly directly to central PA. We ended up getting a nice upgrade car to a Dodge Charger. I just found out that it has Sirius satellite radio and was flipping through the channels to see what was available.
While flipping through I came across a few people talking. One was talking about a rough childhood and how it has affected him on into his adulthood. The others on the radio with him were acknowledging that all that he said was true…but at the same time giving him a hard time about it.
This guy sounded distrustful of people. He admitted to being terrified. He reflected back to when he started on the radio in Detroit how he would do nothing other than sit in his hotel room between radio shows. He wouldn’t even go out to eat…just get food and go back to his room to eat it. He seemed to be controlled by fear. He seemed to have no freedom from the issues that controlled him.
As I listened more I got intrigued and drawn into this guy’s story. Here is a man who is in such need of Jesus in his life. The healing that Jesus could bring to this man’s life. The freedom that he could experience. The change in his life. The freedom from control. Ability to cope. And if surrounded by a loving community of Christ followers, the environment to grow through his fears over time and be an instrument that God can use to influence the lives of countless people.
As I listened more I realized that this is a man who has done much with his radio show that the Christian community simply cannot approve of. He has in fact been demonized by the Christian community. But regardless of what he has done, this is still a man for whom Jesus himself died. His sins, though many, are in reality no worse than my sins, which are also many. Any sin separates us from God and makes us in need of the saving power of Jesus.
Instead of continuing to demonize this man, let’s pray for him. Pray for him to allow Christians into his circle. Pray for those who are already in his circle to come to truly know Jesus and be able to have an influence in his life. Pray for him to seek after God who promises that if we will draw near to him, that he will draw near to us.
For that matter, undoubtedly you have people in your life with rough edges. People who just aren’t that pleasant to be around. People that annoy you. Who hurt you. Who are offensive. Who are not easy to love. Love them anyway. Care for them. Express concern for them…and not just spiritual concern. They might only listen to the spiritual concern after seeing for a long time that you have true concern for the rest of their lives as well. It could be that it is only through you that they will be able to come to see and know and love the true Lover of their souls…Jesus.
Who is this man whose life started me writing? Some of you may have already guessed. Howard Stern.
Life Lessons from Hiking
Julie and I went hiking yesterday. We climbed Horsetooth Rock just outside of Fort Collins, Colorado. As we were going along the hike we kept thinking of parallels to life as we went along. Here are some of the thoughts we had…
As you go through life, realize that there is a path that God has laid out for you. Stay on the path. You can still travel if you aren’t on the path, but the traveling is much more difficult.
As you go on the path, take time to stop and enjoy the scenery. If you do, you will get some needed rest. You will sometimes be able to see where your path fits in with the world around you. As you see the world around you, you will be able to appreciate both the particular path that you are on as well as the beauty of the world where you are traveling. When you start down the path again, your legs will have a bit more spring in their step.
Sometimes the path you are on can look really rough ahead. If God has called you to that path, don’t be afraid of the path, stay on it. He will pull you through.
As you go along the path, take along a friend. Don’t leave them behind. The path is much more enjoyable when traveled together.
If you slip off the trail, you could have a pretty bad fall ahead of you. If you have your friend with you, they can help to pull you back up.
Try to keep your friends from doing something stupid, or at least if they do, take a picture of it!
As you go down the path, take time to notice the small things…sometimes they are the most beautiful.
Many times as you are traveling along the path, you will not be able to see the end of the path.
You need to keep your eyes on the path and the signposts that God has put in place. They will guide you to your destination.
As you tackle obstacles along the path, take time to celebrate those victories.
There are times on the path to be extra careful and serious.
There are times on the path to have fun and be silly.
As you go along the path, be sure to always lean into the Rock.
When you get to the end of the path (and eventually you will), the view from the top is more amazing than you could have imagined.
Lastly, at all times along the path, be sure to give praise to God who created you and designed your path.
Access Denied (part 3…conclusion)
[Note: This is part 3 of a three part series. You might want to check out Part 1 and Part 2 as well. This post is verbatim what I posted in a thread on myITforum.com.]
Access is Denied doesn’t always mean you don’t have permission
Over the last couple of weeks I have been experiencing an odd “Access is Denied” issue in SMS. I posted here once and no one was able to help me fix it. I finally broke down and called Microsoft. I got the issue fixed (after 21 hours on the phone over a three day period), and wanted to post it here in case anyone else experiences this down the road.
Description of the problem/symptoms:
While attempting to update distribution points on a package, it fails to update. When adding a new package, I was unable to add a DP to the package. When I checked the SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER messages and I have a message that looks like:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SMS Distribution Manager failed to access the source directory “\\server\share\app” for package “XYZ00099”. The operating system reported error 5: Access is denied.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
My site is running Advanced Security, so I have already confirmed that the site system (server name) account has permission both on the share and the NTFS permissions. I even have looked on the “effective permissions” tab and confirmed that the server account has permission. It has Full Control rights to the share/folder.
As part of my troubleshooting, I opened a command prompt as system (“at <1 minute into the future> /interactive cmd.exe” at a command prompt), and then tried to map a drive as system using the pushd command. It got “access is denied”. Again…I had already confirmed that permissions was not an issue…at least in this instance “Access is Denied” did NOT mean “your account doesn’t have rights on the file system”.
As part of the troubleshooting that took place while on the phone with Microsoft, we discovered that if we attempted the command “pushd \\server\share\folder”, we got the “Access is Denied” message. However if we used the FQDN for the same server (i.e. pushd \\server.domain.com\share\folder), it succeeded. So…confirmation that it is not permissions…it is name resolution.
After many more hours on the phone, we were looking at the IP properties on the problem SMS server. On a whim, one of the Microsoft guys asked if we could change the DNS Suffix Search order. After changing the search order and forcing that change to take effect, everything suddenly started working correctly. If I switch the search order back…it breaks. Very easily reproducible.
So…the root cause of the “Access is Denied” messages was a name resolution issue…NOT a permissions issue.
Locks of Love
A few weeks ago over dinner, my oldest daughter mentioned that her teacher had told her that her hair was probably long enough to do Locks of Love. We don’t know how the conversation came up (Laurel can’t remember). Anyway, a few minutes later, I asked her if that is something that she would be interested in doing. She very excitedly said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!!!” So, the next day, my wife took her to Great Clips and got her hair cut as a donation to Locks of Love. We are really proud of her. This is the first time that she has had a true haircut in her life…she’s almost eight. She’s had the occasional trim, but not a haircut. They were able to cut off ten inches and she still has shoulder length hair…and she really loves her short cut.
If you’ve never heard of Locks of Love, they take hair donations and make wigs for children going through medical treatment that causes them to lose their hair. The mission statement from their website is:
Our mission is to return a sense of self, confidence and normalcy to children suffering from hair loss by utilizing donated ponytails to provide the highest quality hair prosthetics to financially disadvantaged children. The children receive hair prostheses free of charge or on a sliding scale, based on financial need.
One note about Great Clips…they will take care of processing the donation and sending it in to Locks of Love. And if you donate your hair for this, your haircut is free. It’s good seeing a big company do something like this.
Access Denied (Part 2)
[Note: This is part 2 of a three part series. You might want to check out Part 1 and Part 3 as well.]
Spent eight and a half hours on the phone with Microsoft yesterday. We ended up not resetting the secure channel. Another Microsoft guy from the Directory Services team got on the line and wanted to do some more testing. Honestly I was getting perturbed with him because it looked like he was just doing the same things that we had already done the day before. However, three hours into the call…around noon…he discovered something. If we attempted to connect to a 32 bit server, using the netbios name resolution (i.e. \\server1\share1) we got access denied. However, if we connected using the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) (i.e. \\server1.sub.domain.com\share1) it worked like it was supposed to. So…Access Denied didn’t really mean that we didn’t have permission in this instance. It meant that it couldn’t figure out what I was trying to access.
So, why was I still on the phone for another five and a half hours? Because our files are not specifically on a standard server share. They are on a Distributed File System (DFS) share in Active Directory. This is a share at the domain level…not at the server level. That name is already an FQDN…yet it still gave access denied. That issue is still not resolved. The Microsoft guys will be calling me back on Monday afternoon to continue working. I really hope we are able to resolve this soon. I’m honestly tired of working on it…and it’s not like I don’t have a LOT more work that I could be doing!
One funny note from Friday. We are using an “Easy Assist” session for this troubleshooting. This is a way that the Microsoft guys can see the system and even allows me to give them control, so that they can “drive” the session. Over the course of the day, we kept opening more Remote Desktop sessions to other servers, more Explorer windows, more command prompts, etc. At one point it struck me how many windows we had open, so I counted them. At that time we had 23 windows open. It kept going up and down by a few for the rest of the time. It was comical to see that many windows open at once.
Being a Student of Your Spouse
For years I have made the statement…once you get married…your full time job for the rest of your life is to be a student of your spouse. You need to get in their head and heart and know…and I mean KNOW…what makes them tick. You need to learn what speaks to their heart. You also need to learn what injuries they have received from others in the past…whether intentional or unintentional…small or large. Seemingly small things to us could be much bigger to them.
Then…as you are going along…you figure out how to apply that knowledge. What can you do with that knowledge to build into your spouse? On the opposite end, you also need to know what things to stay away from that will cause pain of some form. In doing those things, you will become much more intentional in seeking out how you can best love your spouse.
Access Denied
[Note: This is part 1 of a three part series. You might want to check out Part 2 and Part 3 as well.]
Okay…warning to the non-technical…this will be the most technical post I have made to date.
I am an SMS Architect for Campus Crusade for Christ. Our SMS 2003 environment is in Advanced Security mode. The way that Advanced Security operates is that to get access to other SMS servers or access to network shares and resources, it uses the computer account of the SMS Site Server. (i.e. if the SMS server is named Server1, it uses the computer account named “Server1” for accessing resources…not a user account which is the normal way.) Note: this is all in layman’s terms…
So recently we had an issue in our site where the SMS server (I’ll call SMS1) suddenly was no longer able to get to the source files of the Microsoft patches. These source files exist on a separate server that I will call File1. File1 has a folder that is shared (Share1). SMS1 (the computer account) has permission on this share/folder. This has been working fine for nearly two years.
So…the problem comes last week. Suddenly SMS1 is getting “Access Denied” when it tries to connect to the share. After checking the permissions, I have determined that the perms are correct…SMS1 does have permission, but it is still getting access denied. So, I set up other shares on other servers to test with. I got the same result on all of them…well, all but one. On one mysterious server the permissions worked as they should. After a couple of days of trekking down the wrong trails, I finally realized the difference. All of the servers that failed were running 32 bit versions of Windows Server 2003. The one that worked is running the x64 edition. I found another x64 server with the same result.
So…today I was on the phone with Microsoft support…for nine and a half hours. I had at least two and up to four Microsoft engineers on the phone with me all day today. Tomorrow morning, we are picking up where we left off. The next step is to reset the secure channel on the SMS1 computer account. Honestly, I’m not sure exactly what that means. I will say this…I was glad for the Microsoft PSS guy that was the lead on the issue today. All I know about him is that he is from Dallas and his name is Ed Walters. Ed…you are professional, friendly, and you do a great job of explaining the process that you are going through in troubleshooting. It also was very nice to have a PSS who listened to the process that I had already been through and didn’t make me go back through the same troubleshooting that I had already done. Good job, and thank you.
A Tale of Two Graves
Yesterday I took part in a “Day of Prayer” that our ministry takes part in twice a year. During the day we sang a song.
Lord I lift your name on high
Lord I love to sing your praises
I’m so glad you’re in my life
I’m so glad you came to save us
You came from heaven to earth, to show the way
From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay
From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky
Lord I lift your name on high.
Over the years as I have heard that song, different aspects of it have affected me. It takes the whole spectrum of what Christ did and puts it to song. He was in heaven, and he came and lived on earth…during which time He showed us how to live. He was crucified to pay for our sin debt. He was taken down from the cross and laid in a grave. Three days later He rose from the grave and eventually ascended into heaven.
Today the word “grave” struck me. The most vivid memory I have of a grave was at my dad’s funeral. I was twelve when he died of cancer. After the graveside service, I retreated back to the front steps of the church next to the graveyard. I saw them lower the casket into the ground and saw my uncles start shoveling dirt into the hole. That was and still is a vivid memory. It was a “finalizing” moment. My dad was not coming back. He was in a pretty box underneath 6 feet of dirt. It was over…my best friend was gone.
That is how Jesus’s friends and family felt as well. They saw him die on the cross…after being nearly beaten to death by Roman guards. They saw him taken down from the cross and placed in a tomb. They saw the gruesome results of the crucifixion. They knew that it was over. He wasn’t coming back. Some of his friends went home and prepared the spices and ointments that were used at that time on the body as it was put in the tomb…so that they could come back later to finish preparing Jesus’s body.
But when they returned on the first day of the week, Jesus’s body wasn’t there. He had come back to life. Yes he had been dead…very much so. But death had not conquered him. He was no longer there. The stone had been rolled away. In our time, I don’t know what it would look like. Would all the dirt over the coffin just move…seemingly on its own? Would Jesus have dug his way out and come out through a hole in the ground? What would it have looked like?
I don’t know…but as vivid as it is to me that my dad is still in the grave…that the dirt that my uncles threw into the hole…that dirt is still there…unmoved in twenty three years. Just as real as that is…it is just as real…even more so that Jesus is NOT in the tomb He was laid in. He is alive; He is in this world; He lives; He touches hearts and souls; He changes lives. He can change your life. This is not some trite statement. He has changed my life in very dramatic ways. Maybe I’ll have to create a blog entry about that. I guess the key question is…since he can change your life…Will you let Him?
Van Halen ramblings
From back in Junior High days, I have been impressed with the musical talent of Van Halen. It struck me years later that one of the reasons that I enjoyed some of their music was the fullness of it. They had the same number of instruments as other bands (electric guitar, keyboard, drums, bass), but what they did with the instruments was a step above many other bands in the same genre. Eddie had some classical training, and that comes out in the sound.
One aspect of classical music is the interaction between various instruments that gives the music a “life”. During intense or high energy sections (true classical fans are cringing at my description) of classical music, there is a fullness (don’t know how to describe it better than that) to the music. Each instrument is intimately connected with all of the others to create an auditory experience that the instruments by themselves aren’t capable of.
In a similar way, there are many Van Halen songs that do the same. The instruments combine into a combination where there is no dead space…more than the individual instruments are capable of. That was in many ways the draw of their music to me.
Now…there is another aspect here. Many indications are that much of that music was created in a drug or alcohol induced haze…do you remember the music video for either “Jump” or “Panama”…Eddie certainly appeared to be stoned out of his mind. Substance abuse is something that he has battled for a couple of decades. He just recently went back into rehab for alcohol abuse. I came across a quote from an interview that Eddie gave to Rolling Stone magazine back in 1995 where Eddie tells why he drinks. He said, “I always got hammered to be able to cope. I have zero social skills and I don’t know how to act, so I get drunk. And then I make a real a– out of myself.”
Here is a guy who has been blessed by God with immense musical talent. (Yes…blessed by God. All talent comes from God…how we utilize that talent is another story.) To many in the world…myself included in Junior High and High School…he had everything going for him…successful band, fame, money, beautiful wife (Valerie Bertinelli)…but by his own admission, he had insecurities that he didn’t know how to deal with.
Okay, so I’ve rambled a lot about VH. What can we take from it? What can we learn? Three things come to mind.
- First, let’s pray for Eddie. As he is in rehab right now, let’s pray for him to get to the root issues and kick his habits.
- Second, and more importantly, let’s pray for someone to come into his life who truly knows and loves Jesus. Let’s pray for Eddie’s salvation.
- Third, we can realize that no matter how good or successful someone appears, everyone has insecurities…some are just better at masking it than others.
Funny Directions
1. go to http://www.google.com
2. click on “maps”
3. click on “get directions”
4. type “New York” in the first box (the “from” box)
5. type “London” in the second box (the “to” box)
6. scroll down to step # 23
[Update: Google removed this. It used to give you directions to the beach and then (step 23) tell you to swim WXYZ miles to reach England, and then continued with driving directions.]
Holding Hands
When Julie and I are in a public area or parking lot with our daughters, we make sure we hold their hands. We keep them from getting lost in a crowd or from getting hit by a car. We know where the dangers are and keep them safe.
Today I was walking out of church with my four year old. We were approaching the parking lot, so we were holding hands. As we were walking along, her shoe caught on something and she tripped. Because I was holding her hand, I was able to pull her up and keep her from falling. Had we not been holding hands, she would have at least fallen, and probably would have gotten hurt on the sidewalk.
It struck me at the time that this is a lot like life. There are lots of things out there that want to trip us up. Some are physical dangers like I am protecting my daughters from. Others are spiritual in nature…temptations that if acted upon could destroy our reputations, our families, our lives. Some of these dangers we can see, some we can’t. What can protect us from them?
How about if we hold onto Jesus’s hand? He wants to walk through life with us. He desires to protect us and keep us safe from the garbage that gets thrown at us. If we are holding his hand when the trial hits, He can pull us up and keep us from getting hurt. As long as we don’t rip our hand out of his, He will keep us safe from the temptations that could destroy us.
Get In the Hole!!!
I was watching The Master’s golf tournament this afternoon. On multiple occasions after a golfer swings, someone (or multiple someones) yelled, “Get in the hole!”
Someone…please escort that man (yes, man…it’s always a man…women have more couth) off the course…you just forfeited your right to be there. That comment is overused to the point of being obnoxious.
So…for the golf tournament directors: How about creating a standing rule for the spectators? If you scream “Get in the hole”, you will be escorted from the course where you can watch through a hole in the fence.
Yeah…it’s a bit of a pet peave. I’m done venting now. :-)
Hearing Through the Noise of Life
Yesterday I took my daughter Laurel to a couple of easter egg hunts. The second hunt was at a very large church here in Orlando. Part of the free “festivities” at this church was a climbing wall. As soon as Laurel saw it, she wanted to do it…so… off to the climbing wall.As I am watching some of the other kids climbing, I’m noticing that as they get higher up the wall, several of them were shifting to the left of the straight up path. As they kept going on that route, when they got closer to the top, the cable they were attached to would actually pull them off the wall…because they were three-four feet off center of where the cable mechanism is attached at the top. So, I told Laurel to just go straight up and not slide to the side.
So as she is climbing up, I’m noticing her moving to the left. I gave her a bit of time to see if she would self correct. When she didn’t I called out her name. She immediately started looking around until we made eye contact. I told her to move to the right, and she saw what was going on and got back on track.
So…what difference does this make? Why am I writing about it? Because a spiritual truth struck me as soon as she started looking for me.
There was a large crowd around the climbing wall. Very large crowd. There was a lot of noise. There was a Christian band playing in the background. Lots of distracting things…not to mention the focus of a seven year old who is hanging on for dear life fifteen feet off the ground. But when she heard my voice…her father’s voice…she immediately started looking for me to find out what I had to say. And when she heard me, she remembered what I told her before she started, corrected and got back on track.
We live in a noisy society that is full of distractions. There are so many things that want to pull us away from the path that God has mapped out for us. He has uniquely created each of us with certain gifts and strengths. He has given us a path to follow…if we will only follow it. There are even things that look good…like the other handholds that the kids were following off track…but they aren’t the best things. For that matter, sometimes the best thing for us is more difficult than what we would like…and we reach for a handhold that is off track…never realizing that we just settled for second (or third or tenth) best.
The key for us is to be able to decipher our Father’s voice in the midst of life. We need to be listening to God as we read the Bible. Then when we get in the midst of our day, we need to listen for His voice guiding us back where we need to be.
Quote that describes me
This weekend I was flipping through channels and came across the last five minutes of the movie “Anne of Green Gables”…the quintessential chick flick. My seven year old daughter is beside me on the couch asking questions about what just happened. I explain it to her, then I asked her if she would like to watch it because my wife owns it. She was thrilled. I actually like the movie and figured it would give me some good “daddy-daughter” time with her.
So the last few days we have been watching a bit here and there and last night came to a scene in which Anne is talking a lot (which if you have seen the movie, you know is common…she talks a lot). Anne goes on to make the following statement, “I know I say far too much, but if you only knew how many things I want to say and don’t, you’d give me some credit for it.”
I cracked up laughing because that quote fits me pretty well. There’s a reason that this blog is titled what it is!
Southern Accent
Over time I have definitely lost a lot of my southern accent. My first time out of the deep south…on a missionary project in New Hampshire…there was a guy from New Mexico that wasn’t even sure I was speaking English. :-) Being around people at work from all over…and the fact that my wife is from Pennsylvania…I have lost most of my accent. However…
If I go back to Mississippi for even a short time; I begin to pick up the accent again. Within a week or two, it has gotten pretty strong again. It is a very natural occurance…my voice is going back to it’s roots. In a different way, my wife will pick up the accent of nearly anyone she is around. It’s been funny hearing her on the phone with someone in England…within ten minutes she is starting to sound British.
Now…why am I noodling on accents? It occurred to me recently that there is a spiritual truth that can be learned from the accent effect.
We live in a “fallen world”…a world which is significantly different than it was like at creation. As humans…descended from Adam and Eve…we have an innate propensity toward sin. We are not perfect. We will head toward what is “natural” to us unless we put safeguards in place to protect ourselves. Our natural tendancy is to sin…to desire things that are not of God. We tend to act like those that we are around.
What safeguards do you need to put in your life to protect yourself from yourself?
Watching You (Song by Rodney Atkins)
Driving to work this morning, I was listening to the song “Watching You” by Rodney Atkins.
http://www.rodneyatkins.com/main/index.php?module=htmlpages2&func=display&pid=5
http://www.rodneyatkins.com/content/VIDEOwy.html (select from the drop-down list)
The song is about a dad and his son. It goes through a couple of episodes where the son is doing things that the dad asks where he learned to do them…one is cuss, the other is pray! In both instances the son responds with:
Let’s take it a step further…Are we watching Jesus? Are we watching to learn what He is like? Do we know his likes and dislikes? Do we care? Are we wanting to be like Him? Do we want to become the kind of person who does what Jesus does…simply because it is what Jesus does?
“HE SAID I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU DAD, AIN’T THAT COOL
I’M YOUR BUCKAROO, I WANNA BE LIKE YOU AND EAT ALL MY FOOD AND GROW AS TALL AS YOU ARE
WE GOT COWBOY BOOTS AND CAMO PANTS YEAH WE’RE JUST ALIKE, HEY AIN’T WE DAD
I WANNA DO EVERYTHING YOU DO SO I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU”
As I listened to it, I thought about what application it could have in our relationship with out Heavenly Father. The illustration breaks down a bit with the cussing part, but we can learn a lot from the interaction that kids have with adults.
This kid had been watching his dad…both the good and bad things. He wanted to be like his dad. He could see the things that his dad liked and wanted to be the same way.
My heart’s desire is to be able to see what Jesus is doing and for that to be what I desire to do as well. I want my life to reflect the work that He is doing in living through me.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Thanks to encouragement from my friend Tim…who is freezing in Minnesota…I registered for and took my first Microsoft certification exam. I took 70-089 (Planning, Deploying, and Managing Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003) this morning. I passed with a score of 921…which makes me officially an MCP.
Flud
One of the seemingly constant frustrations that Julie and I have had is the amazing amount of stuff that our daughters drop on the floor while eating. Cereal, crumbs, cheese…you name it. It looks terrible and gets tracked all over the house.
Well…I finally had enough this week. I started the battle to eliminate floor crud…eventually shortened to simply “flud“.
We are working with our daughters to get them to first of all eat like ladies. “Ladies don’t have flud under their seats.” They are also required to clean up their own flud. To give extra incentive…they don’t get any dessert until all the flud is gone.
So far it has worked well. They are dropping less on the floor. They are cheerfully cleaning up what they do drop. And Julie and I don’t have to deal with the unsightly mess!!!
It also seems to help to have a bit of “silliness factor” thrown in…”flud“…where the heck did that come from?
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The Realm of the Verbal Processor 