This morning I received an invitation to list my blog, for free, with VerveEarth. Check out that link and get your blog listed, if you are interested. It seems like an interesting idea, as you can find out what people in your city or neighborhood are blogging about, or you can look around the world to see what people are saying. On the other hand, mapping blogs out geographically, rather than by topic, doesn't seem terribly useful for most purposes. Also, as more people in a particular area sign up, someone ends up "on top" with their blog being the only one visible from higher levels of the map view. You have to zoom in to the state level to distinguish my listing from others. Sort of like those "where are you from" maps you might see at a tourist destination. It's interesting to see a pin marking someone from a unique location, but after a few hundred from St. Louis try to pin their city, there's really no point.

My poor wife is exhausted. Tonight she went to bed while I was taking a shower and didn't even think to turn the TV off (that's unusual for her). The reason? She and a friend from church had a garage sale here today. Even though it rained all day yesterday and was cool today, it was mostly sunny. Unfortunately, my wife didn't get many signs up advertising the garage sale, so there wasn't the intense movement there was last time she did this. Still, I think she made out pretty well on the deal.

As for my blogging, you may be reading this post on Blogger, Facebook or MySpace, but you aren't reading it on Igneous Quill. This month is a test to see how my blog will do as a primarily Portuguese-language endeavor. Though I haven't had a lot of time to invest in the effort, I am finding it stimulating and am watching to see if incoming traffic from Portuguese speakers increases. At this point I am thinking that Igneous Quill will become more fully bilingual than it was before, and that I won't keep a separate English-language blog on blogger after this month is over.

A friend from college, Jason Steckel (I just call him "Steckdog") wrote recently on his blog about his mother's passing nine years ago. She died quite unexpectedly during his second year at Harding University's School of Biblical Studies (the second year in that program is also the last). He and I studied together in that program, and I remember when this happened and the aftermath. I have to say that, at least outwardly, he dealt quite well with it.

Now Jason's article has been picked up by New Wineskins. Give it a read if you haven't already. It looks like there's a comment option there as well.

You're doing good, Jason.

Last night I downloaded Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail application. I've grown accustomed to Outlook at work, and thought I'd give this free application a try. Tonight I've been playing around with it, and so far I like it.

Most of my e-mail routes through either Gmail or Burntmail. The latter is something I've had for years, and the former is more recent, but I use both pretty equally (okay, maybe I'm leaning more on Gmail these days). This evening I managed to set up Thunderbird to pull e-mail from both accounts, and I have folders set up to manage my e-mail. I can receive in one address and respond from another, and I have an html signature line for e-mails.

Maybe I'll finally get my e-mail under control and organized.

Today at work wasn't bad. I'm getting a feel for the calls and troubleshooting data devices, and I am definitely learning a lot of new and potentially useful (career-wise) information.

My wife and a neighbor plan to have a garage sale together tomorrow (Saturday), as do some women from the church (this latter as a fund-raiser). I'm not sure how this will work out, considering the soaking we took today from rain. It's still raining as I write this at 10:45pm EST.

Yesterday I finally started taking data support calls. It took two days, but someone from IT (it's been outsourced and turned over to a third-party company, that's why it took so long) came first thing in the morning and correcting my firewall settings. That was what was preventing me from a system I really needed in order to troubleshoot data problems. I took a grand total of three calls, if memory serves. These calls are a lot longer than what I had to deal with in my old department, but so far it's okay. We then spent the afternoon in a classroom reviewing calls we had taken and training for possible issues customers might have. I have to say, this department I am going to is doing a far more thorough job of training than the one I am leaving ever did. It's a bit exhausting, but nice.

In case anyone is interested, someone got a hold of some 9000 series Blackberries and sold them on eBay. That is, until someone (RIM, perhaps?) shut the auction down. A few people managed to order them, though, including the fellow over at CrackBerry.com. If you like Blackberries you might check out his posts here and here to see what it looks like and what the reviewer thinks of it.



Personally, I prefer watching the impact of the iPhone on the industry, and am waiting to see if Blackberry and PDA devices will begin to show changes based on the iPhone. Of course, they'd probably never admit the influence.

Someone from M80, a marketing firm, sent me the above video ad comparing the forthcoming Samsung Instinct from Sprint with the Apple iPhone from AT&T. The point is that the Instinct will give better directions and map information because it is GPS capable.

I have Sprint phones. The customer service has to be the worst in the industry (at least, I hope it doesn't get any worse than that) and I'd rather have GSM phones (the international standard). That said, the phones Sprint offers are usually pretty nice, in my opinion, and this Instinct looks like solid competition for the iPhone.

This is what I love about the iPhone. It makes the rest of the industry strive to do better.

Speaking of cell phones, today was rough. I still couldn't get one of the most vital systems I need to work to function, so I didn't take any calls today. I really feel like I am missing vital experience. Hopefully something will get worked out tomorrow. I have been in a foul mood since this morning.

Today was my first day doing data support for AT&T. It was mostly a wash-out, though, because one of my most essential systems wouldn't connect to its server. I took one call before I discovered the problem, then spent the rest of the afternoon watching someone else troubleshoot calls. Tomorrow will be another story, I'm sure, assuming someone comes to fix my workstation. I just hope they don't try to move me. There's only one more workstation available, and I don't like the location at all.

This past Sunday was my second teaching the youth (middle school age) Sunday School, and I'm thinking a lot about forming a youth group. We'll see how it goes. I've worked from time to time in the past with youth in churches and have done okay, I think, but I have a lot to learn. There are a number of areas in which I recognize now that I need to grow as a minister.

Thoughts of starting an English-language congregation have crossed my mind many times, despite my sense of vocation to Brazilian missions. It seems reasonable to think that this youth Sunday School could develop into a youth group which could, in turn, become a congregation. Since I'm teaching the kids in English, it is entirely possible that they'll bring friends.

Just some thoughts for now.

Igneous Quill continues to be my primary blog, but recently I made a commitment to publishing posts there primarily in Portuguese. From time to time I will post there in English, especially for activities like the monthly Synchroblog.

Although I really don't want a second blog on Blogger and would have preferred to have restricted my English-language blogging to MySpace and Beliefnet, it has come to my attention that those who do not have logins for MySpace are unable to post comments. This weekend I attempted to find a solution for this problem, including sending feeds from my MySpace blog to Facebook Notes, but nothing worked. The MySpace to Facebook solution was only partial, as I was able to set up the feed but only the first sentence or so of the posts were being relayed.

So, here's the deal. I will write in English here on From the Bottom of the Ink Bottle, publish and then copy each post manually to the blog of the same name on MySpace. The feed to Facebook will be set to full, permitting entire posts to transfer from Blogger to Facebook (this is not supported by MySpace, as I've mentioned).

Please understand that the Blogger version of From the Bottom of the Ink Bottle is not even secondary to me. It is perhaps tertiary. If you have a MySpace login or Facebook, write comments over there. If not, and you don't want to sign up for either of the other two services, then post here.

Your patience is greatly appreciated as I work through this transition. While making Igneous Quill primarily a Portuguese-language blog is only a tentative change, it is one I really hope to make permanent once May 2008 is over. It is something I have felt led to do, and I am moving forward in prayer and a willingness to be open to correcting my course if this doesn't turn out to be the right direction.

Thank you.

Once a month the Brazilian and Hispanic congregations have a worship service together, and today was the day. Part of the service is in Portuguese and part in Spanish. It isn't as easy as you might imagine, but it's a good thing, I think.

The new signs are finally up on the building. Click here for pictures I took on my cell phone. They are tiny pictures, but that's what you get with a cell phone.

Mike Victorino left a comment over on Igneous Quill pointing out that he is unable to post comments to my MySpace blog because he doesn't have a login. I've played around with the site feed and several blogging platforms, but the best I've been able to do is get Facebook to import partial posts from MySpace. If you are on Facebook you can comment on my posts over there, but unfortunately I still haven't worked out how to get full copies of the posts. It appears to be a problem with the feed itself.

Thank you for your patience, everyone!