Judging by employment history, I'm a consultant... an internet strategist really. But at the same rate, I'm a professional musician that also happens to own a coffee shop. I'm interested in all things Wall Street, but my real calling is race car driving. I don't have any sponsors yet, but I promise, put me in coach... and I'll win. If this sounds like a three ring circus... you have no idea. And since it is my circus... most everything you read hear is my opinion... and as such, it hasn't been run through the least of any filters. Which means unless your name is Katie Murph, this is the closest you'll ever get to experiencing the raw state of my brain. And that's probably a good thing.
If you haven't seen these things yet, go ahead and learn what they are and how to use them, because they are the next big thing. These two-dimensional barcodes can be read by a number of devices, but most importantly smart phones like the iPhone and Blackberry. A phone can quickly scan the QR Code (QR = Quick Response) with its internal camera, and that might translate into plain text or take the phone's web browser directly to a URL.
Why is this so important? For one, these square-shaped QR Codes are going to start showing up everywhere. Two, they are free to use and store a LOT more data than the typical bar code. Three, they can be used in so many different ways. Imagine watching a commercial and seeing a QR Code in the bottom corner of your TV. While watching, you might let your phone scan the code from where you're sitting and it could take your phone's browser to a web page with more information about the product, or directly to a screen to buy what you just saw. Or the QR Code could automatically have your phone call a certain number. No typing, just a quick scan and you're off. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of different applications for these things and ease of use and probable adoption by many industries will make it as common as displaying a phone number in the years to come.
Want to try it out? First, download a QR Reader for your smart phone (I use QR App on the iPhone). Then try these below.
Since only a small handful of people have actually read the 2074 page health care reform bill, allow me to paraphrase some of the points given in recent speeches and combine them with the facts of today.
1. Our health care is a broken system and it's bankrupting the American citizen.
Are you sure? I'll give that a maybe, but is it health care that is bankrupting America, or is it the effects of frivolous lawsuits on health care providers? Oh, so it's complicated. Well then if that's the case, let's not throw out broad statements just to make a great sound bite.
But let's assume it is bankrupting America. Does that mean the answer is a government takeover? We all know how good the government is at running things. They couldn't run a small business for 2 months without driving it so far into the ground it would come out on the other side.
2. If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it.
So what I'm being sold is: health care is broken, but if we want to keep our broken health care plan, yes we can. That's about as desperate of a sales speech as I've ever heard. Basically it means they'll spend a ton of money trying to fix something, and if it doesn't work, the people can just stay the course, only with $940 billion less. Now that is an attractive offer... for a MORON.
3. Health care reform will save $1.2 trillion dollars in its second ten years.
Please, please, try not to laugh. In all seriousness, all who believe that raise your hand. What's that? Not raising your hand? I'm shocked. If the government has an example of anything they have done on at least half this scale that saved the money they said it initially would, a bogus pledge like that might actually carry water. But really, $1.2 Trillion dollars? I would love to meet one person who sincerely believes the government can do something this drastic that will save $1.2 trillion dollars. Now keep in mind, $1.2 trillion right now is about $2.4 trillion in 20 years at the current inflation rate. So if in 20 years it saved us $1.2 trillion that's 600 billion in today's terms. So how much is it going to save? I mean since we're lying about numbers anyway, how much is it? $600 billion? $2.4 Trillion? What's it going to be? The government doesn't know what something is going to cost NEXT YEAR, much less at the end of the "second ten years". Who speaks like that anyways? I'm offended that the government treats the people like a bunch of sheep, who can't possibly know what's best for them.
Realistically, this reform will not save the country money. What's that? How do I know? You need proof? Let's take a look at government experience:
The U.S. Post Office was formed 235 years ago. It's broke, subsidized, and can't compete with private UPS and FedEx.
Social Security was formed 75 years ago. It's broke & failing worse each year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - 72 and 42 years old respectively. They are broke, failing, corrupt, and caused the housing crash and credit melt down of 2008.
Medicare and Medicaid formed 45 years ago and the government has been trying to sweep them under the rug ever since. They are bankrupt failures.
Amtrak was formed 40 years ago. Guess what? It runs at a loss and it was bailed out less than 2 years ago.
So wait, maybe the government has turned over a new leaf. I mean, that's all old stuff right? Maybe we should talk about the $787 billion dollar Stimulus Bill of 2009 which has and will continue to primarily benefit the recipients of non-bid government contracts. And how about Cash for Clunkers? You know, the catch phrase program that stimulated the economy of Japan? Those are all screaming successes right? The stimulus bill fixed unemployment right? What's that, it's worse now? Even worse than Obama said it would be if they didn't pass the stimulus bill? Oh, did anyone tell the government?
Anyone with an IQ over 7 should see a pattern here. Please forgive me if I hear the government say they will spend $940 Billion and save $1.2 trillion while making my health care better when their track record is a resume full of failure.
Now that a couple days have past since ABC (DFW) has run the smear story on Ed Young, I've come to a few conclusions regarding the story, the so called facts, and the man cloaked behind the hood.
Though my family has been attending a different church for the past 3 years, Fellowship Church was a huge part of my life for the 7 years prior. I played guitar on the worship team for about 6 years and was employed there full time as the webmaster for 2 years. I spent much time serving in the singles ministry where I met my wife. I was involved home teams, Jr. High ministries, and various conferences FC took part in. I would not trade those years for anything. And though I'm fully aware that having read that, most people will write me off as an FC Kool-Aid drinking insider yes man; to those I would say - not so fast.
After the story broke, I was shocked, saddened and left with many questions, some of which I was angry about. I let the harsh presentation of the story work its way into my head. But eventually I started thinking over the points.
Several years ago I was walking through the church lobby talking with a young 20's man I met at the church. The lobby had just recently had a make over with about a dozen high dollar flat screen monitors. This young man proceeded to whine and moan about what a waste of money the expensive flat screens were. He went on and on with "I can't believe this", and "I can't believe that. There are better places to put that kind of money." I let him exhaust himself. And when he was done playing the game "I'm smarter than whoever made these decisions", I chimed in with a simple snippet of information.
"All the screens you see here... they were donated." The poor attitude was quenched just like that.
This was my first experience at the church where someone didn't have all the information, and without the full understanding of the situation cast his cynicism to anyone who would listen. It wasn't long before I realized this was a common occurrence.
The story presented by ABC and Brett Shipp was not only lacking in critical information, but it also misrepresented several facts. Presenting a story in this unethical manner makes it very easy for the viewing audience to jump on the hate train.
Complete with helicopter flyover, Shipp mentions with all drama enhancing available voice inflection that Young lives in a sprawling 10,000 Sq Ft, 1.5 million dollar mansion on Lake Grapevine. ABC and Shipp missed the boat on this one. The house is 7800 Sq Ft and 1.5 million is what the taxing county has assessed its current value at today. That's no where CLOSE to what Young paid for it. How do I know? First off the land was donated to him from a personal friend. The county now assesses the land alone to carry a value of over a half a million. Just the dirt. So not only has the estate greatly appreciated in value over the last 7 years, he didn't even have to pay market value for the land. On that land, the home was more likely to be a 700K to 800K construction. Shipp makes it sound like Young cut a 1.5 million dollar check to live like the rich and famous. Now there's probably no way Shipp could have known about the land grant, but yet again - here's another lesson on why you shouldn't be caught running your mouth (especially on camera as a reporter) when you don't have all the information.
So how about the private jet? Shipp slowed his speech to make the most of this shocking number - the 8.4 million dollar luxury jet. The insinuation that the jet was bought with church donor money and kept from the congregation as a secret is ludicrous. It's great for TV ratings, but it's still ludicrous. First off, the church didn't buy the jet, so we can all forget about the jet's hefty value. The jet is leased. If you had been going to church there for a year or more, you are probably aware that Ed primarily flies privately. Several years ago, he flew on friend's jets, and then eventually found a pilot and acquired some time on the leased jet. Remember Ed has sold somewhere around a zillion books. So if he wants to fly his family to Bora Bora on a jet that the church and her donor's aren't paying for, I could not care less. On top of that, he's asked to speak all over the world year in and year out. He could have a great personal income outside of being Senior Pastor of the church. So I'm thinking, with someone who has a very full time job leading a 20,000 member church, a wife and 4 kids... can he afford to be an hour late after a 10 hour commercial airline flight that might get his baggage there with him? Especially when your career depends on you arriving on time, well rested and prepared to keynote a large conference in a few hours time with a several hour jet lag. It's just not realistic to think he could even fly commercial. Aside from the obvious logistical problems, all your big pastors in the world get regular death threats anyway. Is it not worth some extra money to make sure they always get from point A to point B safe and on time? So really, woopty do that one of his for profit companies maintains a jet lease.
Seriously, are we to believe that if you are a minister you're not allowed to fly private or have more than the 2 car garage - white picket fence suburban house with 2.5 kids?
So how about the cloaked informant? First off, ABC aired the voice manipulated segment like it was a scary movie with an evil villain. In hindsight, that display with the lights turned down, the metal chair and horror film-esq setting is laughable. For one, it's not going to hide anything. Technology is readily available to reverse engineer such amateur audio manipulation. And between Pastor Ed and Attorney Denny (the two that were thrown under the bus by the story, and two people who have resources like none of us could imagine), I would be SHOCKED if they didn't know who it was by the next morning, all while not loosing 5 minutes sleep. Some of the most talented pro audio guys I've ever known work with the church. I'd bet the farm they could crack that tape over a deli sandwich.
But I just have to go deeper on that piece of the puzzle. The kind of person that would take pleasure in presenting a smear story like that is a special person. It's a man for sure. To my knowledge only one female would have the information the cloaked man is said to have, executive salaries and what not. The CFO up to 2002 was a woman, (can't remember her name) but trust me, she wouldn't take part in such ridiculousness. So back to the cloaked man of mystery. For someone like this with probably years of pent up bitterness, the story breaking would be a victory to him. But the cloaked man couldn't celebrate because he demanded anonymity. It's so ironic. The guy finally got his day on TV (justice), but can't even be known or celebrate because he chose to be anonymous. This is the kind of stuff that bad movies are made of.
Back to reporter Shipp. I'll go ahead and forgive low quality of reporting, and him getting his "facts" mixed up and overvalued. That is easily corrected and will cause no long term damage. But here is where Shipp crossed the line. He all but gave out the pastor's address going on about the estate's title. Not cool man. You don't go around giving out mega church's pastor's addresses. It's putting a person, a husband and father at risk. That single act is extremely irresponsible. And shame on ABC for letting that information air.
Let me close with this. I've been completely unplugged from FC for about 3 years now. Do I still have lots of questions? Yes. Do I agree with how everything at the church is run (or ran)? No. I could bore you with hours of stories and situations that I personally disagree with the church's decision on. But then again, I can't think of any entity that size that I can agree on everything with. There's always stuff that I would do different. It's a good thing none of us are called to agree. And truth be told, the grey area between living above or below reproach is as wide as the continuum itself. It does no good to judge or be cynical. So with all the questions, doubts, so called secrets and what not, I have to ask myself one question: Do I deserve the answers? Do you deserve the answers? If you're still wondering, the answer is no. Last time I checked, I have exactly zero hours experience leading a mega church of 20,000 in size. I bet most of us are in that boat together. So who are we to say how things should go for a mega pastor. How things should run. Where money should be spent, and not spent. Those with successful experience running any of the nation's largest and most prominent churches, I submit to your experience, wisdom and authority on these issues.
Update from Ed Young - 2/8/2010 - 11am
I am definitely guilty of this small business trap, that is the battle between profit and fun, which can lead to busyness. Often times, those that are responsible for a business's success and growth spend time doing what is fun and interesting instead of what needs to be done to protect the revenue stream.
Years ago I started up a coffee shop with some friends. If someone followed us around and graphed how we spent our time before we opened, I guarantee you the results would make me cry. We pooled the money together and got cracking. We settled the legal structure, secured a lease, bought equipment, installed the POS (point of sale) machines, bought insurance, wrote employee schedules, and on and on. But just looking back, we spent gobs of time thinking and dealing with pieces to the puzzle that were trivial. We spent a lot of time on decorating, planning the music play lists, booking events (bands), and what not. We spent a lot of time thinking about things that weren't involved with agenda of being profitable. In fact, I can't think of much we did that was on the profitable agenda. That was a mistake of magnificent proportions. We were more concerned with running a cool coffee shop than running a money making machine. We just bought stuff, set up stuff, planned stuff, prettied up stuff, and the like. We should have sat down with excel and planned out to the penny where money was going and where it was going to come from. That was a huge mistake.
When you choose the fun and interesting agenda over the revenue agenda, you become busy. And for the record, busy is not a good thing. In business, busy should be defined as spending too much time doing things that are not important, and not enough time doing what is important.
So why do we business owners drift towards fun and interesting and away from profit from time to time? For one, fun and interesting is easy, and protecting profits is hard. Turning a revenue stream into a moat takes a lot of work. Just visualize a moat. Remember that thing was not built over night. It probably was a stream a long time ago. But someone did a lot of work to stack tens of thousands of stones several meters high to line the walls around and in inside of it. That moat is a revenue stream all grown up. I believe the business owner's job is to turn revenue streams into moats.
So with every agenda, you have to ask yourself: is this truly valuable? Will the time invested have a positive return? A perfect example is one of my favorite charities in Houston put on an $11,000 fishing tournament, but only raised $7,000. They flushed $4,000 because they chose fun and interesting over revenue.
For you business owners out there, focus on revenue. Without revenue, you don't have a business, you have an expensive hobby.
Every so often, it seems I am running around in circles again trying to decide how important a logo is. What makes a good logo? How much do design and color choices matter?
Certainly, the logo does become the business's mark as they sign their products and marketing materials with it. But when you are coming up with a new logo, how important are those decisions to shave a corner there, deepen the blue there, or shrink the symbol there?
As an entrepreneur or business owner, logo decisions will be a true test of your decisiveness. Having worked with over a 100 start-ups, I have seen people waffle for days on end over some of the most non-impacting decisions ever known to man. That is the trap; to over think it, and tweak it to the ends of the earth. Often times, it is one of the few creative/subjective processes that one is involved in. Those people usually either could not care less, or worse, are on track to make up their mind right after the second coming of Christ.
Barring any terrible design decisions, here is where I rest on the issue. The value of a logo sits on a continuum between design and perception. On the left side, and early on, the value of the logo rests on the design, and how well it graphically represents the business. On the right side, after business successes/failures, and brand awareness settles, you have perception. The perception phase, which is far longer than the initial phase, depends on the quality of the business. The coca-cola logo would never be talked about if the whole world ignored the soda. The K-Mart logo would not carry its loser value if the business had not inherited its inferior reputation. If Nike shoes were uncomfortable and placed 9th or 10th in people's minds as the athletic shoe of choice, the swoosh would have a negative perceived value. On the contrary, the swoosh is as cool as it is and carries amazing brand recognition because of the success of the business and the quality of the shoes, not because it is a swoosh.
Do your best to not over think your logo decisions. Focus on the business. If your business succeeds, the logo is good.
There are probably two dozen life lessons to be learned from The King of Pop's passing. One lesson in particular is one I hope I never forget... but more on that later.
Fame is a drug, but much more like coffee and alcohol than crack. If you take crack, we know exactly what is going to happen to you. If you're on coffee or alcohol (or fame), the outcome is far more unpredictable. Results vary by individual. But either way, if you get too much of it (fame), bad things will happen. Even Bono sings that no one should be too good at celebrity. And if there ever was a lethal dose of fame, people like Elvis and Michael certainly had it.
But here is my real takeaway from the media circus that is Michael Jackson's death. If you are a parent, a wife, a husband, or you sincerely love anyone more than you love yourself; pay attention to the fifteen second speech that Michael's daughter Paris gave at his extremely public memorial service. There was genuine, deep, real, unscripted, sadness from here father's passing. Possibly unknowingly, she showed the whole world her deepest hurt. If you saw it, and were not even temporarily moved, then check your pulse, the girl lost her father. It is sorrow at its deepest.
It is no secret now that Michael was routinely taking drugs that doctors now say created the perfect storm for the event of his death. I can not imagine that anyone is shocked to learn there was at least some substance abuse in his fame filled life. But I feel confident if Michael could have seen the sadness of his children, family and loved ones, (but primarily his children) at his own memorial service, he would have quit those drugs cold turkey, and never looked back.
I can't think of anything that I wouldn't stop doing (or start doing) to ensure that I never have to see my daughter Ava go through that kind of pain.
Once again, I have reaffirmed the fact that Easy CGI has the stupidity market cornered to the point of monopoly. For the record, they were bought out by a room full of geniuses (EIG) in October of 2008. What once was great, turned disastrous post buy out. Also for the record, since Oct. 2008, they have completely destroyed dozens of accounts of mine, to which I have been slowly but surely moving those accounts to other hosts. If fact, for most of these sites I would even now settle for a bad web host, because that would be an extreme upgrade from EasyCgi.
I simply must share this latest support thread. I assure you, every ounce of this is true. The transparency of stupidity is simply astounding.
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06/18/2009 1:44 PM EDT Ticket Created
06/18/2009 1:44 PM EDT Matt Murph contacted EasyCGI
Subject: Site Down
Comment: Why is this site down?
06/18/2009 4:57 PM EDT EasyCGI contacted Matt Murph
Comment:
Hello ,
Thank you for contacting us. I apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused you.
I checked your website and I verified that the website is not loading. Did you make changes on your domain name smh.shoppas.com DNS settings or name servers? When was the last time this website is up?
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us through the support console in the control panel.
We are available 24x7.
Thank you,
Customer Support
06/18/2009 5:56 PM EDT Matt Murph contacted EasyCGI
Comment:
No, not to my knowledge, in fact if I ping smh.shoppas.com it resolves to your IP address. What's going on?
06/19/2009 3:52 PM EDT EasyCGI contacted Matt Murph
Comment:
Hi,
I did a whois and I noticed that the name servers are not pointing to us.Did you tried to contact your domain registrar if they did something on your domain? The name server should be pointing to ns1.easycgi.com and ns2.easycgi.com.Right now it currently pointing to cbru.br.ns.els-gms.att.net and cmtu.mt.ns.els-gms.att.net.And I think that is the reason why your website is not loading.
Thank you
Technical Support
06/19/2009 3:57 PM EDT Matt Murph contacted EasyCGI
Comment:
NO, the name servers do reside elsewhere, but there are ample DNS records so the SMH sub-domain routes to this account as it always has. You can ping smh.shoppas.com for confirmation.
06/19/2009 5:09 PM EDT EasyCGI contacted Matt Murph
Subject:
Comment:
Hi,
Yes, I just verified that your sub domain is pointing to 66.96.143.169.And with this, I decided that this issue should be escalated to a higher level of support. We need to investigate on this IP address 66.96.143.169. And I also verified that you have lot of account with us. Please give us at least 12 - 24 hours for this.
Thank you
Technical Support
06/19/2009 6:41 PM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
06/19/2009 6:44 PM EDT Resolved
06/19/2009 6:46 PM EDT EasyCGI contacted Matt Murph (Resolved)
Comment:
Hello,
I am writing in regards to your ticket # 6104796.
I noticed that the domain name 'smh.shoppas.com' is available for registration. If you wish to register the domain 'smh.shoppas.com', then please get back to us with the following information so that we can register the domain in your account.
Contact Information
First Name:
Last Name:
Organization Name:
Street Address:
City:
State:
Country:
Postal Code:
Phone Number:
Fax Number:
E-mail address:
Username:
Domain name:
Please update the Support Console with the requested information, so that we can assist you further.
Sincerely,
Domain Registrar Specialist
06/20/2009 10:38 AM EDT Matt Murph contacted EasyCGI
Comment:
First off, you do not REGISTER sub domains. The top level domain "shoppas.com" is registered until 2019, and the sub-domain resolves to YOUR ip address on this hosting account. So please stop asking questions and start fixing problems. The site has been down since Wednesday. See for yourself... you can PING "smh.shoppas.com" and it resolves to your server. The account is up to date and paid for. Please bring this site back up!
End thread
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Now, I just called them (6/22/2009 11:30 AM EDT) to recap the ridiculousness noted above, only to find out they moved the site and did not feel like telling anyone. So not only did I get an array of ignorant support reps, and even a comment from a Domain Registrar Specialist, who very obviously is far from Specialist status, they were just fresh out of ideas on a very basic issue. And please not the time stamps. At times they waited nearly 24 hours to respond with more stupidity.
I had more than 40 accounts with them before the Oct 2008 buy out… now I am down to just under 20, all of which will be migrated off their platform when time permits. And hats off to the new parent company, EIG (Endurance International Group). They really have done a superb job turning a great hosting company into trash. Just check out ( http://www.easycgireviews.com/ ), 1 positive and 62 negative reviews at the time of this posting. Unbelievable.
Churches need to run (not walk) away from using stock photography for people, facility, and environment photos on their website. Those pesky stock photos do not give anyone the slightest idea what it might be like to attend a service there.
Here's the part that I have trouble understanding. A lot of people get their underpants all up in a wad over pouring water down a known terrorist's nose? Interesting. Is that really torture? I think pledging a fraternity is closer to torture than that is. Besides, are they, the terrorists, not lucky in some ways that they were captured, and not killed in battle?
Torture is frying someone's hands over fire. Torture is dripping water on someone's forehead in the desert until they die. Torture is beating someone to death's bleeding edge. Torture is cutting off private parts, or fingers, or whatever. The history of torture is way, way, way way way more severe and permanent than pouring water down someone's nose.
So the question is: is water boarding torture? It causes no long term damage, and it doesn't kill, or leave scars. The victim completely and totally recovers from the experience. So in the words of Dennis Miller, perhaps its heaven sent.
I just find it interesting that right now, there are US troops abroad killing the enemy. Shooting them, blowing them up with bombs, destroying buildings, you know... all out no holds bar war.
But in Cuba, they just poor water down captured terrorist's noses. So are we saying that it's okay to wipe them clean off the face of the earth with superior fire power, but not okay to poor water down their nose? I'm confused.
And now Gitmo is supposed to close. And the million dollar question is: where do we put the captured terrorists? The obvious solution has been overlooked for too long. Many people suggest you can't just take them back to where they came from, they'll become terrorists again. Sure, history has certainly proved that true. I say send them back to the war, where they came from. But instead of dropping them off at the city center, where they can be welcomed home by their terrorist buddies, just drop them off in the middle of the battle field... say... a half a click (0.3 miles) from a marine base. I mean, if we have to close Gitmo and send them somewhere, back to war is the only logical answer. Unless they are insane (which unfortunately is highly probable), would they not beg to go back to Gitmo?
I just find it fascinating that generally speaking, it seems that so many people have a bigger problem with water boarding, than killing the enemy in battle.
