The Search for God and Guinness is a biography of the Guinness brewery and family, from the brewery management to the clerical side of the family, and even discusses the down fall of the individuals within the family.  To fully understand the struggle and importance of what the Guinness family and brewery did, the book first covers the history of brewing within European and American heritage, primarily the role and purpose of beer within the Catholic and Protestant churches for their own survival.  This history is a very enlightening one for anyone that has been sheltered in the prohibitionist American church.  With the understanding of the importance of beer within struggling societies before science understood illness and water purification, the importance and struggle of a brewmaster to deliver a healthy alternative to the toxic water source within a community without the damaging effects of hard liquor.

The Guinness family and the impact of the Brewery within Dublin and the rest of Irish culture is inspiring.  The Guinness, with it’s internal struggles and black sheep, is an example of a loving Christian family that can change the environment around them to the benefit of the community.  The results of the management decisions of the Guinness family and the good natured hearts of the leaders they attracted and employed turned Dublin and the Irish culture around when the struggle for life was a constant battle during the industrial revolution and the aftermath of the environment resulting from the press forward for a newly struggling industrial country.

The Guinness family history provided a great case study for business men and leaders, as well as the chance to look at the struggle of several good Christian men as they work to support and love their family while balancing they impact and contribution to society.

Everyday Greatness is a compilation of inspirational short stories, quotes and proverbs that will challenge and spur the reader on to achieving their potential, regardless of where they are in life.  The book is full of illustrations and short stories that any speaker, secular teacher or biblical preacher, will love to have at hand.  The book’s purpose is to help the reader realize that they have a chose to act in life to help others, regardless of what has happened to them and where life has placed them.  Everyone has a purpose and great potential to fill and succeed in that purpose, and as a result of doing so they will influence and inspire other’s throughout their life.

The book acts as a cheerleader for any one that picks it up, helping to kick into gear the desire and yearning to impact the world and people around them in a positive way.  The short stories will bring tears and joy to any living person, even if they only read one story from the entire book.

I've blocked a few IP addresses that have been spamming the blog very heavily. The IPs came from China and co-location centers in the US, so it should impact any individuals. But, if you do find that you can't access the site from a system, please contact me. One IP address had spammed the site with 560 comment posts over a 2 month period. My filter caught the majority of them, but it's a pain to filter through them all just time make sure important ones aren't deleted.

From the beginning the site has had nofollow links for the comment section, because I don't want spammers to benefit from the spidering of this site. I may eventually turn off commenting all together since 90% of the comments are spammers, but I don't want to silent any potential dialog for the topics I do post on. If things continue to get worse, I'll just disable comments and ask for people to contact me directly for further discussion and questions

The last three weeks I’ve been thinking about what a godly man’s walk with God really looks like.  What characteristics does a Godly man have?  Is there a suitable illustration for such a walk, and how can we remember the keys to continuously growing in and through God?

While thinking all this through I realized that a man’s walk with God is hindered most often by pride.  Man’s pride has many different appearances and can many times hide behind other faults.  But when it comes down to it, men are far more susceptible to failing due to pride than women are.  We thrive on our accomplishments, our hunts, the chase and the race, our dreams and our offspring.  Man’s ability to continue on through life depends on our confidence and respect from others.  It’s too easy for us to slip over the edge of being confident and bold to being proud and individually too loud.  We’re expected to use our giftings and reach our God given goals in order to let his light shine, but our nature is to grasp on to that glory and being proud of our role.

The end result of pride is hurtful sin.  Pride causes collateral damage.  Because of our pride men are more susceptible to falling for sexually sin.  The pride makes us better than our convictions, our family’s reputation and our laws.  Why do so many influential men of God fall for money and sex?  It is because they grasp the glory too much and built up their pride to the point that they were too proud to face the consequences.

Man’s walk with God isn’t a razor edge because of the balance between successfully doing God’s works and fighting our pride.  Man’s walk with God is the razor.  The best illustration of a man’s walk with God is one of the “manliest" things, a straight razor.

Our walk with God has so many commonalities with a good straight razor. 

• We have to be soft to reach our maximum effectiveness.
  A good straight razor is made of softer iron or steel rather than hard and unforgiving stainless steel.  While the stainless steel blades can become sharp enough to shave with, they are not soft enough to get and keep proper edges through stropping.  The metal is just too hard for the leather to help clean the edge to an ultra-fine point.  Stainless steel also eats though the finer honing stones and requires more work on the stone to get to the place that it is sharp enough to cut hair.  The stainless steel is just too stubborn.
  As men of God, we have to be soft enough to work with God’s changes in our lives.  Being honed to the point that God wants us isn’t easy, and we lose parts of who we were, but when we’re malleable enough to be honed quickly, then we aren’t up against the grinding stone as long or as often as we would need to be if we’re as stubborn as stainless steel.
• Even a new and faultless blade isn’t ready to use right away.
  We all still depend on God from the beginning.  A Christian is never finished growing, learning or changing for God.  A brand new blade still requires stropping before use, otherwise the precise and clean honing done on a good blade will be lost against the stubborn grain of the beard.  Regardless of our past, or our anointing, we are still dependent on our relationship with God to continue to maintain and perfect the edge in our life.
• A good edge requires a polished finish.
  A good, sharp razor edge isn’t just ground against any stone, they are honed against several increasingly fine grit flat stones.  The further along in the process the less metal is being removed from the edge and the more the blade is being polished.  In order to obtain that razor edge the blade has to be honed on polishing stones, otherwise the edge is to broad and coarse to shave.  Without the polishing of the ultra-fine grit stones the razor is as useful as a pair of scissors when shaving.
• The blade is supposed to be straight.
  A properly honed and prepared straight razor is just that, straight.  The razor’s edge is formed to the flat stone used during honing.  Regardless of the curve or nicks in the blade, when it goes through the honing process the blade begins to lose the defects and faults in the edge.  The key to removing those nicks and chips is using a very coarse and strong stone on the blade until is wears the fault out of the blade.  This can result in significant changes to the blade and all of the old edge of the blade being lost.  Just as the blade is shaped to the stone, a Godly man is shaped to God during our honing process.
  The straight edge is important for a proper shaving since every step in the process requires an even pressure on a surface, even the shaving process.  Without the flat and straight edge it would be much easier to carve up the face while shaving instead of removing the hair.  The flat blade also increases the performance while stropping and reduces the wear on the leather strop.  A chipped blade will begin eating the leather strop during the stropping process.  Because of our defects we can hinder God’s work in our lives and the lives of others, which is way we have to be willing to allow God to work our defects out of us.
• The edge is delicate.  The blade will rust.
  Since a good razor is made of softer steel or iron it is susceptible to rust.  The blade has to be cared for before and after the shave, including oiling the blade and proper storage when not in use.  The very environment the razor is made to be used it is harmful to the overall integrity of the blade.  Just like a good razor, the working environment we were created for will eat away at us without the proper maintenance and attitude. We depend on God’s constant work in us in order for us to properly allow His work through us.  Without it we begin to decay as a result of the environment we’re in.  The world will cause us to begin to rust and decay, and the more we attach ourselves to the world and its ways the faster and more severe the damage will be.  Just like the water left on the steel razor due to poor drying and maintenance, the world will eat away at us and rust the blade shut.  We become ineffective and even unusable when we separate ourselves from God’s cleaning and maintenance because we refuse to work on our relationship daily.
• Our walk with God should allow us to cleanly cut through the crud of the world. 
  As anyone that has used a knife knows, a sharp edge is most effective for clean cutting.  There are many surfaces that can cut, for example, you can cut your finger tip open with a piece of paper or you can slice your knee open with a edged rock while hiking.  But unless the edge has been prepared and sharpened with the intention of cutting, the edge does more ripping than cutting.  That paper cut hurts so much because the serrated edge of the paper chewed through you skin instead of really slicing through your skin. A surgeon's scalpel is dependent on the sharpness of the blade just as much as it is dependent on the cleanliness to prevent infection and to allow for proper healing post-operation.  If the surgeon used a butter knife to saw open a patient the wound would take longer to heal after being closed back up because the knife would have torn up the flesh rather than slicing through the layers of flesh with little resistance.
  One of the biggest causes of defects in our edge is pride.  Men are in a constant battle between being bold and confident in Christ and falling to our pride.  Our pride warps and chips our edge, as a result our cuts to clean up the world and people around use have impression and defects in them due to our pride and defects in our edge.  An apple sliced with a serrated steak knife might have proper slices, but the flesh of the apple will show the serration of the blade along the cut.  In the same way we leave grooves, grids and marks in the surfaces after we’ve done God’s work, those defects interfere with the clean cut God had planned.
• The chips and nicks need to be completely worked out.
  Chips and nicks result in problems during shaving and when the blade is used to for clean cuts.  When shaving those nicks will increase the chance of cuts, reduce the effectiveness of the blade and require more passes for a proper shave, and will leave marks in and irritate the skin.
  The nicks, chips and other defects have to be worked out of the blade.  The process for removing those defaults requires the blade to be honed with a very coarse stone and then worked back all the way through the honing process again.  Similarly, our pride results in us having to be broken down again and often times taken back to day one of our relationship with God.  The process isn’t fun or easy, just as the coarse stone isn’t soft on the blade.  The deeper and bigger the nick, the more of the blade that will need to be lost to properly edge the razor again.  The deeper and bigger the pride, the hard our process and the more of ourselves we have to lose to recover who we are in Christ.
• The relationship has to be a constant and proactive preparation on a daily basis for us to be most effective.
  To properly maintain the razor edge the blade has to be stropped before and after shaving.  Without stropping the blade has to return to be honed more frequently and the less effective the edge is during the shave.  Stropping is the perfect metaphor for our on going, day-to-day relationship with God.  We have to constantly be praying and communicating with God in order to maintain our edge.  Without it God has to put us through harder times to break us down again and work us till our edge returns again.  Daily devotion, a constant prayer talk with God and frequent praise sessions are essential to being prepared and keeping your edge in life.

A sharp edge razor isn’t always used for shaving and here are some important points with that in mind:

• The sharper the edge, the less the edge is misdirected and distracted by the ruts and grooves in the surface being cut.
• Dull edges require speed and force to perform their cutting operations.  Speed and force reduce the precision and increase the damage caused by the cutting while increase the effort and energy required.
• You don’t use force and speed to perform the slicing in a delicate surgery.  For that reason you don’t use an axe for open heart surgery.
• Almost sharp enough blades get stuck half way through, over come by the force and friction around it.
• Axes have their place is bringing down and tearing down things.  Sharp blades are used for creating, building up, and correcting things.
• A good meat clever is still sharp enough to properly slice through a tomato and onion.  Even with huge gifts and weight behind us, to properly do the job we need God with us to keep the fine edge.

Companies have begun a shift towards hiring and training more generalized workers instead of the more expensive specialized workers so highly sought after in the past.  This is especially true in the IT market.  Companies are hiring individuals with a breadth of knowledge instead of depth.  This means that the worker is capable of doing more and handling a wider range of tasks, but it also means that the individual might progress through a task slower than the specialist would.  But the advantage over the specialist is that the generalized knowledge makes them capable of doing the task in an area that the specialist for another area would no be able to find a starting ground.

The biggest tool in aiding this sift has been the vast knowledge base that is the Internet.  You don’t have to know all the answers, so long as you know where and how to find the answer.  Companies are increasingly using wikis, knowledge bases and document repositories to record the wealth of knowledge that they have access to through their employees.  The biggest drawback to this situation is that there isn’t an easy solution to the problem solving road blocks that are produces by having individuals with a shallow understanding on the issue at hand.

This was the entire reason I went with a general Computer Science degree instead of specializing in Software Engineering.  Small businesses can’t afford to have specialists in every area that they work in or deal in, and larger corporations are dealing with similar circumstances during hard economic times.

If you were having pains in your sides, but had not idea what the cause or alternate symptoms are then you wouldn’t know which specialist to go to for the answers.  The same situation applies to both large and small businesses now.  The more we depend on the Internet for knowledge and other resources, the more our knowledge has the be generalized.  The cultural interactions with other companies in other countries, the systematic interactions with a breadth of devices, and the legal and political issues related to doing business with other states and countries, make every business large and small require an almost infinitely broad knowledge of the world and everything in it.

The big problem isn’t the breadth of knowledge though, it’s being able to access and manage the depth of knowledge available at our fingertips.  We have unlimited amounts of information instantly available to us, but there isn’t a good way of find the information we’re looking for without already having the depth of knowledge of the situation at hand.

With generalization, we know where to take the first step, but the following steps are the journey and blind adventure.

That is the entire reason why I founded Simplified Solutions.  There are already tons of tools out there that are great at storing and securing your information and knowledge, but forgotten and inaccessible information is lost information.  How do you search for the answer you’re looking for when you don’t know exactly what the problem is or the terms used within the realm of your problem?  Right now you have to do a lot of research.  Right now you lose critical time and resources spinning your tires while you race around the world’s boundless information resources.

For many businesses their information resources and repositories have already reach the point that it is difficult to find the information that is already stored there.  The issue is made worse by the recursive destruction of the system’s on handicaps when managing and maintaining the information.

Current information stores are broken.  Search terms, tags and indexing will not help solve problems for a more generalized workforce.  It is time to start making the data and systems work for our workforce instead of increasing the work load as a result of these systems.  Because of this handicap Simplified Solutions is going to begin developing what I call Intelligent Knowledge Repositories (IKRs).  Simplified Solutions’ Assisted Knowledge and Troubleshooting Repository will be the first IKR developed for the IT market.  While the system will work for other markets and industries with little-to-no adapting, it fits best in the IT market where finding information and solutions in the fastest possible means available means saving thousands of dollars and hours of lost productivity.  The system could easily be adapted to the medical industry to help doctors find and research health conditions and ailments.

Simplified Solutions

“Managing Humans” is about Rand’s experience as a manager of developers.  It covers how to manage the different types of developers, interact with other managers from other departments, manage the hiring process and creating the proper environment for creative development and planning.

The book is meant for both the manager and the programmer and attempts to open the eyes of people in both positions.  I greatly recommend it for anyone that is managing development teams or for the programmers that have been forced into the management position.

Starbucks is adding beer and wine to their menu at a test site.  “15th Ave. Coffee and Tea inspired by Starbucks” will serve beer and wine along with Starbucks’ normal coffee and tea menu.

Some might think this is a horrible idea and a step in the wrong direction for the coffee company.  But the decision will probably be the first thing to drastically re-vamp the company during the recession slump and the drag in sales.  Starbucks has been a social “hub” for a while where people meet for business, social meet-ups and teen hang-outs, so the introduction of the alcohol with business and teen meet-ups has some people uneasy with the possibility.  The possibility of creating an environment for both early morning and afternoon business as well as the post-business hangouts.  The happy hour crowd will find a possibility in Starbucks as an alternative to restaurant bars, which don’t provide as comfortable environments for just hanging out and letting go.

Original story in USA Today.

“Collapse of Distinction” is a book about means of defining and distinguishing yourself and your business among the millions of other businesses and people on planet.  In an ever increasing global market and competitive market we have make our businesses stand out using even the slightest differences.

The book starts off good and draws you in, but throughout the book I continued to expect McKain to complete a sentence or finish a story, but by the time I reached the end of the book I still had that feeling.  The book does not deliver.  Too many times the examples and stories used felt more like distractions rather than stepping stones, and the reader never reaches the point of actually learning anything.  Reading the cover and summary for the book have the same effectiveness as the entire book does is communicating the fact that there has to be differences to have distinction.

This week, while I was studying cloud computing platforms and the current definitions for the new buzz words, I started thinking about how the new terms translate to the new social and relational paradigms.  Cloud Computing is being used in a broader sense to describe virtualization of computer resources and systems.   Our new online social interactions have produced a virtualization of our relationships.  There are both benefits and scary repercussions to our behavior and the transition to these Cloud Communities.

As a result, “Cloud Communities” is getting a more specific definition.  Cloud Communities aren’t just communities formed on the internet, they are communities formed around an individual on the internet.  Each person forms, drafts and manages their own Cloud Community around them.  These community is completely free-form and free-floating.  It is constantly changing.  It is constantly abuzz.

For anyone involved in computers for 15 or more years, the online communities and connections with strangers isn’t a new thing.  Electronic Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) were used for electronic communities before the Internet and World Wide Web were wildly available.  These systems allowed individuals with similar interests to gather and commune in an electronic gathering place.  Most of the communication was done through forum posts on the BBSs.  Through those conversations and means the computer “nerds” formed relationships with perfect strangers.  Today, everyone is doing similar things by connecting with strangers through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and the thousands of other niche networks available on our cell phones, computers and entertainment devices.  It has become a mainstream activity for perfectly disconnected strangers to cross paths in these networks and form relationships.  The “strange” and weird relationships of the BBSs have become perfectly accepted in today’s culture and completely invaded our everyday life.

Along with the completely new relationships we’ve thrown our real-life relationships onto these networks as well.  The Cloud Communities don’t include just tangent relationships formed over the Internet, but they now include our family, friends and co-workers.  There isn’t anything wrong with having our everyday relationships included in our online lives, but there is a problem with the degree that the online relationships and our real-life integrate.  Unlike the BBS friendship, or the AOL chat buddy, the online networks aren’t locked down to a system that is only accessible through our computer over a modem.  These relationships, with stranger or family member, are all directly accessible through countless means, the most common one being our cell phones.  The online relationships are beginning to encroach on our real-life relationships.  Tweeting, checking our friends’ Facebook status and reading email replies to our latest post within a community have trumped the conversation and relationship of the people sitting in front of us.  It’s gone as far as being the means in which some relationships are maintained, even when person is just down the street.

The virtualization of our relationships and communities isn’t all doom and gloom, but the extent of which it has interfered with reality has made more people local introverts and global extroverts.  When a text message across the room is a more common means of greeting people in a group rather than finding them and shacking their hand, our environment and bodies no longer matter.  Which makes motivating and connecting with groups even more complicated.  Attempts to connect and commune online results in a direct competition with all the noise already welcome in the individual's Cloud Community.

One voice among several hundred aren’t the ideal odds someone fresh out of bible schools wants to deal with, but with an online connected teenager the odds become one voice among  hundreds-of-thousands.  How does the church connect, commune and counter-act the noise outside of our local environment when it is welcomed in by the one we’re trying to reach?  What do we do with our involvement in the online communities to stand out within each individual’s Cloud Community that they built up around their self?  How do you communicate peace to an individual that is surrounded by more activity and noise than ever imagined, especially when the Cloud Community is always there even when our local community is no where near?  How does a group outside of someone’s Cloud Community connect with them and become apart of their community?

How has the virtualization of your own relationships and interactions impacted your local environment?  How has it impacted your peace of mind?  Do the costs of maintaining and managing your own Cloud Community out weigh the benefits of maintaining the connections, community and invasion of your life and privacy?

How do you know your computer is doing a lot of work?  Most of the time the key indicator is hard drive heads clattering away ever so often as information is written and read from the drive. Well, as we move to 64-bit operating systems with more and more RAM and solid state hard drives the computer's operation will become virtually silent.  No longer will you know when the information is being paged out or your anti-virus software is chugging away aside from the system monitors and performance logs.  The silent laptop is kind of exciting and eerie at the same time.

The other crazy things is having a 17inch laptop with screaming specs last on battery longer than 7 hours.