That was some blogging vacation (although some might say I haven’t been here that much anyway).  At least my absence only affected tens of people.

Over the break, I’ve really been thinking about the focus of my blogging and trying to target one major subject that would define my writing here.  Being a highly un-focused person (slightly attention-deficit disorder here, ooh shiny….), it’s hard to nail it down to just one.  In that, I’m breaking one of the cardinal rules of blogging, if you listen to the blogging “experts”. But since I read this post, I feel like one of my favorite bloggers, Anne Jackson, has given me permission to go against the grain a little.

Without further adieu, here is my blogging vision for the year ahead:

In general, I think about becoming a better person all the time.  Since I spend a lot of time in thought on that, that is probably what I will write about the most. Not that I will be telling anyone how to do that.  Most of my writing is extremely introspective, and out of that I tend to formulate ideas that could potentially apply to someone else.  What I would like most is to develop those thoughts into a conversation on my blog, so that everyone can benefit from the discussion.  Sure, this idea is not that original, but I think it most reflects who I am.

I have plans this year to get back to making music again, so as I go through that process, I have a feeling I will write about that.

I will continue to periodically write book reviews.

Since I have a lot of fun with technology and gadgets, I will occasionally write about that subject.

Here’s hoping that the blogging journey this year won’t be a lonely one.

With all of the activity surrounding the holidays, and my family’s traditional holiday vacation trip coming up, there has been no time for crafting my usually deep and thoughtful blog posts.

Tonight (Christmas Eve) my family has our holiday gathering with my wife’s side of the family.  Tomorrow morning we see what Santa brought us. Tomorrow night, yet another holiday gathering with all four of my brothers’ families.

We head out for Disney World on New Year’s Eve for a four night stay.

The Alabama Crimson Tide play for the BCS National Title shortly after we return.

It’s going to be a busy next two weeks or so.  In the interim, I’ll be working on my goals for the blog for next year, possibly writing a few posts to be published later, and hopefully upgrading to Wordpress 2.9.

But, before all of this I wanted to sincerely wish one and all a very Merry Christmas, and blessings for the coming new year. I also want to express my gratitude for the new friends that I have found in the process of blogging and twittering. I look forward to getting to know all of you better this next year, and hopefully reaching one of my 2010 goals: meeting my twitter friends in person (well, at least some of them, anyway).

See You Next Year!

When my youngest son was somewhere between the age of three and four, we chanced upon a women giving away free kittens in a Wal-Mart parking lot. In spite of my wife’s intense dislike of pets, she let him take home one of them, a tiny, scrawny kitten with a shiny black coat.

The kitten grew to be a healthy cat, and prowled our front deck like a king would his throne room. Of course, our son wanted the cat to stay inside, and we would find him in odd places in the house, most often shut up in our son’s bedroom closet (with a full bowl of milk at least).

One sunny Sunday morning, tragedy struck. We were in our car (my wife driving) and were running late for church (as usual), when my wife backed the car out more quickly than she normally would have, and in the process, backed over the cat. We heard the thump and saw the cat hobbling away, dragging his back legs. Our son was immediately upset, but we did our best to reassure him that his cat would be okay, since the cat managed to escape from the scene. We couldn’t find him immediately, but once we returned from church, I saw him, curled beneath the shade of the azalea bushes in front of our house.

I’m no veterinarian, but my assessment of the poor cat’s situation was pretty grim, as it appeared he could not move his back legs. And if that were the case, I knew he would have to be put down.

My heart dropped when I thought about my child losing the pet that he loved, and not only that, his mother being responsible for it.

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I prayed for the cat. Yes, I knelt down next to him and reached under the azalea branches where he lay so that I could reach him. I stroked his fur, and said a simple, yet sincere prayer, asking God to please heal the cat, and spare his life, so my son would not have to lose his pet.

I walked away after my prayer and left the cat where he lay, while we all went next door to my in-laws house for lunch. I instructed the kids to please leave the cat alone for awhile.

As I walked home later from the house next door, I glanced to the spot where I had left the cat. He was gone. My heart fell a little further, thinking that he may have dragged himself off somewhere to die in peace. I tried to reassure my son that he would be back soon, in as much as I was trying to reassure myself.

A few days later, I had parked my car in the driveway after my trek home from work, and was headed toward the door, when I saw him, walking gingerly up the front steps ahead of me, as if to say, “I’m okay”. I reached down and gave him a little rub down his back, whispering a prayer of thanks to God. And I realized that God does care about little black cats, and little boy’s hearts, and the mostly pathetic faith of a man who’s prayed more prayers than he’s received answers for.

In those times I get frustrated with my prayers, I remember the miracle cat. And even though I may not be getting the answers I want, I take solace in the fact that God is still listening, and if he cared about that cat, surely he cares about me.

What about you – do you have any strange, but true stories that made you think?

We are a country in crisis: economic problems, the healthcare debate, sending more troops overseas. Yet somehow, a house subcommitee finds the time to draw up a bill to force college football into a playoff system.

The bill would ban the promotion of a postseason NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision game as a national championship unless it results from a playoff. So, if the BCS continued, the winner of the #1 versus #2 game could only be called the ‘BCS Champion’, not the “BCS National Champion”. Pure genius.

I love college football. It is my favorite sport by far. I would love nothing more than for there to be a playoff system in Division I college football (the only Division 1 sport that does not have a playoff). What I do not want is our government attempting to regulate and legislate how it is run.

I mean, our goverment has had so much success with other things, Social Security, Medicare, FEMA. Oh, wait. They’ve totally botched all of that, and much more. And as such, I want them to stay as far away from the sport I love as they can.

The bureaucracy in the NCAA national leadership is bad enough. There are so many ridiculous rules and guidelines for student athletics that even experts can’t keep up. If our Federal Government were to get involved it would only get worse. Some may say that it’s okay for the government to intervene on this one issue.  But since when has our government not taken a mile when they were given an inch? I don’t care which party is in power, who the president is, and what their political stances are, they need to leave college football alone. Even if it means watching 35 meaningless bowl games for a few more decades years.

So please, call/email your representative and tell them to stay out of college football, and get back to more important issues.

If you blog, post comments on blogs, Twitter, or post on Facebook, inevitably you will face criticism for something you post online.

The easiest route is just to ignore all criticism, but in doing so, you will give the impression that you are above reproach, which is a fast way to lose respect. Besides, by listening to your critics, you could actually learn something.

I don’t think you should listen to all criticism, especially in these cases:

• The criticism consists mainly of attacks against your intelligence and/or character. That’s not really criticism, that’s an insult. Determine if they are criticizing the information, or the person posting the information. Attacks leveled at the person should always be ignored.
• The critic makes no effort to explain their position. A good critic should use established facts and/or relevant experience to validate their claims. If they can’t do that, it’s not worth it to listen.
• The criticism is an obvious emotional reaction, obviously because these rarely contain any intellectual value.

How should you respond to valid criticism?

• Read carefully. Be sure that you have not misread or inferred meaning where there was none.
• Resist the urge to react emotionally. Strong emotional reactions to criticism will impair your ability to analyze it. Never respond to the critic with an emotional backlash. You will regret it later.
• Determine if the criticism is constructive. Is there something that you can take away from it that you can improve upon?
• Try to see the other person’s perspective. It may not change your mind, but it will allow you to think outside of your normal viewpoints, which will improve your ability to empathize with others.
• Disagree? That’s okay too. Criticism will not always bring you to change your mind, and people rarely agree on everything. We should be able to respect another person’s viewpoint, without agreeing with them.
• Always respond positively. Thank the critic for their input. Even if you still disagree, do it respectfully, without insult, and based in facts and/or relevant experiences; not on emotion alone.
• Never take it personally. Don’t invest too much of your self-worth into how well you are received online.

Most importantly, don’t feed the trolls. Some people are just trying to get attention by posting critical and usually insulting responses on blogs, message boards, and the like. Ignore them.

How do you deal with criticism? Do you have any advice to share?

Allow me to preface this review by saying that I am an Alabama Crimson Tide football fan, which is odd, because while I live in Alabama now, I grew up in Texas, and moved to Alabama shortly before I finished high school. How I became a fan of the Tide deserves it’s own blog post someday, but suffice it to say, I was interested to read this book, due to Eli Gold’s status in the state as the “Voice of the Crimson Tide.” This book is not only for Alabama football fans, though, as it focuses more on Eli’s career as a whole, which does include a lot more than just the Crimson Tide.

From Peanuts to the Pressbox is a collection of stories chronicling the career of sports broadcaster Eli Gold from his humble roots in Brooklyn, New York, where his first sports job was selling peanuts at Madison Square Garden. Eli took a passion for sports and an admiration of sports broadcasting and made it a driving force in his life, and worked hard to follow his dream to create a career in sports broadcasting, and to follow his inspirations into the pressbox. Eli has done it all, from minor league hockey and baseball, to the NHL, NFL, Arena League, NASCAR (and other auto racing) and college sports as well.

Eli’s story is inspirational and encouraging. It shows the values of setting goals and following those goals with hard work and determination. It also demonstrates the importance of making friends and good connections throughout your career, and how those relationships bring not only opportunities, but a more fulfilled life. It is not the standard “climbing the corporate ladder” story, where it was necessary to use others as rungs to reach success, but shows the importance of respect and friendship, especially to someone in the broadcasting field.

The book is full of stories and anecdotes that are not only about Eli’s greatest moments. He was not afraid to poke a little fun at himself in this book, and the reader will get a few laughs at his expense. Some of the best stories come from his experiences in NASCAR, which was surprising to me, and Eli’s perspective on many of the legends of stock car racing are very insightful, and at times very personal, especially due to his closeness to many of the greatest tragedies in the history of the sport.

If you are not a sports fan, this book may not have much for you, as sports are the central focus, but sports are about people, and in that regard, there are some great people whose stories intertwine with Eli’s throughout the book. Overall, I enjoyed the book, somewhat more than I thought.

My rating, four out of five.

(Disclaimer: I am reviewing this book as part of the book review bloggers program from Thomas Nelson Publishing.  You can find out more information about this program at http://brb.thomasnelson.com. I received no compensation for this review, other than a review copy of the book.)

Once again, I am participating in a blog-a-thon of sorts over at ElizabethEsther.com, where all her blog readers share one of their favorite posts from the past month.

You can chime in to over at her blog.

Even if you don’t share a link, I’m sure you will find plenty of fine reading in the links.

For those of you who work a day job at a larger corporation, you have probably run into the web filter from time to time, especially if you are trying to access a site classified as “social networking”.

There are dozens of ways to get around filters, but not all of them are feasible for every environment and some are borderline hacking.  I have no desire to visit Facebook while I am at work (I barely visit when I am home) or to visit Myspace ever, but I am fairly active on Twitter.  Most of the time I keep up with it on my phone, but that is not always feasible.

I recently discovered the twitgether gadget for Gmail, and I’ve been using that as a supplement to my phone for following my twitter time line while at work. (I’m not suggesting that you goof off on Twitter at work. But, if you have created a twitter list with your must read/follow people, you can use this to keep up closer to real time.)

As long as you have access to Gmail at work, you should be able to use this twitter gadget to keep up with your tweets, even if twitter.com is blocked by your internet filters. Here’s how to make it work:

1. Turn on the Add Any Gadget by URL feature in the Labs section in Gmail settings. (It is the last feature on my Labs list.) To enable this feature, toggle the “Enable” radio button next to the feature’s listing, and click “Save settings.”
2. Add the twitgether gadget. In the Gadgets section in Gmail settings, you should now have an “Add a gadget by its URL” box. Put this url [http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml] in the box and click the Add button.
3. Reload Gmail.

You should have a twitter gadget in your Gmail Sidebar now. You’ll need to fill in your twitter account info – the gadget will walk you through that process.  You can update your status by using the input box in the sidebar gadget without opening a full screen. Clicking on the link in the sidebar gadget will open a full screen with your twitter timeline, with options for DM, @ replies, favorites, retweets (you can retweet the new and the old way if you like), lists and search. Clicking to open the full screen gadget obscures your Gmail inbox, though.

If you’re like me, and want immediate availability to your Gmail inbox, you can just open another Gmail session in a new browser tab and open the gadget in the new tab.

Anyone else have any “creative” solutions to getting around an internet filter?

If you’ve attended the sorts of churches that I grew up in, you are very familiar with the “prayer chain.” This was a list of people (usually ladies) who formed a call tree to get people in prayer in the event of an urgent need involving a church member.

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of tweets and re-tweets requesting prayer, and people responding with their prayers. Especially today, when a case of mistaken identity reported that a very well-known blogger was in a car accident with his daughter this morning (as it turns out it was another guy with the same name with a daughter who has a similar name to his). The swiftness and the voracity of the twitter deluge that followed was surprising, with people calling for prayer on behalf of someone they really only know online (well, in most cases). It was somewhat counter productive until the correct information got out, but it was very encouraging to see the care and concern that was shown.

I think twitter is a great medium for the prayer chain for a couple of reasons:

• Information moves really quickly on twitter – the request can reach thousands in a matter of minutes.
• 140 characters is enough to send out a request, but not enough to gossip about it (if you know about old school prayer chains, no explanation required).

What do you think? Is twitter the new prayer chain?