Blog Relocating Again

I've relocated my blog once more. Hopefully this will be it's final dwelling place.

http://blog.billglick.com/

Time Tracking with Twitter

At work recently we've been trying to get a better handle on how we use our time. My goal has been to document my time usage in 15 minute increments throughout the day. But, obviously this could quickly become a tedious task that is counter productive.

Yesterday I had an idea to simplify this task. I setup a new Twitter account specifically for this task. Then I downloaded a Twitter client and setup a cron entry to automatically open the twitter client every 15 minutes throughout my work day. So now documenting my work day is pretty unobtrusive. And if my coworkers ever want a glimpse of what I'm up to, they can simply subscribe to my Twitter feed.

I've been auditing my work time in a similar manner for the past couple of weeks and have found this extremely valuable. I'm finding 4 main benefits:

1. I feel pressured to be more productive so I actually have something to include in my entries. It's a kind of accountability.
   
2. I can quickly review my week so that preparing status reports for management is easier.
3. I'm seeing areas where I get bogged down and am unproductive, as well as times of day that I'm simply wasting time or goofing off.
4. I have a historical log so that I can diagnose issues down the road. Lots of times we'll see where one of our systems started having problems on a certain date or time; and now it's easier to recall what might have changed during that particular time frame.

Have you ever found it useful to track your work and time in this much detail?

Do you have any other creative uses for Twitter.com?

It's Baby Week

It's hard sometimes being single and an only child. So, forgive me while I dote on my latest first cousins, once removed.

Will Eugene Glick
born November 3, 2007 at 7:31p
weighed 7.13 lbs and 20"
parents: Chad & Denise Glick


Kinsey Grace Jarrett
Born November 6, 2007 at 9:55a
8 lbs., 20 1/2 inches
parents: David & Kristin Jarrett

Mac Tip - Better Screen Captures

Often times I need to grab a screen capture from my Mac. For years I've been doing a Command+Shift+3, which grabs a screen capture of my entire desktop.

But, I generally just want a screen capture of my current application window. Well, that's still relatively easy... just do a Command+Shift+4, SpaceBar, and then click on the window you want to save.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I'm trying to be teachable.

Here's a link to some other basic OS X keyboard shortcuts.

What are some of your favorite keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X?

Giant Crosses

So, I've seen 3 giant crosses along US interstates over the past couple of years. I've been curious about them and recently someone at church was talking about them. So, I decided it was time to find out about them. It turns out the one closest to my house is the tallest.

Effingham, IL

• height: 198 ft
• built: 2001
• satellite map
  

Groom, TX

• height: 190 ft
• built: 1995
• satellite map
  
• some cool photos

Edmond, OK

• height: 163 ft
• built: 1996
• map and details
• satellite map
  
• This is at one of the LifeChurch.tv campuses that my church is networked with.

Castro Valley, CA

• 3 Crosses, side by side
• height: 100ft
• satellite map

And for a little context, the tallest cross in the world...
Valle de los Caídos

• near Madrid, Spain
• height: 500 ft 152.4-meters)
• built: 1940-1959

Have you seen any of these in person OR do you know of other huge crosses like this?

Coming next... Colossal Statues of Jesus. (not really)

Blogger Web Stats Reporting

So... Google owns Blogger, right? That's the same Google that also operates Google Analytics, the awesomely incredible web statistics reporting tool.

So, why can't Blogger tell me any web statistics about who, if anyone, reads my blog? Hmmmm...

Blogs I Read

In response to Dave's blog entry, I decided to detail some of the top blogs and RSS feeds that I read each day.

God Related:

• Grace Community's blog & podcast
• swerve.lifechurch.tv
• Perry Noble
• Monday Morning Insight
• digital.leadnet.org
• Terry Storch
• Church Marketing Sucks

Leadership:

• Guy Kawasaki

Geek Stuff:

• The Unofficial Apple Weblog
• Digg
• Slashdot

Several Friends & Family

with news about children, health battles, and life in general

General News:

• News Gazette
• FOX News
• Champaign Weather

Do you have any blogs or RSS feeds that you recommend?

ChMS, SMS, and Maillists for Urgent Communications

I'm not sure if I stole this idea, but as winter weather is only months away, this seems like a good idea to pursue. Basically, how can we make use of SMS text messaging?

Mass SMS text messaging seems useful for last minute announcements. One thing that pops up every couple of years is the need to cancel a church event due to winter weather. It'd be cool to have an easy way to SMS everyone we have a cell phone number for with this sort of announcement.

SMS alerts shouldn't be that hard. Here's what I think we need to do:
1) We should be able to export all cell phone numbers from our ChMS system.
2) Then we can remove all characters from the cell phone data that isn't numeric.
3) Append '@teleflip.com' to each cell phone number to get an email address for each number. (Any other email to SMS gateway service could work instead of teleflip.com.)
4) Then load the list of SMS email addresses into a mailing list.

I already have some other mailing lists that I auto populate from our ChMS, so this should be relatively straight forward. This could be scripted to update the mailing list every week.

So, if an urgent church wide announcement needed to be communicated, someone could simply email the sms mailing list and most everyone should be notified in near real-time.

Does your church make any similar use of SMS for any communciation?

What kind of plans do you have in place for urgent communications like this?