New GM Scott Pioli… acquired from the New England Patriots himself, has traded for Mike Vrabel, linebacker, and now QB Matt Cassel, the Patriots “Franchise Player.”
Obviously the Patriots believe Brady will be 100%, and they have their eye on someone in the draft. That number 3 position was evidently too much to pass up.

Guess I’m rooting for the Kansas City Patriots this year.

I’m told the owners are great people, and they really care about helping teens find the right college to go to. They are a principal and a teacher…

With SugarCRM, I am becoming more organized and efficient while servicing my customers much better. I dig it.

But… I need to learn more. I’m not in a financial position at the moment to spend over a grand a class for CRM training, so I’m giving SugarCRM for Dummies a try. I’ve really liked the Dummies series for other things I’ve needed to learn about (in fact, that’s how I first learned to make web pages… html for dummies!).

At any rate, SugarCRM could be used for churches, small or mid-size businesses, independent contractors, or… for anyone who needs to track information about customers and organize tasks and responsibilities.

I’m trying to learn more about sales forecasting and such, but even without understanding that facet I’m extremely happy with what I’ve been able to get out of SugarCRM.

Oh, and it’s free for the community version. I love Open Source!

I’ve recently received an education on identity theft. Fortunately, it is not because my identity was stolen.

Burn out hit me at the end of 2008, and I just could not continue to have most of my work time be spent on a computer. I’m not one to spend 15 minutes talking to a client for every 10 hours of work by myself at a computer. I just can’t do it any longer.

So I’m going back to a business I was extremely happy with, and I only left because of HUGE life changes (divorce, going back to college, etc…). Once I graduated from college, I started doing web dev and pursuing acting and did not give my former business much of a thought.

Now I’m transitioning back into it full-time, and they’ve added a new product. Identity Theft Shield. It’s pretty amazing, but I thought people who paid for identity security products were just paranoid… until I started getting my education.

According to the FTC, half of all Americans in 2007 (2008 numbers not in yet) had their information compromised due to 446 major corporations having their information stolen. Just today, I see an article about another gigantic security breach.

“St. Louis-based Heartland Payment announced yesterday that hackers gained access to the machines it uses to process roughly 100 million credit card transactions every month. The company handles transactions for 175,000 separate businesses and bills itself as having “the highest standards” and “the most trusted transactions.” Despite that, the company has no idea how long its systems were being monitored, saying only that it was “longer than weeks.”

Full Article: Millions of Credit Card Numbers Nabbed in Payment System Breach

So as I said before, I sell an identity theft product. So take this information as coming from someone who could make a few bucks by pointing out such things.

I can honestly say whether you buy it from me or not, get Identity Theft coverage!

And my short little sales bit is this: If you are a victim of identity theft, we have experts which do the restoration for you. This is much better than the monitoring services your credit card companies, banks, or tv advertisements are pitching to you.

Contact me if you are interested in this low-cost product

Yes, there were some good years under Carl Peterson. Unfortunately for Chiefs fans, success in the NFL is about Super Bowls… the Chiefs have not appeared in one under Peterson. Not one in his twenty years. With such a tremendous record of wins-losses in the Peterson era, the Chiefs are either the unluckiest team in football or the GM has failed to put together the personnel to even get to the big game.

His biggest flaw has been his choice of coaches. With the exception of Dick Vermeil, not a single coach who has headed up the Chiefs under Peterson has ever been part of the Super Bowl. Vermeil had the best chance of getting there, but he also failed to put together a complete team.

As a Chiefs fan for the entire Peterson era, all I can say today is, “Hallelujah!”

Proposed on a secluded beach outside of Malibu last night.

More details to come… No date set, yet, but it could be as early as the end of summer.

Edited: Sorry, this was an April Fool’s joke. I posted a comment saying “read the date” when my friend Mike fell for the ruse, but I realized if you don’t read the comments, you’d still think it’s legit. This was posted on April 1, originally.

Sorry to be a pain

Yes, I won. I went to court on principle. I came to a complete stop before turning right on red, and I was not going to pay the ticket unless I was found guilty at trial.

And the cop showed up. Nobody wins when the cop shows up, right?

Here’s what happened in court:

The officer recounted what happened, but he left out that he was in a conversation with two other police officers while he was monitoring the intersection. That opened up the opportunity during the questioning phase for me to ask if he remembered what he was doing right before he observed my car turning right. He did not remember. I asked him if he remembered our conversation when he pulled me over. He did not. I then stated perhaps that conversation would refresh his memory, and I asked if he remembered asking me why I would go through a red light like that (turning right without stopping) when there were a group of police officers on the corner. The officer was honest and admitted he did remember and that there were three officers on the corner. I asked him if they were having a conversation, and he said, “Probably.”

Then it was my turn. I stated what I honestly believe. The officer looked up after I had come to a complete stop at the limit line and assumed I never stopped. The officer had written a nice little diagram of the intersection on the whiteboard in the courtroom, and I used his diagram to show that because another street branched off at that intersection, the limit line sits back even further than it normally would at a standard intersection. Basically two major streets and a third side street all come together at that intersection.

The limit line being placed so far from the intersection lended to the perception that I had never stopped. When in fact, I stopped at the limit line and accelerated to where I would turn slowed a tad to make sure it was okay to proceed, then accelerated quickly through the turn.

I stated that I believed the officer was honest, and he ticketed me based on what he saw, but he was in a conversation and not watching the whole time. The judge… agreed! He pronounced me not guilty, and I walked out of court a happy man.

To the officer’s credit, he could have lied and said even though he left out he was in a conversation, he was still watching the whole time. Instead, when he had a chance to respond, he just said, “The people rest.”

And I saved $400 by seeking justice. I wanted my day in court. I got it, and I won!!!

It appears that Van Nuys Superior Court Commissioner Martin Wegman thinks I deserve the chance to be innocent…

I posted earlier about the possibility that I could not afford to be “not guilty.” It was going to cost me $381 to have my day in court. Evidently, the L.A. Superior Court thinks it is okay to coerce you into pleading guilty by offering you six months to pay a reduced fine (almost always reduced when you go before a commissioner), but if you want to plead not guilty you have to pay the full amount of the fine within seven days and then you get it back if you win your case.

Innocent until proven guilty? Hmmm…

But when I went back to court, seriously considering pleading guilty because I felt I could not afford to tie up almost four hundred dollars until my trial (and then who knows how long it takes them to send me a check…), I asked to be allowed to come to the trial based on my own recognizance (they call the fine amount “bail” to justify taking the full amount before you even get to trial).

Commissioner Wegman said because I showed up to court the first time and the second time I was given a new date without problem, he didn’t feel I was a risk to not show up and granted my request for O.R.

I just did a web search for Martin Wegman, and he seems like a decent guy. Here’s Martin Wegman’s personality profile.

I went near the end, so I heard him deal with quite a few people. He kept the mood of the court light but still professional, and he was very fair. The only requests he denied were from people who had continually failed to appear for court dates or who had done some other stupid things which negated his normally generous demeanor.

I’m sure it’s a tough job being a superior court commissioner, and I’m glad Martin Wegman is on the job in Van Nuys. Still have issues with the system, but at least I know there’s a possibility of justice even if you don’t have the money.

So right now, I’m downloading the Killers new album from Amazon, for FOUR DOLLARS cheaper than the iTunes version. Better portability, better price, better deal.

If you haven’t, you should really check out the MP3 downloads from Amazon. Click on the Killers link in this post, and you’ll also be able to search for tunes in MP3 instead of a DRM’d format.

My article, “Church Restructure” appears on page 153. This is the first time I’ve been published in book form, though I’m close to completing a proposal which should get accepted rather quickly.

Of course, you could scour The Ooze on your own and read all of these articles online. Call me old-fashioned, but there’s still something nice about holding a book in your hand and turning the pages every once in awhile. Then, of course, there’s the nice benefit of highlighting which I don’t suggest you try on your computer screens.

There’s a great collection of articles from the first few years of the website. It’s at the same time nostalgic and profound. I really enjoyed flipping through and even seeing titles I read before I was the General Editor of TheOoze! That means they’re more than five years old…

It wasn’t until I opened the book that I realized there’s a volume 2 slated for publication already. If you’ve had an article published on TheOoze in 2007, you may just find yourself a book published author.

Out of the Ooze: Unlikely Love Letters to the Church from Beyond the Pew

I’ve tried it out, and it works great. Try it, and even if you’re using Akismet, you’ll notice you don’t have the tons of Akismet spam to go through… if you go through it at all.

Eliminate comment spam with wp-spamfree!

I’m trying to get on an earlier flight to Los Angeles right now. I think I’ll be on, but so far just standby.

Gareth Higgins and I got bumped to the earlier flight in the Bahamas. We jumped at it to make sure we got off the island. I don’t want to be around when a hurricane hits, that’s for sure!

One of the most important things about Soularize is that we don’t start off with the keynotes and workshops. Instead, we hang out and put faces and stories behind the ideas. It is much more difficult to judge someone about their beliefs when you have to look them in the eyes and have some sort of a relationship with them.

We are moments away from the opening keynote session now, and the conversation is great while we are at the church where most of the conference takes place. In fact, the conversation is too good for me to keep typing, even with the great wi-fi here…

Regular updates from Soularize will add some content to this poor, neglected blog…

I said I’d give Herm Edwards a year when he started. I didn’t like him. They made the playoffs (though losing one more game than the year before), and he blew it.

Now this year, he has successfully dismantled one of the most potent offenses in the NFL, and his defense hasn’t made up any of the difference.

Pathetic.