Wray Rives, CPA

When you know they are really not hearing you

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 17:01:00 +0000

When you know they are not actually hearing what you say:

Maybe you read my previous post about my frustration trying to get Office 365 Premium to work. I even resorted to getting into a conversation on their Tech Community Forum.

Here is what I said:

The booking app is essentially useless to me unless it will integrate with my regular calendar. I read on one of your pages that there was an option to connect a staff personal calendar to the booking app, but that option is not available when I edit my staff in the booking app.

Maybe I am not understanding what you intended this app to do, but it seems like basic functionality that you would not double book appointments based on items that were already on my calendar outside of the booking calendar.

Here is the response:

Hello Wray Rives,

You have received a private message in the Microsoft Tech Community community.

Subject: Congratulations! You have a new rank in Microsoft Tech Community
From: Michael Holste
Date: 02-22-2017 08:25 AM

Congratulations, Wray Rives!

As the result of your contributions to the community, you have earned a new rank. Your new rank is New Contributor.

We appreciate your efforts and hope you will continue to be an active member of the community.

Thanks!

The Microsoft Tech Community Team

So basically I say your product does not work as promised but you congratulate me for being a new contributor. They did not hear a word I said.

So it reminds me of my experience with IBM back in the 80's, when I first started working for Pappas Restaurants. They wanted a new computer system in house. PC's were not there yet, so you were looking at some small scale main frame like an IBM System 36.

I called IBM and made an appointment and the next day two guys from IBM come out to our office to discuss our computing needs. This is in Houston Texas and Pappas Restaurants are pretty well known there, so it was not uncommon for companies to be very responsive when the Pappas's were thinking about doing business with you.

I met with these two for about two hours discussing what we wanted to do with a computer system. We covered our basic requirements and software and hardware needs. They left to come up with a proposal and a week later made an appointment to come back and go over the specifications and get clarification on some needs and wants with a promise to come back the next week with their proposal.

Next week as promised the same two guys from IBM show up and the first thing they tell me is "you are in the restaurant business and we only do systems for distribution companies, so we are going to turn you over to our restaurant people".

WTF? When I called to make an appointment I said I was with Pappas RESTAURANTS. There is a big sign on the front of the building that says PAPPAS RESTAURANTS. You guys walked past that sign four times twice coming and twice going and you just now realize we are in the restaurant business.

Like they say, sometimes you can't see the forest because all those trees get in the way.

Microsoft Office 365-Really?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Feb 2017 18:59:00 +0000

I have been a long time user of Microsoft Office apps. I was using Microsoft Office even back in the 80's when they actually had competition in the word processing and spreadsheet software markets.

So lately I have been reading about the new improvements to Office 365, the online version. I will on occasion use the products online, but mostly I pay for the subscription to be able to download and use the desktop products. I do however use a lot of other online apps for things like booking appointments and managing client information. It seems Microsoft is integrating a lot of those functions into the Office 365 business app. Based on what I read online, I could pay Microsoft an extra $50 per year and I would get access to their Booking and Outlook Customer Manager. I am really happy with Acuity Scheduling which I use for online appointment booking and I am satisfied with HubDoc Sales which I use as a customer relationship manager, but I do pay a lot more than $50 per year.

Microsoft has I always though had a good reputation for at least putting out solid products. They may not always be the most cutting edge, but their products are generally solid and work well. So last week I made the leap and cancelled my existing Office subscription and signed up for the new and improved version.

Notice that I did not say I upgraded, because there was no option to upgrade. That should have been a red flag right away that I was going to have to eat the remainder of my old subscription which I prepaid a year for and purchase a new subscription.

Also I am a CPA and I do tax returns. You would think I would learn my lesson about not making any changes to my workflow in the middle of tax season. But work flow seemed like a selling feature to me, because I can get unreasonably frustrated with inefficiencies this time of year and I though going with an integrated solution would relieve some of that frustration.

I guess you see where I was going. I was wrong and Office 365 Business Premium has been a major fail for me. To the point that I seriously question how Microsoft is staying in business if this is indicative of the products they are putting out.

First off the email and calendar absolutely refuse to talk to Google, which is where my primary email and calendar live. Not good. Next, it turns out the Outlook Customer Manager that was supposed to be released back in November and touted as the next great thing, is actually no even really released. Apparently some people have it, but not everyone and you are simply told to be patient as it will eventually show up in an update.

Then you have the booking app. It just flat out does not work. I now have 3 separate businesses set up under the booking app, because I kept thinking I must be doing something wrong. Only to learn there is no function to delete a booking set up once you create it. Isn't that like a basic function. How do you release any product today without a delete, undo or start over functionality?

I can book appointments online, but there is no way to get the booking to look at my Office calendar. It only looks at its own unique calendar. So turning it on would only result in double booking me all day every day.

Doesn't Microsoft still have a lot of money? Why could they not have just purchased a really great scheduler app and put their name on it? There are a lot of them out there. Oh that is whole other problem. They did do that with Skype. Guess what the Skype you get with Office Business is not the Skype you know and love. It is a re-branded version of Microsoft Lync and it will not share information from your old reliable Skype where you have for years accumulated contacts names and numbers.

Seriously Bill Gates, please come back. The guys you left in charge are killing me.

Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 17:07:00 +0000

So I created an Twitter account back in March of 2009. It is interesting to see how the platform use has evolved. For some time there is a subset of folks who are all about having a high follower to followed ratio. I call it the "I am shouting at you ratio", shouters for short. Conversations are supposed to be two way, I listen to you and you listen to me, but if I am the only one listening, then you are just shouting at me.

Obviously celebrities have lots of people who just organically follow them. I think there was actually someone some years ago, who attempted to put a value on having a twitter account with a lot of followers and few that you followed. I suppose that had a lot to do with probably one of the Kardashians who was getting paid to promote things by tweeting about them to her followers.

Then you get to the folks who follow you knowing that human instinct is to follow them back. The thing is they un-follow you hoping you won't notice and so they improve their I'm shouting at you ratio. I play the game to the extent that if someone follows me, I follow them back, but I also actually curate my followers and so when someone un-follows me, I un-follow them. The jokes on the other guy, because he can only follow a certain number of Twitter accounts in a day, so he wasted his count following me.

I also sometimes play this game with myself where I try to predict the ones who are shouters. Like the account where her profile was "YOU FOLLOW ME-I FOLLOW YOU--YOU UNFOLLOW ME-I UNFOLLOW YOU". Oh yea for sure you put it out there like that, she (I say she because there was a picture of a cute girl in the profile-another sure sign that there is actually some short fat dude in China behind the account) is definitely a shouter. Sometimes people surprise you and little miss I FOLLOW was still following me a month later, but at last the short fat dude showed up and today she un-followed me, so I did the same.

Want to follow me? https://twitter.com/RivesCPA

I will follow back.

No doubt an urban legend, but I like it.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:14:00 +0000

I know it is one of those urban myths things that gets passed around as fact so that a bunch of gullible people jump on the band wagon. Not sure what it says about me that I have friends and family who foward this kind of stuff to me, but I did like this idea even if it didn't come from Mr. "Tax me More" Buffett, because I do believe members of Congress are more concerned about getting re-elected than representing our interests.

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple!   The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2012

1.       No Tenure / No Pension.

2.       A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office.

3.       Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

4.       All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

5.       Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all
Americans do.

6.       Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

7.       Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

8.       Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

9.       All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 12/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women.

Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Don't you think it's time?

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!

Change your life

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:21:00 +0000

If you want a life changing experience that your entire family

can benefit from, I highly recommend you look into

Camp Life

Thanks, Wray

Join us and bring a friend to the
Dallas/Ft. Worth Camp LIFE 2013 Recruiting Party

Tuesday, October 30th at 7:00 p.m.

Hilton Dallas Park Cities
Main Ballroom
5954 Luther Lane

Camp LIFE is a powerful summer camp program through Family Legacy Missions International, created specifically to minister to the orphans and vulnerable children of Lusaka, Zambia.

Join our Family Legacy staff, Camp LIFE alumni, and new friends as we celebrate how the Lord is moving in the lives of thousands of Zambian children through the ministry of Camp LIFE.

We hope you will plan to be there and bring friends or family for a night of testimonies and information about this life-changing mission trip!

Please respond to Anne Ferguson at anne@familylegacy.com to let us know how many of your family members or friends will be coming.

Twitter musings

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:27:00 +0000

I have not blogged about Twitter in a while and actually had an interesting experience today that I wanted to share. First some perspective. I got on Twitter in 2009 and currently have a little over nine thousand followers. If someone follows me, I will usually follow them back. The exceptions are accounts that are obvious spam accounts or ones that seem to promote questionable content. Even considering that screening criteria, you will probably find some spam and some questionable tweeters that I follow, because generally I just follow anyone that follows me.

Ok I get that Twitter started out as a tool for people to connect with their friends and family and share all their intimate episodes of their lives, but we all know it has been overrun with folks marketing. With all due respect to the Twitte purist who would like to drag it back to its roots, marketing is why I am there. You might also like to know that the first year I was on Twitter, I picked up 6 new clients who specifically found me on Twitter, so the marketing part of it does work.

Back to the following and being followed part. I guess there are folks who judge the value of your Twitter account by the ratio of followers to people you follow. If you have significantly more followers, it is supposed to indicate you are popular and maybe even stand a chance to monetize your Twitter account. Think Justin Bieber (I just checked and he has almost 27 million followers and he follows 123,000 people himself) To me that seems natural and fair. The ones I don't like are the folks that are trying to game the system. They will follow you and then turn around and unfollow a day or so later and hope to get their follower count up. I am pretty sure the 27M folks that follow Justin did so organically because they care desperately about everything he does.

The other folks are banking on the fact that most people will follow someone who follows them and also that most people will not take the time to unfollow people. Not me. I use a site called Friendorfollow all the time to find the folks who I follow that don't follow me back and I promptly unfollow them. I know the very few people that I have consciously chosen to follow with no expectation that they will follow me back and everyone else better be listening to me if they want me to listen to them.

I am certainly not a purist about Twitter. I use it to market my CPA practice, I am not that great about following what my friends and family post on there and I am certainly not going to lock my account, but for some reason it does bug me these folks that are trying to boost up their followers. You can say that there are bigger problems in the world than Twittersnakes (what I call them) and I would agree, but they bug me for some reason. Hey two months in a row now I have been selected as #1 of the top 100 accounting experts to follow on Twitter. (sorry had to work in a little self-promotion), so I think maybe I have good stuff to say on Twittter and people would benefit by listening in.

Anyway here is the point of my tale. I joined a professional organization (I'm not saying which one) related to my accounting/tax profession. It was a trial thing and I thought it might be beneficial. I guess I would categorize my feelings about this group as lukewarm. They have some good resources and while they don't give me particularly high value information and networking, I did think there was some value there. Given that my trial membership expires the end of this month, I was on the fence if I should renew.

Then a few days ago, they follow me on Twitter. It is such a small thing, but still you feel a little pride when a national professional organization that follows your own profession chooses to follow you, so it felt kind of nice.

Today I log onto FriendorFollow and guess what? The professional organization, has un-followed me. I go and look at their account and it would appear they are a bunch of Twittersnakes! They seem to follow and then un-follow accounts and actually have about 22K followers and only follow about 3K. Guess what, my opinion of them changed immediately . They just lost the chance to get my renewal money over a tiny insignificant thing like un-following me on Twitter, but that is how it works when you sell something.

Are you doing anything that drives away customers or clients, maybe something you don't even consider important?

Sorry about the plague

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:03:00 +0000

Once is a coincidence

I went for my morning walk this morning and a couple of blocks from my house a grasshopper jumps me. He lands right in the middle of my chest and tries to hold on to my shirt. Despite his having the advantage of surprise, I was still able to dispatch him easily.

Twice is suspicious

A few blocks later, I have recovered from the shock of the grasshopper incident and a cicada dive bombs right at my face. I was only able to avoid a direct hit by ducking quickly at the last moment.

The third time it is a definite conspiracy

I was still able to finish my morning walk, but when I was about 2 blocks from my house another cicada takes off right in front of me and promptly files into a tree several yards ahead setting off a huge din of cicada chirping from what sounded like several hundred of his brethren. I decided the cautious choice was to divert my path and avoid the immediate area of the tree.

All of this happening the morning after my post about worms, where I happened to mention my less than cordial relationship with crickets, I realize that all of my attackers are close relatives to the cricket. They have obviously taken offense to the disparaging remarks I made about their family. So far I have been able to avoid any serious injury from these attacks, but it has been solo efforts by what I can only assume are fringe extremist from their community. I do however fear if they ever decide to plan a coordinated assault in greater numbers.

I feel I need to apologize now if I have somehow triggered a new locust plague. In my own defense, I was not even aware that crickets could read.

Early birds and worms, but mostly worms

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:36:00 +0000

I get up early most mornings and walk. I used to run, but finally I was old enough that running seemed like too much effort for too little benefit, so now I walk. I try to start my walk right before sunrise, mostly because I live in Texas and after sunrise you risk melting into the sidewalk.

Walking instead of running means I am going slower and have discovered things happening that I missed before. I have noticed another creature that apparently goes for a walk(crawl) about the same time I do-worms. What is it about a worm that makes them think they can scurry across a sidewalk before it becomes a hot plate you can cook on? First worms don't exactly scurry, it is more like an aimless crawl. I guess worms are not particularly known for their high level thinking skills. Surely if they could, they would learn in worm school to calculate the time it takes for the average worm to cross a three foot sidewalk and compare that to how long it is going to be until the surface of that same sidewalk is like the surface of the sun and pretty much dashes any hope they have of making it to the greener pastures on the other side.

I have no idea how many worms try, but judging from the dried up worm jerky on the sidewalks I stroll, a lot fail. My wife says I am a compassionate guy, but this is the same woman who says I can't dance, so what does she know really? I do seem to have found compassion for the worms that are struggling to cross the sidewalk in the morning. Frequently I find myself stopping to pick up worms that still have some life left in them and put the worm off in the grass. I have no idea if that does the worm any good, judging from their response, the worms don't seem to welcome the help, but I chalk that up more to them not knowing the difference between a goofy guy who is trying to give them a chance and a hungry bird looking for breakfast. I have learned worms are beneficial for our lawns. Apparently a worm's life pretty much consists of eating dead grass, pooping out fertilizer and sleeping. All this time I thought they were just good for putting on a hook to feed to the fish. At least that is how it usually works for me. I put a worm on a hook, drop the hook in the water and a fish eats the worm, so I pull up the hook and put another appetizer on for the fish. Someone told me once you were supposed to pull the fish up too, but that happens so rarely I think they were teasing me. A worm's life of eating, pooping and sleeping actually sounds a lot like my dog and son, so maybe that explains my interest in their welfare.

I am out early, the worms are out early and it actually occurred to me maybe I am depriving the early bird of his breakfast, but then I decided the robins can just eat the crickets. I don't have as much compassion for crickets because unlike the slow moving, benign worm who fertilizes my grass, the cricket seems bent on being an annoyance by chirping at all hours and lying in wait to startle my wife which then means I have to engage in a game of chase with the cricket. God in his wisdom; however, looked at worms and said "ok you are slow and not very smart, but little boys and bass will love you". I believe my compassion for struggling worms is really a reminder that I also need to have compassion for other higher level creatures I encounter during the day, who may be struggling with their own challenges. Except for crickets, I still don't have compassion for crickets. I know Mathew 5:44 says to love our enemies, but I am still working on that.

Mandated Healthcare Insurance is a Bad Idea

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:09:00 +0000

I believe mandated healthcare insurance for all Americans is a bad idea. My opinion has nothing to do with political ideology. I actually do believe the Medicare system is broken and needs to be fixed. I also believe finding affordable healthcare coverage for un-insured and under insured people is a good idea. My opinion is based on my own personal experience and basic theories of economics. Let me explain.

A few years ago as a result of a job change, I switched from being in a highly subsidized group health plan to having to purchase my own private insurance policy. Under the old insurance plan, the most I was going to be out of pocket for drugs was $30. Similarly a visit to the doctor was going to cost me $25 or a whopping $60 if I went to a specialist. It cost me nothing to go to the emergency room. If things were really bad and I had to go to the hospital, I was never going to be out more than $2,500 no matter what the actual cost of the hospital stay was. Preventive procedures cost me nothing. My father had colon cancer when he was in his early 60's, so I got a free colonoscopy way before then.

Now the job change. No more group health insurance, I have to buy my own personal policy. If you want to experience true sticker shock, go shopping for medical insurance in your 50's. It probably helps that I have friends and family in the insurance business, so I have a fairly good understanding of how insurance works. It is a numbers game. Group health insurance is cheaper, because the insurance company gets to lump all those healthy 20 and 30 year old folks in with us old geezers who might actually go to see the doctor. It is cheaper for us old folks, because the insurance company averages out the cost and they know that with the exception of the young women who may end up pregnant, the 20 year olds are not likely to a be net cost to them.

The game changes when the insurance company is just looking at you individually and it cost more to buy health insurance for a 50 something than it does for a 20 something. I know this may come as a shock to you, but insurance companies are in business to make a profit. They need to charge you more in premiums than what they expect you will spend over the long term in actual health care. Ok they average everybody together and look at their entire population of policy holders, but still they basically need to bring in more than they pay out. This is basic economics and totally logical, but still expensive. Thank you EHealthInsurance.com, I was able to find a policy for under $500 per month with a $10,000 deductible. I can afford $500 per month for the peace of mind that if I do ever have some serious health issue, I won't go bankrupt from the medical bills. What a $10,000 deductible and no co-pay really means is that I am going to be paying for pretty much all of my health care costs in a normal year and my insurance is exactly what insurance was intended to be-protection in case something really bad happens. (Ok I am a CPA so here is my tax tip-with the high deductible insurance you can get a Health Savings Account and use pre-tax dollars to pay for your medical expenses)

Think about the insurance on your house. You don't expect your homeowner's policy to fix every maintenance issue you have with the house. You do the little things to keep the house in good repair so little problems don't become big problems. Still you do want the insurance there if a tornado comes through and moves your roof to the next block. That is how I had to start thinking about maintenance of my own body.

I also had to become a better consumer of healthcare and through this I learned that in the past I have done a very poor job shopping for heath care services. I believe by extension, that there are a whole bunch of other Americans out there who are poor consumers of health care also. When something cost you very little, you tend to not care about what you are getting. I know that I spent more time shopping for a new grill, than I did shopping for a physician to do my colonoscopy. My primary doctor gave me a name and number, I called, made an appointment. I spent a week and went to 5 different stores looking for a new grill. Neither item was going to cost me anything because my family was going to buy the grill as a father's day present and the insurance company was paying for the colonoscopy. Guess what, I care that my family got a good deal on the grill, but I care a lot less about the insurance company's money. Plus I knew I would regularly use and look at the grill. I hope to use my colon every day, but I sure don't want to see it.

We have been conditioned to be poor consumers of healthcare, because we have no economic incentive to care. Sure we have a quality of life incentive, but I find that to be very intangible. If we really thought about our quality of life every day, we would be much better about watching what we eat and how much we exercise. As it is, too many Americans just sit on their rears eating McDonald's french fries and wait to have their insurance company pay for the gastric bypass surgery.

The flip side is we have also conditioned our health care providers to not care about cost. After being on the new insurance for a while, my primary doctor tells me he wants me to have a prostate exam. I am not talking the standard digital exam. Let's just say they insert a device in the same place they do for the colonoscopy. The difference is the prostate device is exponentially larger and you are awake the entire time you are being violated. Thankfully, they don't go nearly as deep.

One of my first questions is "how much should this cost?". I know I am paying for this and I want to consider the options and to get a good deal. The doctor is almost offended I even asked the question. His only answer is "your health insurance should cover it". I am not questioning his recommendation, I am going to have the procedure done but the money is coming out of my pocket, so I want to know the approximate cost. This time before I make an appointment I call the urologist who my doc recommended and ask "about how much should this cost?" Scary thing is the people in the office of the person performing this procedure have no idea of even a range of what they are going to charge me for the services I am purchasing from them. Would you go to a restaurant where the waiter just brings you the meal without you even looking at a menu and says "we will send you a bill in 30 days"? No knock on this particular doctor because after shopping around, I was only able to get some general ideas of cost from one clinic's website. Not only has full coverage health insurance conditioned us to be poor consumers of health care, but it has conditioned the health care providers to be poor merchants of health care services. We should be thankful that in general most doctors are pretty decent upright folks who truly do care about their patients, because they certainly don't have much economic incentive to be that way,

I know that the first time I speak with a new client one of their questions is going to be "how much will a tax return cost me?". Even if I can't give them an exact answer, I damn well better have a pretty good estimate of the range of what the cost is going to be. If I don't, they will not hire me. I think we need an incentive for health care providers to be able to do the same thing. Instead we keep taking away the incentive for a health care providers to be smart business people, because we take away any incentive for us to be smart health care consumers. It doesn't cost us anything or it costs us very little, so we don't shop around and consider what we really need and what is the best deal. I know purchasing health care services is a lot more critical than buying tax preparation services and we don't want people to not get the services they need, but our current system also provides no incentive to even do the routine maintenance by taking care of the bodies we have and it certainly does not prompt us to shop for the services before we buy. It is cheaper and easier to buy fast food and have our insurance pay for drugs and medical procedures to "cure" our obesity. Fruits and vegetables and a gym membership cost real money.

I certainly don't have the answer, but it just seems to me that dumping more people into healthcare insurance with no motivation to be smarter about the health care they purchase is not going to make us better consumers. I am a free market capitalist and I have to believe if we were smarter consumers of health care, the basic economics of the marketplace would provide a better solution than government bureaucracy will.

Julie on WFAA

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:27:00 +0000

God is still in the miracle business

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:32:00 +0000

One of the kids I worked with in Zambia, wanted us to meet his mom and pray for her, so on Thursday during Camp Life, we took our entire group and went to visit Blessing's home. Unfortunately when we arrived Blessing's mom had left to go to the market, so we walked around to some of his neighbors and asked if our boys could share the Gospel with them. As two of my boys were sharing the story of Christ, an older lady straight out of Hollywood casting for a witch walked up and sat in the middle of all the action. I had already been warned that witch doctors were very active in this area, so I was not totally surprised, but being an American Christian, witches and witch doctors are not something I deal with every day.

Thankfully the old woman did not make much of a fuss, but I did notice that as we left she was following our group. Just as were were about to leave the area, she yelled something at my Zambian partner. She had asked him would we pray for her friend who was ill. In my mind I am pretty intimidated, because God already has me pretty far outside my comfort zone just coming on this trip. I was about to learn that I really don't need to worry, because he was there in a big way.

We followed the old lady to a small house. Understand house in this part of Zambia means a 7 by 7 space made of 4 walls of concrete blocks covered with a tin roof. Inside we found a young man of about 20 who obviously was suffering from some type of palsy. His hands and feed were curled under and he was unable to control his movements. He seemed to have a constant uncontrollable shake to his muscles. Even my Zambian boys who I thought seemed pretty fearless were somewhat intimidated by the look of this young man, but like troopers they went over and began praying for him. As we were praying, two teenage girls who identified themselves as the young mans sister and cousin came in. The two girls gave us some more background on this boy and in fact they were the ones primarily responsible for caring for him.

He had suffered from his condition his entire life. He had never walked and was essentially unable to do much for himself. The girls had not been able to move him for a week, because they needed the help of some men to get him up. Angel, my Zambian partner was the last one to go over and lay his hands on the young man as we were leaving and when Angel stood up the old woman asked were we not going to give some money to them? Angel told me later that at that moment he felt overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit and he responded "we have no money, but what we do have we freely give". Angel then began to pray the most fervent prayer for this young man and by now I had learned that Zambians know how to pray. They put all their emotion and even their entire body into a prayer.

After a few moments of calling on God, Angel stood up from the young man and said "in the Name of Jesus Christ, I command you to stand" and I am here to tell you that before my own eyes, this young man, who had never walked stood up. Angel then just began repeating over and over again "in the Name of Jesus Christ walk, in the Name of Jesus Christ walk" He continued this with all of us following behind until I looked around and we were standing outside the young man's room. This young man who had never stood up by himself much less walked had just walked 10 feet on his own and was standing on his own outside his home. I asked his caretakers to get his mat and we sat the young man down outside his room. I know our entire group was wide eyed and I could certainly see that the young man's care takers were in shock and crying over what we had just seen.

I think we all stood there for a moment not knowing what to do or say and not sure we could even let it totally sink in what we had just witnessed, because what we witnessed was a true miracle straight out of the New Testament. How many times have I asked God for a "burning bush". I am here to tell you be careful what you ask for, because actually witnessing a miracle like this forces you to decide if you really believe what you claim to believe. I look back now and think how easy it was to have this intellectual belief in an all powerful Lord, but it is pretty intimidating when you actually witness Him working right in front of your eyes.

Zambia

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:49:00 +0000

I spent the past 2 weeks in Zambia Africa. It was part vacation, my wife and I spent 4 days in Livingstone Zambia at Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world. The second part of our trip was a sort of mission trip to work with disadvantaged kids in Zambia. As wonderful as the falls were and as amazing as all the wildlife was, the kids in Lusaka were what made the trip worthwhile.

We went with an organization called Family Legacy Missions International. My oldest son, Josh, actually works on staff for them and while this was my first trip, my wife was going for her fourth time. I had a pretty good idea what to expect from Zambia, because I have heard all the stories from Julie and Josh about the kids in Zambia.

To say that mission trips are not my thing would be an understatement, but what I had to learn on this trip is it really is not about me or what I think my limited abilities may be. What God expected from me was just to show up and He was more than able to take care of the rest of the details, which he did in a big way. I could probably go on for pages about my experience in Zambia, but in order to not loose you the audience I want to focus on just a couple of important things.

1. I learned that we don't take the devil serious to our own detriment. In America, we have turned satan into a cartoon character and think we have him beat. The truth is he has effectively sidelined what is supposed to be the most powerful Christian nation in the world, just by allowing us to believe we already won and so we become apathetic. I have witnessed the real deal in action and I am here to tell you that you should be very scared. He certainly is no cartoon character.

2. I learned that it really is NOT about me. God has absolutely no need to glorify my abilities, all he needs me to do is show up somewhere. Preferably somewhere so outside my comfort zone that there is no doubt who will be honored when something awesome happens and if you show up something awesome WILL happen.

3. Finally, I learned that no matter how bad we think things are here in the US, we have no idea what really doing without means and no matter how hard we try we have misplaced our priorities. I had the good fortune to meet people who truly have nothing and yet they are happier than some of the most financially successful folks I know. If you think the "American Dream" is where it is at, I challenge you to get outside yourself for a week and find out what really matters.

And read the next 10 pages to learn more about "My boys".

Alick

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Alick lives in 3 rooms with no electricity with his mom, dad, 4 sisters and brother. Alick attends community school where he is in 5th grade. Math is his favorite subject and he wants to be a lawyer when he grows up.

Alick worries about having time to study for school, because he has to help his brother work to earn money for the family. A sponsor would insure Alick has the opportunity to stay in school.

Samuel

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Samuel lives with his mom, dad, 3 brothers and 4 sisters in 2 rooms with no electricity. He is in seventh grade at a community school. Samuel's favorite subjects in school are English and social studies. He would like to be an accountant when he grows up.

Samuel worries about being able to pass his exams and stay in school to complete his education.

John

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:21:00 +0000

John is 15 and in 6th grade at community school. John lives in 2 rooms with his mom, dad, brother and sister. His favorite subjects are science and social development studies. John worries because he sometimes has headaches and they affect his vision.

John missed the bus the second day of camp and around 10 o'clock, I saw John walking across the field to our group. He was helping his mom carry water to their house when the bus came, but he had such a desire to come to camp that he walked 15 kilometers from his house. When I told him that was a long way, he said that he walked it all the time because his church was close by and sometimes that was the only way he could get to church. What do you say about a 15 year old who will walk 9 miles to get to church, except that is a good kid! John currently needs a sponsor to complete his education.

Gift

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:20:00 +0000

Gift is an extremely bright young man who is in 7th grade at community school. Gift lives with his mom's brother and does not know where his mother and father are as he has not seen them in several years. Gift lives with his uncle and his wife and their two younger children. His favorite subjects in school are math and English. Gift want's to be an accountant when he grows up.

Despite not knowing where his parents are, Gift has a wonderfully positive spirit and the smile you see in his picture is a permanent fixture on his face. A sponsor would allow Gift to get an education and insure he keeps that smile and positive attitude.

Levy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:18:00 +0000

Levy lives with his mom, dad 2 sisters and 3 brothers. Levy is in 4th grade at community school and his favorite subject is math. Levy wants to be an accountant when he grows up.

Levy typically only eats one meal a day, because that is all his parents can afford. Levy needs a sponsor to insure he stays in school.

Victor S

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:18:00 +0000

Victor S. lives with his mom, dad 3 brothers and 6 sisters. Victor is in 6th grade at community school, where his favorite subject is science. Victor would like to be a pilot when he grows up.

Victor worries because he has a recurring dream where evil spirits are trying to get him to drink from a cup. Witchcraft and satanism are very common in Zambia. I would love to find an American to sponsor Victor, so he can have staff at Family Legacy Missions to pray for him and provide him a safe place when evil spirits are attacking him.

Joseph

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:17:00 +0000

Joseph lives with his mom, step dad, 3 brothers and 2 sisters. Joseph attends community school where he is in 7th grade. His favorite subject in school is science.

Joseph is lucky enough to be sponsored by an American. That sponsorship provides a group of discipleship leaders who work for Family Legacy Missions and live in the neighborhood where Joseph lives. It also supports a Community Resource Center which is a safe place for Joseph to go and seek help or even if he just needs a trained Christian counselor to talk to.

Blessing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:16:00 +0000

Blessing is in 7th grade at community school. His favorite subject is science and he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. Blessing is worried because his family lives in very poor housing and his family, especially his mom, is chronically ill.

Because Blessing lives in one of the worst parts of his neighborhood, we went to visit his house to see how his family was doing. Blessing lives in 2 rooms with no electricity with his mom, dad, 2 brothers and 2 sisters. Witchcraft is very real in Zambia and all Blessing asked us for was to pray for protection for his family, because witchdoctors are very common in the area where he lives. Blessing needs a sponsor.

Victor K

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:11:00 +0000

Victor lives with his mom, dad, one sister and 4 brothers. Victor is an amazingly sweet and sensitive young man. Victor is in the second grade at a government school where his favorite subject is science.

Victor is a very sensitive boy who worries a lot about his family. I would love for Victor to have an American sponsor so he can spend more time at the Family Legacy CRC where he can be free to just be a young boy.

Jonathan

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:10:00 +0000

Jonathan is in 2nd grade in a government school. He lives in 2 rooms with no electricity with his mom, dad 3 sisters and 2 brothers. Jonathan enjoys art and theater at school and wants to be a soldier when he grows up, so he can protect his family. Jonathan is 13.

Jonathan is a very quite young man with a tremendously sweet spirit. Jonathan has been to Camp Life before, but has never had an American that would sponsor him .

Tokyo Tweeters

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:31:00 +0000

My middle son left for Tokyo last week. One of his best friends is living in a small town in south Japan, Oita. He is teaching English and I suppose generally corrupting the minds of young Japanese children. I noticed that around the time he went to Japan, I started getting all these Twitter followers from Asia. I am pretty sure there is no correlation, but I followed the first few back.

After I followed two of them, the next day I got almost 10 more. I am starting to think this must be some kind of spam efforts to build a follower list, so I didn't follow these back and sure enough I went a few days with no more followers from Asia. Then I get one more and just to experiment I followed him back. Sure enough the next morning I had a long list of followers whose posts were all in Kanji.

People try to do weird things in Twitter to boost their popularity and gain followers generally to advertise something. The funny thing is even if these folks are trying to get me to read their information, I have no idea what it says.

株式会社SpinWonder(4life)代表取締役ソーシャルメディアプロデューサー Twitter Ustream Facebook YouTube 外苑前～青山一丁目～麻布十番ミラノカプリカルヴァドスクルージング 1級小型船舶操縦士免許 NHK世界ふれあい街歩きアモーレカンターレマンジャーレ！

I understand SpinWonder and Twitter Facebook and YouTube. I can read the word Ustream, but am not sure why it is on here. The rest is just pretty pictures to me.

Sorry, I didn't get the message.

More on my dad and the state pen

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:44:00 +0000

I have mentioned earlier that my father at the tender age of four was a regular visitor to the Mississippi State Pen. He spent most of one summer there and a group of the inmates built him a small wagon that he could ride around the property. They borrowed a female goat from the state farm heard and rigged up a harness so the goat could pull my dad and his wagon around the property at Parchman.

As the summer drew to an end, the inmates wanted to allow my father to take home his wagon and the goat that had become more of a pet to him. The warden told them that he really did not care about the wagon as it had been built from scrap iron that was worthless; however, the goat was property of the state. The farm actually did raise much of the food that was consumed by the inmates that lived there. Of course my father was quite distraught that he would not be taking his new pet goat home with him, but the inmates who had built the wagon came up with a compromise that was acceptable to the warden. The inmates agreed to skip the meat at their next meal in exchange for the goat.

Of course my father was very excited to have a new pet goat, but his excitement doubled when the next spring his female goat came up pregnant meaning that he would now have two pet goats. In fact the nanny goat gave birth to a new kid, but unfortunately at about three months of age the baby ran away. My father in fact remembered that over the next several years his goat would become pregnant quite often. Unfortunately every new goat invariably ran away from home at about 3-4 months of age. Each time my dad was distressed to loose this new goat, but he always knew that his mom would try to cheer him up by making his favorite meal of ribs for dinner.

IE no longer supported

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:28:00 +0000

If you have been using the internet for any length of time, you know that there once was a time when Internet Explorer was the standard for web page browsers. IE had such a huge market share of the web browser market that every page on the web was built to be compatible with IE and if it worked with other browsers then that was good from them.

Firefox was the first modern day contender that actually started taking any kind of market share from IE. (Don't leave me comments about Netscape or any of the other pre-IE browsers) It's all about the commercial application and when Microsoft released IE as part of the operating system Windows 95+ in 1995 that was the real start of web acceptance by the general public and not just us techno-nerds.

Fast forward to 2011 and there are other (I would argue better) web browsers around. The top of the heap being Firefox and Chrome, but IE just because it comes standard with Windows OS is still a force in the browser wars. I can remember when FireFox added an IE compatible tab to insure their browser worked with everyone's web page. Imagine my surprise today to get the following email:

Internet Explorer (IE) no longer supported

For now, we have discontinued support for ALL versions of the browser, Internet Explorer (IE). IE has always given us fits when it came to compatibility issues. It was time to rethink our position. We have decided that the time it takes to make our code compatible with IE would be better spent adding and improving the core functionality of the Bee. Adding new features that would help you, our customer, grow your business.

If you are using IE today to access the Bee, please don't be alarmed. Downloading a compatible browser is easy and straightforward. Here's a list of three we recommend. Just click on the link to go to the download page. You'll be up and browsing in minutes!

Firefox
Google Chrome
Safari

Happy browsing!

Scott Miller
Founder/CEO
Scott@getthebee.com

The Bee is an online bookkeeping/accounting application and apparently they have been having problems getting their software to work correctly with IE. Sorry this was news to me as I rarely use IE, so I have never had a problem with their site.

Some day we may look back to January 2011 and realize this was a tipping point for Microsoft and Internet Explorer.