5 years. I can hardly believe it’s been that long. The older one gets, the faster time flies by.

High School

7 years ago, I was a senior in high school. 18 years old, doing the things you need to do to get ready for college, having fun with friends, playing drums in pep band, starting on the basketball team and getting ready for the quickly approaching district tournaments, with legitimate hopes of making the state tournament (though we ultimately came up short). That summer I would return to Missouri for AIT, the part of training that comes after basic.

College

So I graduated, went to AIT, worked for a couple weeks, then took off for school, away from my parents, on my own, with a plan for how the next few years of my life were going to happen. I quickly gained new friends, got involved with Campus Crusade, I was having a ton of fun, loving life, and the plan was off to a great start. Then we got to the end of October, and God started to intervene, by way of telephone.

It was almost Halloween, and I was being informed that we were on notice that we could go to Iraq. Not that we were going, just that it was more likely. Being a never ending optimist, I thought ok, but never once seriously believed I’d be going to Iraq.

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

It was Thanksgiving Eve, and I was hanging out in the dorm. The next day I would be going to Jamestown for Thanksgiving dinner at grandma’s house with a lot of cousins. But on this night, I would get another call. “Shawn, we’re going to Iraq.” Reality would slowly begin to set in as I realized ‘my plan’ was being interrupted. So, being a college guy that just received life changing news, I did the only logical thing. Grabbed a buddy, hopped in the car, drove to Grand Forks and didn’t really do anything. Grabbed some food, drove around town, visited some car lots, sat in a Nissan 350Z (my dream car at the time).

So began the journey to Iraq. Like the other students, I took finals early so I could get home and do some final prep for our all expense paid trip to foreign lands.  I enjoyed Christmas with family, getting a lot of presents that I’ve never used (just because I go to Iraq doesn’t mean I’m going to suddenly start playing cards), and receiving a never ending deluge of ‘we’ll be thinking of you.’

Training

Shortly after Christmas, we all met at our various armories, and the 141st Engineer Battalion would proceed to load onto buses, heading for Colorado to train. In true North Dakota fashion, we left in the middle of a blizzard. We stayed at Fort Carson for several weeks, doing desert training in the snow, then made our way across the Atlantic and down into the middle east.

Iraq

We briefly spent some time in Kuwait, where we learned we would not be working as carpenters, but would be driving around looking for IEDs (roadside bombs). We quickly went to work reinforcing  all of our vehicles, because the Army was dealing with a backlog of requests for supplies, and we weren’t about to wait around for stuff to keep us safe. A large group of farmers doesn’t take long to weld up steel boxes, which I was very thankful for during our ambushes as I heard the bullets pinging off it around me.

Long story short, almost all of us came back safely. We went through a lot of ambushes, saw a lot of stuff blow up, did a lot of work around our FOB to help keep people safe, but most importantly, efficiently kept the roads clear for the hundreds of military vehicles that daily passed by.

February 4, 2005

Mom received a phone call at 4 am, as the kind people at a small airport in Maine were gracious enough to show up at 6 am and let us use their phones. “Good morning, Mom, I’m in Maine. I’ll be home soon.” A few hours later we would land back in Colorado, step off the plane to the sight of McDonalds logos everywhere, cheeseburgers for all!

I opted not to come home for 2 weeks leave during our year in Iraq, so they put me on the first plane home. Just in time for the Superbowl, and somebody pulled some strings, convincing some people to come in on the weekend and push through our debriefing period. This kept everything moving and just 4 days later, we would leave Colorado.

Tuesday, February 8, 2005

I had asked my parents not to tell anybody I was coming home, though I think everybody figured it out anyway. I was hoping to surprise people. We landed in Bismarck that afternoon, went through the welcome home line with a bunch of Generals and Majors from several military branches, and of course Governor Hoeven and some of his staff. We reached the end of the stairs and looked down at a large crowd of people there to welcome us home, with signs, balloons, cheers, hugs, handshakes, and tears. I found Dad and we took off. We made a quick trip to the mall to grab some things I wanted, and all the looks from everyone that came with that. When you’re dressed in desert camo, and have a good tan the beginning of February, people in ND tend to notice.

We started the trek home, stopping in Carson on the way. My youngest brother had a basketball game that day, so we stopped in to say hi to him and Mom. I was eager to get home though, so we didn’t stay long, and soon I’d find my other brother and sister at home. For the first time in over a year, our family had supper together, all of us at the table again.

My Plan Still Doesn’t Work

I thought my plan would now resume, finishing college and rolling on to whatever came after that, but God had other plans. College became so boring, and I wasn’t learning anything, so I only did 1 year after we got back. In the span of time since, I picked up 2 new MOSs in the National Guard, and worked a variety of jobs, including farm work, filling anhydrous ammonia tanks, electrician, computer repair, web design, basketball coach, youth leader, internet web app bug testing, and more.

Through it all, I’ve seen God’s presence at my side. I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes, some of which I’m still paying for, and will be paying for a few years yet. College still crosses my mind, but I first need to settle in on a direction to take with it. But through all the ups and downs, my needs have been taken care of. There’s a lot of wants that would have been nice to have, but I’m surviving, one day at a time, and involved in a variety of things that I love.

There are several things floating around my mind for a few years now that I’d love to do, whether God allows me to do them or not remains to be seen. I think some of them will work out, because I continually see developments that are like pieces of a puzzle fitting together, small steps leading up to the grand prize. I have a ton of fantastic friends, both to hang out with every week, and to chat with online, Twitter has connected me to some amazing people from around the world. I see God at work in my life, even as I continue to mess it up. There are great people around me to challenge me and call me out when I do something stupid, or encourage me when I need it most.

Iraq was an interruption to Shawn’s plan. The 5 years since have been crazy, but it seems God has me right where he wants me, and keeps throwing things in front of me where I can put my skill set to fantastic use. I hope everyone reading this can remember that no matter what comes your way, God is working in it, whether you realize it or not. When your whole world gets turned upside down, it might be so you wind up in a certain place, at exactly the right time. For me, it seems to be Bismarck, ND, in position to help a variety of people move forth in things they have started, but were needing someone to lighten the load, to help them take the next step, to encourage them, and inspire. I hope you come along for the ride and help us too.

Verifying my short url was a snap, I adjusted the A Record a few days ago. It was slightly troublesome to verify the url to track, the html file that I downloaded to add to my site didn’t work, so I finally want to adjust the cname. After several agonizing minutes (I’m an anxious geek, I want to play wi SQUIRREL!), it finally verified, I threw a link into Tweetdeck, and yippee! It works, just as advertised.

Sadly, we do not yet have the option to customize the shortened url further, as you can with the regular bit.ly. So for now, I couldn’t take my post about dating conduct and shorten it to something like http://ttdu.de/dating. No big deal for most, but as I roll out some pages with specific content, I’d like to make a shortened url very specific to that page, regardless of title length. Mostly so I could remember shortened urls at a moments notice for tweeting purposes, rather than having to copy and paste again.

Anyway, bitly.pro is here, and I hope you take the time to check it out. I’m excited to shorten links that can be traced to me at a glance.

When you see something with http://ttdu.de/ in it, you can bet it came from me.

Well, that confusion was cleared up in a 2nd email tonight. The Bit.ly Pro site should roll out later this week.

The DNS settings (A-Record or CNAME) detailed in the previous email are steps you can take before the site launches. Sorry if our last email was unclear, and thanks for your patience!

Being the impatient geek that I am though, I learned a trick earlier today. You can start using Bit.ly Pro now. We don’t have access to the official site yet, but we can use our domain.

I purchased ttdu.de nearly a month ago, which now that I’ve changed the A Record, redirects to bit.ly. But if you manually adjust it, it already works with shortned urls. Take my post from earlier this week, Proper Date Conduct: How To Treat Ladies Right. It shortens to bit.ly/9vIf24. But if you swap in ttdu.de for bit.ly, leaving you with ttdu.de/9vIf24, you’ll find that it still goes to the right post. 

There is a catch though. I have found that when putting it into Tweetdeck, it will still take it and shorten it into a bit.ly url. The trick there is to add your custom url by itself, and then add the http:// in front of it.

I still eagerly await the full featured back end, but for now, I can start using my custom url.

I recently went on a date. For those who know me well, you already know that this does not happen often. For those who know me really well, you already know that I wasn’t sure if it was a date when it started.

How can I not know if it’s a date? Well, maybe it’s because I go on so few of them that I’m not totally sure what constitutes a date. Maybe it’s because I have a deep desire to get to know someone before we start dating (but trust me, there was no shortage of communication between us after we first met), and the date happened relatively quickly after we met. How did I realize it was a date? I went with my initial feeling of ‘we’re hanging out,’ but having no oppositon to it being a date if she called it such. Later that night, she referred to it as a date, so I’m going with that. I doubt she realized that’s how I was going about the evening, but I have only one regret about it.

But, internet, I’m getting sidetracked. This is a touchy subject in today’s culture, how should a guy treat a girl on a date? What’s the proper conduct?

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m an old school kind of guy. Open the door for her, properly escort her from place to place (I bring this up because we walked across a lot of ice, don’t let her fall), hug or not (again, old school, take it very slow with the kissing), give her your jacket when she’s cold (her teeth were chattering, so I went out in my t-shirt, despite her objections and insistence I wear the jacket), should I pay for everything myself? But what if she doesn’t want that treatment?

This is where it gets tricky, I think. It seems to me that some girls have been through some stuff in their lives, and are fiercely independent. Maybe they don’t want the door opened for them. They might think they didn’t prepare for the night well enough if I give them might jacket. Some modern women are just very self sufficient, and feel a bit insulted if us guys do too much for them. Others may be insulted if we don’t do those things for them. Others might not care one way or another, and just think that it’s sweet.

My use of social media makes things dicey too. I can’t help myself. I’m a smart guy, so I keep things vague, you’d have to know one of us pretty well to really figure anything out, but I don’t exactly hold back from hopping on Twitter/Facebook and say I’m going out with a girl tonight. Definitely don’t say anything I might regret later. But all my online friends really know is I’m going out, I’m a bit nervous/excited, and she’s smart and pretty.

People I talk to face to face, however, know more. It’s a more personal connection when I can see them, and I know I can trust them. I’m sure she’s told some of her friends about the night too (hopefully good things).

Anyway, how should us guys act on a date? I consider myself a chivalrous guy, and want to act as such, but I don’t want my date to feel uncomfortable either.

Maybe I’m over thinking it. Maybe all guys wonder about this stuff, and we just don’t talk about it. I don’t know, I’m just expressing a lot of stuff that’s been mixing through my head more than usual for about 4 days.

What was my 1 regret from the date? I didn’t start it by praying with her. Say whatever you want about me, I’m counter cultural like that, so deal with it. It’s simply something I decided I wanted to do while reading Joshua Harris’s excellent book, Boy Meets Girl. Fellow believers in Christ should understand, if the rest of the world doesn’t, that’s fine.

Regardless of how you feel about the previous paragraph, please comment here about what you think. Talk about me as much as you want, but if you know who the girl I was out with is, please respect her privacy and leave her name and any identifying details out of the conversation. Just because I live on the internet doesn’t mean everyone else does.

Thanks internet,

Shawn

But around the turn of the century, they changed. Their music became less rock and more worship. Now there’s nothing wrong with worship music, I love it. But some people are great at worship, some people are great at rock, and when a band like the Newsboys transitioned, it was tough. Their shows were still good, but I increasingly found myself excited for the opening acts, and was totally cool with leaving when the Newsboys took the stage. I know I’m not alone, as many others have expressed the same sentiment.

Recently though, they made a change. The lone original member, lead singer, Peter Furler, stepped into a behind the scenes roll, and former DC Talk member, Michael Tait, stepped in as lead singer. I have been anxious to hear how this would impact them, and now we have a glimpse.

The song, Born Again, will be the title track on their new album set for release on June 8, 2010. The video was shot just outside of Tijuana, Mexico, where the Newboys will be taking people to help build homes in the Baja peninsula next summer.

But listen to that sound! It’s peppy, it’s fun, I want to dance to it. Most of all, it has me excited about the Newsboys once again. Tait’s distinctive voice sounds great, the drums are crisp, the bass pulls you in without being overbearing, and the guitar pulls everything together.

If this is a new direction that the Newboys are taking, back into rock and songs you want to jump around to, maybe open up the mosh pit, I’m all for it. Worship music isn’t going anywhere, there’s a ton of great artists leading the charge there, but rock with a Christian theme has taken a hit the last decade. There has been some great music, but the bands don’t seem to last more than a few years.

It seems the Newboys are reinventing themselves, which makes Born Again all the more fitting, for a number of reasons. Now, if I can just get Inpop to send me a few copies of the EP, one for myself, of course, several to give away to readers, and youth group kids in the area.

And I can’t remember the last time the Newsboys had a song that I listened to over and over and over again. It’s all I’ve listened to in the last hour.

Dallas had a great year.

Minnesota had a great year.

I still won’t cheer for Minnesota.

I expect Jerry Jones to keep Philips and Garrett and the majority of coaching staff intact.

The Vikings beat the Cowboys today. Badly. I don’t expect that to happen again soon. We can break it down 37 different ways, but it comes down to this, they scored more points than us. I blame the offensive line.

Romo has had his share of mistakes the last few years, but I still believe the O-Line needs to shoulder more blame than our QB. The past few December’s they haven’t played well. This year they did. Today they let Romo get roughed up, a lot. He didn’t really get a chance to do anything because he was always on the run. As good as Adams has been for us at LT, I think we need a definitive succession plan in place there. He’ll still be our guy for a couple of years, but we need someone to apprentice under him, and be ready to play in case of injury, like we saw today.

Kicker will once again be an issue as well. Folk is already gone, I expect Suisham to not be back. It remains a point of frustration for us.

We featured a lot of new starters on defense this year, and by the end of the season they were coming together and playing well. There were a lot of plays they could’ve done better on today, but I expect an offseason of reflection and refinement will bring them back next year, with an opportunity to set NFL defensive records as a group. I fully expect at least 5 shutouts next year. Some youthful depth at Safety would be pretty spectacular too.

I already mentioned our O-Line still needs some improvement and bolstering, Doug Free is a good start. I anticipate (along with seemingly everyone else) that Jones will be the primary back next year, but Barber will still be heavily featured.

Here’s to next season (in my never ending optimism), as Dallas marches to become the first team to win a Superbowl at home.

Now I just need to figure out who to cheer for through the Superbowl. Stay true to the NFC or pull for the AFC? I guess I’ll be cheering for the Saints now.

I haven’t had a cell phone for a year.

The only reason I think about having a cell phone is lack of wifi.

For the most part, I don’t miss it. The first few weeks without it took a small bit of adjusting. But armed with an iPod Touch and Google Voice, I have stayed connected enough. Sporadic wifi access on the go allows me to check text messages and “read” voicemail (transcription is a wonderful thing).

It helps that I’m not a fan of talking on phones. Never have been. Twitter, Facebook, text messages, email, those are simple, concise methods of communication. Too often a phone call can take 5 minutes or more, even though the purpose of the call was completed within 30 seconds. Also, unless you record your calls, you can’t easily look back at what you said, should you need to remember.

There are many people who still can’t grasp that I haven’t had a phone. I’ve simply had Google Voice set to run through Skype. If you’ve had a phone conversation with me over the last 12 months, I was probably in front of the computer, using Skype. Recently I picked up an Ooma Telo though. Partly because the Ooma has always intrigued me, partly because it will offer me some flexibility for future plans that I hope work out, and partly because I like gadgets. It didn’t hurt that on the day I bought it, Ooma announced new features are coming, like better integration with Google Voice.

How many of my fellow geeks could care less about their phone’s voice capability? Just admit it, you spend all day checking email, Facebook, Twitter, and other social web stuff. I’m finding more reason to have a cell phone now, but only because I want to check into foursquare, and many places don’t have wifi access.

It has been healthy to be disconnected though. I still find myself constantly pulling out my iPod to check things whenever I can, but when I have no connection to the net, I pay more attention to the things around me, I experience more of life. As hard as it may be for us geeks to admit, there is more to life.

So I don’t have a cell phone. I usually don’t miss it. If I get a cell phone again, I have absolutely no plan to include a voice package with it, only data. I challenge you to try it. Live without a cell phone. See how well you can survive.

Besides, that’s $100 every month that I no longer hand over to Verizon.

Time to use that wonderful comment section (where you can simultaneously post your comment to Twitter, Facebook, and other places. You’re welcome). How do you feel about your cell phone? Is it still worth having?

Some of these things are easy enough to change. Time allocation is always in flux, depending upon what projects I’m working on and how quickly they need to be completed. What is bothersome is how much of my time is now spent contemplating, rather than doing. In some regards, contemplation is great, but when you start over thinking things, some stuff needs to change. I need to get back to decision making from the gut, and living with it. Besides, if something isn’t working, it’s easy enough to change later. This is the beauty of CSS.

Creative mojo is tougher. I have come to learn that I work better in open spaces. Quality of work, inspiration, great ideas, efficiency, I just do better in areas I can spread out in a little. That died, a lot, when I moved. My work area is now a small fraction of what it once was. Ever so slowly, I am coming up with better ways to organize things, making it feel bigger than it is, but it’s still not the same. And a north facing window has no comparison to a south facing window. I miss the changing light throughout the day as the sun shifted across the sky.

Most disturbing of all though, are my habits. Before the move, and the blog database that tanked about the same time, I felt like I was finally developing a good groove amongst RSS feeds, Friendfeed, Twitter, and blogging. First off, the move really messed things up. Between not doing the things I was accustomed to before, particularly at Church and Youth Group, and adjusting into a different set of things I was doing (now at a different Church and Youth Group, though a large quantity of the stuff are basically the same tasks).

Twitter habits are particularly bothersome though. I once did a significant amount of link sharing on Twitter. While I still share a lot, much of it is different content, and not as much ‘look at the cool thing I found in my feed list!’ This can partially be traced back to not actively reading feeds like I used to. I find myself spending more and more time on the iPod marking things to read on the computer, and less time actually reading them. This also impacts my Friendfeed use, which has dropped off a cliff. I really like Friendfeed too.

But back to Twitter. I don’t know if it’s the rapid influx of less geeky people, or a lot of people spending different amounts of time on Twitter, at different times of day, or just that I’m tending to use it more earlier in the day than I used to, but the conversation is diminishing. I used to frequently be part of 50 tweet bursts amongst 15 different people, and learn something fantastic in the process. These days any conversation tends to be more in the 15-20 tweet range, and amongst 5 people at best. Definitely a lower value in Twitter this way.

Through it all, I’m realizing that several somethings need to change. Maybe I just need a catalyst to shake me out of a rut, as I type this, changing my Tweetdeck color scheme comes to mind. Maybe removing the Facebook column in Tweetdeck too (and killing most of my Facebook activity in the process).

Any thoughts? How do I get out of a rut?

Anyway, after seeing some stuff throughout the day, I’ve been inspired to make a short list of 10 things that we didn’t have 10 years ago.

1. Gmail – Released in 2004, Google changed the way we email. Do you remember 10 years ago? No way I could go through the amount of email I do, as quickly as I do, with what we used back then.
2. YouTube – Founded in 2005, and since purchased by Google, millions of people have gone on to use video creatively and share it with the world.
3. Hulu – We’ve had easier access to TV shows and select movies since 2007 with Hulu’s arrival. For many, this has provided access to TV shows they didn’t get on cable.
4. iPod – Apple dropped a bomb in late 2001 when they announced the iPod. The music industry will never be the same.
5. PS2/PS3/Xbox/Xbox360/Wii – Gaming has taken a flying leap forward with the releases in 2000/2006/2001/2005/2006. Advancing all the way to high def and physical activity, we’ve come a long way from Pong.
6. Mac OS X – The public beta came out late 2000, and brought a dramatic shift to the user interface of operating systems. This also paved the way for Apple’s transition to Intel processors.
7. Windows XP/Vista/7 – Windows finally broke out and ditched the gray interface this decade, progressing in 2001/2006/2009. Microsoft has truly seen the light of Apple, and gradually makes everything a little easier to use, even if a lot of it has obvious inspiration.
8. Twitter – Only here since 2007, Twitter is changing how people communicate with each other, how businesses communicate with customers, and how social media is done.
9. Facebook – Launched in 2004, they have rapidly grown to become not only the largest social network in America, but cash flow positive too.
10. WordPress – Millions of websites are based on it now, but WordPress wasn’t released until 2003.

What do you love today that wasn’t here 10 years ago? Take a look around, you might be surprised .

Not that this isn’t being worked on. OpenID was started with that very intent. The problem is the general public doesn’t know what OpenID is. If we don’t know what it is, we won’t use it. If it’s too hard to use, we won’t use it. Furthermore, if it isn’t there to use, we won’t use it.

That’s right, a disturbingly large number of sites still don’t provide OpenID as an option. It’s astounding how many blogs out there have a comment system that requires me to have their specific login in order to comment, or at the very least, an alternative option. Blogger is among them, which is sad, because Google should know better.

Echo's Login Options

A universal login doesn’t necessarily have to be one login that is standardized world wide. I’m not sure I’d even want that. To me, a universal login is something that gives me 3 or more very popular options. There may be more, but off the top of my head I can refer you to JS-Kit’s Echo, Disqus, and Intense Debate. For those that have it, they all offer OpenID login. They also offer Facebook and Twitter login. Those pretty much cover it, if you don’t have at least one of those three accounts, you probably aren’t giving any though to commenting on anything.

So maybe universal login isn’t what we’re after. Just an easier login. Much of the blame can be placed on the shoulders of those running websites or blogs. They need to be on top of things and realize that they need easy options. Even with the options I have enabled with Echo, some people still think it’s a bit too much effort. So why would we sign up for another specific service just to leave a comment?