Rain Rain Go Away

It's been an incredibly rainy day today. It wasn't raining when I first got up this morning, but started soon after. There have only been a couple of lulls, but the ground here certainly can't keep up. Lucy refused to leave the overhang of the door to go outside, but she'd been heading to the door for about 30 minutes, so I took her out with an umbrella. Right now I'm thankful for huge umbrellas and plastic birki shoes. I managed to stay fairly dry, can't say the same for Lucy. While I was up to my ankles in water I thought taking some pictures would be good. The street in front of our house is under a couple of inches of water, and the river that runs around the back of our house and down the side to the front is certainly contributing. 

You can't really see it in the first picture, but the second shows the lake by our upper patio nicely. There's also a great little waterfall pouring into the river that runs from the side of our house to the street. The standing water is about 4" deep much to the dog's dismay. 

Leadership Reminders

Last night we had our summer worship kickoff. Overall I think the night went really well. We're using OnePrayer materials for the summer using four of the messages, small group materials, etc. The prep leading up to the worship was a bit more chaotic than I would have liked. Honestly, it was a lot more chaotic than I would have liked. I've had a bit of time to reflect on the night and I think most of the headache was probably more my doing than any other factor. Ultimately leadership plays a huge factor in the success or failure of any endeavor.

So here are some leadership lessons I was reminded of last night:

1. Be Specific - I made the mistake of asking people to help coordinate the event without asking them to do specific jobs. When I asked people to help I also let them know when we would be starting setup before the event. I neglected to tell people when they needed to arrive. If people don't know when you need them to be someplace they'll get there when it's convenient rather than when  you need them. 
2. Confirm Commitments - I had several people tell me they would help us when we initially asked, but I didn't follow up on the day of the event. That leads to a lot of unneeded stress. I think most everything would have been resolved if on Monday or Tuesday I'd asked people to confirm they would be at the event to help and if I'd have repeated their confirmation, "We'll see you at 4 tomorrow night."
3. Plan Redundancy - Realistically, sometimes people don't show up to serve. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for not being there, sometimes people forget, sometimes you get a lame excuse. In any situation though the work needs to get done. My redundancy plan last night consisted of frantic phone calls to get people to fill in for various slots. In the future I'm going to plan to have a couple of people scheduled to fill in when an unexpected need arises either because of an unplanned circumstance or additional people requirements.
4. Overcommunicate - Vision leaks. It has to be repeated. This is probably one of my biggest failures recently. I make the assumption that because I know the vision and I'm passionate about it that everybody else is as sold out for what we're doing as I am. Honestly the leadership team is behind the vision. Where I need to improve is to make sure that I effectively communicate how the vision relates to every ministry opportunity.

All things considered last night went off well. I didn't get to hang out and chat with folks as much as I would have liked because I was paying attention to last minute details. Thankfully Sarah, the Soles, and a couple of other people came through at the last minute to take care of things I wasn't able to do. I'm especially thankful that Sarah puts up with so much of this sort of stuff from me.

One Brush to Rule Them All

We're working on a new site for our college ministry which is launching in the fall. Zak's been doing the design for the site and after several years I've finally convinced him that Fireworks is a great tool for web design. He did a template redesign for the Youth section of our site last week and has become a new Fireworks convert.

This week however, neither of us is a big fan. We wanted to use some design elements that can be easily handled by a Photoshop brush. The problem is that the workflow for using those brushes in Fireworks is horrible. We would LOVE to use Photoshop .abr brushes in Fireworks, other apps too.

Here's the current workflow:

1. Start a design for a web page in Fireworks
2. Realize your banner would be better if you used a couple of Photoshop brushes
3. Discover that FW doesn't support add-in brushes
4. Open PS, design a banner graphic in Photoshop using brushes
5. Import the banner into Fireworks
6. Update the page layout for the new banner
   
7. Realize the banner needs an update
8. Go back to PS, update the graphic
   
9. Reimport into FW - basically starting over with the banner in FW
10. Repeat as needed
11. Slice up your design to convert to HTML
12. Go back and make tweaks based on feedback - leaping back to step 8

Here's what I'd like (either of these would work). Easy solution might be for editing capability in a similar fashion to what Illustrator will allow for a linked/embedded image. Ideal solution would be for .ABR brushes to be supported in as many Adobe apps as possible. Who wouldn't love to have PS brushes available in Flash, Fireworks, Illustrator, and maybe even After Effects in addition to Photoshohp?

This ideal solution has prompted this graphic and shirt designs.

Indiana Jones - Bleck

I really wasn't expecting much from the latest installment in the Indiana Jones franchise. After reading Hershey's review I was expecting even less. A group of us from licensing school decided to go see the movie last Friday night to end our week together. A couple of people liked it, several of us seriously considered getting up and leaving.

I knew it was going to be cheesy - heck we wanted it to be cheesy. After about five minutes the cheese quota was pretty well covered. The only part of the movie that really felt like an Indiana Jones movie was the classroom scene at the start of the movie. It had the right look, the right type of editing, the right dialogue. The rest of the movie was just off base.

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't suffered through it yet, but the entire premise is a but too much for my tastes. I'm a SciFi fan, I'm an action/adventure fan, I'm a historical thriller fan, but they can't all go into one movie. It felt as if the plot was composed of a series of brainstorming sessions thrown together. "I wonder if..." and nothing got left out of the plot.

My friend Lisa joked about it sucking until they blew the world up at the end. That probably would have been an improvement. 

Sushi at Kubota - Japantown, San Jose, Ca

A group of us went out last night to Japantown in San Jose.  It is one of only three such communities left in the US (there were more than 40 before the internment of Japanese during WWII). At a tip from Rob Brooks-Bilson we went to Kubota for dinner. 

Several of us ordered the chef special sushi, which is essentially all you know before it shows up. This is a picture of my plate, although I'd already eaten a couple of pieces. One measure of good sushi is whether or not you need to use soy sauce and/or wasabi. I'd poured some soy sauce into the little bowl, but after lightly dipping the first piece realized it wasn't at all needed. Each piece had a different amount of wasabi that provided varying levels of heat to each piece. The toro and the hokkigai were easily the best two pieces. We finished the dinner with mochi ice cream, always a treat.

We took the light rail to Japantown but by the time we left it had finally cooled down enough to walk back. This evening, the group of people and the sushi, was one of the highlights of the week.